Labor Day Wrap-Up

(1) And how was your Labor Day weekend? Not as wild as Carbondale’s:

(2) I always thought that the media was making a big mistake by telling us the names and life histories of infamous school shooters, such as Columbine, Jonesboro, Pearl, Miss., Springfield, Ore., and Santee, Cal. All they did was give the school shooters what they wanted, and that is eternal fame, or infamy, if you will. As it is, the shootings that happened after the first ones were all copycats of the first and the ones that followed. And now those fruits have really ripened hard in the UK: Two British school students are now on trial for plotting a Columbine-style attack at their school ten years to the day after Columbine.

(3) Kurt Schilling is thinking about throwing his hat in the ring to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. I don’t know what I think about his political chops, but I do know that he would be a Republican in any political office he would hold. That said, he might as well forget Massachusetts, even if two of his three World Series rings were won in Boston. I think he would have a better chance in his native Arizona, (where he won the other ring), except that neither John McCain nor Jon Kyl seem to want to retire anytime soon.

(4) Maybe they weren’t kidding when they said that the Swine Flu would hit blacks harder. Stillman college, an HBCU in Tuscaloosa, Ala., had to cancel and forfeit its home opener football game against conference rival Clark Atlanta, also an HBCU. The reason is that 37 members of the Stillman football team have Swine Flu. That’s has to be close to half their roster.

(5) Someone named “Davis” has been named the GM of Clear Channel’s St. Louis radio properties. Too bad it’s not Jefferson.

(6) There’s a jihadist in Alabama. WWGWD? (What Would George Wallace Do?)

(7) When you were about ready to graduate from high school, members of your class voted on who was most likely to succeed, most likely to become President, most likely to have gender-changing surgery, most likely to join a cult, most likely to cure AIDS, and a whole bunch of other “most likelies.” In Chicago, you might well win the title as Most Likely to Get Shot. The CPS will spend $30 million a year to intervene into the lives of the 1,200 students (of all grades) it thinks are most likely to get shot, in order to give every one of them their very own individual social worker, and guarantee each of them some sort of paying make-work job. (Though I would think child labor laws mean that the jobs are given to students that are of a certain age or older; I can ill imagine that first-graders will be made to pull the wagon out there in the working world.) Aside from all the other reasons this idea is problematic, which you already know because you’re smart enough to read this blog every day, the thing that jumped out at me is $30 million a year for 1,200 students, which divides out to $25,000 a year. If I were in charge, the CPS would spend $30m on its 1,200 smartest students before doing this. If they won’t agree to that sensible step, I would rather spend $30m a year on the 1,200 students most likely to shoot somebody.

This puts to bed any concerns about urban public schools being underfunded.

Question: For those of you who are victims of our most recent recession, would it behoove you to paint your face black, fraudulently present your age as a teenager, and move to Chicago? There has been a recent trend of middle aged people taking on a fake ID and going back to high school. Now I know what they’re after.

(8) Speaking of Chicago, a 25-year old gang banger was killed when a member of his own gang accidentally ran over him with an SUV. I hardly think that’s what he signed up for, to get mowed down by one of his own homies. That said, I have an idea for the CPS…

(9) It looks like the topic of President Obama’s much-ballyhooed address to America’s school students tomorrow will be a call to them to do their best. For some students who will be watching tomorrow, that isn’t very much. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

(10) Canada is mulling a tax on iPods and similar portable digital music devices, money which would be distributed to record labels and movie studios based on the premise that those who own such devices will attain music and movies outside the bounds of copyright law.

Like I have said in this medium before, the RIAA and MPAA (and their equivalents in other countries) are arguing for horses in an automobile world. I would be in favor of this tax IF AND ONLY IF the RIAA and MPAA agree not to sue individuals that download music and movies. In other words, this would be the stop-gap solution to allow the RIAA and MPAA to adjust to the new paradigm.

In the long term, what I think might save the music and movie industry is the Holographic Versatile Disk (HVD), a CD/DVD/BR-sized medium that would allow for perhaps tens of terabytes of storage on one disk. In other words, why buy a CD with music in .wav format when downloaded 192 kbps MP3 files sound just as good? Why buy a Blu-Ray movie of 1920x1080p video resolution when you can download one on a very fast home broadband line in a few hours? (Assuming your ISP doesn’t have bandwidth caps.) But an HVD could store uncompressed audio of extremely high quality, sampling rate, frequency response and dynamic range, in various possibilities of surround sound. An HVD could (and indeed would be needed) to store Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) in 7680x4320p resolution, 16 times that of 1080p Blu-Ray, with a 22.2 channel three-dimensional surround sound system, compared to 7.1 channel audio offerings on Blu-Ray. (UHDTV has already been demonstrated in Japan and Las Vegas.) The saving grace for the labels and studios is that even with the fastest available residential broadband connection of the near future, it would take weeks to download (e.g.) 10 TB of data to fill an HVD. The only way to get music or movies of such high quality would be to buy them or rent them on their physical commercially-produced HVD disks.

Broken Down Van

I noticed there was a lot of hits on my previous post in this medium about one Van Jones, who got out of the kitchen yesterday because he couldn’t take the heat.

One of the things Jones gets criticized for is that he is a “9/11 Truther.”  I, too am one of those, but the more I read about what Mr. Jones though about 9/11, the more I realize that some Truthers are more equal than others.  For instance, Jones (and many like him) are only into 9/11 Truthism because they want to find a way to blame it on former President Bush, and a supposed cabal of “neo-cons” and the military-industrial complex.  With Mr. Jones, I think it’s a matter of racial jealousy; I don’t know if this is true or not, but there are supposedly writings of his circling around that show him approving of Johnny Jihad’s terroristical boogie-woogieism on September 11, 2001, for racial reasons.  You know how that goes, the enemy of my enemy.  But that’s inconsistent with 9/11 Truthism.  You can’t say that you approve of AQ doing what they did on 9/11 out of a common contempt for honkey/infidel, then turn around and say that Bush did it.

However, you’re not getting anywhere near the Truth about 9/11 if you stroll down those roads.  I hardly know (or am comfortable with) any solid conclusions about the Rest of the Story about 9/11, but I am very comfortable in concluding that:

(1)  No President, neither Bush 43 nor Clinton, had any prior knowledge.

(2)  Sorry, David Duke.  There WERE Jews that died in 9/11.  I remember there was one day a few years ago that I watched a scrolling applet on the side of a website I used to read regularly, that showed names and faces of 9/11 victims.  I watched it for quite awhile, and must have seen several hundred names and faces.  And my guesstimation is that about one in twenty New York victims (don’t forget there were some at the Pentagon that died) had both obviously Jewish names AND obviously Jewish looks.  Some people had obviously Jewish names but not looks, and might or might not have been Jewish.  Some didn’t have an obviously Jewish names but did have obviously Jewish looks, and they might or might not have been Jewish.  It is also possible that there were some with neither the name or the looks that actually were Jewish.  Norm Coleman, the former Senator from Minnesota (but not a 9/11 victim) has neither an obviously Jewish name nor obviously Jewish looks, but is Jewish.  But the whole upshot of this is that the theory circling around certain (i.e. white right-wing anti-Semitic) circles that no Jews died because they were told to stay away from the WTC, is total bullshit.

Then, there is the matter of common sense.  It’s physically impossible to call every Jew in New York City metropolitan area, a metro area that spans three states and 20 million people, to tell them to stay away from a certain place.  Hell, to prevent any Jews from being in a set of certain buildings at a certain time on a certain day would require you calling every Jew in America, and probably the world.  Ever hear of business travelers?  On top of that, there’s the name/look dilemma I mentioned above.  If you’re someone in a secret bunker that has to call every Jew in the world to tell them to stay away from WTC on September 11, what do you do when you get to the “Coleman” listing in the Minneapolis-St. Paul white pages?  What do you do when you get to the “Berg” listing in Reading, Pennsylvania?  Many stereotypically Jewish surnames were borrowed from German, and names like “Berg” could be Kraut instead of Jewish.  What of ethic Jews that convert to Christianity?  I don’t know if this supposed Jewish cabal would give them the pleasure of surviving a terrorist attack, so they might have to get their psychic on to figure out which Jewish names in the phone book not to call.  Hint:  Avoid “Rothstein” in Tulsa.  There are such things as blended Christian-Jewish families.  I suppose that you would tell a son of one Jewish parent and one Christian parent to keep half of himself away from the World Trade Center, but let the other half come.

(3)  The two airliners flown into the two WTC towers by radical Islamic jihadists would have caused irreparable harm to the two towers, so much so that they would have been unusable.  However, the plane-building collision and subsequent fires (and any other damage as a result) would not have been able to cause the self-implosion of the buildings.  Something else had to cause that.

And that’s all I have been able to conclude.  Anything else is pure speculation, and will be pure speculation until real credible people with real subpoena power can do a real credible investigation.  And whatever Van Jones thinks, you can send straight to File 13.

I Won’t Be Laboring on Labor Day, So Enjoy the Headlines Now.

WSJ:  Cash for Flunkers  -  Berlin wants to bribe banks to make high-risk loans. What could possibly go wrong?

Give the Germans at least one thing:  Their colossal subprime mortgage debacle is going to be more efficient than ours.

Northern Territory (Australia) News:  Dog given parking ticket

The next time he gets a moving violation, the car will go to the impound, and the driver will go to the pound.

CNS:  Massachusetts Considers Naming Landmarks for Sen. Kennedy

It’s too bad that everything in MA is already named for Jack or Bobby.

CNS:  Republican Lawmaker Says Obama’s Back-to-School Address Is Attempt to Spread Socialism to Schools

I’m sure the President will accomplish what the public schools they already attend has not.

John Lott:  Why are public school students being asked to help President Obama?

Because the private and homeschooled students are too smart.

CNS:  ‘Third-Rate’ Charter Schools Should Be Closed, Education Secretary Says

That’s a relief for those of you who run second-rate charter schools.

CNS:  Biden Claims Stimulus Working Faster Than Hoped

How low were their hopes to begin with?

CofCC:  Obama Advisor: Time to get “Uppitty.”

Wait until I get a chance to put him “downitty.”

Breitbart:  Van Jones: Only ‘Suburban White Kids’ Shoot Up Schools

As opposed to urban black kids, who shoot up any place else other than schools.

James Edwards:  Black congresswoman praises Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

She musn’t read often, if at all.

LoS:  Gordon Brown faces a hammering

Too bad it’s not Nick Griffin holding the hammer.

LoS:  Congressional Favorability at 24-Year Low

You mean Congress found a way to sink under 0%?

P-D:  College football is about to start, again with few black coaches

Cue the violins.

Slashdot:  Sending Astronauts On a One-Way Trip To Mars

Don’t waste any perfectly good astronauts.  Send Sheila Jackson-Lee so she can find the flag we planted there a long time ago.

Slashdot:  Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid

As opposed to wives, who don’t make men temporarily stupid but do have you check in your balls after the honeymoon.

WBBM-AM Chicago:  Caught with a gun, five days in jail

This from the city that brought you misdemeanor murdering cops.

The Onion:  Haiti Makes Bid For 2216 Olympics

Its bid might be affected by Zimbabwe’s push for 2212.  The IOC doesn’t seem to like holding the Games in third world dumps consecutively.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep…

P-D:  Obama holds Islamic dinner

I hope he waited until after sunset to start eating, otherwise Allah is going to be mad.

KSDK:  Device allows women to go to the bathroom standing up

FINALLY!!!! The seat can stay up for good.

UK Telegraph:  Say a prayer before sex

I hope to God (the Viagra I bought from a Vietnamese pharmacy isn’t fake/She’s really a woman/Her husband doesn’t get too angry/She only has one orgasm/The cops stay away from this ridge/She doesn’t have inflated expectations due to her affair with a younger guy/She’s never heard that YMCA shower racial joke/The people directly underneath us are deaf/She’s really 18/I have enough money/We can do it with her on top)

CNS:  Parade of Despots Heading For New York

Doesn’t New York have enough despots of its own without having to import any?

CNS:  Homeland Security’s Goal: Allow 70 percent of Bad Guys Through Ports of Entry

Yeah yeah, that’s not how they do it on TV.

CNS:  U.S. Fares Poorly in Child Welfare Survey, Paris-Based Watchdog Says

It’s just France’s revenge for the crap we call French bread, French dressing and Freedom fries.

CNS:  Hand sanitizer is given to Metro riders

I’ve ridden St. Louis’s public transit a few times in my day, and from what I can tell, some riders should get that and decontamination showers.

National Examiner:  What does the Disney/Marvel merger really mean?

Superman and Uncle Remus do a crossover.

Kansas City Star:  Federal officials praise Green Impact Zone in KC’s urban core

NAACP sues for too many greens and not enough blacks.

Voice of America:  ‘Sesame Street’ to Combat Swine Flu

They will not be joined by Oscar, who will be getting his very first bath, or the Warner Brother’s Porky Pig.

The Two-Wheeled Getaway Vehicle

P-D:

Credit union robber flees on bike, FBI says

The FBI and Florissant police are searching for a man who briefly took over and robbed a credit union branch Tuesday, then fled on a bicycle.

The man walked into the Midwest Credit Union at 11 Flower Valley at about 10a.m. waving a handgun in his left hand. He ordered everyone inside the bank to the ground, jumped the counter, grabbed cash and left, the FBI said, heading north on a bicycle.

The man, described as black and about 5’10” tall with a thin white cloth wrapped around the top of his head, was wearing dark glasses, a beard that may have been fake, dark pants and whitish-grey coat, the FBI said.

And yet, the bank’s security guards couldn’t catch up with a guy fleeing on a BIKE?  Neither could the Florissant P.D.?  Hell, he might as well have gotten on all fours and crawled away from the bank, he would have been just as unmolested.

Of course not.  The credit union probably didn’t have any security guards, and the Florissant P.D. was once run by that world class dufus Robert Lowery.

Then again, I have another theory — The credit union did have security guards, but one or more of them is related to the robber.  An inside job, like.  You know how that goes, oops darn it fell away from me.  The long time between the robber getting away and the guards calling the cops — just a coincidence!

Things Sure Are Expensive in Illinois

Ground will soon be broken to widen Route 13.  However, it will take FIVE fucking years and nine figures to add 12 piddley feet of concrete to each side of 13 between Marion and Carterville.  And they only need to add concrete — It’s not a freeway grade road, it’s just four lane divided with a grass median, with frequent grade crossings and stoplights (Think: 94 in St. Charles County between 70 and 40, not counting Page Avenue Extension concurrency.)  IIRC, there is only one overpass for 13 in that stretch over a creek, therefore only two bridges that need to be let out a bit.  Why so fucking expensive and fucking long?  Then again, this is old hat for Illinois.

As it is, it won’t help me one bit, because my daily commute is from Carterville to Carbondale and back — that stretch will be widened in the far distant future, and is not part of this project..  By that time, I’ll probably have moved away from here, hopefully back to St. Louis or some other sane state.  It will actually hinder me because going back to STL from Carterville means 13 east to I-57 north.  That’s the part that’s going to be worked on for the next five years, which means one-lane stretches in each direction, low speed limits and a snails pace just to get back to Marion.

Looks like I might have to learn to love US 51 north out of Carbondale up to I-64.

If you ask me, what needs to be done is to convert 13 from I-57 in Marion to Carbondale to an interstate highway grade road.  Use the existing main lanes of 13 for the freeway lanes, take out the lights and cross-grades.  There are already outer roads in and around Carterville, make those one-way on each side, extend those from Marion to Carbondale, as frontage roads for the freeway.  Any freeway exits would be slip ramps to the frontage roads, which would meet the surface streets at-grade (Think:  I-44 between the Meramec River and Highway 141 in Fenton).  There are two ways they could end the freeway in Carbondale:  (1)  Join the freeway and frontage lanes going westbound before the US 51 stoplight in the center of Carbondale, and vice versa for eastbound after it, or (2) Dogleg the freeway lanes down so that they flow right into the entrance to SIUC (Southern Illinois University – Carbondale), where almost everyone who goes west on 13 from Marion winds up going anyway, let the frontage roads flow as the Route 13 lanes do now, right through the middle of Carbondale as one-way surface streets, until they meet back to to go to Murphysboro.

The freeway could be an I-57 spur, I-x57 where x is an odd number.  I see no need for anything more than SIU to I-57.  13 east of 57 to Harrisburg isn’t that busy, and 13 west of Carbondale to Murphysboro isn’t too busy either; both stretches are four lane divided and are fine that way.

http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2009/09/02/front_page/29343728.txt

http://countenance.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/i-can-understand-the-confusion/

The Light Bulbs That Didn’t Work

I had no idea about the school funding lawsuit that SCOMO ended yesterday was about, until the P-D told us that:

Less than half of the state’s 523 public school districts filed the original lawsuit, contending the current funding formula which directs the state to “establish and maintain free public schools” falls woefully short of addressing the disparity in resources and performance across Missouri. In other words, the plaintiffs argue the state needs to direct more funds to areas with the fewest resources, worst overall student performance and the most challenges. In Missouri, this means several so-called urban school districts.

Which get much more money per capita per annum than a lot of white rural districts.  Until recently, the St. Louis City Public Schools spent more money per student per year than all school districts on the Missouri side of the St. Louis metro area except Clayton and Ladue.

And no, I don’t buy the bullshit that the worst students need the most money.  If Thomas Edison had that attitude about light bulbs, that more time and money should be spent on designs that didn’t work than ones that did, we would all still be in the dark today.  (Some think we still are.)  Somehow, for some reason, probably having to do with racial egalitarianism, people can’t seem to apply that mode of common sense to the realm of public education.

Time to Unwind

BBC:

Inventor urges patent law change

A major British inventor is calling for a change in the law to strengthen protection against those who try to steal ideas.

Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, has written to the business secretary urging him to criminalise the theft of intellectual property.

The move would involve a fundamental change to the law on patents.

Currently, inventors have to sue those they believe have stolen their idea through the civil courts.

(snip)

The answer, he says, is to make stealing a patent a criminal offence – just as it’s already a criminal offence to steal copyright from creative people like authors and musicians.

(snip)

Mr Baylis, who lives in an eccentric house-cum-workshop which he built himself on Eel Pie Island, in the middle of the River Thames off Twickenham, says he has the support of the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of his local MP, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable.

I don’t know what I think about what Baylis wants, though I should say that comparing patent infringement and “copyright violation” is like comparing apples to uranium.

However, I do have an inclination to oppose this, for a reason that is a violation of Aristotelian logic. The reason is that I consider the source.

As you read in the article, Baylis invented the wind-up technology that is used for emergency/blackout radios produced by his own company, Freeplay, but by similar devices manufactured by other companies.

However, Baylis didn’t invent this technology to help you during a blackout. He did it to pander to black Africans. You see, many black Africans live in places where electric power is either non-existent or unreliable (gee, I wonder why). And if we could just give every black African child a radio that needs no juice or batteries, they would listen to education broadcasts, all become nuclear physicists and turn black Africa into a first world powerhouse. It just happened to fall out of the design that white people in America and Europe would buy these things like hotcakes before the next hurricane, earthquake or derecho. So Baylis came up with new scheme: Double the retail price for honkies, and use the extra proceeds to buy one for a black African kid. It was then that I decided to forego a Freeplay. I eventually did buy a wind-up radio, but not from Freeplay. I’m sure that the company that made the one I bought had to pay royalties to Baylis for the use of the technology, but that’s a relative drop in the bucket.

Want proof? Look in the 1997 Passport to World Band Radio, but make sure you haven’t eaten in awhile. For the picture of Baylis, one of his business lieutenants and Nelson Mandela will make you puke. Baylis gave Mandela the very first production model of the first version of the Freeplay that rolled off the assembly line.

Mr Baylis, who lives in an eccentric house-cum-workshop which he built himself on Eel Pie Island, in the middle of the River Thames off Twickenham, says he has the support of the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of his local MP, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable.

Nowhere near minorities. How typically lib of him.

Bring the Heat

Somebody stole the copper wiring and other metallic items from an after-school center in St. Louis City over this past weekend.

You can probably guess where the center was and who did it.

It was the Lift for Life Gym in Cass Avenue on the north side.  The P-D doesn’t tell us about any suspects, though there probably aren’t any credible suspects at the moment.  But I think I already know one distinguishing characteristic about the theives.

LfL Gym is a project of the same non-profit agency that now runs a charter middle school of the same name in the Soulard neighborhood, very near Soulard Market.  It is held in a former bank building that fronts to Broadway, but the parking lot is along 7th.  When it was a bank, it was my oldest aunt’s first place of employment.

But the whole upshot of the matter is that the LfL gym on Cass has no a/c, so workouts and lifting sessions are bound to be hot until they get the a/c fixed.  One can hope that the thieves didn’t make off with the copper or other metals that allow the gym to have hot water.

Someone commented to the P-D story with this:

We’re not going to get rid of thieves, and we can’t penalize people who are already broke with larger fines. The only way to stop this lunacy is to demand stricter laws for scrap yards.

Yes, they do require ID and you have to sign a paper saying the items weren’t stolen, but come on! When a dude rolls in with a beat-up truck filled with copper pipe, where do you think he got it? The copper pipe fairy? The scrap yards KNOW these people are selling stolen goods.

I’ve seen the scrapper guys in my neighborhood. They’ve been targeting vacant houses, and they are so bold! I saw one guy walk right up onto my neighbor’s lawn in the middle of the day and attempt to take an AC unit that was sitting on the ground. When I confronted him, he said he figured the unit was trash. I told him, “Well, that’s not really for you to decide, is it? It’s not your property!!”

Make it harder to sell scrap, plain and simple. That’s the only way to curb this problem. How many houses (and other buildings) do these fools have to ruin before our lawmakers address this?

Okay, let’s say we do what you ask.  When the next “dude rolls in with a beat-up truck filled with copper pipe,” and the scrap yard owner gets suspicious and says no, the “dude” will yell racism and racial profiling, and an ACLU or NAACP lawyer will sue.

Fit These Pieces Together

KPBS-15 San Diego:

Fires at Home May Keep Governor From Border Conference

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may not attend the annual gathering of U.S. and Mexican border governors that kicks off in Monterrey, Mexico on Wednesday.

The governors of the four U.S. and six Mexican states on each side of the border meet annually to discuss issues that affect both countries.

Governor Schwarzenegger hosted last year’s meeting in Hollywood. He planned to attend this year for the opening cocktail party and part of the first day.

However, the Governor’s spokesman, Francisco Castillo, says it’s not clear if the Governor will be able to because of the wildfires burning in California.

“His priority right now are ensuring that those fires are taken care of here and ensuring the public safety as well,” says Castillo.

And then, AP:

Fire official: Big LA forest fire human caused

LOS ANGELES – Firefighters made more progress Wednesday against a giant wildfire that has ravaged a national forest north of Los Angeles as investigators searched for information about how the fire started.

Officials are still trying to figure out what set off the blaze in the Angeles National Forest that had burned nearly 219 square miles, or 140,150 acres, by early Wednesday. Deputy incident commander Carlton Joseph said Wednesday that the fire was human-caused, but it’s not known specifically how it was started or whether it was accidental or arson.

Joseph said a human cause could include a range of things from a dropped cigarette to a spark from something like a lawn mower. Joseph says investigators have several leads and notes that lightning has been ruled out as a possible cause.

Yes, it could have been a cig, or a lawn mower.  It might have been some kid playing around with two sticks.  Yes, it could have been any one of those things.  But it probably was Mexican drug gangs setting a fire to create a distraction from their own drug running.

Anyone want to try to put these two stories together to end up with Arnie is a fool?

My Advice to Joe Farah: Just Be Yourself. And By “Yourself,” I Mean Not a Re-PUBIC-an Talking Head.

Joe Farah, in WND:

GOP bloggers call for boycott of WND!

Surprise. It’s not just the Obama administration and the left that’s using intimidation tactics to malign and suppress WorldNetDaily. Now a few Republican bloggers are using the same bullying tactics in an effort to put WND out of business by calling on Americans to, and I quote, “boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce … support for WorldNetDaily.”

(snip)

Last Saturday, the Herald published an article titled, “Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make ‘birthers’ look sane.” In that story, reporter Steven Thomma of McClatchy, a newspaper chain founded on the notion of promoting “public ownership of private property” (and doing its best to fulfill that mission, I might add), alleges “WorldNetDaily.com says that the government is considering Nazi-like concentration camps for dissidents.”

(snip)

“In the 1960s, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being ‘so far removed from common sense’ and later said ‘We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.’

“The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet.  The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.  For instance, I have been told that F.I.R.E (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) – an otherwise respectable group that does important work – uses the WND email list.  They should stop.”

I would consider this a badge of honor.  When I started this blog a number of years ago, albeit as the official voice of a chapter of a certain organization, and not my personal soapbox/jokebox like it is now, I deluded myself into thinking that I/we were on my/our way to official praise and links from the conservative lamestream, the Crud States, the American Stinkers.  Needless to say, there was none of that.  One by one, I kept dropping one lamestream conservative blog after another off my blogroll, thereby increasing my sanity and decreasing my blood pressure.  What made me divorce the lamers forever is that none of the lamers could be bothered to cite the original source of the Joyce/McCulloch “Truth Squad” scandal that I broke for a certain organization on another medium in the fall of last year, during campaign season.  All those fuckers cited the Gateway Pundit as the orignial source, when the Gateway Pundit, to his credit, did cite where it got the story from, clearly as the nose on your face.

And let’s face it — all lamestream conservatism and its blogs ever got us was one disappointment and heartache after another.  For all the Republican electoral successes between 1968 and 2004, there has been almost no reversal of the liberal cultural trend.  Affirmative action is as strong as ever, started by Richard Nixon.  Ronald Reagan eliminated the requirement that Federal employees read at a 12th grade level (P.A.C.E. exam), in order hire more blacks.  And that’s not even counting the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens; California is forever unwinnable and on its way to third world dumpdom.  The Ward Connerly organization has to sweat it out on street corners to hope to get enough signatures to get an affirmative action ban on Missouri’s ballot at some time in the near future.  It would all be moot if the heavily Republican Missouri General Assembly would just pass MCRI by legislative vote.  Even with a Nixon veto, the Senate is more than 2/3 Republican, so it could be overridden.  But no, the Stupid Party is too afraid of offending a constituency from whom they get no votes.  Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday?  Reagan/Gingrich.  Overthrowing the white government of South Africa, such that it’s now a big ghetto where whites are target practice dummies?  Reagan/Gingrich.  The cities are still black, whites can’t live there, in spite of Republicans winning all those elections.  The racial dispossession of America’s whites continue.  The cultural genocide of white Southerners in the South continues, in spite of the fact that the white Southerner is the Republican Party’s base, mainly because the natural party of the white Southerner, the Democrats, drove them out decades ago.

Lamestream conservatism has been good for exactly two things:  Nothing and shit.  Joe Farah, be glad that it’s telling you to fuck off.

As for William F. Fuckley, I am on very good speaking terms (i.e. I have their phone numbers, and could stay at their houses for a few days if I needed), with two people that are or were very high up within the John Birch Society, and were with the JBS when Fuckley told the JBS to fuck off.  Both have told me independently of each other that the prevailing feeling among JBS members at the time was that they were happy that Fuckley did what he did, because they were tired of disturbing links between their organization and that Skull-and-Boner rich blue-blooded Yale alum.

And as for Joe Farah’s concentration camp theory — Hey, it happened in an advanced first world country before, it can happen again.

This Is Punahow We Do It

CNS:  Letter Reveals Ted Kennedy’s Opposition to Abortion, Belief in Life ‘From the Very Moment of Conception’

Smile!  You’re on Candid Camera.

Jihad Watch:  Egyptian Muslim Council: Building a church is a sin against Allah

Or, it may not matter Allaht.

P-D:  Poor access to good schools for many St. Louis students

All those genius kids on the Northside are suffering from old buildings and mediocre teachers.

WCNC-NBC-36 Charlotte, N.C.:  Homeowners: We didn’t know I-485 was coming

Except the realtors’ brochure stated that you would have easy access to the soon to be I-485.

NYT:  Justice Department to Recharge Civil Rights Enforcement

President Obama will have to take Michael Jackson’s doctor for affirmative action’s sake.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/us/politics/01rights.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Docstoc:  President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009

“Please do better on the standardized tests; We’re tired of homeschoolers showing us up.”

Take Two:  Docstoc:  President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009

Somebody put up a subtitle that the above attended a private school for middle and high school.

KSDK:  Bank of America teller demands fingerprint from man with no hands

Yet, all they wanted from illegal aliens is a Matricula Consular card to give them an affirmative action mortgage.

NYP:  HYPOCRITE CHARLIE [Rangel]: PUNISH TAX SLIP-UPS

That’s right.  Taxes are only for the little honkies.

WND:  Why Big Government hates God

Because it hates competition.  That’s why you shouldn’t steal.

LAT:  Lakewood High football star is charged in shooting

From tailback to jailback.

The Ted Kennedy Effect (Or, You Can’t Keep a Bad Man Down)

With the passing of Ted Kennedy, the U.S. Senate does need somebody who thinks that marriage vows are merely suggestions.

All glibness aside, the more I think about it, the more I think the effort to depose Spitzer was a hatchet job.  I think it was all a Wall Street plot to exact revenge on the man who, as NYS AG, was called the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” who didn’t put up with corporate bullshit.  I mean, if you’re going to topple Eliot Spitzer, why didn’t the same people try it on Ted Kennedy?  Eliot Spitzer was guilty of something that a very significant minority of politicians do, (Yes, David Vitter, I’m looking at you), the only difference is that Spitzer made very powerful enemies, a la Jeff Smith.

Not that I would vote for Spitzer or Jeff Smith, or not vote for Vitter.

If you’re going to take on the Powers That Be, you better be purer than the wife of Caesar and wind-driven snow combined.