Saturday Wrap-Up

*  As a fan of a school that’s currently in conference limbo, that being the University of Missouri, I think a lot of the worry about conference re-alignment is unnecessary.

First off, even though Mizzou offers very little to the Big “Ten” athletically, it has one of the very best J-Schools in the country, and they’d take Mizzou just for that.  Not to mention the St. Louis and Kansas City TV markets.  But even if you only want to consider sports, it’s not that MO is compelling by itself, it’s MO+KS that the Big Ten likes so much.  It already has NE now, so logic and geography would dictate that it take in MO and KS, to put that storied rivalry in the same conference with OHST+MI.  It would also make the MO+IL rivalry a permanent one.  Because the Big 10 has already taken Nebraska, that means they’re certainly not loath to expanding their geography westward.  Lawrence, Kansas and Columbia, Missouri are now solidly in Big 10 territory.

The Pac “Ten” is obviously going to take TX, and therefore, TXTech, OK and OKST will poodle right along.  There is talk that TXA&M would like the SEC better, but no other big TX school would ever schedule A&M again if they were in the SEC.  Gov. Perry is an A&M alum, so he’s going to see to it that A&M goes to the Pac 10.  Gubernatorial politics in Texas and major Texas school conference alignment seems to be co-dependant; The only reason Baylor was able to join TX, Tech and A&M to enter what was the Big 8 in 1994 was because Gov. Ann “Ma” Richards is a Baylor alum.  A&M should be happy that Perry won that primary, because Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a TX alum, so she might not have cared.

I predict that, along with MO+KS, the Big 10 will also take Notre Dame and then either MD, Rutgers or Pitt, Pitt the least likely b/c Rutgers brings in the N NJ TV market and MD is a D.C. school.  This would make a Big “Ten” that comprises of schools east of the IL-IN state line in one division and west of there in the other division, eight in each.  The Pac “Ten” would be coast schools in one divison and inland schools in the other division, again eight apiece.  The SEC and Big East will probably cannibalize the ACC to get to 16 teams in each conference, or maybe the SEC and ACC cannibalize the Big East.  Either way, it just might make the talk about a playoff in college football a moot discussion, because the four winners of the four superconferences could start a playoff independent of the BCS/NCAA.

The Big 12 was destined to fall apart for much the same reason that the Hitler-Stalin pact did.  It was delusional to throw three big schools from a big state into a conference that was comprised of significant but not too big state schools from relatively small Midwestern states and not expect the Texas schools to dominate.  It totally wrecked the NE-OK football rivalry, because they were in different divisions, and therefore didn’t necessarily play each other every year.  Now they’re going to be in different conferences.

Iowa State and Kansas State, I don’t know what will become of them.

UPDATE: A Tiger fan board is sending me a bit of a ‘lanche, so let me lay out some hard cold numbers for you:  The number of college football national championships, BCS game appearances, men’s basketball championships and Final Fours Mizzou has won/appeared in my lifetime in is zero.  That number for KS and NE is definitely higher than zero.  And don’t talk about women’s field hockey, we’re only talking about money making sports here.  And I’m saying this out of tough love.  MO’s going into the Big Ten with Kansas, or we’re going to some obscure conference that doesn’t matter whose home office is in Pocatello, Idaho, and KS goes to the Big Ten.  Simple as that.

*  Amazing.  Some of the same neo-cons and lamestream conservatives who hash their Tweets with #tcot, and who just love Meg Whitman so much, are now bitching that PayPal has revoked Atlas Shrugs’s PP account because it’s a “hate” site.  They’re a little late to the party — PP has been doing this for quite some time.  And when did PP start in with this shit?  Right, just after Meg Whitman engineered the E-Bay purchase of PayPal.

Meg Whitman.  Big time phony.  I told ya so.

And a few headlines.

Daily Mail:  That’s the spirit! UK vodka beats Russia and Poland to be voted best in the world

I bet British vodka is even better when it’s warm.

Daily Mail:  Curse of the screen: PCs ‘dull children’s brains and should be banned until nine

De-brainwish your kid — Send them to public school.

Daily Mail:  Try not to cart off people, binmen told by health and safety chiefs

Knock on the door and tell the people inside that discarded people should really be recycled.

UK Independent:  Australian billionaires take to the streets for tax protest

Zimbabwe’s billionaires, meanwhile, don’t have anything worth taxing.

NSLF:  Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating “Lifestyle Behavior Modification”

He’s going to require you to be gay, get a government job and join a public employee union.

Rodney King II

Here’s some heavy weather ahead for which you all should prepare.

Paul Huebl:

Los Angeles, CA—The trial of Bay Area Rapid Transit cop, Johannes Mehserle has been removed from Oakland to be tried here.

Mehserle is the young cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant on a transit platform on New Year’s Day in 2009. Grant was being subdued and handcuffed by several officers when Mehserle removed his service weapon from its holster and shot Grant in the back. It sounds so simple but it’s not.

The shooting of Oscar Grant was a YouTube Sensation because several people in the hostile crowd pulled out cell-phone video cameras and captured the incident. They quickly posted the videos on YouTube with their own misleading and incendiary commentary.

(snip)

Next we have to talk about Oakland, California. Oakland is the Hate Epicenter of the United States for African-American extremists. The Black Panther Party was spawned here and cops, especially White cops are targets of hate and deadly race based assault.

Oakland’s African-American community wants the blood of this young cop. The threats against this lad are such that anyone killing him in a on the street, jail or prison would be considered a Black Hero.

Mehserle’s lawyers were right to get the trial out Oakland, but then they agree to L.A.?  Rodney King?  Hello?  About the only chance he has for a fair hearing is that L.A. is full of Hispanics, and if there are enough Hispanics on the jury who happen to have grudges against blacks, they might actually listen to the evidence and be immune to pressure from the blacks that will surely be on the jury.  (UPDATE:  The jury is comprised of seven Hispanics and five whites.)

If he’s found not guilty or if there is a hung jury, (UPDATE:  And a not guilty verdict is all the more possible since there are no blacks on the jury) two big cities will have riots.  I don’t know how long this trial will take, but I can easily see a verdict being turned in before the end of summer.  A not guilty verdict in late October resulting in black riots in L.A. and Oakland would suit me just fine.  Hope and change?  More like dope and flames.

One Can’t Be a Servant of Two Masters

5:  P.E. teacher at North County school accused of having sex with student

Her education certainly was physical.

WCBS-2 NYC:  Chaos, Anarchy To Reign If Paterson Shuts Down NY

They both can’t reign at the same time, so they’ll have to be co-regnants.  But that usually never lasts long; one will assassinate the other.

2:  Shots Ring Out As Patrons Leave Clubs

That’s what happens when you go to Chez Murder.

5:  Missouri committed to Big 12 — for now

Pardon me, how is 12 minus 2 still equal to 12?

Great Scott, Friday’s Stuff!

Can’t wait to get my blogging for the day through so I can play with my new phone.

*  And it looks like my new toy might already be obsolete — I thought 1 GHz inside your pocket was remarkable, but Motorola forecasts 2 GHz in smartphones by the end of the year.  (A lot of people still have desktop computers with single-core processors of 2 GHz or slower.)  On top of that, a few CPU makers for smartphones are about ready to release 1.2-1.5 GHz multi-core chips.  So the forecast calls for the doubling of speed, unless you live in Appleville.  iCabal.  Tee Hee.

*  A clear and present violation of the 13th Amendment.  Nobody can force you into slavery.

*  The more you tie teacher pay, teacher tenure and school funding to student test scores, the more cheating you’re going to have.  Pure and simple as that.

*  Alvin Greene is not going to be a United States Senator.  But anyone who has Jim Clyburn’s feathers all ruffled is fine by me.  As for the accusations that he’s a GOP plant — For all of his other faults and upsides, Mr. Greene seems too dumb to be able to play along with that sort of scam.  He would have outed it by now, just by pure accident.

*  TPM and immigration making waves in another Governor race — When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced last May for the Senate, CW essentially coronated AG Bill McCollum (R) the next Governor.  But out of nowhere, Rick Scott, a former health care industry exec, has soared to a 44-31 lead over McCollum.  Almost the entirety of Scott’s media buys have been about how he wants Florida to have an SB 1070.

*  Gee, I bet she’s just waiting on pins and needles for his endorsement.

*  Central banksters usually are given to lying, cheating, scheming and mendacity.  So on the rare occasions they tell the truth, I cherish it.

Bad, Bad Taliban.

5:  NAACP of St. Louis County calling for “calm and prayer” regarding crime

Except their calm prayer will be interrupted with the sound of gunfire.

Daily Mail:  HIV needles buried with bombs as Taliban uses ‘despicable’ tactics to fight British troops

The Taliban engages in despicable tactics?  I would have never guessed, because they’re usually so peaceful and civilized.

Daily Mail:  Taliban executes boy, 7, accused of spying as suicide bomber kills 40 children at wedding

The only other place that would execute a 7-year old boy is Texas.

UK Daily Mail:  ‘Follow the Islamic way to save the world,’ Prince Charles urges environmentalists

Elizabeth really ought to think about cutting his allowance and sending him to bed without dinner.

CNS:  Can Black Americans Afford Obama?

No, but they put him on their credit cards anyway.

CNS:  63 Percent of American Men Say Soccer Not Likely to Ever Be As Popular as Football, Baseball, Basketball or Hockey in USA

The other 37 percent said “Si.”

CNS:  Actress Ashley Judd Calls for End to Mountaintop Coal Mining in Kentucky, Says Workers Should Be Retrained

For what?  To be a celebutard bottom-feeder blogger?

Kansas City Star:  Philadelphia’s success story can cheer KC’s hopes for downtown

Two cities that have recently had black hate mobs run through critical parts of their cities ought not be looking at each other for anything.

5:  Rescuers search for [16-yo] Abby Sunderland who is sailing around the world

She just can’t trace out “HELP” in super giant letters in the desert with her feet.  But she can hook her iPod full of Justin Bieber songs up to the boat’s speaker system and crank up the volume really loud.  They’ll know it’s her.

A New and Interesting Angle on Thursday’s Other Stuff

*  Four of the ten schools the NCAA is sanctioning due to low graduation rates in their football and basketball programs are HBCUs.  They’ll get their scholarships back when they start screaming racism.

*  It might be UNT&T’s fault, but it’s by implication AAPL’s fault for having thrown in so deeply with a shitty carrier.

*  “Halter topped” was not only bad news for the doctrinaire left, it also spent down eight figures of organized labor’s war chest.  And by “organized labor,” I don’t mean middle aged white men working in manufacturing and heavy industry — We’re talking AFSCME and SEIU.  That’ll be $10 million less they can spread around the country in November.

*  “Basically, I’m in shit.  I’m between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.” Truer words might never be texted again, unless he gets stuck between Haiti and Jamaica.

*  Uh, Michael?  That kind of stache doesn’t have the best reputation.

*  Because they are white.

*  I don’t know if there is such a map for St. Louis, but if there is, the only colored dot you would see would be just to the east of Downtown and just to the west of the river, and just to the north of the Poplar Street Bridge.  UPDATE:  There is indeed.  Most St. Louis photos are Arch, Busch, Shaw, Zoo, Art and A-B.

*  So much for Republicans won’t consolidate behind Sharron Angle.  Rasmussen:  Angle 50, Reid 39.  88% of GOPers for Angle, 68% of Dems for Reid.  Once again, Harry Reid shows low numbers.  64% of those polled in NV want an SB 1070 for the state.  These numbers will tighten up, I predict, mainly because Reid has a $25m war chest, and has the community organizer crowd to fake up a lot of Hispanic voter fraud, and that part will show up in the actual results.

*  Speaking of voter fraud and community activists, you’ll find “ACORN” and “St. Louis” here.  Remember the 2000 Presidential election?  Right about poll closing time, some black woman Federal judge pulled a “you gotta keep the polls open” ruling out of her hat, which was almost instantly reversed by the Federal Appellate Courts here in St. Louis.  In between, robocalls from Jesse Jackson’s milieu went out to a lot of homes in North St. Louis.  The whole thing was an orchestrated scheme to try to get Gore to win MO, and I bet ACORN was behind it.

Mexico and Drugs

Two stories.

First, the Obama White House is sitting on a DOJ report linking Mexico to weed and meth trafficking.  Ever since meth-heavy states and the Federal government restricted the sale of cold tablets, this made starting a trailer park meth lab virtually impossible.  This dried up the domestic production of meth, and addicts had to get their fix from Mexican drug gangs.  The kind of meth they bring in is far more potent than hoosier trailer park stuff.

Second, U.S. Attorneys in both Arizona and St. Louis have indicted 24 people on interstate marijuana trafficking.  This article does not state it, but a crucial element of the scheme involves transporting the “finished product” across the border from Mexico.  The only bad news from these indictments is that, if it means a sharp decrease in the supply of marijuana into St. Louis, then the cost will go up, and therefore the hard core addicts will have to rob you at gunpoint more often or burglarize more houses in order to get the money to buy weed.

Look What a Decade of BushObama Wrought

“Officially,” whites are down from 79% of the country in 2000 to 65% today.  And white births could be a minority as early as the end of next year.

Unofficially, the white population is much lower than these figures suggest, because certain mixed race North Africans, Near Easterners and South Asians are counted as white.  Meaning that white births probably have been a minority for a few years.

UPDATE 6/11: One in ten counties are now majority minority.

Yankees Sign Strasburg, Harper to $1 Billion Contracts

November 9, 2016

BRONX, N.Y. (FNN) –  Fresh off winning its sixth World Series championship in eight seasons, the New York Yankees announced today that two free agents, pitcher Stephen Strasburg, and center fielder Bryce Harper, both formerly of the Washington Nationals, have both signed matching and record-breaking seven-year $1 billion contracts with the team.  The Yankees broke their own record of six years ago this month, when they signed former St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols to a eight-year $840 million contract.

Manager Alex Rodriguez, General Manager Derek Jeter and team owner George Steinbrenner, in their press conference today, announced that Strasburg, 28, a seven-season veteran, and Harper, 24, a six-season veteran, will be the core of many more championship Yankees squads for years to come.

While their contracts are exactly the same, their decision to join the Yankees will affect their lives in different ways.   For instance, while Strasburg keeps a bald head and no facial hair, which already complies with Yankees players code of comportment, Harper will have to jettison the mohawk goatee he has sported for the last two seasons.  Both will have to choose different numbers, for Harper’s 4 and Strasburg’s 37 are both retired numbers in Yankees lore, in honor of Lou Gehrig and Casey Stengell, respectively.

However, both will join an already star-studded roster.  Strasburg will team up with veteran Yankee pitchers Tim Lincecum, Ubaldo Jiménez and David Price.  And Harper’s fellow stars behind the battery are many — The Yankees outfield is already so replete with $70 million-plus yearly superstars that baseball analysts predict that the team will groom Harper to move to first base, to be able to replace the 36-year old Pujols, who is presumed to be retiring after next season.

Not everyone is greeting the news of major league baseball’s first billion dollar contract with glee.  President Jan Brewer, who won re-election yesterday, announced that the Justice Department might explore revoking anti-trust exemptions for Major League Baseball, unless “the Diamondbacks get some of these good players.”  Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who just completed their 24th losing season in a row, have a total team payroll that is so low that both Harper and Strasburg will make more in a month than all members of the Pirates made in the 2016 season.  Lavish spending on the part of the Yankees is sure to dominate the conversation at the next owners’ winter meetings in San Diego, Republic of Aztlan, and this rich-poor dichotomy might affect the united front the owners want to put up during the next round of a collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA after the 2019-2020 season.

While these were the MLB’s first $1 billion contracts, the first $1 billion equivalent contract in professional athletics occurred in 2012, when the Chelsea F.C. of the English Premier League of soccer gave American F Jozy Altidore a £590 million 16-year contract; the total amount translated to US$1bn using the exchange rates of the day.

In a World Without Arnold Schwarzenegger At the Helm…

The Hill:  Schwarzenegger’s first ballot is rejected

The penultimate failure of a failed Governor.

NYP:  ‘Shore’ cast not worried about STDs

Why should they worry about catching any when the eight of them combined probably already have every STD known to man?

New English Review:  Britons link Islam with extremism, says survey

Now where would someone get a crazy idea like that?

Yahoo Sports:  Video shows tot with beer bottle at Phillies game

You’re a sports fan in Philadelphia.  You gotta wait to start drinking at games until you’re at least 12.

WSJ:  The Alien in the White House

I recall someone calling Obama “our Odoacer” after he was inaugurated.  Gee, who was that?

Wednesday Rundown

*  Man.  Are you CRAZY?

*  Man.  Are you CRAZY, too?

*  I’m surprised he himself wasn’t arrested and charged with a crime.  This is a country that loves diverse criminals, after all.

*  Maturity:  Noting that one or more major record labels is about to go bankrupt, and not blaming file sharing.

St. Louis Crime Update

(1)  On the murder of Chief emeritus Thompson — Unfortunately, according to this, he might have been another one done in by his own “youthful” arrogance, or at least he never got over his youthful arrogance even in middle age.  See the third paragraph and this.

(2)  P-D posts the mugs of the adult alleged South Co/Jeff Co crime spreers:

Now, why would two black men from South City just willy nilly go on a crime spree in Lemay, Oakville and Imperial just targeting “random” people?  Maybe it wasn’t so “random.”  Methinks they were deliberately targeting random white people.

(3)  Maryland Heights Chief:  “Stiff sentences for gun crimes” not deterring “youth crime” in his city.  Maybe someone should be having a talk with about the last ten U.S. Attorneys for Eastern Missouri, and find out why the “stiff sentences” aren’t being handed down.

(4)  I ran with it yesterday, but Bob McCulloch went out of his way to avoid race when it talks about the typical criminal defendant his office prosecutes, but then tells you their gender and age range.  If race is so wrong to talk about, why is age and gender okay?

(5)  May I suggest a name change?  Call yourselves Citizens Racial Against Profiling (CRAP).

(6)  Now, on to crime of a far less serious nature and of a different hue, KinderCare gave Jeff Smith a prison visit yesterday morning.  Probably not a conjugal visit.  Probably.

The Netherlands Votes Today

Let’s all pull for Geert Wilders.

CNN projects that the PVV will move up from 9 seats and fifth place in 2006 to 23 seats and third place after today.  The center-right VVD of Mark Rutte and center-left PvdD of Job Cohen will be tied at 31 seats.  The currently ruling center-right CDA of Jan Peter Balkenende is projected to drop from 41 seats down to 20 seats, in fourth place.  There are 150 seats in the Dutch Parliament.

UPDATE 6/10: The final numbers seem to be VVD 31, PvdD 30, PVV 24, CDA 21.  Any conservative coalition administration will have to have to include Wilders.

Chicks Before…Well, You Know.

Yesterday was truly the day of the woman.

I’ll run down state by state.

CALIFORNIA

Whitman 64%.  H-1Borina 56%.

I’m surprised that Steve Poizner wasn’t able to make it closer vs Whitman.

Whitman won every county, while, ironically, in spite of her self-styled tech industry experience, the only counties Fiorina lost were in the Bay Area.  Tom Campbell, who topped Fiorina in those counties, was a Congressman from a Bay Area district.

As you know from a regular reader of this space, I don’t like either Whitman or H-1Borina, so I can handicap November with an unbiased mind.  Jerry Brown is Whitman’s competition for Gov, and he can run again b/c term limits were passed either while he was Gov.  Whitman’s problem is that she’s going to be unable to differentiate herself from Arnold Scharzenegger.  On the other hand, Jerry Brown has his own set of baggage, as he essentially handed a state blank check to public employee unions during his first go-around as Governor, and that’s part of the reason why the state’s finances are in a pickle.  Why do I think Brown wins on the end?  Immigration — he’s significantly more conservative on the issue than Whitman, and far more conservative on it than most in his party in the state.  Michael Savage endorsed Brown when he ran for AG a few years ago, FTR.  I also think that Fiorina-Boxer will be another nail-biter that Boxer will eke out, simply because it’s California.

What are Whitman’s plans to solve the state budget deficit?  Hawk the state on E-Bay?  I guess Fiorina could give the Federal government free ink refills for its HP printers, and believe me, THAT would save a LOT of money.

Proposition 14 won, but not by the huge margin I thought it would.  It won every county except Orange and San Francisco City, and I think what was up with that is that doctrinaire conservatives and liberals, respectively, feared that a beauty contest-top two Louisiana-style system would make it much easier for November elections to be between members of the opposing political party.  I think the conservative fears about it meaning D-vs-D in Novembers down the road are far more justified than liberals’ fear of R-vs-R, because of the demographics in California — The state is just too replete with Hispanics and white liberals for any real conservative ever to make it to the top two in a June beauty contest.

I like the idea of Prop 14, and would vote for it, but I am aware of its exigencies.  Consider the race for Governor this year in my current state of Illinois.  Here are the results from February’s primaries:

DEMOCRATS

Pat Quinn 462,049 50.5%
Dan Hynes 453,677 49.5%

REPUBLICANS

Bill Brady 155,527 20.3%
Kirk Dillard 155,334 20.2%
Andy McKenna 148,054 19.3%
Jim Ryan 130,785 17.0%
Adam Andrzejewski 111,030 14.5%
Others 8.7%

So if Illinois had that system, then all of the above names would be running in a single election, and the top two would face off in November.  If all of these people were in, and got the same number of votes that they actually did get in a partisan primary system, then the general election would be D vs D, Quinn vs Hynes, simply because all these Republicans were slicing up the Republican pie in so many ways.  Bill Brady, the most conservative name in the bunch, has a good chance to win now because of the current system; he would have had no chance under a Louisiana-style system.

If Illinois ever gets such a system, then the practical result will be that for any Republican to have a shot to make the top two, the repulsive DuPage County country club set known as the State GOP will have to become the gatekeeper, and the downstaters and conservatives would have to live with that.  Maybe Illinois shouldn’t have such a system.  Or, if it did, it would hasten the statehood movement downstate.

Such a system is workable in a state where the demographics, both racial and partisan, are about on par with the national average.

One thing that jumped right out at me is that 22 minutes after the polls closed in CA, there were already 700k votes counted, enough to see some clear winners.  Nevada closed an hour before, has a much smaller population, yet it took much longer for its dust to clear.

Voters in Santa Clara approved a bond issue that would mean a new stadium for the 49ers, which would also mean they leave SF for the Silicon Valley municipality bordering San Jose.  I highly doubt they would continue to call themselves the “San Francisco” 49ers, because SF is too far away from SJ in terms of distance and especially mindshare.  Since the new stadium is almost equidistant from Google, Apple, Adobe and HP, I can just imagine the feeding frenzy that will occur for naming rights.

NEVADA

TPM movement favorite Sharron Angle wins with 40%, compared to 26% for the smoking red hot bodied Sue Lowden, and 23% for Danny Tarkanian, son of once upon a time UNLV hoops coach Jerry Tarkanian.

What are Angle’s chances against Harry Reid?  Hard to tell, but it won’t be easy toppling a Senate Majority Leader in a Hispanic-heavy state.  Reid might be able to make a lot of hey on the Yucca Mountain issue.

Reid’s son, Rory, is the Democrat nominee for Governor.  Hell, two Reids might win or lose on one day in one state.  I think their fates are intertwined; both will either win or lose.  On the GOV-R side, Jim Gibbons was toppled in his own party’s primary, by former AG Brian Sandoval.  Gibbons is the first incumbent Governor to lose in his own party’s primary since our very own Bob Holden lost to Claire McCaskill in 2004.  Polling showed that Reid would have easily beaten Gibbons, while Sandoval has a healthy lead over Reid.

There was a State Senate candidate in Washoe County’s District 4 named Ty Cobb.  While he did do better than 36.636%, it wasn’t enough for him to win.  (Rimshot)

ARKANSAS

Blanche Lincoln pulled it out.  Or rather, Halter topped.  (Rimshot)

Halter was a proxy for doctrinaire liberals and unionized public employees in the state.  That he couldn’t win is probably a slight rebuke for the left wing.  Lincoln’s problem, though, is that Bill Clinton saved her bacon.  If she winds up winning in November, then she’ll have to pay Bill back somehow.  That means kneepads.  I didn’t title this post “chicks before…” for nothing!  She’ll be before his…

SOUTH CAROLINA

I’m leery about Nikki Haley (Nimrata Randhaya), because the Stupid Party is going to be all full of itself over having nominated a non-white.  She didn’t get to 50, so it’s her vs Rep. Gresham Barrett in two weeks in the runoff.  There are already calls for Barrett to concede, because Haley got so close to 50%.  I wish he wouldn’t — She might still be able to be defeated if outsourcing and H-1B are used against her.

IOWA

Terry Branstad, former 4-term Governor, succeeded in his quest in getting his old job back by beating two primary challengers on the GOP side, at least one of whom had TPM backing.  He will face off against Democrat incumbent Chet Culver, whose approval ratings are in the tank.  I don’t know enough about Iowa politics to say why, but Culver did sign a bill shifting Iowa from may issue to shall issue on CCW, so I like him in that regard.

Whoever wins will have to carry out the most important duty of an Iowa Governor, and that is greeting participants in the Hawkeye Cauci.  I get the feeling that he will be greeting a lot of participants in both parties January after next.

Have You Seen This Man?

Evidently, a lot of people have.

A man who looks like this is alleged to have murdered the owner of a restaurant in the U-City Loop.  This composite sketch has generated a bevy of leads for the authorities, but they admitted to the local media that almost all of them are unusable.  Gee, I wonder why — I think psychologists call it the TALA Doctrine.  I myself saw this man in three different places at the same time on Sunday.

Primaries and Runoff Today

I was mistaken last week at this time — The Halter-Lincoln AR-SEN-D runoff is today.

The big events are CA-Rs, hoping that Whitman and H-1Borina lose, though they’ll probably both win.  In NV-SEN-R, I don’t have a clear enough read to make a prediction or have a preference, though the TPM types seem to like Sharon Angle the best.  Her big achilles heel, though, is that she’s for Yucca Mountain, which won’t endear her to voters in the state’s most populous county.  Though since Harry Reid All You’ll Ever Need can’t poll above 43%, it might not matter.  In GOV-SC-R, I think you really can’t go wrong with any one of the four, but the TPM types like Nikki Haley the best.  She’s the daughter of immigrants from India, so she might bug out and turn traitor on important issues like H-1B and outsourcing, even though she (and the three other major contenders) wants SC to have an SB 1070.

I forgot to cover the results from last week’s primaries, but there wasn’t way too much interesting.  In AL, Dale Peterson and George Wallace, Jr. lost their respective races.  There will be a runoff for GOV-R, between Bradley Byrne and Robert Bentley, the winner will face the D-winner, Ag Commish Ron Sparks, who did beat Artur Davis over on the D-side with more than 50%.  Byrne is a former Chancellor of AL’s JC system, while Bentley is a State Rep from Tuscaloosa and a dermatologist by trade.  In New Mexico, Diane Denish, who would be the incumbent Governor ATM were it not for a minor scandal keeping Bill Richardson out of the Obama Cabinet, did win the D-nomination, and will face the Republican nominee, Susana Martinez, who is currently the DA for Dona Ana County.  I think it’s the first time ever that two women have faced off with each other as major party nominees for Governor of a state.  She is the first Hispanic woman to win a major party nomination for a state’s Governor, and she won a majority in a field of five, which included the son of former Sen. Pistol Pete Domenici in the process.  I don’t know if she would sign an SB 1070 like law for NM, though its legislature is unlikely to pass one.  And she’s probably as restrictionist as you’re gonna get out of a New Mexico politician, from what I read.

UPDATE: Woman vs Woman for Governor had occurred twice before:

There have only been two other gubernatorial races pitting women against each other: in Hawaii, Republican Linda Lingle beat Democrat Mazie Hirono in 2002, and in Nebraska, Republican Kay Orr beat Democrat Helen Boosalis in 1986. That is it, according to a chart from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University.

UPDATE 8 PM: CA also has a referendum eliminating the primary-general election system and implementing a Louisiana-style beauty contest-top two runoff system, not only for statewide and state legislative offices, but also for Congressional seats and U.S. Senate seats.  Proposition 14.  LA still uses this system for state offices, but recently changed to primary-general for U.S. House and Senate elections.

United States of America: Thanks For Participating. Here’s Your Bill.

Take Two From Yesterday:  5:  Sheriff: Sexual torture chamber found blocks from school

No naughty stuff found inside, but they knew it was an S&M club because of all the RNC credit card receipts littering the floor.

FARS:  Ahmadinejad Stresses Need for New World Order

Up next:  A policy paper in Foreign Affairs.

CNS:  Billboard Puts Obama on $100,000,000,000,000 Bill, Asks: ‘But Who Will Pay the Piper?’

If it was a Zimbabwe $100 trillion bill, then the billboard might actually be counterfeiting.

P-D:  Officers unhurt in gun battle in Pine Lawn

That’s because the average Pine Lawn thug isn’t the kind of crack shot indicative of someone who made it through Marine Corps OCS.

Yahoo News:  No-contract iPhone 4 starts at $599

Really?  Buying any iCabal device is like taking a contract out on yourself.

AP:  Border Patrol seeks text on suspicious activity

“Gadzooks, Sarge.  Are you reading all these txtmsgs?  There’s a lot of Mexicans sneaking across the border!”

Tuesday’s Stuff

(1)  He might be able to beat the rap — I mean, what harm comes to anyone anymore from being outed as gay?  The only place left where your career would be hurt is the military, and even that’s about to end.  Anywhere else, you can sue to high heaven if they try to fire you or demote you because you’ve been outed.

(2)  Not a sense of humor, but a working set of ears.

(3)  LOLicabal.

(4)  Are you surprised that Bernie Madoff is blaming his victims?  That’s what thieves do, try to rationalize their own criminality by claiming that the victims you swindled were somehow greedy in a criminal sense themselves.  That’s what the 419 scammers in Nigeria think, and it’s also the semi-official position of the Nigerian government.

(5)  Some British prisoners are seeming to convert to Islam while imprisoned, in order to gain protection from powerful Muslim prison gangs and to get special material and civil rights perks.  Some are worried that the new “convenience Muslims” might become really hard core terrorists when they get out, but I don’t think that will happen.  If I had to guess, most of these “convenience Muslims” are black, and like their American counterparts, they’ll drift away from Islam once they get out of the joint.  Those that continue with Islam will mainly do it to conceal the rap sheet and debts acquired under their birth name.

(6)  Imagine all the extra tornado cleanup help northern Illinois could have had if Club Gitmo were relocated to the hoosegow in Thomson by now.

(7)  Jaden Smith certainly chose the right parents.

(8)  Do you blame him?  He probably already read the teleprompter transcript.

(9)  Obsession for Men helps Cheetah chase tail.

(10)  Sarah Brady hearts Helen Thomas, calls her a “visionary.” To see where such “visions” lead, look at old film clips from the liberation of Auschwitz.

(11)  PJB asks in his latest, “An independent investigation needs to be conducted to determine whether Chicago-style politics has been introduced into the West Wing.”

You’ve got two working eyes and two working ears, don’t ya?  A President, a Chief of Staff, a Chief of Staff in waiting and an Education Secretary from Chicago.  I wonder if this means Chicago style politics are being practiced inside the WH.

(12)  Two South St. Louis men are accused of going on an overnight crime spree in South County and Jefferson County, wherein they shot two men and invaded two houses.  They are said to live in parts of South City that have shifted from overwhelmingly white to overwhelmingly black in the last few decades, but they don’t have stereotypically black names.  So there is a chance that they’re white, and what makes me think they are is that they went on their crime spree in Lemay, Oakville and Imperial — Does that sound like something your typical black teenage thugs would do?  Then again, I’m the one who said that the D.C. Beltway Snipers in 2002 had to be white, because the shootings were too well planned for it to have been black men doing it.  Bonk.

UPDATE 5:05 PM: Bonk again.  Channel 4 showed the mugs.

(13)  Also on the St. Louis Crime Beat, Bob McCulloch said in response the men accused of murdering Tyrone Thompson, who I mentioned yesterday was the son of former State Rep. from U-City, Betty Thompson, that “most of the crimes his office prosecutes these days are committed by 18 to 25 year old men. “It’s frightening,” he said. “There is a whole breed that just doesn’t have that same respect for life that got ingrained into most of the people in this world.”"

That may be partially true, but we’re talking about a Circuit Attorney that has no respect for the civil liberties of Obama opponents.  And did the Obama lover actually use the word “breed?”  Oh boy, he’s gonna hear about that.  Even though he conspicuously didn’t say “18 to 25 year old black men,” the civil rights crowd in this town and my new good buddy over at St. Louis Is Full of Racists aren’t going to let him live this one down.

(14)  The UK won’t let Chris Clown in.  And, unlike a certain talk show host with more degrees than a thermometer but no felony rap sheet, they have a good reason not to let Clown in.

Who Knew Anti-Semitism Was Good For Something?

She opened mouth, inserted hoof, and the resulting row has forced her into retirement.  Just in time for her second career as the Senior Advisor to the LaQuinta (Calif.) H.S. Beat the Jew Club.

Evidently, making anti-Semitic remarks seems to be the only way to get old journalists who should have retired years ago finally to call it a career.  I can think of <tombrokaw><larryking>a few more of them that ought to make anti-Semitic remarks.</brokaw></king>

Droid Can Do One More Thing

Speed up time to the end of this week, so I can not only get my Droid Incredible sooner, I can also have the whole weekend to fiddle around with it.

I haven’t heard anything about any further delays, and in the case of my new smartphone, no news is good news.  Or, if it were being delivered to Jena, Louisiana, no noose is good noose.

Speaking of, His Highness Steven I is showing the iCabal’s lame answer to the drastically improving Android platform today.  Nice timing asshole — put a front camera for future videoconferencing when your precious carrier cripples it and the whole damned thing with monthly bandwidth caps.  How long of a video conference can you have with the iPhoney 4.0 with 2 GB of B/W?  Four seconds?  While Steven I was unveiling iPhoney IV on the Altar of AAPL, the device actually had trouble connecting to the outside world — It was blamed on a software error.  But with the shitty carrier they use, they shouldn’t squash this bug, they should plant many more of them.  It’s not like you’d be able to get connected anyway, even if the software was bug-free.

Steven I:  “If you’re on Wi-Fi, get off!” Everyone in the crowd who was on Wi-Fi should have started masturbating.

Steven I also claims that iPhoney IV has 100 new features.  iCabal rule of thumb — Take the number of new features claimed and divide by 100 to get the real number of new features.

Other than that, 4′s biggest selling point seems to be the improved “oooh and ahhh” that iMorons love so much.  Thankfully, there are only so many iDrones.  Just like there were only so many Bill Gates worshipers who loved WinBlows Vista for its GUI sparkle, but certainly not its reliability.

It’s a Zoo Out There, Boy.

Slashdot:  Drunken Parrots Falling From Sky

Polly want a fifth of whiskey?

P-D:  Scouts pour into Forest Park for weekend gathering

The residents of the surrounding progressive neighborhoods might not have been fond of so many homophobes in their presence, but the SLPD loved the extra help in turning up a few more dead bodies.

NYP:  Dubya speaks

Wake me up when he gets to a word.

NPI:  Businesses say illegal immigrants increase taxes, work hard-to-fill jobs

Funny, businesses seem to be the only ones saying this.

WCBS-2 NYC:  Extravagant $68 Million NJ Mansion Hits The Market

Pros:  12 Bedrooms, 19 Bathrooms, Indoor Basketball Court, Tennis Courts, 3,000-Bottle Wine Cellar, Movie Theater, 4 kitchens, 11-car garage, unbelievable views, 20 TVs.  Cons:  New Jersey.

Daily Mail:  THIRD of children have seen online porn by the time they are 10, shocking study reveals

How else do you expect them to do their sex ed class homework?

5:  Sheriff: Sexual torture chamber found blocks from school

Then again, it made it easy to get to sex ed class.  Just a short walk.

WNYW-Fox-5 NYC:  Naked ‘Jesus’ Causes Accident

The cops arrested the men gambling for his clothes for disorderly conduct.

AP:  NJ men accused of trying to join Somali terrorists

Read closer, and you’ll find the “NJ men” in question aren’t seen on Jersey Shore.

Sydney Morning Herald:  UN warns climate change could trigger ‘mega-disasters’

Please, UN.  Make an anti-Semitic comment so someone can force you into retirement.

Daily Mail:  Orangutans in zoos ‘enjoy watching their human visitors’

“And THEY keep US locked up in cages?”

Daily Mail:  Teenager burst into flames after being hit with 11,000-volt electric shock as he stole power cable

The good news is that the border fence need not be 100,000 volts.  That’ll save on electricity.

CNS:  U.S. Will be Like Greece in ‘Seven to 10 Years,’ Say Congressmen, Experts

Just in time for a certain Hopester not to be President anymore.

5:  Justin Bieber to perform in St. Louis

November 8:  Root canal scheduled.

McPaper:  Alanis Morissette quietly gets married

Congratulations, Mrs. Bieber.

The Weekend’s Other Stuff

(1)  H1N1?  A lot of drug company-financed ado about mostly nothing.  See also:  ADHD, Autism…

(2)  Twentysomething White House staffers can’t get out the door fast enough.  This might be the Obama ship sinking, then again it might not be:  A more plausible explanation is that it’s merely the short attention span of the generation slightly preceding my own, and including my own, to be quite honest.

(3)  Earth to Andre Johnson:  Don’t try this if you ever go on trial.

A number of years ago, Ray Allen represented himself in getting a new contract, but it’s not like it was a hard thing to do:  He got a max contract pursuant to the existing NBA CBA, so there were virtually no negotiations.

(4)  I covered this in today’s headline fun, but I also wanted to cover it here.  It’s the $68m NJ mansion up for sale.  Note what city it’s in — Alpine.  Alpine is where Edwin Armstrong built the first FM radio transmission tower, which still stands to this day.  In fact, when 9/11 took the WTC main towers, it took down the transmitters for all the TV stations in the NYC market.  They all used that tower in Alpine as a temporary backup.  Still, there are those who want to make improvements to the tower, but the do-gooders and NIMBYs who live near the tower are worried about their property values.  WTF?  Are we to think that the tower is the reason why the $68m house won’t sell for $100m?

(5)  Speechless.

(6)  Black parents are pulling their children out of a major urban school district because of a poor quality of education and too many students sagging their pants.

Huuuuuuuuuuh?

They got it right when they used the H-word.

(7)  Four words:  I Told You So.  (See #2)

(8)  I can’t link to it, because it posts the name of a Federal judge, but two illegal aliens are going to get 10 and 45 days (!) of jail time, respectively, for smuggling semi-automatic rifles and relevant ammo into the United States from Mexico.  You read that right, Obama — From SOUTH to NORTH, not the other way around.  The Federal court proceedings took place in McAllen, Texas.  If I’m reading this right, the only crimes to which they plead guility are entering the country illegally; I guess the U.S. Attorney (who has a Hispanic name) is happy that the guns were taken and let that go.  In theory, they’ll be deported to Mexico or wherever after they get out of the can.

(9)  Irony alert:  Two North County men have been charged with murdering the former Police Chief of Pagedale, Tyrone Thompson.  Thompson is the son of former State Rep. from University City, Betty Thompson.  Who, as a member of the State House, voted for every anti-police, pro-black and pro-civil rights bill that came down the pike.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (Today’s 48th State Stack of Stuff)

(1)  The WH released the transcript of what the teleprompter will have the President say to the 2010 graduating class of Kalamazoo Central H.S. in Michigan.  You know, the ceremony where the President who doesn’t like border security is going to put you through the kind of border security measures he doesn’t want a mere fraction of for Arizona.  In it, the President who blames Bush and companies for everything will ask the graduates not to make excuses, and to take responsibility for their own actions.  So you’ve got two-faced hypocrisy in both his being there and in what he says.

The President chose this school because of its “80 percent-plus graduation rate, improvements in academic performance and a culturally rich curriculum.”  Before you move to Kalamazoo to send your kids to school there, read this and this.

(2)  Speechless.

(3)  You can’t even get away from em in Prescott anymore.  Used to be a lot of people that had jobs in the North Valley (northern parts of the Phoenix area) moved to Prescott because while the commute was long, it was tolerable.  Prescott is higher in altitude (about a mile up), ergo cooler in the summer (15 degrees cooler than Phoenix ceteris paribus), and more importantly, and until recently, free of Hispanics (relatively).

(4)  Not about Arizona, but it gives me a chance to say that a man named Balls is trying to cover his ass.

Bad News All Around. Weekend, Come Quickly!

Bayanihan Tayo:  President Obama gets Heckled on Bus

That and everyone else who has ever ridden a bus.  Heckling on a bus is about as newsworthy as a tornado near a trailer park.

CNS:  Obama: Economy ‘Getting Stronger by the Day’

Everything’s going great for him, so everything’s going great for everyone.

Daily Mail:  Pupils could study speeches by Barack Obama or Eddie Izzard as part of new English GCSE

If it’s only Obama, then the schools must be banking on students having a four-word vocabulary:  Bush, change, clear and hope.

CNS:  Price Tag for Oil Spill Cleanup: $69 Million and Counting

Yeah yeah, more oil spills!

CBS:  Penguins Play Soccer!

They’d beat the Americans.  Mark me.

P-D:  Marvin O. Teer Sr. has died: survived ESL riots to teach at Vashon High

Survived a riot, but teaching at Vashon killed him.

Yahoo Sports:  Roethlisberger: Make best of ‘second chance’

WTF?  By my figuring, he’s on his third chance right now.

NYP:  Chris Brown & Bow Wow not welcome

Not welcome where?  For it sounds like a pretty nice place or thing, whatever it is.

P-D:  Black candidates struggling this year

Cue violins.

P-D:  [Black paper St. Louis] American calls on Missouri to end racial disparities in traffic stops

Fine.  Don’t pull over any blacks.  But don’t come cryin’ to me the next time a little black girl is murdered because the cops should have pulled over the carload of black gang banging miscreants an hour before.

5:  Teens charged with burglaries in Pocahontas, Illinois

One tried to use John Smith as an alias, but nobody bought it.

Friday Wrap-Up

(1)  A lot of people are rightly worried about a lack of privacy in this world where the line between your public and private life seems to be blurring.  That is a double-edged sword, though, for if we know everything about everyone, behavior that seemed freaky and deviant in the past is going to be taken as normal and acceptable, even if not majority embraced.  For example, if both you and the personnel director for the company you want to work for are both well known S&M freaks, then how does that company have any moral authority to reject you for being an S&M freak?  No one human foible is going to seem shocking or too embarrassing if everyone knows that a lot of people have that particular foible.

(2)  Just what we needed — Another incentive for Ohio drivers to drive even slower.

(3)  This Obama half-brother isn’t living in a hut, because he could afford the airfare from Kenya to D.C. to see Dear Half Bro be inaugurated.

(4)  I wonder what the Boy Scout Merit Badge is for saving a woman who was raped, beaten and left for dead.

(5)  A St. Louis area credit union is trying to lure young adults to open up accounts, and part of the push is a contest, entitled “Young and Free,” wherein participants could win, among other things, an iCabal notebook and an iCabal smartphone.  So much for freedom.

(6)  President Obama is pondering using Executive Privilege to keep Elena Kagan’s memos from the Clinton administration from being released.  EP won’t fly here for two reasons:  One, she wants to be on the judiciary, so this involves another branch of government other than the executive branch.  Two, the only administration’s internal documents and communication Obama has EP over is his own.

Besides, it’s all a misplaced row.  I don’t need to read any inter-office memos to know that Kagan is a liberal wacko.  I already implied that from the fact that the Wacko-in-Chief nominated her.  And while Sonia Sotomayor, strident liberal that she is, isn’t a wacky wacko like Kagan or any other names rumored for future Obama SCOTUS nominees, this Wacko President wouldn’t give us more than one non-wacko, a la the Law of Averages.

(7)  An Augusta, Ga. father threatened to kill his nine-year old daughter unless she got drunk.  I wonder what his motive was — Molestation is the only thing I can think of, otherwise, he was doing nothing but creating more competition for the alcohol in his own house.

(8)  LeBron James is not going to the Chicago Bulls.  How do I know this?  Obama wants him to go there, just like he also wanted Corzine, Deeds, Specter and Coakley.

Civil Disobedience Is Overrated

Young illegal aliens are adopting the same civil disobedience tactics used in the Civil Rights Movement of some five decades ago.

Word to the wise, or even to the unwise:  My advice to you is the same I give to fellow right-wingers who think they can use C/D tactics and expect the same (or any) level of success that the CRM had more than a generation ago.  C/D tactics weren’t the reason why the CRM ultimately won and accomplished almost all of its goals, they won because they had determined politicians on their side who knew how to grease palms, scratch backs and roll logs (read: LBJ), the intellectually dishonest left-wing of the Federal judiciary threw out almost all pretense of legal rationale to impose elements of the CRM’s agenda (read:  Earl Warren), and curiously well-timed right-wing violence was able to swing enough key votes of key politicians at just the right time to pass civil rights bills (read:  JFK/LBJ ordered FBI “informants”/shit disturbers to dress up in Klan robes and blow up black churches in Alabama.)

The End Is Near

But not for any reasons that soon-to-be 60-something guy trolling singles bars in Nashville borking pick-up lines merged with carbon footprint preaching is paranoid about.  I actually saw a middle aged shirtless white guy with an upper body full of tattoos sagging his cargo shorts to expose Ralph Lauren briefs.  And that was the least bad part about my day.  So on to the headlines.

5:  The St. Louis Central Library will move four million items for renovation, restoration project

Security need not be very high.  Who in the city would steal books?

5:  Mark McGwire’s wife delivers triplets

Insert any given corny pun about fertility drugs vis-a-vis steroids here.

5:  Police release mug shot of suspected cop shooter Arvon Brown

Have you ever wanted to see what a good boy/honor roll student/great HS athlete/aspiring rapper* that just got caught up in the wrong crowd looks like, and you don’t subscribe to the St. Louis Evening Whirl?  Well here’s your chance.

5:  Latest teen trend: pouring vodka straight into eyes

We’ll really be in trouble when they start pouring it straight into their mouths.

2:  Soldan Teacher named St. Louis Public Schools Teacher of the Year

Sadly, she doesn’t teach any students of the year.

5:  Normandy High School senior Janell Buckner receives $1 million in scholarship offers

Better enjoy it now — Next year, all those academic superstars from Wellston High get merged into Normandy High, increasing the competition.

AP:  Report says DOJ not fully prepared for WMD attack

While a WMD attack on the DOJ would negatively impact the ATF and FBI, it would liberate us from a lot of three-letter acronyms.

CNS:  Wilmer Valderrama: Too Many Hollywood Films Have a ‘Secret Political Agenda’

And not enough have an obvious political agenda.

CNS:  Study: Mexico Drug Cartels Avoid Bank Deposits

Gee, Sherlock.  YA THINK?

CNS:  U.S. Citizenship Should Not Protect Enemy from Justice, Ashcroft Says

I got a better idea — Don’t give citizenship to enemies.

P-D:  Auditor candidate Schweich says he won’t take lobbyists’ gifts

Who needs them when you’ve got John Danforth as your sugar daddy?

Daily Mail:  Why four true friends is all a woman needs

Because any five women combined already own every pair of women’s shoes ever made, any more women in the group would be redundant.

WNYW-Fox-5 NYC:  Porn Actor Goes on Rampage, Kills 1 Injures 2 at Calif. Office

That’s the wrong way to get a dead person in the movie about necrophilia you’re starring in.

* – This might not hinder his rap career, if recent news is any indication.

Thursday’s (Throwing In Wednesday’s) Stuff

I had a lot to do yesterday, so I had to put off the less important blogging stuff until today.

(1)  It’s amazing.  Adherents to a certain faith are upset about defamation, yet they aren’t threatening to behead anyone.

(2)  Unlike most jobs in our country and theirs, this one actually comes right out and tells you no whites need apply.

(3)  Scholarships?  Good.  The fact that someone had to knock off a cop?  Very bad.

(4)  Bill Maher doesn’t think that President Obama is acting like a real black man.  Now, Spike Lee wants him to act like a real black woman.

(5)  Yins ain’t showin’ up — Obama goes to Pittsburgh, and the only people who want anything to do with him are a lame duck politician, associated with that other big city in Pennsylvania, who was in the other party as late as 14 months ago, and a mayor who was so embarrassed by his last name that he pretended to change it for a weekend.

(6)  It is said that car thieves are getting younger and more brazen, and actually want the cops to chase them in high speed pursuits.  Hell, maybe that’s the only good reason not to allow high speed pursuits, if doing so means a few less cars will be stolen.

(7)  This does not inspire a lot of confidence in me — Military chemists now have a formula that can clean up nerve gas, mustard gas, anthrax and radioactive isotopes, yet isn’t harmful to the environment.

Well, I’m so glad to know that if Johnny Jihad drops a biological weapon on Edwardsville, that the inevitable clean-up would be environmentally correct, even though I’d be dead.

And I bet that stuff still wouldn’t get that nagging stain out of my car’s back seat.

(8)  What are you bitching about, Paul McCartney?  You used to say that music, yours included, should be free.

(9)  HA!  The Days Inn at Six Flags in Eureka is one of the ten dirtiest hotels in America.  For the life of me, I can’t figure out why — Do the same brats that leave trash strewn about the walkways inside Six Flags do the same inside their hotel rooms?  Then again, SF STL isn’t a highly regarded amusement park on a national basis, so very very few people actually go to SF STL from a long distance and need a hotel room.  That Days Inn might be a big trick turning haven.

Today’s 48th State Stack of Stuff

(1)  If a school district teaches its students that Arizona’s SB 1070 is un-American, yet the district has almost no American students to begin with, is SB 1070 really un-American?  I’ll leave that one for you philosophy majors.

(2)  Gov. Jan Brewer is LCMS, which means she must have genealogical roots in either St. Louis, surrounding parts of Missouri and Southern Illinois, or in the Upper Midwest, esp. IA and NE.

(3)  White supremacists wrote a law which specifically states that LEOs can’t use race as a basis for suspicion, according to Congressidiot Linda Sanchez (D-CA).

As someone who used to be active with a group so accused, I can tell you that if politicians came to me and asked me to write immigration legislation for them, what I give them wouldn’t be so circumspect as is SB 1070.  Idiot’s accusations are rooted in a nutroot blogger finding that a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) legal beagle arm helped contribute to the SB 1070 verbage, and that since the SPLC has said that FAIR is a hate group, then the whole thing is a white supremacist conspiracy.  Of course, FAIR is actually the least conservative and the most given to racial PC of all the immigration control groups, so the only reason the SPLC targeted them for destruction is because they need to dig further and further into the cupboard for food.

It’s official, Linda — You better liquidate all your assets and give it to the Southern Poverty Law Center.  JUST DO IT~!  And do it quickly, at that.  You know the deal — Hitler didn’t die, but he was able to make off to the jungles of Brazil with troves full of stolen Jewish gold, and has been using that ever since the end of WWII to finance the right wing white supremacist conspiracy which he hopes will accomplish the genocide he himself wasn’t quite able to finish.  You and Morris Dees are the only two people standing in the way of that happening.

Surely I jest, but a lot of kook left-wingers who take Morris Dees’s mouth for the Bible actually believe that.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if the SPLC is selling that line of bullshit behind the scenes, in order to raise money.  Implying that in their official material for outward consumption would be too crazy, even for them.

Ma Bell Kicks AAPL in the Nuts

No more unlimited data plans for UNT&T smartphones, including the one for iDrones.

Android market share on carriers without an ampersand in its name?  Full speed ahead.

How do I know this?  Because I’ve taken both accounting and psychology courses in my lifetime, and therefore I know that there is such a thing called sunk cost syndrome (IIRC, it might be called something else).  The long and short of it, whatever its name, is that people don’t liked to be nickeled-and-dimed, and will therefore accept a steady cost for an infinitely variable good or service before they’d accept a variable cost for a steady and finite good or service or a variable cost for a variable and finite good or service, even if the steady cost they pay is more than the variable cost, within a relevant range.  Apply that to smartphones and carriers, and you can see that UNT&T is shooting itself in the ass.  Even if a lot of other carriers follow suit, and it is expected that some will, there will be at least one who offers unlimited plans for data and voice, because a lot of people want it, and would pay more for it even though they’d pay less for either a plan that stair-steps the cost based on the b/w allotment you want per month, or puts you on a straight meter.  The hassle of having to worry about counting beans, counting minutes and stressing yourself out over overages isn’t worth the money you save over an everything-plan.  Thankfully, Verizon doesn’t seem to want to shoot itself in the ass right now.  With it throwing in so heavily with the Android platform, not doing so would be another smart way to differentiate itself from the competing carrier (UNT&T) and its prime platform (iCabal).

Here’s another example:  Taxicabs.  In most cities, most decent taxi services have fixed rate fares between popular destinations, e.g. between the main international airport and the central business district.  They might be a tad higher than running the meter, but it gives the consumer, usually business travellers, psychological (and real) stability in your trip expenses.  Another example that comes to mind is utility company budget billing, but that isn’t the best example, because they do keep track of what you use compared to the fixed monthly cost times twelve over a year, and you owe them if you used more (i.e. the aggregate amount you would have owed if you weren’t on budget billing) than you paid in (i.e. while on it) over the year’s time.  Most people that use budget billing wind up owing at the end of the year because there is no built in consequence to your disposable income next month if you turn the heat up in January or the A/C down in July.  If they offered a budget billing plan that let you pay 10% more than your monthly average bill in the previous year, and the trade-off was no beancounting, then budget billing would become even more popular.  But that won’t happen, because of the necessity of the conservation of energy, especially for natural gas utilities, and especially fossil fuel-dependent utilities if cap-and-tax is ever passed.

In case you’re wondering, no more delays on my Droid Incredible since the last one.  I’m slated to become a proud owner on June 10.

UPDATE 8 PM: GMTA.