Fun With 22 Days to Go

Politico:  President Obama rallies faithful in Md.

Pathetic that he has to campaign in a state that he won by a whole quarter of the electorate a mere 23 months ago.

UK Telegraph:  Black Republicans offer hope after Barack Obama’s failures on race

I didn’t buy the hope and change bullshit when one black man was peddling it two years ago, and I don’t buy it when two black men peddle it this year.

Politico:  Karl Rove: Obama has an ‘enemies list’

Any politician who doesn’t have enemies isn’t much of a politician.

P-D:  Ill. Senate debate focuses on candidates’ integrity

Shortest debate in history.

CNS:  Arizona Border Sheriff: Obama Should Visit Grave of Murdered Rancher

Why should he get upset that a Democrat voter murdered a Republican voter?

CNS:  NY GOP Gov Hopeful Paladino Says He’d Hire Gays

Meanwhile, his opponent once wrote a campaign line for his father that went, “Vote for Cuomo not the homo.”

Thirty-Third Time’s a Charm

A four-felony sheet with 32 previous arrests.  33 was on suspicion of stealing an on-duty ambulance, whose paramedics were tending to his friend.

Some friend his friend has.

I highly doubt that anyone will believe the excuse that he only borrowed the ambulance from a friend.

Hopefully, this keeps him in the slam for awhile.  But this being Illinois, you never know.  At least I know Bill Brady wouldn’t cop him loose.

Faster

Mozilla is about ready to release Firefox 4.0 Beta 7.  I know this, because the nightly builds are now called 4.0b8pre.

One thing that was very pleasing to me about the most recent nightlies is that the javascript performance is all around better.  On Win64 builds, it’s faster than the last of the b7pre builds, but not quite as fast as Chrome (which is only 32-bit on Windows).  On 64-bit Linux, the latest 64-bit Fx nightly is just about as fast as 64-bit Chrome.  And by “fast,” I mean in this robot-lapping version of SunSpyder.

BTW, this should put to bed those theories that Google is jiggering around with SunSpyder to bias the results toward Chrome, a common meme among Firefox advocates.

Sunday Wrap-Up

*  NexMedia takes on Cali’s Pot Proposition:

*  Did CitiBank learn nothing from its similar fiasco of about ten years ago?  NRA members who also had CitiBank checking and savings account ran the bank, demanding their accounts closed and their money in cash.  It almost cracked the fractional reserve scheme, so Citi had to Ctrl+Z whatever it did to piss off gun owners as fast as it implemented it to begin with.

*  SPLC treading new waters.  I wonder what’s in it for them.  There has to be, else they wouldn’t be doing this.

 

*  Speaking of the SPLC, everybody on the right is acting so damned surprise that it and HLS have essentially merged.  They’re acting like it’s something new.

Which it is not.  You already know this, because you are smart enough to read this medium on a daily basis.  You know that Paranoia-Industrial Complex groups like the ADL and SPLC, and Federal law enforcement, have been wound so tightly together for such a long time that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.  A George Mason University draft Ph.D. dissertation of about ten years ago proved not only the existence of this relationship, but also proved that the reason for the relationship was that the Federal Alphabet Gang needs the SPLC/ADL to engage in spying that it itself can’t do, because of civil rights concerns, and the SPLC/ADL need the Federal Alphabet Gang to have its informants (and sometimes even its hired agents) to dress up in funny uniforms and parade around street corners to create the impression that “right wing extremism” even exists, to scare rich lefties into writing checks to the ADL and SPLC.

One might be tempted to think that this tight relationship between the Feds and the SPLC is merely a product of a Democrat in the White House.  I’m here to tell you that it’s almost as bad with a Republican executive regime.  Hell, Ronald Reagan loved the ADL, and vice versa, in spite of the fact that there are strong rumors that Reagan also read and loved every edition Willis Carto’s Spotlight, even while he was President.

*  St. Louis blacks behaving badly at high school football games, seatbelt spot checks.

“Jigger” Rhymes With…

Mark Jerk has his nuts in a vise because…

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk is drawing some criticism for a remark he made to fellow Republicans about the upcoming election.

Kirk did not know he was being taped and certainly did not expect the recording to end up on YouTube. Now, Democrats are demanding that Kirk explain himself and apologize to African-American voters.

The Kirk campaign confirms the congressman was secretly taped this week while telling state Republican leaders about his hiring of a voter integrity squad to concentrate on four regions that happen to be areas populated by large numbers of African-Americans who vote heavily Democratic.

“These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat”.

(snip)

Lyle, a Democratic Committee member and an Alexi Giannoulias supporter, and others were offended by Kirk’s use of the verb “jigger” when talking about regions heavily populated by black voters.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says “jigger” does mean “to alter, re-arrange, or manipulate” and has been used by many politicians to describe election fraud.

“The problem I had is that it sounds so much like another word,” Rev. Albert Tyson said.

Legal Insurrection has dug up a Time article that used “rejigger” and Obama in the same headline.

Now, as for Jerk’s contentions that the Rhymes With are going to haul out their usual voter fraud machines in the black sections of Chicago, Rockford and East St. Louis  –  I don’t think they’d waste their time, especially since it’s on a Senate race where no blacks have a chance to replace a black man who was the placeholder for another black man who now has a better job.  The black power structure in this state is still fuming over the fact that no black men or women had a credible chance to win the Democrat Primary, and obviously none did.  I can ill imagine that they Rhymes With will waste their time and risk Federal prison to help a puny little prick like AlexiG.

As for the other side of the ledger, this only goes to show you how two-faced is Mark Jerk.  He fully recognizes that the Rhymes With has the ability to Sounds Like enough votes to cheat their way to victory, yet he still believes in diversity and equality, i.e. a Rhymes With Lover.

Over in the other race, C-Trib comes out for Brady.  No surprise on the endorsement, but almost the entirety of their reasoning is used to bash Blago/Quinn/Democrats.  IOW, they’re saying vote Brady because the other team is so horrible.  They couldn’t devote one word to tell you why Brady is good, so I guess I must:  Budgetary restraint, conceal carry, a somewhat real conservative not sullied or spoiled by Chicago’s rancid political climate (read: Mark Jerk, (Fill-in-the-Blank) Ryan, Jim Edgar, James Thompson, etc.), won’t buckle under to every iota of pressure that the Rhymes With power structure exerts.

Full Frontal

H/T Gateway Pundit.

Illiberals produce a video extolling the virutes of ObamaCare’s ramifications for the sort of people we used to call young adults:

Follow the logic here:

(1)  The people in this video are suggestively naked, but the signs cover their private parts.

(2)  They get to stay on their parents’ private plans until age 26, which means they’re really not adults anymore, just overgrown children.

Put the two together, and what is this video almost?

Child porn.

As an aside, the reason ObamaCare has this provision has really nothing to do with these naked beneficiaries, but everything to do with helping colleges and universities, a Democrat constituency, save money and in some cases, make money on top of that.  If all these college students are on their parents’ plans, this means the colleges can shut down their student health services, saving them money, with the expectation that the student will use his or her parents’ insurance card and go to a doctor or hospital in that area that accepts that insurance.  If the particular university has a med school and an associated university hospital, then it’s an even better deal for the university, because the students can go to the university hospital as a “private patient with insurance” on paper, and the U Hospital gets recompensed by the student’s parents’ insurance company.  Whereas before, being able to use the U Hospital was a “free” perk of attending the school.

It’s Friday. I’m Not in Love.

Daily Mail:  Cult leader who styled himself ‘Black Jesus’ convicted of raping young ‘flower girls’

He comforted his rod with his staff.

P-D:  Man charged in Kirkwood rape is city finance director’s son

Kirkwood doesn’t pay its public employees very much — Dad can’t afford to buy his son any shirts.

Yahoo Sports:  New Oklahoma State recruit never played high school football

Yeah, I know, it’s amazing.  A young man with athletic talent from Texas never played high school football.  That’s pratically un-Texan.

25…

*  Democrat Senate Campaign Committee canceling all its reserved media buy slots in Missouri MSM outlets between October 11 and 25.  This is almost a matter of raising the white flag over Fort Mrs. Antolinez.

I’ll have more analysis of this when I do my General Election Preview in a few weeks, but I had predicted all summer that Mrs. Antolinez would pull this out because Missouri wouldn’t turn away a Carnahan.  As it turns out, both Roy Blunt and Mrs. Antolinez are deeply flawed candidates, so it’s all a matter of partisan turnout.  And that helps Blunt in a year like this.  Were this 2006 or 2008, it would have helped Mrs. Antolinez.

*  Rush said today that he doubts that the Harry Reid/Sharron Angle race is that close, i.e. Angle has a bigger lead than the polls indicate.  His reasoning is that the CW before NV-SEN-R primary between Angle, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian is that Reid was a sure loser this year.  So he thinks the media are jimmying its polls downward to try to sully the Tea Party-backed Angle, in order to discourage the TPM in general.  In other words, if Reid was a sure loser, especially against Lowden or Tarkanian, why are Reid-Angle polls supposedly so close?

I agree with Rush’s conclusion, but for a much more simple reason.  And that reason is Rory Reid.  The Younger Reid put his hat in the ring for Governor because incumbent Republican Jim Gibbons was wildly unpopular.  However, Republican voters double crossed him by turning out Gibbons in his own party’s primary and instead voting for one Brian Sandoval, former state AG and Federal trial level judge in the Las Vegas circuit.  Sandoval was the first Hispanic ever to win statewide public office in Nevada.  Sandoval has a wide lead in the polls over Rory Reid.  So my thinking is this:  Why are we to think that Rory is so far behind yet Harry is that close?  I can ill imagine that Nevada voters would vote for one Reid but not the other.  So, if both Harry’s and Rory’s fates are intertwined, this must mean either:  (1)  Harry is way behind Angle, or (2)  Rory isn’t far behind Sandoval.  Or somewhere in between.

The only thing which might explain Sandoval’s way bigger lead over his Reid than Angle’s over her Reid is that Sandoval is Hispanic, thereby attracting a fair chunk of Nevada’s big Hispanic electorate.

Anyway, Rory Reid is in the news today because he absolutely Pwn3d the health care bill his father had a big part in ramming through.  Methinks that’s not going to be a very cheerful family dinner table this Thanksgiving.

*  I tell you what.  Dino Rossi better punch it through this time, because he’s that close to having a reputation as a perennial candidate.

*  Earth to Chicago:  Obama never had a magic wand.

Toward the end of this article, we read a name we haven’t read in a very long time:  Dawn Clark Netsch.  The reason her name interests me is that she was the Democrat nominee for Governor in 1994, as she attempted to deny Jim Edgar a second term.  One of her campaign planks was to raise the single-rate state income tax from 3% to 4.25%, then give rebates to all or most state income tax payers to make this rate hike effectively only for those above a certain income level.  Edgar of course denounced it, and won, but three years later, he proposed the exact same thing himself.  Several other statewide Republicans have also proposed it since then.

*  Obama’s 2012 Strategery.  Remember, this is the party that hates tobacco.

Along side of this, Obama could dump Biden and pick either Cheech or Chong as his new running mate.

Another thing:  It wasn’t that long ago that I was in the 18-29 age range.  I would have been offended if a given politician tried to use the weed issue to get my vote.  Now, I’m for leg/decrim, but not because I actually want to smoke the poison.  Hell, I’m a little past that age range, and I’m offended that the Obamaites think that the way to gin up the under-30 crowd is to let them smoke weed.  Then again, that’s the only way most of Obama’s other policies can ever make sense, if you’re high.

*  Hand to hand combat, Mr. Obama?  If you’re jonesing for that, then you better tell your people to hit the gym.  From what I seen, they badly need it.

*  Here’s the first bad news I have to report this season about Carl Paladino:  He wants to act like Chris Christie.  IOW, he wants to be a moderate/RINO who is wrong on all but a few issues, and despises the Tea Party Movement, but he acts so bravely on the few issues on which he’s right that the Dorkpublicans practically want to crown him President in 2012.

*  George W. Bush and Barack Obama are virtually tied in a hypothetical Presidential election between the two.

How do I interpret that?  It’s not a matter of increased esteem for Bush in the last two years, it’s a matter of how far Obama has fallen.

Today’s Immigration Stack of Stuff

*  Red Bud, Illinois:  Mexico’s Newest Colony.

KFTK radio’s news reports this morning confirms that the suspect is “undocumented.”

*  Hey, Rick Perry.  Come out for SB 1070 and promise to sign a similar bill for Texas, and then we’ll take your rhetoric seriously.

Until then, hypocrite.

*  Al Sharpton is calling the listeners to his rinky-dink radio talk show “bums” because they’re not rah-rah for Democrats or Obama this campaign season.

I’m putting this in the immigration stack of stuff because this schism between Sharpton and the vast majority of his 20 listeners opened up after Arizona passed SB 1070 this past spring.  Sharpton is against it, mainly because of the hate whitey rainbow coalition angle, while most of his listeners are for it because of the fierce job competition between blacks and Hispanics in a lot of big cities where there are big populations of both.

There’s Been a Lot of Homophobia in the New York Metropolitan Area Lately

And none of it is coming from white fundagelical Christians.

Last week, it was the two South Asian Rutgers students secretly recording their friend inside his own dorm room doing another man, the affair ending up with the victim of the voyeurism committing suicide.  (For the sake of discussion, I am assuming that orientation was the motivating factor for the voyeurism, which has not yet been proven either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion.)

Now, it’s the Latin Kings street gang up in the Bronx sending out recruits to assault young homosexual men as an initiation ritual.  And this wasn’t a matter of they “happened” to be homosexual — Various gang members admitted that they were deliberately targeting young (presumably white) gay men.

Fun With Delaware

Daily Mail:  Who needs The Apprentice? Boy sets up his own funeral director’s business, aged just 17

Who better to handle your burial than someone who thinks he’s invincible?

FNC:  Biden Says He’ll ‘Strangle’ Republicans

That’s right.  Delaware Dummy’s gonna kill us with laughter.

The Hill:  Biden: ‘You’re the dullest audience I’ve ever spoken to’

The dumb leadeth the dull.

NYP:  ‘Punk’d’ eyes Bieber

‘Punk’d’ had found its punk.

CNS:  Tennessee County Jail Gives New Inmates Used Underwear

I can see the ABC spinoff now:  “Extreme Makover:  Jailhouse Underwear Edition”

5:  MDA Telethon shaves 15 hours off annual fundraiser

That’s too bad, because I sure looked forward to watching a telethon in the middle of the night.

CNS:  New Program Will Boost Security at Military Bases

That’s really inspiring — An institution where everybody is (or should be) well versed in the use of firearms and ordinance can’t secure its own bases.

P-D:  Full-body imaging will start Friday at Lambert

To show us how it will work, Janet Napolitano will serve as a TSA screener for one day — The day after a convention of Swedish blondes in St. Louis ends.

AP:  Stern: This NBA season may be 1 ‘of the greatest’

Seems like someone needs to send an NBA random drug test notice to the commish.

Thursday’s Stuff

*  They found Yoda!

*  They ought to post signs at the Hillsboro city limits that read, “Morons on Board.”

*  The count of radio stations in this town where Charles Jaco has worn out his welcome now stands at three.  (If he keeps this up, he’ll soon be right up there in Onion Horton territory.)  KTRS is bouncing him out to make room for the newly hired J.C. Corcoran.

There is hardly any liberal talk radio in this town or most towns, granted, but not for the sake of it not getting a chance.

*  Another day, another Verizon iPhone rumor.

*  Shopping for home or car speakers?  Cross Harmon-Kardon and JBL off your list.

Your Mouth Is Writing Checks…

…That your white-bread English ass has not yet shown the ability to cash.

His time slot competition on FNC is a man with an Irish surname.  Sean Hannity can undo hundreds of years of injustice just by keeping his ratings high.

Man Cannot Live on Bread Alone

Heritage/WSJ ranks all but four of the world’s current countries based on their current level of economic freedom.

The Good Ole is in eight place, but has the biggest raw score decline over their last survey of all the countries in the top ten.  Australia, New Zealand and Canada are examples of countries that finish ahead of us.

My reaction to this survey?

File 13.

Think you’re so free in Australia, New Zealand and Canada?  I dare you to stand on a street corner in Sydney, Wellington or Ottawa with a sign around your neck that reads, “The Holocaust is a Myth.  Heil Hitler!”  Stand on a street corner in New York City with such a sign, and while you’re bound to get a lot of boos and jeers, and you’ll be experiencing the yummy taste of tomatoes quite often, you have the freedom to do that.  Try it in those cities I just mentioned, and you are committing some sort of crime relating to “hate speech” or “racial vilification.”

Plain words, economic freedom, while important, isn’t the only kind of freedom in this world.

They Didn’t Call Her “Sappy Nappy” For Nothing

“Ultimately a matter for California voters to decide.”

Gee, I thought immigration was a Federal matter and only a Federal matter.

And what of the state whose voters elected you to statewide office thrice?  Two terms as Governor and one before that as AG.  According to you and your boss, their body politic doesn’t have any purview over the issue.

Wednesday’s Stuff

*  Now I know what all the buzz is about:  A bee expert from Beecher, Illinois is now accused of shooting three men, one of them fatally.

Hmm.  Bee expert in Beecher.  He should meet the Missouri Conservation Department bear expert named Beringer.

*  A roadgeek in the making.  Now all we need to do is to teach the boy how to say “pha pha phaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” and eat Krispy Kreme donuts and get all his gas and snacks at Quik Trip, and he’ll fit right in to the current St. Louis metro area roadgeek scene.

*  Sweden’s Prime Minister is trying to form a plurality/minority government without the Social Democrats.  Problem is, neither the pseudo-conservative coalition he holds nor the leftist coalition of overtly Marxist and environmentalist parties have a majority — the Social Democrats and their newly minted 20 members holds the balance of power.  Neither coalition nor the Social Democrats much like each other, so a deal between two of them seems unlikely.

Like voting, Sweden?  Because you’re probably going to be doing more of it in a very short order.

*  So let me net this out.  Nutbar Pastor Phlegm goes to a part of the City of Chicago that hardly has any crime, because it’s full of SWPL-type white liberals, and he has in tow the grandfather of a young black man who was murdered last year with a railorad tie.  And their message is to go the Springfield and beg for the state to pass more gun control laws that will apply to people in Effingham and Anna and Danville?

FAIL.

*  Los Mets.  FAIL.  The two people most closely associated with the New York Mets trying to become the official MLB team of Afro-Caribbean Latin America have been fired.

*  Do-gooders.  FAIL.  They whine and moan about the death penalty, but then act so shocked when more and more people are given life sentences, where they’ll die in prison at a relatively advanced age.

If you all are so worried about having to do volunteer geriatric work in prisons for lifers whose lives are almost over, then you should come out for the death penalty, so we can fry them when they’re young.

*  One in four Americans between the ages of 14 and 34 admit to engaging in binge drinking on a regular basis.  “Regular basis” is defined as at least once a month.  We’re not told what is the definition of “binge,” but the Yankee government officially defines it as a man downing five or more or a woman four or more within two hours.  Whether that is the definition of “binge” for the purposes of this study, I don’t know.  But if it was, it’s a hideously easy threshold to reach — I would have to admit that I am such a “binge drinker.”

What is a relief is that about a year and a half from now, once I hit 35, binge drinking will no longer hurt me.  I know it won’t, because this article states all the negative effects that binge drinking has, in relation to a study about how so many young people do it.  Meaning that alcohol in large quantities is smart enough not to fuck around with anyone who is over 35.

*  We knew this day was coming.  It was only a matter of when.

Microsoft Internet Explorer is under 50% market share.  It’s still the leading browser, but only in a plurality sense.  Firefox at first and Google Chrome in the last eighteen months have eaten into its once ubiquitous status.

27…

*  ACC speculates that if MO shrinks to 8 Congressional districts, that the Republican-run redistricting committee will stick it to MO-3 and, (making the fairly safe assumption that he is re-elected in 27 days), Russ Carnahan.  ACC thinks that they’d preserve two “black” seats to keep the Civil Rights and Voting Rights jackals at bay.

I get the feeling that they’d engineer a district in and around St. Louis and in and around Kansas City to encompass/ghettoize as many blacks, Hispanics (mainly KC) and white liberals as possible.  It would be an attempt to engineer a 6-2 GOP majority in the Missouri Congressional delegation.

Let the civil rights and voting rights jackals have their two little playpens.

*  President Obama to take Twitter-submitted questions at a “youth town hall” co-produced by MTV and BET.

Have you seen some of the popular hash tags that appear on Twitter every day?  This “youth town hall” will be the mindless asking the clueless.  A real hoot.

But if MTV and BET want to keep on collaborating on things, I would much enjoy a ghetto version of Beavis and Butthead.  S’il vous plait.

*  WAT:  “Boo hoo, the Blue Dogs.”

If you think I’m one to cry here, count me out.  All the Blue Dogs voted for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker.  And don’t forget that a lot of really good Republicans who had nothing to do with Bush lassitude nor the Abramoff/DeLay culture of corruption were tossed out on their ears in 2006, some of them replaced with these very same Blue Dogs who are in danger this year.

*  NYT:  “Boo hoo, foreign money spoiling American elections.”

This coming from a paper begging for Carlos Slim to bail it out, and a paper which cheerleads every George Soros-financed leftist cause.

Friends of the Court, Enemies of America

I’ll let this speak for itself.

Fresno Bee:

Brewer opposes Mexico’s participation in appeal

PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is opposing a court ruling that lets other countries file a friend-of-the-court brief in her appeal of a decision that put parts of the state’s new immigration law on hold.

Mexico and 10 other Latin American countries were granted permission by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to present their viewpoints.

Brewer’s lawyers told the appeals court that the opinions of foreign countries have no bearing on whether the law is constitutional.

The governor says she was offended that foreign governments were meddling in a domestic legal dispute.

Mexico was joined in its brief by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru.

I’m guessing the particular judge agreed more with the clever legal argument advanced by these 11 Latin American countries:  What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine.

The Compleat Sane Person’s Guide to Firefox 4

Instead of just showing you screenshots, I’ve decided to do a screencast this time.

Apologies for the cock-up when I try to close Opera.  CamStudio apparently isn’t a perfect piece of software.

As you can see, I’m in Windows 7 64-bit, and using Opera, with the Firefox nightly build FTP site as Opera’s home page, to install the current nightly build of Firefox 4 Beta 7 Pre 64-bit (October 4, 2010), directly from Opera.  After that, I un-fuck-up the user interface, and restore it to sanity. Unlike my screenshot portfolio I posted three months ago, there are a few extra steps one must take to arrive at full sanity, as Mozilla has tried to unify stop/reload inside the URL bar all the way over to the right, a la Google Chrome.  (“Me too me too!”)  The old steps plus these new steps are all shown here.

The current nightlies of 64-bit Fx/Win have some show-stopping bugs, so as you can see, I first start it (“Minefield” is the Mozilla parlance for nightly builds of Fx) in safe mode, then call up about:config.  I search for “methodjit” and toggle the one “true” value to “false.”  That is to turn off the experimental JavaScript engine, which crashes all but the most simple webpages if you don’t change this setting.  Then I search for “ipv6″ and toggle the true/false value to “true,” in this case, it’s a double negative registry value — What I do is disable IPv6 to make webpage loading faster.

And, for consistency, I show you some of the same websites I showed you in my screenshot gallery from three months ago.

UPDATE 10/5: The new way to do manual updates:

You no longer have an “Update” option under “Help,” you have to do Help -> About Firefox (or Minefield), and you’ll see a “Check for Updates” button. You hit it, and if one is available, which there is almost daily using a nightly build, (though mysteriously, there have been periods this past summer where you didn’t see a Win64 update for a week or two, yet all the other versions, Win32, Mac 32/64 and Linux 32/64, continued to get daily revs), you’ll see the button replaced with a throbber and a text-based update progress. (But no progress bar). Once it’s all in, then the button returns reading “Apply Update,” and you have to hit to to do so.

UPDATE 10/6: I’ve gotten a few e-mailed questions about why I’m bothering with 64-bit Fx on Win64 when Flash isn’t available for Win64 platforms yet.  (UPDATE 10/11:  It is now.) Really, I don’t — I just create a special user account on Windows for testing purposes.  I obviously use the 32-bit stable production version of Firefox on my main Windows user account.  On my Fedora 13 installation, I do the same thing — As you saw from my second screenshot gallery awhile ago, my dicking around account there is called “crashlanding.”  The difference with Linux is that Mozilla officially releases a stable production 64-bit version of Firefox, and has for awhile.  Plus, Flash exists for 64-bit Linux, theoretically in alpha, but it works very well.

Two and a Half Women

Recusing herself from nearly half the cases SCOTUS will take up this term, because of CofI problems relating to the fact that the SG that her former boss appointed to succeed her will argue them.

They say SCOTUS now has three women Justices?  Not really.

Welcome to Headlineland

WMAQ-NBC-5 Chicago:  Chicago Claims Most Dangerous U.S. Neighborhood: Study

Oh boy.  Rahm.  You ditched the White House for this.

UK Telegraph:  Foreign Office warns of high terror threat in France and Germany

Damn it, they could have transposed “Germany” and “France” in this headline so that my underpants joke would have rhymed.

Doug Ross:  Tolerance:  ‘The Flag of Islam will fly over the White House’

Consistency:  That’s because it’s already well-established inside the White House.

Washington Examiner:  Mondale: Obama’s teleprompters are ‘idiot boards,’ keep him from connecting with audiences

“Connecting with audiences.”  Something a man who lost 49 states surely knows something about.

5:  St. Louis Rams could win the NFC West, Frank Cusumano predicts

In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.

Ben Maller:  Michael Vick: Levenworth prison was best thing that ever happened in my life

Sure.  You weren’t subjected to two years of NFL wear and tear, and you sorta grew up to the point where you’re a regular QB now and not just an overglorified running back who takes snaps.

5:  Joe Biden coming to Missouri to help Robin Carnahan

Good thing she’s not confined to a wheelchair, or he’d be no help.

AP:  Fla. man denies cocaine found in buttocks is his

Don’t tell me about that being a really lame ass excuse.

Monday’s Musings

*  Sundays when the Packers have home games are pretty good times to sneak up to Green Bay, Wisc. and buy some furniture.  I bet there are some serious markdowns.

*  Let me translate this into English for you.  The EDL wants to have a peaceful rally, and the leftist goons want to engage in violence.  So idiot David Cameron’s idiot Home Secretary (who maintains her predecessor Jacqui Burqua’s travel ban on Michael Savage, btw) is going to shut them both down, as if they both share equal or similar liability for the outbreak of violence.

*  The Missouri state conservation agent responsible for bears is named Beringer, LOL.

*  It’s official.  This is one high school with “math,” “science” and “engineering” in its name where neither really seems to be taught.

29…

*  Of all the bad news for Democrats, the worst could be that so many state legislatures flip from D to R in November.  This is crucial because Congressional reapportionment and redistricting happens next year.  If the Republicans in various state houses play their cards right, they could gerrymander U.S. House district boundaries so that the GOP can hold the House for the next decade.

As for Missouri, the GOP flipped the Senate in 2000, but didn’t flip the House until 2002.  This means that, during the 2001 process to re-draw Missouri’s 9 House district boundaries, there was a Democrat Governor, a Democrat House and a Republican Senate.  Now, Missouri will likely go down to 8 districts, and to draw the new lines, there will be a fairly moderate Democrat Governor, a Republican House and a Republican Senate.  They could easily engineer a 6-2 Republican advantage in MO’s U.S. House delegation, if they know what they’re doing.

*  The election for Chicago Mayor isn’t until next Spring, but I’ll include it in this stack anyway.

The WSJ notes what would be the irony of semi-dirty tactics disqualifying Rahm Emanuel from running for Mayor, vis-a-vis similar shenanigans engaged by his former boss more than a decade ago to clear away his opposition for the State Senate seat.

*  West Pw3ns East:  KC officials call their STL counterparts “worthless” in their supposed joint opposition against Missouri Prop A, the Rex Sinquefield-backed effort which might (but not right away) eventually lead to KC and STL having to do away with their city earnings taxes.

I think what’s going on is that KC and STL both have different strategies in their opposition.  As I said above, A wouldn’t eliminate the two cities’ earnings taxes right away if passed next month — It would eventually mean that there would be public votes in those two cities.  KC seems to want to slay (no pun intended) the dragon while it’s still in its cave, while STL will wait until it’s out and spawns offspring, and slaughter those.

*  Hey, Republicans.  Want to own the (white) youth vote for a very long time?  Do what the Instapundit says.

Duh, Europe

You wonder why AQ terroristical boogie woogies are planning to hit you?  (And us).

They wouldn’t have a prayer if there weren’t whole Muslim communities in most European big cities and increasingly in many American ones.

I told you a few days ago that I’m no longer that excited over Muslim terrorism, because I can’t do anything if our big brave well-funded government won’t do anything about it.  Here’s another example — Unless you hear “deportation,” then you, too, shouldn’t care, because your public officials are nowhere near a real solution unless they use that word and mean it.

After American troops in Afghanistan lassoed in KSM, one of his first admissions to his American captors was that AQ wanted to pull off attacks inside Japan, when they, along with South Korea, co-hosted the 2002 World Cup of Soccer.  They wanted to attack various venues associated with the games, players and fans.  But they gave up because something which was absolutely crucial to their plans, an established ground network in these Japanese cities, did not exist.  The reason there will never be a “ground network” of Muslims in Japanese cities is because the Japanese haven’t given up on this antiquated notion that Japan is for the Japanese.  Good for them.

Sunday Wrap-Up

*  Rush took the opportunity of a definitely drunk supposedly Indian caller to his show on Thursday to discuss his own ancestry.  While he was doing that, he noted that there is a town in Saxony named “Limbach.”  Of course, he rightly said that his parents did an extensive genealogical study of themselves.  A lot of that is on the web, and I know from reading about his patrilineal ancestry that his great*7-grandfather immigrated from Baden to eastern Pennsylvania, a popular destination for so many German immigrants to what would become the United States.  When he came, his last name was Limbach, but the town of Limbach is in Saxony, not in Baden.  Therefore, some of the Limbachs had to have migrated around the various German city-states before his great*7-grandfather made the trip across the ocean.  As it was, the Limbach that immigrated changed the family last name to “Limbaugh” once he got over here, and named all of his children “Limbaugh.”  One of his sons immediately got up and left the Lehigh Valley for what would become Bollinger County, Missouri.  (He migrated while that and all of the future state of Missouri was still Spanish territory, even before Spain had to give it up to France, can’t remember the context, then later the Jefferson-Napoleon negotiated Louisiana Purchase made it part of the United States).  What was odd about that is that while a lot of German-Americans did indeed migrate out of Pennsylvania, it was very unsual for the sons of people that actually immigrated to do this — Most stayed for several generations.  The Limbaugh that moved from PA to MO is of course the (patrilineal, in all these cases) great*6-grandfather of the Rush Limbaugh of talk radio fame, and the great*4-grandfather of Rush Limbaugh, Sr., who migrated from Bollinger County to Cape Girardeau, and eventually discovered the legal profession.

Rush did say that there was a lot of North Carolina, and English and Dutch in his ancestry, but those had to have come from various matrilineal routes along the way.

*  I don’t know if this admission about deliberately infecting Guatemalan prisoners with syphilis in order to test experimental treatments for syphilis on them is true, but even if it is, you can’t equate it to Tuskegee.  You know how it goes — A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can get out of bed and put its boots on — It is already taken for granted that the Tuskegee Experiment deliberately infected black soldiers with syphilis.  That is not true — The black men who were part of this study already had syphilis, and some got an experimental treatment, and in order to have a control group, some didn’t.  In fact, from what I understand, this was a true double-blind study, in that there were four classes of patients:  Some thought they were getting the real meds, and were; some thought they were getting the real meds, and weren’t; some thought they were getting a placebo, and were, and some thought they were getting a placebo, but got the real meds, and that there were four classes of physicians:  Some thought they were administering the real meds, and were; some thought they were administering the real meds, and weren’t; some thought they were adminstering a placebo, and were; and some thought they were administering a placebo, but were really giving the real meds.  Where that might break down in terms of reality is that the double-blindness might not have been complete on the patient side — It might be that all the patients, again, already coming into this study with syphilis, thought the were getting the experimental meds, but some didn’t.  That might be the “sin” of Tuskegee, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

There was really no good syphilis treatment in the 1940s (hint:  what passed for treatment involved arsenic), so these men could not have been cured or have the worst of their symptoms assuaged, in spite of the hysteria circulating about Tuskegee.  And the particular institute in Tuskegee, Alabama which administered these clinical trials was named for Booker T. Washington, and two of the supervising physicians were black.

*  Hey, Lazy Clay.  Maybe you should take a break from making wise cracks about white men and basketball and do your fucking job for once.

*  I have to both concur and disagree with V-Dare’s analysis of the “anti-outsourcing” bill shot down in the Senate last week.  To read V-Dare’s narrative is to think that the bill would have done any good or have been anywhere near effective.  Which I don’t — All it would have done is to remove a few tax breaks for companies that outsource.  Like I have told you many times before on this medium, they’re not outsourcing because of line-items on corporate tax returns, they’re outsourcing because of cheap labor.  If the answer doesn’t involve stiff tariffs, it’s not truly an answer.

*  There was some indefinite point in time earlier this year when I decided to give up worrying about Muslim terrorism and the “War on Terror.”  I mean, I’m just some guy banging away on a keyboard in flyover country.  What can I do about it if the multi-trillion dollar a year Federal government and its eleven figure a year Defense Department I help pay for doesn’t care?  If I didn’t acquire that attitude before, I would have today.

*  Is there anything you can’t do at the DMV these days?  (Other than smoke a tobacco cigarette).

*  If you think the cost of ignorance is high, consider the cost of education.

*  Cameras for me, but not for thee.

*  While you’re at it, lady, why not just give them to keys to a fully fueled jumbo jet, if you want them to be so welcome here?

She must not remember all the wars that were waged between her favorite country and her favorite religion in the 20th Century.

*  “Shin-Soo Choo.”  I dare you to say that ten times in a row really quickly.  Better yet, don’t sneeze, or he’ll think you’re calling him.  Mark me, he’ll be Cardinal at some point in the next few years.

And some headlines.

CNS:  Veteran’s Family Denied White House Tour Because of Shorts

That of course, is coming from the same White House whose chief resident can’t be bothered to wear proper business attire habitually in the Oval Office.

NYP:  Tony Bennett has lesson for Lindsay Lohan

She won’t pay attention, so all that’s left is for Tony Bennett to do is to sing dirges at her funeral.

CNS:  ICE Won’t Say If It Will Enforce Immigration Law Against Self-Professed Undocumented Alien Who Worked for California Gubernatorial Candidate

Seriously, they don’t think we already know the answer?

5:  St. Louis Rams donate tickets to Sumner High School football team

That’s a hell of a way to be able to see a Rams game for free, having one of your players murdered.  Way to go, Rams.

Yahoo Sports:  Haynesworth didn’t deposit his $21 million check right away

But the poor oppressed slave eventually did.

Got Myself a Weeding Ticket

The CW is that now, possessing less than an ounce of weed in CA will have no more serious consequences than getting a speeding ticket.

Maybe, but Paul Huebl has just proven why the cops won’t write many “weeding” tickets in the first place.  Ergo, having less than an ounce of weed is effectively legal in the state.

Go figure — Just as CA is loosening its grip on weed, it’s tightening the noose around tobacco cigarettes.  I bet that there are now places and circumstances in CA where smoking a tobacco cigarette will have more serious legal ramifications than smoking a marijuana cigarette.

Incidentally, I support what Schwarzenegger did.  Meanwhile, I would advise you not to exercise your new quasi-rights if you’re in California, because weed is more dangerous than ever.  THC concentrations are getting higher and higher by the year, and THC is a proven cause of mental illness.  Also, the cannabis plant easily absorbs toxic heavy metals of the volcanic soil in which it easily grows into the resin that becomes marijuana cigarettes.  (Then again, I can open my kitchen sink and bathroom sink cabinets and count seven containers of substances that would kill me or injure me seriously if I ingested them.  Yet, it’s perfectly legal to go to Target and buy these things.  It’s all a matter of common sense.)  While weed does have therapeutic benefits for people with certain illnesses, the cannabis resin compounds which have these benefits have been isolated and made into a legal prescription drug called Marinol.  I know this because a second cousin once removed of mine was (and still is) a breast cancer patient, and was on Marinol for awhile.

The reason I’m for drug decrim is to re-establish a more proper relationship between law enforcement and citizen.  That and the “war on drugs” has been an expensive failure.

As an aside, a buddy of mine who was once a bailiff for the Federal administrative law courts in St. Louis, and is now (last I heard from him) working for the USPS in Kansas City, proposed a compromise for drug decrim.  He says that the Feds/DEA categorize drugs based on “schedules,” or “deltas,” I can’t remember which.  His compromise was to establish a line of demarcation at one of these schedules/deltas — Anything below, e.g. weed, state option.  Anything above, e.g. crack cocaine, exclusive Federal jurisdiction.  Transporting or dealing drugs below the line of demarcation across state lines or importing them across an international border would still be Federal business.  He recommended that users of drugs above the line of demarcation never face any Federal criminal penalties as such for simple possession/use, that the exclusive target of Federal action for those drugs would be the dealers and transporters.  His recommendation is that of the drugs below the line of demarcation left to state option, the state in which we both lived at the time, Missouri, should also target dealers and distributors, and never punish possession/use.

Going Away Present for Rahm

RIP, Joe Sobran. 1946-2010.

Here’s hoping that the essence of Heaven is being a victim of Bill Buckley purge, and the essence of Hell is having to work for Bill Buckley in the way down there place for all eternity.