Fun With Cracka Cars

Ben Maller:  U.S. Senator thinks caring about sports a lot is “just plain stupid”

Before you get too excited, it’s Al Franken.

AFP:  China ‘scared to death’ of Pelosi: leaked cable

The rest of us just laugh at her.

P-D:  Two dead in shooting outside St. Louis funeral home

How ’bout that.  Skipping the middleman.

CNS:  Scientists Trick Cells into Switching Identities

Using the same techniques perfected by illegal aliens.

CNS:  Cracker Barrel to Offer Electric Vehicle Chargers

I knew it would take a restaurant named “cracker” to make things easier for those who own the quintessential SWPL car.

I’d Like to Know

This describes one Timothy Herring, Jr., 19, of Chicago, as a “recent parolee.”  Herring is accused of assassinating CPD Officer Michael Flisk and former Chicago Housing Authority officer Stephen Peters.  The deed happened last week, as Flisk was in an alley on Chicago’s South Side gathering evidence that would have showed that Herring committed an armed robbery just days before — Evidently, Herring returned to the scene of his first crime looking to destroy evidence to avoid the inconvenience of having to return to prison, and when he got there, he overheard Officer Flisk telling Peters that he’s got a clean set of fingerprints, presumably Herring’s.  So Herring, not wanting to return to prison, murders them both, giving the state yet another reason to send him back to prison, and in theory, execute him.  (I say “in theory” because this is Illinois.  A bill is moving quickly through the State Legislature which would do away with the death penalty altogether — As it is, death sentences are currently under moratorium that George Ryan enacted and both Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn continued).

What I want to know is if Mr. Herring is one of Pat Quinn’s infamous parolees.

If he was, I can imagine that there are a lot of people in Illinois who want a mulligan in the election for Governor.

Truth In Crisis

P-D:

Boy, 8, injured in St. Louis shooting

An 8-year-old boy was shot in the back Monday night as he was riding in a car near the intersection of Grand Boulevard and Dodier Street, police said.

A bullet also grazed the boy’s 31-year-old father, who was driving the car.

Police say it appears that boy’s father was the intended target.

The shots were fired from an assailant in a passing car at about 6:40 p.m. Monday as the father and son drove south in the 2900 block of Spring Avenue. The father drove to the 3800 block of Enright Avenue to report the shooting and get medical care for his son.

What they don’t tell you here is what is on the 3800 block of Enright that the boy’s father was so interested in.  Turns out it was St. Louis City’s juvenile hall.  Someone there called for an ambulance to take the boy to the ER at Children’s, which is where the father should have driven the boy in the first place.

Psychologists tell us that a human mind reveals its true nature in times of crisis.  What is interesting to me here is that in a time of obvious crisis, his son getting shot, this father’s mind immediately defaults to the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center.  Why?  Did the boy ever spend time there?  Or rather, and more likely, did he ever spend time there?  Since he was the target of the shooting, this means he’s probably in some sort of racket himself, gang or otherwise  and therefore he probably has been for quite a long time.  I’m guessing he did a couple of tours in the 3800 block of Enright before the law considered him to be grown up enough for him to start doing time Downtown.

Two Women, Troubles Innumerable

I’ve been following this story for quite awhile, but this is the first time I’m bringing it up here.  It’s the Brian Aitken saga in New Jersey.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is now starting to cover it.  I’ll link to it even though it contains the name of the now former state trial level judge who is relevant to this story.  I usually don’t link to stories with the names of all but the highest level judges, even if they are former judges, but the story is too long just to re-hash it here just for the sake of not naming a former judge.

What the story doesn’t say is that Aitken wrote and received a letter from the New Jersey State Highway Patrol while he was still living on Colorado, on how to transport all of his firearms and ammunition legally within the state.  He specifically asked about hollow point bullets and large capacity magazines, the two items that seems to have gotten him in the most trouble afterward.  The letter he got back acknowledged that but stated how he can transport them legally, even though they’re otherwise illegal within the state.  Aitken’s lawyers tried to introduce that letter as evidence at trial, but the judge blocked it.

The one part of this story I wanted to respond to was this bit:

Separated from his wife, the entrepreneur and media consultant, now 27, had moved back home to New Jersey from Colorado toward the end of 2008 to be closer to their young son.

In between jobs, his well-oiled life was running ragged, and on Jan. 2, 2009, when his ex canceled his visit with their son, he became distraught, muttered something to his mother, and left his parents’ home in Mount Laurel, N.J.

“He said something that scared her, things that a guy will only say to his mom, like . . . ‘Life’s not worth living anymore,’ ” said Larry Aitken, Brian’s father.

Sue Aitken, a trained social worker, decided to play it safe and called police, but she hung up before the 9-1-1 dispatcher could answer. Police traced the call and showed up anyway, and found two handguns in the trunk of Brian’s car. And now Brian, her middle child, a graduate student with no prior criminal record, is serving a seven-year prison sentence for weapons charges.

No one blames Sue Aitken for Brian’s arrest, except herself maybe, but his father and attorney claim that the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office and the former Superior Court judge who tried the case ignored evidence that proved Brian had the guns legally. The family has asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for clemency and has garnered a great deal of support on a “Free Brian Aitken” Facebook page and among gun-rights advocates.

“No one blames” Sue Aitken?  Fuck that.  I blame her.  A “trained social worker” in a state like New Jersey should have known better.  And all this was a fallout from a failed marriage.

His case is in front of the State Court of Appeals, and it is thought that either they or the State Supreme Court will finally deliver justice.  (The article says that Gov. Chris Christie is considering “clemency,” which is misnomer because Aitken did nothing wrong.  Be that as it may, it won’t happen, because I know the kind of rat fink Christie is, on guns, immigration, Ground Zero Mosque, Hal Turnergate, etc. even as I want to pull all my hair out of my head after every neo-con and lamer talking head on Fox has already anointed him the 45th President of the United States.)  And when that happens, the first thing Brian Aitken should do is swear off women like the plague, and disown his mother.  (Since he’s in a woman-free environment for the time being, he’s got a good running head start on that.)  Save his mother giving birth to him and his wife giving birth to his son, two women in his life have brought him nothing but trouble.  Second thing he should do is sue the state for everything it’s got.

Anything Is Possible

But not everything is desirable.

CNS:

Missouri Officials Back More Restrictions Aimed at Meth

Jefferson City, Mo. (AP) – The Missouri governor and attorney general want to make Missouri the third state to require a doctor’s prescription to buy cold and allergy medicines that can be used to make the illegal drug methamphetamine.

Gov. Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster announced their support on Tuesday for legislation imposing a prescription mandate on medicines containing pseudoephedrine, which is sold under brands such as Sudafed, Claritin-D and Aleve Cold & Sinus.

Missouri for years has led the nation in busts of methamphetamine labs, even while enacting increasingly stricter laws.

Proposals to require prescriptions for the medication have been rejected in the past by the Missouri Legislature and face opposition from the pharmaceutical industry. But Nixon and Koster say more safeguards are needed.

Sure, if you want government to stop the production and use of meth, and assuming you have the Mexican border 100% sealed to prevent meth from Mexico coming in country, then of course you can do it.  But there is always an opportunity cost to everything — Should Nixon and Koster get what they want, then curing a common cold with pseudoephedrine will go from a several dollar OTC medication purchase to a several hundred dollar doctor visit yielding a script to get a bottle of pills that will cost you several tens of dollars.  I don’t know why big pharma is so opposed to this bill — Seems like they would benefit in the long run.

On the other end of the spectrum, the easier you make it to get pseudoephedrine, the more likely it is that meth labs and meth use will increase.

Therefore, the trick is to find the right balance between squelching the illicit meth industry and ensuring inexpensive ways for people to mitigate common cold symptoms.  The system we have in place, limiting sales to a certain amount per month per person, using centralized logging to prevent store hopping, is ideal.

 

Mohammed Squared

It’s that time of year.  Seems like some Muslim is trying to make trouble for us every Christmas.  Last year it was Mr. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Mr. Hot Pants, Mr. Blow It Out Your Ass, or whatever you want to call him.

This year, it’s someone whose name includes two different spelling variations of “Mohammed.”

First off, I have to say that I’m suspicious.  This is all a result of a sting operation, in that FBI agents strung him along with real explosives, and then with fake ones when he actually wanted to do the deed.  Methinks someone’s budget was up for review, and they had to score a “victory” in order to keep the money spigot open.  This might be similar to the Haitian gang of drug dealers in Florida that supposedly wanted to blow up the Sears Tower even though they didn’t know what city the Sears Tower was in.

However, this story is useful to our times because the FBI was able to string along a young Somalian man, not a 40-year old Catholic nun wearing the full habit, not an eight-year old shirtless white boy, not a 35-year old woman with breast implants, and not a 60-year old man with a leg prosthesis.  Except the fully clothed nun, half-naked boy, enhanced woman and peg-legged man deserve the same level of TSA rape as does Mr. Mohammed Squared, if Big Sis is to be believed.

On top of that, I can present to you three stories I was able to dig up from deep inside the rabbit hole:

First, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, who never met a gun he liked, or a young male intern he didn’t like, is urging “fairness” and tolerance as we read about how a young Somalian man wanted to blow up the Christmas Holiday Tree lighting in his city.  About the only kind of people Adams would allow us to display unfairness and intolerance toward is white men who own firearms.  Earlier in that same story, Adams seems miffed that he wasn’t told about the FBI sting operation until it bore its final fruit.

That is an ideal segue into the second story.  Maybe the reason the FBI didn’t tell Adams is because if were up to Adams and Portland’s City Council, the FBI wouldn’t have been able to go into Portland and start the sting operation against Mohammed Squared.  If they would have told him, he probably would have sent in the Portland PD to protect Mohammed Squared from the FBI.  This sounds like the kind of “preemption” that the good progressives of Portland denounce when Arizona “does it” (really, they aren’t) on immigration issues in 2010 or when Mississippi wanted to do it on forced racial integration in 1964.  Muslims and weed — Preemption and thumbing your noses at the Feds is okay.  Gotta love libkook logic.

Third, there was a fire of suspicious origin set in the office area of the mosque that M-Squared frequented.  V-Dare thinks that this is a combination hate crime hoax/destroying evidence.

Reading Is Fundamental (If You Can Read)

NYP:  Druglord loves Justin Bieber

That should serve his ass well in prison.

NYP:  Potter gold at the flicks

Puberty didn’t hurt Daniel Radcliffe’s career one bit.  Now, will Justin Bieber be so fortunate?

Yahoo Sports:  Vick throws 1st interception in 4 years

I’d be more impressed if two of those years weren’t spend in the clink.

Yahoo Sports:  Steve Johnson blames God for his overtime drop

Spotted on twitter.com/God — “Oh no @SJohnson13 – I aint takin da rap for your butterfingers.”

NYP:  Rangel wants House to reject censure

I don’t know if his political career could survive such a strong hand-slapping.

CNS:  Obama’s Agriculture Dept. Has Hired Consulting Firm to Advise It on ‘Diversity’

Queue the recurring joke in five years where the CEO of a Diversity Consulting Firm is sad because his farmer died.

CNS:  Borders Bookstore Chain Offering $15 Gift Cards for Public Schools

Just what is a typical public school student going to do with a gift certificate to a bookstore?

Monday’s Musings

*  Having a bank account in the Cayman Islands isn’t indicative of poverty, and is probably only marginally lawful.  But if you want to hide money and its accounting, you can’t go any further south.

*  They go in threes.  Barabra Billingsley passed last month, and Leslie Nielsen this month.  I wonder which “Airplane” star will kick the bucket next month.

*  Whoa Nelly — Old rappers don’t die, they just fade away into obscurity and irrelevancy.  I mean, Nelly is staring 40 in the face — Who wants to listen to a 40-year old rapper?  Hell, who wants to pirate the music of a 40-year old rapper, much less buy it?

*  Speaking of which, it was all over Drudge this past long weekend about the DHS domain name seizure of some 75 websites, almost all of which were involved in “copyright infringement.”  Smart people are asking the obvious questions — WTF does “copyright infringement” have to do with homeland security?  (Answer:  RIAA/MPAA own Obama.)

But here’s the political question that nobody is asking — The people starting in on Obama’s 2012 reelect efforts have already mapped out weed legalization as a way to get the under 30 crowd into the voting booths.  As Prop 19 in California showed several weeks ago, it won’t work that well.  But to the extent that it could, it’s going to be negated when all those young people hear that Obama’s been bought off by the copywrong extremists who want to shut down their preferred method of acquiring music and movies, i.e. sharing and torrent sites.

*  Doing sit-ups in front of dozens of women doesn’t sound like punishment to me.  Doing them naked in front of dozens of women sounds like one of my recurring wet dreams.

*  This is an argument for giving drug tests to welfare recipients.

I thought putting food stamps on cards was supposed to stop this sort of stuff.

*  Let me net all this bullshit out for you — It’s called affirmative action.  They want to ghetto up their college admissions essays as much as they can to clue the admissions staff into the fact that they’re black.  A lot of these colleges are in states that have passed the Ward Connerly initiatives, and ghettoizing the essays is widely understood as an end run around those laws.

*  I’m happy that Canada is boycotting the third UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, but it would be nice if Canada would boycott out out self-concern rather than just protecting Israel.  I mean, do they think the vile and venom against Israel spewed in Durban somehow won’t apply to (white) Canadians?

*  A man comes out of nowhere and fires a gun at SLPD officers who were in the process of making an arrest early Saturday morning.  The media tell us more about the gun he used than the kind of man they’re looking for.  The SLPD seems to be more upset about the kind of gun used to try to assassinate one of their own than the fact that someone tried.  It quotes a SLPD Lieutenant about the “prevalence” of “assault rifles,” even though “assault rifles” are “prevalent” almost everywhere, but only a problem in certain places.  I’m more worried about the “prevalence” of something else, but it’s too taboo for official pronouncement.

Needless to say, it happened in North St. Louis City.

*  One of the byproducts of the elections of almost a month ago is that the last remnants of anything resembling a credible Democrat Party in the Deep South outside of black areas were pretty much wiped out.  Politico states various reasons, but I don’t think it’s much more than the fact that the President of the United States is both black and a Democrat.

*  The second comment on this story stole my thunder — This isn’t a pro-atheist billboard, it’s an anti-Christian billboard.  Why don’t atheists pwn Ramadan/Islam and Hannukah/Judaism on billboards during this time of year?

And actually, if you take the billboard’s visages literally, none of it is a myth.  Mary and Joseph did have to go to Bethlehem to particpate in the Roman census, in order to facilitate Roman taxation.  While there, Mary had to give birth in what was basically a shed because everyone else was in Bethlehem for the same reason, and this totally corked up the local lodging.  There was probably some sort of planetary conjunction which helped lead nomadic people on their camels to Bethlehem, again for the same reason.  The only thing that’s an article of faith here is the fact that the child was born of a virgin mother, as he was the Son of God.  But you wouldn’t know that if you weren’t well versed in Christianity.

We Just Might Be on the Vestibule of Solving One of Life’s Great Mysteries

AP:

SC man accused of threatening to shoot president

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A 78-year-old South Carolina man with more than a dozen weapons in his home has been arrested after federal authorities say he told a nurse he wanted to kill President Barack Obama.

But the man’s son said Friday his father only spoke out as a cry for help for mental instability.

Michael Stephen Bowden was being held at the Spartanburg County jail. Bowden was arrested Nov. 18 after he told a nurse at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Spartanburg he was thinking of killing the president, according to a sworn statement by a U.S. Secret Service agent.

(snip)

Bowden repeated those words to another nurse, adding that he wanted to kill Obama “because he is not doing enough to help African Americans.”

(snip)

U.S. Magistrate Judge [*****] has ordered that Bowden be held without bond until a mental evaluation had been completed.

If I were a psychologist or psychiatrist, I’d give an arm and a leg to have a crack at this kook.  I want to find out once and for all why he or any white person loves blacks so much, in his case that he would think about assassinating a black President for not doing enough for them.  Whites’ self-flagellation over race has to be some sort of mental pathology.  Solving it should earn you a trip to Sweden.

President Obama Leaves the Barn Door Open Again

And whaddaya know, more cows got out.

I’m still standing by my contention that President Obama himself is the main “leaker.”  Yeah, there were a few documents that were of mild embarrassment to him, but the one big-name American government official whose reputation takes the biggest tumble is Hillary Clinton.  Just in time for what could be a primary challenge.

As for the rest of the wikileaked documents, it’s really no surprise to me — It’s perfectly obvious that the world is headed for another cold war — This time it’s mostly going to be on racial lines, white countries (including Israel) plus a few allied Oriental countries and one or two in South America for good measure, versus most of the rest of the world, with China, the Muslim Middle East and Brazil being the main movers on the other side.  I don’t expect Berlin Walls and Charlie Checkpoints this time around like the last time, though if Mexico is going to be on the opposite side of the United States and allied like most other Latin American countries with China/Islam/Brazil, and I think they will, there should be at least one Berlin Wall.

Any idiot with an IQ higher than his shoe size already knew that most of AQ’s money came from wealthy Saudi Arabian citizens, all the while its country’s government is trying to stir us into an irrational hatred of Iran.  (Not that there isn’t anything worry about with Iran, because there is.  But Saudi Arabia is the more acute threat.)

Among the documents leaked relevant to the UK, they suggest that the last few patriotic Britons in their foreign service are worried that the Cameron+Clegg Odd Couple is for open borders.  Like, no shit, Sherlock.  Gordon Brown, someone else cited in these documents as weak, was a real left-wing open borders kook, and Nick Clegg is even further to the left on the issue (as much as you think that’s physically impossible).  Transpose David Cameron to the United States, and you’ve got Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins.  So why wouldn’t a rag-tag duct-taped together British government lead by an open borders neo-con and an ultra open-borders far left whack job want open borders for Muslim terrorists?

UPDATE 11/30: Perhaps proving my point that the most recent round of wikileaks were nothing more than a coordinated Obama hit on HRC, Julian Assange is demanding that she resign as SoS.  If she does, and people think that wikileaks is the reason, her Presidential prospects are shot.  And that would be music to Barack Obama’s big ears.

Black Sunday Wrap-Up

*  I don’t ever want to hear any bitching from the other side of Missouri ever again about the Show-Me Bowl always being in St. Louis.  Seems that wasn’t a particular disadvantage for Kansas City and western Missouri teams this weekend.

One thing that jumped right out at me, validating why I read Caste Football often, is that all three heavily if not almost entirely black teams from St. Louis County lost to mostly white teams, two from KC’s urbanized footprint and one to a rural school in northern Missouri.  Hazelwood Central (6A) and Maplewood-RH (2A) have teams that are mostly black because their student bodies are that way, while Webster Groves (5A) has a team that’s heavily black in spite of the mostly white high school aged population of the district, because WG just loves that deseg.  Anyway, Maplewood lost to Penney HS of Hamilton, Mo., and Webster and HC lost to the KC schools Lee’s Summit West (white flight Missouri suburb) and Rockhurst (Elite Jesuit, in a part of Kansas City proper that is still heavily white).

*  Superteam LOL — The Miami Heat are 1-8 against teams with an above-.500 record so far this season.  They’re 9-8 overall, which is worse than last year’s team sans LeBron and Bosh through 17 games.

*  If you are a professional or amateur athlete at a level where the media cover the sport and its athletes on a daily basis, and you have at least a shoe size IQ, then you learn to develop a sort of diplomatic grace in your public statements worthy of your employment with any government foreign relations agency on Earth.  You are always guarded and nothing less than complimentary in your public statements about your future opponents, because you don’t want to give the other team “bulletin board material,” i.e. media stories about you dissing them that wind up pinned up on their locker room’s bulletin board to motivate them to beat you like a drum.

I’m guessing Gordon Gee has never as much as picked up a football.

Luckily for him, Boise State lost this weekend.  But unluckily for him, Ohio State might face one of those “Little Sisters of the Poor” teams in their bowl game.

*  On to more interesting sports:

WALTON – Dennis Bennett has been involved in the Central Empire State Pistol League for over 10 years and this year his idea for a junior league in Walton garnered support and involvement from the local youngsters willing to learn the sport of shooting.

Bennett was granted permission by the Central Empire State league to start the junior program if he could find support. Bennett had little trouble finding supporters and the fledgling program began to welcome girls and boys ages 12-21.

Wasn’t it just a short time ago that people on the upper end of that age range were called “men” and “women?”  I guess ObamaCare has changed all of that.

*  Anti-violence activists being violent enough to get their asses arrested — It’s a Jersey thing:

Six people were arrested on several charges including obstruction of justice and resisting arrest. Sharif Amenhotep faces the most serious allegation, a charge of inciting a riot.

I’m guessing they won’t let Pharaoh Amenhotep out of jail on his own recognisance, so I guess someone bearing enough gold debons for bail will have to deliver him from bondage.

*  Putting the “black” in “Black Friday.”

And some headlines.

Yahoo Sports:  Titans Vince Young apologizes to [Head Coach Jeff] Fisher via text

This is what we call “womaning up.”

Ben Maller:  Eagles Michael Vick wants Tom Brady money?

“Get a clean rap sheet and three Super Bowl rings, then we’ll talk.”

McClatchy:  Economy causes Florida lesbian landmark to welcome male guests

Thank goodness there are enough male lesbians to pull it off.

Houston Press:  Lamar High’s Library Ousts Books, Re-Opens as Coffee Shop

Then again, the only place I see people reading books anymore is a coffee house, so maybe it’s all a Machiavellian move on the school’s part.

AP:  AP Exclusive: Teens adrift at sea almost lost hope

Perhaps we should thank Barack Obama that the only way anyone can ever lose hope anymore is being lost at sea for two months on a metal dinghy with no food or water.  The rest of us are just aces.

Sydney Morning Herald:  [Elementary School] Students in Mexican city under threat

This is Mexico we’re talking about, so the threat is coming from middle school students.

Sydney Morning Herald:  Deadly violence, fear of fraud jolt vote in troubled Haiti

Really, the only thing different about today is the election.

P-D:  CHICAGO > Audit finds fraud in free program

Only in Chicago can there be fraud even when no money changes hands.

NYDN:  Kristopher Allen White, skinny inmate, escapes Tennessee jail by slipping through prison cell bars

I can think of one jail’s warden that will never order lite bologna ever again.

Thanksgiving Eve Leftovers

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

*  South Park.  Absolutely nails it.

*  Paul Gottfried writing at Taki pretty much nails why a grand left-right anti-war coalition is a pie in the sky.  But he flunks with this partial paragraph:

Such an apparently unlikely union does have precedents. It can draw on the antiwar, isolationist alliances of right and left that took place in the 1930s and during the Vietnam War, although briefly and less effectively.

To think that the anti-WWII movement of the 1930s reaching all the way to December 6, 1941, and the anti-Vietam War movement, was a result of a grand left-right coalition, is itself a pie in the sky reading of history.  The former was almost entirely a function of the isolationist right, with just a tinge of anti-Semitism here and there (though I don’t think anti-Semitism was the driving force behind rightist opposition to the U.S. entering WWII).  The anti-Nam effort was nothing more than neo-Marxist professors egging on college students to show their asses out in the streets.  Support of communism was the driving factor from the profs, fear of being drafted was the driving factor for the students.

*  Unfortunately, that is the case.

*  Ironic, huh?

If this union really liked Martin Luther King so much, then they wouldn’t be judging the Chinese workers building his memorial on the Mall in D.C. on the color of their skin.

*  Strangely, I agree with Barney Frank.  Too bad I don’t actually believe that he means it.

*  Just a few weeks after drawing 4.7% of the vote in the Arizona U.S. Senate election, (if I had such a vote, he would have gotten mine), and he as a Libertarian drew that relatively big number because John McCain winning was a foregone conclusion, David Nolan has passed on.

And some headlines.

5:  Police: Hundreds of dollars in cigarettes stolen

A few cartons of cigarettes were stolen.

Gateway Pundit:  More Hope & Change… Feds Are Now Using Mobile X-Ray Vans On U.S. Streets (Video)

Anybody know where I can get a lead-shielded jock cup?

CNS:  Justin Bieber Wins 4 American Music Awards, Including Artist of the Year

Sorry, Don McLean.  November 21, 2010 was the day the music died.

CNS:  Barney Frank: Serving on Appropriations Committee in Republican House Will Be A ‘Pain In The A–’

So saith the expert about pains in his a–.

Fun With Headlines, a Thin Tuesday Edition

Reuters:  U.S. corn ethanol “was not a good policy”-Gore

I guess ole Al Gore went grocery shopping for the first time in ages.

5:  Coach Steve Spagnuolo on 4-6 St. Louis Rams: We’re still in it

That tells you more about the crummy NFC West than anything.

5:  Dallas man flies Mexican flag over U.S. flag to protest wars

That’s right.   When I think of peace and tranquility and no wars, I immediately think of Mexico.

Tuesday’s Tidbits

*  Dispatches from the Most Dangerous City in America — I notice that she has and activated a device that automagically locks the doors when she senses someone is shoplifting.  Fine for any other place, but as you can read, a bit risky for Ghettoville.  Thankfully, she anticipated that one of these days, the shoplifter(s) might not be happy with being locked into the store, and she was ready for it.

*  Zogby figures the Tea Party Movement and the NRA were the two biggest influences in most voters’ voting decisions on November 2.

Thankfully, the NRA didn’t have much influence in PA-11 and IL-11.  Unfortunately, I think they did have a lot of silent influence in Nevada — Like I said in my election review, I think the NRA, which did endorse Harry Reid at first in fear of a Schumer- or Durbin-run Senate, and then backtracked because of member outrage, silently did everything it could to get Reid to win.

*  Doing wheelies and other stunts on a crotch rocket bike in the middle of an urban interstate highway at midnight is definitely hazardous to your health.

The bike was okay, though.  From the reports I saw on the news, it came away with just a few scratches.  Heck, the man’s next of kin just might be able to pay for his funeral by putting it on the market — It will be able to fetch that much for the next sucker who’s going to kill himself on that thing.  I don’t call ‘em donorcycles for nothing!

*  No wonder why America is broke.  The one mistake in this accounting that makes the situation even worse for the middle income earners is that some of the things subsidized for lower income earners are things that the middle income earners must pay for, reducing their disposable income even further.

*  Like, Roman Emperor crazy:

“There are some Democrats that cue me into things,” said Hannity on his show Thursday. “The feeling among some people in the White House is that this president is unhinged, that he’s detached, that he’s losing it, he’s obsessed with critics, very specifically obsessed with Fox News, he can’t stand [Vice President Joe] Biden, he hates the Clintons, the Clintons hate him. Infighting, apparently, and finger pointing is at an all-time high; if the president is brought bad news on the economy, he has a meltdown every time he hears it. And this is what people – and I’m telling you, my sources are reliable – are telling me.”

This is the kind of paranoia that led to conscription lists, mass persecutions and sending horses to the Senate around about two thousand years ago.

*  He was upset about the NK-SK DMZ.  So why is he protesting in Beijing?

As it is, the Korean DMZ has already become a “peace park.”  Decades of human absence has been a boon to certain plant and animal species that were otherwise near extinction.

*  Forty-five simple rules for outfitting your ‘baller.  If the NBA dress code gets any more complicated, then the average NBA player will need his accountant in the locker room as well.

*  What if they gave a prison and nobody came?  New York Gov.-Elect Andy Cuomo wants to undo a law his father signed in his final year as Governor, that requires that the state not close certain public facilities until nine (later expanded to twelve) months after its last use.  The occasion was Cuomo the Younger touring an empty and about to be abandoned juvenile prison upstate.  Of course, the reason the law was passed, and the reason why it will never be undone, is because of the power of public employee unions within the Democrat Party.  Sure, the law changing would have had a chance of happening with Carl Paladino as Governor, but oh no, he was obviously unfit for the job because he promised to keep media goons away from the ten-year old daughter he had by a mistress.

*  Mike Huckabee’s chances to be President are now shot to hell.

*  Velma Hart, the woman who announced at a CNBC Town Hall with President Obama that she was one of his “middle class voters,” but was “exhausted” by his inaction on the economy, has been laid off from her job.

She was CFO of Amvets.

So she wasn’t so “middle class” at all.

Makes me wonder what the Board of Directors over at Amvets is smoking, to hire something like that as CFO.  After all, she voted Obama, who installed Nappy at HLS, and she thinks that vets returing from Iraq and Afg are terrorists.

*  Oh, Time.  You know better than that.

The left doesn’t care what we think.  All they want are leftists in the Federal judiciary making leftist decisions, and leftist bureaucrats influencing Federal law enforcement to use its guns to enforce those decisions.  It’s like a Caligula once said, oderint dum metuant (allow them to hate as long as they fear).  In other words, they don’t care if various screwy SCOTUS decisions on things like deseg, abortion, gay marriage, and so on are culturally polarizing.  They might lead to an occasional Republican victory as sort of a backlash, but the left figures it can co-opt Republicans once they get to D.C. anyway, (assuming the Republicans that took advantage of those issues to win elections weren’t faking it all along, and often times they were), and then just wait until the usual cycle of partisan back-and-forth brings the Democrats back to power.  If the left can’t intimidate us into acceptance through Federal guns, then it will use the force of corporate suasion to accomplish the same — business “sensitivity seminars,” you get fired if you’re found to be a conservative activist hatethinker.  If that fails, then there’s always the good ole Paranoia-Industrial Complex, ADL and SPLC to smear us as haters and bigots and potential terrorists.  (Yes, even being opposed to gay “marriage” is now hate.)  So it doesn’t matter if we don’t accept deseg, abortion and gay marriage in our hearts, they’ve won in the battlefield that matters.

Another problem with this article is that Time cannot fathom the concept that there are people who are both tolerant of homosexuality and homosexuals yet opposed to gay “marriage.”  They’ve accepted the behavior and its practitioners in their hearts, yet that hasn’t led them to countenancing eviscerating the civilizations-old concept of marriage.

*  I think I can come to a conclusion about this man in question, if a team of high school football players going through the TSA nude body scanners gets him off to the point where he’s gotta whack off in public.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

“Bad, Very Bad”

VOA:

State Department acting deputy spokesman Mark Toner said the artillery barrage that killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded several others, including civilians, was an unprovoked military assault.

(snip)

“North Korea’s behavior has been very, very bad…we’re not going to buy into that cycle of rewarding that kind of behavior.”

Fine.  Send it to its room without any supper.  It’s not like most North Koreans ever eat anyway.

Fun With H.F.O.

5:  Arizona group says it figured out how to achieve immortality

Just what Arizona needs — More old people.

Take Two:  5:  Arizona group says it figured out how to achieve immortality

Yet another reason the Federal government will have to sue Arizona — The Feds will lose out on death taxes.

 

Reuters:  Children safer in Afghan cities than NYC-NATO envoy

Idea:  Ship some of NYC’s thug children to Afghanistan to give them a safer environment.

 

AP:  FBI: Hate crime incidents, victim numbers down

Search the article.  You will find zero instances of “Dees,” “Potok,” “Beirich,” “Cohen,” or “Poverty.”  The AP got through a whole article without keying in any one of those words, so I’m checking the WeatherBug readings from Hell.

 

NYP:  Rangel’s pals call for mercy

That’s right.  Don’t slap his hand too hard.

 

Yahoo Sports:  Indians expect Choo to be exempt from military

And also sneeze.

 

Sydney Morning Herald:  Boy gang-raped by 10 women: police chief

I should have been so victimized at 17.

 

KNSD-NBC-7 San Diego:  Passenger Chooses Strip-Down Over Pat-Down

It was San Diego — He was probably already half-naked when he came to the airport.

Groundhog Day in November

St. Louis the most dangerous city in America, again.

We seem to hear that news almost every autumn.

As is to be expected, the usual bromides are pouring out of Room 200 like there’s no tomorrow.  I won’t bother responding to them all, because I responded to them all the last time St. Louis was the most dangerous city in America.

The only thing that has changed is that Slay can’t use the “no recreation centers” bromide.  Since we passed that sales tax several years ago after St. Louis was last named most dangerous, and have built or are in the process of building and/or renovating recreation centers, and STL is once again the most dangerous city, that proves that recreation centers don’t matter.  Can city taxpayers get their money back?  Or at the very least, rescind the sales tax?

Don’t hold your breath.

The good news for St. Louis (and for spell checking software everywhere around the city) is that cases of STDs like syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in STL are way down.  And that is the case in spite of no free condoms available in any form.  Previous years have showed that St. Louis wasn’t the most dangerous crime cities, but it was the worst STD city.  Now it’s the other way around.  What it means unfortunately is that if the germs don’t get you, the criminals will.  Or vice versa.

As for other crime news, overall hate crimes were down in 2009 compared to 2008.  Much of the treatment of this news on the radio and on cable channels involves various “experts” (amazingly, none of which come from Montgomery, Alabama) telling us not to get too giddy, because the data are “incomplete,” or “flawed.”  I see where they’re coming from — A lot of people, especially certain ones in Montgomery, Alabama, stand to lose a lot of money, with falling hate crimes statistics.  On the other hand, I think they’re right when they say the data are “incomplete” — To complete it, they have to include all the hate crimes where whites are the victims and targets.

UPDATE 11/24: The Onion’s take.

A Diverse World

Hypocrisy alert:

St. Louis-area school separates boys, girls

JENNINGS, Mo. (AP) — Normandy High School in suburban St. Louis is the latest public school to move to single-gender classrooms, part of an effort to turn around a district that could lose its accreditation because of low test scores and other academic woes.

One-third of Normandy’s students were not graduating, so two years ago, superintendent Stanton Lawrence hired Curt Green as principal. Green had used single-gender classrooms to help turn around failing schools in Baton Rouge, La., and Atlanta.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday that Green has begun the Ninth Grade Academy. There, girls and boys are separated from each other and the rest of the school.

Green says the idea is to improve learning by reducing classroom distractions and ingraining academic achievement into the culture.

People like Dr. Lawrence and Mr. Green keep telling us that we have to have schools whose classrooms are racially mixed very close to the demographics of the city which it serves, and some go so far as to say that the lunch room tables in those schools have to be the same way.  Their reasoning is that young people have to become acclimated to the same kind of racially diverse world that they will surely encounter as adults in the work place.  (That was back in the days when there was actually work available).  Whatever “classroom distractions” and impediments to “ingraining academic achievement” there were as a result of integrated schools, we just had to get used to them because diversity was so important.

Yet, gender diversity isn’t anybody’s concern in this instance.  And I can’t understand why — While there are still some people left in America who will rarely encounter anyone outside their own race, virtually everybody will have daily contact with someone of another gender.  And virtually everyone who has a job will work with a lot of people of other genders.  (Not a grammatical error here — There are more than two genders, I realize that)  Dr. Lawrence and Mr. Green should apply their own race logic to gender — If young men and young women who are high school freshmen, that would put them anywhere between 13 and 20 years old (this is Normandy, after all), can’t learn in spite of the gender distraction, then they won’t be able to work (just in case some of them ever do) in the same kind of mixed gender environment.

Of course, maybe what Dr. Lawrence and Mr. Green are driving at is that so many of the young men they see at Normandy High will wind up going to prison that they should get used to an environment without girls and women.

 

Credit Due

They say white men can’t jump, but I don’t believe them.  Blake Griffin is the result of one black and one white parent.  So which side gets the credit for his dunking skills?

Just as some of these dunks seem physically impossible, the fact that they’re resulting in deleriously happy Clippers fans at Clippers games only complicates the mystery.

Drinking Game

Chug-a-lug every time Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) says “Selma.”

Then again, you risk going into a coma if you drink that much alcohol.

Sunday Wrap-Up

Kevin Love can score and rebound, but he can’t shake hands.

*  LOL — The chief bureaucrat in charge of the TSA is named Pistole.  We might actually have some transportation security if more people were allowed to bring their legal “pistoles” with their CCW licenses on board airplanes.

*  A daughter of Malcolm X was recently in St. Louis to deliver a message of inspiration to an almost all black high school in North St. Louis County.

Pardon me, Miss Shabazz, but perhaps some of that charity ought to begin at home.  Where was all that positive motivation when your nephew murdered your mother more that a decade ago?  That’s right, Malcolm X III murdered Mrs. Malcolm X Sr.  Well, technically, not a murder, but Betty Shabazz died in a house fire that then 12-year old Malcolm Shabazz III started.  Since then, he’s been in and out of jail for one thing or another, so his doing life on the installment plan started at age 12.

*  Why I was NOT on the Marco Rubio bandwagon, and am still not:  A writer known only as “Washington Watcher” analyzes various prominently newly-elected Hispanic Republican elected officials, and finds their immigration records leave a lot to be desired.

*  WWYAWWYD?  The P-D fesses up to one of the things it was doing on the day JFK was assassinated.

*  Go figure — The one actually going to prison is the blackest of the bunch.

*  Speaking of one of the Democrat tax cheats, let me interpret this article for you:

Tim Geithner is telling Ron and Rand Paul to knock it off, or they’ll be with Luca Brazi sleeping with the fishies.

*  The NFL denies that these are anything but a result of some amateur artist with too much time on his hands.  That shows that the NFL isn’t smart — Hell, I would buy a couple of these jerseys, and I’m as jaded about this kind of stuff as they come.  The Rams uniform looks pretty good, better than what they wear now, but not as cool as some of these other mockups.

And some headlines.

P-D:  McClellan: Black-on-black crime is fact we can’t deny

Really?  Do you even know who you work for, Bill McClellan?

CNS:  Sen. Barbara Boxer Likens U.S. to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan Because U.S. Bans Homosexuals From Military

If one broken clock is right twice a day, then it stands to reason that three broken clocks are right six times a day.

Yahoo News:  Rangel ‘trial’ spotlights flaws in House ethics process

Of course, it’s always the system’s fault.  It’s physically impossible for black and/or Democrat politicians to do anything wrong.  If Rangel’s parents were still living, they’d be telling the media that their son is a good boy who just happened to fall in with the wrong crowd.

AFP:  Obama’s ‘Beast’ of a limo stands out at green NATO summit

I’m guessing he didn’t have to undergo the TSA treatment, either.

Mediaite:  President Obama: TSA Pat-Downs “An Inconvenience For All Of Us,” Except Me

I’m guessing Michelle, the daughters, Mother Robinson and Aunt Zeituni are also exempt.

People:  Miley Cyrus Wants to Spend 18th Birthday with Mom and Dad

You mean she’s about to turn 18?  It seems like only yesterday she was running around topless on magazine covers.  America’s little girl is growing up.

UK Telegraph:  Cigarettes ‘may be sold in plain brown packs so they are less attractive to children’

At this rate, the only thing in the store that will have colorful packaging attractive to children are condoms.

Bloomberg:  Buffett Tells ABC Rich Americans Should Be Paying `a Lot’ More in Taxes

Nothing’s stopping you.

President Obama Gets Something Right, Again

If this keeps up, then people are going to get the mistaken notion that I want him to win a second term.

Be that as it may.

Obama wants a nuclear missile shield, WITH Russia involved.  And, surprise surprise, they’re receptive of the idea.

Now, you see how easy that was, you motherfucking neo-cons?

Fun With…

UK Sun:  Oxford professor issues shock population warning for Great Britain by 2066

What’s shocking about it is that Oxford as a Professor who seems to think that Britain becoming majority non-white is somehow a bad thing — Most of them not only want it, but want to hurry the process along so it happens sooner than 2066.

WNBC-4 NYC:  High School Plans to Open Drug Clinic

Among those who are happy to hear this news are the police officers who are based at the school’s police substation, the probation and parole officers based at the school, and the school’s WIC coordinator.

NYP:  Cops bust seven men playing chess in upper Manhattan park

Along with felony chess playing, they are also charged with misdemeanor charges of breathing and walking.

Fanhouse:  Will Manny Pacquiao Fight a Top African-American Fighter?

Actually, the question is this:  Will a certain top African-American fighter ever work up the balls to fight Pacquiao?

Thursday’s (Don’t Touch My) Junk

*  Guess Who:

*  The Greek paradox falsely attributed to Zeno did not get solved today.  Too bad.

Unfortunately, someone else saw fit to get involved in this morass.  See Paragraph #6 of the blockquote.  Truthfully, they’ve got no more of a dog in this fight than I do, so I wish they would stay out of it.  I wonder if the one SMVM member who recently converted to Islam was either part of the counter-demonstration or a reason for the SMVM being in it.

*  Freeman Bosley, Jr. — He may be a former St. Louis Mayor, and a lawyer, but he’s not very bright.  He doesn’t quite grok Missouri’s statutory rape laws, so let me help him out:  You’re committing stat rape if you have sex with anyone under 14, or with anyone under 17 if you’re 21 or older.  That means that 20 on 15 is okay, in fact 20 on 14 is okay, assuming it’s entirely consensual.

*  Speaking of not very bright, Jay Rockefeller has taken the title of Screwy One in the Family away from Winthrop.

Let me help you out, Jay:  FNC and MSNBC aren’t on the airwaves.

*  The games people play:

This drug ring was toppled like a bunch of dominoes.

A Manhattan cocaine and heroin trafficking gang run by men who played dominoes on the sidewalk as they kept a watchful eye on their turf has been busted, authorities announced today.

The group – known as the “Old Timers” – routinely hung out in Washington Heights on West 160th Street, between Fort Washington Avenue and Broadway, and sold two pounds of drugs a week, according to the city’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“They would play dominoes on the sidewalk. Some of them would be sitting on chairs with a table out. Some would be standing,” said Wynieo Almanzar, 14, who grew up on 161st Street, a block from the alleged gang’s sidewalk hangout. “I’m happy they’ve been caught. I’ve been seeing them here for a long time.”

Now we know why the NYPD arrested seven men for playing chess in a Manhattan park.  Maybe chess was a front for drug dealing.

Funny thing, when I was 14, I realized that I had a little more growing up to do, such that I considered any of my old neighborhoods places where I “grew up.”

As the Rubber Stretches

Follow up from a story from this past May I covered (no pun intended) in this space.

D.C. health officials are going to mail Trojan Magnum condoms in discrete security envelopes to anyone in the city who requests them.  Part of this new condom putsch is a “condom quiz,” to see what kind of condom you would be based on your answers to several personality questions.  However, the only kind of condoms that D.C. will give out for free going forward, either by mail or at various distribution centers, are the aforementioned Trojan Magnum, based on the fact that every guy in D.C. thinks they need the super-sized variety.

Once again, I have to raise the ethical question — Why should consequence-free sex be free of charge for the end user?

You Don’t Think Their Methodology Was Flawed, Do You?

It’s the Center for American Regress, after all.

The one big flaw I can point out right away is that SB 1070 became law on April 23.  If the state somehow “lost money” on tourist activities, it’s only because SB 1070 was signed into law just about at the beginning of the hot season, and therefore, the slow season in the Arizona tourist industry.  November through March are the big months, when it’s cool enough actually to do something outside.

Another rebuttal is that while the figures might be true, they are also irrelevant to the case being made.  Phoenix and Tucson are big corporate golf retreat towns.  The Great Recession has put a big dent into that.  But that’s got nothing to do with SB 1070.

UPDATE 11/21: However, there is one AZ tourist destination that sees a lot of summer business.  The Grand Canyon did pretty well this summer, better than last.  This probably bodes well for this coming winter for both Phoenix and Tucson.

The Manchurian Dispatcher

Yet another reason I’m looking forward to ditching this dumbass state:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. —
It’s not necessarily a crime for a police dispatcher to warn drug dealers about law enforcement activity, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court overturned the conviction of Carmecita Williams, a dispatcher in the Chicago suburb of Glenwood, who was found guilty of official misconduct and sentenced to two years of probation. Prosecutors said she contacted the father of her son and alerted him to police activity that might have discovered his drug-dealing.

“So I’m not sure what agency, you know — if there’s FBI, DEA or ATF or whatever — but we just know there’s agents in the area,” Williams said in one of three calls that authorities recorded on July 12, 1998.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court called Williams’ actions “troublesome” but said they didn’t amount to official misconduct.

That’s because there was no specific law barring Williams from revealing what she knew about police activity, the court said. It clearly violated the police department’s rules, but that wasn’t enough.

I really can’t blame the Illinois Supreme Court here.  The people to blame are the dumbass legislators for either the state as a whole or the city in question.

If there aren’t such laws enacted pronto, then you’re going to have a glut of suspicious looking people wanting to become police dispatchers.

BTW, did she hide the fact that her “babydaddy” was a drug dealer when she applied for the job?  Because the job was with law enforcement, I’m sure the application paperwork has such questions, and also stipulates that lying is punishable by force of law.  Also, why didn’t higher-ups in the Department investigate her background otherwise?  I’m sure they vet those who want to be real cops to make sure they don’t have any naughty associations.  That is, of course, if “Carmecita Williams” is what I think she is.

Fun With Homopartisanality

WaPo:  Rahm: I never believed in bipartisanship

Why should you?  You come from a city where only one party matters, so “bi”-partisanship is alien to you by definition.

Gateway Pundit:  The Perfect Storm… WESTBORO CULT to Picket Dearbornistan Islamic Center — Nov.18th

Time and channel, please?  I want to see the irresistible vs immovable paradox finally get solved.

P-D:  McCaskill wants to end breaks for Alaskan firms

Methinks a certain someone doesn’t much like Lisa Murkowski.  Good Claire :)

5:  Enraged over Bristol Palin’s dancing, man blasts TV with shotgun

If he gets bail, then the judge should have his cable provider delete both ABC and MSNBC from his lineup.

CNS:  Elton John: America Is A ‘Very Uncomfortable Place To Be At The Moment’

Door.  Hit You.  Way Out.  Not.

CNS:  Senate Democrats Swim against Anti-Earmark Tide

It’s okay to say that Senate Democrats “swim” now that Ted Kennedy isn’t among them anymore.

Wednesday’s Stuff

*  Opponents of TSA voyeurism want to borrow tactics from Critical Mass bike rides and “cork up” the system by opting for the patdowns a week from today, which is one of the busiest airline travel days of the year.  It is said here that Lambert officials don’t think it will result in too many delays at STL.

And I think they’re right — Hardly anybody uses Lambert anymore, it’s almost an aviation backwater.

*  The backlash against the TSA could turn into a racial issue very quickly.  As Obama might say, one can but hope.

*  Outgoing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is considering pardoning the late Jim Morrison for a conviction that came of his exposing himself at a 1969 concert in Miami.  Since the concert was in ’69, perhaps we should be fortunate that exposing himself is all he did.  Tee hee.

If he were living today, he could defend himself by stating that he was just showing his TSA-generated nude scan to all his fans.

*  All’s well that ends well — Read the last two paragraphs to find out how.  Now, if he were diverted to Texas, then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have Real BBQ.  Sure, it would have been good food, but not Real BBQ.  I repeat, not Real BBQ.

*  Tom Friedman and George Soros love China so much — I dare them to go to China and do two things:  (1) Breathe, and (2) Drink water.

*  I know how Four Loko can get back in good graces with liberal college administrators and government officials — Add cannabis resin to their formula.

President Obama Gets Something Right

Yes, you read the headline correctly.  And no, the temperature in Hell isn’t under 32.

Liberal do-gooders are upset that President Obama has granted waivers to several countries, three of them in black Africa, that means that American military aid won’t be diminished or eliminated to those countries in spite of the fact that those countries use men under the age of 18 in their legitimate armed forces.  The reason Obama granted the waiver is because the countries in question need the warm bodies in order to fight AQ.

I mean, what else are these young men supposed to do?  It’s not as if Congo, Chad or Sudan have great high schools, and they probably reached the plateau of their mental development long ago.  Don’t forget, black Americans, themselves a little bit mixed with white on average, level off around 10-12 years old, so “pure” black Africans level off a year to two earlier.  And if the legitimate military won’t take them, then you know AQ will.

Notice the irony — This news story on this source has a banner that implores readers to purge the term “illegal alien” from their vocabularies and minds, IOW, amnesty by means of language censorship.  So this means all these good little coffee house patron dork liberals love Mexico so much, and I just read a story a few days about about how what passes for legitimate authorities in Mexico were looking for and eventually apprehended a 12-year old member of a drug gang who tortured rival gangsters in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable.  (The “legit” Mexican authorities that nabbed him are probably rival gangsters themselves.)  That’s the kind of people all these dork liberals want to import.  Of course, if we can’t say “illegal alien,” then by definition, we can’t say “border,” either — It’s simply a matter of global citizens traveling in their precious little united global community.  But I digress.

Now, if it were up to me, the United States of America wouldn’t be passing out military aid to non-white countries.  But if we’re to live in a system where this option isn’t visible from the Overton Window, then I am glad that President Obama isn’t prostrating himself to every demand of dork liberals.