“But Iron Head, What About That Thingey?”

This came to mind when I found out that DL Cameron Heyward out of Ohio State went with the second-to-last pick in the first round of the NFL draft to the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Heyward is the son of the late Craig “Iron Head” Heyward, a RB that was with the Rams for one season.   But the elder Heyward’s biggest contribution to society was making it safe for all us straight men to use those “thingeys.”  As you can see, the above ad used film from his practices as a Ram.

The younger Mr. Heyward was one of three men with the first name “Cameron” to be drafted in the first round yesterday, including the #1 pick overall.  Since NFL draftees must be at least three years removed from their senior year of high school, this means that draftees are somewhere between 20 and 23 years old.  There must have been a fad of parents naming their newborn sons “Cameron” in the 1988 to 1991 time frame — I was alive and coherent then, but I can’t remember any reason why “Cameron” was popular.  Maybe Kirk Cameron, whose big claim to fame was playing the problematic firstborn son on the ABC sitcom “Growing Pains,” which was going strong in that period, but that’s my best guess.  That all three Camerons drafted yesterday are black probably borks this theory, because I hardly think “Growing Pains” was appointment television for too many blacks.

Sixty Seconds on the Clock

P-D:

At Old Courthouse ceremony, Nixon vetos discrimination bill

Standing in front of the building where slave Dred Scott sued to gain his freedom, Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a measure that would have made it easier for employers to avoid discrimination suits.

The bill would have raised the threshold for proving bias cases, requiring claimants to prove discrimination was a “motivating” factor, and not just a “contributing” factor, which is the current standard.

It would also have capped damages awarded to plaintiffs, and exempted individuals — such as a boss or supervisor — from liability.

“Protecting human rights is not a matter of politics,” Nixon said. “It is a matter of principle. That is why I will veto Senate Bill 188.”

Standing in front of the Old Courthouse, Nixon evoked the names of prominent local civil rights leaders such Minnie Liddell, the St. Louis mother who started a marathon desegregation case…

Some emphasis mine.

Contestants, you have exactly one minute to spot the irony.  Clues may be found in bold in the above article fragment.  Good luck.

The clock starts now.

Civil Rights for D.C. Residents

For as long as I can remember, the left has been beating the drums for voting rights for residents of the District of Columbia.  Translated into English, this means they want statehood for D.C. so there can be one or two extra Democrats in the House and (more importantly to the left) two extra Democrats in the Senate.

How about 2nd Amendment rights for D.C. residents?  Because you have to purchase firearms from an FLFD who is licensed in the same state in which you live, D.C. residents can only buy from D.C.-based FLFDs.  Or rather, I should not have pluralized that acronym, because there is only one FLFD in the whole District, and thanks to bureaucratic snafus with his lease (maybe not so accidental, IMHO), he is out of business for the time being, and with it is one of the ten items of the Bill of Rights in the District of Columbia.

A computer scientist named David Wheeler proposes that a district ceded to a Federal government from a state in order to be the national seat of government be treated as if it were still part of its state for the purposes of Federal elections.  Originally, the Feds took territory from both sides of the Potomac River.  Look at a road atlas’s D.C. inset, and you can see how Arlington, Virgina sorta “completes the square” with D.C.  For some reason, the Feds didn’t think it would need any of the Virginia territory, so it quickly returned what it had taken from Virginia back to the state, and kept only the Maryland portion.  Wheeler’s proposal would mean that D.C. residents would be counted and apportioned as Marylanders for House elections, the number of House seats MD would get would consider the D.C. population count plus its own state population, and Maryland’s state government would draw Congressional boundaries in accordance, D.C. residents would vote in Maryland U.S. Senate elections, and D.C. residents would vote for which slate of Maryland electors are sent to the Electoral College for Presidential elections.  It would not mean that D.C. residents would vote for Maryland statewide offices (Governor, etc.) or its state legislative body.  The beauty of this plan is that it gives the left what they apparently want, and when they start crowing against it for some contrived reason, then their hypocrisy will become plain even to the biggest moron — Maryland by itself is solid blue, so adding more blue votes from D.C. won’t change the balance of power in the Senate.

The same should be done with the ATF regulation that you have to buy from an FLFD within your state — D.C. residents should be treated as Maryland residents for this purpose.  So they can purchase from an FLFD in rural Maryland if worse comes to worst.

Registry

No, I’m not talking about Wills and Kate.

This is too much.  Just too much.

WMAQ-NBC-5 Chicago:

Murderer Registry? How About Life In Prison Instead?

Earlier this month, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a law creating a “murderer registry” that would require criminals convicted of first-degree murder to check in with the state for 10 years after their release from prison.

The bill was named for Andrea Will, a young Batavia woman who was strangled to death by her boyfriend in 1998, when they were both students at Eastern Illinois University.

The boyfriend, Justin Boulay, was set free last year after serving only half his 24-year sentence. For taking away an estimated 70 years of his girlfriend’s life, Boulay did just 12 years in the joint.

Here’s an even better plan for keeping an eye on killers: don’t let them out of prison. I was all in favor of repealing the death penalty, but if Illinois isn’t going to have capital punishment, we should have another method of permanently removing murderers from society. The penalty for first-degree murder should be changed to a mandatory life sentence, with no chance of parole. It’s a lot easier to keep track of people in prison. Instead of asking murderers to check in with the state, we’ll have prison guards check their beds every night.

I don’t know if Mr. Boulay was a beneficiary of the Pat Quinn Open Jail Cell Policy.  He might have been released just because Illinois has permissive murder laws.

Missouri, on the other hand, only has two possible punishments for a Murder 1st conviction:  Death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Then there is the matter of pardons.

There’s a good reason why Presidents and Governors have the absolute power of pardon and commutation, because sometimes prosecutors and juries screw up, or get it wrong, or are just plain devious and evil.  Sometimes, the law is an ass.  Sometimes, the law is arcane.  (Frank Sinatra was once arrested for “carrying on with a married woman.”  The charges were dropped because the prosecutors didn’t think they could prove that Sinatra knew the woman was married.)  Sometimes, we just want to forgive.

However, I think that a pardon or commutation that results in someone being released from incarceration should be treated differently than pardoning someone whose conviction was long ago and punishment was served long ago.  Personally, I think a pardon or commutation that results in a release from incarceration should be approved by the relevant legislative body before happening.  The U.S. Congress if it’s a Presidential pardon, the state legislature if it’s a gubernatorial pardon.

Thursday’s Toestubs

*  You can tell this isn’t England.  If it were, the FBI would have arrested Mr. Kellner for committing such a “racist hate crime.”  Or worse, singing “Kung Fu Fighting.”

*  Someone has been doing some investigating, and has discovered that the real world annualized inflation rate of the last three month is 7.4%.

*  “Marie G. Davis Military and Global Leadership Academy.”  (Name)(Weasel Words)(Academy).  If I didn’t know any better, I thought this institution that was too cool to be named “school” was in St. Louis, because our fair city must be the capital for these things.  Anyway, their weightlifting/chess/social studies teacher (do they even call them “teachers” anymore?) was popped for doing one of the school’s young lady students, a 16-year old.  Which means that if you want to schedule a lifting or chess competition against the Marie G. Davis Military and Global Leadership Academy, now is a good time to do it.

*  Yeah, alcohol, tobacco and lottery tickets aren’t necessities to you.  However, you’re just not diverse enough to understand.  You white racist bigot.  (Oops, I forgot, a black Governor won re-election making this a campaign issue.)

Just to clarify something, these are new restrictions placed on cash welfare benefits distributed through EBT cards, not SNAP/”Food Stamps,” which are also distributed the same way, the phrase “EBT” has erroneously become synonymous with Food Stamps.  However, I’ve read plenty of anecdotes, from my secret squirrel sources and otherwise, where people were able to use Food Stamps on EBT cards to buy booze and tobacco and a lot of other things that Food Stamps aren’t allowed to be used to buy.

*  A noun, a verb and 9/11 (as Joe Biden calls him) was in town yesterday for a motivational speaking engagement, and took the occasion to look at North County tornado damage.

As an aside, he’s thinking of jumping into the Presidential race because the current field is so weak.  Like Mr. 15% in the only state he really tried to win (Florida), winning no counties in the process, is going to make the field any stronger?

*  Another joke.  He loves ethanol subsidies that much?  A whole lot of people don’t like food inflation, either.  That should end his campaign.

*  Illinois AG Lisa Madigan has appointed former Governor James Thompson as special assistant AGs in the AG office’s efforts to keep FOID data private.

Hold on, am I going crazy or something?  Wasn’t her office’s opinion that FOID data was public information the thing that generated the ISRA’s lawsuit to begin with?  In other words, the AG is hiring a former Governor to argue for herself and the ISRA against herself in court.

Huh?  This is turning out to be a confusing clusterfuck.

All Madigan needs to do is to issue a new opinion, and this all goes away.

*  This is a win-win for defense attorneys.  You can read from this that defense attorneys us failure to do fingerprint checks on all seized guns and ammo to contribute to “reasonable doubt.”  But when they’re all sent to the crime lab for that analysis, and it clogs up the system, and sends the work load of lab workers into orbit, and slows down all their other tests on everything else, then the defense attorneys can get a judge to dismiss the case for the “lack of a speedy trial.”  In rape kits, etc. get clogged up from all these guns and bullets going to the state crime lab, then the defense attorneys for the accused rapists can also move for dimissial because of the lack of a speedy trial.

*  President Obama knows about Revis Island?  He sure does.  In fact, he probably knows more about it than all the things he should know something about.

*  Say it ain’t so.  Superman is renouncing his American citizenship.  Captain America has become a left-wing wacko.  Now all that’s left for traditional Americana is Garfield.

*  The University of Nebraska is mulling variable tuition rates depending on major.  In spite of the excuses they’re giving, there’s only one reason they’re doing it — Because they can.  Because they think that majors for which they’ll charge higher tuition, e.g. engineering, business, etc., means that its graduates will get better and higher paying jobs after graduation, and therefore will be willing to accept higher student loan payments.  By contrast, English and liberal arts majors won’t get those kinds of good jobs, so the University wants to keep their majors relatively cheap and therefore their student loan payments low.

All fine and dandy.  But in many cases, especially for native born white Americans, those high paying engineering jobs aren’t there after graduation.  And while the H-1B Asians get those kinds of jobs, they certainly don’t get them at very high salary scales.

Also, the University has to tread really carefully about pricing the black history and women’s studies majors.  If you price them either too high or too low, then they’ll get accusations of racism and sexism as sure as Christ made fish.

*  Just as quickly as China is becoming us, we’re becoming China.

How well is biking to work going to work out when it’s 10 degrees outside and most of the streets are coated with a thick glaze of ice?  Or when it’s going to be raining and storming all day?

Too, St. Louis’s Downtown is not the only place where there are places of employment.  A high percentage of St. Louis’s office space is near 270/Manchester, 270/Olive, 270/Page and 70/ECE.  Add all the hospital complexes, none of which are Downtown, and you can see why maybe they put this fancy bike rack and group shower complex in the wrong place.

*  Dr. Adams’s perspective is here, and the Peter Downs/Susan Turk rebuttal can be found here and here.  It’s like listening to tweedledee argue with tweedledum, or good cop argue with bad cop, or the keystone cops fight with the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.  Nobody involved tells the truth, i.e. a school system whose pupils are 90%+ black will almost always be an academic failure, and will almost always have a lot of its schools plagued by violence, poor test scores and lethargic attendance rates.

Peyton’s Place

…is the Cover of Madden NFL 2012.

You know the last time I bought a video game was not long after I turned 14?  Way back in the spring of 1991, for the 8-bit Nintendo.  I remember the game, too — Rad Racer II.  I bought it used for $15, and the market for that game went through the floor because most people panned it compared to the first RR.  By the time the fall of that year came and I started high school, I just got way too busy for the Nintendo I had, much less to learn the 16-bit Super Nintendo which came out that same fall, and had an implied extra dimension of game play.  The next summer, I gave my 8-bit Nintendo and all my games away to the grandson of one my mother’s best friends.

Even though I don’t own a game console, and EA Sports doesn’t make the Madden NFL series for PC, I’m going to buy Madden ’12 for PS3 anyway, just as a matter of gratitude for them putting a white running back on the cover of this year’s version.  The two finalists were Peyton Hillis and Michael Vick, and while the insider gossip said that Hillis would win easily, there was a fear that EA Sports would bow to PC racial pressure and put either Vick or someone else on the cover, instead of a white RB.  To their credit, they didn’t, and they’re going to see my 60 clams for it.  It’ll be a Christmas present for someone I know who has a PS3.

Truly Agreed

Here you go.

Evidently, there was a bigger dispute between House and Senate Republicans than I thought.  I don’t know what all the fuss was about –  All three maps, the House’s, the Senate’s, and what finally got adopted, look almost the same.  Everyone knew that Russ Carnahan was going to be aced out.  Everyone knew that a map that generated the best odds for a 6-2 Republican majority for the next decade was what was going to come out of this process.  All the House and Senate were arguing about were matters on the margins.  And some of the rural House and Senate Republicans didn’t like the fact that their home geography would be in large rural Congressional districts that eked into suburban sprawl of St. Louis or Kansas City.  Too bad — You can’t divide the state up into eight slices that are almost equal in population and rig the boundaries for a 6-2 Republican majority and have rural-only districts all at the same time.

Since there are only eight district to be had, common sense stated that in order to engineer a 6-2 R map, that each given Republican-oriented district, while very likely red, would result in districts that would be lighter red than their predecessors.  This document confirms that — If this map is right, then all eight districts have the exact same population.  I don’t know what the exact metric that the column “%MRPAveNum” is measuring, but I think it’s some sort of average of votes for Republican candidates over a given time period in each of the eight districts.  You can tell it’s a Republican statistic, because MO-1 at 21% is the lowest, MO-5 at 35% is the second lowest, and MO-7 at 64% is the highest, and the others are between 54% and 57%.

Because the final map is almost the same as the House map, my analysis really isn’t any different.  I don’t have to type it again here.  I will insert these addenda:

MO-1:  In reaction to the beating murder of the Vietnamese-American elderly man in South St. Louis, I said in this space a few weeks ago that the Grand-Arsenal-Chippewa area, while it was the heaviest Asian census tract in the City, wasn’t the most Asian census tract in the metro area, that was in Maryland Heights, the Silicon Valley of St. Louis areas.  Turns out that the final map has most of that tract (being mindful of the fact that political precincts and census tracts are not the same thing) in MO-1.  Also, a little bit of Lemay is thrown into MO-1, because the working class whites who live in that are seem to be expected to be reliable Democrat voters.

MO-2:  All of St. Louis County that is not in MO-1, plus a good chunk of residential southern St. Charles County south of 70 and north of 64, and also Arnold and Fenton in Jefferson County.  Like I’ve been saying, a really tall blue wave nationally could turn this district blue temporarily, especially if that blue wave is accompanied by a Republican incumbent in MO-2 abandoning the seat.  However, Todd Akin will really have no problems keeping this seat as long as he wants.  If Akin runs for Senate, Ann Wagner or whatever Republican comes out of that process should have no problems winning it November of next year, because 2012 is going to be a redder year than 2008, even if it won’t be as red as 2010.  If Arnold and the Jefferson County portion of Fenton aren’t reliably blue anymore, and 2010 was the start of a long-standing trend instead of a one-election fluke, then all bets are off for the Democrats flipping MO-2.

Like I said in my House map analysis, if you got on I-55 Southbound at Carondelet, you would cross from 1 to 2 at the City Limits, from 2 to 3 at the Meramec River, and from 3 to 8 just before you got to the Imperial Main St. exit.  In that short drive, currently within MO-3, you would be partaking of four different Congressional districts.  The final map works like this:  You cross from 1 to 2 between Weber and Bayless, from 2 to 3 just south of the Richardson Rd exit, and from 3 to 8 at the Festus exit.  Again, that’s all in MO-3 at the moment, but soon to be within four different districts.

MO-5:  Virtually unchanged from the House map.  While no Republican could ever win it, I do think a white Democrat could win the Democrat Primary if Emmanuel Cleaver retires any time while this map is law.  And that’s why I think the NAACP will drag this map into court because of the Voting Rights Act.

Sen. Ryan McKenna, a Jefferson Countian, said that he wouldn’t filibuster this map on the Senate floor even though it trifurcates Jefferson County.  It’s not that he “wouldn’t,” he couldn’t.  The Senate is 76% Republican, and as it is, the map passed last night 27-7, meaning that one Democrat voted for the map.  It passed the House 96-55 before it went to the Senate.  House and Senate Dems are already asking Gov. Nixon to veto the map, using the trifurcation of Nixon’s Jefferson County as the emotional rallying cry.  However, Nixon probably hasn’t lived in DeSoto since he left the State Senate to become Attorney General in 1992, so he probably doesn’t care that much about JeffCo anymore.  But I don’t think he’ll veto the map because he knows the House and Senate will override — It already got more than a 2-1 vote in the Senate, and even though they’d need to peel one of the 55 House “No” votes away in order to get two-thirds in the House, (assuming that those that didn’t vote are all for this map), I don’t think that will be a problem, because Lazy Clay and his people will see to that, as this map keeps him safe.  And no, I don’t buy Dave Drebes’s theory that Carnahan could beat Clay in a MO-1 primary next year because there are more whites over 18 than blacks over 18 in the new MO-1, because not all white voting age adults in MO-1 are racially conscious — The ones that are, mainly elderly South City and North County residents, are dying off by the year, and the remaining ones wouldn’t manifest their race consciousness by voting for a liberal like Carnahan.  Also, the statistic that shows more 18+ whites than 18+ blacks in MO-1 is a static stat from the 2010 census — As this decade drags on, thanks to white mortality, that balance will shift.  The map that Drebes provides does show that white adults outnumber black adults by 3.5-to-1 in MO-5, proving my point there.

Fun Wednesday Headlines

International Business Times:  Apple: We ‘must have’ comprehensive user location data on you

Uh oh, there’s that word again.  “Comprehensive.”

NYP:  Lindsay Lohan to work as a janitor at LA morgue

“Janitor at a morgue?”  I can buy that.  It’s the part about LiLo “working” that I can’t grok.

CNS:  Lindsay Lohan Gets ‘Tonight Show’ Ovation

Tonight Show tickets are free.  Just remember that.

NYP:  NYPD admits it provided Diddy with a police escort

WTF?  Aren’t there enough skinny ass white boy wannabes buying Sean John clothing for Diddy to pay for his own security?

Next Big Future:  Is the National Security Agency Building an Exaflop Supercomputer using $895.6 million?

An exaflop for under a gigabuck.  Good deal.

RCP:  Tavis Smiley: 2012 Will Be “The Most Racist” Election Ever

One can but hope.

5:  Steven Tyler admits past abuse of drugs

Five, six, seven, eight…DUH

P-D:  Illinois may soon scratch “crippled” and “mentally retarded” from law books

Good.  I’m not a big fan of redundancies.

CNS:  Afghan Forces Recapture 65 From Kandahar Jailbreak

I bet an Afghan jailbreak isn’t as much fun as an iPhone jailbreak.

CNS:  Levi Johnston to Write Tell-All Book on Palin Family

With all the other tell-all books on the Palins already written, you would think that it would all be told by now.

CNS:  Teleprompter Inventor Dies in Connecticut at 91

He will lie in state inside the White House.  President Obama will deliver the eulogy, and yes, he will need a teleprompter for that.

CNS:  Trump Says Obama Wasn’t Qualified for Ivy League

What do you mean?  He’s black, isn’t he?

Wednesday’s Wobegons

*  The demographic dam is starting to break, in terms of the American body politic.

This is perhaps one reason why Republican gains weren’t even bigger than they were last November.  I think this news is partially responsible for Harry Reid and very much responsible for Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper winning their statewide elections in Nevada and Colorado.  It might also explain why a number of Congressional districts that had a fair chance of flipping did not after all the votes were counted.

*  No link because too many judges are named, but the 3rd Federal Appellate Circuit wants Mumia Abu-Jamal to get a new sentencing hearing.

At this rate, he’ll die of natural causes before the state can execute him.

*  That figures.

This news brings me to a matter closer to home — Be very suspicious of all these sheriffs and cops and prosecutors preaching and pontificating against meth, and demanding ever more strict laws about the sale and distribution of pseudoephederine by the year.  They’re either hiding something, or overcompensating for some sort of guilt.

*  Colleges and universities are skirting Title IX by doing such things as classifying men who are practice players on women’s sports teams as women athletes.

Classifying men as women is somehow wrong?  I thought that was civil right these days.  Remember, gender is just a social construct, and if you can change your identified gender on a dime, then someone else should be able to do it for you.

*  Stole wallets and valuables from gym lockers?   Hell, this one looks like he needs to use the gym, and badly.

That Nutty Island

An England two-fer.

First off, from the Telegraph:

Pub singer’s ‘racism’ arrest over Kung Fu Fighting performance

Simon Ledger says he fears he will end up with a criminal record for performing the 1974 disco classic at a seafront bar on the Isle of Wight on Sunday after two people walking past apparently took offence.

The 34-year-old, from the island, regularly features Carl Douglas’s 1974 number one hit in his set when he performs at the Driftwood Beach Bar in Sandown.

But after striking up the melody in front of customers at the weekend he noticed a man of Chinese origin walking past with his mother, making gestures at him and taking a picture on his mobile phone.

He said that he later received a telephone call from police – while he was dining in a Chinese restaurant – asking him to meet officers about the incident.

He was then arrested and questioned before being bailed.

(snip)

“People of all races were loving it, Chinese people have never been offended before.”

Better be careful with this one, coppers.  Arresting someone for singing a hit song of a black artist is just as racist as singing a song about a stereotypically Chinese athletic pursuit in front of two Chinamen in a Chinese restaurant.

Then again, it’s not “racist” at all, it’s “racism schmacism.”  And nobody’s business, really.  Certainly not the public’s business.

Second, from the Daily Mail:

Farmer menaced with death threats by gang of travellers dials 999… and police turn up to confiscate her shotguns

Having confronted travellers cutting down trees on her farm, terminally-ill Tracy St Clair Pearce found herself subjected to a terrifying ordeal.

Some of the group pelted her with rocks while a youth threatened to slit her throat and slaughter her cattle.

When she dialled 999 she expected the full weight of the law to be on her side.

Instead, however, police officers criticised her for inflaming the situation and confiscated her legally held shotguns – even though they had been locked away in a cabinet at home throughout the incident.

Yesterday, the 50-year-old accused police of causing her ‘harassment and distress’ when she should have been given protection.

‘I’ve been treated like a criminal,’ said Miss St Clair Pearce, who has been given months to live after breast cancer spread to her spine.

If she wanted to retaliate outside the bounds of the law, she would have done that in lieu of calling the cops.  Didn’t any of these big brave cops consider that?

Also, the gypsies cut down trees.  I thought that was some sort of crime against the environment.  In some Australian cities, you have to get permission from the local bureaucrats before you as much as prune or trim any tree, much less cut it down.

Passportgate

In case you haven’t heard, you can read the skinny here and here.  Ironically, until he cleared things up beyond all reasonable doubt this morning, President Obama couldn’t have gotten a passport from his own State Department under this proposed paperwork.

The pregnant question here is why?  Glenn Beck’s two theories are:

(1)  Trapping the Jews inside Germany, if you know what I mean

(2)  Obama is showing his ass on the immigration issue — “How can you say no amnesty for these poor undocumented Hispanics when you yourself are so ‘undocumented’ that you can’t even get an American passport?”

Obviously, both Beck and I think that (2) is more likely than (1).  However, I have a theory which is less devious sounding in nature than either one of these, and is more likely to be true.

The theory goes like this:  Rod Blagojevich, Scooter Libby.

Remember, those two were facing numerous Federal charges, but in the end, the jury only nailed both on the process crime of lying to a Federal agent.  Of course, in RodB’s case, the Feds are going for a re-trial on all the other charges which were a result of a hung jury, while in Libby’s case, (IIRC), his jury found him not guilty on everything but the process crime.

I think what the State Department is thinking about here is making the paperwork for a passport application so complicated and so likely to trip most people up in a lie that they’ll have some easy process crimes to nail Muslim terrorist “American citizens” with if they get the notion to want to run back to Pakistan or Somalia and build bombs with Good Ole Osama.  That way, the U.S. Attorneys will be able to file a number of charges relating to “supplying false information on a passport application” (because ole Mohammed Al-Terroristiqua didn’t spell his third grade teacher’s third grade teacher’s name correctly, or he overstated how big his dick is, and if you think I’m joking about that, well, I’m almost not), on top of the serious charges.  Either to plead the serious terrorist charges away down to the process crimes, in order for the Federal prosecutors easily to dispense of a difficult case, or to have some charges which will generate easy convictions from the jury if the whole matter makes it to a petit jury, and they hang up on the serious charges.

Another possibility is that the FBI can use the Sword of Damocles of “supplying false info on a passport application” charges to try and extract information out of relatively uncooperative people for the aid of other Federal investigations.  In that, this would be very similar to the gun criminal registry in Baltimore.

Ridin’ Along in His Automobile

The Cape P.D. think that he stole Peter Kindercare’s 2009 Ford Flex (an ass-ugly car, BTW) and rammed it into the side of a gun shop.

I was hoping for Mr. Cromer to be a man of color.  I’d be feasting on the porterhouse steak of irony if he were.

Until and Precisely

Just as I thought.  The only difference is that the consensus wisdom is that the LFBC controversy was cooked up by HRC as a last second Hail Mary to the end zone.  I don’t buy that because Obama would have knocked her off forever if he thought she and her people were behind it.  I thought all along that it was either Rahm or Axelrod who cooked up some sort of Machiavellian scheme, and  leaned on Obama to hold it under the vest, in order to create a diversion from the rest of his rot-gut policies.  And he would release it when he thought doing so would be most beneficial to his political ambitions.  I thought that would be some time between Labor Day and Election Day next year, during the heat of the general election campaign, as an effort to mass discredit his Republican opposition.  That answers the “until” question — Why did he wait until now to release it?

While one question is now resolved, another one sprouts in its place — Why precisely now?  What is he trying to distract us from?  This is just too valuable an ace in the hole just to pull out and play just for any ole reason, or just for no reason.  There’s a reason he’s playing this card now, a card he can only play once.  And it doesn’t seem like he’s playing it against any serious member of his political opposition.  What’s going on?  Why would he blow through his AITH without all the chips on the table?

Answer:  Mark Levin noted yesterday that some time today, Zimbabwe Ben Bernanke is going to be holding the Federal Reserve’s first press conference in almost a century, purportedly to tell us about how well QE2 worked out.  The consensus about what that is all about is that TPTB are going to start engaging in what Levin termed “economic repression,” because everyone is scared to buy T-Bills and finance the Federal government’s deficit spending all of a sudden.  (S&P warning, anyone?)  Levin thinks that through a combined series of regulatory mandates, carrots and sticks, raising the fractional reserve requirements for banks, a hypothetical and probably soon to be real QE3, and so on, TPTB are going force/lure/cajole/trick unwilling people and institutions into buying T-Bills, combined with cranking up Federal printing presses so that the Feds can easily pay its own debts, especially on outstanding T-Bill interest.  I can see how well this is going to work out — In a few years, you’ll go to your bank to close out your checking account, and the bank will give you T-Bills (a claim against an increasingly un-creditworthy Federal government) instead of (increasingly worthless) cash, because the bank doesn’t have your cash, even though they should in theory because the fractional reserve percentage was raised, but it was raised so that banks could have more cash on hand to buy T-Bills.  It’s just that those T-Bills will be worthless, especially for face value of redemption, if not also by that time the Feds won’t be able to afford debt service, because a whole lot of favored political constituencies (seniors, China, etc.) will have to get theirs first.

Whatever Zimbabwe Ben says today, people with brains are going to be flashing on heavy weather ahead.  It seems to me that Obama doesn’t want us looking outside a window and up at the sky.

Tuesday’s Tidbits

*  If the relatively high rate of domestic violence against women on college and university campi isn’t all the result of feminist stat-padding, then the reason it’s so high, or even so close to being so high, probably has to do with most colleges and universities’ admissions staff being so covetous of black men.

*  Black crime?  Gypsy crime?  Muslim terrorism?  Nope, British police can’t do anything about that.  It’s too dangerous.

But some joker drawing a Hitler ‘stache on an election poster?  The coppers are working 24/7 to solve that dastardly crime.

Notice that the whole police investigation got started because of a complaint by a local politician from the TORY Party.  Which only goes to prove the point that David Cameron is about as useful as a tit on a bull.

The story quotes a local who rightly said the cops have plenty worse crimes to investigate.  Logically, this person is right.  But you don’t live in a logical society, you live in a neo-Marxist “democracy” that believes in equality and human rights above all.  Therefore, anything Hitler or Nazi requires immediate and consummate police attention.

*  While the cops in the UK are chasing Hitler ‘stashes around, they’re missing the obvious threat in their own capital city — London, for all intents and purposes, is practically the world’s nerve center for radical Islamic terrorist plots.

*  How cruel and hard-hearted can you be?  Actually expecting people who want “temporary” (read: permanent) immigration status in your country because they’re (supposedly) being persecuted in their native countries, to behave like gracious guests while they’re being processed by immigration authorities, and sending them back from whence they came if they don’t act like gracious guests, and do things, like, um, burn down their processing center where they’ve probably gotten the first decent meal, medical check and good night’s sleep ever in their lives?

*  “It wasn’t really a gun.”  Florida’s law might not be too similar, but in Missouri, a robbery can still be classified as a first-degree robbery (i.e. using a deadly weapon) if the perpetrator had something that looked like a deadly weapon, or seemed to be a deadly weapon, or the perp said he had a deadly weapon even if the victim could not actually see it, or the perp had some concealed item that had the appearance of being a deadly weapon, even if it was just his thumb and index finger pointed like a gun underneath a deep pocket.  Even if the perp actually didn’t have a deadly weapon in his possession, that kind of robbery is still deadly weapon category robbery in Missouri, all depending on what a “reasonable” victim is made to believe about the presence of a deadly weapon.

I have no doubt that PlayStation 3 controller, concealed well enough under the right kind of clothing material, could be made to look like a gun, and could fool enough sane and reasonable people into thinking that it is a gun.

And, yes, in case you’re wondering…

*  More children than the number of years of high school he completed by the time he was 18?  That can only be bad news.  Seems to me he should have been reading that Bible a little sooner.

*  Videri Quam Esse.  License plates don’t have criminal records.  This won’t actually do any good, nor will it deter any crimes.  This village’s politicians just want residents to think they’re doing something, in order to keep the “For Sale” signs from multiplying like weeds and to keep the property values up, in order to keep the village’s tax coffers full.

While Kings Point, New York, is 93% white, it’s not too far from the heavily black/Hispanic borough of Queens, and just a few bridges away from the heavily black/Hispanic borough of the Bronx.  Since Kings Point is described as wealthy, I bet many of the home owners have Hispanic maids and housekeepers and domestic help, a lot of those being illegals.  And it’s a very short continuum from them to the MS-13s and the Mara 18s and the Latin Kings.  Petard, hoisted, own.

Cue Violins

Eugene Kane, writing in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

With hopes so high, Benson arrest hits hard

At one time, Corey Benson seemed like a sure bet for success.

He was an 18-year-old African-American who had managed to survive a rough childhood to excel academically at Milwaukee’s Washington High School. A star student, Benson was his class valedictorian and earned a scholarship to Purdue University.

What made his story even more compelling was the fact Benson was the son of a single mother living in poverty, and was occasionally homeless during high school. Yet, he managed to maintain a sterling academic performance.

His achievements were highlighted by the local media, including this newspaper, as a much-needed positive story about young black males in Milwaukee.

I did a column on Benson in 2003, then another in 2007 after his graduation from Purdue and return to Milwaukee. During our last interview, he seemed frustrated by his lack of opportunity after earning a college degree from a good college. He had found steady employment but wanted things to happen much quicker in his career.

(snip)

This week, many of Benson’s supporters were shocked to see him named as the suspect in the death of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son. According to police, Benson, 26, was arrested in connection with the child’s death last Saturday. He has not been charged.

(snip)

Another troubling aspect: Benson was out on bail after being charged with physical abuse of the same child last October and was under a no-contact order that instructed him to stay away from the child’s mother’s home.

(snip)

The tale of an underprivileged young black male who used education to overcome a life of poverty was an intriguing story for some journalists, including myself. In fact, I treated him as more than just a news source. I maintained contact with Benson after writing my column, occasionally meeting with him to offer advice and even provided a few job recommendations.

(snip)

I don’t think Benson really needs any more media attention, but because of his previous press clippings, it’s part of the deal.

Of course you don’t Eugene.

Before I go on, realize that I’ve been telling you over and over again in this space that when an infant or toddler child is murdered, it is almost always at the hands of the child’s mother’s new boyfriend that is not the child’s father.  Along with that, whenever you read stories about homeless teenage boys, it is almost always a result of the mother’s new live-in boyfriend (again, not the young man’s father), influencing the mother to throw her son out of the house.  We have both human parallels of leonine social habits displayed in Mr. Benson’s life story.

Are we to think that Mr. Benson is the only young American adult that is a recent college graduate who is unable to find work commensurate with his or her education and major field of study?  There are plenty more where he came from, and plenty of all races.  It’s just that hardly any of the men murder their girlfriend’s infant children, and as such there are no journalists using their employment situation as an excuse to rationalize it.  At least he had a full-time job of any sort — He’s luckier than a lot of recent college grads.  “Wanted things to happen much quicker in his career.”  What, he was one of these overly self-esteemed brats who thinks that he should be able to walk into any corporate high rise and be made a middle manager with a six-figure salary and a generous expense account just because he put his toe through the revolving doors?  There are plenty of those (of all races) where he came from, and just in case you haven’t figured it out by now, that’s not how the world works.  However, almost all people who get bitch-slapped by this harsh reality don’t turn around and bitch-slap toddlers to death.

I’d like to know what his major was in college.  Probably some useless bullshit like black studies.  Also realize that “valedictorian” of one’s high school class doesn’t necessarily mean best GPA anymore — Politics, and by “politics,” I mean racial pandering, often come into play when a school’s administration chooses a valedictorian for a graduating class.  If GPA was the sole determinant, then realize that his high school is 98% black, (source:  Great Schools) and therefore, it probably doesn’t take much more than a pulse to have the highest GPA.

This story would be hilariously funny, just to see the race pandering media eat its own crow, except there’s a dead infant child involved.

With Friends Like These

Rush said on his show today that his dream Presidential candidates are Allen West, Marco Rubio and Piyush (“Bobby”) Jindal.

Geezo.

A black, a Hispanic and an Indian.  Not a real American in the bunch.

With adversaries like these, Barack Obama can sleep a lot easier.

Monday’s Musings

* The fancy name is called “Course Title Inflation.” I’ve been aware of it for almost five years, and of all people, The Oprah brought it to my attention. She had her people send a young black woman enrolled and getting an A in trigonometry at at CPS high school to a suburban 90%+ white high school’s trig class, and she was lost because the material being taught in the white high school was so beyond her.

However, the NYT and the official studies from Federal educrats on which this story is based seems to give the phenomenon the imprimatur of Official America.

* Wouldn’t you know it. President Obama just happened to stumble on another kook leftist black preacher. It’s a good thing for us Obama doesn’t pay attention in church.

* Usually, “Dodge” as a geographical moniker implies a place one wants to flee as soon as possible. Dodge County, Georgia, on the other hand, seems to be a good place to go.

* Good show, guards.

* My grandfather worked around beer all day (A-B), and therefore didn’t want a drop of it in his house. I work around numbers, statistics, spreadsheets, paperwork and beancounting for good portions of my work days, therefore I keep my own tax returns as simple as possible. You would think that someone whose job is looking at the implied human nudity generated by x-ray scanners would want no part of it, legal or illegal in nature, while he’s off the clock.

* All throughout the NCAA tourney, they kept telling us how smart Kemba Walker because by the time this summer is through, he will have graduated from the University of Connecticut in three years and change. But before you fill out your application to UConn, thinking it’s the Harvard of public institutions in New England, realize that through those three years of college and thirteen years of primary, middle and secondary education before then, he didn’t have to read an entire book until about a month ago. And, surprise, the book he was assigned to read was kook left propaganda about “racism” in sports, and by that, I don’t mean the “racism” that Caste Football describes.

* The Army needs a smartphone OS? Guess what, Steve and Bill — Your phones didn’t ring. The lines over at RIM were pretty quiet, too.

* The casual reader might gloss over this story and think that Fort Benning Army Officers are violating Posse Comitatus. The reason they’re not is because they’re only out there teamed with Columbus, Georgia P.D. officers to look for Fort Benning’s enlisted men who are causing trouble for Columbus’s civilians, and there has been a lot of that happening lately. Even while they’re off base, the Pentagon can still regulate the behavior of military personnel, and the chain of command is still in effect within the Weberian military structure even if all parties involved are off base or installation. Now, why would Fort Benning’s enlisted men be causing so much trouble? The Army is the blackest/most Hispanic branch of the Armed Forces. Jus’sayin…

* Printing money causes inflation across the board? It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Too, it takes an even bigger non-genius not to figure it out.

* The BNP’s name is being thrown around like a hot potato in the debate over AV/electoral reform, the public vote coming up next month. First, the AV opponents said that Britons must vote no on AV because it would make life easier for the BNP. Now, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, an AV proponent, says that AV opponents are in league with the BNP. With the BNP apparently being both for and against AV at the same time, you would think that John Kerry moved to London and joined the BNP.

So which is it?

NickG is opposed to the precise AV proposal that is on the ballot, because for some reason he thinks it’s a poison pill, while he still wants electoral reform in the long run. The BNP itself has no official position on AV.

Sunday Wrap-Up

*  Lakers center Andrew Bynum sounds like a really smart man.  Unfortunately for the Lakers, he has a lot of time to take car racing classes, build and maintain seven computers in his house, play around with remote control cars, and finish Phil Jackson’s reading list — He’s hurt all the time.

*  I’m undecided about Bloomberg’s proposal about putting fingerprints on Social Security cards, but he’s full of it when he says that:

“Now, in all fairness, at great expense, we have beefed up the border patrol. There are fences, there’s electronics, there’s people, there’s airplanes,” he said. “It isn’t like something isn’t being done.”

No, we haven’t done all these things.  It’s just that someone told you we’re doing all these things and spending all this money.  If you ever bothered to leave the Upper West Side for some place other than London, you might realize that.

*  While she was Governor, Sarah Palin endorsed the opening of a Mexican Consulate Office with Matricula Mickey Mouse card issuing powers in Anchorage.  Roost, chickens, come home…

*  About the two city jail inmates that broke out on Friday but were quickly captured — I get the feeling that some black jail guard (maybe related to one of the two?) and his perfidy (maybe deliberate?) is involved.

*  More technocratic ordinaces, more cameras, more recreaction centers.  Everything is on the table, except for telling the truth.  Before you get all excited about recreation centers, read comments #12 and #14.

*  The Tea Party Movement gets a lot of flack, some if it justified, some of it not, for engaging in typical neo-liberal and lamestream conservative egalitarian histrionics on race.  Stories like these demostrate why you don’t want to be so hard on them.  Just because there are a few screwballs way up on high shoving Allen West and Herman Cain in our faces doesn’t mean there aren’t some TPers that get it.

Also, Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, two figures on the right often criticized for their anti-racism and race pandering, have done a stand-up job exposing these black wildings (some of them anti-white hate crimes) at all these fast feeder joints.

*  These two?  And a 17-year old young man?  Just by looking at those two, we know there had to be alcohol.  But these two are so sinfully ugly that there had to be a LOT of alcohol.

*  I hope you haven’t eaten your Easter dinner yet.  If you have, you’ll want to skip this story until much later in the digestion process.

*  I would say after having read this story, I was now on Gadhafi’s side.  However, the reason I’m still neutral is that Gadhafi has imported a lot of black mercs in order to fortify his hold on power.

And it’s like Onion Horton has always said, nobody ever sang their way to freedom.

“Just to Even Out the Stats”

Northwest Indiana Times:

Preckwinkle: Criminal justice system racist

CHICAGO | In the winter of 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama asserted that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates and receive different sentences for the same crime.”

Speaking Tuesday at the Fairmont Hotel during an event sponsored by the Executives Club of Chicago, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle echoed that assertion about Cook County’s criminal justice system.

“Nobody talks about institutional racism, but what kind of a criminal justice system has an outcome where 70 percent of the people are African-American and the rest are Latinos.”

Preckwinkle described Cook County jails as “entirely black and brown people. … This is in a county where a third of our population is African-Americans, a third Latino, and a third white and Asian.”

This is an easy problem to solve, Miss Prickwinkle.  If blacks and Hispanics don’t like being the disproportionate patrons at Crook County’s Graybar Hotel, then they should commit fewer crimes.  In fact, to end the racial disparity problem, then they should reduce their crime rate to the same low level as whites and Asians.

Ted Pierson, co-chairman of the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, a Chicago area civil rights organization, agreed with Preckwinkle.

(snip)

Pierson said there is a racial discrepancy in offenses and who is held.

“We’ve found that whites actually commit more drug offenses than African-Americans, but African-Americans are locked up while whites are taken to the station and released to their parents,” he said.

We’ve been through this before.  However, there’s an angle that even my brilliant mind missed, an angle that has been a topic of discussion on AR this weekend.  The reason many black and Hispanic gang-bangers seem to get really long prison bids for “drug crimes” compared to whites who get punished a lot more leniently is because the black and Hispanic gang bangers have a lot of their crimes pled out of existence and pled down to “drug crimes.”  The reason for that is that a drug crime doesn’t have a human victim that is too scared to testify in court out of fear of reprisal or doesn’t want to testify in court because of “stop snitching.”  Therefore, the prosecutors and the lawyers for the black and Hispanic gang banger defendants plea down to “drug crimes,” and they are given prison bids on the long end of what is legally permissible for the given “drug crimes,” under the sentient awareness of everyone involved that the defendant really did a lot more.

While Preckwinkle expressed concern over this issue she also said that beyond the bully pulpit of her office, she has little power to affect change; most of the decisions fall to judges and probation officers.

“People are in jail because judges put them there,” she said.

I’ve never been to jail or prison, other than a tour as an outsider as part of a Citizens Police Academy.  All that means, in the fucked up FUBAR mindset of Miss Prickwinkle, is that some judge must be giving me a pass.  My never having committed a crime serious enough to warrant arrest, prosecution or incarceration must have nothing to do with it.

Second City Cop takes this up.  One commenter makes this point:

You can not go around locking up whites for no reason just to even out the stats. Major high crime cities account for most murders and violent crimes. Whites are the minority in these cities. Let our people go. We can not even drink water from the same fountain in without being shot at. The white sheep are not responsible for the new babies mama style fatherless children. There are so many churches in the poor neighborhoods and nobody gets married.

I disagree, unfortunately.  While you can’t “go around locking up whites for no reason just to even out the stats,” you can move the goalposts around depending on which race has the ball.  What I mean by that is that to fend off liberal bitching and lawsuits, you can lock up a white man for any ticky-tack offense, while giving non-whites a pass on all but the most serious offenses, “just to even out the stats.”  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that that kind of thing is happening in a city as liberal and full of civil rights loudmouths like Chicago.  While the percentage of whites in the Crook County Jail are small, I bet most of them are in there on average for far less serious offenses than the blacks and Hispanics who are raping them.

A few more interesting tidbits from the MSM article:

Preckwinkle said she believes that because a small number of offenders committed high-profile crimes while on electronic monitoring, judges have been weary of approving that remedy for defendants in their courts.

She said that judges fear their name will be plastered all over the media if that happens in their court, causing them to lose in their next election. Preckwinkle said she supports the idea of having retired judges making electronic monitoring decisions.

This is one reason why I rarely link to media that publish the name of sitting or retired judges in good standing, relating to something they do in a case over which they are presiding.  My recommendation is that for all but the Federal and State Supreme Courts, we can know that a particular person has been nominated or approved for the judgeship, or is running for re-election or re-election either against another person, or in a Missouri Plan yea/nay retain/reject scheme, but the names of judges involved in actual proceedings aren’t released.  Personally, I think criminal defendants’ names shouldn’t be released unless and until there is a guilty verdict or plea.

John Lott, author of the book “More Guns Less Crime,” challenged the idea that the nation’s drug laws were biased against African-Americans in a piece for the libertarian Cato Institute, published in March 2009. In it he suggested penalties for drug offenses were set up “because the lives of many blacks were being destroyed by blacks and people thought that they could help by having large penalties on those involved with crack (cocaine).”

Black politicos and civil rights leaders wanted the harsh crack-powder punishment disparities in the 1980s, precisely because crack was affecting blacks.  It didn’t take them long to discover that the perpetrators of crack crimes were also heavily black, so it barely took a decade for the civil rights industry to do an about-face and demand the disparity be undone.  President Obama signed Federal legislation in that stead last year.

A 1994 study by Stanford University professor Joan Petersila of about 11,000 inmates in California concluded that sentencing relied heavily on prior criminal record, seriousness of the offense and the presence of a gun, while race played a negligible role.

It might be too much to ask, and too big a study to undertake, but I bet people like Miss Petersila would also find that there is a high correlation between sentencing relative to the legal maximum for the crimes to which the defendant pled guilty, and other criminal charges the defendant was facing at about the same time, or even the suspected crimes for which the defendant was simultaneously arrested in addition to the one(s) to which they pled guilty.  “The presence of a gun” usually stems from gun crime multiplier laws, endorsed by the NRA as a political ploy to head off further gun control.  Most liberals are against gun crime multipliers, for the same reason, and because of the “disparate impact” on favored minorities.

Fun With Friday Headlines

BBC:  Rioters torch Australia asylum seeker detention centre

Don’t shit where you want to eat and sleep.

5:  Mo. Senate passes plan to shrink House

They say this bill has no chance to pass the House.  DUH.

The Hill:  President predicts Pelosi will again be Speaker of the House  

That’s right — Ask all four #1 seeds that made the Final Four in the basketball tourney — Obama’s predictions are as good as gold.

Sydney Morning Herald:  Kate will omit ‘obey’ from vows: report  

Times have changed.  The future King’s own future wife doesn’t want to obey him.

Detroit News:  Critics: $2.3M Detroit library project a symbol of waste amid budget crisis

It’s Detroit.  You can bet that they didn’t need to order any new books.

Friday’s Frolicks

*  Hate crime at McDonalds.  Note the black man recording it all alerts the perps when the cops are about to come.  IMHO, they could pop him for some sort of obstruction or harboring rap.

Thankfully, Drudge is running this at the very top as I write these words.

*  Every organized criminal is just a businessman, don’t you know?

*  In related news, this is going nowhere, because the Obama White House and its ATF, already stonewalling Issa’s investigation as much as they can, would do everything they could to block this potential lawsuit in order to cover their own asses.

But consider the possibilities if Mexico is able to file this suit and win — Maybe the Federal courts will issue a consent decree ordering the Feds to build a real border wall and fortify it with the 101st Airborne, in order to protect Mexico from America’s guns.

*  So what?  You think much of anyone could name a Democrat Presidential candidate in April 1991?  Nobody really could, because Bush 41 was a shoo-in for a second term.  Too, it wasn’t until the fall of that year that the major names started declaring.  How’d that turn out?

*  If Apple was doing it, I knew Google was doing it too, and my suspicions have been confirmed.  I think the reason is obvious — AAPL and GOOG are all big Obama flunkies, so this has something to do with sucking up to Federal law enforcement.  Michigan has already gotten into the act.

*  I loved this story.  It goes under the category of a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

*  Straight out of Gibbon.

*  Fear not, Dayton, Ohio P.D. Chief.  The Federal courts will make you hire all those “chronic offenders” as police officers.  They’ve done the next worst thing in reality.

*  When I was 15, I really couldn’t grok why a lot of older people I knew, parents, preachers, ministers, and other similar people, kept saying that it was a bad idea for teenagers my age to be engaged in steady relationships with members the opposite sex, much less to the level of a romantic relationship.  I was allowed to date, but I was not allowed to date the same girl more than two dates in a row.  (I never even dated one twice in a row, because I knew that pushing the envelope of the rule so tightly would have meant the rules being tightened even further.)  The older I get, the smarter they all get, and stories like these confirm their wisdom.

*  This is a French-produced map of anti-German propaganda during the first year of World War I.  Ironically, if the French feared a Prussian-anchored united German nation-state, they only had themselves to blame — The main impetus to German unification in the 1870s was the fear of another Napoleon.

*  They come out with virtually the same stories with almost the same prose every year at this time, depending on the sport.  I’m starting to get the feeling that the “Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports” is nothing more than Richard Lapchick and his fax machine.

*  The Borg is having to increase pay and benefits packages in order to stem off employee defections to Google and Facebook.  You know what this means — Gates and Co. are really going to start ratcheting up the propaganda machine, pulling Obama’s strings in the process, for more H-1B visas.

*  Fine.  But where were all you little puke leftist motherfuckers when the Feds were torturing Tom Sell?  Granted, you probably don’t know about Tom Sell, but I think that even if you did, you wouldn’t care about it, or maybe even halfway approve of him being tortured.

*  Wrestling for Aztlan.  You keep complaining about how you didn’t cross the border, the border crossed you.  Well, if you don’t like it, the border is that way.

*  Now this is a weird case — Two 18-year old brothers, both white, from Granite City, are accused of shooting a 30-year old black man, also from Granite City, in Gillespie, Illinois, 40 miles to the north of GC.  Wonder what that was all about.  I suspect drugs.  UPDATE:  The victim died, he was from Carlinville, and the investigators don’t suspect drugs played a role.

Ensign Out, Heller in, Angle Back

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), reading the writing on the wall, is resigning as of early next month.  Gov. Brian Sandoval has already promised to appoint Congressman Dean Heller (R-NV-2) to replace.  NV-2 is almost all of Nevada not too close to Vegas, and does include Sharron Angle’s Reno.  Now, Heller was already gearing up to abandon NV-2 to challenge Ensign in the Republican Primary next year, therefore his district was opening up.  Sharron Angle has a lot of money left over from her failed Senate bid, plus has raised a lot more coin based on the speculation that she will run for Congress next year.  Gov. Sandoval will have to call a special election to fill NV-2, and Angle is considered the frontrunner.  Democrats might think they have a pickup chance, but Angle easily beat Harry Reid in the territory that now comprises NV-2.  It was only because of Vegas, and heavy politicking by casino owners and casino workers unions that Reid got over the top, but since NV-2 has really no Vegas territory to speak of, I think Angle’s a shoo-in.  Democrats’ evidence that it could flip is that John McCain only beat Barack Obama by a few hundred votes in NV-2 in 2008.  However, 2008 was a pretty tall blue wave nationally, and if a weakling like McCain was able to beat The Great Messiah, even narrowly, with all those factors working to Democrat advantage, in a state that the media were able to call for Obama when its polls closed, and realizing that 2011-2 won’t be that blue of an election cycle, if at all, then Angle is easily the favorite.  Too, Dean Heller himself won NV-2 in the blue wave years of 2006 and 2008 by fairly comfortable margins over the same Democrat woman.  Interestingly, both years, he narrowly beat Sharron Angle in the Republican primaries.

Here’s the complication, though — Nevada is doing redistricting, and gaining a House seat (going from 3 to 4).  I think that the special election to fill the rest of Heller’s term will be done under the current geography of NV-2.  It won’t be until 2012′s primary and general cycle that the new boundaries become relevant.  Whatever the House district is that will comprise Reno, if Angle wins the current NV-2 special, then she’ll have to run in the new district next year.  It may be more or less winnable for her or any Republican than the current NV-2.

Tattoo You

If they’re so dumb as to burn their entire criminal history on their chests and backs for everyone to see, including the cops and DAs, then who am I to call them stupid?

It’s Always April 20 in Doobietown (Today’s Headlines)

Drudge:  Manson:  Obama ‘slave of Wall Street’…

Me:  Manson ‘murderer’…

WBZ-CBS-4 Boston:  [Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]: Burnt Marijuana Odor Not Enough To Suspect Criminal Activity

Did they issue that ruling on April 20 just to be provocative?

UK Telegraph:  A grim Easter for the Obama presidency: Washington Post/ABC News poll delivers another blow to the White House

Imagine writing this headline 13 years ago.

YNet:  Palestinians counting on Obama for state

We’re still waiting for his birth certificate.  Get to the back of the queue.

Daily Mail:  ‘Any nation will do’: New book reveals Barack Obama wanted to be prime minister of Indonesia at tender age of 9

“Any nation will do.”  Yet, he just had to pick ours.

P-D:  Man shot outside McDonald’s in St. Louis

Be careful being so violent around the only employer hiring these days.

Daily Mail:  Facebusted:  [Atlanta] Mother uses Facebook to track down boy, 17, for ‘under-age sex’ with [12-year old] daughter

If only this were in Philadelphia, they both could have gotten free condoms mailed to them, and nobody would have cared.

SLPOA, WTF?

P-D:

St. Louis police, mayor’s office come to terms on local control

The city may yet wrest control of its police department from the state this year.

Mayor Francis Slay came to terms with the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association this afternoon on a new deal that would give police officers collective bargaining rights for the first time ever, and protect existing officer salaries, benefits – and residency rights.

In exchange, the force would become a city department. The mayor’s office would have appointing authority over the police chief, and city leaders could not only set the department’s budget, but determine how that money is spent.

(snip)

The city has been fighting for such control for years. State control, the mayor has long said, doesn’t allow city leaders to direct overarching police policy, nor set police budget priorities.

The officers association has fought back fiercely, saying city officials would meddle in police arrests and pilfer police pensions, as association leaders testified to more than once in Jefferson City.

(snip)

Discipline hearings would keep police department rules, but shift from the police board to the city’s Civil Service Commission, which currently handles discipline for city employees.

And elected officials who “impede, obstruct, hinder or interfere” with police work, according to a draft of the bill, would be fined $1,000, and could lose their office.

I’ve been saying all along that the pension argument isn’t the best arrow in the quiver against local control.  Race is — Should this local control deal get done, the Board of Aldermen will immediately put in a civilian review board, fill it with cracker jack box theology degree black preachers, thereby ending any hint of effective law enforcement on the part of the SLPD.  I suppose this last line in my blockquote is an attempt to head that off.  But responsibility for enforcing that law would fall in the lap of the CA’s office.  The CA being Jennifer Joyce, of the Obama-lover “truth squader” scandal.  Do you honestly think she’ll enforce such an ordinance against City Hall politicians, especially if there’s a racial tar baby involved?

SLPOA.  FAIL.

Jan Brewer, WTF?

Vetoed two good bills in one day, one requiring Presidential candidates to prove their Constitutional qualifications before getting on a Primary or General Election ballot, and a provision allowing CCW permit holders (and maybe also non-permit “constitutional carriers,” legal since last summer — Help me out here, secret squirrel) to carry on college and university campi.  I don’t know what her motivation for vetoing the latter is, but as far as the former, she says she’s concerned about how much power the bill gave to the Secretary of State.

There’s also talk that she would veto a Gadsden Flag license plate bill making its way through the state legislature.

As far as overrides, the State Senate is 20 of 30 Republican, for exactly two-thirds, so just on a party line vote (never a given), the Senate could override her vetoes.  I’m not sure about the composition of the State House, though I know it’s GOP-controlled.

Funny, I had Jan Brewer already penciled in as the 45th President of the United States.  I suppose I better break out the ole eraser.

However, even after all this, she’s still way better than Arizona’s previous Governor.

Fun With Headlines (No, I’m Not Celebrating 4/20 Day)

The Stir:  [Cincinnati] Reds Pitcher Mike Leake Shoplifts Despite Crazy Salary

A Cincinnati Red was arrested?  He must think he’s on the Cincinnati Bengals.

AP:  Job center blasted for giving [superhero] capes to unemployed

Is that their consolation prize for there being no jobs?

P-D:  Missouri Senate votes to create ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ license plates

I’ll take the first one.  Phooey on you, MIAC.

Live Science:  657 New Islands Discovered Worldwide

Hank Johnson better visit them all before they tip over.

Wednesday’s Wobegons

*  President Obama comes out for simplifying the tax code and shrinking the individual tax return down to post card size.

*  SLPD Chief Dan Isom says he’s in the running for Chicago Police Department Superintendent (Chief).  That’s going to send Paul Huebl and the Second City Cop into orbit.

*  If anything, Governor Nixon’s Thanksgiving day meal, at least the main course, is now secure.

*  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  And I can’t tell whether convenience or avoiding being a victim of a drive-by at a funeral will be the main selling point.

*  LOL — This happened at a Democrat Party HQ, which the party rented out so that others could hold a party of a different sort.  Those “others,” you should know, are the Democrat Party’s most loyal constituency.  To me, it’s all a matter of making your bed then having to sleep in it, or clean up the blood.

*  I’ve been more focused on Missouri, but Illinois is also losing a Congressional district, so its state legislature is also having to deal with the musical chairs of fitting 19 dancers into 18 seats when the music stops.  The first news story I’ve read about it in the local MSM is about how the Mayor of East St. Louis wants his entire city to be within one Congressional district.  Unlike Mayor Slay of St. Louis, who hoped against the entirety of St. Louis being under one Congressional district, a wish that will not come true.

Mayor Alvin Parks of ESL somehow thinks that all of ESL being in one district helps black political power.  How, I don’t know, because all of ESL is within one district right now, and it was in the 1990s, but the very non-minority Jerry Costello has held down that district for as long as I can remember.

*  Kook leftist conspiracy monger.  MASSIVE EPIC FAIL.

*  Just like very large and massive stars have shorter life spans than smaller stars, and I mean in the astronomical sense of the word, pitchers like Aroldis Chapman that throw the big 100+ MPH heat consistently quickly wear out.  Already, he’s having a bit of trouble this season.

*  Rebel against the system and question authority — Play wiffle ball.

I don’t get it.  First Lady Michelle Obama wants all these kids to get more exercise so that they don’t get fat.  But the ilk of her syncopants in the New York State bureaucracy don’t want kids to play wiffle ball, freeze tag, dodgeball, kickball or red rover.  Pray tell, what are they supposed to do?

*  I guess this particular left-wing nut didn’t get the ADL/SPLC/DHS memo, that only “crazed right wing extremist” proto-terrorists are so fanatical about the Constitution.  He apparently didn’t watch House Democrats a few months ago react so viciously to the concept that John Boehner would open the new session of the House by having members read the Constitution on the Floor, that it was as if the Constitution to Democrats is like sunlight to zombies.

*  America elects a President who might seem like he’s a little sympathetic to Islam?  We laugh about it and make jokes.  Nigeria, a half-Muslim country, re-elects a Christian President?  Those practitioners of the Religion of Peace go on a murderous rampage.

*  I’ve thought all along that in the realm of alternate renewable energy, windmills are snake oil, but solar actually has potential.  MIT researchers have come up with photovoltaic paint, for use on clear glass windows, or any sun-facing structure.

*  I usually don’t link to stories that have the names of sitting judges (other than the Federal or State Supreme Courts), but this story made me so sick that I really don’t want to summarize it.  All I can say is that he loves em so much that he would team up with three of them to murder his father because his father had the audacity to think that his son didn’t deserve to be given a six-figure automobile just as a reward for consuming oxygen long enough to be old enough to drive a car — He better love them, because he’s going to spend the rest of his life surrounded by them in a Florida prison, or hopefully, just enough time to await execution.

*  Here’s the money quote:  Remember S&P had investment grade, AAA, ratings on countless mortgage-backed securities right up until the moment the paper became worthless. Amazingly, the rating agencies somehow maintained their status, and their ability to move markets, after the dust settled.

If the Federal government weren’t the Federal government, the S&P would have downgraded its credit rating long ago.  But when you’re a roach, you can’t downgrade the credit rating of a can of bug spray.

*  Sorry, ADL.  You helped create this Frankenstein, so now you have to live with him.

*  Who are you going to believe?  The Missouri Supreme Court, or your own lying eyes?

I think that this is greasing the skids for the elimination of any official public release of crime information, especially crime-race correlation information.

*  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that if this gang goes ahead and adopts this logo, Nike and Arizona State University can sue them for trademark or copyright infringement.

Though since this is a gang we’re talking about, a gang that probably doesn’t flinch in the face of out and out right murder, a copyright lawsuit probably won’t scare them very much.  Too, Nike wouldn’t want to sue Hispanic gangs, thereby “offend” Hispanics, and “offend” that fast growing demographic of shoe consumers.

What I don’t get is Time-Warner:  They own a music conglomerate (Warner Music Group, WMG) that is fanatical as can be about copywrong extremism.  Yet, people are going around selling T-shirts and other things with the “WB” logo, exactly like Time-Warner’s “WB” motion picture logo, in the context of “If you see Da Police, Warn-a-Brother.”  You’d think Time-Warner would sue them as quickly as they sue some teenager for downloading songs.  Then again, a white teenager downloading songs is a way easier target to hit than the ghetto types that fear law enforcement.

*  Allen West is right in that Obama is displaying a “third world dictator like arrogance.”  Unfortuately, Congressman West is sorta throwing stones from inside a glass house.  Last summer, he chided Harry Reid for using the phrase “Negro dialect,” and halfway insinuated that such a politically incorrect phrase concerning the group of people that are now called “African-Americans” in polite discussion (that changes every decade), a word that was once the respectable word in that regard, should be illegal.  Yes, you read that right — I’m defending Harry Reid against a “Republican.”

Mr. West also said that he was “starting to believe that a community organizer is nothing but a low-level socialist agitator.”  What took you so long?  I had that figured out when I was 16.

*  Everything that’s wrong with the American response to 9/11 can be summed up in two words:  Lee Baca.

The media are making a big deal about him being a “Republican.”  So is Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Brooks, David Frum, Charlie Crist (formerly), Lincoln Chafee (formerly), Olympia Snowe, Susal Collins, John McCain, Lindsay Grahamnesty…Get my point?

The Streets of Philadelphia

The City which once gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is in the news for several juicy reasons today.

1.  If it weren’t such a forward and uncouth thing to do, I would go right up to John Featherman, slap his and, and tell him to apologize to Libya right now.

2.  That’s the Philly we all know and love — You clean an area up, and within days, it’s the same kind of pig sty that it was when you started cleaning up.  I bet Libya doesn’t have much of a litter problem.

It is said that Mayor Nutter wants community service to be a punishment for illegal dumping.  He doesn’t tell you how he’s going to enforce those mandates, because not doing the community service puts you in contempt of court, and a judge could send you to jail.  But as it is, Philadelphia’s jails are so overcrowded that about the only crime you can commit in Philly and get pre-trial detention is murder.

3.  This news source is being deceitful here.  It states that “About 65 million Americans, or one in four, have a criminal record, while 90 percent of employers use criminal background checks, according to the New York-based National Employment Law Project, which released a report on the issue last month.”  It states this in the context of Philadelphia disallowing employers from asking about any criminal record in its employment application, though they can ask about felony convictions later in the interview process.  65 million people might have a criminal record, but not all of those people have been convicted of a felony.  The only kind of criminal record employers can ask about or even know about is felony convictions.  No misdemeanors, no arrest record.  Only felony convictions.  Yet, even that is too much for Philadelphia, precisely because so many black men commit and get convicted of felonies.

So, since employers can still ask about felony convictions later in the interview process, what good is disallowing them from asking about it on the application?  I guess what the city and NAACP are thinking is that without the question, they won’t throw the applications of convicted felons into File 13.  That way, they’ll call them in for interviews, and when they see how clean cut these people are, and how great they are, just innocent victims of the white racist justice system and 400+ years of white racist repression, they’ll hire them on the spot, and not even ask them about their felony rap sheet.  If you buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free.

The Shortest Yard

I knew Russ Carnahan had it in him.  Just to look and him and listen to him, I knew he was an insipid asshole.

The Politico here is checking in on Missouri U.S. House redistricing.  And they get a couple of things wrong or very distorted:

1.  Russ Carnahan wouldn’t even try to topple Clay in the new MO-1.  Because he knows Clay would trounce him.

2.  Politico is acting so surprised that Carnahan is the odd man out in redistricting.  Hell, that’s been conventional wisdom around here ever since last summer, when it seemed apparrent that (A) MO would lose a House seat, and (B) Republicans would retain control of both the House and Senate, because by the time last summer rolled around, everyone with a brain knew it would be red year nationally, so the chances of Republicans losing control of either chamber in Jefferson City became zero.

3.  Carnahan won’t even “move” to MO-2 and try and topple Todd Akin, or if Akin runs for Senate, whatever Republican comes out of that process.  Like I have been saying, the new MO-2, either the House’s verison or the Senate’s version, while it’s lighter red than the existing MO-2, it would take a very very tall blue tsunami nationally to flip MO-2, and then it would only be temporary.  2012 will not be such a tall blue tsunami, because Obama’s going into the season on crutches.

4.  I don’t think the new MO-5 is much to Emmanuel “Leave It To” Cleaver’s liking.  Either the House or Senate version.  I think it’s still a blue district, but it’s ripe for a white Democrat to oust Cleaver, provided you can find a white Democrat in that geography who has enough racial balls to challenge Cleaver or any other black who runs on the Democrat side.  I think the NAACP will drag this map into court precisely because of the new MO-5.

5.  The State House Republicans and State Senate Republicans are not at war with each other over the new map.  Each side has a proposed map, and they’re almost exactly the same.

6.  Worrying about Governor Nixon vetoing the map is a straw dog.  He won’t, because he knew if he did, the State Senate (76% Republican) would override, and the State House (65% Republican) would need a few Democrats for an override, and those they would get from St. Louis black House members who would be happy the map protects Clay.