Darwin Award Recipient, or UC Merced Student — You Decide

Picture 1.  Picture 2 (see the second photo).

Then again, maybe you don’t have to decide, because it’s not an either/or proposition.

Go Directly to Jail. Do Not Pass Go…

…But do collect $200.  Or whatever Missouri unemployment pays these days.

It’s Official

Only Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler want Scott Walker tossed out of office.

In related news, the ACLU is dragging Wisconsin’s voter photo ID law into court.  For plaintiffs, it has found:

…a 84-year-old woman without a certified birth certificate to a 52-year-old homeless Army veteran to a 20-year old without a Social Security card to a 19-year-old college student who doesn’t want to give up his California driver’s license — to demonstrate the effect the law could have.

First off, they can vote with yellow provisional ballots if they don’t have requisite photo ID.  If you’re a 20-year old without a SS#, that means you’re either an illegal alien or starting a long life as a marginal vagabond.  And a 19-year old California resident should be voting in California’s elections, not Wisconsin’s.  I highly doubt the other two people don’t have or couldn’t easily attain the requisite ID cards.

Dumping All Over Conventional Wisdom, and Confirming My Suspicion, All in the Same Article

Weekly Standard:

Romney has the least-impressive electoral history of any Republican frontrunner in a very long time. Most of the politicians who chase the White House are proven vote-getters with very few electoral blemishes on their record. John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis—what unites all of these men is that before getting to the presidential level, they had demonstrated a talent for getting people to vote for them. (Barack Obama is the exception who proves the rule.)

Over the years, Mitt Romney has faced voters in 22 contests. He won 5 of those races and lost 17 of them. (This total includes a win in the 1994 Massachusetts Republican Senate primary as well as results from the 19 primaries he participated in during 2008. It excludes caucuses because their rules make them complicated enough to be considered distinct from straight-up lever-pulling.)

Romney’s electoral record becomes even more underwhelming when you examine the particulars. He first attracted national notice in 1994 when he mounted what was considered a strong challenge to incumbent senator Ted Kennedy. But when it came time to vote, Romney lost by 17 points in what turned out to be the best year for Republicans in more than half a century. In 2002, Romney won the gubernatorial race in Massachusetts. This victory—the triumph of a Republican in deep-blue Massachusetts—is now the cornerstone of his 2012 “electability” rationale.

Yet Romney’s victory was, as a matter of raw political power, less impressive than it seems. Romney was actually the fourth in a string of Republican governors who ran the state from 1990 until 2006. Of that group, Romney received the lowest percentage of the vote, failing to break the 50-percent mark in his 2002 victory. He took home a smaller share of the vote even than Paul Cellucci, the political nonentity who won the 1998 election. After three years in office, Romney’s approval rating was so low that he was forced to abandon hope of reelection. Romney’s term concluded with a Democrat winning the governor’s office for the first time in 20 years.

From the moment on election in night in November 2006 when I found out that a Democrat won, I said that the reason Romney didn’t want to seek a second term as Governor wasn’t because he wanted to focus on his Presidential campaign, as was the CW, it was because he knew he would lose.  Losing straight up to Deval Patrick or whoever would have ended his Presidential prospects.

Unfortunately, the person in this field who has won the most votes from the most people in the widest geography most often is the Rickroller.

Go North, Young Men

Examiner:

Mexican attorney general: “Obama more involved in Fast & Furious than admitted!”

President Barack Obama appears to be getting it from all sides regarding a government snafu dubbed Operation Fast and Furious. Besides both houses of the U.S. Congress and a number of public-interest groups investigating what is being characterized as a rogue federal law enforcement operation, Mexico’s attorney general is infuriated over the allegations that the U.S. was behind the smuggling of weapons into Mexico that ended up killing her countrymen.

In a statement released by Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales, she called Operation Fast and Furious “an attack on Mexicans’ security.”

Morales told Mexican reporters that she is demanding a full and honest explanation from the United States government especially since evidence is being gathered that reveals the Obama administration was more involved in Operation Fast and Furious than top officials admitted in their sworn statements.

If what is being reported is true, U.S. Attorney General and other government officials may have committed perjury and/or obstruction of justice if it’s proven they lied when testifying before House and Senate committees.

The AG of Mexico is Pw3ning F&F?  That’s rather ironic, as I think F&F was designed to sabotage the immigration debate, along with 2nd Amendment politics, and sabotage it in the direction of open borders and amnesty.  Morales works for a President associated with a political party that is largely funded by Mexico’s rich elite, and it has the semi-official position that Mexicans should migrate northward, mainly to clear Mexico of its ne’er-do-wells, to prevent any leftist revolution and expropriation of the assets of the rich elite.

Snap Election

UK Telegraph:

Election would finish us, Nick Clegg tells Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats would cease to exist as a party if they brought down the Coalition over Europe and triggered an early election, Nick Clegg warned his MPs last night.

The Deputy Prime Minister told a private meeting of more than 100 MPs and peers that he would not play “Russian roulette” with the Conservatives over David Cameron’s rejection of a new European treaty.

He said: “I don’t want to be the last leader of the Liberal Democrats by provoking a general election today.” His speech, which was applauded by the meeting, came as a poll put the Lib Dems on just 12 per cent, just ahead of the UK Independence Party.

You mean the LDs want new elections?  Remember, part of the Tory-LD “Odd Couple” deal to form a coalition government was that Clegg wanted an iron clad agreement from CaMoron that there would be no national elections until May 2015, a full five years after the last election.  That was because Clegg was worried about Cam calling for a quick new election cycle hoping that the Tories would gain an absolute majority, then Cam could tell Clegg and his LDs to go pound sand.

Funny how some people forget history, even recent history.

I hope that the next elections aren’t at least until 2014, because the BNP will anoint Nick Griffin’s successor in 2013.  Hopefully it will be someone who is at least as good as or better than NickG in making forward progress.

Don’t Have a Cow, Sheriff

The Brossart scandal is now international news, mainly because of the Predator drone angle.

First off, the Brossarts themselves aren’t the “extremists,” it’s one of their supposed family friends.

Second, this Keystone Cop Sheriff here is a real big Morris Dees kiss ass.  If I were the Brossart defense attorney, I’d move to have the whole case summarily dismissed en banc with prejudice on those grounds alone, that the Sheriff being so SPLC-friendly means that his law enforcement activities are biased.  If that doens’t work, and they go to trial, then the Sheriff’s credibility will be easy to bork, simply because he’s in so thick with the SPLC, and their credibility is just about zero.

The only point the Sheriff might have is that the drone probably precluded a Waco.  Except I’m not so sure that flying drones over the Branch Davidian property would have precluded Waco, because TPTB wouldn’t take the simple and obvious and simple step of lassoing in Koresh when he went out for his daily and unarmed jogs away from the property.  Remember, the early 1990s were a time when the ATF was thought superfluous, and there were serious proposals to fold its functionality into the FBI.  Therefore, to save its own skin, the ATF had to justify its existence, and it woudn’t have been glamorous if settling the Koresh question came down to a few county mounties slapping the cuffs on an unarmed jogger.

Personally, I think some big money institution has eyes on the Brossart farm, either a corporate farm, or an oil interest.  Such an interest has probably funded the Sheriff’s poltical campaigns.  North Dakota is in the middle of an oil boom, and this land might be sitting on top of billions of barrels.  Wouldn’t have taken much to plop a few cows near their property line, if you catch my drift.

You Know How It Will Turn Out

Belleville News-Democrat:

Pike County will vote on concealed carry

JACKSONVILLE — Pike Countians will decide during the coming election whether to allow people to carry concealed weapons, but the decision will be moot because of state laws prohibiting such activity.

They’ll vote for it, but it will be meaningless as long as Illinois has that peculiar county in the northeastern part of the state that calls itself “Crook.”

Instead of wasting time, dillying around, Pike and a bunch of other counties south of Joliet should be getting to work on statehood.

Already Coming True

Me, earlier today:

What will happen going forward?  Hint:  SPLC.  As their treasure chest dwindles, they’re getting more and more desperate for enemies.  As you can see, being an extremist isn’t as extreme as it used to be.  Watch for the ADL to go big time shrill.

This didn’t take long:

Sheriff’s Department Sponsors Secret Meeting On Small Government ‘Terrorists’

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has teamed up with the Anti-Defamation League to sponsor a quasi-secret meeting in Camarillo, California that characterizes small government activists as violent terrorists.

Entitled The Sovereign Citizen Movement: Exploring Their Ideology & Indicators, the conference is set to take place on January 5th, 2012 and is only open to “Public Safety Personnel”. The precise location of the meeting is only made known to “reviewed and cleared” attendees, a measure of secrecy crafted to imply that members of the Sovereign Citizen movement are a potential violent threat.

Indeed, a flyer for the event written by the ADL’s Joanna Mendelson characterizes the movement as a “right-wing anarchist” fringe group that uses “paper terrorism” to pursue its cause of restoring minimalist government and resorts to harassment, intimidation and violence.

“This seminar is sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and facilitated by the Ventura Country Sheriff’s Intelligence Unit,” states the flyer.

This kind of skullduggery used to be the exclusive province of the SPLC.  The ADL only used to care if the target of its ire was explicitly anti-Semitic.

Aside from the obvious outrage, there’s the curious choice of location — Camarillo, California.  Or anywhere in California, for that matter.  Why worry about right wingers in a place where there are none left?  California has just about become a bifurcated society where you have millions of welfare-dependent Hispanic moochers on the bottom and a few hundred multimillionaires and billionaires, mostly white and Asian, on top.  I doubt either demographic is much interested in “sovereign citizenship.”

 

If It Ain’t Brokered

Bull.  There will be no brokered convention.

We heard this theory four years ago, and how did that work out?  The reason no Republican Convention will ever be brokered again is because of the winner take all system, you win a state even with a plurality, and you get all the state’s delegates.  Just like John McCain did in 2008, someone will win the early important states by at least narrow margins, and eventually it will become a futile exercise to vote for anyone else in the later states.  McCain won the nomination when he beat Romney by 5 points in Florida, even though that was well before Super Tuesday and even longer before he won enough delegates.

There will never be another brokered Democrat Convention again for the reason you saw in 2008 — The superdelegates will all vote for the candidate who got the most delegates based on the primaries and caucuses, even if that wasn’t enough to give it to them mathematically.

Hell Hath No Fury Like the Paranoia-Industrial Complex Scorned

ADL, AJC bumming for money.  A combination of the Great Recession and increasing interest among younger Jewish donors in single issue Jewish-oriented organizations on both the left and the right are contributing to the ADL/AJC’s hard times.

What will happen going forward?  Hint:  SPLC.  As their treasure chest dwindles, they’re getting more and more desperate for enemies.  As you can see, being an extremist isn’t as extreme as it used to be.  Watch for the ADL to go big time shrill.  I also expect internecine warfare within the Paranoia-Industrial Complex.

Sick. Just Sick.

Who holds a protest inside a cemetery?  Not even the Fred Phelps gang is that nuts.

Civil Rights crowd, you done crossed your Rubicon.  Or jumped a shark.  Or whatever.

One World Under Shari’ah

CNS:

State Dept. Aims to Denounce ‘Offensive Speech’ While Upholding Free Expression

The State Department on Monday launched three days of closed-door talks with representatives of international organizations and several dozen countries with the stated aim of promoting religious freedom and tolerance while ensuring that freedom of expression is not harmed in the process.

U.S. Ambassador at Large for international religious freedom Suzan Johnson Cook, said on Monday, “We must denounce offensive speech whenever we encounter it – but our commitment to universal principles makes clear that faith must never be a crime and religion must never be used as an excuse to stifle freedom of expression.”

The Obama administration’s initiative, building on a resolution adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) last March, has drawn some criticism, in part because of the key role being played by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has sought for years to stifle speech deemed to denigrate Islam.

The OIC, a bloc of 56 Muslim states, has campaigned for more than a decade against “defamation of religion,” galvanized by actions such as the publications of newspaper cartoons satirizing Mohammed, anti-shari’a activism, and threats to damage copies of the Qur’an.

The OIC nuts, well, they’re behaving as expected.  The real sad sacks in this process are people in our own State Department.

Hey, State Department.  Take a hint.  The reason we have a First Amendment is that some political expression is offensive.  If nothing anyone ever said or wrote was offensive, you wouldn’t need a First Amendment.

Maybe Good News for Ron Paul

Fear of big government is very near record highs.

I looked at that graph, and even after 9/11 and the Enron/World Com scandals, when it was to be expected that people would fear big busines more than big government, big government was still feared slightly more than big business.  Even after the 2008 financial crisis, it only caused a slight shift.

The Whole Is Greater…

…Than the sum of its individual parts.

I think this research applies to social institutions a lot larger and more complex than kids’ impromputu soccer teams.

“I Do”

Most people think of that as a “no adultery” pledge.  A point that one Newton Leroy Gingrich has had a hard time grokking.

Isolationist As Smear?

It’s 2011, soon to be 2012.  The deficit is unmanageable, we’re bogged down in impossible conflicts to turn seventh century throwbacks to Jeffersonians, and to top it off, Osama bin Laden is dead.

Far from being a smear, “Isolationism” will be next year’s must-have fashion accessory.

Eighty-Six

P-D:

St. Louis RCGA hires Louisville’s Reagan as new CEO

Joe Reagan, president of Greater Louisville Inc., has been hired as the new president and CEO of St. Louis’ lead economic development organization.

The Regional Chamber and Growth Association announced Monday that it has hired Reagan to replace Dick Fleming, who is set to step down at year’s end. The 48-year-old Indiana native has run Louisville’s largest economic development group since 2005.

Question to urbanists:  How will this affect “City to River,” now that the new St. Louis RCGA head comes from a city where “86-64″ was born?  City to River is actually a result of 86-64, and I’m actually giving myself credit for broaching the idea of Eighty-Sixing 70 in Downtown St. Louis — I speculated about the wisdom of doing so some time before the City to River people did the grunt work.

If You Vote For Fleas, Your Dog Will Probably Wake Up With Them

Miami Herald:

Conn. workers worry about jobs in Colt’s Fla. move

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — The United Auto Workers says employees of Colt Firearms in West Hartford were distressed to learn that the gun manufacturer is opening a manufacturing plant in central Florida and are worried about their jobs.

The union said in a news release Monday that it is assuring members it will do what it can to keep the company and its 500 jobs in Connecticut.

Mike Holmes, a local union official, said the UAW has a strong contract with Colt and will work to keep the company successful, profitable and remaining in Connecticut.

Colt Manufacturing Co. announced earlier this month it is bringing 63 jobs and a new regional headquarters and product manufacturing center to Kissimmee, Fla., next year.

If Colt does bolt Connecticut, it won’t be because of unions or closed shop or right-to-work or anything like that.  It will be because CT is a blue anti-2nd Amendment state.  To wit:  Unless it has been changed, or the judiciary has modified or nullified it, CT has a law stating the cops can seize all your guns for any reason.  The very first person against whom this law was applied after it was passed was a 2nd Amendment activist.

Which party’s politicians does the UAW largely endorse?  Right.  Then again, in CT, the “Republicans” are mostly RINO and not much better.  To wit:  A Republican Governor (John Rowland) signed the bill I just mentioned.

Show Me Summer Lunch

Boston Globe:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.—Missouri is receiving a $2 million federal grant to help feed needy children near Kansas City and St. Louis during the summer.

The state has operated a pilot project in Kansas City and plans to expand it with funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The funding will be divided between Kansas City and St. Louis.

State officials say they will be able to help 10,000 children in the St. Louis, Kansas City, Hickman Mills and Center school districts.

Federal officials plan to evaluate Missouri’s program to determine whether it is an effective model that could be used elsewhere.

Missouri’s food program is operated by the state Social Services, Elementary and Secondary Education and Health and Senior Services departments.

Rush just mentioned this story, as it was already in my own stack of stuff.

The “free summer lunch” program has been going in St. Louis City for several years already.

What’s the whole point of this?  The parents of children who need free lunch get food stamps, but they find that dope is a better use of food stamps than actual food.  So, if their kids are to have any actual food while school is out, they literally have to be given food.

I swear, some people just can’t handle freedom, even the milquetoast welfare-y version that passes for it at the present time.

The only silver lining to this cloud is that these two megabucks will be used to buy food, and not be used to pay black men to dance naked in front of black teenagers in St. Louis City in the name of preventing AIDS, as has been the Federal government’s habit in the past.

“The Muslims I Know”

Des Moines Register:

Mitt Romney: Islam is not an inherently violent faith

(snip)

Romney said radical, violent Islamists pose a threat to Americans and others around the world. However, he said, “they take a very different view of Islam than the Muslims I know.” He noted that he was raised in the Detroit area, which has a large Muslim population. “They are peace-loving and America-loving individuals. I believe that very sincerely. I believe people of the Islamic faith do not have to subscribe to the idea of radical, violent jihadism.”

I have no doubt at all that the Muslims that a man who can make $10,000 wagers as if that amount was a pocket penny knows personally aren’t the terroristical boogie woogie types.  None of the hairs on their heads ever move, either.

New And Old Mumia

Get used to the name “Lamont Pride.”  You’ll be hearing it for the next generation.  Paris will name a street after him.

As for the old Mumia, Jim Goad has a column today pretty much taking the words out of my mouth — He, like yours truly, thinks that The Brothers Cook deliberately pre-planned an ambush/assassination of any given Philly cop, and Daniel Faulkner just happened to stroll into the situation.  I slightly disagree with this part, though:

I grew up about ten miles from where Mumia did, and I spent the first quarter-century of my life in the Filthadelphia area. As someone who has been to all 50 states and lived in all four corners of this country, I submit to the jury that the City of Brotherly Love has both the angriest cops and the angriest black radicals in the USA. I wouldn’t trust either group as far as I could sneeze. So I approached this case highly suspicious of both sides.

Maybe that’s why the cops are so angry, precisely because the blacks are so militant.  One thing I’ve noticed about Philadelphia is that its civic elite is probably the most doctrinaire egalitarian of any civic elite of any old age big former industrial city in America, going back to its Ben Franklin/Quaker roots.

Every Vote Counts

Every single one.

Examiner:

Chicago conservative African Americans to support Newt Gingrich

The Illinois African American Libertarian Alliance (IAALA) is home to hundreds of Chicago African American conservatives and has decided to endorse Newt Gingrich for the upcoming 2012 election. “Newt Gingrich represents the values of many conservatives—White, Latino, or Black. He is honest about who he is and is the perfect person to turn a falling country around,” says IAALA President David Lemar.

Black libertarians in Illinois are for Newt?  Like I said, every single vote counts.

The Problem With Deportation

You have to convince the illegals’ countries of origin to take their people back.  Far easier said than done.

Haaretz:

Netanyahu to visit Africa in bid to stem illegal migration to Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he plans to travel to Africa to examine the possibility of returning illegal labor migrants to their home countries.

At the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday during which a NIS 630 million plan to halt the influx of African migrants and refugees was approved, Netanyahu said that the phenomenon of infiltrators entering Israel via the Sinai Peninsula is a “blow to [Israel's] economy, society, infrastructure, welfare and internal security.”

(snip)

Netanyahu’s trip to Africa is expected to take place in early February 2012. Netanyahu said that the Africans infiltrating into Israel are labor migrants, not refugees.

Lotsaluck, Bibi.  Africa doesn’t even want Africans.  Other than the American Republican Party and lamestream conservatives, who in this world really loves blacks?

You Don’t Know How Much Things Are Worth Until You Must Earn Them

Agreed.

What I’m about to say is a very convenient thing to say for someone without either kids or a lot of money, but if I had both kids and a lot of money, they would not be in the will.  I could imagine what kind of dorky elitist or liberal shit my kids would do with my fortune once I’ve kicked off.  Even if that wasn’t a concern, it’s the principle of the matter — I earned the money, my kids lucked out with the right father.

In spite of that all, I am not for confiscatory inheritance taxes.

Ungrateful Non-Whites: Same The World Over

Austria.

It implies here that the white native Austrians who used to live in these public housing projects were a strong voting base of the country’s socialist party, but now that it’s full of non-whites, there aren’t any socialist votes from those projects any longer, and the whites that used to live there are voting for the nationalist-right parties.

Usually, welfare dependent non-whites in the white world are almost 100% voters for socialist-left parties.  I wonder why it’s different in Austria.

All I can say?  Patterson’s First Axiom, nothing cures the thirst like a good dose.

Early Beats Them Both

Better late than never, though.

Opposing Views:

NRA: After “Fast & Furious,” Eric Holder “Can’t be Trusted”

(snip)

NRA-ILA has prepared a video that all freedom-loving Americans need to watch showing that Holder’s actions prove he can’t be trusted with the sanctity of our freedoms, the powers of his office, or the lives of our law enforcement officers.  To watch the video, please click here.

“After” F&F, and because of his “actions,” Eric Holder can’t be trusted?

I knew he couldn’t be trusted before F&F.  F&F, along with a lot of other things, Sgt. Crowley, “My People,” etc., was merely confirmation.

How did I know he couldn’t be trusted?  Easy:  Holder is black, and a black President made him Attorney General.  Black people should not have that kind of power in a white country.

But don’t count on the NRA to grok this.  They have a reputation as “lovers,” if you catch my drift.  In case you don’t, the word before “lovers” starts with an “N.”

Rabbitt’s Second Act

Former Missouri House Speaker Richard Rabbitt, who will be eternally remembered for being corrupt and being sent to Federal prison, the film of him getting out of a 70s hooptee/whale automobile on his way into the Federal Court House to hear his verdict and sentence being permanently implanted in the minds of us St. Louisans, died this weekend at the age of 76.

After he got out of prison:

Shortly after his release, Mr. Rabbitt was hired in 1981 by the St. Louis Housing Authority as a supervisor of warehouse operations. He later served as deputy executive director, where he administered the Section 8 vouchers by which federal rent assistance is given to poor tenants in apartments throughout the city. He was dismissed from that job in 1992 for unexplained reasons.

He doled out Section 8 vouchers.  Gee, no corruption opportunities there.

Gadzooks, CaMORON Does the Right Thing

Wherefore, David?  It’s a whole three and a half years before the next election, so you’re not acutely worried about losing your job.

Maybe he looked inside and remembered that he’s English, not European.

Fiddling While Rome is Burning

This economy still sucks, it’s still in a severe recessive state for most people in most places in the United States.

Yet, most of the people who want to turn out the incumbent President can’t stop talking about a small country on the other side of the world that is perfectly capable of carrying on its own affairs without our interference, interest or money.

Sounds like a perfect climate for record low white voter turnout.  (By design, IMHO.)