It’s Truthful, It’s Racial

The Wentzville School District is in “hot water” because it dared send an official letter to parents citing black pupils as a reason for low test scores at one of its elementary schools.

Wentzville has a significant black population, unusually so for St. Charles County, because of the existence of the General Motors Assembly Plant.  When GM moved the facility to Wentzville from north St. Louis, it did so to try to escape the prospect of having a majority black work force in a nearly all-black area; however, some of its black workers followed GM to Wentzville and established residency there.

Picnic Tomorrow

If you’re a CofCC member in or around St. Louis, you have probably received a snail mailing on orange or yellow paper, and/or a telephone call from volunteers on the St. Louis Metro Area CofCC telephone committee, alerting you to the upcoming St. Louis Metro Area CofCC Picnic.

With that having been said, you know the time and place, and you know that it’s tomorrow.  If you know, then come.  If you’re a far-left “anarchist” troll, then stay away.

Here are a few thumbnails from past St. Louis CofCC picnics:

The Nutmeg Nut

While the citizens of Connecticut are pondering over Joltin’ Joe Lieberman or Ned “Kos” Lamont, the verdict on the state’s other U.S. Senator is in: He’s a nut.

From Jo Mannies:

Dodd to be at Wash U to mark Nuremberg trials, blasts Gitmo tribunals

The article itself does say that Dodd draws a moral equivalence between the Nazi death camps/Nazi Holocaust victims (Yes, N.V., it DID happen) and Gitmo/Gitmo Detainees.

I wonder if Dodd can draw any link in his head between empty households in his state and a big hole in the ground in lower Manhattan.

Scientists Form Group to Support Leftist Candidates

New York Times:

Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians “who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.”

(snip)

In a statement posted on its Web site (www.sefora.org), the group said scientists and engineers had an obligation “to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interest ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.”

The odd part is that all the causes that SEFORA thinks needs to be depoliticized are all left-of-center social concerns or derivatives thereof. If you don’t think it’s the world’s biggest coincidence, or the longest of longshots, then you will agree with SEFORA cares as much for politics as anyone else.

I wonder if SEFORA is going to get into the field and fight for depoliticization and re-scientificization of governmental public polices on the matters of race, and demand that the cult of racial equality be jettisoned, or ignored, or ridiculed, or bypassed, so that legislators can recognize the legitimate science of race apart from quasi-religious fervor.

Doubt it.

RICO, Where Are You?

ABC 11 Durham:

Durham officials have postponed a murder trial amid alleged gang-related threats of violence.

(snip)

“You can’t really conduct trials in an atmosphere, where there is intimidation of witnesses, or where there is fear that something might happen,” Nifong said. “The District Attorney’s Office is not equipped to protect witnesses in any situation. There aren’t any local witness protection programs, or anything of that nature. The fact is people are to some extent on their own, in terms of their protection.”

This is the same Mike Nifong (pictured above) who is still in the process of trying to string up several Duke Lacrosse players for their supposed rape of a black stripper, to placate black voters.  Now he’s upset when black gangs use violence against witnesses to complicate a murder trial (presumably revolving around black gang activity itself) —  He can’t have it both ways.

I think that if a known organization uses threats of physical violence to try to disrupt legitimate justice, these are enough grounds for the Feds to come in and haul the whole group into jail for RICO violations.  Where are you now, RICO?

Hey Hey Ho Ho Western Culture Is Gone

Or, maybe it should be called “Intended Consequence.”

InsideBayArea.com:

They may be attending some of the best universities in the world, but students at UC Berkeley and Stanford don’t know much about history, according to a study released Tuesday.

Neither, apparently, do students at many other universities.

A study of more than 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges found that students scored poorly on a series of multiple-choice questions designed to test their general knowledge of American history, government, foreign affairs and the economy.

Students were given 60 multiple choice questions on wide-ranging topics in American history, from the Founding Fathers to the Persian Gulf War. At UC Berkeley, freshmen averaged 60 percent on the test, while seniors scored 55 percent. Stanford’s numbers were slightly higher, with freshman averaging 62 percent, and seniors averaging 63 percent.

The study rated UC Berkeley second from last in a ranking it created that assigns a “learning rank” to schools based on students’ scores. Berkeley was one of 16 universities, many of them among the most prestigious, that earned a “negative learning” rank because freshmen scored higher than seniors. UC Berkeley earned a negative 5.6, followed only by Johns Hopkins University, with a negative 7.3.

Remember, Stanford University was the site of famous protests, led by Jesse Jackson, animated by the chant “Hey Hey Ho Ho Western Culture’s Got To Go.”  The point of contention was a mandatory semester on Western Civilization for Stanford undergrads.  Jackson and his milieu of diverse peoples wanted the requirement gone, and Stanford’s administration poodled right along, and instead offered various fluffy duffy courses on what are supposed to be the virtues of non-white and indigenous civilizations.

Therefore, in the eyes of some people, this story should not be viewed as a mark of failure, but as a harvest of success.

To Catch a Media Guy

This story would have been so ironic and juicy if the man was found to have been an employee of Dateline NBC.

Latest Convert to Linux?

Bill Clinton is now in favor of “ubuntu.”  Not in the operating system sense, but in the generic sense of the word.

If he would have said “Suse” instead, there would be no ambiguity possible.

Meet the new White House Military Strategist

CBS News:

President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, “I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.”

On the heels of a story that inspired a blog post here earlier today, maybe he should give up war games and replace Michael Chertoff over at DHS.  Probably a majority of ground level Border Patrol agents would cheer if that happened.

Raise Your Hand If You’re Unsure

If you were really surprised by recent revelations that senior agents in the Department of Homeland Shystery ambition to suspend U.S. Border Patrol agents that spill the beans to sitting U.S. Congressmen, raise your hand.

I see no hands in the air, so you all get a gold star for the day.

This must mean you all remember the story from earlier this year that senior leadership in the Border Patrol spies on Minuteman Project volunteers and their activities, even in non-border states.

They call it the fifth column.

Pub Def Weekly, WTF?

Antonio French had three straight blog posts this morning, entitled “(Publication Name or Abbreviation), WTF?” noting the lack of due and proper citation of his blog for news stories.

How does that work that this right-wing blog you’re reading now can give Mr. French the proper citations, but the liberal publications he has bemoaned today (and earlier this month) can’t find it in their compassionate hearts to do so for the (probably) left-of-center Mr. French.

Make It One for the Power Line

The Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota area will host the 2008 Republican National Convention, in a state that Republican Presidential contenders haven’t won since 1972.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this decision is that the Power Line blog (see blogroll) is based in Minneapolis, and, while the blog Little Green Footballs broke the “Rathergate” faked documents story in 2004, Power Line’s piggybacking on it launched the story into mainstream credibility.

And the Howard Deanie beanies think that they’re the only e-activists that need to be stroked.

Oh Thank Heaven

The 7/11 chain of convenience stores is going to drop Citgo as a provider of automobile fuel for its locations that have gas stations.  Officials with 7/11 admit the politics vis-a-vis Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (Citgo is wholly owned by the Venezuelan government) and his hatred for the United States of America played into the decision.

Another, unspoken reason, is that 7/11 is wholly owned by a Japanese conglomerate, and, when American troops in Afghanistan captured Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (Ron Jeremy) in 2004, who was himself an uncle to Ramsey Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, Mohammed gave up info to his captors that AQ was planning attacks inside Japan during the time when Japan co-hosted (with South Korea) the 2002 World Cup of Soccer.  Mohammed then conceded that AQ gave up the idea b/c Japan’s immigration laws were so strict that it was impossible to get a “ground network” of AQ sleeper cells inside Japan — let that be a lesson to pondering Americans and subway canaries and arch pundits near and far.

However, Tokyo now has a reason to fear Islamic radicalism, and any non-Islamic powers like Chavez of Venezuela that align themselves with radical Islamic countries in the “enemy of my enemy” spirit.  Part of 7/11’s decision might have been forced from the other side of the world, as Japanese retribution against the developing anti-Western axis comprised of a curious grab-bag of radical Islamists, Marxists and non-white dictators.

On a Dope Set on a Corner

A St. Louis City Police Officer, who was working undercover, was shot overnight.  The officer was working undercover near the corner of College and Carter in north St. Louis City.  When the officer spied something amiss, namely a car with New Mexico license plates (like, hello, a car with license plates from a border state traveling in known dope dealing territory in a Midwestern inner city), the officer gave chase, but the occupants of the Enchanted car reciprocated by firing weapons at the officer.  The officer is expected to recover, but as of the time of this writing, the “New Mexico” suspects are still at large.

When I heard this incident took place at College and Carter, I knew that street junction sounded familiar.  Alas, quoting from this blog, February 3, 2005:

The winner of your North St. Louis CIRCVS MAXIMVS Predatory Thug Baby of the Week Award, for the week ending January 21, is one Orlando Fields. The 18-year old Mr. Fields was sentenced to 227 years as a guest of the state for his August 2003 crime spree, which included felony (second-degree, or whimsical) murder, multiple carjackings, multiple robberies and other goodies. St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce commented to the media that she had never heard of a prison sentence as long as this one in her recollection of the St. Louis City Circuit. The media also reported that Mr. Fields belonged to the “College and Carter” gang, presumably a black drug gang revolving around the junction of College Ave and Carter Ave in North St. Louis Circvs Maximvs Land. That begs this question: The Federal “Justice” Department would like to use RICO statutes to bust up pro-life groups, why aren’t they using RICO to bust up PTB street gangs?

On July 4, 2005, the USA will be celebrating its 229th birthday, at which point, Mr. Fields will only have 226 years to go. Perspective is helpful.

So this College at Carter junction seems to be a serious hotbed of every ill and vice that this city could offer.  “Like the same can’t be said about other street corners in St. Louis PTB Land” — Peanut Gallery

Hold the Enforcement

Late this afternoon, a St. Louis County Judge temporarily suspended the City of Valley Park’s immigration enforcement ordinances.

Among the Plaintiffs in the suit, i.e. those opposed to the statutes, i.e. open borders advocates, were various immigrant LDFs, “fair housing” organizations (question:  Where is their concern for “fair housing” of whites when their neighborhood becomes Hispanic?) and the Ray Hartmann-led ACLU of Eastern Missouri.

They were upset because Valley Park is enforcing some elements of Federal immmigration law by means of city ordinances.  If those kinds of laws are so reprehensible, they should sue the Federal Government also.  But they aren’t, and the fact that they aren’t is telling —  other than sovereign immunity concerns, which might trump all here, they won’t sue the Feds because they know the Feds treat Federal immigration laws as if they were printed in disappearing ink.

A Wretch By Any Other Name

Title of a blog post at the Stein Report today:

Cop-Killer in Houston An Illegal Alien

Now, we needn’t be so harsh and glib.  I prefer to think of him as a subway canary.

Where’s Waldo Laptop

David Sheets:

Since 9/11, all of us have been left with the impression that fighting terrorism involved some degree of personal responsibility — like buying sheets of plastic and rolls of duct tape to protect against nuclear attack.

But exercising that responsibility apparently doesn’t extend to federal authorities keeping private information out of the public domain.

That’s the impression we’re left with following the U.S. Commerce Department’s admission this week that it has misplaced more than 1,100 laptops since 2001. Some probably were stolen.

About 250 of these devices, many of which were owned by the Census Bureau, contained private information on more than a few of us: addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, Social Security numbers, etc. The census folks need this stuff to do their job.

Questions:

1.  Why is so much personal and private information left on Census Bureau laptop computers instead of being synced into and secured in central servers, and then expunged and electronically shredded from the laptop?

2.  Why does the Census Bureau need so much personal and private information about individuals to begin with?  How is the number of bathrooms in each house germane to decennial Congressional apportionment?

3.  Why is the Census Bureau trusted with Americans’ Social Security Numbers?  SSNs are account numbers for individual Americans who pay into and (expect to) receive benefits from the Social Security system; they are not legally, and should not be, a form of personal identification.

Pay Attention to this One Little Paragraph

Especially those of you who can do nothing but moan and whine and harp about how we haven’t apprehended Osama Bin Laden Yet.  From Jihad Watch:

You may recall that he was widely believed to be dead for several years after 9/11. I therefore take this report with reserve. In any case, if he is dead, the jihad will continue. It is not based on the charismatic power of any single leader, but on an ideology.

I should add to “ideology” the concepts of racial jealousy, racio-religious animosity, and that OPEC oil profits is the direct or indirect “right releasing touch” to manifest the ideology, the jealousy, the animosity, into terrorist actions and plots.

What IS She Thinking

By now, I’m sure you have seen the Blagojevich ads in the St. Louis market, the ones that criticize Judy Baar Topinka’s budget proposals, and end with someone or some group of people saying, “What Is She Thinking?”

I want to know the same thing myself — What IS she thinking?  More specifically, where are her media buys in the St. Louis market for southern Illinois eyes and ears?  If she has ANY chance to win, and it’s not much of one, it’s going to be because of Southern Illinois.  If she’s focusing all her money around that impossible malignancy in the northeastern part of the state, then she’s making a big mistake.

Anarcho-Tyranny Takes the Day Off

Houston Chronicle:

About a dozen residents of a Dallas neighborhood beat a man after reports that he had been showing pornographic pictures to children on a playground, police said.

(snip)

Burke was arrested on suspicion of harmful display to a minor.

In this day and age of anarcho-tyranny, I’m surprised the cops didn’t arrest the 15 men who gave this pervert what he deserved and let the perv go free.

There Is Another Solution

AL.com:

A 5-year-old girl is undergoing treatment for possible HIV infection after the man charged with raping her — an illegal alien who was previously deported to Mexico — admitted he has the virus, authorities said.

The case has re-energized some state lawmakers to push for tougher penalties for people who commit sex crimes and knowingly expose their victims to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The case should re-energize state lawmakers to beg the Feds to build that border wall, and while they’re at it, throw a hundred thousand volts through the metal of the middle fence, along with many other things the Feds should be doing on the immigration issue but refuse to do.

But It Will Take a Month

David Sheets:

Hence the appearance of the group called “ZERT,” the Zeroday Emergency Response Team. It says it’s offering a patch for a flaw in two popular Microsoft products that the company won’t address until next month.

The flaw vexes Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and Outlook 2003 e-mail program — and consequently vexes millions of computer users. It allows shady hackers a way into Windows computers that lets them drop damaging code into a system.

(snip)

Microsoft discourages this kind of behavior, saying third-party patches shouldn’t be trusted. The company believes that hurrying patches before they’re thoroughly tested could invite more trouble than the original threat.

So, it would take Microsoft a month to patch something a lot of people use, so you should trust them instead of third party patches.  Yet, when someone cracked Microsoft’s DRM (Digital Rights Management, software encoding within music files and music playback hardware that restricts music playback, presumably to prevent “piracy” and “file sharing”), Microsoft issued a patch in THREE DAYS.  The article so linked will tell you why.

This is why you should use a browser and e-mail client developed by an institution whose business IS and whose reputation relies upon the browser and e-mail client.

Living on Baker Street

Mike Anderson:

Has anybody else ever noticed that …  Dr. Gregory House’s address is 221 (whatever street) and that he lives in Apartment B, which would make his address 221-B? Just FYI, Sherlock Holmes’ address was 221-B Baker Street. I think that’s pretty cool. Good for the show’s writers for being literate, which ain’t always the case.

Not surprising, because the whole House series is modeled after the Sherlock Holmes books and character set.  House (Hugh Laurie) is obviously Holmes, Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) is Watson, Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) is Lestrade, House’s Team (Jennifer Morrison as Cameron, Jesse Spencer as Chase, Omar Epps as Foreman) is modeled after the Baker Street Boys.  The real life Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician by training, and he modeled the Sherlock Holmes character after a medical diagnostician.

There are even more House-Holmes parallels than these.

Profiteering

You’ve heard of war profiteering, and the Military-Industrial Complex.  Now, there has arisen border profiteering, and the border-industrial complex.

You will notice in this article that the brother of Grover “Let’s Get All The Muslims To Vote Republican” Norquist has been approved as the CFO for the Homeland Security Department.

I take all this to mean that while there’s a lot of hype and hoopla and money-making around “securing the border,” nothing will actually be done to secure the border.  Really, what are all these airborne drones and ground cameras going to tell us that the ground-level Border Patrol agents (i.e. the honest ones) and Minuteman Project volunteers (i.e. the ones not interested in hustling a quick buck) haven’t already witnessed?

I suspect this “high tech virtual border” nonsense is the sneaky mechanism by which all the open borders and pro-amnesty zealots can get away with the two-faced doublespeak of saying that they’re for “securing the border” during election season.

What Of Your Precious Forest Park

Mayor Slay notes today that the plan to build a new city dog pound at Ellendale Park might be jeopardized by the ballot initative, started by those who opposed the BJC expansion onto the west side of Kingshighway into Forest Park, that would require public votes on the dispensation of public park lands.

The more pertinent question is this:  Why does the left wing in this town fuss about a hospital wanting to expand into the far eastern section of Forest Park, and fuss about 12 feet of the southern end that might have been taken for widening Highway 40, when Slay’s predecessor in Room 200, Clarence Harmon, would have seen Forest Park turned almost upside down to tunnel Metro Link underneath it, and the pro-FP lefties had no complaints?

The pic above is the St. Louis Art Museum, which is entirely within Forest Park.  FP also complains the entirety of the St. Louis Zoo, Missouri Historical Society, the Jewel Box (botanical sudatorium), the Municipal Opera (“Muny”), the St. Louis Police Department’s equestrian stables, and about half the St. Louis Science Center.

But It’s An Oxymoron

To compete with Google’s web applications, Microsoft is pondering “webbifying” Microsoft Works, being mindful of the fact that “Microsoft Works” is an oxymoron.  (“The day that Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck is the day they make Microsoft Vacuum Cleaners” — L.C.)

Several Questions:

1.  Will you have to use Internet Explorer to utilize Microsoft’s free webbified Works suite?

2.  What kind of spyware will Microsoft sneak into your system in the process?

3.  Will Microsoft somehow find out how you’re using their webbified Works suite and use that information to its advantage, or perhaps sell it to your business competitors?

4.  What is the great virtue, or benefit, or rush, to “webbify” applications, whether by Microsoft, or Google, or anyone else?  Whatever happened to good ole fashioned non-networked non-internet applications?

Opposite Effect

The Centers for Disease Control suggests that all Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 receive routine HIV/AIDS tests.

Other than the purely altruistic and epidemeological motivations for their directive, I think there’s also something political at work here.  Because AIDS is a politically protected infectious disease, based on the political power of a certain group of people that tend to contract HIV/AIDS, AIDS victims aren’t quarantined like those who have similar dangerous and highly communicable infections.

The reason I think the CDC issued this directive is to attempt to “universalize” the perceived risk of HIV/AIDS, to distract the public mind away from the “alternate orientation” lobby.  However, if anything, it might have the opposite political effect in the long run — I think what will happen is that the rate of HIV/AIDS infection will seem to shoot way up, because I think many more people have it than we know.  The reason I think that is because I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that HIV/AIDS is communicable by means other than those within human control, e.g. mosquitoes.

In the long run, a spiked HIV/AIDS infection rate might provoke the public mind to consider my mosquito theory.  If that happens, and is proven to be true, then it might mean that the power of the “alternate orientation” lobby is broken and quarantining occurs, and HIV/AIDS is finally defeated.

Sounds Better

From Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s UN Speech as published on World Net Daily:

“And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here.” [crosses himself]

“And it smells of sulfur still today.”

Actually, if you read Chavez’s speech, you would agree that it sounds better in the original Russian.

However, a broken clock is right twice a day, and Chavez does have one good idea.

That’s What Pigs Do

The Early Show on CBS this morning, seen locally on KMOV-CBS-4, had a shocking piece of news this morning:

Pigs squeal.

The context was that a family in Wisconsin keeps a pig for an indoor pet, and Early Show told us that the family wakes up each morning because the pig squeals.

Naw, really?  I would have thought a pig would bark, meow, or stood on two legs and do the Kwanzaa Dance at the crack of dawn.

Needless to say, I WON’T have that channel on come 5:30 this evening.

Opera Sure Moves Quickly

If you’re a user of the Opera Internet Suite, you might have received a popup dialogue box today that looks like this:

Click on the above image for a larger, full-screen view.

I must have fallen asleep and missed Opera versions 10 through 89.

To be sure, when you actually download the requisite file, the decimal point will be in the correct place, as you can see in the following screenshot (click for full-size):

When you install the new version (or, in the case of Suse Linux, Zen autoinstalls it after you enter your root password), and do Help -> About Opera, you will also see that the decimal point is in the correct place in the following screenshot (click for full-size):

For those of you who are familiar with the *NIX file system, you know why I deliberately blacked out certain areas of the latter two images.

I should say that Opera will probably get to version 90 before Internet Explorer gets to version 9.