I was listening to Imus this morning and he was gas-bagging about the Ferguson shooting. He said something stupid, but obviously intended to tell the rulers he was not going to be any trouble on the subject. Since his return from exile, Imus has been extremely careful about anything touching on race. In fact, he has been very sensitive about the whole metathesizing list of official taboos. Gays, womyn, trannies, minorities of every conceivable type now get treated with the honor they deserve.

This is becoming more and more common. As the lunatics get better and better at ruining careers, the people on radio and television become increasingly frightened and cautious. I still watch Red Eye, for example, but it is so tame now I hardly see the point. Every show they do a segment on how much they love homos or trannies now. Once in a  while they worship a black guy. I fast forward through the piety segments, but sometimes that’s most of the show.

Anyway, he said something about how the cop had no right to shoot the big black guy. His argument was that there are no circumstance in which a cop can shoot an unarmed person. I’m a police skeptic and I said from the start that I would need a strong case to justify this shooting. Getting bashed in the face by a giant and then having said giant come back for another shot is enough for me.

In fact, it is enough for everyone in most states. When you get a concealed carry in most states, you learn when you can use lethal force. The first rule you learn is the seven yard rule. When the bad guy is within 20 feet, it is assumed retreat is impossible. About 20 states do not require any retreat whatsoever. Others have laws on the books requiring a citizen to take reasonable steps to get away from the bad guy. Once the bad guy gets close, however, you can do what you need to do to avoid harm.

That rule applies to cops too. This guy is not required to take a beating just because the giant did not have a weapon. Once the giant punched the cop, the cop had every right to assume the giant posed a threat. The only two questions left are how close was the giant when the cop fired on him and was the giant coming forward toward the cop. If the giant was running away or surrendering, then the cop is guilty of murder. If the giant was a block away then the cop is guilty of murder.

What we know so far is that the cop was struck in his car hard enough to fracture his eye socket. That sounds worse than it is as that part of the skull is fragile. Boxers suffer broken orbital bones frequently. Still, it takes a big hit to cause that level of damage. The other thing we know is the giant was shot in the front. Assuming the autopsy report is correct, his arms were at his sides and he was facing the cop. What we don’t know is if the giant was surrendering or advancing. Witness accounts are all over the place and press accounts are full of deliberate lies.

That’s what makes this post from the increasingly deranged Karl Denninger hilariously stupid. He’s arguing that the cop can only shoot the giant if the giant is actively attacking the cop. Not even the Brits have laws like this. In America, no one, not even the cop, has to submit to a beating in order to claim self-defense. Otherwise, there’s no such thing as self-defense and there’s no reason to give the cops guns.

This post has already been linked to 1473 times!

I’ve said for a long time that the hippies got exactly one thing right. That was dropping out. The whole “turn on, tune in and drop out” gag was mostly nonsense. Sitting around getting high all day is no way to live. Hallucinogenics will certainly make you feel like you are reaching a higher consciousness.  You’re not. You’re just high. Maybe it is a good idea to get in touch with yourself and your relationship to nature. I don’t know. I suspect that if you need to do it, it will never happen for you.

Dropping out, however, has merit. A great deal of what ails the world is due to participating in it. Even if that bit of philosophy is nonsense, active engagement with society brings a lot of misery. This former hermit probably had it right the first time.

A man who lived nearly three decades in the woods now has a job and is adjusting to life back in society.

Christopher Knight, who survived brutal winters in the Maine woods by stealing food from homes and camps, could graduate from a special court program as early as this fall, Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said.

After serving about seven months in jail, Knight, known as the North Pond Hermit, was admitted last fall into the program, whose participants receive treatment and counseling.

While in jail, Knight told GQ magazine that he didn’t like the society he was being forced to re-enter.

“I don’t think I’m going to fit in,” he said in the GQ story, which will appear in the magazine’s September issue. “It’s too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia.”

Knight never fully explained why he disappeared into the woods, telling GQ that he didn’t have a reason and that it was a mystery to him too. He committed more than 1,000 robberies while he lived as a recluse, he told the magazine.

Maloney declined to say what job Knight had taken and where he was living. Members of Knight’s family couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.

Maloney said Knight has done everything that he has been required to do in the court program and has done a “remarkable job.”

“He has been working hard to understand what it takes to become part of society again,” she said.

He was better off in the woods.

This post has already been linked to 1057 times!

One of the central arguments in favor of legalizing drugs is that it eliminates the black market. At first blush, it sounds reasonable. If you can buy your fix at a legitimate store, there’s no need to go to the street dealer. That drives out the street dealer, the street crime, gang wars and so on and so on. It all makes sense, which is why everyone and his brother is carefully watching what is going on in Colorado. All of these arguments are being put to the test.

This story from the Guardian is interesting.

In these, the curious, infant days of Colorado’s legalisation of recreational marijuana, of shiny dispensaries and touch-screen ordering and suburban parties where joints are passed like appetisers over granite countertops, no one would notice the duplex. Plain brick, patchy grass behind chain link, it appears weary, resigned to what the tenant calls “the ‘hood” and others might call left-behind Denver, untouched by the frenzy of investment that has returned to downtown.

The front door of the duplex stays closed. Sheer white curtains cover the living room window. A basement filtering system vents air scrubbed of the sweet funky smell of the pot growing in the basement. The tenant keeps his grow operation here small. It’s his home. That’s his grandson upstairs watching TV with strict instructions not to open the door if someone knocks. Should the cops inquire, they’d find a frail-looking, middle-age Latino with diabetes and heart problems, talking about his pension and his Medicaid and waving his medical marijuana registry card.

The red card – part of the state’s legal landscape since 2000 when voters approved the sale of marijuana for medical use – allows the grower to cultivate a doctor-prescribed 16 plants. It does not allow him to sell what he does not consume to the underground market. It does not allow him a second grow operation in another rented house where he and a partner grew 55 plants until the landlord grew suspicious. It does not allow him to run his own little corner of a black market that still exists in the state with America’s most permissive legal pot sales.

The grower says he recently sold more than 9kg of his weed – Blue Dream for the mellow, Green Crack for the perk – to middlemen who flipped it for almost double the price.

“I try to keep it legal,” he says, “but sometimes it’s illegal.”

Camouflaged amid the legal medicinal and recreational marijuana market, the underground market thrives. Some in law enforcement and on the street say it may be as strong as it’s ever been, so great is the unmet local and visitor demand.

That the black market bustles in the emerging days of legalisation is not unexpected. By some reckonings, it will continue as long as residents of other states look to Colorado – and now Washington state – as the nation’s giant cannabis cookie jar. And, they add, as long as its legal retail competition keeps prices high and is taxed by state and local government at rates surpassing 30%.

I’m inclined to support these experiments in marijuana legalization. I don’t know the right answer, but discovery through trial and error is the way we have sorted these things out for 15,000 years. That said, I find it hilarious that people thought it would eliminate the black market. A highly regulated and taxed legal product will always be more expensive than an unregulated and untaxed product. Unlike cigarettes or booze, there already exists an efficient and sophisticated black market.

“I don’t know who is buying for recreational use at dispensaries unless it’s white, middle-class people and out-of-towners,” said Rudy Reddog Balles, a longtime community activist and mediator. “Everyone I know still has the guy on the street that they hook up with.”

Obviously, legalizing weed was an upper middle-class novelty cause. It was the pseudo-libertarians from SWPL-ville who pushed it through in Colorado. Even a “longtime community activist and mediator” should get that.

This black market boom, the state argues, is a temporary situation. As more legal recreational dispensaries and growers enter the market, the market will adjust. Prices will fall. The illegal market will shrink.

Actually, it will probably grow. Quasi-legalization makes it nearly impossible to police the black market. If you can’t bust a guy for holding, you can’t squeeze him for his dealer. If you can’t bust guys for holding quantity, you can’t squeeze them for the bigger dealers. Then you have the race angle. Busting the black guys in the hood for smoking reefer is not going to go over well when Kendall and Dylan are buying it at the mall with mom’s credit card.

In any case, these first curious months of the legal recreational market have laid bare a socioeconomic faultline. Resentment bubbles in the neighbourhoods where marijuana has always been easy to get.

The resentment goes something like: we Latinos and African Americans from the ‘hood were stigmatised for marijuana use, disdained and disproportionately prosecuted in the war on drugs. We grew up in the culture of marijuana, with grandmothers who made oil from the plants and rubbed it on arthritic hands. We sold it as medicine. We sold it for profit and pleasure.

Now pot is legalised and who benefits? Rich people with their money to invest and their clean criminal records. And here we are again: on the outskirts of opportunity. A legion of entrepreneurs with big plans and rewired basements chafes with every monthly state tax revenue report.

Sing it brotha! Sing it!

Ask someone who buys and sells in the underground market how it has responded to legalisation and the question is likely to be tossed back with defiance. “You mean, ‘Who’s been shut out of the legal market?’” asks Miguel Lopez, chief community organiser of the state’s 420 Rally, which calls for legalisation of marijuana nationally.

“It’s kind of like we made all the sacrifices and they packed it up and are making all the money,” says Cisco Gallardo, a well-known gang outreach worker who once sold drugs as a gang member. For the record, he does not partake. It rattles him a little, he says, to see the young people with whom he works shed their NFL and rapper dreams for the next big thing: their own marijuana dispensary.

In this light, taxation is seen as a blunt instrument of exclusion, driving precisely the groups most prosecuted in the war on drug further into the arms of the black market. In one Denver dispensary, a $30 purchase of one-eighth of the Trinity strain of cannabis includes $7.38 in state and local taxes – a near 33% rate. As Larisa Bolivar, one of the city’s most well-known proponents of decriminalising marijuana, puts it: that $7 buys someone lunch.

“It’s simple,” she says. “A high tax rate drives black market growth. It’s an incentive for risky behaviour.”

It’s not hard to see where the logic is going. The thing is, legalization does nothing for Red Team or Blue Team. Both need an angle so they can pretend to be different. My guess is Red Team is going to be the tax collectors for the weed industry. The Blue Team will go the social justice route demand free weed and subsidies for the poor. Two decades ago, the ruler passed welfare reform which was supposed to start kicking loafers off the dole. Today, one third of the population is collecting. How long before they are giving away free weed in the ghetto?

This post has already been linked to 1035 times!

Historians disagree about when the Roman Republic ended. Some argue that it was when Tiberius Gracchus stood for re-election as tribune in 132 BC. Some argue it was when Julius Caesar “crossed the Rubicon” refusing to disband his army and submit to the Senate. I had a teacher who made a great argument in favor of the lex frumentaria as the beginning of the end. That’s the law passed by Gaius Gracchus providing subsidized grain to the poor of Rome. Well, it sounded convincing to a young Latin scholar.

It is one of those debates historians and cranks enjoy having as there is no right answer. You pick a date that fits your needs and go from there. I’m re-reading Gibbon and I think the best case for the end is when Tiberius Gracchus stood for re-election in 132 BC. It was at this point when the ruling elite of Rome, the patrician class, lost their respect for the law.

The law was no longer the agreed upon rules under which they would settle their differences. It became an obstacle to power or a weapon to wield against rivals once you attained power. The spirit of the law, the point of the law, no longer mattered. From there is was a short road to a “who, whom?” social order.

Of course, none of this could have happened without the destruction of the small landowners after the destruction of Corinth and Carthage. In 146 BC the Romans finally defeated their old enemies. Both cities were destroyed in spectacular fashion. The Romans burned the cities, killed all of the men and sold the women and children into slavery.

The influx of slaves changed the economics of the Republic. Large landowners could now replace their free Roman labor with slaves. This undercut the small landowners. The result  was a consolidation of the land and a massive influx of people into the city, mostly former farmers and soldiers.

That should sound familiar.

Anyway, as I’m re-reading Gibbon, I cannot help but wonder where the last five years will fit into the puzzle of when the America Republic ended or collapsed. This story from yesterday makes me think we are firmly in the lawlessness stage of the final crisis.

Senior White House officials are in talks with business leaders that could expand the executive actions President Barack Obama takes on immigration.

Obama was initially expected to focus only on slowing deportations of potentially millions of undocumented immigrants and altering federal enforcement policies. Now top aides are talking with leaders in big companies like Cisco, Intel and Accenture, hoping to add more changes that would get them on board.

Representatives for high-tech, agriculture and construction interests have put forward a range of fixes, from recapturing unused green cards to tweaking existing work authorization programs.

The outreach is an effort to broaden the political support for Obama’s decision to go it alone on immigration — another sign that suggests the White House fears a backlash in November, particularly among independent voters in battleground Senate races where Republicans are seizing on the issue.

“The president has not made a decision regarding next steps, but he believes it’s important to understand and consider the full range of perspectives on potential solutions,” said White House spokesman Shawn Turner. “The meetings were in keeping with the president’s commitment to do whatever he can, within the constraints of the law, to address the immigration issue.”

Turner said the meetings with business leaders were among more than 20 “listening sessions” with outside groups.

“They are very seriously looking at a big variety of things to figure out what people think would be helpful,” a source in one of the meetings said, describing the meeting as a “productive listening session.”

Senior administration officials stepped up their engagement with companies and business groups over the past month as they look to produce a series of executive orders starting in September. Aides are asking industry executives for ideas and are trying to earn their support against an expected barrage from Republicans opposed to Obama taking any action.

You’ll notice that the Obama administration is not looking for how they can enforce the spirit of the laws passed by the people’s representatives. They are not looking at the law as a limit to their power. They are looking at the law as an obstacle and spending all of their time scheming to get around it.

All of those quislings from corporate America in there know they are a part of an effort to subvert the law and harm the American people. They don’t care about any of that. They just want to line their pockets with your money. If we had any sense, the roads leading out of Washington would resemble the Appian Way after the Third Servile War.

No one can point to a single line in the Constitution that gives the president this right. No one can point to anything in the law that gives him this right. Obama is too stupid to understand any of it, but the people around him surely know it. They don’t care about the law or the results that will flow from their lawlessness. Whether or not it is the point of no return is unknown, but it is on the way.

The whole TED Talk business is mildly amusing to me. Generally speaking, I love the idea. Give a smart guy a half hour to talk about a subject of his choice and you have a great hour of TV/Interwebs, assuming the usual assholes pack it with commercials. I’m not sure I’d travel to see it, but watch it on-line, if it is someone I find interesting.

But, they are not doing these things for plebeian slobs like me. These things are aimed at upper middle-class white people looking for grace. That’s what these things are – special services for the faithful to get some inspiration and some absolution.

A good example of this is one I found in my twitter feed for some reason. Apparently, someone hates me.

[ted id=2059]

The talk itself is stunningly awful, but the comments are hilarious.

Totally inspiring – the cadences swelling and receeding just adding to a magical presentation

Jane Thurnell-Read, the womyn who posted that is easily inspired.

Amazing, beautiful and powerful. Also a good reminder to listen to those silences each and every day. Because when there is silence, it not consent, it is not agreement, and often it hides a sadness or fear, or as Clint indicated shame. And nothing addresses these better than listening. And speaking up. I am so inspired by this talk. Thank you.

andrea eichhorn, the womyn who posted that nonsense must have taken a hit of acid before watching the video.

Thank You Clint. Your passion and common sense leap from your words and the screen. We have two ears and one mouth that we mostly use in the wrong proportions. Silence is all powerful, it fills us with awe on a mountainside or in a forest, but is awkward and feared when we are not alone. Listen for it. Embrace it. It gives us time to think, order our thoughts, remember that germ of an idea that needs time to grow and allow you to see that stranger or friend that needs your kindness.

Huw Edwards, the dick who posted that gem, must be one of those guys who plays the emotionally available guy shtick. His pic says he’s a bit long in the tooth for that bit. At 20 it goes over well with the hippie girl with the nice rack. At 50 you sound like, well this guy:

 I watched this earlier and then today I passed a homeless guy. I live in the centre of town and someone threw some food in a bin and he tried to get it out. He couldn’t because the bins only have small holes at the top, I guess to stop urban foxes pulling everything out. So he grabbed a stick and started trying to poke it in the bin to get the food, he sounded exasperated that it went in the bin when he could have had it. He was sitting right there outside the local convenience store with a little paper cup with a couple of coins in it, but I guess the guy never thought to give him his half eaten food.

I thought about what you had said and walked up to the guy and said “My name is Robert, what is yours?” He responded “Randal.” I immediately thought, what high hopes his parents must have had for him as this is quite a posh name in Scotland. But what I said to him was “can I get you sandwich from the shop?” he said “yes.” So I said “what kind would you like Randal?” he responded “ham and cheese.” So I got him the sandwich, it left me just enough to get some milk for the morning and so I skipped getting some sweets to watch a movie with at home, my usual weekend treat. I gave him the ham and cheese and shook his hand before I left and said “look after yourself Randel.” He smiled and said thank you and I left feeling a good deal better than I have in several days.

I’ve never acknowledged a homeless man by name before. I’ve given money, food or a bottle of water, but I’ve never asked their name.

I’m alone and have no one to speak to, but at least I have a roof over my head. No one ever asks my name anymore these days either, and there was a time I performed for hundreds of people every night. But, now I know no one, and so I know what it is to slowly become invisible to others.

As I walked home I remembered a poster I once saw for the homeless, that had a play on words that said – we don’t just want your change, what we want is real change.

That comment is the most liked comment on the post. It’s what I mean by this crap being a religious experience for old white people. He watched the video, had his religious experience and then went out like an apostle to minister to a bum he spotted on the way home. Then he posted it on the site so his co-religionists could praise him. The only thing missing is  chorus of “amens” from the congregation.

Here’s a link to Clint Smith. The first thing that should jump out to you is he is working on a PhD in education at Harvard. This is how the Ivy leagues makes their grad schools balance out the Chinese and Jewish guys filling up the STEM fields. They created doctoral programs in nonsense fields like education and womyn’s studies.

You’ll also note that he is a “slam poet.” That’s where exhibitionists scream at the audience in gibberish. In another era, these guys would be wearing a beret, playing folk guitar poorly while the audience smoked reefer. Now, it is old white women with long dangle earrings drinking twenty dollar chai tea while some idiot screams doggerel at them. If you think there’s nothing worse than free verse, go to a poetry slam sober. In the old days a guy could at least get laid at something like this.

I always had a soft spot for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Maybe it is is freakish physique or his weird demeanor. I don’t know. He’s just a weird dude in so many ways I can’t help but like him. John Derbyshire, when he is not slacking off, talks about old weird America from time to time. Kareem is part of old weird America. He’s one part black guy, one part California weirdo. one part famous athlete and one part batshit crazy philosopher. Lately Time Magazine has been letting him express his batshit crazy side.

Will the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice, or will it be a minor footnote in some future grad student’s thesis on Civil Unrest in the Early Twenty-First Century?
More
Hungry Heroes: 25 Percent of Military Families Seek Food Aid NBC News’We Have Had Enough’: Ferguson Rally Remembers Michael Brown NBC NewsMore Charges Planned Against Amish Girls Kidnap Suspects NBC NewsHeidi Klum Wears Dress Made Of Tiny Strings, Spins Around A Lot At The Creative Arts Emmys Huffington PostPhoto Emerges Of Darren Wilson, Cop Who Fatally Shot Teen Michael Brown Huffington Post

The answer can be found in May of 1970.

You probably have heard of the Kent State shootings: on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University. During those 13 seconds of gunfire, four students were killed and nine were wounded, one of whom was permanently paralyzed. The shock and outcry resulted in a nationwide strike of 4 million students that closed more than 450 campuses. Five days after the shooting, 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C. And the nation’s youth was energetically mobilized to end the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and mindless faith in the political establishment.

You probably haven’t heard of the Jackson State shootings.

On May 14th, 10 days after Kent State ignited the nation, at the predominantly black Jackson State University in Mississippi, police killed two black students (one a high school senior, the other the father of an 18-month-old baby) with shotguns and wounded twelve others.

There was no national outcry. The nation was not mobilized to do anything. That heartless leviathan we call History swallowed that event whole, erasing it from the national memory.

That’s not true at all. There was a big showy commission that addressed both Jackson State and Kent State. The Jackson State incident was due to the students trying to burn down the university and the cops being put into a situation for which they were unprepared. They basically threw a bunch of cops into the middle of a riot and they panicked. But hey, when you’re trying to rally the proletariat from your Malibu home, who has time for details?

And, unless we want the Ferguson atrocity to also be swallowed and become nothing more than an intestinal irritant to history, we have to address the situation not just as another act of systemic racism, but as what else it is: class warfare.

By focusing on just the racial aspect, the discussion becomes about whether Michael Brown’s death—or that of the other three unarmed black men who were killed by police in the U.S. within that month—is about discrimination or about police justification. Then we’ll argue about whether there isn’t just as much black-against-white racism in the U.S. as there is white-against-black. (Yes, there is. But, in general, white-against-black economically impacts the future of the black community. Black-against-white has almost no measurable social impact.)

Then we’ll start debating whether or not the police in America are themselves an endangered minority who are also discriminated against based on their color—blue. (Yes, they are. There are many factors to consider before condemning police, including political pressures, inadequate training, and arcane policies.) Then we’ll question whether blacks are more often shot because they more often commit crimes. (In fact, studies show that blacks are targeted more often in some cities, like New York City. It’s difficult to get a bigger national picture because studies are woefully inadequate. The Department of Justice study shows that in the U.S. between 2003 and 2009, among arrest-related deaths there’s very little difference among blacks, whites, or Latinos. However, the study doesn’t tell us how many were unarmed.)

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor. Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal. Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor.

And that’s how the status quo wants it.

Years ago, I was part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Guatemala. Status Quo was an invaluable resource. In all seriousness, poverty is simply not an issue in modern America. I see a lot of poor people. Way more than Kareem does out their in Malibu. Most of the poor are fat. Most of them have plenty of drugs and booze. It’s not a life I want to live, but it beats starving or shivering in the cold. The poor have it better than any poor people in the history of the planet.

The rest of it is more of the same nonsense he picked up from TV. Like I said at the start, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kareem. I wish him no harm. He would be better off just enjoying is remaining years and feeling good about having lived a better life than all but a handful of humans in the history of man. Kareem had a great life.

I enjoy Gavin McInnes on TV. His writing is not that interesting to me, but that’s a matter of taste. McInnes seems to have the right instincts and a willingness to say unpopular things. We need more of that, which is why the lunatics have decided he has to be killed. They hate anyone who says or writes unapproved things. According to this story, a lynch mob of degenerates has managed to get him suspended from his job at an ad agency.

Gavin McInnes, chief creative officer of Rooster in New York, has been asked to take an indefinite leave of absence following the publication of a transphobic essay.

Published earlier this week on Thought Catalog, “Transphobia is Perfectly Natural” has at publication received 2,082 comments. It has also sparked a “Boycott Rooster” movement, with Tumblr and Twitter accounts asking followers to let Rooster clients—Vans, Red Bull, Fox Sports and others—know they will not support companies that work with McInnes.

“Gavin’s views are his own and do not represent those of the company or its members,” said a Rooster representative. “We are extremely disappointed with his actions and have asked that he take a leave of absence while we determine the most appropriate course of action.”

McInnes co-founded Rooster in 2010 as an agency that would make ads for people who hate ads. He has appeared in the shop’s work for Vans, most recently as the man who explains how to do absolutely everything.

Prior to that, he co-founded Vice Magazine. McInnes has made controversial comments publicly before, with essays on Thought Catalog and contributions to Fox News. Though, due to the tone of his work, some are unsure if it is meant to be taken seriously.

McInnes could not be reached for comment.

If you go to the site where the article is published, you get this message:

The article you are trying to read has been reported by the community as hateful or abusive content. For more information about our reporting system head to our about page.

I can only assume the “community” is full of perverts and pansies. Why else put up the notice?

The fact is we have reached some sort of tipping point. Sex is a biological reality, not a social construct. Humans are either male or female and that’s determined by genetics. The people butchering themselves to change their sex are not doing anything but butchering themselves. They most likely suffer from a form of mental illness. Apotemnophilia is treated as a mental disorder and that’s not materially different from what the “trans” people suffer.

Of course, this is not about biological reality. It is about religious fanatics trying to force their morality on the rest of us. This pagan cult we call liberalism is no different from the Muslim lunatics running Iran. They only lack the ability to behead heretic in public. You’ll note I said “ability” and not “willingness.” Since they cannot murder McInnes, they will do the next best thing and that’s ostracize him. If he loses his job, they know the next guy will censure himself so as to avoid the same fate.

This madness cannot hold forever. Boys cannot become girls and two guys playing house is not marriage. If these obvious realities cannot be spoken in public, what other realities must be ignored? At what point does this disconnect become untenable?  When do normal people stop ignoring these lunatics and begin top push back? Or, are we headed for the same fate as Iran?

I’m not an attorney, but I wonder when some pissed off victim will decide to sue these protesters. It strikes me that this is a clear case of tortious interference. These people are threatening a business. They are interfering with the contractual relationship McInnes has with this ad agency. Hiding behind the first amendment should not be a defense of what is brown-shirted thuggary.

The reason comments are moderated is the spam problem. There’s a way to fiddle with WordPress to defeat the robots, but I have not invested the time to do it. The usual way to defeat the robots is to require a registration or CAPTCHA . I’m not a big fan of either so I just check in regularly to approve the comments. In the process I read a lot of spam. There’s two approaches I see most often. One is the post is designed to look real, but with links to some scam baked into it. “I agree completely! Keep up the good work” is common. The give away is the fact the post links to fake Nike sneakers and the poster calls themselves Cheap Nike Sneakers.

Then there are posts that seem to be random word generation. I’m guessing they pack the message with words designed to fool the spam filters. You see this with e-mail spam. Some of it is hilarious. I just had a bunch like this one. The links are safe. One points to a consultancy in Washington DC. I don’t think they advocate the easting of testicles.

I really like swimming mortimer supported buy proscar without prescription anna limit But eating testicles is a humane choice of meat, the veterinarian pointed out. Animals raised for eating are routinely castrated at a young age so they gain weight faster. It’s a simple, relatively painless procedure after which the animals live on for many months — giving testicle recipes the rare distinction of being meat dishes that aren’t fatal to animals.
valiant stromectol price manages chaise SEOUL, July 23 (Reuters) – Seoul shares advanced firmly onTuesday, rising for a second straight session on continuedforeign investor demand and solid gains in the market’s largecap issues including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd andPOSCO.

The point of these spam posts is a mystery to me. A few months ago I was bombarded with spam from a Ukrainian robot promoting the services of a parking garage company. The name used was something about fake viagra, but the links in the post were to a parking garage company. I called the company and finally got connected with their IT guy. He had no idea why a Ukrainian robot was posting links to his website. Maybe he was lying. Maybe he was an idiot.

Anyway, I’m thinking about using Disqus for comments here. I think they filter spam so then I can let the comments go live.

Texas is the new cool place these days. There are a bunch of TV shows shot in the state. Austin has become the hipster place to be. An Austin aesthetic has developed that is showing up all over. It’s like white trash meets SoHo. It helps that the economy is booming with major companies leaving blue states and relocating to Texas. The people who claim to measure these things say more jobs have been created in Texas since the bust than the rest of the states combined.

But, it is a very weird place with a distinct third world vibe to its politics. This story is a good example. The local DA gets drunk and decides to drive around, getting caught by the cops eventually. Anywhere else, even deep blue states like Massachusetts, the DA would have resigned. If not, then the rest of the crooks would have backed efforts like Perry’s in order to force the issue.

Not Texas.

A Travis County grand jury Friday indicted Gov. Rick Perry on two charges related to his effort last year to force District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign after her drunken driving arrest.

Grand jurors charged Perry, 64, with abuse of official capacity, a first-degree felony, and coercion of a public servant, a third-degree felony. The first charge carries a punishment of 5-99 years and a fine of up to $10,000. The second charge is punishable by 2-10 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

The indictment stems from Perry’s threat last summer to withhold $7.5 million in state money from Lehmberg’s office unless she step down – a threat he later carried out by vetoing an appropriation in the state budget.

Mary Anne Wiley, General Counsel for Perry, said in a statement following the indictment: “The veto in question was made in accordance with the veto authority afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution. We will continue to aggressively defend the governor’s lawful and constitutional action, and believe we will ultimately prevail.”

Immediately, after the indictment was announced, Perry, who is poised to make a second run for president, tweeted: “Help RickPAC elect candidates who support a strong border, new jobs, smaller gov’t, and fiscal responsibility.”

The special prosecutor in the case, San Antonio attorney Michael McCrum, said he was confident with the strength of the charges filed against Perry.

“There has been an immense amount of work that has gone into my investigation up until this point,” he told reporters after announcing the indictment. “I have interviewed over 40 people who were related in some way to the events that happened.”

He later added: “I looked at the law. I looked at the facts. and I presented everything possible to the grand jury.”

This is the same court that hounded Tom DeLay out of office. A lunatic named Ronnie Earle terrorized the state for years, abusing his office with the full support of the kooks in Travis County.

Asked about his thoughts of Perry’s ability to do his job as governor, McCrum said: “I took into account the fact that we’re talking about the governor of a state and a governor of the state of Texas, which we all love. Obviously that carries a level of importance, but when it gets down to it, the law is the law, and the elements are the elements.”

McCrum said he will speak with Perry’s lawyers Monday to arrange for the governor to be booked and formally notified in court of the charges against him.

Ray Sullivan, a former chief of staff to the governor who served as his spokesman when he ran for the 2012 presidential nomination, said of the indictment, “I think it certainly will be a big deal with the liberal media – Slate, Salon – and therefore for the national media. It is beyond ridiculous that Travis County is pursuing the governor, after letting the seriously drunk, police-disrespecting DA stay in office.”

Some Democrats were calling for Perry to step down.

Again, you see the weirdness of Texas. Anywhere else this either gets laughed out of court or laughed off the stage. In Texas, it is how they do politics. I wonder if it is the unusual combination of people. If you look at this great map from American Nations, you see Texas is a mix of independent Mexicans, chaos-loving Scots-Irish and Anglo-Saxon rejects. That’s not the genetic stock one looks for in a stable  democracy. Great warrior class, but not what you want in local burghers.

Of course, this is a good example of how the lunatics that plague us everywhere are the same everywhere. In Texas, the abuse the laws and customs as we see everywhere. For liberal lunatics everywhere, the utility of the law lies in how they can use it to assault their enemies.

I was listening to the great Howie Carr last night and he did a segment on the Bob Smith-Scott Brown-Jeanne Shaheen Senate campaign in New Hampshire. For those unfamiliar with the details, here’s a quick primer. Jeanne Shaheen is a moonbat, who won her seat in 2008. She beat John Sununu, a guy who mostly got by on the family name. In a big Democrat year, weaklings like Sununu were easy prey. Now the shoe is on the other foot and a lot of experts think she is vulnerable. That’s why Scott Brown moved to New Hampshire so he could run against her.

It is also why Bob Smith moved back to the state. He was a senator from New Hampshire for a long time and was a reliable old school conservative. Like a lot of those guys he went slightly bonkers in the Bush years over the invade the world/invite the world stuff. The Bush people ran Sununu against him in the primary, thus ending Bob Smith the senator.

He’s now back looking for a little payback. He’s also running as the conservative alternative to the liberal Scott Brown. The Conventional Right and many Republicans are framing it as the imperfect, but electable Scott Brown versus the unelectable ideologue Bob Smith. Do you vote your heart and let the Democrats keep the seat or do you hold your nose and vote for the fop?

That’s the setup and that’s how the radio segment was setup. It was a steady diet of locals saying you take the best you can get and that’s Brown, because he can win. One guy said it was like poker. You play the hand you’re dealt. The ideologues just keep folding because they don’t get the hand they want. The fact that the analogy works better the other way was not noticed by the host or the callers.

One guy, a libertarian, made a try at arguing against voting for the least worst option, but the host was having none of it. The belief that libertarians are sympatico with conservatives is a mistake, I think. Libertarians have more in common with the Left than the Right, when it comes to these things. The called simply could not get his mind around the idea of taking half a loaf rather than no loaf.

As for the race, I’m not sure why anyone thinks Brown can win. Current polling has him trailing badly. It is still early and the last polls are over a month old. The immigration issue will put a dent in Shaheen’s support. Brown is up with ads bashing Shaheen’s record on immigration. Plus, he has been a late bloomer because he is a nice guy. He gets a late push from the undecided voter who finds him pleasant.

On the other hand, New Hampshire is a weird state. They hate outsiders almost as much as West Virginians. The people Brown needs to win are not going to see him as a local. Instead they will see him as a turd sandwich from Massachusetts and just stay home. That throws the whole argument about Smith and Brown out the window. If the choice is a turd sandwich that can’t win and the true blue conservative who can’t win, you send a message.

One argument in the segment got my attention. It is an oldie I first recall hearing in the 70’s. That is, a guy who votes your way half the time is better than a guy who votes against you all the time. It sounds reasonable, which is why the liberal wing of the GOP always says it. A caller put it this way. “Brown will only screw me half the time, while Shaheen will screw me all the time.”

Again, that sounds good until you think about it. What if, as has been the case with the GOP, those issues they fuck you on are the big ones? Sure, the GOP has been pretty good about cutting taxes on rich people, but so what? Since Reagan burst on the scene, the Federal state has grown bigger, more intrusive and more expensive. For fiscal year 1980, the total outstanding Federal debt was $908 Billion. When Bush the Minor left office it was $9 Trillion.

The size and scope of the Federal state has grown geometrically since 1980. Gun laws? We have more of them. Tax laws? We have quadrupled the size of the tax code. Immigration? There were 3 million illegals here in 1986 at the time of the amnesty. We have 30 million illegals and more flooding over the border. Regulations? The code is five times larger than it was in 1980. Culture? In the 80’s Eddie Murphy was making jokes about homosexuals and AIDS. Today they put you in jail for it.

I could go on, but the point is obvious. The “half-fucked” strategy is not working. If the guys arguing in favor of accepting half a rape could point to some success, then maybe they would not have to counsel laying down and quietly taking it. No matter how you feel about your favorite Republican, the evidence says the GOP is never going to beat the Liberal Democrats at anything. Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, is not madness. It is stupidity.

Take a look at the Left. In the 1990’s they did not like the direction of their party so they started backing the Green Party. It cost them some elections. It may have even put Bush in the White House. But, the result was a far more liberal party. The Democrat Party is now wholly owned by the Left. Maybe the Right should take the same approach. Getting raped by a liberal Republican is no better than getting raped by a liberal Democrat. Maybe losing a few elections will force the Republicans to change as it forced the Democrats to change.