April, 2012 archive
Rights Stripped 0
Andrew Trees comments on justices run amok. A nugget:
In addition to giving police unlimited rights to strip-search for contraband, the Supreme Court had given them unlimited rights to strip-search to humiliate, abuse, and debase prisoners.
Not that any police officer would ever do such a thing.
Waiting for the Easter Bunny 0
H/T Susan and Quincy for the pic.
QOTD 0
John W. Gardner, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing, because plumbing is an humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy, because philosophy is an exalted activy, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
If You Build It, They Will Come 0
But what if you subsequently let it fall apart? Bloomberg considers America’s fascination with building new while ignoring old:
“See those lights,” a transit manager in a major American city told me during a tour of an open-air train station, pointing to some bulbs in rusting metal frames hanging over the platform. “It would only cost about $1,000 a year to maintain those well. We can’t get that. So instead, we will wait until they rust out and fail completely. Then we will replace them, at a cost of perhaps $100,000.”
Giving money to developers and contractors: Good, because they are “free enterprise.”
Paying persons to maintain what you get for that money: Bad, because they are “government drones” (but not the kind of drones which kill people; those are good).
Newtmentum 1
Dick Polman discusses the Republican presidential nomination contest with long-time Republican activist Rich Galen. Mr. Galen seems to despair of the course of his party.
His comments on Newt the Gingrinch are particularly interesting:
Galen surely did: “Newt’s world has always been inside his head. He’d have 15 ideas a day (back when Galen worked for him), and at least one would be deadly. It was my job to sort out the deadly one…He has the attention span of a five-year-old…He truly believes that if Romney doesn’t get the 1144 delegates (by convention time), he’ll have one last chance to get the delegates to chant his name.”
But how can Newt possibly believe that?
Because, as Galen put it, Newt operates within “a reality-distortion field….And he’s 68 years old, so what else is he going to do with his time? Go to the zoo?”
Follow the link for the rest.
Reince Cycle 0
J. M. Ashby evaluates the spin.
QOTD 0
Simeon Strunsky, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.
Mac Attack 0
Apple just works. Until it doesn’t:
This led to a large-scale spam outbreak, which used pirated logins and passwords to flood the innerwebs with spam yesterday. It was aided and abetted by the complacency of iStuff users who believe that Apple “just works” and therefore do not take the simplest precautions to keep their software updated and to practice safe HEX.
If you believe the hype, the hype will get you. Every time.
Truth in Headline 0
Headline at Bloomberg:
What goes around . . . .
Do unto Others 0
At Tampabay dot com, Bill Maxwell muses on the antics who so loudly claim to be Christians:
Meanwhile, at the Guardian, Katherine Stewart points out that these same professional Christians are trying to codify hate so they can bully those they dislike (but God forbid someone bully them! Why that would be wrong):
In Arizona, for example, legislators had their anti-bullying bill teed up for passage in March. But then, Cathi Herrod, chief of a lobbying group associated with Focus on the Family, decided that the bill was really part of an effort to “force cultural acceptance and affirmation of homosexual lifestyles”.
The equation is simple. Hate raises more money and pays for more Cadillacs and Lexuses (Lexi?) than does love.
Bad Day for Birds 0
The birds are losing.
The chickens have got to go:
Suppose for a moment chickens were companion animals, Garriott said. How many could you have?
“If she had 22 golden retrievers, would that be allowed?”
Wilson said the limit on dogs is four.
The board voted 4-1 to uphold Gugal-Okroy’s zoning violation.
And the pigeons are already gone:
King said it doesn’t matter that Kinser bought the 1.1-acre lot in 2000 with the intent of raising pigeons or that he built the coops shortly after his family moved into the house.
In Kinser’s neighborhood, and most other residential areas in Chesapeake, city code allows only domesticated birds that are kept indoors.
A pigeon in a coop isn’t indoors, King said. “Also, they are homing pigeons. You let them out to fly.”
He’s given away most of them, but three of them have have already homed. They are, after all, homing pigeons.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The number of do-nothing stay-at-homes continues to inch down:
(snip)
The total number of people receiving jobless benefits fell by 16,000 in the week ended March 24 to 3.34 million.
In addition to the jobless claims, the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs increased by about 17,000 to 3.26 million in the week ended March 17.
Crabby Appleton Politics 1
When you turn from the rhetoric of Republicans to their actions, it is difficult not to wonder whether one of their core values is kicking people when they are down.
The 30-year-old mother of two boys was stunned.
“It is written in stone that he’s covered,” Muhammad said of Samad, who qualifies for Medicaid based on his serious medical condition, not the family’s income level. “He’s pacemaker-dependent . . . [H]is heart will not beat without a pacemaker.”
But the heartbeat of the fragile little Samad was clearly not a priority for welfare officials, who informed Muhammad that she had failed to renew his benefits – even though she said she had not received renewal paperwork in the mail – and that she’d have to reapply.
Wars and Rumors of Wars on Women 0
Dick Polman wonders at the polls regarding Mitt the Flip’s relative unpopularity amongst women voters and wonders from whence comes the unpopularity.
He concludes that Republicans just can’t help themselves. A nugget:
