2011 archive
QOTD 0
Agatha Christie’s character, Jane Marple:
I always think the worst. What is so sad is that one is so often justified in doing so.
Red Bull 0
Virginia Beach Democratic Committee Third Thursday Dinner 0
- What: Virginia Beach Democratic Committee Third Thursday Dinner
- When: July 21st, 6:00 PM
- Where: Kelly’s Hilltop Tavern, 1936 Laskin Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23454 (map), in the nonsmoking section.
Show up, order off the menu (separate checks), socialize, and talk politics–or whatever else interests you.
See the website for more information.
“World’s Dumbest” Candidate 0
No, I’m not talking about a politician for once.
I’m talking about TruTV.
I once worked with a railroad police captain on a series of projects.
One thing that really irked him was the “cops and doughnuts” stories. He used to complain, “I don’t even like doughnuts.”
He would have told this clown that this was a bad idea:
Apple Patent Trolling Defeated 0
The use of bogus patent and trademark suits as a tactic to stifle competition is growing.
It’s nice to see one squelched.
(snip)
In a ruling late Monday, the U.S. International Trade Commission’s six-judge panel affirmed a preliminary decision in May that Kodak’s technology doesn’t infringe on Apple’s patent rights and that one of the two patents in dispute is invalid.
Facebook Frolics 0
All your dataz are belongz to Facebook, Gold Card version.
Through the new “Link, Like, Love” application on the American Express Facebook page, customers can link card accounts to their own pages. Cardholders’ Facebook use and circle of online friends — what Palo Alto, California-based Facebook Inc. calls a user’s “social graph” — will be used to personalize merchant deals, entertainment offers and other perks.
Full disclosure:
I use my AmEx card to the exclusion of other cards.
AmEx has treated me well, including getting me reaccommodated in record time after a missed airline connection in Phoenix. I had arranged a new flight through them before I got through the line to the airline service desk.
I wouldn’t sign up for this on a bet.
Wishes Do Come True 0
Two men broke into a police van because they wanted to pose pictures of themselves being arrested.
They locked themselves in, then they got their pictures, full-face and profile, down at the station..
Recidivists 0
It really is time to start rounding up banksters and putting them in jail.
Not the street hoods. The Moriaritys.
QOTD 0
Robert Heinlein, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.
Foreign Agin’ 1
In considering the internal disagreements of the GOP faithful on foreign policy (basically, isolationism vs. all war all the time), Juliette Kayyem identifies the single principle of Republicanism (emphasis added):
The Republican Party no longer believes in anything, except that they want to be in charge of the pie, so they can consume said pie.
Gay-Dar Fail 0
He’s not.
The law on which this refusal was based dates back to the Reagan days, when AIDS was thought to be restricted to male homosexuals (and therefore was No Big Deal and the Wrath of God all in one) and no screening tests for HIV existed.
Mencken Was Right, Nancy Grace Dept. 0
Mencken was right when he said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
A surfeit of stupid, reported by John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. Here’s one example:
“I said, ‘Oh my God, help me,'” Sammay Blackwell, 26, told her local News on 6. “She hit me again, causing my vehicle to flip two-and-a-half times, landing on the driver’s side, and I just laid there playing dead.”
Charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, the alleged Oklahoma nutball reportedly told police she’d been “trying to save the children.”
More stupid to come: As Steve Chapman points out in the same newspaper, bad cases make bad law:
(snip)
The point of these measures is retribution against a single villain who allegedly escaped the severe penalty she deserved. But a law specifically aimed at preventing a repeat of today’s notorious case will almost certainly be irrelevant to the shocking crime of tomorrow. In these instances, the unforeseen and surprising are the norm.
From the push for Caylee’s Law, you might assume the problem with American justice is that there are not enough criminal laws on the books. In fact, there are some 4,400 such statutes at the federal level alone, on top of thousands more enacted by the states.
And, as Chapman goes on to explain persuasively, the law of unintended consequences is likely to result in any “Caylee’s Law” ensnaring some innocent someone into an unwarranted felony conviction.
The problem with the Casey Anthony case is that the prosecution either did not have or botched the case (I’m suspecting the former–suspicions are not evidence).
And now the lynch mob is forming to string up someone–anyone–in retribution.
Nose. Face. 0
TSA Security Theatre 0
Thoreau comments.
A Modest Proposal 0
Dana Garrett has a suggestion:
So instead of a balanced budget amendment, I recommend an amendment to the constitution that requires Congress to raise taxes across the board whenever the nation undertakes a major military endeavor to cover the FULL cost of the military endeavor.
It doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, but it does point out the absurdity of the current budget kabuki in Washington.
Follow the link to read his entire argument.