ricketyclick

Outstanding bit of satire from Iowahawk:

All new for 2012, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the mandatory American car so advanced it took $100 billion and an entire Congress to design it. We started with same reliable 7-way hybrid ethanol-biodeisel-electric-clean coal-wind-solar-pedal power plant behind the base model Pelosi, but packed it with extra oomph and the sassy styling pizazz that tells the world that 1974 Detroit is back again — with a vengeance.

We’ve subsidized the features you want and taxed away the rest. With its advanced Al Gore-designed V-3 under the hood pumping out 22.5 thumping, carbon-neutral ponies of Detroit muscle, you’ll never be late for the Disco or the Day Labor Shelter. Engage the pedal drive or strap on the optional jumbo mizzenmast, and the GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition easily exceeds 2016 CAFE mileage standards. At an estimated 268 MPG, that’s a savings of nearly $1800 per week in fuel cost over the 2011 Pelosi.

Read the whole thing.

Pretty damn funny, huh? Filthy scumbag Rick Roberts at KFMB 760AM in San Diego thought so to. He liked it so much he just cut and pasted the whole thing onto his website without attribution.

You see, people who do cool stuff on the Internet aren’t real; they’re magic elves who generate stuff for real journalists and entertainers, and therefore do not deserve credit.

Filthy scumbag authorized journalists like Rick Roberts, on the other hand, deserve an on-air kick in the balls, followed by an on-air firing.

Oh, and Rick? Rick, you filthy thieving scumbag? If you ever get around to apologizing, say you’re sorry for being a filthy scumbag thief, OK? Don’t apologize for making a mistake in judgement, and don’t say you’re sorry Iowahawk let his feelings get hurt, when he should be proud he’s supplying material to a media god like yourself.

I note some of Scumbag Thief Rick’s commenters are thinking he actually got permission from Iowahawk.

No. He’s just a filthy scumbag thief, per Iowahawk himself.

By the way, Filthy Scumbag Rick put this up November 21, over a month ago. Still not corrected.

…Or else:

From Bill St. Claire, via Billy Beck.

Gun fearing socialist pussies everywhere, relax: my favorite African-American, Kim du Toit, is closing The Other Side of Kim, having gotten tired of shouting the ugly truth into the faces of people who have an ideological commitment to not hearing it.

When he started, he was one of the few strong advocates for the crazy idea that ordinary American citizens, men and women regardless of creed or color, were competent to run their own affairs, even in matters of life and death. He started the idea of National Buy a Gun Day, as a part of his Nation of Riflemen campaign, aimed at re-arming the militia of which the Second Amendment speaks, the unorganized one.

He has also been a tireless critic of communism, socialism, nannyism,and big government generally.

He was one of my very first daily-read bookmarks when I myself realized that the Second Amendment imposed much the same duty as the first: to actively participate in the nation’s political process in ways far beyond mere voting. (What, you thought the First Amendment was all about Freedom From Religion, and your right to buy, sell, and make child pornography?)

He put his money where his mouth is, nearly suffering financial ruin when his employer discovered he, uh, Spoke Real Truth to Real Power, and fired him. So great was his distress that he actually sold off some of his substantial collection of firearms to make ends meet. (And you may judge the size and value of that arsenal by the fact that selling off only a part of it actually made a difference in the finances of a family, including teenagers, who had recently purchased a new home in Dallas.)

He has also taken dozens of people, men, women, and children, Off to the Range, and taught them how to shoot. Fittingly, one of his last posts today was about one such excursion.

All Americans can be proud that when he escaped from the hell hole of South Africa he chose to come here; all Texans can be proud that when he abandoned Mayor Daley’s fiefdom to its own rot, he came here. He came not for a free handout, but to do his part in holding the line in the world’s Last, Best Hope for Liberty.

He, a foreigner, has been a better American than I, a native; indeed, a far better American than almost all of us, including especially many of those who now hold elective office. He took an oath to become one of us, he meant it, and he’s done his level best to keep it.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Please enjoy having a private life again; you have already done more than your share.

I hate flow-restricted faucets. I can adjust the faucet myself, thanks, and sometimes I want that pot or bucket to fill up as quickly as possible, please.

But you can’t buy unrestricted aerators anymore. Federal law mandates that you can’t draw more than 2.2 gallons/minute from your tap.

My old kitchen sink aerator got clogged awhile back, and I couldn’t clean it out, so I had to buy a new one, and just tolerate the restricted flow. Then it got clogged, and I took it apart to clean it:

Restricted flow aerator completely disassembled.

Here’s a close up of the key parts:

Aerator core parts. Flow restrictor plate on the right.

That flat plate on the right, with the hole in the middle? That’s the flow restricter. All the water must flow through that hole.

Turns out, the aerator works just fine without it. I had thought it was glued in place, but it only snaps in; a small hemostat or needle nose pliers will yank it out presto-change-o.

Take that, bureaucratic scum!

[That part in the middle is the mixer, the thing that does the actual aeration. It goes in pin-down, as shown in the first picture.]

Dead on. I even seem to remember, back in the early days when high-end crypto was banned for international trade, that advocates were in fact invoking the Second Amendment in public, although I don’t recall that it was ever invoked in court. Pity, that.

The Right to Keep and Bear isn’t just about firearms. It’s about being able to resist the government with whatever tools come to hand.

jim Treacher:

I heard Carl Cameron once answered his hotel room door in a full Wonder Woman costume

I’m not sayin’ it’s true, I’m not sayin’ it’s not. That’s just what I heard. And no, I won’t tell you who said it. Under the new standard of journalism, it’s plausible until proven otherwise. And I get to decide what constitutes proof.

Better get out in front of this one, Carl!

[My link, for those of you wondering what the hell this is about.]
Jim, if Carl wants to run around hotels in her Wonder Woman costume, that’s entirely her business, as long as she doesn’t start lassoing other guests.

Meanwhile, here’s the story I want tracked down:

Been hearing unattributable talk that to deflect from Obama’s inability to deliver on his promises, or do much of anything with the economy, Democrats will divert attention the old fashioned way. Moscow Trials. The machinery is supposedly in motion to drag the entire Bush administration before congressional inquisitions. If you think there’s raw feelings now between the Obama left and constitutional Americans, you ain’t seen nothing yet. It also looks like Democrats Dodd, Frank, et al, will escape scrutiny for their major role in the subprime disaster. Sweet being a Democrat these days. eh wot?

As one of Roger’s commenters says, “Thats the step that will end liberal democracy. When going out of power leads to personal jail time or execution - no one will go out of power freely.”

Spread this one far and wide. Demand President-Elect Hussein prove it wrong.

I mean, it’s not any worse than the charge that President Chimpy personally ordered airliners flown into the World Trade Center as a kind of Reichstag Fire maneuver, is it?

Moreover, if BO is even remotely thinking of this, maybe airing it out will kill the idea, like, oh, say, exposing his entire Transition “Platform”, the one where he proposes mandatory servitude for all teenagers, made it fall down the memory hole.

(No, no, that last is absolutely true. People have screen shots.

(That’s going to have to be the rule for reporting on Obama’s Presidency. Save screenshots and local copies, because whenever he’s caught out telling the truth about what he wants to do, the official copies will disappear. )

There’s a paper floating around [PDF, 935 KB] alleging that Barack Obama is hypnotizing his followers using the techniques of “Neurolinguistic programming”, aka NLP.

You know, it’s tempting. Obama has captured so many otherwise intelligent, educated, sophisticated, well meaning people, and convinced them to believe things that simply do not hold up when examined closely (or even casually). At the same time, he’s managed to keep people, including virtually the entire press corp, from examining closely not only his ideas, but his past associates, words, and actions.

Discredited socialist, central-planner politics aside, I find Obama profoundly creepy, and don’t really understand what people see in him.

I absolutely agree that “this unaccomplished man’s unnatural and irrational rise to the highest office in the world [is] suspicious and frightening”.

However, scanning through this paper — no. I can’t easily identify it, but it has the faint reek of crank to it. The crowded formatting, the lack of a by-line on the first page, the exhortation to read the table of contents….

The command to “READ THIS DOCUMENT IN ORDER, FROM BEGINNING TO END, AS DEFINITIONS ARE BUILT ON TOP OF ONE-ANOTHER, AND UNDERSTANDING OF THESE DEFINITIONS IS NECESSARY TO FOLLOW LATER INTERPRETATIONS AND ANALYSIS”.

Sigh. All-caps, in an extra-large typeface. It might as well have more than three exclamation points at the end, the inarguable sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head!!!!

There’s the desperate footer, “EXPOSING OBAMA’S DECEPTION MAY BE THE ONLY WAY TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY”. Again, note the all-caps.

Then there’s this video:

Here’s the give-away: many, many vaguely threatening clips of Obama, but not one clip of him actually speaking, nothing demonstrating the techniques allegedly in use.

Notice the oddly cadenced narration (”Why, it’s almost as if the narrator wants to hypnotize us to bypass our rational…Oh.”), and the vaguely threatening background music straight from the X-Files.

Oh, yes, Hitler and his rallies put in an extended appearance.

Not proof that this is crackpot work, but there’s simply too many signs to take it seriously.

Obama is indeed a dangerous demagogue, but he is using techniques that have been used for centuries, not some weird modern mind-control.

Via M. Simon’s Classical Values. I do recommend Simon’s article on “The Cult of Personality” at his other blog, Power and Control.

Update:
The Language Log has another skeptical article on Obama and NLP, with excellent comments on the history of NLP.

Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

[YouTube link.]

To summarize the fates of the executives in the Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom scandals:

• Bernard Ebbers, Worldcom: 25 years in prison
• Ken Lay, Enron: Convicted on 10 counts, died before serving sentence
• Jeff Skilling, Enron: 24 years in prison
• Andrew Fastow, Enron: 10 years in prison
• Dennis Koslowski, Tyco: 8 years in prison
• Mark Schwartz, Tyco: 8 years in prison

What’s happening to the two executives at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandels, necessitating a $700 Billion bailout?

Franklin Raines never faced criminal charges, and instead settled a civil suit with a $2 million payoff — which came from Fannie Mae’s insurance company.  Jim Johnson didn’t even have to do that much. And where are they now?  The Washington Post reported twice that Raines was advising the Barack Obama campaign, although they denied it.  Jim Johnson still advises the Obama campaign and had briefly led the search for a running mate.

While I can’t be certain, I think a tiny part of the apparent discrepency might possibly maybe sort of slightly just a bit might have something to do with the fact that Fannie and Freddy were, and are, creatures of the government doing the socialist biddings of the Democrats in Congress.

Truth to tell, if Raines and Johnson were called to count, a number of Congresscritters would be frog-marched oout of the Capital; can’t be havin’ none o’ that, eh?

Congress does its part to increase biodiversity with the Endangered Species Act:

Ferraro, McIntosh, and Ospina (2007) find that the ESA has, in fact, failed to protect endangered species. Indeed, their evidence indicates that for a large majority of the species studied, listing under the ESA has actually harmed the species’ chances of recovery.

Ferraro et al examine two different elements of the ESA’s operation: the impact of listing a species as being endangered, and the effects of species-specific government recovery expenditures. After taking both listing and spending into account, the authors find that the overall effect of the ESA has been to reduce listed species’ chances of recovery, although this negative effect is small. They go on to show that there are quite dramatic differences in outcomes depending on the level of spending on species recovery programs. For the 25 percent of the listed species that garner about 95 percent of all government recovery funding, the ESA seems to have produced improvements in the chances of recovery. But for the other 75 percent of species, those that are largely ignored by the funding process, the ESA has sharply reduced species’ viability, compared to unlisted species that are otherwise similar except for listing status. Thus, for most of the species studied, the ESA has had perverse consequences, reducing rather than enhancing survival chances.

…

It may seem odd that a law ostensibly designed to protect species could end up harming them. Yet there are at least two mechanisms through which this may occur. First, there is the well-known “shoot, shovel, and shut up” response to the ESA: When species on private land are listed, property owners may attempt to rid themselves of the species to avoid government restrictions on the use of their land.

But there is a more subtle effect that may be at work here. Some species are under threat from other non-human species or from climate-forced habitat change, rather than from assaults by landowners. The best long-term hope for these species may be proactive assistance (e.g., control of exotic species) from the owners of the land on which they reside.

…

This brings us back to the importance of species-specific recovery expenditures. Enforcement activities might well deter active hostility toward listed species on private land. But only spending for programs such as habitat acquisition is likely to boost private efforts to aid maintenancedependent species.

Although Ferraro et al have left some important loose ends, their message is ominous. The ESA does not merely fail to provide widespread species protection; it is positively harmful for most endangered species. Given the widely acknowledged costs of the ESA, perhaps it is time to change the way we think about—and behave toward—species conservation.

[Via Overcoming Bias.]

Three approaches here:

1. Leave it alone.
2. Throw money at private initiatives.
3. Deprive landowners of the full use of their land without compensation.

The first two work. The last actually defeats the stated goal — but does usurp property rights. Ask me if I believe your average congresscritter actually gives a rat’s ass about spotted owls or snail darters. Ask me if I think your average congresscritter can pass up the chance to usurp property rights — or to take your money in service to a cause a handful of whacko activists make a lot of noise about.

Tell me again, tell me exactly, why you think these greedy, powermad sons of bitches need to be anywhere between you and your doctor.

Or between you and your mortgage, for that matter.

A convicted sex-offender dies while trying to ruin the life of a 17 year old girl.

David Meyers (pictured), 52, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after officers arrived following a report of a home invasion in the 3500 block of West 79th Street at about 3:20 a.m.Officers said they found Robert McNally, 64, on the floor with his arm around the neck of Meyers, struggling to hold him down.

When officers told McNally he could let go, they found that Meyers was unresponsive. Medics who were called to the scene then pronounced Meyers dead.

Indianapolis police Sgt. Matt Mount said Meyers had come into the home naked, except for a mask and latex gloves.

“He had rope, had a knife, had condoms, had a gag,” Mount said.

Police said Meyers had gotten into the home through a window next to the girl’s bedroom and that he knew the home well because his uncle owns it and he was an acquaintance of the family.

…

Meyers was a registered sex offender and was released from prison two years ago after he had served 10 years of a 20-year sentence for criminal confinement and sexual deviate conduct stemming from a case in Hamilton County.

“Criminal confinement”? I have a bad feeling this means the guy kidnapped some girl and played with her for hours or days before being caught, then bargained the charges down.

I want parole hearings to be public records, including the names of the board members, and I want reporters on cases like this to point their fingers at the culprits.

via Clayton Cramer.

heheheh:

Girl’s father to every future suitor - “You know son, I killed the last guy who tried to have sex with my daughter, with my bare hands. You two have a good time at the movies now, don’t be out too late”