(Headline hint: Seinfeld, puffy shirt)
A Near Darwin Moment
November 4, 2010 4 Comments
So if I’m reading this right, some guys dressed as cops broke into a home, beat the crap out of the residents, and took their stuff.
The residents called the real cops — the Dallas Police Department — which didn’t respond for three hours.
When the DPD dispatch did respond, they sent a cop in an unmarked car.
Resident not at the hospital sees this fishy scene — the cop in an unmarked unit arriving some three hours after the 911 call — and gets scared. She fires a shot at the car.
That’s my takeaway?
Seriously, this has to be made up. Three hours after the 911 call, the DPD sends an unmarked car to a house where the home invaders broke in dressed as cops.
A New Morning in America
November 4, 2010 Leave a Comment
The Establishment GOP, Rove and all the rest of the tired old machine are spending this week elbowing for their piece of the pork, laying claim to victories that aren’t theirs, and blaming each other for where they failed.
Meanwhile, someone else is looking forward. And rubbing the left’s noses in it.
They Rapin’ Ever’body Up in Here
August 2, 2010 2 Comments
Skip to the 0:58 second mark. This guy is awesome.
Robin Hood: Not a Socialist, You Know
July 30, 2010 2 Comments
I never understood why anyone thought Robin Hood was some kind of socialist. He robbed from the tax collectors and gave the money back to the people who earned it. But Cathy Young goes even further, saying the Ridley Scott libertarian Robin Hood is the closest thing to the original legend we’ve seen.
The Ridley Scott film Robin Hood has drawn some critics’ political ire. In The Village Voice, Karina Longworth laments that “instead of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood preaches about ‘liberty’ and the rights of the individual†and battles against “government greed.†New York Times critic A.O. Scott strikes a similar note, mocking the movie as a “medieval tea party†and declaring: “You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is…a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles.â€
Whatever you may think of Scott’s newest incarnation of the Robin Hood legend, it is more than a little troubling to see alleged liberals speaking of liberty and individual rights in a tone of sarcastic dismissal. This is especially ironic since the Robin Hood of myth and folklore probably has much more in common with the “libertarian rebel†played by Russell Crowe than the medieval socialist of the “rob from the rich, give to the poor†cliché. At heart, the noble-outlaw legend that has captured the human imagination for centuries is about freedom, not redistribution, a fact that is reflected in many previous screen versions of the Robin Hood story.
The earliest Robin Hood ballads, which date back to the 13th or 14th century, contain no mention of robbing the rich to give to the poor. The one person Robin assists financially is a knight who is about to lose his lands to the machinations of greedy and unscrupulous monks at an abbey. (Corrupt clerics using the political power of the Church are among Robin Hood’s frequent targets in the ballads.) The Sheriff of Nottingham is Robin’s chief opponent; at the time, it was the sheriffs’ role as tax collectors in particular that made them objects of popular loathing. Robin Hood is also frequently shown helping men who face barbaric punishments for hunting in the royal forests, a pursuit that was permitted to English nobles but strictly forbidden to the lower classes. In other words, he opposes privilege bestowed by political power rather than earned wealth.
Net Find O The Day
July 29, 2010 4 Comments
The Female Privilege Checklist (courtesy mepersoner)
1) Due to anti-discrimination laws, if I compete against a man for a job, all other things equal, I’ll get the job because it’ll look good on paper.
2) I can use sex appeal to get practically anything I want from any male at any time.
3) If somebody says something derogatory towards my partner, I will not be expected to fight that person.
4) If I hit a man and he hits me back – he’ll get the jail time.
5) I can sexually harass men as much as I want, and if they complain they’re gay.
6) If I ever rape a man, he won’t say anything for fear of being labeled a pussy. If he does say something, he’ll probably just be laughed at.
7) If I ever beat up a man, he won’t say anything for fear of being labeled a pussy. If he does say something, he’ll probably just be laughed at.
8 ) If he doesn’t orgasm when we have sex, it’s his fault.
9) If I don’t orgasm when we have sex, it’s his fault.
10) I’m in charge in the relationship regardless of what any book says.
11) If I have kids and split from the father, I’ll get the kids.
12) …and he’ll have to pay me.
13) If I pursue a career I’m commended as being an empowered female.
14) Anytime I do well in business, the media will look at me as some messiah because I’m a woman. Everyone will be impressed.
15) My parents were more loving to me and harder on my brothers.
16) As a child I was taught necessary skills to survive in the world on my own, such as better communication skills and the ability to make food.
17) If I cry everyone huddles around and hugs me, telling me to feel better.
18) If I get angry or sad, I can blame it on it being “that time of the month.” Everyone will understand.
19) Worst case scenario I need to lose some weight and use makeup to be attractive, unlike guys who are either attractive or they aren’t.
20) If I like to spend money, it’s expected.
21) If I have sex with a lot of people, I maybe labeled a slut, but that just means more people will try to have sex with me.
22) There is a wide variety of different styles and types of clothing available to me. Same goes for jewelery and perfumes.
23) I’m taught the skills necessary to make it on my own, but that it’s okay to rely on others – unlike a males who generally aren’t taught to even cook and that they must compete over every last little thing. If they lose, they’re lesser men.
24) If a crime is committed against me, the punishment will always be worse than it would be for committing it against a man.
25) Regardless of how much or how little I do around the house, I can nag my boyfriend/husband for not doing enough and he’ll put up with it.
26) If I get pregnant, regardless of what the father wants, I can choose to abort the child or not abort the child.
27) If I make more money than my husband, people will think more of me and less of him.
28) If I look down I can expect everyone, even complete strangers, to care and tell me to cheer up or smile. They’ll do little extra things to try and make me feel better.
29) If I don’t want to have sex early on, people don’t wonder if I’m gay.
30) I have the privilege of being fully aware of these advantages, and I use them in excess.
Gun Sales Up, Crime Down. Naturally
June 9, 2010 10 Comments
Via PeterK, we have this from John Lott:
President Obama surely didn’t intend it, but he deserves some credit for last year’s 7.4 percent drop in murder rates. His election caused gun sales to soar, and crime rates to plummet.
At the same time gun sales were soaring, there was an unusually large drop in murder rates. The 7.4 percent drop in the murder rate was the largest drop in murder rates since the 1999. For those who don’t remember, 1999, when President Bill Clinton and Columbine occurred, was another time when gun sales soared. With people such as Elena Kagan serving as Mr. Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser were pushing hard for more gun control, Americans were worried that more gun bans were coming. And in response gun sales soared.
While gun sales started notably rising in October 2008, sales really soared immediately after Mr. Obama won the presidential race. 450,000 more people bought guns in November 2008 than bought them in November 2007, that’s over a 40 percent increase in sales. By comparison, the change from November 2006 to November 2007 was only about 35,000. Over the last decade, the average year-to-year increase in monthly sales was only 21,000.
The increase in sales continued well beyond November 2008. From November 2008 to October 2009, almost 2.5 million more people bought guns in the 12 months after the election than in the preceding 12 months. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, doesn’t tell us how many guns each person bought just the number of people who bought them. Most likely though, gun sales rose by more than the number of people who purchased them.