Oh, Right, That'll Work

Utterly confused and leaderless, the Philly police department figures some PR will help deflect criticism:

As the homicide rate continues to soar and families continue to grieve over loved ones claimed by the gun violence suffocating the city, Police Commisioner Sylvester Johnson has a plan.

It will require high-ranking officials, including himself, to take turns working crime-filled districts one night a week.

The Phinqy, of course, blames the guns for the violence.

On the other hand, you can backslap a Philly politician because they at least managed to ban smoking in bars. Way to go!

In a sort-of related story, the Phinqy manages to boost its contention (and that of leftists everywhere) that it is guns that drive violent behavior:

Speaking on a day when Philadelphia recorded its third gun killing in 24 hours, Rendell said that if lawmakers' terms were limited, they might be less fearful of the gun lobby and more likely to support a long-stalled proposal to limit handgun purchases to one a month.

"That law should be passed," Rendell said. "No one who is sane and rational would vote against one handgun a month."

I'm sane. I'm rational. I don't even own a gun. But, I'd vote against a law forbidding you from buying more than one a month. Hell, if it looks like the state is getting close to passing such a law, I'm going out and buying a couple of guns immediately.

Of course, Rendell is generally high when it comes to the things he wants to do with the state government, having enacted slot-machine-gambling as a tax-hike-dodge and now proposing a slew of fixes that need the votes of the fixed to pass, ensuring they won't:

Limit campaign contributions. Expand access to government records. Set term limits for lawmakers. Shrink the legislature. Change the way legislative districts are drawn. Choose judges through a "merit" system instead of electing them.

I'm for much of this, though I can't see any state representatives voting themselves out of existence. I hear the jobs are too sweet with perks.

Nitpicking the Nitwits

Oh, yeah, it's a nit to pick:

1,000 rally to call for end to Iraq war

The crowd moved slowly through Oakland -- stopping to rebuke Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute for developing technology for the military -- before finally coming to its final destination.

Okay, so a thousand (maybe) idiots march to protest a war that doesn't affect their lives in any way, shape, or form. They suffer not one whit from the war. And, yet, they march.

Hey, it's their free time, do what they want with it.

The media, on the other hand, is a different animal. That the writer used "final" twice in five words should tell you something about the intelligence level of the average newspaperman. That a newspaper thought a thousand nitwits marching in protest of a war that doesn't cause anybody any hardship (aside from military families and Iraqis, of course) amazes me daily. It's almost as if reality doesn't exist for some people.

The American Left

What the hell is wrong with these people? At least they're not pretending to support the troops, but burning them in effigy? Isn't there a Stalinist regime somewhere on the globe these people can move to?

Buying Votes with Your Money

Apparently, the federal government doesn't need all the money it extorts from the citizenry:

House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year.

So far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap.

But at least a few Republicans and conservative Democrats who otherwise would vote "no" remain undecided, as they ponder whether they can leave on the table millions of dollars for constituents by opposing the $124 billion war funding bill due for a vote on Thursday.

That's a little more than $20 billion in theft by Democrats looking to fund pet projects in their home districts.

Life Sentences in England

You murder two kids, confess, and get sentenced to life in Britain and you might get out early:

A habitual cannabis user was jailed for life today for the "savage and brutal murder" of two school friends, promoting calls for a public health campaign about the side effects of the drug.

Tom Palmer, 20, will serve a minimum of 18 years.

Those Europeans are so sophisticated with their "only shades of gray" approach to the world.

Found on the Cutting Room Floor

This wasn't in the movie about Gandhi:

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

My estimation of Gandhi has just been radically altered from "non-violent anti-tyranny revolutionary" to "complete and total idiot."

Political Reality

From Victor Davis Hanson, some truths about modern politics:

In today's Roman circus, talking populist while enjoying the high life mixes no better for the left than mouthing old-fashioned virtue and living the low life do for the right.

Billionaire liberal George Soros has harangued the Bush administration for its supposed amorality in Iraq. But he's bought into it — literally. Capitalist profit seems always to trump his loud leftist ideology. That might explain why Soros' management company just purchased nearly 2 million stock shares of Halliburton, the contractor formerly run by hobgoblin to the left Dick Cheney and now demonized by liberals as a war profiteer.

Al Gore has preached to millions about the dangers of climate change caused by profligate carbon emissions. But his mansion and the private jets he has often used burn up far more fossil fuels than what the average citizens whom Gore browbeats to change their wasteful lifestyles consume.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi promised to end the privilege of Republican elites. Well and good. But as speaker of the House, she requested a gas-guzzling outsized jet for her personal trips back to San Francisco — at a cost that far surpassed that accorded to her predecessor.

Presidential candidate John Edwards serially laments the "two Americas," one wealthy, one poor. But this multimillionaire trial lawyer just finished building a new 28,000 square-foot mansion. His palace is beyond the means even of most people belonging to Edwards' rich nation who supposedly benefit at the expense of poorer Americans.

And the mainstream media keeps this information from you, because if you knew, you'd never vote for a Democrat candidate ever again.

Why Would You Want to Defend Yourself?

Lindsay Bayerstein posts this godawful tripe over on the This Modern World blog. She seems to think you have a moral duty to allow yourself to be robbed if someone has chosen to rob you.

Keeping a gun at home to protect against robbers seems like an especially silly idea in a big city where the police can arrive at the scene in less time than it takes to open your gun safe, load your gun, and confront the burglar.

If you’re already getting burglarized, do you really want to add to your problems by confronting a desperate criminal with your own loaded weapon? That’s as dumb as trying to fight a mugger for your wallet.

Lindsay is an idiot. She deserves to be robbed and mugged, often.

Notes on a (non)Scandal

Idiots will continue to press the firing of some US attorneys as a Bush Scandal. My guess is they will ultimately fail in creating a scandal. But, hey, they can try. Give Will Bunch of Attytood some anti-credit for not detecting a similar scandal when Bill Clinton fired all of the US attorneys and replaced them: at least Bunch is totally partisan.

Imitating Clinton

Shrimpy McBushitlerburton is obviously going to face media-generated "scandals" for the rest of his term in office. We'll see how they stick, but this latest attempt to gin-up a scandal where none exists is silly and pathetic:

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to a White House spokeswoman.

Gonzales approved the idea of firing a smaller group of U.S. attorneys shortly after taking office in February 2005. The aide in charge of the dismissals -- his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson -- resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.

Lawmakers requested the documents as part of an investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated.

Clinton fired all 93 prosecutors after he took office and not one newspaper reporter or politician smelled a scandal.

Fake Bad News

I just heard my radio news announcer report that because of bad weather, retail sales didn't rise as much as "experts" had forecast. Sheesh. Retail sales increased, but the increase is bad news because it didn't match or exceed the prognostications of some financial markets analysts, and this is passed on as "bad news" to the average prole by the mainstream news media so that you feel bad about the state of things. Or something.

Global Warming Faithful Freeze in Arctic Trip

For a religion, Global Warming and environmentalism are strangely populated by idiots, nitwits and morons:

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

You don’t say. And now, a punchline of such sublime delusion it’s impossible to imagine it being said with a straight face:

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,” Atwood said. “But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Download this video now before the GloboWarmo clowns succeed in getting it removed, or see it here, now. It's The Great Global Warming Swindle.

An Idiot's Idiot

Will Bunch of the Philly Daily News:

The Inquirer's Gail Shister has a really good profile of my former high-school newspaper editor, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (and despite what you'd expect, there were no rants about Ford's pardon of Nixon, the big issue in the fall of 1974).

Now you know why Will Bunch sucks as a journalist/blogger: he thinks Kieth Olbermann has redeemable qualities as a journalist.

Try Anything

Gay ex-governor and eterna-loser James McGreevey is now at rock bottom:

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey is seeking sole custody of his five-year-old daughter and child support from his estranged wife.

Another reason to hate lawyers.

What I Said About Philly is True for PIttsburgh, Too

Pennsylvania's two major cities are both riven with corruption and ineptitude, helmed by socialist-leaning Democrats who are bankrupt of ideas and beholden to special interests. Both cities are failing their residents. Both cities refuse to cast off their Democrat Party allegiance and look to their needs with a clear eye, and here we have Pittsburgh lining itself up for a decade or more of guaranteed failure:

The winner of the general election will serve out the term the late Bob O'Connor won in 2005, and face the voters again in 2009. In a city that hasn't driven a mayor from office since 1936, that person could be mulling whether to run again in 2013 and 2017.

Though the city is constrained by budgetary limits and state oversight, some argue that in the next decade the mayor will be as important as ever.

In Pittsburgh, the Republicans don't even bother to put up serious candidates because the population has been so totally brainwashed by the Democrats and local media to consider them evil robber barons intent on looting the public coffers and closing down the government.

Which, considering that's what the Democrats do by actual governance, is funny.

More Misery on the Way for Philadelphia

Consider this:

According to a poll released yesterday by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, residents are contemptuous of city government and sour on Mayor Street, who is barred from seeking reelection this year after serving two terms.

Seventy-six percent said city government was "pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves." Fifty-three percent said city officials "waste a lot of money." Half said "quite a few" officials were corrupt.

Yep, like any major city run soley by the Democratic Party for decades, Philadelphia is a complete and total mess. The public is upset with the standard of living and afraid for their lives (high murder and mugging rates). Mayor Street was investigated by the FBI during the last election cycle and still managed to win re-election. The city government is filled with incompetent and inept politicians looking for positive headlines in the Phinqy, not positive results in policy. Hence: they banned smoking on certain kinds of private property and are looking to ban trans fats from restaurants.

Would a Republican make things better? Who knows? But this only ensures another four years of misery:

Whoever wins the Democratic primary - the victor will be regarded as a shoo-in in November's general election - will automatically be more popular than the incumbent.

The Democrats have already proved they can't do anything to improve the city, time and time again. Year after year, the Democrats only make the city worse. Oh, maybe there's a non-socialist Democrat out there not beholden to the education union who could figure out how to make the city work, but I doubt it.

Take the red pill, Philadelphia, and wake up.

Do the Math

God, I just love it when someone points this stuff out:

Personally, if the figures pan out, I’d be willing to pay the offset in the form of a tax just to be able, in perpetuity, to point out how simple it is to buy your way into compliance with Kyoto—without having to change your carbon-emitting habits one single bit. In fact, the more gas we burn, the quicker we reach compliance!

These fundamentalist environmentalists are just so stupid it's hard believe they can actually have any effect on the way people live their lives, but, hell, religion is religion, and people will believe anything, including "global warming."