enormous iNCoNgrUiTieS|A Beacon of Intermittence

Slice and dice it however you want but Peter Tubic’s run in with the city of Milwaukee is nothing but state sponsored tyranny. Occurrences such as this goes on everyday in every city large and small. The arrogance of those who believe they are morally correct to take someone else’s house to satisfy a $50 fee is unfathomable. No entity other than the government could perpetrate such a fraud as running a fifty dollar nuisance fine stemming from a complaint over a zoning violation into a $2,600 obligation and foreclosing on the house for payment. For thumbing his nose at the little Eichmann’s at city hall, to borrow from that moron Ward Churchill, Tubic, who is disabled, is going to lose his paid-off home. The people in charge of this despicable practice as well as those who would justify it for any reason are rotton pieces of shit and I look forward to destroying them with extreme prejudice when the revolution starts. If you are down at city hall stealing from citizens, having blue hair will not save you when the retribution comes.

I would like to see these guys maintain their self-righteous smugness with this embedding in their forehead.

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What a shame that only after thirty-five years on the job does New Orleans Police Sgt. Bobby Guidry finally realize that cops are a bunch of assholes eat up with their own self-importance and superiority.

I would say that New Orleans is run by a bunch of retarded inbred morons but that would be an insult to retarded inbred morons.

Morons.

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Roger Vanderpool, Nevada DPS director:

“Photo enforcement exists to help slow people down, thereby ensuring the safety of everyone on the road. Sadly, some drivers have no regard for the safety of others as they continue to recklessly speed,” (Link)

In the story it seems a couple of dumbasses have been caught habitually speeding as if the cameras weren’t even there. So, what if you were not “recklessly” speeding? What if on a long stretch to work you routinely drive five miles over the limit? No more taxi cab stops or stopping past the white line or you can be subject to being arrested, jailed and fined. Well fined. The cops probably wait until the total fines are over $10,000 before sending out a squad car to pick these reckless citizens up. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

If you think cops are watching all this video for the sole purpose of public safety, you are naive. Video surveillance seems contrary in a free society but if we are going to have it we must be sure it’s done fairly. At a minimum we must make all real-time surveillance of all citizens freely accessible to the public.

Video sureillance of the public should not be left to the police. Let the public police themselves. Millions of eyes on millions of monitors. UsTube.com. At least that way the vigilant citizen can bring grief to errant public servants, which I bet would happen at a far greater rate for public officials than for ordinary citizens.

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Your being offended offends me, so let’s just call it even before I kick your ass. Because if you think my shirt is offensive, wait till my foot is wedged in your rectum.

An airline passenger claimed that a security guard threatened to arrest him because he was wearing a T-shirt showing a cartoon robot with a gun.

Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed ‘offensive.’ (Link)

I think they should publish the picture of the moron harassing people over a cartoon on a t-shirt. And since when does security screening have anything to do with screening for offensiveness? How fucking stupid is that? If I had the job over half the idiots couldn’t get on the plane.

Geez Louise. If culling dingy t-shirts with a cartoon are the depths to which screening for terrorists has sunk, how bout we cut back on some of these expensive security “officials.” We obviously have too many and I find it quite offensive to be paying for something that I find to be offensive.

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Barack Hussein Obama:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK” (Link)

Or, maybe the better question is How. How are you going to make us stop using our cars and living in conditioned air?

I guess maybe this is the Change of which Obama speaks.

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Bob Hezzelwood was kicked off Bonita beach for his skimpy swimsuit

“It frightens me and embarrasses me to go public with it. But by the same token, I don’t know what else to do,” Hezzelwood told The Naples News. “I’m a civilian out here who’s been picked on by a little bully deputy and that’s wrong. It’s just wrong.”

Yes it is, Bob. Yes it is.

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Since when is it against the law to study natural weather phenomena? Too bad somebody didn’t just kick the living shit out of the asshole Crane County Sheriff deputy, except I am sure the dickweed cop is more than willing to shoot anyone with the nerve to question his authority, much less lay hands on him. Not to mention the additional serious trouble one would be in for actually beating a stupid cop even though the beating was well-earned.

The worst thing about the whole stinking mess is that the asshole deputy is obviously supported by his asshole boss, Sheriff Robert DeLeon, and the local asshole judges which makes me think the whole matter is just another case of state-sponsored highway robbery. The only reason there was any problem was because there was an asshole cop present.

Crane County Sheriff’s Dept: 432-558-3571. Call em up and tell em they are a bunch of assholes.

UPDATE:

According to the January 31, 2008 edition of El Ave News Weekly, Crane County Sheriff DeLeon is running for re-election. He claims to “Protect and serve the people ‘always’”. Maybe someone could ask Sheriff DeLeon to explain exactly how he was protecting and serving the people by arresting a weather researcher and harassing a news reporter who were providing eyewitness information on a tornado to first response agencies.

Sheriff DeLeon is a Democrat so I suspect the truth of it is that they really need the $2,000. Every opportunity to scrape some money from the citizenry must be availed. All those new programs the Sheriff is so proud of are not cheap, even though they do serve the people.

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America is done. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.

Tuesday is the deadline for filing federal income taxes. Half of American taxpayers will pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes the government will collect for 2008, according to IRS data. The other half will pay little or nothing, yet receive billions in benefits in the form of cash, subsidies, “free” services and other benefits, and loans. There are indeed “Two Americas,” but the two aren’t the rich and poor, but taxpayers and tax consumers. (Link)

And I know that this will come as no surprise, but Pelosi and her liberal friends have much more shit on their agenda for which they will demand you and I pay. Well, I didn’t sign up to be a damn slave; I signed up for hard work and the American Dream. To date I have had plenty of the former and not much of the latter.

When the government takes more than I can afford to give, and leaves me with less than what I need for my own responsibilities (like sending my kids to college and providing for a reasonable retirement for me and the Wife,) that pretty much makes me a slave, or an indentured servant at the least.

For example, due to severe economic hardship over the past several years, I have no college savings and no retirement. We spent our savings to keep our house and to take care of our kids. And what did the government say when I went for assistance? “NO SOUP FOR YOU!” After working my ass off for thirty years, and paying unemployment taxes that would make the regular employee feel faint, all I got was “NO SOUP FOR YOU!! And by the way, here is your current tax bill. Pay us promptly or we will levy your house and bank accounts.”

Half the country is not going to continue to support the other half while providing less and less for their own. Nor should they. Nor would they be without the explicit threat of violence for refusal to pay. There will eventually be a breaking point and it could get nasty. Being an angry white male, I’m all for nasty. Until I have taken care of my own kids and provided for my own retirement I could give a shit about poor people or the environment. Make food out of poor people for all I care. Why should I provide for others to the detriment of my own? There is no reason academic or moral.

The government has made promises it can not keep. Due to its false pride the government is compelled to take whatever it can from whomever it can to fulfill its promises. At what point can a person say, “NO MORE!” I’ll tell you at what point, there is no point. Not if you put it into action. The police will come put you in jail or kill you if you resist too good.

We are free as long as we do as we are told, obey all the rules, and send in most of our money to the government. What a bargain!

PS: Re that last paragraph: I am quite certain there is more than one YouTube clip out there of Hillary saying pretty much the exact thing. Especially the soundbite “those who follow the rules…”

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And if you say Barak Obama I’ll puke.

I just read that the Banks are about to write off another $15 B. Are we over a trillion yet? A trillion dollars basically given to people to buy homes that they could not pay for. A good deal on the front end for those building homes, selling homes, financing homes, and The Home Depot; on the back end, not so good. For the middle class, who financed such largess since it was a government program that facilitated the boondoggle, it was a bad deal all around. Especially now that the people given a house they didn’t deserve are now classified as victims and eligible for even more monetary help they don’t deserve.

The Enron bubble seems to pale in comparison to the credit bubble. Lots of people — several of whom I know personally — lost everything they had due to Enron’s collapse (greed and corruption) so I wonder why we haven’t heard about all the people who have lost everything in the credit collapse? Did everybody at Bear-Stearns get to keep their pensions? If the government hadn’t bailed them out would everybody at Bear-Stearns get to keep their pensions? [More importantly, do the people at Bear Stearns deserve to keep their pensions? -Ed.]

How many times are we going to let big corporations (greed) and the government (corruption) destroy the economy? The American middle class is the most powerful economic engine the world has ever seen. The American middle class drives both the stock market and the government. Yet, in my brief recollection anyway, there has never been a economic meltdown caused by greed and corruption in the middle class. It’s always caused by those at the top.

Human beings, as a whole, are not capable of wielding power without corruption. Eventually they will set in motion events that are not to the benefit of the people they supposedly serve.

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There are so many things wrong with this story it’s not even funny. And, of course, it makes me very angry. Only a lying, arrogant sack of shit would proclaim himself a courageous leader while blaming the rejection of his attempt to implement state-sanctioned highway robbery as a simple matter of the poor common people’s obstinate resistance to change.

“It takes courage to ask people to change—even if it won’t really cost them much. It is sad but it is true. Political leaders today are afraid of their constituents,” he said in a speech at an environmental conference at Georgetown.

No, It takes courage to run as a Green candidate, you big loser, because no politician has ever been elected to save the planet. Next time, do us a favor and run as a Greenie. Besides, shouldn’t politicians be afraid of their constituents? If not afraid, then shouldn’t politicians at least be respectful of the needs of those they are elected to serve? Does Bloomberg really think his average constituent needs to shell out several hundred extra dollars a month because the city can’t manage their own traffic boondoggle? No politician is elected based on his or her promises to play wet nurse to Mother Earth. They seem to take on that job after they get into office since it presents a really effective way to swindle money from people.

Except for the mayor of New York and his enviro-whack cronies at the EPA, DoT, UN and other power-hungry, money-grubbing bureaucracies, no one cares that the mayor of New York isn’t doing enough to save the environment. For many people I’m sure there is a collective sigh of relief that Bloomberg wont be able to economically rape them because they have to drive into the city. I got news for Bloomberg, no one wants to drive in heavy traffic congestion and they for damn sure don’t want to pay the city $21 a day for the privilege of doing so.

As much as I’d like to hang this preposterous money-grubbing scheme on the despicable Mayor Bloomberg, it seems he has some allies in the Bush administration — if not Bush himself — who support this money grab.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters had said the administration hoped congestion pricing in New York could serve as a model for other cities nationwide. Charging drivers fees in congested city centers is a concept that has gained popularity around the world but has yet to be tried on a major scale in a large U.S. city.

By failing to pass congestion pricing before a midnight deadline on Monday, the state appeared to have forfeited an offer of $354 million in federal money to help kick-start the initiative.

So the citizens provide the start-up costs for their own further oppression? Isn’t that precious? The feds give NYC a third of a BILLION dollars of taxpayer money so they can build a clusterfuck bureaucracy to steal many more hundreds of millions from people required to commute to a job they probably really don’t even want.

I bet I can think of several different ways to alleviate traffic congestion that does not involve stealing money from middle-class commuters. I’ve written about some of these before and it’s very simple: Use telecom technology and common hub facilities to disperse the corporate workforces away from congested areas. Providing $354 Million dollars to those forward-looking entrepreneurs implementing the dispersal plan would be a good start.

But, you have to understand this will never, ever happen because it is simple, it requires no bloated bureaucracy to administer, it benefits the middle-class instead of taking their money from them, and it might actually work. Simple and effective solutions are not really desired by the politicians and no bureaucrat would ever disperse a taxpayer away from his or her tax base.

Big rotten chunks of the planet could be falling off into space and no politician would propose dispersing corporate workforces away from congested downtown areas.

I don’t care what anyone says, every single political issue no matter how it is wrapped up and sold to the gullible public is designed in an effort to take more money away from the middle class. If a problem happens to get solved, it is purely an accidental side-effect. As a matter of fact, I would be interested in knowing a single big problem since Smallpox was eradicated that was solved by any government program.

But wait, there’s more:

City officials estimated congestion pricing would reduce traffic by about 6 percent…

That’s it? Six percent? Bloomberg would rape and pillage a hundred million* people for a measly 6% reduction in traffic?

…and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue for transportation projects. Bloomberg shrugged off criticism that the fee was too high by comparing it to the price of a movie.

What an asshole. I’d like to see Bloomberg shrug off a brutal beating with a short length of rubber hose. Most people don’t go to the movies because it’s way too expensive for the value of the product. And most people certainly don’t want to have the price of a movie extorted from them every day they have go to work.

In lobbying for his plan, Bloomberg displayed a short fuse with anyone who didn’t support the idea, painting opponents as “stupid” people who didn’t care about the environment, progress and the health of asthma- afflicted children.

So if you don’t happily give to the government hundreds of dollars of money you don’t have so they can drop it down a black hole not only are you stupid but you don’t care about the environment, progress and the health of asthma- afflicted children.

I feel like I am constantly under attack by the government for my money. Our one lousy vote is insignificant in the face of the ubiquitous corruption in government. We can not vote ourselves out from under the oppression of outrageous taxation that even a two-worker family struggles to meet. So, what does that leave us with?

Until we can get the government back under the control of the common people, the American ideal of liberty and freedom is dead. If you don’t believe me, just try to not pay the congestion fee when it comes to a neighborhood near you.

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* I obviously pulled that number out of my ass, as there is no where near 100 million people in the State of New York let alone commuting to congested areas of Manhattan. I have no idea what I was thinking at the moment those brilliant words flowed from my pen, but 100 million is a big number and sure sounds good but it’s probably still a bit on the high side even after the new steal-money-from-those-suffering program spreads across the fruited plains from sea to shining sea, as the Bush administration supports. Unless you include those in Europe who have already been suckered into the program. That’ll probably get you to a hundred million.

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Related:

• Why Do We Have To Commute?
• Save my jet, please!
• The Internet will change everything II
• Change is in the air
• How the Internet is going to change everything

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Who do we have to kill to put a stop to this Islam madness? Obviously some killing is necessary since some killing is going on every day, but it’s evident we are not killing the right people. The Democrats say we shouldn’t be killing people in Iraq. I don’t think it’s hurting anything to be killing those in Iraq who want to die — a good thing, overall — but I’m thinking maybe we are not killing the right people in Iraq to put a stop to the bullshit. Or, more likely, the right people aren’t even in Iraq.

We are killing people in Afghanistan. Again, not a bad thing, but the Islamic bullshit is still going on there and all over the world. So I have a question for both the Democratic and Republican Commander in Chief wannabes: If we are not killing the right people now, where do you propose we start killing people next in an effort to end the Islamic reign of terror?

See, people, we have a problem. Our culture and institutions are under attack by a group of ruthless bastards that the liberals here and abroad would rather ignore and the conservatives don’t want to pursue into areas that might interfere with business. So we confine our efforts to Iraq and Afghanistan fighting some meaningless proxy skirmishes while the Muslims invade Europe, install sharia law in Canada, reek havok in Indonesia and Africa, rain rockets on Israel, and build atomic bombs in Iran.

The terrorists are not going to fight us to our face, they are going to explode bombs on innocents while they sleep and then disappear into the massive crowds of peaceful Muslims, who, because they are peaceful Muslims, can not be fucked with in any way.The Muslims aren’t (at first anyway) going to be riding around in old rusty pickup trucks packed with stinky men carrying Ak-47s, they are going to have a pack of lawyers at the courthouse.

I don’t think our guns here at home are going to be useful in the upcoming resistance to radical Islam at a location near you unless we are going to shoot the police when they come to our door with a court order demanding us, on pain of imprisonment, to quit doing whatever it is we are doing that the Muslims don’t like. Standing behind the police officers will be a CAIR plaintiff’s attorney with a smug smile on his/her face.

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Waterboarding OldPunk.

The blogosphere is not about free speech, initiating dialogue, speaking your mind, sharing your perverse views with others who may not have heard them before, or being the kind of dick who just pisses a whole bunch of people off to no purpose. It’s about climbing the ladder. The mainstream media is dying. The blogosphere is a tournament to determine who will replace them.

So, successful blogging is not about being a decent writer with original content and interesting, original takes on the events of the day?

You know the book, “Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned in Kindergarten”? Same principle applies here. Blogging is like coloring. You have to stay inside the lines. You can pick any outrageous color you want, and people will love you to death for your color choices (tits are the best colors, and PhotoShops of Hillary), but just remember to STAY INSIDE THE FUCKING LINES.

Okay, so it’s more of an echo chamber? That explains a lot.

Instapunk Update:

On the off chance that this post wasn’t servile enough, I want to take this opportunity to apologize personally to Ace of Spades, 2007 Conservative Blogger of the Year, for any implication or inference by OldPunk that Ace is somehow an ambitious, illiterate, sex-pandering, gay wannabe, one-joke practitioner of blogorrhea, meaning the nonstop posting of absolutely nothing just because the topic happens to be in the news and maybe we can dig up a mildly related old YouTube video that has tits and ass to boot.

I remember when Ace was just getting started it seemed he was forever humping Glenn’s leg like a little dog in hopes of a link. Coming from someone as sophomoric as Ace I was quite surprised that such a strategy would work with Glenn. So here we are four years later, Ace is conservative blogger of the year and has 21 million hits while I am hoping to reach 100K by the end of the year and have but a handful of people who link to my site (thank you all.) Thanks be to God for Google and the other search engines that apply a less personality and ego based objectivity when searching out relative content.

What really pisses me off is that so many of the blogs in “The Blogrolls” of almost every ‘A’ site are dead links. Anyone who knows anything about lists is that lists require management. The longer the list, the more list management required. The A-Listers would rather have a dead link than to color OUTSIDE THE FUCKING LINES.

I may be an idiot, but I am not an idiot like Ace. Until now I had no idea how an idiot like Ace could be so successful. My thanks to Instapunk for clearing it up for me.

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The subtext of the above brilliance is another piece of brilliance where InstaPunk had the balls to utter the word nigger.

Here’s the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE niggers. Black people know it. White people know it. And only black people are allowed to notice and pronounce the truth of it. Which would be fine. Except that black people are not a community but a political party. They can squabble with each other in caucus but they absolutely refuse to speak the truth in public. And this is the single biggest obstacle to healing the racial divide in this country. The dammed-up flood of good will in this nation for black people who want to work for their own American Dream is absolutely enormous. The biggest impediment is the doubt created in each and every non-black American by the clannish, tribalist, irrational defense of every low act committed by any black person. If you’re offended when Republicans defend Richard Nixon or when Democrats defend Chuck Schumer, imagine what it’s like when black people swarm the streets to defend Jeremiah Wright.

Yep, you definitely colored outside the lines there, my friend. But that’s okay, my nigga, because I like to color outside the lines myself from time to time.

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Man, what’s the world coming to?

A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground. (Link)

Seems only the federal government can pass such a law.

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Not much I can add to this:

[Sydney Blumenthal,] A senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to plead guilty to drunken driving after the arresting officer was ordered to Iraq making a trial on a more serious charge impossible, police said Monday.

That’s funny. I thought Hillary wanted to bring the troops home. But until then, one more wont matter I guess. I don’t know about any of you all, but I would have chipped in to have the cop flown flown back to the states for the trial. Round trip first class.

I would like a hearing into how the officer came to be “ordered” to Iraq.

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More proof that the school systems across the country are run by a bunch of socialists:

With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.

“It’s created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink,” said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.

This has become a lucrative business, Nason said, and those kids are walking around campus with upwards of $40 in their pockets and disrupting class to make a sale.

Where the hell you been, Mr Nason? Candy sales have been a lucrative business for quite some time. Should be a big spike in sales (and confiscations) this week, eh, Mr Nason? I guess all your special candy agents are in place for maximum enforcement of the candy laws.

Any capitalist knows (even aspiring young junior high capitalists it would seem) that it is not possible to ban a product that is in high demand without creating an intractable enforcement regime. This pattern can be seen occurring over and over again. There is simply no good way to ban things that people want.

But reality doesn’t matter to socialists, especially once a good idea is put into place. No amount of failure can make them stop. What, you think a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats with a cause are going to repeal the failed candy and soft drink prohibition act just because some unruly kids have plugged a market void, do you? Mark my words, a costly enforcement policy will be established including surveillance and severe consequences including suspension for bringing candy to school. Otherwise they can’t tell if their brilliant program is working.

The schools mandate is to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic and not worrying about whether a kid eats too much candy. Here’s an idea, how about teaching the kids that too much sweets are not good for them?

This whole situation is a result of Schwarzenegger’s do-gooder school nutrition BS out in California. Maria Shriver probably told him to do it.

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You wonder why people don’t care about the problems with over-zealous prosecutors and steadily increasing para military police forces and I agree the common ambivalence is baffling. Ironically, these same otherwise apathetic people — especially on the upper end of the socio-economic scale — once caught up in the cogs of justice at any level become very concerned about their heavy-handed treatment at the hands of the state and to their horror they find out no one cares except for the maybe the gossip rags if the alleged’s demise can sell a paper or TV commercial.

I think one reason for the lack of concern is because of the way police and crime are portrayed in the media. Cops and DA’s are the heroes of the show more often than not thus people tend to assume those accused of a crime are bad people guilty of whatever they’ve been charged. Even after being found not guilty there are many who are going to think the defendant was just able to beat the rap through technicalities or loopholes.

Another reason is that we seem to have a sick need to assess blame for all the world’s tragedies. Every poor bastard charged with DWI–whether a conviction is even a remote possibility or not–is the scapegoat for all the senseless deaths caused by drunk drivers; anyone accused of having “inappropriate” sex is the scapegoat for all the horrible sex crimes and/or child rape/homicide; anyone caught with a bag of weed is the scapegoat for all the crime and violence associated with the illegal drug trade.

Such is the basis for the powerful platitude “it’s for the children.”

Unfortunately, prosecutorial heavy-handedness is not always simply due to over zealous prosecutors. Some of the largest billy clubs used by the DA are codified in the statutes. The DWI and drug forfeiture laws are the best examples of this though the sex crimes are coming on strong.

For example, if someone is charged with DWI, even though the case is so weak it will never get a conviction–such as one where the field sobriety tests were performed adequately but the suspect refused to take the Breathalyzer–the alleged drunk driver is arrested, handcuffed, subjected to a humiliating experience in jail with some very unsavory people (the vast majority of whom are poor by the way,) denied the privilege to drive due to the confiscation of driver’s license on the spot, and relieved of a good portion of their savings account for attorney’s fees, SR22, occupational license, and other such money-grubbing malarkey.

A .08 blood alcohol content is not a lot of beers. Why would any thinking person supply the state with evidence that could lead to a slam dunk DWI conviction? I don’t care how it’s gussied up, or how many dead babies are strewn around the room by MADD while lobbying for the execution of first time DWI offenders, taking a person to jail and suspending their driving privilege because he or she refuses to give evidence that could convict them is a violation of the fifth amendment.

If someone can goose step a straight line repetitively while under the glare of a state trooper, kleg lights, and video recorder that person is sober enough to drive, in my opinion. However, the way the statutes are written, actually posing a threat to the public is not really the issue, it’s how much money can be sucked out of the public dupes.

This is just hearsay but it is first hand hearsay: There was this one DWI case with which I am familiar, the poor bastard passed the field sobriety but refused the breathylzer and was only about a half mile from his house and he asked the trooper to cut some slack since he did so good on the field tests and the trooper replied, paraphrased, “If I let you go now and something happens I’d be liable.”

So someone has to go to jail and be subjected to a year of administrative hell just so some lowly trooper isn’t liable for his actions. Makes perfect sense to me, I guess.

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How is it when rights and freedoms are being usurped from the people in the name of safety and security the mantra is always, “Well, if it saves just one life it’s worth it.” But when it is the right of the police state to continue with their botched SWAT para-military raids enforcing the failed War on Drugs an innocent life here or there is not that big a deal?

I bet for a tenth of the cost I could come up with a better, more effective drug policy than the War on Drugs zero tolerance bullshit with which we are now saddled. And half of that amount would go into my pocket for being so smart. If we can damn near eliminate one of the most addictive substances known to mankind, nicotine, in a single generation with nothing but public disapproval and admonishment, then I see no reason why the same can not work for other addictive substances.

One reason why I think the decriminalization path is rejected out of hand is because the distinction between those who without the drug addiction have opportunity and those who don’t will be painfully evident to the social do-gooders. Better to point at the drugs as the failure point than to point at the true source of failure: Seventy years of failed social policy. For example, if you successfully take both a college grad and a poor slum dweller off heroine, the college grad has a real chance to make something of what’s left of his life whereas the slum dweller is still in the slum where the heroine still looks pretty good.

In the name of equality, it is fair then to throw them both in jail.

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This is why we wind up with more accidents with red light cameras, not less:

Dallas lawmakers originally estimated a gross yearly revenue of about $15 million for the system. The city is about $4 million below that estimate.

But were any lives saved, that’s the real question. Because even of only one life were saved the red-light cameras are worth it. Right? No?

So a very clever bean-counting half-wit comes along and says, “Hey, how bout we shorten the yellow lights? Yeah, that the ticket.”

(Via Instapundit)

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In case your common sense has not already informed you that red light cameras are a big scam, here is a study for you to peruse.

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A colleague emailed:

Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I
pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In
order to get that pay check, I am required to pass a random urine test
with which I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the
distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I
have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no
Problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other
hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their you know
what, doing drugs, while I work. . . . Can you imagine how much money
the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public
assistance check ? Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you
don’t. Something has to change in this country — and soon!

The meme was entitled “The Job Urine Test” but it should have been “The Welfare Urine Test”. I f we can make the people doling out the doe pass a urine test as well, maybe we could cut some entitlement spending.

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EBrashear comments:

How about extending that line of reasoning, which I concur with, a little further? Since every seeking our vote claims to work for us, shouldn’t we have the ability, as their employers, to require random drug tests for them if we elect them?

Yes, we are definitely on the same page. The people “doling out the doe” would be those seeking our votes. Everyone with a government job from top to bottom should have to take a urine test before allowed to ply their trade or no one should. I mean, even if you don’t owe any taxes, you still have to file, right?

The bad thing about the “equality under the law” logic is that we all know which way the other shoe is going to drop. Soon, if not already, anyone who is not rich enough to opt out of the system will be cataloged, inspected, and documented from cradle to grave. 80% or more of these people wont care.

The government has to do this, don’t you see? Some one could get hurt. It’s for security. It’s for the Children. Right out of the freaking handbook.

Obviously the People can not or will not stop it.

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Seems I started a little brouhaha with some commenters over at The Agitator’s site who believe I am an idiot. Maybe they are right. How easy is it to kill a baby while giving it a bath, do you suppose?

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Radley Balko’s original post is about the appeal of this guy Jeffery Havard who was accused and convicted of murdering and sexually abusing — not sure of the order the offenses occurred — a six month old baby girl that was not his. Classic boyfriend-kills-baby case.

I don’t have a problem with giving the guy Jeffery Harvard a new trial. Hell, give him two for all I care. There are obviously some serious flaws with the legal system over in Mississippi. The deal is I don’t believe in this particular case it was an accident that the baby was hurt. Sorry.

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Let me clarify something here. If the prosecutors are fabricating aggravating circumstances in order to obtain capital convictions, they should be charged with civil rights violations and sent to prison if convicted. I posted something along these lines before if I can find it in the archives… Oh yeah, here it is: Up to here with Betty Brock Bells. An excerpt:

Barring that first solution, here is an even better one. The very quickest solution would be to take any prosecutor or judge who is convicted of wrongly prosecuting and convicting an innocent person, and hang him or her from a lanyard by his or her balls. The problem will dry up lickity split. If there were any political considerations found to be involved in the prosecutor’s decision to wrongly prosecute, then that would be an extenuating circumstance and a hot poker would then need to be shoved up their ass for the duration of the hanging. If it was a death penalty case, and the innocent person was actually put to death, the prosecutor and judge can hang until dead.

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No doubt we have too many laws in America and we are putting too many people in jail who are not threats to public safety. However, without including at least a footnote regarding the per capita executions I don’t see how the US per capita incarceration numbers are a valid comparison to those of your typical Dictatorship.

The report said the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which round out the Top 10. (Link)

Let’s not forget that Russia, China and other nations run by despots are known to round up people in the middle of the night who are not to be heard from again.

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How can anyone expect a common person who might be concerned that they have broached the miserly .08 blood alcohol content limit to go to the trouble and expense of calling a cab when the director of a large DUI education program wont even do so when she is so stinking drunk she can’t even walk straight?

Margot “Peggy” Cioffi is one of the worst of the worst drunks, a drunk who gives other drunks a bad name. Even worse, Cioffi has been making a good living from the misfortune of those unlucky bastards ensnared in the government-run DUI scam.

Cioffi, whose blood alcohol level was measured in a breath test at 0.336, could not immediately be reached for comment. The legal driving limit in Florida is 0.08 percent.

Cioffi couldn’t be reached for comment probably because she was in a coma from alcohol poisoning. You’d think being such a smart drunk she would know better than to give a breath sample.

Cioffi is one of the retarded drunks out there who have ruined social drinking for everyone else because they are the ones who plow into people at high rates of speed with no warning. Stopping for a beer after work, or going out and having a few drinks with dinner, or an evening out at a dance hall have become a roll of the dice as to whether you might be pulled over and robbed by the state, denied your right to drive, and enrolled in expensive and time-consuming bullshit drunk classes run by the likes of Ms. Cioffi.

What good is a program that might save just one life if the director of the program is the one most likely to kill your baby while driving in a drunken blackout?

I bet a dollar there are many people who knew Peggy Cioffi was a drunk but didn’t want to rock the money boat.

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Shoddy crime labs are looking like the state of the art. In Washington a court has ruled the state’s breathalyzer tests are basically junk:

The State Patrol’s toxicology lab has had so many ethical lapses and made so many scientific mistakes in recent years that alcohol breath test results should not be admitted at trial, a court ruled Wednesday.

FBI Crime Lab, Houston Crime Lab scandal: It’s like Dan Rather in Charge of the police. We know these guys are scumbag, drunken criminals all we have to do is make the facts fit.

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Paul Jacobs: “I was placed in hand-cuffs and leg-irons before my release on bond, and am threatened with a ten-year prison term for that oh-so-violent crime of helping others petition their government. ”

In Oklahoma it is seriously against the law to come from out of state to help with peaceful petitions of the government, but obviously it’s okay to bring in ringers from out of state to harass anyone who has the temerity to chalenge the oppressive power of the state.

This wasn’t merely a few renegades. Jeanne Berg, a liberal labor activist from Oregon, was hired to run a campaign of harassment. Blockers were hired from throughout the country and paid as much as $100 a day. Their function? Swarm around anyone out circulating the petition and create enough street theater and mayhem to chase away citizens who, since the measure was overwhelmingly popular, would otherwise be likely to sign.

So what ya gonna do? Complain to the government?

On a related topic, does the 2nd ammendment provide for a well-regulated state-run militia, or a well-regulated citizen-run militia?

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(Link via Instapundit)

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If Connecticut can do it, why can’t the energy deficient California? Arnold, quit bitching and do something.

Conn. Begins Offering Online High School Classes

What size is the carbon foot print of a typical public school? What size is the carbon footprint of a typical private school? Now, what size is the carbon footprint per child for each school? Obviously you have to include the excess administrative overhead when toting the public school’s footprint, not to even mention all the school buses. I think private schools would win hands down. Er, footprints down?

Common sense dictates that in the current political climate everything will eventually be tagged by it’s carbon footprint which will inevitably lead the opposition to make comparisons of the footprints left by government operations to those left by the private sector operations engaged in similar endeavors. It will be interesting to see how the bureaucrats will nonetheless justify the superiority and proclaim the dire necessity of public operations, like schools, regardless of how much they are killing the planet.

Of course, I’ve discussed this before until I am green in the face, but the number one thing we can do to immediately curb greenhouse emissions, as well as conserve energy, reduce traffic congestion, reduce the cost of maintaining and building new roads is to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Would this be an easy thing to do? On paper yes, in practice probably not: There will be great opposition by people who sell buses, build and maintain roads, and grant contracts for building and maintaining roads.

How do we reduce the number of cars on the road then, you might ask. Well, with the Internet of course. Why transport the body when the mind is the only thing that needs to go? I know for some of you a light bulb just when off over your head but the rest are thinking what a dumb fuck. While many people make use of the Internet daily, they still don’t “get” the Internet. We can resist all we want but the Internet will eventually change everything.

Colleges have been offering courses over the Internet for years, probably for a decade now. Colleges are about making money by delivering quality education. Public schools are about control of curriculum, control of children, control of property taxes, etc.

Defensive Driving is offered over the Internet. To handle your court case you have to go the courthouse. Defensive driving courses are about making money as efficiently as possible. Court is about control.

The government is keen on solving the alleged global warming problem by regulating the shirts off our back while not endangering the current power structure. No one in government wants to lose his or her job due to efficient operations conducted over the Internet. They don’t mind letting a few clerks go at the tax office but anyone making over $50K with undisclosed perks will fight tooth and nail to keep the system in place regardless of whether it is killing the planet.

Ok, it all sounds good, you say, so let’s do it! In broad strokes, we begin with pilot programs implemented across the country targeted at large inefficient school districts that are not biased by extracurricular social activities, such as crime. (A slightly different plan will be required for these districts.) The goal would be to reduce the number of vehicles, e.g. buses, commuters, on the road by 10% in five years and 80% in ten years. The reduction occurs as more and more of the curriculum is delivered over the Internet.

At the same time offer great tax incentives for employers to integrate their infrastructure with the public broadband to keep as many people as possible from working in centralized locations. In other words try to get rid of the morning and afternoon commute. Middle and junior management loathe this idea because the people who would be telecommuting are the very ones they lord-ass over all day. They correctly assume that their jobs would be in danger.

Corporations will be able to adjust whereas the bureaucrats will never surrender because for the corporations it will always come down to the dollar and for the bureaucrats it always come down to power and control.

As one advances logically through the exercise of reducing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by utilizing the Internet, one will inevitably come to the conclusion that such a course will lead to the breakup of school districts: If I can get all my curriculum from the Internet, I don’t need school districts. And if I don’t need school districts, I don’t need school buses, or huge air-conditioned buildings, or a bloated administration at the local, state, and federal level, or school taxes to pay for all of same.

This realization then leads to the equally obvious realization that it will likely never happen in my lifetime. If we are to solve our looming social problems — both real and imagined — efficiently and fairly instead of on the back of the bourgeoisie, a revolution will be required to pry the power from those who are currently entrenched. The alternative is life in a bureaucratic tyranny that seems to have been accurately defined some sixty years ago by Orwell. How bout all them cameras. They are even on school buses now.

Related:

• Why Do We Have To Commute?
• Save my jet, please!
• The Internet will change everything II
• Change is in the air
• How the Internet is going to change everything

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I know, let’s allow old people to work off their tax debts.

The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.

“It’s not like we’re going to see grandma running the snowplow,” he said. “There are lots of things people can do for the town and it wouldn’t cost us that much to pay them.”

The proposal has caused a stir in Greenburgh, a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation’s third-highest homeowner property taxes. The plan would be unusual if not unique in New York, but similar programs are considered successes in Colorado, Massachusetts, South Carolina and elsewhere.

Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes - perhaps $2,000 to the town - and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.

Only a bureaucrat would think this was a good idea. Never would a tax abatement occur to them. But even so there are some issues toovercome before such a stroke of genius can be pulled off:

Feiner is suggesting creating about 25 slots for seniors and letting them work off $500 or so a year. His proposal faces some obstacles. If the wages earned are to be tax-free and directly credited to the property tax bill, the state Legislature would have to approve. In addition, unions would have to be convinced that the program is no threat to their members’ job security.

Liberals are so compassionate.

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Bravo to Reporter babe Alycia Lane. She is probably in a lot of trouble for hitting the cop but the police should not be allowed to do whatever they want under the color of authority.

Lane, 35, her current honey, Q102 morning host Chris Booker, and another couple were in a cab behind a slow-moving unmarked cop car, the New York Post reported. One of the males jumped out and headed to the police vehicle, screaming, “I don’t care if you’re a cop, drive faster!” the newspaper said.

The officers got out and identified themselves to Lane and company, and Lane began to take photos, according to the paper. The female cop asked her to step back and that’s when Lane lost it, according to the Post.

A station source said Lane’s iPhone was confiscated by cops as evidence.

How convenient, the iPhone, along with the photos, was confiscated as evidence. I wonder if the iPhone will be coming back intact, with photos. Lane’s attorney, Manhattan-based David Smith, disagrees with the official police version, as one would expect:

“Miss Lane never hit or ever said any derogatory comments to anyone,” he told the Daily News.

Lane was “accosted by several individuals wearing plainclothes,” Smith said. “They attempted to grab her camera to prevent her from taking photographs of an altercation they [plainclothes people] were involved in. Miss Lane was shocked to learn after the fact that these individuals were police officers.”

Let the word ring out load and clear, if on a jury I will never vote to convict on any charge of assault on a public official, especially when there is no mention of alcohol or drunkard behavior. My guess is that cops should be hit way more than they are, what with how they behave. Eventually our only defense against the cops will be to surreptitiously record every encounter with them, which of course pisses the cops off for some reason. (Related: Popular Mechanics Watching the Watcher.)

Here is what I believe happened: The cops were doing something causing them to drive too slow and block traffic. When confronted about driving like jerks, the cops are all like, hey, we’re cops and we can act like jerks if we want, but you can’t. At which time Lane begins to snap some stills of the altercation. The police says, “Give me the iPhone,” to which Lane says, “Are you crazy?” At which time the officer tried to take the phone and got popped upside her noggin just like she deserved. If only the other cop could have been slapped upside his noggin too this would have been a great story.

Obviously I’ve lost respect for the police. I hate the TV show COPS. I don’t think there is anything trustworthy or noble about the officers as individuals and I think the bureaucracy, like any bureaucracy, is corrupt with special interests and favoritism. Since I consider myself to be an average person with average experiences, this can not bode well for the police. Or, more likely, it doesn’t bode well for the citizenry. If you are not a cop or other high-ranking public official, this means you.

(Related: Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You)

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I saw the news piece linked on Drudge early this morning and Instapundit has it linked via Dean Esmay… The more intrusive the surveillance cameras and red-light cameras become, the more we will see them destroyed in place. Even though it is the right thing to do, I am hoping regular law-aiding citizens will not have to risk doing the dirty deed and that the criminals will become adept at taking the electronics eyes off line without detection.

Yeah, yeah I know, I must have something to hide because if I’m not doing anything wrong I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Tell that to the Duke Lacrosse players.

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I am about sick and tired of the lunatics that are left in charge of Colorado. This would drive me to commit heinous acts of violence. In Texas McLean could be shot for attempting his little stunt. And it would make me happy to hear about it.

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