Having an existential crisis

Off to Paris, France alone to clear our head and contemplate what we wish to do, both personally and professionally, with the rest of our life.

Computer isn't coming with us, as we need to do some heavy thinking, so no blogging until Friday, January 1 at the earliest.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Benefits law nets illegal immigrant suspects"

Arizona recently enacted a law requiring state public-benefits agencies (welfare, housing, unemployment, etc.) to report services applicants who are suspected of being illegally in the country to ICE.

After barely one month under the new policy, the number of people referred to the Feds in such a manner has reached nearly 800:

"Since mid-November, DES has discovered 772 people who sought public benefits but could not verify their legal status, said Steve Meissner, a DES spokesman. Because they could not verify their status, they never received benefits."

Whod'a thunk that getting serious about denying taxpayer-funded benefits to people who don't legally deserve them would actually work? Imagine if every state were to pass similar laws, instead of merely collectively wringing their hands and moaning about how "we can't possibly identify and deport so many people".

Well, this is certainly a good start, at least on Arizona's end of things. Now if ICE will only do their job correctly and escort these people back to their proper homes, we'll really be getting somewhere.

With Janet Napolitano running Homeland Security, though, don't hold your breath:

"DES sent those names to ICE this week. ICE plans to review the referrals to determine the individuals' immigration status and whether they have a criminal history', said Vincent Picard, an ICE spokesman."

We would like to point out to Mr. Picard that the article correctly notes that most, if not all, of these particular individuals (in addition to their unlawful immigration status) are now suspected of being guilty of attempted fraud, so his agency should pretty much assume the "criminal history" part.

"'There's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear,' [among the illegal immigrant population] said Connie Andersen, an immigrant advocate with the Valley Interfaith Project."

From our perspective, that's a good thing. Turning up the legal heat will no doubt convince more of the illegal immigrants to do the right thing and voluntarily return to their proper homes.

Good news resulting from some excellent police work

Regular readers of this blog will recall that we were the recent victims of a vehicle burglary in the driveway of our home, resulting in the theft of a laptop computer.

There have been some interesting developments in the case since that time.

About a week after the incident, we received an email from Toshiba Customer Support, thanking us for recently calling them for service and asking us to take an online survey in order to rate their effectiveness.

Wait a minute - we never called them. Why would we?

We immediately called Toshiba, and learned that someone indeed had called their company seeking to obtain a recovery disk for our computer, and that the email we received had been auto-generated because we were the registered owner of that computer's serial number. We also ascertained that the caller had left contact information consisting of a name and phone number.

After explaining the situation to the person on the phone, they stated that they would place our computer on an internal stolen list and that they would also release the caller's contact info to the Scottsdale Police Department if contacted by them. We passed that little nugget on to SPD (adding it to the original police report we filed) and settled back to wait.

Well, there has been at least some partial success. SPD Detective Reid Watson called us the other day to report that our laptop has been recovered from someone who purchased it for a "bargain" price on craigslist. Watson is currently tracking who placed the online ad, and actually seems to already have a suspect, as he informed us that he is in the process of ordering the comparison of someone's fingerprints to ones that were found on our vehicle after the break-in.

The laptop has been impounded as evidence, but should be returned to us shortly. Detective Watson stated that the craigslist buyer technically can make a claim to the property as well, but that they are ultimately simply going to be out of luck.

We wish to sincerely thank Detective Watson for his professional, prompt, thorough and diligent police work, and we will be writing a letter to the Scottsdale police chief to that effect once resolution of the case has been reached. He is indeed "serving and protecting" Scottsdale residents in exactly the manner that police departments around the country should be doing. We are quick around here to point out when cops are guilty of wrongdoing; it's only fair to note when they are doing their jobs correctly and successfully as well.

Lessons to take away from our ordeal:

1. Park your car in an enclosed garage if at all possible. Ours was locked but in the driveway, easy pickings for a casual "smash and grab". The computer was not visible from the outside, by the way, and other valuable items inside the car were left untouched, signifying that this was a crime of opportunity, not a specific targeting of something carelessly left in plain sight.

2. Register your electronic equipment as soon as you purchase it, either online or by mail. This established a clear record of ownership on our part, and the fortuitous email from the manufacturer also had the benefit of providing us with the computer's serial number, which we could then provide to the police.

3. Be wary of purchasing anything on craigslist, particularly items that are missing boxes, owner's manuals, recovery disks and the like, or which are being offered for a "bargain" price. Don't be the chump who takes a chance in order to score a great deal, only to have the item confiscated by the cops because it's stolen property. The person who bought our laptop from the thief, for example, is apparently going to be out $250.

Our increasingly desperate President ratchets up the pressure

"Obama calls Dems to health reform chat."

That's one way of putting it, although we've never before heard such a frantic, bullying political strong-arm session referred in such an innocuous manner. We imagine MSDNCNBC's description of the session would be quite different if it were a Republican president engaged in such a similar "chat" with party holdouts.

Were tea and crumpets served at this lovely social event?

'The measure includes 'all the criteria I laid out' in a speech to a joint session of Congress earlier in the year, [President Obama] said. 'It is deficit-neutral,

An outright lie, as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office keeps laboriously pointing out.

it bends the cost curve,

Artificially, by drastically cutting Medicare payments to health care providers, which will have the effect of driving even more of those doctors who still see such patients out of the industry, with the resulting effect of of creating extremely long lines to see the few incompetents and masochists who are left. Can anyone say "rationing?

it covers 30 million Americans who don't have health insurance

When Obama himself estimates that from 46 to 63 million people lack such coverage. Why, then, are the Democrats hell-bent upon wrecking the finest health-care system in the world, socializing one-fifth of our economy in the process, when their scheme won't even end up accomplishing their stated goal of covering everyone? It would be far easier (and cheaper) to just outright pay for private insurance for the uninsured, especially if the government were to exclude the people who have no wish to purchase insurance, those who self-insure and, of course, the millions of illegal immigrants in this country from being provided such coverage.

and it has extraordinary insurance reforms."

But nowhere in the proposed bill is found tort-reform, the lack of which is a large reason why health care costs keep rising so quickly.

And President Obama wonders why his wonderful, magical plan is meeting with so much resistance, both in Congress and among the peasantry.

Sounds sensible to us

The Ohio Court of Appeals has quite reasonably ruled that police officers in that state must use objective facts in order to cite a motorist for speeding, and that "the car sounded fast, and I could tell it was speeding just by listening to it" just doesn't meet that evidentiary threshold:

"In weighing the evidence and all reasonable inferences and considering the credibility of the witnesses, we conclude that this presents the exceptional case, where the evidence weighs heavily in favor of [defendant Daniel] Freitag," Judge Donna J. Carr wrote for the court. "The weight of the evidence does not support the conclusion that Freitag was exceeding the posted speed limit, specifically because [West Salem] Patrolman [Ken] Roth's testimony that he audibly and visibly determined that Freitag was speeding is not credible... It is simply incredible, in the absence of reliable scientific, technical, or other specialized information, to believe that one could hear an unidentified vehicle 'speeding' without being able to determine the actual speed of the vehicle."

Our header-equipped Chevrolet Nova just breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The speed differential that Patrolman Roth claimed to be able to distinguish with his fantastic auditory acuity, by the way? Well, the ticket he wrote stated that Mr. Freitag was going 42 in a 35 mph zone.

He's good, isn't he?

The Nanny-state thugs still don't get it, despite receiving the memo

British journalist Paul Lewis of the Guardian investigates complaints from local photographers about being harassed while going about their lawful business, and promptly gets worked over by the "authorities" himself for photographing a landmark building in London while standing on a public street, despite the fact that the cops over there recently received specific orders to stop engaging in such harassment:

"It felt like a minor terror alert. Four security guards were watching me, whispering into microphones on their collars. A plainclothes police officer had just covered my camera lens, mentioned the words "hostile reconnaissance" and told me I would be followed around the city if I moved.

Two uniformed officers were on their way to stop and search me under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, he said. Special Branch, the police counter-terrorism unit linked to the secret services, had been informed.

It had taken less than two minutes from the first click of my camera. My subject was the Gherkin, an iconic London landmark photographed hundreds of times a day and, as it turned out, the ideal venue to test claims from a growing number of photographers claiming they cannot take a picture in public without being harassed under anti-terrorist laws.

This was the first week in which police had been ordered to take a more sensible approach to street photography. By Monday morning all 43 police forces in England and Wales had received a memorandum warning them that officers were "confused" over stop and search powers.

'Officers should be reminded that it is not an offence for a member of the public or journalist to take photographs of a public building and use of cameras by the public does not ordinarily permit use of stop and search powers,' the circular said."

Lewis's buddy also got stopped and questioned, despite taking pictures of the encounter with the reporter, not the building, from across the street:

"My colleague, Martin Godwin, had been spotted across the road, where he was using a long lens to take pictures of me. They also stopped him under section 44 and looked at his pictures."

Illegally, as it turns out:

"Section 44 does not specify that officers have the power to look at images"

These types of officially-sanctioned goons, who profess to enforce "the law" while blatantly ignoring the legal restrictions on their own activities, will keep right on with their reprehensible behavior until the agencies involved, as well as the police officers themselves, get sued and socked with heavy enough fines to make them think twice about violating the rights of law-abiding people for no apparent reason.

The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week...

... is Woonsocket, Rhode Island Police Officer John H. Douglas, who has been arrested by the FBI and charged with both a civil rights violation for allegedly participating along with unnamed other officers in brutally assaulting a sixteen-year-old boy multiple times, both in a local park as well as back at the police station (leaving the teen with a fractured eye socket and nose), as well as obstruction of justice for attempting "to persuade other Woonsocket officers to provide false information to FBI agents investigating the allegations."

Here's the complete indictment which details the nauseating charges against "Officer" Douglas.

The story doesn't report whether or not the other cops actually went ahead with the cover-up attempt. We hope for their sake they didn't, as this particular jig is most definitely up.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 26

So that when a nogoodnik breaks into my house in the middle of the night while I happen to be there, and stupidly keeps on advancing despite multiple warnings to stop, I will be able to successfully defend myself, just like Cushing, Oklahoma resident Donna Jackson had to do recently.

Jackson was on the phone to 911 when she discharged a shotgun, fatally ending the imminent threat to her safety. Here's a partial transcript of the call. The firearm, Jackson's son's, happened to be there and available; the cops weren't, at least not in time to prevent the home invader, an intoxicated Billy Dean Riley, from entering Jackson's home and causing her to reasonably fear death or great bodily harm to herself from him.

What say you to this incident, Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center? Still maintain your naive position that lawfully owned and used firearms are of no use in defending one's home and life, even in the presence of constantly-occurring events such as this one?

Lincoln County Sheriff Chuck Mangion (not to be confused with the flugelhorn player) and District Attorney Richard Smothermon have both stated that Ms. Jackson acted reasonably and appropriately and will face no charges. A very correct conclusion, sirs. Thank you for sparing her any further stress by unnecessarily prolonging the investigation of this obvious open-and-shut case.

Another nanny-state roundup

More random meanderings through the insane asylum that is today's Great Britain:


1. Noranside Prison in Scotland is going to close for a week over the holidays, putatively in order to save a little bit of money. This means that around 100 convicted felons, including murderers, are going to be unleashed upon the communities where their serious crimes were committed . It seems that jail officials have yet to learn their lesson that these types of furloughs historically don't work very well:

"Sex offender Robert Foye absconded from Castle Huntly in 2007 after being let out to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and raped a 16-year-old girl before being recaptured.

This led to a tightening of controls over who is sent to open jails.

But this year murderer John Brown and armed robber Brian Martin - dubbed The Hawk - both absconded in quick succession from Castle Huntly."

Law-abiding local residents, who have been forcibly disarmed by their masters, should be very, very afraid this Christmas.


2. An English ambulance crew had to haul around a suicidal teenage girl for hours in an ultimately futile, Flying Dutchman-style quest to get a National Health Service hospital to admit her for treatment:

"The case is revealed in a memo sent by one of the paramedics who dealt with the incident, which he described as a "clear system failure on the part of mental health services for children in Ipswich which caused distress and harm to the patient".

The memo, written on 5 March 2009, described how an ambulance was called to help a 15-year-old girl who had gone into a local newspaper office.

The girl was described as suicidal and suffering acutely paranoid delusions.

The paramedic described how the crew and police officers spent hours transporting the girl from location to location in an attempt to find a safe and secure place where she could be cared for, but without success"

The medics ended up taking the poor girl to a police station, where she spent six hours in a jail cell before being transferred to a, you know, medical facility.

Bring on the socialized medicine!

3. "Two stars of a British celebrity reality TV show filmed in Australia have been charged with animal cruelty by New South Wales police."

Their supposed "cruelty"? Catching, killing and eating a rat while stranded out in the boonies for the UK show "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here".

A tasty rat, presumably, as one of the people arrested ironically is a celebrity chef. How come he isn't in the pokey for the horrible crime of serving prime rib at his restaurant?

"If found guilty, the pair face up to three years in jail."

Note to Australian hikers - the next time you're lost in the Outback, it's plants, moss and lichens only for you, otherwise you will surely be thrown in the clink should you survive your ordeal.

It's becoming tiresomely repetitive to keep making the following statement about that particular nanny state, but here we go again - what utter madness.

Another dissatisfied customer

Hank Schwenckert of Munds Park, Arizona is bemoaning the bill of goods he was sold last November, as published in last Friday's Arizona Republic:

"I have tried to believe that change was coming but can no longer delude myself.

Our president is not the man I thought I was voting for.

Barack Obama has not pushed hard for meaningful health-care reform that includes a public option.

He has not closed Guantanamo. He has not gone beyond token change in our insane relationship with Cuba.

He has not suspended "Don't ask, don't tell" in the military.

He has not imposed meaningful controls on Wall Street. He has not drawn down troops in Iraq by any substantial amount.

He has not led the charge for job creation.

He has, however, continued many constitutionally suspect policies of the Bush Administration, including warrantless wiretaps and faith-based funding.

He is about to escalate the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan with the same sorry rationale we've heard so many times before.

This week, I learned that Obama will continue President George W. Bush's policy and not sign on to the Mine Ban Treaty, preferring the company of China and Russia and munition suppliers to almost all the rest of the world.

President Obama is a right-wing dream come true. This liberal finally woke up."

So sorry your full-of-impossible-promises demigod turned out to be just another politician solely out for personal power, Mr. Schwenckert. Better luck next time.

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

(Splash News via RadarOnline)

She, plus a billion or so dollars, plus two adorable young children, plus a great career and global respect. All of this apparently wasn't enough for Tiger Woods, as there is now a seventh alleged mistress coming out of the woodwork.

What greed.

We don't care what Mr. Woods does or doesn't do in his private life. That's his bed to make. We do get to have an opinion, however, when that same person exhorts us to buy Buick automobiles, Tag Heuer watches, Gatorade sports drinks and many other products by trading on his personal reputation.

Personally, we're switching to Powerade.


UPDATE: Gatorade has just discontinued Woods's eponymous sports drink. Good for them.

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the simpleton Chicago, Illinois police officers who arrested street artist Christopher Drew on a public street in front of a department store on December 2. He was charged with violating two ordinances, specifically "not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area".

Fair enough, if those are indeed the laws there.

However, and here's where they earn this week's illustrious award, the cops also saw fit to charge Drew with felony eavesdropping after a running voice recorder was found on him during their search of him subsequent to his arrest:

"Inside several pockets of the poncho officers found his items for sale and an Olympus digital voice recorder which was recording at the time of the incident without the consent of the responding officers, according to the report."

Since when is it "eavesdropping" to record one's interactions with others on a public street where no one (including city employees) has a reasonable expectation of privacy? Mr. Drew, whatever other minor infractions he's guilty of, was definitely not bugging anyone, just as taking a random picture of people on a beach naturally isn't considered "spying".

Following this type of logic, the peasants of the Windy City should able to sue the city government for installing numerous surveillance cameras to increasingly track their every movement. Turnabout is fair play, and all that.

Someone else happened to videotape Mr. Drew's encounter with the cops that day:

The cops presumably didn't give their consent to be filmed by that person, either, Why wasn't the cameraman hauled off to the clink as well?

The rank-and-file members of the Chicago police are forever complaining about not having the manpower and resources to do their jobs in an effective manner. Well, if that department as a policy chooses to use what time they do have to file ridiculous, overbearing and thoroughly inappropriate, liberty-stifling charges against what is basically someone committing a nuisance crime, then they've lost whatever sympathy we had for their having to suffer under the dictatorship of King Emperor Mayor-for-Life Richard Daley.

A snapshot of life

Friday, December 4, 2009
Scottsdale, Arizona
11:30 a.m.

The littlest commuter:



That's just too cute.

Not making any sense

"The leader of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense says the U.S. Justice Department was right to drop a voter intimidation suit against his group because the case was weak."

Allrighty, but if that is indeed the case then why did that virulently racist group go ahead and

"[suspend] the member who stood outside a Philadelphia polling place with a nightstick during last year's presidential election"?

We've commented on this outrageous story twice, once on Election Day last November and then again in May, right after Attorney General Eric "Neutral, leaning towards favorable" Holder's Justice Department decided to let these goons off the hook for some unknown reason. In case anyone's forgotten, here's just one small video of the incident, captured by a local poll watcher:



Now imagine a white person being caught on tape behaving in a similar manner in front of a predominately black polling station. Think they would have been immediately jailed for a hate crime, as well as charged with blatantly intimidating voters?

We certainly do.

"[Malik] Shabazz says he wants to set the record straight"

And ends up failing miserably, in our opinion.

Completely undeserving of our help

Upwards of 10,000 people in Tanzania and Burundi who suffer from albinism are having to flee their homes and hide in fear because much of the rest of the population is intent on chopping them up and selling their body parts to witch doctors for their supposed magical properties.

Why are ordinary Americans being forced by our government to continually send billions of our tax dollars in aid every year to that part of the world, when even the residents of one of the most modern and stable countries in Africa (Tanzania) insist on behaving in such a horrible fashion?

Madness.

"The enemy camp"...

... is what Chris Matthews actually had the gall to label West Point last night:




Matthews indeed is a truly small man.

One illustration that completely debunks the entire premise of the 2000+ page health care bill

Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner points us to an amazing graph, prepared by Jeffrey Anderson of the Pacific Research Institute, which shows the blatant sleight-of-hand accounting that's being used by liberal Democrats in Congress and the White House to claim that their proposed health care "reform" scheme will cost "only" 800 billion dollars or so over its first ten years.

Anderson's illustration (which uses information obtained from the Congressional Budget Office review of the Senate bill) not only clearly debunks that assertion, it also documents that the true cost of this debacle's first decade (that really begins in 2014, despite the disturbing fact that the large amount of tax money which will go toward funding this unconstitutional mess will begin to be confiscated from us in 2011, three full years earlier) is actually closer to 1.8 trillion dollars, or more than double the fanciful cost estimates the likes of Obama, Pelosi and Reid are spewing non-stop to anyone who'll listen to their nonsensical rantings (click for a larger image):



Didn't we just get finished sending a whole bunch of so-called financial wizards to Federal prison for making just these kinds of dodgy, demonstrably false claims?