Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Mark Twain (or was it Benjamin Disraeli?) famously said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". This is the quintessence of statistics-as-lie.

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Four out of five...struggle...with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for...wait for it...at least parts of their lives. Wow! That sounds really terrible. Foreboding even. But it's bullshit. Total and complete bullshit.

See, this pasture-pies-masquerading-as-science study includes people like me, who 30+ years ago was a struggling 23-year-old newly married guy, living in a crappy part of Sacramento (on the edge of Oak Park, a notorious crime-ridden part of town), making under $10K per year. At that time in my life, it's safe to say that I was living in "near-poverty". But is my situation in 1982 really "a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream"? No more so than my economic situation now is a sign that Obamanomics lifted me from poverty to prosperity. 

I'm not sure whom I'm more disgusted with: the quacks who published this study, or USA Today for giving it credence.

New Tizona Post

I've spent years trying to figure out why people fail to understand how governments have been systematically tearing down the foundations of individual liberties. Now I know.

Read more at The Tizona Group.

Disingenuous much, Rupert?

An old adage intones, "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it."

Rupert Murdoch is signaling displeasure with Team Elephant's choice of Presidential candidate.

To hear Rupert Murdoch tell it lately, Mitt Romney lacks stomach and heart. He “seems to play everything safe.” And he is not nearly as tough as he needs to be on President Obama.

Mr. Murdoch’s thoughts on the Republican presidential candidate’s prospects? “Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from the team.” Chances of that? “Doubtful,” he tapped out in a Twitter message from his iPad last weekend.

Then, on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published a blistering editorial criticizing Mr. Romney’s campaign, accusing it of being hapless and looking “confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

Mr. Murdoch has never been particularly impressed with Mr. Romney, friends and associates of both men say. The two times Mr. Romney visited the editorial board of The Journal, Mr. Murdoch did not work very hard to conceal his lack of excitement. “There was zero enthusiasm, no engagement,” said one Journal staff member who was at the most recent meeting in December.

You'll pardon me if I pause here to soak in the schadenfreude.

You see, it was Murdoch's Fox News that has served as the leading cheerleaders for Romney for the past year. It was Murdoch's Fox News that declared Romney the front-runner well before the primaries started and continued to label him the front-runner through the early primaries notwithstanding the obvious lackluster response to him from the electorate. It was Murdoch's Fox News who declared Il Dilettante the only candidate who could defeat Obama. And it was Murdoch's Fox News that served, effectively, as Romney's unpaid propaganda machine.

NOW Rupert decides he isn't that into Romney? NOW?!?!?!?!?

You created this situation, Rupert. You can like it, or, like the rest of us, you can lump it.

But don't try to sell us your belated regrets now. Anyone who has been paying attention ain't buying it.

Stupid enough, indeed

I don't follow all that many people on Twitter, mostly friends and my favorite bloggers. One of the people I follow is IowaHawk, a blogger I heard about from Toes.

David Burge is hilarious. Mostly, he's hilarious because he's got a sniper's talent for hitting at the very essence of an issue. A great example is this tweet from yesterday.

As one of those falling into that category, I must say: guilty as charged.

For years I've said that the official motto of the state of Maryland should be, "If you can imagine it, we can tax it". Maryland has been a one-party state practically non-stop since Reconstruction. And it shows. Maryland Donkeys put the "tard" in "libtard".

Not content with chasing off most of the state's millionaires by raising their taxes in 2008, Governor Martin O'Malley (known as "owe Malley" around these parts) and the one-party drones in the legislature apparently want to chase off the rest of the tax base as well.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Maryland is nuts.

Expect to hear that I've moved to Virginia sometime in the near future.

Outsourcing's Final Frontier?

Outsourcing. It's a dirty word for most of us. In my line of work, computer programming, it's a dirty word on the highest level. Face it, if you don't have special skills or qualifications, you face the risk of having your job outsourced.

But it's not just that. It's calling customer support for your laptop and getting a man named "Peggy" on the phone, speaking the worst kind of broken English, and providing no help whatsoever.

The other day I was driving to work and heard a commercial that made me do a double-take. I had to hear the commercial a second time to make sure that I heard it right. I had heard it right.

There is a company called Surrogacy Abroad (website here) that offers surrogate mother services in...wait for it...INDIA.

Surrogacy in India has become an increasingly popular alternative for Americans. The laws for surrogacy in India favor the intended parents more than the other countries. The cost for surrogacy in India is roughly a third of what it costs in the U.S. Also, the range of treatment options available is broad and at the forefront of art technology. Surrogacy in India offers a unique opportunity for discretion, which would be difficult to achieve in the U.S.

Wait, what?

Has outsourcing reached the level of reductio ad absurdum? We're outsourcing....childbirth?!?!?

Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life on this planet.

Heart, broken

It was going to be a game that came down to turnovers. That was supposed to favor the 49ers, who finished the season an astounding +28 on turnovers. Of course, that was before Ted Ginn was declared unable to play because of a bum knee. It was yesterday that we all learned just how valuable Ted Ginn really is to the 49ers.

He was replaced by Kyle Williams. Kyle MF'ing Williams.

It seemed as if old Kyle thought he was playing in some meaningless pickup game instead of for a chance to play in the Super Bowl. He carelessly bobbled a pitch early in the game, fortunate to fall on his own fumble. He dove (DOVE!!!!!) to catch one punt, coming up with it, but risking a costly turnover with really nothing to gain from it.

And then he got down to seriously screwing the pooch.

A poor punt by the Giants resulted in a ground ball bouncing along the sideline. Even a fan like me knows what the punt returner is supposed to do in that situation - yell out the signal for blockers to get as far away from the ball as possible and then do likewise.

Oh, but not Kyle MF'ing Williams. No, he ran alongside the bouncing ball like a retarded dog chasing a stick. The ball grazed his knee and was recovered by the Giants. It's bad enough that the asshat broke a cardinal rule of punt returns by placing himself in the path of an erratically bouncing football. It's what he did after the ball grazed him that made this heartsick Vulture lose his marbles. He made no effort to chase down the ball. Rather, he play acted that the ball hadn't touched him, and acted all aggrieved when the referee confirmed the call on the field, that the ball had touched him and was Giants' ball.

A handful of plays later, a Giants touchdown gave them the lead.

The Niners moved down the field and tied the game at 17, where it remained at the end of the 4th quarter.

Overtime.

Overtime looked just like the final minutes of the 4th quarter. The 49ers couldn't mount any offense. The Giants were being dominated by the 49ers defense.

Enter Kyle MF'ing Williams.

The Giants punted after yet another 3-and-out. Williams fielded the punt cleanly, took a few steps while holding the ball like a loaf of bread, and was promptly stripped of the ball.

The Giants were in field goal position at that point, but they ran a few plays to set up a closer field goal, which they made to win the game 20-17.

So here's the breakdown. The 49ers defense allowed 10 points in the first half, but didn't allow a drive of over 30 yards or allow the Giants to cross midfield from the 3rd quarter through overtime.

The Giants only two scoring chances in the second half and overtime were gifts courtesy of Kyle MF'ing Williams. Those two scoring chances resulted in 10 points, and victory for Big Blue.

The final score of that game should have been 17-10 or perhaps even 14-10. The Giants rightly should have been shut out in the second half. The 49ers should be the team headed to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

But that isn't how it turned out. Thanks almost entirely to Kyle MF'ing Williams, it's the Giants, not the 49ers, who will represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

Thanks a buttload, Kyle. You single-handedly destroyed your team's dream season.

Wiener of the Year - 2011

It's time for the least prestigious unknown award currently presented by the denizens of the old WWW - The Vulture's Wiener of the Year.

I received a number of nominations for WotY for 2011, including three very good ones from April Day. Each and every individual nominated is certainly deserving of derision. The list includes:

California Jim (AKA Jammin, AKA CAJim) - a troll from the execrable FLDS Texas website bigotry cauldron, who once took over this blog's comments for a full week to debate "journalistic integrity" and my lack thereof.

Gregory Prickett (AKA The Prickette, the 2010 WotY - nominated due to his ludicrous lawsuit against various blogger cohorts of mine, a lawsuit meant simply to harass, a lawsuit dismissed by a judge who saw through the pointlessness of the suit.

Former Seattle police officer Ian Birk, about whom I wrote earlier last year, for murdering in cold blood an innocent civilian. Throw in the fact that Seattle PD did NOTHING about it - no charges, no disciplinary action, N-O-T-H-I-N-G, and you have a most Wiener-worthy nominee.

The usual suspects came up as well. Il Duce. Big Media (the BM for short). Congress. The TSSA*. The inaptly named "justice" system. The Occupy movement. Team Elephant.

But this is the year when the Wiener of the Year award achieves absolute synchronicity. The 2011 WotY award winner truly IS a Weiner -- Anthony Weiner.

Weiner, a gawdawful socialist member of Congress since 1999, inadvertently sent a tweet intended for a single individual to his entire "followers" list. Ah, but this wasn't just any old tweet. This was a picture of little Anthony's, well, wiener. After claiming that his Twitter account had been hacked and trying one excuse after another for another several days, Weiner finally resigned from Congress. As I noted at the time, Weiner "pulled out" at a senior center in his District.

What makes Weiner's story even more wiener-worthy is that he is married to a smoking-hot woman who was pregnant when all of this was going on. What. A. Douchebag.

But isn't that what makes a Wiener, after all?

Heretofore, the Wiener of the Year award logo will no longer be the three strutting wieners I've used since 2007. From now on, this will be the WotY logo.

Congratulations to former Representative Anthony Weiner! You are the 2011 Wiener of the Year!


* You can't abbreviate Schutzstaffel without the double 'S'.

New Tizona Post

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New Tizona Post

Ron Paul's self-inflicted wound

And here I was worried that the media, the Team Elephant establishment, and the other GOP candidates were going to take down Ron Paul. It appears he's pretty good at it himself.

Read more at The Tizona Group.

Windows 7 fail

I've had an interesting run with the old laptop over the past month or so. First the hard drive became corrupted. Rather than buy a new laptop and incur that expense, I decided to install a new solid-state hard drive.

The new drive is awesome. REALLY awesome. Breathtakingly fast.

However, because my OEM install for Windows Vista was so old, there were literally hundreds of updates that had to be applied post-install. Okay, not an issue, right? Wrong! One of the updates kept breaking Vista and throwing a blue screen of death on boot up.

Again, undaunted I was. I purchased an OEM copy of Windows 7 64-bit to install on the old laptop. Everything was ducky. The software installed, outstanding updates applied quickly, and I was ready to rock and roll.

Or so I thought.

I began to notice that my wireless connection would drop at random intervals. Oh sure, it's easy enough to fix using the troubleshooter's drop-and-reset functionality. But not having a reliable wireless connection makes large downloads an adventure, and makes maintaining a consistent system backup (you know, like the one that saved my bacon when the hard drive became corrupted) impossible.

I made the rounds all over the Interwebs and discovered that I wasn't alone. No, far from it. It turns out that literally hundreds of Windows 7 users have had this issue, and Microsoft refuses to acknowledge that it's their problem. They blame the ISPs, the routers, the router firmware, the wireless cards, the wireless drivers...everything except the position of the moon and the stars. But they will not acknowledge that their operating system might have anything to do with it.

Listen up, Redmond! It IS your operating system that is causing the issue. There are too many people from too many walks of life with too much prior OS experience having the exact same problem regardless of laptop manufacturer, router manufacturer, wireless card make and model, or ISP. In my home alone the following operating systems are actively running without any wireless connectivity issues:

Windows XP
Windows Vista
Ubuntu (Linux)
Mac OS X
iOS 4 (iPhone and iPad)
Android (3 different phones running Gingerbread, Honeycomb, AND Ice Cream Sandwich)

The driver software on my laptop is current. The router firmware is current. The ISP is a national carrier.

My sons and I have over 50 years of experience with computers between us, including 10+ years building custom PCs. I think we know what we're doing here. I think we know how to diagnose and troubleshoot.

The problem is Windows 7, Redmond! Fix the problem. Now. Because you're making Linux look like a more attractive solution with every dropped connection.

Response to a troll

CalJim, aka CaJim, Jammin, and "Guest", takes umbrage to comments I made in response to comments he made (re-read it - it'll make sense on the second pass). For those of you who don't know about good old Jimmy, let me introduce you.

• Old Jimmy is a butt-buddy of the Caput a Palos
• Old Jimmy is a prominent voice for the FLDS persecution club (FLDS Texas)
• Old Jimmy still refuses to believe that Greg Prickett is the Caput a Palos
• Old Jimmy thinks that the Vulture is guilty of journalistic malpractice
• Old Jimmy has reading comprehension issues
  

Let's address old Jimmy's gripes, one by one.

I have never called you a pedophile nor even inferred it, your need to broad brush many topics might work for you but don't accuse me of such simple minded thought processes. Come on Vulture admit it, I never called you a pedophile.

You, Jim, may not have ever called me a pedophile. But how would I know, since so many of you over there at FLDS Texas and the (thankfully) dead Caput Penitus Culus post as "anonymous".

But that's not even the point. I said, "Your side categorizes my side as being pro-pedophilia." Your side != you personally. There's that reading comprehension problem again.

Your preoccupation with 'Due Process' I've criticized, especially now in the light that minor children brought to the YFZ Ranch from Canada definitely were sex trafficked from British Columbia.

Really? Children brought to the YFZ Ranch from Canada were sex trafficked? See, I did a Google search under "News" (so as to filter out wild accusations from bloggers like little Greggie), for "FLDS sex trafficking Canada" and I didn't get a single hit. Not one.

That's how your side works. Some blogger repeats gossip and it's fact to you, because it's what you want to believe. Legitimate news operations risk lawsuits if they print wild accusations. That's why there's no mention of any of that under "News" on Google. Even Big Media (the BM for short) wants no part of allegations that might get them sued.

You, however, stay mute on anybodies rights other than FLDS Church Priesthood men and their Prophet. Howze that? The women and children of this fanatical sect are look upon by their tenets of faith as literal property but you somehow clam up on that topic. Does equality stop at the MENS room door for you?

First, it's "anybody's", not "anybodies". Do try to be articulate when you write.

Second, you want to talk about a "broad brush"? The very idea that my interest in Due Process starts and ends with the FLDS is ridiculous on its face. See the right hand column, where it says "Labels"? See how it starts with various amendments, includes categories such as "bad law", "constitution", "crime", "Das Überwachenden", "Der Staat", "DHS", "F'ing lawyers", "Free Speech" - I could go on and on. The FLDS? Child please! They're way down on my list of priorities. I've spent way more time railing about cops, prosecutors, and politicians who violate the public trust than I have on the FLDS - and a lot of the FLDS posts were to defend myself against the likes of you and your execrable cohorts.

Tell me, when I write about black men who spent decades in prison because of planted evidence, prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence, or other malfeasance, does that mean I don't care about white men in the same situation? Or do you simply choose to only see what you want to see? I suspect the latter.

Scott Ledbetter republished your opinion pieces and his 'Ye Olde Journalist' blog fancies itself as a mainly journalistic site fighting yellow journalism and you allow him to pass off your writings as news content and it has never been labelled as editorial nor opinion column.

For the love of Pete! This is the exact same argument he raised months ago when Greggie's story appeared in the UNT student newspaper. Apparently old Jimmy expects Ye Olde Journalist to adhere to some kind of high standard of journalism, like The Washington Post or The New York Times. As if! Jimmy, those fishwraps regularly print opinion masquerading as news! Virtually every story about Global Warming is nothing but propaganda and political posturing slathered on like mustard on a ball park frank, masquerading as legitimate "news". What's the difference between Dana Milbank of The Post writing a Page 1 "news" article that says that Republicans are obstructing "progress" and me writing - well, anything? Get a clue, son. There is no "pure" journalism. Stop whizzing on Scotty. He can put anything he wants in his blog because....wait for it...it's HIS BLOG.

You're nothing but a troll, Jimmy. I don't know why I wasted my time responding to you. Nobody gives a rat's stinking tuchus what you think about anything. Your own mama doesn't even listen to you. Give up. Please.

New Tizona Post

Weiner pulls out.

The schadenfreude has been beyond blissful. A creepy libtard is caught flashing his namesake. Caught lying about it. Accused of asking a former prØn star to lie for him.

From each according to his ability...

Welcome to Amerika!

Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found four years ago.

Republicans and Democrats have sharply different reactions to the government's taking such an active role in equalizing economic outcomes. Seven in 10 Democrats believe the government should levy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while an equal proportion of Republicans believe it should not. The slight majority of independents oppose this policy.

I'm not at all surprised that 70% of Donkeys support wealth redistribution. I wish I could say that I'm surprised that 30% of Elephants support wealth redistribution...but I'm not. See McCain, John.

Of particular interest is the way men and women view wealth redistribution. Only 42% of men, regardless of political party, approve of it, while 52% of women think it's just ducky.

That any American citizen finds wealth redistribution acceptable saddens me. It is yet another example of how the public schools have failed us. Stealing from the productive does NOT end poverty. It just spreads it.

The rapture that wasn't

As a Christian, I find folk like Harold Camping.........challenging. Why in the name of all that is good do Camping and other deceivers like him troll about proclaiming that they have "secret knowledge" regarding the Second Coming, when scripture very clearly states, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32)?

I get a little bent over it, because of the impact it has on the deceived and the opening it gives militant atheists to bash Christians. But don't worry -- old Hal Camping is going to have his own little taste of hell over the coming weeks and months. Getting in the first shot is Ed Stetzer.

Harold Camping needs to publicly apologize for being wrong about his doomsday prediction and leading people astray, said a Southern Baptist leader.

The California radio broadcaster’s wrong prediction about the rapture and the end of the world reflected poorly on Christians, said Ed Stetzer, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research and LifeWay’s missiologist in residence.

Stetzer issued a series of tweets about Camping’s eschatological prediction on Saturday, among which one noted that there was no earthquake in New Zealand after 6 p.m.

“Harold Camping, pls update www.family.radio.com w/your repentance statement & instructions to your now-broke followers,” Stetzer tweeted.

An hour later he tweeted again, “6pm here in Turkey. I’m standing at the Temple of Athena waiting for the Rapture. Nothing happened. ;-)”

Of course, given that Camping has made this self-same WRONG prediction before, in 1994, I wonder if he's capable of shame. Given that many of his followers blew their life's savings backing his lunatic assertion, I would say that anything short of donating every penny he has to his followers to make them whole again will fall far short of genuine repentance.

Or maybe he'll try again. Third time's the charm. [/sarcasm]

UPDATE: It seems my sarcasm was wasted: Camping IS going for a third time.

And, he decided to give it another go: on Monday night, in his first radio broadcast since his May 21 prophecy proved a bust, Harold Camping conceded he didn't plot his rapture prediction "as accurately as I could have." But, nevertheless, the elderly pastor rejiggered his apocalyptic calculations for five months from now: October 21st. So, look forward to rehashed Camping coverage beginning two weeks prior to the next non-event.

FFS.

The "Justice" system fails again

I have a bad rap with so-called "Law and Order" types because I won't bend to their fawning "our cops and prosecutors, right or wrong" view of law enforcement. This story (hat tip: Debra Farver) puts into perspective exactly WHY I think the system should be examined with higher scrutiny.

First, the basics of the story.

The festive atmosphere of Fourth of July celebrations turned somber as Tacoma police were called to investigate the kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl. Zina Linnik was last seen walking in an alley behind her parents house at around 9:45 p.m. on July 4, 2007.

A witness heard a girl scream, looked in the alley and saw an unknown Asian male get into an older model, gray van and drive away. Authorities issued an AMBER Alert. Police say that the Washington license plate of the van contained the numbers 677 or 667.

An Amber alert was issued the next day (more on that later). But it was for naught.

Tacoma Police announced they found the body of 12-year-old Zina Linnik in Pierce County. The information came from a sex offender arrested earlier this week.

Sad. Very sad.

But "sad" wouldn't be the dominant emotion for long. First, that little passage about Zina's death -- the information came from a sex offender. That's a story all by itself. Meet Terapon Adhahn, child rapist and murderer.

Thai national, Terapon Dang Adhahn, a 42-year-old construction worker, who has legal US residency on a green card...a convicted sex offender and pedophile

How'd he get the label "sex offender" in the first place?

Adhahn...was convicted of incest in 1990 for violently raping his 16-year-old half-sister.

Yeah. You read that correctly. He violently raped his own sister.

And how did our "Justice System" deal with Mr. Adhahn after he brutalized his sister? After all, he had committed a heinous, violent crime. And, while he was a legal alien, he was STILL an alien, subject to deportation. Not to worry, sez "Justice".

During therapy, when he was again diagnosed as having an “extremely problematic” personality, it is considered that the authorities were negligent in not recognizing the danger. He was only classified as a level I, or low risk sex offender.

Not deported. Not classified as a dangerous offender, notwithstanding the considered opinion of Psych professionals. Not given an appropriate jail sentence (only 2 months behind bars).

After he was arrested for the murder of Zina Linnik, he was linked with still more acts of violence and murder.

According to the Pierce County Proescutor’s Office , Adhahn was booked into the Pierce County Jail on one count of kidnapping and three counts of first degree child rape for the May 31, 2000 kidnapping and rape of an 11-year-old girl who was found duct taped to a tree at Fort Lewis.

Adhahn has also been booked on one count of first degree rape, three counts of second degree rape and three counts of third degree child rape involving a girl who lived with him in Spanaway between 2001 and 2005. Probable cause documents indicate the girl told investigators that she was raped once or twice a week and that the total number of rapes was somewhere between 150 and 200. In some of the cases the girl, who lived with Adhahn between the ages of 12- and 15-years-old, told police she would sometimes be restrained. She said she ran away after the last rape in which she allegedly told Adhahn “No, I’m not doing that anymore.” The documents say “the defendant pointed a gun on her and told her to ‘shut up and just do it.”"

More allegations followed.

The man suspected of killing 12-year-old Zina Linnik has been named as a person of interest in the death of Adre’Anna Jackson, who was found dead in a Pierce County field in 2006.

Lakewood Police Lt. Dave Guttu said officers went back and showed Terapon Adhahn’s photo to residents in the Tillicum neighborhood where Adre’Anna lived, and several people said they saw him in the area around the time Adre’Anna disappeared.

All this because he wasn't given an adequate jail sentence, nor was he deported, nor was he recognized by law enforcement as the vile sociopath he is.

Fail.

But the "Fail" had only begun by that point. Remember the Amber Alert? It wasn't issued until SIX HOURS after the girl was reported missing. Why? The official reason given back in 2007 was "continuing police work".

Uh, about that.

Police Department spokesman Mark Fulghum was on-call during the early morning hours of July 5, 2007, when he went back to sleep instead of issuing the [Amber] alert as requested.

You read that right. He went back to sleep. FFS.

Surely he was fired, or at minimum suspended without pay, or reprimanded, or something, right? NOT.

Tacoma Police Sergeant Mark Fulghum won't be disciplined in any way following an on-the-job nap that delayed the issuance of an AMBER Alert for Zina Linnik by six hours after she was kidnapped and later killed by deranged sex-offender Terapon Adhahn in 2007.

It was only after the public outcry reached Biblical scale that a reprimand was issued. Sort of.

In a sudden about-face, Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson announced Friday that he has reprimanded Police Chief Don Ramsdell for withholding information regarding the Zina Linnik investigation.

The reprimand does not concern the chief’s misleading of the news media about why the issuance of an Amber Alert was delayed after the 12-year-old girl was abducted July 4, 2007.

A reprimand against the Chief for lying to the City Manager, NOT for lying to the general public. No reprimand against Sgt. Fulghum for sleeping on the job, either. Nice.

And what of Sgt. Fulghum? Has the public outcry caught up with him. Not exactly.

Fulghum...remains on duty while the internal investigation runs its course. He has not been disciplined for his handling of the Amber Alert.

Nor do I expect him to be. Lapdog local media will be complicit in it: his "exoneration" will be buried in the paper on page D-11, next to the Want Ads, where John Q. Public will be most likely to miss it. Local TV news might mention it 15 minutes into the broadcast in what should be about a 20-second news item. Not a knock on the media. It just won't strike them as news-worthy. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen are out there doing something more important, after all.

"Our cops and prosecutors, right or wrong"? Not me. Law enforcement needs to get its house in order before that will ever happen for me or anyone thinking past the end of their nose.

I had to share this

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture, courtesy of Theo Spark, is worth as least that many.

A retraction of sorts

CAJim seems to think I owe him a retraction. It seems that the quote I cited in my last post, which I got second-hand from the Tizona Group, is misleading, and that both Tizona and I have misused the quote to misrepresent the meaning of the AGW-worshiper's words.

Ignore for the time being that the inclusion of "let's fight global warming" in an alleged expression of condolences to the Japanese people is a de facto piggy-backing of two unrelated calamities and leads to the impression that the warming-worshiper is linking the two. CAJim says I owe a retraction, and, by God, a retraction I'll give.

Okay, CAJim, Nilsson's comment doesn't link the earthquake and tsunami to global warming. But these "scientists" do link earthquakes and tsunamis to AGW.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides are some of the additional catastrophes that climate change and its rising sea levels and melting glaciers could bring, a geologist says.

Note the weasel word "could". That's so that the "scientist" has plausible deniability when his patently ridiculous premise is dismissed by real scientists.

And, lest you think that the preceding comment was cherry-picked, there's this one.

Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.

Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.

Of course, you have to read on to get to the part where the polar ice caps have to disappear and the glaciers melt away for this to happen...

But the question wasn't "Do AGW quack scientists attribute earthquakes and tsunamis to AGW?" It was, "Does this particular AGW quack scientist attribute a particular earthquake and tsunami to AGW?" The answer is, apparently, no.

So CAJim has his retraction. Who is CAJim, and why is he so adamant in seeking a retraction from your friendly, neighborhood Vulture?

CAJim is a common troll. He is a habitue of that den of bigotry, FLDS Texas. He wants to discredit the Vulture because I have written some extraordinarily mean (but true) things about his boyfriend, the Caput a Palos (hereinafter referred to as The Prickette). CAJim thinks that by discrediting anything I say he discredits the factual things I wrote about his butt buddy.

Sorry Jim. You lose. Nobody who reads this blog on a regular basis is going to believe you or your fellow FLDS Texas bigots over me.

Nobody.

Pot and kettle

In an interview that can only be characterized as the pot calling the kettle black, Bernie Madoff compares his crimes with those of our government.

Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff said in a magazine interview published Sunday that new regulatory reform enacted after the recent national financial crisis is laughable and that the federal government is a Ponzi scheme.

"The whole new regulatory reform is a joke," Madoff said during a telephone interview with New York magazine in which he discussed his disdain for the financial industry and for its regulators.

Ponzi scheme? I guess it takes a Ponzi-schemer to know one.

And who can argue with him? Social Security is a total Ponzi scheme. The same can be said of virtually all of our "entitlement" programs.

The current direction our government is taking us in leads to financial meltdown and will leave this once-proud nation in ruins. Don't take my word for it. Read Vox Popoli on a daily basis and you'll come away as pessimistic about the future as I am.

The American experiment is not going to end well.

Dripping with irony

Senator John Kerry Lurch made an appearance this past weekend. The reception he got was the sweetest type of schadenfreude imaginable, and for all of the right reasons.

A loud and angry crowd in Northampton confronted Sen. John Kerry over his support for the war in Afghanistan, the government’s response to the recession and other issues.

Anti-war protesters interrupted Kerry numerous times Saturday as he met with constituents.

OMG, is that the best or what? Mr. Vietnam Veterans against the war. Mr. Winter Soldiers investigation. And he gets heckled for what? Supporting an unpopular war!!!

It just doesn't get any better than this. Seriously.

He was pushed

When Sgt. Gregory Prickett (pictured at left), hereinafter referred to as The Prickette, left his position as campus cop at UNT-Dallas, no one could say for sure if he jumped or was pushed.  Now, the as the Modern Pharisee first reported, the UNT student newspaper has provided the answer to that question: he was pushed.

A veteran UNT police officer has filed an appeal after he was fired in December on accusations that he violated the university’s computer-use policy.

UNT Dallas Police Coordinator Gregory J. Prickett, a 20-year member of the department, was placed on administrative leave in October while investigators looked into complaints that he had blogged and edited Wikipedia articles at work.

Fired. Now it's out. Now we know.

My first reaction to this is that my fellow bloggers and allied persons have been vindicated. The Prickette IS the vile TxBluesMan. The Prickette DID use university computers for his campaign of slanderous hatred.

As Hugh noted in his post, "They don't fire you for blogging from work when you've been there for 20 years." That would lead one to believe that The Prickette went well beyond blogging to activities that quite possibly put the university at risk, or at least violated the university's code of ethics. There's more to his dismissal than just blogging at work. I, for one, am left with the hanging question: what ELSE did The Prickette do using university computers and other resources? I would like answers. (YOU WANT ANSWERS? I WANT THE TRUTH!!! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!)

Sorry.  Got a little carried away there.

Never look a gift horse('s ass) in the mouth, that's what I say. I can't say that I'm pleased that The Prickette lost his job. But I am pleased that his vile internet presence has been quashed, hopefully for good.

Yer finished, Prickette! Time to take your sorry, tired act and head home to wherever subhumans like you live.