American Voters Can Learn From The Ones In Zimbabwe...

But they won't.

Unless they can come up with real solutions for the economy, they are finished. The problem with promising us the mines or ownership of other businesses (or whatever it is they have robbed from Peter to give to Paul today) is we have the experience of the land behind us now: we know that redistribution doesn’t have anything to do with the people; that all benefits go to the elite and the economy falls apart at the seams as a result. There is nothing left to dangle before our noses.

No more politics for a while, a hunting report tomorrow.

The elusive, crafty wild turkey...

I always had a giggle when I saw a program on the television about wild turkey shooting. The camouflage, the whispering, the calls. Because they are elusive and crafty.

So I thought I'd put up a picture of this, which appears every morning within a short distance of our hunt:



But then, this morning, I drove past this:



That's not some isolated house, it's in a half acre per house subdivision. The adjacent county has over a million residents.

Hunters slaughtering wildlife. Terrible.

Busted!

So on the way back from hunting a couple of months ago, and earned a speeding citation. So yesterday I went to court. The fine was less than the cost of the gas to get there...

Interesting to watch the procedure in a different place. This particular court had four separate dockets at once- jail overnights, on bail criminal, traffic citation, and review. The Judge started with the standard lawyer speech, got lawyer request affidavits to the people who asked for them, called the on bail criminal docket and set the DA to work there, and then did the traffic citations.

I found it refreshing that the court ran its docket to get things done, rather than to make sure the lawyers were served first.

The Judge also told us traffic citation defendants what the result of a guilty plea would be, and so it was easy for us to decide to take our medicine.

BMW uses less fuel than a Prius in the real world....

"The BMW doesn’t have the external look of a green car and you don’t get the same self-righteous glow when you are driving it." But if you drive one from London to Geneva, you'll need less fuel.

AFP story less biased than AP on HELLER...

It's pretty bad when Agence France Presse has a more even handed story than the

AP does about the gun rights case.

Although neither is as badly biased and directive as they would have been just a few years ago. The cultural tide might be turning.

Ben Stein is very wrong about the Eliot Spitzer case...

Mr. Stein, who is usually dead on and about whom I've often raved, is very wrong here about both his points.

First, he seems bothered that investigators looking for evidence of one crime, finding evidence of a different "minor" crime, investigated that offense and eventually brought charges based on what they found.

Doe Mr. Stein seriously want the reverse to happen? "Yes, we've found evidence that a man is committing a crime. But he's the Governor, so we'll just not notice". That's not the Ben Stein I have heard before.

(There are really two things here. One's easily disposed of, and that's following the investigation where it leads. It happens all the time- police stop someone who runs a red light and find the driver is drunk. Or the police ticket a car and discover a multiple murderer's identity. I'm sure Mr. Stein doesn't oppose that sort of thing, and if the $4,000 had gone to a hit man or a legislator he'd have no complaint with a murder or bribery charge.)

The real problem seems to be that the investigators dared to charge someone Mr. Stein considers important with an offense he doesn't.

I suppose if it's just a plumber with a wife and family, it's alright to wreck his life with the truth about prostitution. Or an actor- I don't recall Mr. Stein being upset when Hugh Grant's picture was all over the news. Or is it just elections, rather than families or careers, that are sacred-ish? How about a Mayor smoking crack, am I supposed to give him a pass? A Congressman's roommate who is running a prostitution ring?

Everyone stayed quiet when another Governor ordered State Policemen on duty to fetch a state employee to an hotel room for an attempt at sex. Is that the way it's supposed to work?

Mr. Stein is frightened that "a few career civil servants" did exactly what they are sworn to do- investigate and charge a crime. Even though the criminal is powerful.

But he is not scared by the idea that the same "few career civil servants" decide whether to do their duty based on their personal judgment matrices of the criminal's importance and severity of the offense?

We have people to do that, and they do it in the open, not in the DA's office in secret.

As a prosecutor, I rightly have a very limited responsibility. When investigators bring me credible evidence of a crime, I present it to the courts. That's what the people chose me (through my boss) to do, and I won't deny them that election. It's not my place.

The legislature decides what crimes are. If the people think patronizing prostitution shouldn't be a crime, they can elect legislators who agree. It isn't up to a f.c.c.s. to deny the people their laws.

Courts decide whether a particular defendant committed a crime. Judges apply the defendant/offense balance in sentencing. It isn't up to a f.c.c.s. to deny the people their due constitutional process.

Mr. Stein's second point confuses me. He says that Gov. Spitzer was "kicked out of office". He wasn't, he quit. The public knowledge of the fact that he was a patron of prostitutes had no legal effect on his position, any more that the public knowledge that President Clinton was a perjurer.

The investigators didn't nullify Governor Spitzer's election, Governor Spitzer did. He could have hung on, but unlike President Clinton he had enough sense of shame, honor, fitness, respect for the citizens, or whatever to quit.

The Aspen Daily News' motto is, "If you don't want it printed, don't let it happen".

If you don't want to be caught, don't do it. And if your man gets caught, don't blame the catchers.

Eliot Spitzer in 1974?

I swore I wouldn't deal with this Spitzer thing, but after I saw this advert the name coincidence was too much.

The best Home Schooling thing ever is 80 years old...

Clever people often think along similar paths.

As before, click on each picture to blow the page up to readable size.




From:


No one reads APH any more, and it's a shame.

(And just in case one of my reader isn't familiar, these are sarcastic reports of fictional law cases dreamed up by the author to illustrate legal and social problems. Sort of like a proto-Onion, or my mass killing rewrites. Just so no homeschooler thinks the story is fact.)

It's now Federal Reserve policy to destroy the currency...

In case you hadn't heard, the United States Government will be creating some $200 billion (just to start with) to "lend" banks to cover worthless loans.

We send bankers and company executives to prison for fraud when they do this.

And as a bonus, it looks as though we might get the 401(k) Tax Forgiveness Act of 2012 a little bit ahead of schedule.

I thought it was just mad stupidity, but even an idiot child can see that it's intentional now.

I suppose we'll be hearing some of those old hits from President Nixon's dollar destruction speech of 1971. From the days of $35 gold, $6000 Cadillacs, and $25,000 average houses.

An 890 Dow Jones, too. Yes, your money has lost 90% of its value since 1971.

And I suspect that this sort of event is happening in D. C. right now:

President Nixon expressed grave concern that if he gave his speech during prime time on Sunday, he would preempt the tremendously popular television series Bonanza, thus potentially alienating those addicted to the adventures of the Cartwright family on the Ponderosa ranch. But his advisors convinced him that the speech had to be given before the markets opened on Monday morning, and that meant prime time. A few of the advisors would recollect that more time was spent discussing the timing of the speech than how the economic program would work. Indeed, there was virtually no discussion of what would happen after the initial 90-day freeze or how the new system would be terminated.

Just one question...

Just what is the certification procedure?

No Media Bias Here...

So, AOL has a little slideshow about political sex scandals. I wonder which are identified by party? Let's see:

Elliott Spitzer- a big mystery.
Larry Craig- Big R by his name.
David Vitter- Another R.
Mark Foley- R for all to see.
James McGreevey- We don't need to know.
Bill Clinton- Party unknown.
Bob Packwood- Clearly we DO need to know he's an R.
Donald Lukens- Another name followed immediately by that R.
Barney Frank- #9 is the first identified Democrat.
Gary Hart, another Democrat named as such.
Studds and Crane, one each, identified.
And in the era of black and white photography, Wilbur Mills gets his D.

Only three of 13 not identified by party, all D. Just a coincidence.

Politically correct bird seed...

The last time I bought finch food it was still Niger seed, but the political correction actually occurred in 1998.

Some other actual offensive terms (rather that perfectly correct geographic ones with different spellings)are still proudly adopted as trade names. Here are the retailers currently being vilified and boycotted.

Meanwhile, I still have to see this racist wordconstantly.

Ricin recipe...

My ScienceGirl is hilarious. Or scary. We were discussing something a group of people had done to upset one of her friends.

SG- If they do anything more to her, I'll be making up some ricin in the attic.

S- Maybe not making it, but at least getting the recipe and ingredients.

SG- No, I already have some...  errr... ahh... ummm...


Maybe K and kennelman C should compare notes.

North Carolina School Shooting...

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — A campus security officer is dead and several Elizabeth City State University officials are in jail charged with murder following a bizarre incident at the college campus yesterday.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday's editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. According to several people who were in the room, as he ranted at them and waved a gun around, the students and teacher responded in a way the gunman did not expect.

Assistant professor Jingbin Wang, whose American foreign policy class was held hostage. "I was not prepared to die at that moment," Wang said Tuesday of the moment the gunman entered the room. "I know from the study of history that it is better to resist than to submit. My ancestors were driven from their homes by warlords and communists, but I'm an American. And Liviu Librescuwas on the cover of every magazine in the country- I just followed his example."

"Professor Wang was incredible", said George Hanover, one of the students. "While he was telling us to line up against the wall, he just launched himself at the guy, and it was on. One of the students grabbed a chair and hit him, and Lizzie grabbed onto him and dragged him down. It was like United 93, we just pounded on him until we got the gun away."

The attacker died from his injuries.

Unknown to the students, they had been unknowing participants in an "emergency response drill". The man who attacked them was a campus security officer, ordered to assault the students in the "drill". The gun was only a red plastic model, but Wang and others said they didn't have time to examine it as they were being attacked.

Following a brief investigation, ECSU Chancellor Willie J. Gilchrist, Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, and Samuel Beamon, director of public safety, were arrested. Each was charged with eleven counts of aggravated assault, eleven counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and one count of murder, listing the security officer as the victim. No students were charged.

"Look here, in North Carolina, when you go into a room full of innocent people and tell them you're going to kill them, I HOPE they resist", said Sheriff Andy Taylor. "None of those people did anything wrong. They were placed in reasonable fear of imminent death, and did what the law allows and human nature demands. The days of lining up like sheep are over. With people like Adam Walburger and LaShanda Quantrell being all over the news, people know what to do now. I'm proud of them."

District Attorney Mike Notnifong explained the charges. "Entering the classroom and threatening the students with what appeared to be a weapon is aggravated assault, a felony. All three of the defendants conspired together to make that happen, and ordered their employee to commit the crime. Even if no one had been hurt, they would have been charged, as would the security officer if he had lived.

In North Carolina, when someone is killed during the perpetration of a felony, the person committing the underlying felony is criminally responsible for the death as a murder. It's called the felony murder doctrine. Usually it's applied to robbers and burglars who kill their victims, but it has been used to convict accomplices when a co conspirator was killed by a resisting victim, too.

Look, this was incredibly foreseeable. Just a week ago, the NIU attacker was beaten to death by resisting students. The defendants knowingly and intentionally put twelve people in peril, and one died. These defendants killed him, and if a jury agrees they will do life in prison."

Just a dream... But they SHOULD charge the people who did and ordered this.

Seriously, click on the Gilchrist and Beamon links- in light of this incident, their previous sayings are hilarious.

And sorry, Miss C- you were wrong. Too much Rosa Parks and M.L. King, not enough Peter Salem and Nat Turner.

A book for children...

I had forgotten all about this book until I bumped into it by accident recently. But when I saw it, I well recalled reading it when I was quite young. It made a big impression.

On reading it now, I had some thoughts that of course would never have occurred to six year old me.

Starting with, shock. Actual, internal surprise. This would NEVER win the Newbery Medal today. Are you joking? It would never even be published. Only its Newbery keeps it in print.

If somehow it DID see the light of day, its author would be hounded out of the scribblers' guild. I cannot imagine any public or government school librarian permitting it to be added to the stacks. Other Newbery winners have been sanitized, but this entire book is thoughtcrime.

I've asked three librarians in different parts of the country to see if it was in inventory. The only one who said it was, after looking at it, expressed surprise at its presence.

The America of the time this book was published was a very different place. It was in its physical world- genuine poverty, segregation, sound(ish) money, no welfare, nationally engulfing war right off shore, men with neckties at the ball game, and the criminals always losing in the movies.

But that mental America must have been different from this one too. Some of those differences will scream at you when you imagine what would happen if this book magically appeared on the shelves at a school in Berkley or Westport. They are too obvious for even I, the Earl of Obvious, to point out. But there are a LOT of them.

That America was different from the way we have been taught, and are told, to imagine it as well. A couple of things from the book bring that home to me.

I won't talk about them here, for fear of spoilage. I've put most of the book in the post immediately preceding this one, and so that post- from March 4, 2008, is big- 40 pictures. Click on each picture to make it large enough to read. It will take a while to load if your machine is slow. I've left out the preface (which is for adults), most of the illustrations, and the last chapter. That's fair use, and if you want to discover what happens...

But if the owners ask me to take it down, I will.

I've got a couple of thoughts at the end of that post that might be not entirely obvious.

The Matchlock Gun, by Walter Edmonds

Thank you, Tam, for the link!! Haven't had so many visitors since I almost got blown up.

I had forgotten all about this book until I bumped into it by accident recently. But when I saw it, I well recalled reading it when I was quite young. It made a big impression.

On reading it now, I had some thoughts that of course would never have occurred to six year old me.

Starting with, shock. Actual, internal surprise. This would NEVER win the Newbery Medal today. Are you joking? It would never even be published. Only its Newbery keeps it in print.

If somehow it DID see the light of day, its author would be hounded out of the scribblers' guild. I cannot imagine any public or government school librarian permitting it to be added to the stacks. Other Newbery winners have been sanitized, but this entire book is thoughtcrime.

I've asked three librarians in different parts of the country to see if it was in inventory. The only one who said it was, after looking at it, expressed surprise at its presence.

The America of the time this book was published was a very different place. It was in its physical world- genuine poverty, segregation, sound(ish) money, no welfare, nationally engulfing war right off shore, men with neckties at the ball game, and the criminals always losing in the movies.

But that mental America must have been different from this one too. Some of those differences will scream at you when you imagine what would happen if this book magically appeared on the shelves at a school in Berkley or Westport. They are too obvious for even I, the Earl of Obvious, to point out. But there are a LOT of them.

That America was different from the way we have been taught, and are told, to imagine it as well. A couple of things from the book bring that home to me.

I won't talk about them here, for fear of spoilage. I've put most of the book in this post, and so it is big- 40 pictures. Click on each picture to make it large enough to read. It will take a while to load if your machine is slow. I've left out the preface (which is for adults), most of the illustrations, and the last chapter. That's fair use, and if you want to discover what happens...

But if the owners ask me to take it down, I will.

I've got a couple of thoughts at the end of that post that might be not entirely obvious.

Click on each picture to make it large enough to read.

It's a shame that we live in a world where every single bit of this story is subversive of the established theology.

One thing I like about this book is the author's spare, relaxed style. The book is full of incident, yet it feels like he's describing the making of a sandwich or some other fairly ordinary event. There's not the slightest attempt at hyperbole. The people, all of them, just cope.

Perhaps that's why the lessons and points of the book were so effective for me as a child. They aren't presented didactically, but are part of the background. Many modern books for children (like many old ones) are preachments, and that's just not so effective. With me, anyway.

One of the things most subversive of orthodoxy is partly what this book presents, but mainly the fact that it presented it in 1941.

We're told that women in those dim, pre-Friedan days were kept barefoot and pregnant. That they were the household skivvies of men, prevented from any contribution or decision making. And further, that the eeeeeeeevil patriarchy reinforced that outlook at every turn.

But look at the Gertrude children are shown in 1941! Talk about a strong, independent, intelligent, capable woman. She even refuses her husband's command to go to the brick house, and he just accepts it! It's almost as if she's a respected equal!

Current feminist thinking often pretends that girls (and boys) back in the bad old days weren't shown powerful examples of women. That's a lie, and this book is a demonstration.

This book is still under copyright, and I encourage you to buy it. Even if you are profoundly cheap. Certainly everyone who can read the second amendment and has a child whom he or she knows ought to think about it as a present. You might want to discuss aspects of it with them, but it should be in the nursery.

Something just occurred to me- I wonder if new versions ARE altered? Don't see how they could be, but the bien pensants are clever. I'll have to buy one and see.