The Other McCain is on the case.

Jennifer Andrushko will testify today at an 11:15 a.m. hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. Also testifying will be Dr. Ronald Mortensen, who tells the story of how an illegal alien stole the identity of Mrs. Andrushko’s 5-year-old son Carter….

A reminder, should one be necessary, that people who are in this country unlawfully are CRIMINALS by that very fact, and criminals can be depended upon to act criminally in other ways, ‘progressive’ handwringing notwithstanding.

Read it.

South Africans woke up on Wednesday morning to the claim that a group of Soweto youths had filmed themselves raping a 17-year-old girl believed to be mentally ill.

The cellphone video is said to have gone viral among school kids in the township south of Johannesburg, and the term #rapevideo was trending on Twitter in South Africa on Wednesday.

Think of how much worse things were under the old regime run by Racist White People. Oh, wait….

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Read it.

A small cadre of lawyers, some from out of state, are using New York City’s age and architectural quirkiness as the foundation for a flood of lawsuits citing violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The ADA is a prime reason George H. W. Bush will burn in Hell for all eternity.

The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.

The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses.

In other words, they’re gaming the system.

Read it.

Certainly the IRS ought to be doing your taxes. All this crap is reported to them anyway, and they’re going to run their own calculations; why should we have to waste all of our time doing what they’re being paid to do?

Read it.

Read it.

A police community support officer hired because she was a lesbian has been jailed after telling a friend to flee town when detectives were looking for her.

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Read it.

Hindus, the religious majority in India, regard cows as sacred and the animals are often used in temple ceremonies as well as allowed to wander at will through the country’s busy towns and markets.

In the traditional Hindu caste system, Dalits (formerly known as ‘untouchables’) are considered the lowest of low castes, and some Dalit groups reject Hindu religious practices such as the ban on eating beef.

Beef biryani and other beef dishes were served to 200 people at the festival before about 50 students belonging to a right-wing Hindu group tried to enter the venue, police said.

Rather like putting a crucifix in a jar of urine in a majority-Christian country. But of course nobody would do that.

Police fired tear gas on Sunday evening to break up the fighting, in which at least five people were injured and two vehicles were set ablaze at the Osmania University in the city of Hyderabad.

Jeez, you’d think these guys were Muslims.

Read it.

Considering how quickly the Anglican Church is coming apart, cardboard ought to last long enough.

Steve Sailer turns over a rock.

Last summer, I wrote about Bruce Norris’s play about real estate and race in Chicago, Clybourne Park. (Here’s an interview with Norris.) The NYT has an article about rehearsals for its opening on Broadway that unintentionally makes an important point about how Nice White People want middle class African-Americans to be driven to the edge of violence just by the thought of things that happened to blacks before they were born.

Basically, this racial anger among the black cast members didn’t really happen, but NYT subscribers want to believe it did.

Reminds me of the old Cheech & Chong routine about Blind Melon Chitlin.

There are two kinds of black people in America: a minority who have assimilated to mainstream American culture, and a majority who have developed, cultivated, and in many cases enthusiastically embraced a separate subculture that is degenerate, corrupt, and semi-criminal, the home of the ‘gangsta’ and the ‘nigga’. Progressive White People (‘PWPs’, pronounced ‘poops’) hate the former because it illuminates the lie of the PWP mythology that all black people are oppressed and Just Can’t Get a Break Because of White Racism. So they keep up an unending pressure on non-nigga black Americans to Get Down and Dirty and join their ‘bruthas’ on the barricades. That’s what John Derbyshire was trying to communicate, and why he was hung out to dry by the self-righteous cowards at National Review and elsewhere, as well as the rabid dingoes of the Left.

As Orwell, liked to say, who controls the past controls the future. My in-laws were nice white liberals who tried to make integration work, not fleeing the West Side of Chicago until their children had been mugged three times. By trying, they wound up losing half their net worth and my late father-in-law ended up with a 126 mile commute to his job in the orchestra at the Chicago Opera House. But that kind of history is unappreciated, to say the least. Nobody wants to hear about it, and especially nobody wants to hear any hard feelings about it.

Because, after all, Only Blacks Can Be Victims.

Read it.

It appears Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano perjured herself in front of Congress numerous times. In her new book “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up” Townhall’s News Editor Katie Pavlich provides evidence from inside sources that Ms. Napolitano did in fact lie to Congress under oath. She also provides evidence Ms. Napolitano did know about Fast and Furious.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

We’ve told you in previous reports to expect the increasingly broke, desperate and nomadic Occupy movement to continue to make police the enemy and to make more flailing ‘direct actions’ in an attempt to stir up headlines. In New York City this weekend, they did not disappoint.

Matthew Yglesias fears not to express ideas that would get a right-winger run out of town; after all, he’s a card-carrying Voice of the Crust, writing in a certified Crustian Rag.

But the same consideration applies to married women! Today’s married mother, after all, may be tomorrow’s divorced mom. If you stay out of the labor force while married, this will severely hurt your earnings prospects if you become single. And the fact that you’ll be hard-pressed to cope with the economic consequences of divorce weakens your bargaining position within the marriage. Indeed, Torben Iverson and Frances Rosenbluth argue in a fascinating paper on “The Political Economy of Gender” (PDF) that this has what’s driven women to left-of-center political parties in a wide range of advanced economies.

In other words, the welfare state makes it easier for you to dump hubby if you get tired of him. So vote socialist Democrat! You want that EBT to be there for you!

Read it.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Don Boudreaux is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Whatever is the reason why so many grown people respect holders of political office is, as it has always been, beyond my comprehension.  I just don’t get it.  Practitioners of no other profession are accorded more honor, respect, and (most importantly) power while at the same time being held to such low standards of ethical behavior.  Actions that, when committed by the family dog, properly elicit scolding or muzzling or even eviction from the premises are, when committed by an elected official, greeted with oohs, aahhs, applause, and re-election to powerful office.

Read it.

Carl Simpson, executive director of Denver 911, has apologized after instructions given by a 911 operator led to the death of one man. Jimma Reat called 911 to report that the occupants of a red Jeep had thrown bottles at his vehicle and threatened him and family members traveling with him. The operator told Reat to return to the scene of the incident. Reat at first refused and argued with the operator but relented after the operator threatened to not send police if he didn’t go back. Reat went back to the scene to wait on police, where he was shot and killed by the occupants of the Jeep.

Your tax dollars at work.

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Crowds in Stockton, California massed for a protest against the police yesterday over the police shootings of Luther Brown Jr. and James Rivera. Brown was shot after grabbing an officer’s baton and beating him with it; he was a gang member. Rivera was shot after he tried to back over police officers in his vehicle during a traffic stop.

Ah, yes; just innocent victims of The Man. Looks like Derb was right.

Read it.

Electronic Arts is being criticised by Christian campaign groups who say it is setting a bad example for young people.

Uh, where in their Articles of Incorporation does it say anything about ‘setting a good example for young people’ as one of their business purposes? Sell games, I would believe; make money, sure. But ‘setting a good example’? I don’t think so.

The company has reportedly described the complaints as “political harassment” and said the ‘gay’ content is only an customisable option, not a mandatory part of the game.

Some people need to learn to mind their own business.

Read it.

This trend is of a piece with those that seek to ban such things as smoking, trans-fats in foods, and salt in restaurant meals. In every case, political power is used to force an ideological agenda on people who are obviously Not With The Program. In every case, it divides a population into the Smart People who are enacting the ban and the Dumb People who don’t know what’s good for them and hence have to be forced into it.

Such strictures are one of the primary reasons that people are deserting places like California and New York and Michigan, and moving to places like Texas, where personal liberty is still a respected concept. You will no doubt have noticed that such ideological advocacy groups tend to prefer to get their programs enshrined into law on the  Federal level whenever they can, precisely to prevent such ‘voting with the feet’.

Read it.

A majority of us consume chocolate each day. Although the U.S. produces only 6% of the world’s cocoa, we consume more than 20%.

The threat is obvious. It’s time for government to step in and promote alternatives.

Read it.

1. Every fifth man in America is out of a job. Indeed, black male unemployment is now at the highest rate it has ever been since the U.S. government began collecting statistics on the subject in 1972. Just 56.9 percent of black men over the age of 20 are now working. Indeed, according to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), one out of every six African Americans, male or female, are now unemployed.

2. Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.

3. On the last day of President Bush’s presidency, gas prices were $1.84 a gallon. Today under Obama, the average price of a gallon of gas costs $3.94. Easter weekend in Catalina Island, California, drivers saw prices topping $7 a gallon.

4. In 2006 and 2007, 90% of all college graduates found a job. Under Obama, just56% of college graduates are able to find a job.

5. More than one in four U.S. homeowners are “under water” or owe more than their homes are worth. The housing crisis has now destroyed $7 trillion in U.S. household wealth. Another 9.5 million homes are still at risk of default, sparking what analysts believe will be a second wave of foreclosures in the months to come.

6. President Obama has increased the national debt more in three years than President Bush did in eight. Under Bush, the debt rose $4.899 trillion in eight years. In three years, Obama has exploded the debt by $4.939 trillion.

7. A record 87,897,000 Americans are no longer in the labor force. When the number of individuals who have stopped looking for a job and/or who are working part-time but desire full-time employment is included–a figure known as the “underemployment rate”–real unemployment stands at 19.1%.

The Daily Telegraph has a piece that slovenly characterizes John’s article as ‘racist’ but is otherwise fairly accurate.

The disappointing thing is the number of people who, had it been a black guy talking about white people, would have praised it for its ‘courage’ and ‘speaking truth to power’, yet are in the forefront of those howling for his scalp, while out-and-out racists like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson apparently get a pass.

Nothing so strongly supports what John has to say as the reactions to it.

Read it.

Obamacare is a Trojan horse, intended, as Barack Obama has said, to lead to the extinction of private health insurance and its replacement by socialized (“single payer”) medicine. So it is pertinent to observe how socialized medicine has worked out in countries where it has been in place for some decades, like the United Kingdom. One key feature of socialized medicine, wherever it exists, is the establishment of death panels. Death panels are needed to ration health care by designating those who are not worth treating, usually by virtue of their age.

The Other McCain jumps into the latest SWPL controversy, this one involving John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspspsia.

What you might not notice is that this is a skirmish on the fringes of the Trayvon Martin controversy, which has turned into a stalemate, so that now frustrated people are in scalp-taking mode. The NBC producer got taken out by conservatives and now, for some strange reason, NR‘s John Derbyshire just volunteers himself as a target for the Left?

It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it. Since Derb turned up with cancer perhaps he’s looking for a grenade to fall on.

One problem I’ve discovered in trying to communicate with intellectuals is that so many of them are wimps from sheltered backgrounds whose mamas wouldn’t let them play football — apple-polishing goodie-two-shoes who never strayed outside the confines of their safe, wholesome, upwardly-mobile affluent cocoon.

Yeah, that matches my experience. Couple of years in the military would straighten them out — but usually that sort of thing is too yucky for them, so they just stay drones. So we wind up with a country run by drones, which results as you see them.

Read it.

A high school science teacher in the Bronx who had already been warned about touching female students brushed his lower body against one student’s leg during a lab exercise, coming so close that she told investigators she could feel his genitals through his pants.

That guy’s still in the classroom, as are a math teacher who harassed a female student via phone and text messages and a health teacher who simulated anal sex on one of his male students. In these and other cases, the Times reports, New York school officials’ efforts to fire such teachers were stymied by contractually-required arbitration that, while finding the teachers at fault, didn’t go so far as to fire them.

And why? Because it’s a government school

1. Being a government school means being controlled through politics.
2. Being controlled through politics means being subject to whoever has the most and loudest votes.
3. Unions almost always have enough (and loud enough) votes to control the political process especially if Democrat are involved.
4. In a large city, Democrats are always involved — after all, they invented the big city political machine.

Read it.

Children of the Crust can do no wrong.

Read it.

Black kids beat up old white guy.

While Mr. Watts was down the boys kicked him, over and over, shouting, “[Get] that white [man]. This is for Trayvon … Trayvon lives, white [man]. Kill that white [man],” according to a police report.

Obama White House, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson: Yawn.

Read it.

A couple of years ago I attended a conference which discussed various aspects of public sector and government, and education in particular. During this event I got taken aside by someone who apparently did something fairly high up in the department of education, probably because of my previous work on Elgg which has been linked – for better or worse – to the field of E-Learning.

During our rather meandering conversation on education and politics, he admitted that the education time bomb, as he called it, was a widely acknowledged problem, but that they had no solution whatsoever for it.

He went so far as to admit to me that given the lead time involved for any solution to have an effect it was almost certainly too late to do anything about it in any case.

His candour shocked me, and I asked what he suggested as a recommended course of action; “Leave.”, was his reply, “Before it gets really bad.”

I think this guy is really Dennis in a Clever Plastic Disguise.

Read it.

The death of the 77-year-old man in the Greek capital’s Syntagma Square came after similar incidents in Italy.

The pensioner shot himself with a handgun a few hundred yards from the Greek parliament, in apparent despair over his debts.

He reportedly shouted “so I won’t leave debts for my children” before killing himself in the square, which has been the scene of numerous violent protests against the introduction of tough austerity measures in recent months.

I’m not sure I make the connection, here. ‘Debts’ means that you borrowed money and can’t pay it back. Does Greece not have bankruptcy laws?

In neighbouring Italy, a 78-year-old woman threw herself from the balcony of her third-floor apartment on Tuesday in apparent protest against the fact that her monthly pension had been cut to 600 euros.

So I guess the government is ahead by 600 euros a month. Not what I think of when I think ‘protest’.

Read it. And try not to puke.

Smoking gun: ‘The overriding thing that struck me about this article is here is a company that brought in over 45 billion dollars (yes, that’s billion with a B last year) and has given next to nothing in its home base where it employs more than 9,000 people.’

Note the blind spot: It employs 9,000 people, and yet that is ‘next to nothing’. What matters is not how many jobs a company provides for a community, how much it enriches their lives (and those of their customers around the fucking world), but what it ‘gives’ to the locality in which it is headquartered.

Apparently, in the world of Josie Leavitt, the purpose of a company isn’t to conduct a profitable business, employing people, making its customers’ lives better by providing goods and services, and giving its investors a return on their money; no, the purpose of a business is to serve as a fountain of cash to any do-gooder with a hand out (and there are always plenty of them) who passes by.

Amazon needs to move its headquarters from this behavioral sink on the Left Coast to someplace like Dallas, where its generous contributions to the community will be appreciated rather than sneered at.

Read it.

The goods and services highlighted are popular targets for revenue-hungry lawmakers who impose “sin” taxes and other punitive costs on products and industries. These discriminatory taxes, coupled with the costs companies shoulder under the current tax burden under federal, state and local governments, increase the costs of goods and services by an average of 41 percent.

In other words, of you like something that the Crust things you ought not to like, they’ll punish you for it financially.

Read it.

Well, that’s because the shooter was black — and the victims were white. Any son he had wouldn’t have looked (or, day we say, acted?) like James Cooper and James Kouzaris – we hope.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, points out how ‘multiculturalism’ is the problem, not the solution.

In Europe and the Anglosphere, this is the Age of Multiculturalism—an age when the doctrine is so much taken for granted, at least by elite types such as the Mayor of London, editorial writers at The New York Times, and American generals, that it has seeped into the tissues and bones to the degree that contrary notions cannot be thought.

The thought that New York Times editorialists cannot think about anti-Semitic murders in Europe is that Jew-killing has nothing to do with “anti-immigrant political talk” or the “far right.” It is instead an activity favored, encouraged, and committed pretty exclusively by radical Muslims who have been admitted to Europe in ululating multitudes by the same lunatic multiculturalist immigration policies that gave London its riots.

Read it. And watch the video.

Read it.

According to information obtained by Belling, a custodian working for a private contractor at Whitewater (Wisconsin) High School was recently fired by her employer after two school employees, including the supervisor of custodians, demanded that she remove a pro-Scott Walker sign from her car and she refused.

Free speech my ass; you cross the Organization, they hurt you.

A quick drive through any Wisconsin school parking lot will reveal dozens of “recall Walker” bumper stickers. Nobody is demanding that the owners of those vehicles lose their jobs.

Look for … the Union label ….

Read it.

Nothing related to academics, of course.

Harvard’s renovation plans for its residential houses where undergraduates live include “flat-screen televisions” for student rooms, “courtesy of Harvard,” the Harvard Crimson reports. Also, “wall jacks for students to connect their gaming systems and computers to the television screen.”

Read it.

The bar code served as a form of identity for the woman and as certificate of “ownership” by one prostitution ring, and beneath the bar code was also tattooed the amount of money she owed the ring, police said.

Read it.

The Sacketts wanted to build a home on a 0.63-acre lot near pristine Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle that they bought for $23,000. But after three days of bringing in fill dirt and preparing for construction in 2007, officials from the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered the activity stopped and said they suspected the land contained wetlands.

Months later, the agency sent the Sacketts a “compliance order” that said the land must be restored as a wetlands before the couple could apply for a building permit. The government acknowledged that fines for failure to comply with the orders could be as much as $75,000 a day.

Your tax dollars at work.

The question for the justices was whether the couple had the right at that point to appear before a judge and contest the agency’s contention that their land contained wetlands subject to the Clean Water Act.

The agency didn’t even want to allow them access to a court to challenge the order. That’s the EPA all over.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined in the criticism in a concurring opinion, saying the position taken by the federal government in the case “would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.”

As if they aren’t already.

Read it.

Workers at a large Russian company are to boycott British goods over the UK Government’s support for businesses that ban Christians from openly wearing crosses or crucifixes at work.

Pretty sad when Russians have more respect for freedom of religion than the British government.

Read it.

Yet another excellent reason to steer clear of Facebook.

Read it.

The American government, which has been shoveling out federally guaranteed loans to American solar power companies, is now going to try to help by taxing the companies’ foreign competitors, the Wall Street Journal reports….

So we see that ‘solar power’ is not a goal to be accomplished, but rather an excuse for more taxpayer-funded cronyism on the part of the administration. How’s that Hope and Change working out for you?

Read it.

After Dharun Ravi was convicted of “bias intimidation” crimes that carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, many people wondered why he had rejected a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail. Ravi’s lawyer explained that the 20-year-old defendant’s parents “didn’t believe their son acted with hate, or bias, and they didn’t want him labeled like that for life.” But it turns out you can be convicted of a hate crime without hating anyone….

Oh brave new world, that has such bullshit in it.

Read it.

From the ‘Do Something Even If It’s Wrong’ chronicles: Midnight basketball for the Children of the Crust.

One of the perennial problems of modern revolutionary movements is ‘What do you do if you win?’ Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all faced this problem and answered it in different ways: Hitler by external war, Lenin and Stalin by internal purge, and Mao by cultural suicide. I think one can safely say that the these were all, shall we say, less than successful.

The modern Crust likes to encourage ‘activism’ amongst its juvenile tools (including, of course, its own offspring) — witness the ‘anti-fascist’ movement in Europe, whose chief characteristic is that they are actually the chief tool of the ideology that they claim to be fighting. There are two reasons for this, so far as I can tell: It gives Restive Youth something to do rather than effectually opposing those who actually run the circus, and it creates a handy tool to use against those who refuse to Get With The Program, such as the Tea Party movement in America and the Anti-Islamist movement in Europe.

The continuing problem, of course, is that ‘activists’ are active, and they might chance upon some cause that does not comport with the New World Order. So they must have straw men to fight, lest they turn and render their handlers. Hence projects such as these.

This week, Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” hits the big screen. As the latest wildly popular young adult (Y.A.) novel becomes a film franchise, it’s not just box office dollars that will be captured, but potentially nascent citizens.  At least that’s the goal of the social campaign called “Hunger Is Not a Game” which aims to connect fans to the global food justice movement.

This is a perfect example of the increasingly fashionable trend that might best be described as a ‘theme circle-jerk’. It resembles nothing so much as what the authors of the Illuminatus trilogy called a ‘Bavarian fire drill’ — at the end of the exercise, everyone is back in their cars, having changed nothing but nevertheless having worked off some steam, imbued with a vague but satisfactory feeling of accomplishment.

The ‘global food justice movement’ is almost a poster child for the sort of thing with which the Crust occupies its more ADD denizens. What, exactly, is ‘food justice’? And in what respect is it ‘global’? This is one of those inchoate concepts that Voices of the Crust love to drop en passant in the sure and certain knowledge that those whose lives are a constant struggle with Fear Of Missing Out will nod sagely and say, ‘Why, yes, of course, the global food justice movement’, having no clue as to what it means but unwilling to acknowledge that they aren’t up to speed with the In Crowd.

It is, of course, more redistributionist nonsense — the fact that there are hungry people in the world and well-fed people in the world OF COURSE means that the well-fed have somehow done the hungry people a mischief, which it is the goal of the activists to shame them into correcting, preferably by means of giving the activisst money for them to distribute (with a healthy cut for themselves, naturally, for being so well-meaning). Nothing significant ever comes of it, of course — a wad of taxpayer-supplied cash to play with, a few meals augmented here and there, a notch on multiple resumés, but no real mark in the sands of time.

Food prices in recent years have hit record highs, leading to riots worldwide. Oxfam’s pledge calls for simple reforms: create policies that encourage crops for food, not fuel, reform food aid procedures and support small farmers.

This would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. The reason food prices are high is because governments provide price supports, precisely to ‘support small farmers’ but chiefly benefiting Huge Corporate Farmers; of these ‘simple reforms’ that Oxfam would do: (a) ‘encourage crops for food, not fuel’ is directly contrary to official government policies based on the clamor of their fellow ‘activists’ in the environmental movement, and now set in stone for benefit of the typical special interests that grow up around any foolish government money-spending program; (b) ‘reform food aid procedure’ would have to mean getting the government (and NGOs like Oxfam) out of it, and you know that’s not going to happen; and (c) ‘support small farmers’ is a strategy guaranteed to keep prices high, since such farmers can’t use the economies of scale that actually bring prices down. So, as you see, it’s all hot air.

It’s worth paying attention to this campaign, not just because “The Hunger Games” film is projected to make $90 million at this weekend’s box office, but because Imagine Better is an example of how social change organizations are looking to tap into the extraordinary market power of Y.A. fiction — now the world’s fastest growing literary genre.

How to keep young people active but ineffectual? Key their themed circle-jerk to a current fad. You didn’t think that Lady Gaga got where she is today based on actual talent, did you? And it’s brilliant. Having ensured that two entire generations of young people will have no useful skills by pushing them into college and luring them into such wanker majors as art history, gender studies, and queer theory, the Crust capitalizes on the sort of ‘literature’ that is most popular with the arrested-adolescent set by keying their ineffectual ‘activism’ exercises to it.

Perhaps the most effective practitioner of fan-fueled social change is Andrew Slack, the 32-year-old founder of The Harry Potter Alliance and the force behind Imagine Better. Since Slack, who started out as a comedian, founded the Harry Potter Alliance, he has motivated Potterphiles to send five cargo planes with $123,000 worth of relief supplies to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, donate more than 88,000 books across the world, raise awareness about net neutrality and genocide and make forays into politics — taking on Maine’s 2009 ballot initiative that sought to repeal same sex marriage.

The ‘most effective practitioner’ is named Slack (surely this is a joke?), 32 years old but head of the Harry Potter Alliance (bet he still lives in his parents’ basement), and is ‘most effective’ … how? Sending food handouts to Haiti (an amount that Congress spends in about ten minutes on ethanol subsidies) rather than, you know, helping them grow their own food; donating a lot of books (and doesn’t that fill the stomach?); ‘raising awareness’ about net neutrality (seriously? ‘net neutrality’?) and genocide (not trying to prevent it, mind you, but just ‘raising awareness’ — for the Crust, ‘raising awareness’ is almost as good as actually doing something); and ‘forays into politics’ (in support of a typical Crustian political initiative — yeah, there’s hope and change for you). Really, you can’t make this shit up.

The rest is more of the same.  The problem is that you can’t parody this stuff; they write a better parody than you can, and present it as news.

Read it.

“[Glenn] Richter has been collecting food from places like the Ohav Zedek synagogue and bringing it to homeless shelters for more than 20 years, but recently his donation, including a ‘cholent‘ or carrot stew, was turned away because the Bloomberg administration wants to monitor the salt, fat and fiber eaten by the homeless. … Richter said that over the years he’s delivered more than two tons of food to the homeless.” The NYC mayor says he’s not planning to reconsider the recently adopted policy.

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ — Benito Mussolini

Read it.

Illinois had an optimistic outlook when it passed House Bill 3659, which was the state’s affiliate nexus tax. Bill co-sponsor Senator John Cullerton anticipated the new would generate an additional $150 million in much-needed revenues. As the Chicagoist reported today, the reality looks far more grim.

January thruough June 2011, the months before the law went into effect saw the Illinois Department of Revenue collect approximately $139 million use tax. From July 2011 through the end of the year, Illinois collected $127 million in use tax. That’s right, Illinois collected less use tax after their affiliate nexus tax went into effect.

Politicians just don’t grasp that people respond to incentives. The see a stream of money going by and figure that if they start wetting their beaks (hell, dipping out big bucketfuls) the stream will continue as if nothing is happening. This is like thinking that a dog will run just as fast pulling you as it will by itself.

Amazon.com and Overstock.com, two of the biggest affiliate programs online, terminated their affiliate programs in Illinois, just like they have in most other states, meaning they avoided the new tax law completely. That also has the side effect of reducing potential income tax revenue from affiliates.

FatWallet, Inc, a coupon site formerly located in Rockton, IL, moved to Wisconsin to avoid the taxes, taking over 50 jobs and any associated taxes with them.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Jehu lays it out in black and white.

Diversity promotes sprawl, by the engine of white flight and NAM crime.  Sprawl promotes obesity, the number one killer of a woman’s value in the SMP and MMP.

That’s the bottom line. The implications are pretty ugly.

Diversity atomizes communities, which makes mass media more influential in relation.  Mass media tends to reduce the status of males relative to females, which is toxic to attraction
The atomization of communities breeds virtual anonymity, which increases the effectiveness of the ‘Cad’ strategy relative to the ‘Dad’ strategy because communities that don’t actually exist find it very difficult to enforce shared norms, especially in ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ sorts of situations.
By importing lots of cheap labor, the value of the average Joe’s labor in the economy is bid down, lowering his status, which is, again, toxic to attraction
Importing lots of voters with a socialist bent tends to move states in a more socialist direction, and the thicker the social safety net, the more devalued the archetypal ‘beta provider’ becomes
Forcing people to walk on eggshells all the time around issues of diversity, ethnicity, or race coerces most people to act like cowards or fools, neither of which is especially attractive.

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Read it.

The capital city of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg is 52 percent Black (and only 30 percent white) as of the latest US Census.

Though not as big as the failure of Jefferson County, Alabama and the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history (primarily courtesy of the financial mismanagement of 71 percent Birmingham), Harrisburg is an insolvent capital city. With virtually no tax-base (cities that are primarily comprised of Black people tend to have that problem), Harrisburg relies on parking garages and parking meters to as primary cash-generating assets, bankruptcy appears inevitable.

Whatever you do, don’t step in the diversity.

Read it.

SUDBURY, ONT. – Family members are shocked after Grade 7 Catholic school students received oral sex pamphlets meant for 18 year olds.

I guess Canada isn’t as boring as people say.

“They had a booth in the gymnasium, so they had to have permission to get in there. They wouldn’t have just been able to set up without somebody’s permission,” said James-Poulin, grandmother to one of the girls who came home with the sexually explicit pamphlet.

Well, I guess Catholic schools have changed more than I supposed.

Catholic school board officials and an AIDS information organization are at a loss to explain how the oral sex pamphlet ended up in the students’ possession.

Degenerate modern culture seems an obvious suspect, but that’s just me, I suppose.

Read it.

The movie industry is run the same way, which is why smart people work for a share of the gross, a figure less readily played.

Both are amateurs compared to the government, of course.

Jehu is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

It was that the public changed its expectation regarding the impact of a hijacking from ‘we’ll take an unscheduled vacation to Cuba and pick up some cigars’ to ‘some SOB wants to turn us into charcoal by using our plane as a guided missile’.  Changing the expectation is all that it took to make such behavior impractical.  All of the rest is theatre—expensive, humiliating, and time-consuming theatre.  All of the terrorist incidents that have been thwarted recently have been done so by…you guessed it…passengers, or, if you prefer, by the unorganized militia of the US.  Not for nothing did Sun Tzu say, if you put your men on deadly ground (i.e., ground where it is clear that you must fight and/or die, retreat is obviously impossible) they will live (because most of the slaughter in ancients battles came after one side’s morale had broken, and those ‘on deadly ground’ tend to have very strong morale).  Because the public now recognizes a hijacking as ‘deadly ground’, it is extremely unlikely that we’ll see a successful repeat of the tactic.

But that’s the government way — as armies prepare for the last war, governments strip-search everybody coming out of the barn after the horse has long since taken off.

Read it.

An earless baby bunny that was a rising star on Germany’s celebrity animal scene had his 15 minutes of fame brought to an abrupt end when he was accidentally stepped on by a television cameraman.

Let that be a lesson to us all.