Al Sharpton gets a Whitey

Waaaay back in January 2009, I began taking nominations for something called "The Whitey Award".  Whited Sepulchre = Whitewashing a stain = Whitey Award, etc etc etc....(You either get the joke or you don't.) 

The Whitey Award goes to those who have done the most to prevent government waste.  And the best way to keep governments from wasting your money?  Don't pay taxes. 

Well, everybody with good sense does that to some degree.  But not all of us clamor for more and more government spending.  That's what'll get you a Whitey.  Hit the post label down below to see all the other nominees.  Heck, back when Obama was trying to fill his Cabinet with Democrats who had paid their taxes, it felt like the Special Olympics around here.  We used a 10-year-supply of trophies in six months ! 

Here's the latest nominee.  I know it's only February, but this character is so blatant that we might have to retire the trophy for 2011.  Is there any point in holding the competition for the remainder of the year? 
Here's The New York Post:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has vowed to clean up his fiscal house, has a new tax lien to pay.
Sharpton owes $359,973 to the IRS for 2009 personal income tax, according to documents on file with the city.
Public records show he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state and federal taxes, including penalties, dating to 2002. But Sharpton's spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, said that he had paid back "well over seven figures" as part of agreements with the state and IRS and that the liens remained on the books as "a matter of bureaucracy."

Of course it's a matter of bureaucracy !  When you lobby for more and more spending, you're going to get bureaucracy.  Bureaucracy that could screw up a brass donkey.   

Sharpton made $250,000 as head of the nonprofit National Action Network in 2009, a year that ended with the group owing $1.1 million in taxes and having just $36,397 cash on hand.
The organization also pays for first-class or charter travel for Sharpton and other NAN staff, according to its 2009 tax return. Noerdlinger declined to say for whom.

Congratulations, Reverend Al ! 

Because of your constant lobbying and yammering for every spending program that comes down the pike, programs that you try to avoid paying for, you have accomplished something that no other human could. 

In your case, to be nominated is to win.  Yeah.  In February.  You've won the 2011 Whitey Award. 

Unless Obama, Pelosi, Reid or Paul Krugman gets caught trying to keep their own money for themselves, the 2011 trophy is retired. 

Coexist

An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity.


Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison were he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards.

Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees.

He was arrested in May last year as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy following a crackdown on Christians within Afghanistan.


He claims he was visited by a judge who told him he would be hanged within days unless he converted back to Islam.

But he remains defiant and said he would be willing to die for his faith.

He told the Sunday Times: 'My body is theirs to do what they want with.

'Only God can decide if my spirit goes to hell.'

Defence lawyers have refused to represent him, while others have dropped the case after receiving death threats.

Mr Musa was arrested after a TV station showed western men baptising Afghans during secret ceremonies.


So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.



— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Insane Locavore quote of the day

Various people have told me to broaden my horizons and stop reading and viewing so much libertarian propaganda.
So yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble and picked up this month's copy of Adbusters, the most anti-capitalist publication I could get my hands on.  (The New York Holy Times was sold out.) 

Adbusters is a big-time environmentalist, anti-capitalist, anti-consumption and anti-marketing periodical.  They have a visceral hatred of shopping malls.  Adbusters gives the impression that the Soviet empire fell because of bad luck and poor execution of the Marxist roadmap.  "Profit", the concept that supports Adbusters, is in such ill-repute that I would feel guilty about ever purchasing a copy.   

Adbusters supports something called "Buy Nothing Day"

(It's on November 26th.  You're supposed to purchase nothing.  Don't support your neighbors, your friends, or anyone but yourself.  Don't swap your own stuff for anyone else's. Regardless of their intent, that'll be the result.)

They do have some cool advertising parodies.  Here's one taking a stab at Joe Camel.

I was kind of enjoying their (ahem) unique point of view until I got to this quote.  It's from a guy named Bill Mollison, founder of something called the Permaculture Movement.

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby." - Bill Mollison

Oh for the love of God.  Where to begin, where to begin. 

We are more secure than we've ever been because we can't look out our kitchen windows and see our entire food supply.  If the view from your kitchen is your only food supply, and something happens to the area in front of the kitchen window, you're in deep, deep shit.  Google the word "famine" when time permits. 

But if you have cheerfully taken part in the capitalist evils of globalization, you don't have to worry as much.  Iowa could waste its entire wheat crop by converting it to enthanol or some other useless boondoggle, and it will hurt me.  But there's always Nebraska.  And Canada.  And Russia.  The Ukraine.  As long as those places are growing wheat, and as long as someone in our government doesn't shut down the supply of wheat (to protect American jobs), then I'll probably be okay. 

As long as some raving locavore doesn't require me to live off what's visible from my kitchen window, I'll be okay. 

 But wait, Mr. Bill Mollison, founder of the Permaculture Movement, there's more.  I've got more for you.  Where are you going to get your kitchen, the kitchen you're going to look out from to view your wheat, your bananas, your strawberries, your lowfat decaf triple-skinny mocha, your carrots, lettuce, arugula, your mineral supplements and your chicken, fish, and occasional slice of roast beef?  Where will this kitchen be produced?  The kitchen itself.  The wood, the brick, the sheetrock, the heat and air vents, the electrical wiring, the ducts, the oven, the stove, the sink and the water faucets?  The refrigerator?  Pots, pans, and George Foreman Grill?  Does that have to come from your front yard?   

Will you need to grow the trees for wood within view of the damn kitchen, just to feel safe?  Are you going to set up a kiln to make bricks out of local mud?  Mr. Mollison, have you ever looked at the different locations that Adam Smith's Invisible Hand blindly coordinates in a united effort to put ceramic tile on your countertops and your floors?  Are you going to go off into a blind lefty panic if some of that stuff is manufactured by little dark people who don't look like you, you racist son of a bitch? 

Sorry about that.  I can't stand racism masquerading as compassionate save-the-earth do-goodism.  Back to the topic at hand....

Let's get to the window itself, that window Mollison is looking out of to see his garden and his wheat field and chickens and goats and fish tank and brick kiln and lumber forest and all the other things required to make Bill Mollison feel safe from the efforts of other people in strange places with funny names. 

Bill, do you have any idea, any idea at all, what goes into making a damn window?  Do you want all that going on in your front yard?  Or is food the only thing that makes you break out in fantods if it's handled by Mexicans?  Is it ok if Mexicans or Canadians, or people from across the county line make your window? 

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby." - Bill Mollison

Ok, we're getting to the end of that insane sentence.  "We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window....and see our friends working nearby."  Hell, is there going to be room for them if Bill Mollison requires all of this industry in his front yard?  Or are they all going to be Bill Mollison's employees? 
What will the view have to look like from their kitchen windows if they have the same phobias and anxieties that afflict Bill Mollison? 

Do you think we might all be better off if we allow everyone else in the world to compete for the honor and privilege of producing our food, kitchens and windows?  And we can give them what we produce in return?  And maybe, just maybe, they can one day have a kitchen of their own?  With windows? 

Sorry for such an ill-tempered rant.  I wrote Mollison's sentence down in my notepad yesterday and just found it a few minutes ago.  If you want to read a more calm and measured explanation of the evils (yeah, evils) of Bill Mollison's worldview, check out "The Future And Its Enemies" by Virginia Postrel. 

Unintended consequences of the war on warming

The following post makes no sense.  I'm trying to make some kind of point about all the contradictions in various government ripoffs.  The task is so huge that I can't quite get my arms around it.  Oh well. 

They have finally backed themselves into a corner. 
The New York Holy Times, apologists for The Teleprompter Jesus and all his works, came up with a great excuse for last month's anemic job growth.

The snowstorms in January probably had some effect on the anemic job growth, given that the transportation and warehousing sector and the construction sector both shed jobs.

Here's a CNBC video on the same topic.  The cold weather is killing us. 

So....here's a shout-out to all my guys driving trucks and working in warehouses.  Don't even THINK about shutting your rigs off at lunch or break time.  Let those bad boys idle.  Forklift drivers, let your machines run all night. We have a planet to warm.  Heck, that's what they're paying us to do, right?  Hit this link to see that, yes, they really are paying us to run the forklifts all night.  Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to prove that we needed the forklifts through a Cash For Clunkers-type boondoggle.  But we're doing it to fight Warming.  We supposedly want Cooling.   

It all gets really confusing when the government gets involved in anything but Defense, Enforcing Contracts, and Intervening In Disputes. 
Doesn't it? 
Think about how freakin' great it would be if the government just sat back and stopped trying to save us by fighting warming, cooling, unemployment, wealth, poverty, weather, Arabs, enemies of favored dictators, The Non-Existent Soviet Union, imports, exports and unclean African genitals?
Think of all the money we could save if they just....stayed.....home. 

An explanation of Arlington's Super Bowl weather disaster

I don't believe that God intervenes in human activity, or anything else. 
There are only three exceptions to this rule:

1) My blackjack games
2) My football bets
3) The life and works of Jerry Jones  

Let's concentrate on #3.  Jerry Jones and the City Of Arlington conspired to steal some peoples' houses, bulldoze them, and build a Pharaonic Pyramid of a football stadium on the site of the theft. 
It was all legal, done within the realm of Eminent Domain, and at least 51% of Arlington voters voted in favor of the theft. 
You can hit the Jerry Jones or Eminent Domain tags at the bottom of this post to read some older rants on the subject. 

Tomorrow's Super Bowl was supposed to be a week-long celebration of the crime, seven days of partying to reward the many who voted to rob the few.  Million-dollar parties, Concerts.  Swarms of media. 

Full Disclosure: My employer, Jukt Micronics, got a contract to build the ESPN booth that they're using in downtown Fort Worth.  Nice piece of work, but it's generally been too cold for ESPN to use it. 

But what has happened?  We've had ice storms, sleet, and snow.  The power companies have had to implement a rolling blackout system for businesses, warehouses, manufacturers and some residences.  Traffic has slowed to a crawl.  Or no crawl at all, because everyone has stayed home all week.  We don't do snow very well. 

DFW airport and Love Field have had to operate at a limited capacity when they could operate at all. 
Downtown Fort Worth was supposed to have crowds rivaling Disneyworld.  On my one trip downtown I saw a few drunken Cheeseheads wandering around, Wisconsinites who know how to deal with this kind of weather.  That was it. 

And then, this happened:

As bowling ball-size chunks of ice fell on him from the roof of Cowboys Stadium on Friday afternoon, Win McNamee said he didn’t think he would survive.

“Honestly, while it was hitting me, I was thinking I’m going to die here,” McNamee said. “It was pretty frightening.”
McNamee, a veteran photographer who works for Getty Images, was one of six people injured by falling ice outside the site of Sunday’s Super Bowl XLV in Arlington. He broke his left shoulder in four places and was planning to fly home to Washington, D.C., on Saturday and undergo surgery soon.
None of the other injuries were thought to be life-threatening, authorities said. One person remained hospitalized in stable condition Friday evening, officials said.

Lord have mercy, what a mess.  And why do I think that it isn't over yet? 

As for the economic impact of the disastrous weather?  Go here for ABC's evaluation of it.  We've got hotel cancellations left and right, retailers shuttered, and restaurants operating at 10% of capacity.  The national media is gleefully mocking Arlington's lack of preparedness for this kind of weather.  Especially the reporters who have been told by the NFL that their cities (Denver, Seattle, Detroit) aren't good Super Bowl locations because of their....weather. 

How could something like this happen?  I mean, what are the freakin' odds? 

It's very simple, folks. 

God hates Jerry Jones.  The Lord God Jehovah hates Jerry Jones with the white hot passion of a thousand dying suns.  And Jerry must atone.  Now.  Unless he wants to spend another decade with fewer playoff wins than any current NFL General Manager over a ten year period. 

Here's the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, speaking out on the subject of Jerry, The Cowboys, and Arlington:

Ezekiel 22:29 The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.

Ezekiel 22:31 Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD.

I don't think there are any Eagles, Redskins, Giants, or Packers fans who could've said it any better.
So what do we do? 

Here is a purification ritual that Jerry could undergo.  This comes from the Holman Bible Dictionary. 

A cleansing agent (to atone for sin) was required: water, blood, or fire (Numbers 31:23). Water, the most common purifying agent, symbolized cleansing and was used in the rituals related to a waiting period. The person was to wash the clothes and bathe the body (Leviticus 15:7). Blood was used to cleanse the altar and the holy place (Leviticus 16:14-19). It was mixed with other ingredients for cleansing from leprosy (Leviticus 14:1) and contact with the dead (Numbers 19:1).


The final element of the ritual of purification is sacrifice. Purification from discharges required two pigeons or turtledoves, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering (Leviticus 15:14-15,Leviticus 15:29-30). A lamb and pigeon or turtledove were offered after childbirth (Leviticus 12:6). Sacrifice in the purification ritual for lepers was quite complicated, indicating the seriousness of leprosy as a cause of impurity (Leviticus 14:1). The priest also touched the person's extremities with blood from the offering and with oil, cleansing and life-renewing agents. The poor were allowed to substitute less valuable animals for use in their sacrifices.

To cut to the chase:  If we're ever going to have a succesful NFL franchise in Tarrant County, Jerry Jones must strip down to his skivvies, wash one of his suits on the 50-yard line of his gaudy Temple Of Baal, mop the field with the blood of Wade Phillips, and perform a ritual sacrifice by slaughtering some of his worst draft picks in the City Of Arlington's luxury suite. 
That should do it. 

But what about all the little people, Jerry's victims, the refugees who were dispossesed by Eminent Domain ? 
Once again, let's see what the Holy Scriptures have to say:

Leviticus 6: 1-7 :   "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby— if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt. ... "

It's fairly simple, isn't it?  Jerry and Arlington must determine the current value of the stadium, the parking lot, the team, along with the value of having God on their side.  They must give that amount of money, plus 1/5th, to the people they stole the land from. 
Until that happens, we will labor under an Old Testament curse. 

YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE DECREEES OF GOD, JERRY JONES, AND.... YOU.... WILL..... ATONE !!!!!

Fauxbama crushed by a giant fish sandwich

From Vanity Fair, via Althouse, via Instapundit comes the KFC Commercial that they don't want you to ever see again. 
Two of my China trips were spent in a high rise apartment building over a KFC.  They love that stuff over there, and spend major amounts of Yuen getting kids into the restaurants.  Every 30 minutes or so, some militant marketing music comes over the speakers and the cashiers and cooks come out from behind the counters with KFC crowns for all the Little Emperors and they go through a five minute dance/aerobic routine centered around the glory of fried chicken. 
Lordy, I love that country. 

Anyway, here's the offending video.  If you're offended by the idea of a Fauxbama getting slammed by a giant fish sandwich, don't watch. 

Yes, Ms. Pelosi, We Were Serious

Go here.

Star Wars vs. Lord Of The Rings

I haven't linked to my Australian/British/Whatever buddies at the Counting Cats blog in a while. 

Please enjoy Nick M's comparison of The Lord Of The Rings to the three Star Wars prequels.  You might have to Google some of the slang, but it is time well spent. 

Be sure to follow all of the *** footnotes. 

Please, please, please look through the comments.  You'll never again look at a dachshund without thinking of toast. 

Lordy, I love the internet. 

Picture of the northern hemisphere

From the UK's Daily Mail website:

Here's what happens if you leave your truck door open in Chicago:

Lordy, it's cold. 
My employer built the ESPN booth that they're doing pre-Super Bowl broadcasts from in Downtown Fort Worth.  Will post pics soon, if it ever warms up enough for them to really use it ! 

Black woman convicted of trying to get her children into a White school

The All Mediany website has uncovered a freakin' outrage.  Colored people are using false addresses to get their kids out of the ghetto and into OUR public schools. 

Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron, Ohio, was convicted with a felony for using her father’s address to send her daughters to a different school district than the one her children were zoned for.



Whoever wrote this piece for All Mediany sounds kind of outraged, but that's the way our government schools are supposed to work.  You are born into a "zone", and if you can't get by with the crappy education provided in your zone, you die in that zone, surrounded by your own kind.  Deal with it. 

Four years ago Williams-Bolar decided to use her father’s address, where she lives part-time, to enroll her daughters in a top-performing school in the Copley-Fairlawn School District. Upon discovery of her alleged fraud, the school district accused Williams-Bolar of lying about her address and falsifying official documents. The school district hired a private investigator to follow Williams-Bolar driving her daughters from their home to the school.

Hiring a private detective to follow this lady around might sound like overkill, but think about it.... Do you really want colored people in YOUR public school?  What would happen to our segregated enclaves if the government issued some vouchers that let people go to school where they wanted to go to school?  Why, the system would crumble !  Our cities would stop creating White Flight Suburbs.  Minority kids might be able to compete with our kids.  Underperforming public schools, which create hundreds of thousands of jobs for goverment employees, would be shut down ! 
DAMMIT, IT MIGHT ACTUALLY IMPROVE THINGS !   HOPE !  CHANGE !  AND ALL THAT OTHER B.S. !!!!
(Thank God that Barack Obama will never ever let anything like this happen.)

School officials were angered that her daughter received a quality education without paying the taxes needed to fund it. Despite William-Bolar's father living in the neighborhood in question, the district is asking her to pay back the estimated $30,000 it cost to educate her daughters.

And if "Williams-Bolar" (don't you love her pretentious little hyphen in there?) can't pay back the $30,000.00 to the white citizens of that school district, she should be put to work as a household domestic.  Too bad Ohio doesn't have any cotton fields to throw her into. 

The court sentenced Williams-Bolar to 10 days in jail, 80 hours of community service, and three years of probation. Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove made it clear that she was using Williams-Bolar as an example.

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts,” she said.

Williams-Bolar, a teacher’s assistant, is working toward a teaching degree and has only one semester left to finish. As a convicted felon, she will face great difficulty getting a job as a teacher. Felons can't receive any government assistance - including financial aid for education -, they can't vote, and they are required by law to inform prospective employers of their felony.

Sheesh....  What are the black folks going to want next?  Freedom of movement?  Let's hope they got the message that Uncle Sam has sent.  Stay in your "place", keep voting for Democrats, and for God's sake, don't support school vouchers. 

It's not what you know, it's who you know

From Bloomberg News:

President Barack Obama named Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

In announcing Immelt’s appointment to take the helm of the newly renamed President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Obama said the economy is “in a different place” from where it was during the financial crisis when Volcker was brought on, and new ideas are needed to keep the momentum going.

Go here to read about all the mischief that G.E. can get into with Immelt having access to The Teleprompter's screen.  Worth the read. 

“The past two years was about moving our economy back from the brink,” Obama said alongside Immelt during an event in Schenectady, New York, home to the birthplace of GE’s energy business. “Our job now is putting our economy into overdrive.”

And now for something completely different....From the TaxProf Blog:

During his State of the Union address, President Obama said the current tax system is broken. "Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all," he said. "But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change."


Just how broken is the corporate tax system? Consider the tax rate paid by two of America's biggest companies — Wal-Mart and General Electric. Wal-Mart paid 34 cents in taxes for every dollar of profit it made in the past three years. General Electric paid just 3.6 cents on the dollar.

Welcome to the mysterious world of the corporate income tax, says tax expert Len Burman at Syracuse University. "There are big companies that consider their tax departments to be profit centers," he says.

That's right; instead of concentrating on making light bulbs, power plants or whatnot, companies use the tax system to boost their profits.

Here's what's funny about this....G.E., the ultra-wholesome, greenie, in bed with the Statists company, (and manufacturers of The ObamaBulbs) only paid 3.6 % of its income in taxes. 

Wal-Mart, the great Satan, the destroyer of America, exploiter of the people, torturer of kittens, etc., Wal-Mart graciously allows Obama to have 33.6 % of their income. 

I don't care who you are, that's funny.