teh Mexigogue

I have long been opposed to municipalities using traffic fines as a method of revenue enhancement. In the beginning, traffic fines were used to dissuade people from committing driving infractions. It is when these fines began to viewed more as a government shakedown that the punishment began to cease fitting the crime and turned into something ridiculous. In 2003 Michigan instituted the Driver Responsibility Fee, which effectively allowed the government to shake you down twice for the same infraction, once in the initial fine and then again when considering driving points. This came as Governor Granholm’s administration was dealing with a budget crisis and workers leaving the state in droves.

Dallas Texas is now an example of another municipalities gone wild. The redlight cameras that were supposed to make driving safer and increase revenue have worked too well. Speeding has gone down because people know the cameras are there. As a result, the number of speeding fines has gone down as well so Dallas has turned the cameras off. How very telling. The cameras and fines never were about saving lives. It is, and always was, nothing but a stickup. This is patently unfair and the only solution I can think of is to do away with monetary fines and bring back flogging. Only when you take away the monetary incentive for the government will the fines go back down to where they fit the offense.

Went to Chicago on Saturday to celebrate St. Patty’s day with my older brother. The first thing we did upon arrival was drive through Chinatown enroute to looking for parking downtown. Chinatown in Chicago is just that, everybody everywhere you looked was Chinese. Even the store signs were written in those chicken scratchy character thingies. I fought the overwhelming temptation to jump out of the car and start a kung-fu fight. I also fought the temptation to stop at a Chinese restaurant. I was starving and food was everywhere, but what I had really come to city for was the world famous Chicago hot dogs.

We parked on the sixth floor of some parking structure and immediately went wandering around the city streets on our food quest. Hordes of holiday revelers flowed every whichaway, decked out in outlandish costumes in the ubiquitous green. We saw an Asian chick in green tights who I am not likely to forget anytime in the near future. I was color coordinated for the festivities as well, wearing a Michigan State University jacket and MSU ballcap. I will point out right here that I am actually one sixteenth Irish, which is neither here nor there, since people of any race, color, or creed can celebrate St. Patty’s day, but at any rate my great grandmother on my father’s side was half Cherokee and half Irish. Or that’s how the story goes anyway, that explained my why great grandmother (who I never saw until her funeral) had blue eyes.

We found a hot dog place after about 45 minutes of wandering around. I had two Chicago style hot dogs off the grill, complete with pickle slices, black pepper, onions, relish, and some unidentified hot peppery thing, on a poppyseed hot dog bun. I also had fries and a Sierra Mist to complete the quest. 1,500 experience points gained and reputation with Chi-town increased by 11.

We found a sports bar in Wrigglyville (not associated in any way with “The Wiggles”) and watched the Michigan State basketball get soundly beaten by the refs. This is where I was introduced to Big Butt Dopplebock which I highly recommend for any beer drinkers who enjoy flavor. The only sad thing about the experience is that this is where I learned that, as of January 1, the entire State of Illinois has gone non-smoking in all restaurants and bars. First NYC, Austin Texas and Phoenix went non-smoking, but I always thought a blue collar metropolis in the midwest would be beyond this travesty. Et tu, Chicago? A very sad day indeed.

To finish the day we ended up taking the L to Ukraine Village where I shot pool at an upscale restaurant that had a pool table. I soundly defeated two league players that had just gotten married. Also, somewhere along the way, I bought “The Blank Slate”, by Steven Pinker, which I had already read before when I checked the book out from the library but this time I wanted my own copy. All in all a great weekend.

How was YOUR Saturday?

This story doesn’t look like much. At first glance you might think this is just a bunch of hicks getting out of hand and pummeling a black reporter woman for a short amount of time but on further analysis this story has everything: it has the privacy rights of the family of a murder victim in their hour of distress versus the right of a free press (the father of the woman fighting the reporter had just been murdered which is why the camera crews were on the scene). Also factored in is the question of the ethics of a journalist peppering these people with questions against their will at that time. Certainly it is legal for them to do so but is this acting like a decent human being? And if the answer is no, then should this be considered a mitigating factor if these people are brought up on assault charges?

Secondly, as much as I like reading the news, I admit to having a soft spot for people who physically attack pesky reporters. Whether it’s Sean Penn punching a reporter in the mouth (justified), a neo-Nazi breaking Geraldo Rivera’s nose when he refused to get out of his face (a victimless crime), or that man in San Diego who assaulted a reporter who was investigating him on some sort of corruption charge (unjustified), seeing a reporter get pummeled is always kind of funny to me. This case is a little disturbing however firstly because the family was being hounded, not for having done anything wrong, but because they were the victims of a crime. It is further disturbing because some members of this family used racial slurs against the reporters.

It is instructive to see how the use of racial slurs in this attack elevated the assault beyond a local news blurb into national news. The woman in the linked news report apologizes for the family’s action and she is asked (by a different reporter obviously) if the attack was racially motivated. She says no it was not and she seems genuinely repentant for her actions (or at least highly disturbed at having been caught) but it is interesting that there is more focus on the racial slurs than on the attack itself. Either she is highly concerned about the racial aspect potentially being used to jack up the charge to a hate crime or she is more concerned about the stigma of her family having been caught on film using the n-word that the attack itself. At any rate it is quite instructive to note that this society seems to be more concerned about names than they are about sticks and stones.

On a final note, I have long been opposed to designating certain crimes as “hate crimes” because it is simply absurd to punish some assaults and murders worse than others simply based on what the perpetrators think about their victims. That said, I will also add that it’s next to impossible to determine in cases like these whether race was the motivating factor in the attack. If I get angry at a guy who looks like Bum Phillips and get into a fistfight with him, I’m probably going to call him a Bum Phillips-lookin-mothafucka. That is not a priori evidence that the fact that he looks like Bum Phillips was the motivating factor in the attack. Fistfights are unpleasant by their very nature and in the course of engaging in one it is only natural to want to insult the object of your wrath at the time. So calling someone a chink/whore/faggot/dago/spic/slut or even the n-word during a fistfight might actually be a simple biproduct of the assault rather than the motivating factor behind it.

The family that attacked this reporter should perhaps be prosecuted for their actions (although the distress they were experiencing coupled with the intrusiveness of the reporters should certainly be considered as a mitigating factor) and the use of racial slurs in the attack should NOT be used to upgrade the assault charge to a hate crime. I don’t think the family in question goes around slinging black people around by their hair and calling them the n-word on a normal basis.

The Clinton camp has repeatedly injected race into the campaign and it is rightly coming back to haunt them. From ads that were darkened in order to make Obama appear darker than he really is to Bil Clinton’s disparaging Obama’s win in South Carolina by pointing out that Jesse Jackson also won that state (the first black President indeed), to Geraldine Ferraro’s claim that Obama’s ethnicity has given him some great advantage in the primaries, one thing sticks out in my mind; Either the Clinton campaign is the most undisciplined conglomeration of misfits that have been assembled since the Gary Hart campaign or they are injecting race into this primary intentionally in an attempt to come from behind. I lean towards the latter.

Either way it speaks ill of the Clinton campaign and more important this may well be the death knell for whichever candidate emerges as the nominee for the Presidential election. Residual bad feelings among pro black and pro woman groups can only bode well for John McCain in the general election. Of course it’s all a trilemma for me anyway so to me this is like following a hockey tournament.

Update: I was just on the verge of editing this again but I have to leave for a second. I just noticed this story that postulates the same thing I’ve been saying, that the so-called racial gaffes by the Clinton campaign are intentional. Nuff said.

The racism of the left has reared its ugly head again. In the news today, former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has refused to apologize for saying that if Obama was a white man he would not be in his position. She tried to do damage control later, claiming she was really talking about all the awesome support Obama has received with the black voters but that belies her actual statement which was:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.”

Oh those lucky lucky black people. No happy-go???

That doesn’t sound like she was talking about the support of black voters. Clearly she was talking about people of color being propped up as figureheads.

Implicit in Ferraro’s statement is the idea that black people are incapable of achieving on their own due to merit, that everything must be handed to them through the benevolence of white people who are willing to grant the unearned. It is the idea that black people certainly aren’t smart enough to lead, that affirmative action is really just like sticking a tie on a monkey because you feel sorry for it but that white people really run the scene in the background. What Ferraro is really saying (in my opinion) is that play time is over and since being President is a serious job and we should all drop the shennanigans and elect a grown-up, which is to say a white person.

To those who will say that I’m reading too much into one statement, I ask you what else she could have meant by saying that Obama is only in his position because of his color? That being black is such an obvious advantage because hey just look at all the black Presidents we’ve had?? No, I think she’s saying that his color is what got him there because he certainly does not have the merit, he’s not good enough, he’s not smart enough, he’s incapable of leading. He hasn’t earned it, it was just handed to him. This is what we (I’m speaking as an ethnic minority) reap by accepting affirmative action. The underlying premise of Affirmative Action is sick, so therefore so shall be the product.

I’m saying all this despite the fact that I don’t like Obama’s politics. I don’t like where he stands on the issues but I don’t for one minute think he’s less capable than any of the other candidates based on race and I think that all ethnic minorities should bolt the Democratic Party because it’s the most racist thing going right now. I’m not even saying that people of color should all become Republicans, join a different party if you like or even create a new one (but please, no race-based agendas). I think Geraldine Ferraro has shown the true spirit of the Democratic party with her comments which is also why she has refused to apologize. She meant exactly what she said, it doesn’t get any more clear than that.

Fear
and
Ignorance.

Shout out to the Russ Martin Show for bring pastor racist Manning to my attention.

The story is here. In a news conference he apologized to his family and said that he has failed to live up to his own standards. I don’t like it. I wish instead he would have said:

“I have been implicated in an action that should not be considered a crime. I harmed no one, I spent only my own money, and anyone who wants to make a big deal about this can just blow me. I will pay you of course.”

Nogginfogger Elixir

Ok, I decided to get totally seriously and start looking at the candidates for President. I got on the John McKane issues site and I found that I absolutely hate 50% of this guy’s stances on the issues. It was upsetting until I remembered that I hate about 80% of what Hillary and Obama stand for (issues-wise, they are basically the same person, the only difference is that Obama actually has charisma whereas Hillary is about as likeable as Jar-Jar Binks). Be that as it may, it breaks down like this:

Economic Stimulus Tax Cuts: Thumbs up, I’m all for it (side note, if the Democrats wanted to be a little bit craftier, they would refer to tax cuts as “revenue reduction” which would put a negative spin on something that is basically good. If you’re gonna be evil, you could at least be a little slick with it.)

Government Lower Spending/Fiscal Responsibility: Shut up, everybody says this, nobody comes out and says “I’m going to spend like a sailor!” Except maybe sailors.

Health Care: All I had to read was the beginning “Bringing costs under control” to know that I’m against it. The past hundred years have seen the greatest explosion in new medical technologies precisely because there is money to be made on it. Fuck with that at your own peril. No one has the right to impose a dollar ceiling on the medicines I invent and if the government succeeds in imposing one then I’m going to stop inventing lifesaving medicines. When the government runs the healthcare system it will become just as effective as our public schools.

Strict Constructivist Philosophy: thumbs up, the Constitution is meant to be taking literally, it’s not a “this means whatever you want it to mean handy-dandy guidebook” like the Bible.

Overturning Roe v Wade: No. If you don’t like abortions, John McKane, no one is forcing you to have one. And for the record, I think that harpooning your unborn baby is a shitty thing to do, but my personal opinion (or anyone else’s) is not a valid basis for interfering with another person’s right to dispose of their own property as they see fit.

Lobbying and Ethics Reform: lol

Strategy for Victory in Iraq: Saddaam is dead. Please come up with something other than a hundred year presence.

Border Security & Immigration Reform: Ok, I read the whole blurb and I can’t tell what he’s saying. “Recognizing the importance of assimilation” is a little disturbing. How exactly does the government do that? Whack somebody with a billyclub for speaking Mexican???

Commitment to America’s Veterans: Yes

Education: I don’t believe the Constitution granted the feds the right to interfere in local public education. The only acceptable answer to “what do you as President intend to do about education?” should be “Nothing.”

National Security: Ok, his website doesn’t say anything about sacrificing freedom in the name of security but I would hardly expect him to say that explicitly even if that was his plan. What are his views on the Patriot Anti-American Act?

Protecting Second Amendment Rights: Thumbs Up

I would review the Hillary and Obama platforms but I don’t think I have enough expletives. I don’t like our choices for President at all this year. The biggest problem with John McKane’s campaign is that he’s so old that electing him would be pretty much the equivalent of putting an undead character in the White House. The American electoral process is basically a popularity contest and I don’t see an old McKane defeating a young Obama, regardless of the issues. I would like a do over.

This is just precious. On the eve of the (possibly) deciding primary day Obama & Hillary are verbally battling each other in a contest to see who can be more anti-freedom. They both have come out as opponents of NAFTA and free trade and Obama’s camp has come out and said that he plans to “protect” the American worker. I believe it was Ayn Rand who said that no worker has the right to be protected from competition. To say you have that right is the same thing as to say that you have the right to prevent me from buying goods or services from someone who is willing to provide them to me at a better price. You have that right based on what?? Only if your rights are based on whim in which case they have no objective basis which makes YOU a despised mystic. On both sides of the political spectrum this is the worst roster in living memory. I’m going ice fishing and yes I’m fully aware that there isn’t any ice. At this point I don’t care.