Duck Season

If you owe the mafia money and you can't pay up, they don't actually break your legs, unlike in the movies:

Then there's the misconception that if you don't pay your debts, the mob will break your legs. I've seen that on TV but never in real life. Sure, some agents make their collection runs with a bodyguard, but wouldn't you want some muscle around if you were carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash? Breaking people's legs is bad business. If somebody doesn't pay their debts because they're broke, maiming them isn't going to put cash in your bank account. Still, the threat of pain remains a valuable deterrent. Tell your customers that you're breaking people's legs and there's no reason to actually do it. Truth is, when people don't cover their debts, we put them on a payment plan. If that doesn't work, we spread the word that they're a bad risk. Basically, we fuck up their underground credit rating.

There's other untold mafia secrets as well.

(Via Marginal Revolution)

John Kerry is losing it:

Struggling 2004 Democratic wannabe John Kerry fires an X-rated attack at President Bush over Iraq and uses the f-word - highly unusual language for a presidential contender - in a stunning new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Sen. Kerry (Mass.) used the undeleted expletive to express his frustration and anger over how the Iraq issue has hurt him because he voted for the war resolution while Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has soared by opposing it.

"I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f - - - it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did," Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.

Did he meant to use the f-word, or did he just say it in a moment of rage? Neither option is flattering to Kerry, though. If it were the former, it'd mean he's reduced to using swear words to pander to young people, most of whom don't even vote. If it were the latter, it'd mean he can't control his emotions. Even though he used to f-word when referring to Bush, it seems to me that he is actually angry at Dean, or the voters who are supporting Dean. Kerry's quotes reeks of the attitude of "why can't voters be smart enough to see that I'm better than all the other candidates?"

And he still doesn't get it on why his vote on Iraq last year is hurting him. From a meeting with Eric Alterman and other liberal journalists:

He said he felt betrayed by George Bush, whom he had believed, had not yet made up his mind to go to war when the vote was taken. He never expected a unilateral war given the way Powell, Scowcroft, Eagleberger and others were speaking at the time. He defends his willingness to trust the president of the United States, but now realizes that this was a big mistake. At one point, after answering somebody else’s question, he turned back to me and pointedly—one might even say “passionately”—insisted, “And Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been president, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me.

Once again, Kerry misses the point. Democrats aren't turned off by Kerry because they think he would take the country to war; they're turned off because he voted with the president even though he didn't want to go to war, because at the time it was the political expedient thing to do. All the post facto excuse-making is just making his image seem worse to voters who think he'll bend any way the wind blows.

Now maybe he can use this blowup as an excuse to quit and save us all the trouble of trying to come up with excuses for him.

(Links via Polipundit and The Corner)

In Britain. Cultural sensitivity runs amok again. (Via Right Wing News)

Mickey Kaus is running a Kerry Withdrawal Contest to come up with the best excuse for John Kerry to gracefully quit the presidnetial race before he gets humiliated [Before?--Ed.]. This is my entry:

As a veteran who served our nation in combat in Vietnam, I know about losing battles. Just as our country was wrong in diverting our energy to Vietnam when we should be focusing on the Soviet Union, we Democrats should be focused on defeating Bush. And similar to how the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese were fighting each other, it would be counterproductive for Democrats to fight amongst ourselves. Instead, we should unify behind one candidate in our fight against Bush to prevent him from turning Iraq into a quagmire like it was in Vietnam. Therefore, this old soldier is withdrawing from the presidential race and calling it a day.

It's better over there: "Headscarf issue has Europe tied up in knots."

Worth checking out.

The Grammy awards nominations were announced yesterday. Needless to say everybody hate the nominations, because few people like every genre of music and with a hundred plus categories there's bound to be something to complain about. Early storylines include: will Eminem get screwed again? Who will get to say something stupid onstage about Bush first? Since they both were nominated in separate categories, will either Clinton show up? Will they win? And will Outkast pull a Norah Jones and win every single category?

I just watched the Boston Celtics blow a 29 point lead to the mediocre Phoenix Suns. So whose fault is it? If you're Tommy Heinsohn, the Celtics' broadcaster, you blame Antoine Walker. Antoine Walker? Who doesn't even play for the Celtics anymore? Well, according to Heinsohn, it's "carry-over from Antoine Walker" the way they kept shooting three-pointers while they're blowing the lead. See, Antoine might not be there anymore, but his poltergeist spirit is making the Celtics players throw up bricks from 25 feet.

It's amazing how some people will try to shift the blame for everything to people they don't like.

If this doesn't get people to use a condom I don't know what will.

(Via Oxblog and The Corner)

Monday December 8th, 2003 at Jillians Boston: A Howard Dean Christmas.

Christopher Hitchens proves, yet again, why removing Saddam Hussein was the morally correct thing to do.

Why is it that the anti-war types are unable or unwilling to accept what a brutal tyrant Saddam was, and how, insurgency or not, Iraq is undoubtedly better off now that she has an opportunity to build a democratic future?

Does anti-Bush hysteria really throw their moral compasses off to that extent?

1) The struggle for religious freedom for Muslims in France continues.

2) Mr. Grammar Person works for CNBC.

3) What could be more fun than hanging out with other Howard Dean voters on New Years?

4) Welkommen! German blogger David Kasper thought enough of our blog to spam me with links to his blog last week, so I'll post them. Check out this post which reports that Germans consider Karl Marx the third greatest german ever, or this post where German media "experts" on the USA can't even get the basic facts of US history correct.

5) What Media Bias? The Boston Globe ran this story about students upstaging Governor Mitt Romney at a school event on the front page, above the fold, and with an accompaning photograph in this mornings' paper. The Herald burried the story on page 32.

The students were at odds with Romney because his administration has labeled their school an "underperformer", and because he supports the M.C.A.S. exam as a graduation requirement for all high schoolers. The students, led by senior Kim Thurlow, wanted to know why severely disabled students were required to pass the exam. To make their point complete Kim Thurlow escorted to the podium Jeremy Dell, a severely disabled student whom Kim tutors for several hours every week.

For some reason people have been looking for this: The Go Joe Lieberman song.

Is it safe to say now that the last round of campaign finance reform is a complete failure? As critics like me predict, the new regulations haven't prevented one person or interest group from giving money to a candidate. The regulations prevent funneling money one way, so people simply come up with other ways that are just as effective, and often less detectable. When the law prevents someone from giving a large amount of money, then that person can simply have 300 of his closest relatives each give the legal maximum $2,000. Similarly, a company can have each of its employees do the same thing. Now in the example from the link, the lawyers who gave to the John Edwards campaign got caught, but there are definitely other companies who have done the same thing that we haven't heard about, because they did it discreetly and didn't get caught.

Of course, if you're George Soros or any other multi-millionaire, you can avoid all the trouble of finding sympathetic relatives and employees and simply set up your own political action committee. Spending $10 million in an effort to defeat Bush is quite legal under the current law because the expenditure is "independent" of the Democratic campaign. Legal? Yes. Does it violate the spirit and intent of campaign finance laws? You betcha. You won't find many CFR proponents criticizing Soros though, because beating Bush is more important to them than the CFR laws.

This morning, I see Mickey Kaus points to a Wall Street Journal article form Tuesday on a new group called America Votes that is trying to coordinate many of the liberal "independent" committees. This, too, is legal, bacause the group presumably wouldn't be working with the Democratic candidate. And this type of behavior was predicted when the last CFR law was going through Congress:

Everyone knew this would happen when McCain-Feingold was being debated. America Votes and its affiliates are simply exploiting the obvious and constitutionally necessary avenue of political expression McCain-Feingold left open.

The last CFR differentiated between "non-profit" groups and "for-profit" groups, giving much more leeway to the non-profits. Is it just a coincidence that these new committees are all non-profit?

And then there's this from the Howard Dean campaign that Instapundit seem to approve but looks very much like bribery to me. Dean, in an effort to get the endorsement of the only Congressman from Iowa, is telling his supporters to donate to the Congressman's campaign. The official explanation is that the Congressman is being targeted by Karl Rove for defeat and Dean wants to show that his campaign is about more than winning the presidency, but puh-lease. Again, all legal under campaign finance laws.

The point isn't that the last round of campaign finance reform didn't do enough; rather, it didn't do anything it was intended to do. One might respond that because of this we need more CFR regulations, but I don't see any reason why the next round of regulations would be any more effective than the last round. I'll reiterate my support for getting rid of all the regulations, allowing everyone to give as much as they want to a candidate, and a public disclosure system that tracks all donations and that anyone can search. But that has as much chance of being implemented as an effective campaign finance law.

World Series for Red Sox leads to re-election for George Bush? Works for me!

I think everyone is too quick in saying that there's nothing to the Valerie Plame leak just because she and her husband Joseph Wilson craves media attention despite their pleas to the contrary. While it might hint at Wilson's credibility, that really doesn't have anything to do with whether it was legal or moral for someone to reveal Plame's identity as a CIA agent. It is quite possible that the two of them are horrid liars and still be true that a crime was committed in disclosing her identity.

Eugene Volokh supports a potential Religious Equality Amendment and talks about why it might be neccesary because of a current Supreme Court case. I expect proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment to throw their full support at this civil rights cause.

It turns out the reason why I like to eat meat is because I and other men use meat as a proxy for the abuse of women. Well, at least according to "ecofeminist" Carol J. Adams, who writes books about "the animalizing of women in contemporary cultural images and the sexualizing of animals used for food".

With right-wing nuts you usually know what you're getting, but left-wing nuts never fail to amaze.

John Derbyshire makes a citizen's arrest:

To the Editor
New York Post
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y.

Dear Editor,
Your report of a tragic subway suicide (Oct. 16) describes the deceased as "quietly laying in front of a fast-moving subway train." What was she laying? Carpet? Linoleum? Plans? Later you tell us that the unfortunate woman "laid down as the train approached." Oh, so it was down she was laying. But was it goose down or swan's down? Perhaps we could ax the witnesses.
Yours sincerely,
John Derbyshire

In an article in TNR Online about the show Alias, Rebecca Onion talks about how hard it must be for teenage girls who are both smart and attractive:

Girls as smart and capable as Sydney experience a sort of "double consciousness," in the lexicon of W.E.B. Dubois. As with African Americans torn, in DuBois's words, between being "an American, a Negro; two warring souls," there's not really an acceptable model of how to be both a smart girl and also attractive and un-intimidating. Instead, most smart girls spend their high school years hiding test papers, laughing at jokes they don't find funny, and selling themselves short with boys who don't deserve them. What you end up with is two girls: the girl herself, the "American," who knows inside that she'd rather be reading or writing or playing around in a chem lab; and the other girl, the "Negro," who wants to be pretty, date the cutest boy, and have friends. The genius of "Alias" is to acknowledge both identities.

Well I'm shedding a tear for these girls. Too bad they can't the ugly girls who don't have to worry about "boys who don't deserve them" or the dumb girls who can just be themselves.

Ralph Nader has formed an exploratory committee, in case he wants to screw the Democrats again. Given what happened last time, Nader's decision whether to run or not is especially interesting. Nader's currently supporting Dennis Kucinich, but we know he's not winning, so Nader will have to decide whether the Democratic nominee is "progressive" enough. I'd say he'd definitely run if anyone other than Dean wins. If it's Dean, and Nader still runs, then it probably means either 1) Nader was going to run anyway, or 2) Nader thinks Dean can't win.

I'm not sure I understand how this will slow down the drug trade, but I'm willing to give anything thong-related a looksie:

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - They have tried aerial assaults and stiff jail sentences. Now Colombian officials have a new and unlikely weapon to combat the cocaine trade: push-up bras and thongs.

Some 900 peasant women in Colombia are set to make racy lingerie and sell it to French supermarket chain Carrefour under a U.N.-backed program aimed at encouraging impoverished farmers and their families to stop growing drug crops.

"We thought it was a very original idea. These are regions where there are drug crops and people need legal jobs," said Thierry Rostan of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Bogota.

From this week's TMQ:

Alexandre Berthon-Dumurgier of Paris, a French TMQ fan, nominates the calendar of a Paris rugby team. Considering this is a French product, in many poses the men are just barely north of naked. Alexandre bemoans that although the guys of the Paris rugby team are willing to pose full monty, the team has no elegant, leggy Parisian-model cheerleaders who might take it off as well. He laments in haiku,

Sidelines: no cheer-babes,
but hunk calendar sells out.
Sign of French decline!
-- Alexandre Berthon-Dumurgier, Paris

Everyone's linking to this Dick Gephardt photo, so I might as well ...

Byron York reports in National Review Online that the people who are trying to put together a liberal talk-radio network are making some changes to make their future programming more appealing. First, they're going to focus on being more entertaining than preachy, with Comedy Central's The Daily Show as a model. They'll also call themselves "centrist" because if they say it enough times people will believe them. So who are the centrist talk show hosts with whom they're negotiating? Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.

No matter how brilliant their plan might be, it's the wrong way to put together liberal radio programming that will draw large audiences, because they're doing it backwards. Their plan in outline is to get, in that order, a) money, b) hosts, and c) audience. That's the wrong way to do things. Contrast that with conservative radio. There was no multi-millionaire who put it all together by hiring well known conservatives for big money. Instead, it was built from the ground up. Rush Limbaugh, for example, started his career spinning records at some 5-watt radio station his father worked in. Other stations picked up his show because it drew large audiences in his own market, not because a conservative company pay the stations to. The right way to do it would be to find popular local hosts who are liberal but still manage to get a lot of moderates and conservatives to listen. But what they're doing now seem to be like a football team building by signing away all the players from the Super Bowl team instead of developing it own players.

Britney alleges that Justin isn't exactly carrying a big mac according to the Sun.

These allegations have the Timberlake camp furious, and have forced 70 year old Sadie Bomar to come to her grandson's defense: “I helped raise him — and I can assure you there is nothing wrong with him physically.”

A new employee is hired at the Tickle Me Elmo factory and she reports for her first day promptly at 8:00 am.

The next day at 8:45 am there is a knock at the Personnel Manager's door. The Foreman from the assembly line throws open the door and begins to rant about the new employee. He complains that she is incredibly slow and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire plant behind schedule.

The Personnel Manager decides that he should see this for himself so the two men march down to the factory floor. When they get there the line is so backed up that there are Elmos all over the floor and they're really beginning to pile up. At the end of the line stands the new employee. She has a roll of red plush fabric and a big bag of marbles. The men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to sew the little package between Elmo's legs. The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter.

After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches the woman. "I'm sorry," he says to her, barely able to keep a straight face, "but I think you misunderstood me yesterday.......Your job is to give each Elmo two test tickles......"

Check out this Viking Pundit post for details of how Kim Jong Il "took Saddam to the cleaners" as the latter attempted to obtain highly illegal missle technology.

UPDATE: More details over at OxBlog.

Soldiers under attack, angry demonstrators demanding the imperial power leave, why I believe it's a quagmire. Luckily the French are in charge, and, with the weight of world opinion behind them, are restoring order and bringing a democratic solution to a fractured land.

Le Hah!

Proof that one shouldn't believe in something just because it's "science":

A study that compared humans with other species concluded there are 1,000 times too many humans to be sustainable.

***

William Rees, professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia, disagrees that humans are abnormal and said, "I would use the term 'unusual' instead."

Rees explained that humanity has been inordinately successful. Unlike other species, humans can eat almost anything, adapt to any environment and develop technologies based on knowledge shared through written and spoken language.

Rees, however, said that we may be "fatally successful." He agrees that industrial society as presently configured is unsustainable.

"In the past 25 years we have adopted a near-universal myth of 'sustainable development' based on continuous economic growth through globalization and freer trade," Rees wrote in a recent Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society paper. "Because the assumptions hidden in the globalization myth are incompatible with biophysical reality the myth reinforces humanity's already dysfunctional ecological behavior."

Is this a scientist or a protester outside a NAFTA convention? I didn't know it was part of the "globalization myth" that humans wouldn't go extinct. I guess I was just brainwashed by The Man. But uh, haven't human population growth slowed down in the last 25 years during the period of globalization? All I hear about is that Europeans aren't having enough babies, and they're not exactly mating like rabbits in China and Japan either. The people in the other countries must be really picking up the pace, but I haven't heard anything about that. So what does globalization have to do with anything (unless one believes globalization has to do with everything)?

Maybe the researchers missed the part of history where humans learned to grow their own food. Or it was simply a few people not succumbing to common sense. The computer model on which the study bases says that the human species is sustainable for only 6 million of us, yet we've had over 6 million on earth for quite a long time now. One would have to conclude either a) there's something missing with the model, or b) we'll be extinct soon. What led the researchers to reach conclusion B, I have no idea. Well I have some idea, seeing that only a person with a certain political persuasion can say something like this:

Rees added, "It would be a tragic irony if, in the 21st century, this most technologically sophisticated of human societies finally succumbs to the unconscious urgings of fatally self-interested primitive tribalism."

I'm not a dumb guy, but I can't even begin to tell you what "unconscious urgings of fatally self-interested primitive tribalism" is and where I can get me some of that. And remember, we're relying on these people to tell us about global warming. But how can I worry about that if we're going to go extinct anyway?

From reading the article, the scientists seem to be recommending the final solution for 99.9% of us so that the other 0.1% can go sustain themselves. Maybe they can lead by example ...

Some feminists in Australia are unhappy about the convictions of gang rapists. Why is that? Because the rapists are Muslims. To these women (and a lot of men), the fear of being "culturally insensitive" outweighs their concerns about the fact that women are being gang raped. No crime is inexcusable as long as it's committed by persecuted minorities. Gang rape? What gang rape? Nothing to see here, just good natured Muslims being diverse:

But the social problem behind the rapes hasn't gone away. Whatever makes a subsection of immigrant families in Sydney bring up their sons with such disregard for "Australian" or non-Muslim females remains. In a speech recently, former detective sergeant Tim Priest, the Cabramatta whistleblower, said he saw a pattern of denial about "Middle Eastern crime" similar to that which he experienced about drug crime in Cabramatta. He told of many instances of police "backing down to Middle Eastern thugs" in confrontations in what he calls the "Muslim-dominated areas" of south-western Sydney.

A blanket condemnation of Muslims? Not quite. The writer finds that there is a "vast bulk of decent, law-abiding Muslims in Sydney, whose own leaders have been vocal in support of harsh sentences for gang rapists." So here is a problem that Muslims themselves are trying to address, but others are trying to pretend doesn't exist. Are multiculturalists so blinded by their devotion to their ideology that they can't see what is wrong with the picture?

Kathy Kinsley at On the Third Hand comments:

It's long past time that all of us in the west start fighting back against the type of 'multiculturalism' that says any culture except western culture must be respected. If I go live in a country with a different culture (and I have), I respect that culture. If a someone comes to live in my culture I demand they show respect for my culture. Anyone who comes here and doesn't show respect for my culture can expect no respect from me. Anyone who comes here and thinks they can commit crimes because their culture doesn't approve of ours should find themselves in jail and then deported after they get out. Nor is it racism to demand respect for our culture from those coming here. If you despise western culture you can just find somewhere else to live.

Sadly, many of the people who seem to most despise western culture are native to the west and can't be kicked out.

There's a man who's trying to walk all the way across Britain naked ... but he keeps getting arrested. He's doing it, according to his lawyer, because he wants to "raise public awareness of the human state and celebrate himself as a human being", whatever that means. Now if only he were doing it to protest Tony Blair or the foxhunting ban or something, he'd have enough public support to get the police to leave him alone.

Dennis Kucinich is the only bachelor among the Democratic presidential candidates. According to him, dozens of women have contacted his campaign, hoping to land a date with the Ohio Congressman. But Kucinich hasn't met with any of them because he busy running for president. If I were Kucinich, I'd quit while I'm behind, because with Howard Dean in the lead, Kucinich is making no impact as the anti-war candidate. But perhaps the women are interested only while he's running for president (maybe some of the women actually think he has a chance of winning). Catch-22 ...