STFU.  Please.  You make real Christians and other religious people look bad.

Opponents of a new federal hate crime law say the legislation could turn ministers into criminals.

“Our point is that pastors and others are not prosecuted as criminals for speaking out against homosexual behavior and the political agenda that promotes it,” said Gary Glenn, a Midland resident and president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

“It’s all about free speech,” Glenn said.

Glenn and three mid-Michigan ministers filed a civil rights suit challenging the constitutionality of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act that President Barack Obama signed in October.

The act makes it a federal offense to assault someone because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

Let me say up front that I completely oppose "hate crimes" legislation in any form.  I think prosecuting someone on the basis of what they were thinking when they committed a crime borders entirely too much on "thought crime."  Orwell would be proud. 

Additionally, creating a special protected class of victims certainly makes me cringe when I think of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."  I don't know about you all; I'm certainly not a lawyer, but equal protection under the law certainly implies to me that creating a special class of victims is a big no-no.

That said, however, I'm sick and tired of frothing fundamentalist fruitcakes trying to create a whole new class of potential victims in themselves!

Ouellette said the ministers are concerned that the law has the potential to allow the government to prosecute ministers for the content of their sermons.

“We believe that the law will be used to stifle free speech and keep people from quoting scripture as it is written,” Ouellette said.

In other words, "WAAAAAH!  We're skeered that we won't be allowed to vomit forth venom toward fags, queers, queens, trannies and other freaks whom our God hates with a passion of a thousand burning suns with impunity!"

The Reverend Oullette is a moron.  The proposed law specifically protects the right to religious expression (no matter how hateful or odious), so these assholes, along with their Fred Phelps cohorts are safe to spew any kind of hate they want, as long as it's not accompanied by them beating the shit out of some guy because he happens to be a little more limp-wristed than they are comfortable with.

(4) FREE EXPRESSION.—Nothing in this division shall be
construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s
expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely
upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or
espousing such beliefs.

(5) FIRST AMENDMENT.—Nothing in this division, or an
amendment made by this division, shall be construed to
diminish any rights under the first amendment to the Constitution
of the United States.

(6) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS.—Nothing in this division
shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected
speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of
whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief),
including the exercise of religion protected by the first amendment
to the Constitution of the United States and peaceful
picketing or demonstration. The Constitution of the United
States does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting
of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act
of violence.

In other words, ejaculate all the hate you want.  Just as long as you're not spewing it while killing off some effeminate looking boys, you're safe to be an asshole. 

Our Constitution protects your right to be one.

And ferfuckssake, stop screeching about being oh-so-persecuted!  If the right of Fred Phelps' and his band of trolls to be complete and total assholes at the funerals of our fallen heroes is protected, so is your right to screech about the eeeeevils of buttseks in your church.  No one is going to come drag you off because your sex life revolves around creating oodles of brainwashed offspring to carry on your twisted message.

If you're going to oppose this law, do it because it's morally repugnant to prosecute someone based on what they were thinking during the commission of a crime.  Do it because it's unethical to create a law that makes the murder of one protected minority more odious than the murder of another, unprotected human being.  Do it because murder, assault, rape, etc. are hideous crimes, and they're equally hideous when perpetrated against a white redneck or a black, gay, tranny.

Opposing the law because you think it will limit your right to vomit forth invective against those you perceive your twisted deity hates, when it's specifically protected, makes you a douchebag.

Period.

        

You guys know that I can get very mean and visceral on occasion.  Some of the things that piss me off most are hypocrisy, lies, statism and tyranny and abuse of power.  So when Phil Jones, the so-called "scientist" in the middle of the “climategate” email scandal announced (in what seems like a bout of a public cry for sympathy for his self-created plight), that he thought about killing himself after the backlash of hate and derision against him, my first reaction is "why didn't you do it, asshole?"

The incident has taken a severe toll on his health. He has lost more than a stone in weight and disclosed he is on beta-blockers and using sleeping pills. He said the support of his family, and especially the love of his five-year-old granddaughter, had helped him to shake off suicidal thoughts: “I wanted to see her grow up.”

Waaah!  So the bloody hell what!  This guy intentionally tried to hide data that discredited his research - research that can cause irreparable damage to our way of life!  If his and his team's lies hadn't been exposed, how many of us would be paying exorbitant taxes to cover petty tyrants' attempts to impose draconian "environmentally friendly" regulations upon us?  How many of us would be screwed by new laws that would drastically alter the way we live?

And guess what, folks!  This festering hemorrhoid on the ass of humanity has absolutely no remorse about what he did!  None!  He doesn't think he and his band of rabid enviromonkeys did anything wrong!

Jones has temporarily stood down as director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. He fiercely defends the unit’s science — “I stand by it 100%” — but now accepts that he did not treat Freedom of Information (FoI) requests for the data as seriously as he should have done. Jones believes that the unit was maliciously targeted with multiple FoI requests by climate change sceptics determined to disrupt its work.

Repeated requests for information about a topic that could drastically alter the lives of billions of people are somehow "malicious,' according to this asshole. The fact that people's earnings (read: taxpayer money) sponsored his research somehow doesn't prompt him to consider that he's somehow accountable to those people.  And the fact that his emails reveal intentional and malicious plans to conceal data and discredit scientific critics and negative peer reviews of his work doesn't stop him from defending his fraud.

In emails that were hacked into and seized upon by global-warming sceptics before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Jones appeared to call upon his colleagues to destroy scientific data rather than release it to people intent on discrediting their work monitoring climate change.

Jones, 57, said he was unprepared for the scandal: “I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises.”

I submit to you, the reader, that Jones has no business calling himself a scientist.  Real scientists have the integrity to face scrutiny of their work, and the open mind to admit that perhaps their research isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Real scientists don't try to bury evidence contrary to their preconceived hypothesis.  Real scientists don't manipulate their data and selectively choose only supporters to peer review their work, while banding together with other, like-minded scientific fraudsters to shun unfavorable or critical reviews.  That is exactly what Jones and his cohorts did. 

Another glimpse into what the files and emails reveal was the report by Professor Deming. He wrote, “With publication of an article in Science (in 1995) I gained sufficient credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change.They thought I was one of them someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said. “We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”  The person in question was Jonathan Overpeck and his even more revealing emails are part of those exposed by the hacker. It is now very clear that Deming’s charge was precise.They have perverted science in the service of social and political causes.

And now he has the unmitigated gall to try and garner some sympathy from the general public by dragging his granddaughter into the Phil Jones Pity Fest????

As far as I'm concerned, Phil Jones should have offed himself.  He has no integrity and no honor.  His lies affect the rights of billions of people to live as free human beings. He's a coward who can't face the consequences of his actions, refuses to take responsibility for his lies and is deathly scared of scrutiny, because he knows he's a miserable liar and doesn't want his lies exposed.  In other words, suicide is appropriate as the coward's way out.

        

Can I just say this sucks!  A lot.  I spent last night clearing my property.  I spent this morning clearing my property.  When I ran out of gas for my snow blower, I had to walk to the gas station in the blizzard to get more fuel.  Why?  Because the snow plows came through overnight and left me a present - a 5 foot wall of snow and slush that completely blocked my driveway!



Please note the rather large hole in the Great Wall of Snow and Slush... This is where I plowed my car into it, hoping to break up some of the densely-packed, wet, heavy snow and slush.  This is also where I high-centered my car on a bunch of snow and sleet that packed itself under my car.  If it wasn't for the completely awesome neighbors, their sons and some folks from down the street, my car would still be there, sitting on top of the slush.  THANK YOU NEIGHBORS!  THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH!



In case you're wondering, that snow currently comes up to right below my waist!  It JUST stopped after 36 hours of pounding.  My child (the one who stayed here last night, as the older one was trapped at her friend's house and couldn't leave) drowned in the drift up to his tiny little waist.


That would be my driveway, which I spent the entire day clearing, with a potentially torn rotator cuff, I might add.

And now a message to all you environmentalist assholes who still claim the globe is warming, even though it hasn't seen any warming in more than 10 years, and this is one of the coldest, foulest, snowiest winters on record:  FUCK YOU!  FUCK YOU AL GORE.  FUCK YOU every single envirodouche who is screeching for more taxes, more penalties, more legislation, more tyranny in the name of Mother Gaia!

Go fuck yourselves!

        

From Svetlana Kunin at Investors Business Daily.

Democratic party leaders speak incessantly of limiting profits and regulating salaries.

It brings back to memory another Soviet line: You pretend you are paying us salaries, and we pretend we are working. If bureaucrats predetermine the value of your work, there is no incentive to be productive. This is the quickest way to kill a dynamic economy.

I never expected to hear this kind of rhetoric in the USA. Today,the American educational machine teaches exactly the same points the Soviets taught.

It idealizes Socialist societies and denigrates America, especially its economic system.

American students are brainwashed to despise economic freedom and to yearn for a big government state.

Freed from their parents' control, but intimidated by the relentlessly negative portrayal of America, young Americans look for politicians to show them the way.

Ms. Kunin hit the nail on the head.  Parents have abdicated their responsibility to the nanny state.  Schools are expected to be mom, dad and educator.  They're expected to teach morals and ethics in addition to the three Rs.  And the more resources schools receive from the government, the more diluted their curriculum becomes. 

And why not?  After all, when an entity - especially a governmental one - pours money into your coffers, you become beholden to that entity.  So when politicians pour billions of dollars into the school system, they can demand schools teach what is politically desirable at the time.  Facts, logic, rational thought and objectivity be damned!

When politicians in power bloviate about equality and fairness, what they're really targeting is achievement and success.  What they're talking about is force - government force that will impose equality and fairness in a world that cannot, by the nature of morality, have both.  Equal opportunity?  Sure.  Equal achievement?  Never. 

In a fair and just world, there will always be people who achieve and succeed, who perform their jobs better, and who consequently receive more for their efforts.  There will always be those who dedicate their lives to succeeding in school, work long days and achieve the highest success at their jobs.  They deserve a higher level of compensation than the indolent who sit around and expect everything to be handed to them, who have no ambition and no desire to work.  That's justice.  That's the nature of the universe.  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The politicians who talk about how unfair it is that some have more than others, aim to tip that precarious balance in favor of the lazy - in favor of the non-achievers - in favor of those who refuse to work, and who consequently have less to show for their lives.

They do so through emotional appeals, targeting the natural sympathy of Americans, instead of their rational minds. They tug at the heartstrings.  They emphasize poignant stories of the starving unfortunate, and ignore the inconvenient facts about how those wretched got that way.  They discount the numerous charities that are able to help the truly needy - those who honestly have fallen upon hard times - and involve the nanny state in the lives of every miserable mediocrity, regardless of whether or not they were the architects of their own fate.

Speaking of sympathy, I feel the need to address the following that Ms. Kunin wrote in her essay.

As someone who experienced real government-approved anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I am amazed by the obliviousness of American Jews,the most fervent supporters of left-wing politics.

They support a party that is obsessed with pitting one group againstanother, and that incessantly plays on envy and hatred for bankers,rich people, big business and doctors.

They fail to notice that the success of Jews, as well as otherminorities, in the sciences, business and arts is directly correlatedto their freedom from oppressive, centralized control. American Jews who support big government do not understand what their ancestors escaped from.

Persecutions of Jews throughout history all have one thing in common: a centralized power that manipulates and directs people's anger away from themselves onto an easy target.

No matter how much Jews align themselves with the power structure and work for noble causes, they will remain an easy target.

I never understood it either.  I have experienced some nasty anti-Semitism in the USSR as well.  I was shunned, ignored and borderline tortured by kids and teachers alike in kindergarten as the kid with the weird Jew name.  Teachers encouraged students to bar me from group play. When we went outside to play, I was the one kid on a deserted set of monkey bars, while everyone else played in a group on the other side of the playground. I was the one kid who wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom after nap time and forced to wet my bed.  I was the one kid who was constantly ridiculed about my last name.

And knowing all this, I could never figure out why it was that Jews here in America were so anxious to embrace the type of system that perpetually abused them and turned them into second class citizens.

My father, being particularly religious, finally shed some light on the subject.  Jews are a naturally sympathetic people.  Their faith directs them to fulfill mitzvah, a word that has come to mean "acts of kindness."  This compels them to fall victim to cunning politicians who play on their natural tendencies to help when they can.  This also many times prompts them to close their eyes to the natural consequences of the kind of policies they support, but instead focus on the immediate gratification of having done something that could help the poor and oppressed.

This is why they fail to notice that they support policies that increase centralized government control.  They're too focused on the issue of helping to understand the unintended consequences of their acts.

        

This has quickly become one of my favorite shots of Oleg's.  Must be my background in radio.

        

Yet more proof that some school administrators really need a hot tar enema.

Patrick Timoney, a fourth-grader at PS 52, South Beach, was nearly suspended yesterday after playing with LEGOs during his lunch period because one of the action figures was carrying a toy machine gun.

[...]

While the action figure was a standard LEGO policeman figure, the brand of the gun could not be determined.

"She took him into her office in the middle of the lunch period and he was crying," said the boy's mother, Laura Timoney. "He was afraid."

The principal called Ms. Timoney and said she considered the toy suspension-worthy, and that she was going to double-check with a security administrator from the city Department of Education.

You just can't fix stupid.  You can eradicate it from the face of this earth, but you can't fix it.  This dumb bitch terrorized a child for playing a harmless game with his friends, because she happens to lose bladder control at the mere thought of a firearm.

Cowardly, sniveling morons such as this are teaching your kids!  What are they teaching them?  How to be petty tyrants?  How to fear inanimate objects?  How to avoid common sense?  How to overreact?


Courtesy of Oleg Volk

I wonder how this school administrator would react to this.

        

Courtesy of Oleg Volk

The latest "Presence of guns can increase risk of death" screed comes from the Southern Medical Journal, with the latest attempt of supposed medical academics to meddle in politics. 

In 1986, Arthur Kellerman conducted a firearms study that claimed a firearm in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder.  Later, Kellerman admitted that his study did "not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm." He also admitted his study did not look at situations in which intruders "purposely avoided a home known to be armed."  Meanwhile, this same Arthur Kellerman was quoted in Health Magazine (March/April 1994) p 61 as having said the following:

“If you've got to resist, your chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah.”

This latest study apparent piece of dreck once again tries to draw a spurious connection between firearms and suicides, among other things.

Based on a review of the available scientific data, Dr. Lippmann and co-authors conclude that the dangers of having a gun at home far outweigh the safety benefits. Research shows that access to guns greatly increases the risk of death and firearm-related violence. A gun in the home is twelve times more likely to result in the death of a household member or visitor than an intruder.

The most common cause of deaths occurring at homes where guns are present, by far, is suicide. Many of these self-inflicted gunshot wounds appear to be impulsive acts by people without previous evidence of mental illness.Guns in the home are also associated with a fivefold increase in the rate of intimate partner homicide, as well as an increased risk of injuries and death to children.

The assumption here is that:

a - the mentally ill people who used firearms to commit suicide would not kill themselves via some other means had the gun not been present

b - intimate partner homicides would decrease if guns had not been present.

Now what the study doesn't seem to take into consideration is that:

Countries with much stricter gun control, such as Japan and Russia, have much higher suicide rates than the United States with our really lax gun control laws.  As a matter of fact, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Iceland and Canada all have higher suicide rates than we do. 

According to the National Institute of Justice, intimate partner homicides have declined in the past 25 years.  As a matter of fact, the November 2003 issue of NIJ Journal says that "Intimate partner homicide has declined significantly in the past 25 years."  And gun ownership?  In 2008, gun ownership rates in the United States have risen to an all-time high.

Additionally, the NIJ Journal also assessed that the presence of a gun in the house is less of an indicator that a victim of domestic abuse will get murdered than a partner attempting to "choke (strangle) woman."

In other words, Lippmann and his cohorts tried to once again draw a causative link between the mere presence of firearms and domestic violence, suicides and a whole host of other ills, which they claim cost society billions of dollars per year, and which they claim far outweigh the benefits of owning a firearm.

What is really galling is that doctors in this country command a certain authority.  When they speak about health related issues, people listen.  And when they attempt to link obviously biased political views to matters of health and life and death, they appear to have more credibility than politicians.

Considering how dangerous doctors themselves are to the health and lives of Americans...

12,000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgery

7000 deaths per year due to medication errors in hospitals

20,000 deaths per year due to other errors in hospitals

80,000 deaths per year due to infections in hospitals

106,000 deaths per year due to negative effects of drugs

I'd want them to stay the bloody hell out politics.

        

It is correctly attributed, and in my opinion, dead on.

        

I remember my dad telling me horror stories about having to deal with union thugs when he owned his first store.  As a new entrepreneur, my dad was so proud that, after years of working for someone else, he was finally going to get the opportunity to own his own business!  My dad is an electrical engineer by trade, so he was going to do some wiring to his new place... until union thugs came over and threatened to destroy his business if he didn't allow their slugs to perform the work.  If I remember correctly (and my dad can fill in the memory blanks, since he does read this blog), these lazy pieces of rancid crap took twice as long to perform the work my dad could have done himself in several hours, took several union-mandated work breaks, and cost my dad much more than if he had done the work himself.

Nice.

Not.

Want more proof?

Try this guy.



If this guy doesn't look like a child molester, I don't know who does.

Except this particular child molester was a substitute typing teacher in New York, was accused by several kids of being a perverted creep, and he can't be fired.  That's right.  This scumbag draws a handsome salary sitting on his ass, and he can't be fired.  All thanks to unions.

A Queens teacher who collects a $100,000 salary for doing nothing spends time in a Department of Education "rubber room" working on his law practice and managing 12 real-estate properties worth an estimated$7.8 million, The Post found.

Alan Rosenfeld hasn't set foot in a classroom for nearly a decade since he was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to junior-high girls and "staring at their butts,"yet the department still pays him handsomely for sitting on his own butt seven hours a day.

In 2001, six eighth-graders at IS 347in Queens accused Rosenfeld, a typing teacher who filled in for an absent dean, of making comments like "You have a sexy body," asking one whether she had a boyfriend and making others feel uncomfortable with creepy leers.

Because the Department of Education could not produce all the students as witnesses, he was found guilty in only one case. A girl testified that Rosenfeld stopped at her locker, where she was standing with a friend, and "said I love him because I talk to him so much."

A DOE hearing officer gave him a slap on the wrist -- a week off without pay -- for "conduct unbecoming a teacher." He was cleared to return to teaching.

Instead, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has kept the scruffy 64-year-old in a Brooklyn rubber room, deeming him too dangerous to be near kids, officials said.

The DOE can't fire him.

"We have to abide by the union contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

So Rosenfeld simply collects his $100,049 salary -- top scale for teachers -- plus full health benefits and the promise of a fat pension,about $82,000 a year if he were to retire today.

His pension will grow by $1,700 each year he remains. He could have retired at age 62, but he stays.

Hell, I'd stay too if I was paid that much money for doing absolutely nothing!

At a time when NYC is running painful deficits, and will likely fire thousands of REAL teachers.  But they will keep this disgusting disgrace to humanity on the payroll, and continue giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thanks, unions!

Thanks a pantload!

        

Just remember - these are the people whom the gubmint trusts to examine your belongings, pat you down, and - coming soon to an airport near you - gaze at you nekkid looking for... uh... weapons.

I feel so much safer knowing TSA is on the job!

A federal Transportation Security Administration employee has been arrested in connection with the molestation of a girl, Orange County sheriff's deputies said. The man told investigators he planned to make her his "sex slave," according to the arrest report uncovered by Local 6.

According to jail records, Charles Henry Bennett, 57, works as a TSA employee at Orlando International Airport, and was booked into the Orange County Jail early Friday morning after a 15-year-old girl came forward claiming Bennett touched her inappropriately when she was 12, deputies said.

A TSA spokesperson reached late Saturday night said it would not be possible for her reveal whether Bennett’s employment status with the agency was impacted by his arrest until Monday at the earliest.

Impossible? Hell, if I owned a security company and one of my employees was molesting 12 year olds, he'd not only be fired, he'd be found dead under a rock!  But it's TSA.  It's the government.  I certainly don't expect this foul pervert to lose his job over something as silly as trying to turn a kid into a "sex slave."

Just remember, these are the folks who will be touching you too!