Much appreciated, Mr. Bellamy

Wes Bellamy, vice mayor (hee hee) of Charlottesville, has a nice string of tweets including this gem:


I DON'T LIK WHITE PEOPLE


To be sure, he probably meant he doesn't "like" white people, but I'll simply be glad if he keeps his tongue in his mouth where it belongs.  Judging by his racist tweets, it might be good to keep his lips together as well and superglue his fingers to the bannister or something.

Say what?

Apparently, the FBI investigated complaints that former basketball coach Bobby Knight groped women at a U.S. spy agency.  My instant question; what business would he have at a spy agency?  The answer, apparently, is that he was teaching leadership.  Here is some video of agency leadership after the lecture.

I mean, yes, he was a great basketball coach, but....seriously?

New on King David's Cruise Line

Since King David has gone off to parts unknown, I'll try to help.  Apparently, a cruise ship going through the Indian Ocean (not really near Somali pirates) chose to have a ten night pirate drill with all passengers aboard, most of whom were paying up to $40,000 for the cruise.


Now precautions can be a good idea, but in light of the recent collision of a U.S. Navy ship with a freighter, going without lights really isn't exactly the best idea.  Instead, remember that your ship is a much more stable platform than a pirate boat is likely to be, and have a few crew members on board to spot prospective pirates, and if necessary, introduce them to Ma Deuce, or possibly something in 40mm if longer range is desired.  After all, five or so people to guard the ship (really a small faction of the security staff you'd want with 1900 passengers and probably 1000 staff) is a whole lot cheaper than 1900 people with their vacations ruined.


And also on the light side, who wouldn't want to take a ten day cruise to Dubai with a nighttime curfew through pirate infested waters?  I bet the reason KD didn't write about this is he was on the ship!


(sorry, KD, couldn't resist)


In other cruising news, a cruise ship in Alaska arrived in Ketchikan with a dead whale stuck on the bow.  I'm guessing that "smell of the seas" really enhanced the experience at the evening buffet.

Now that's a job well done

The editorial board of the New York Times is arguing that Sarah Palin's defamation/libel lawsuit against them ought to be dismissed because the editorial board had not read New York Times articles that clearly stated that the editorial board's positions were false. 


Given that one of the roles of newspaper editors is to, you know, edit the writings of reporters for brevity and clarity, we would have to go further; we would have to say that the editorial board of the New York Times had not even read the articles they had claimed to edit.


In a sane world, such an argument would be met by a series of quick dismissals by Arthur Sulzberger, but no such luck, sad to say.  On a more serious side, this does explain a lot of blatant factual errors by many at the Old Gray Lady.   Apparently those layers of fact-checkers were in fact down at the bar.

Nope, no problem, nosirree

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain submitting 18 false voter registration forms.  Just believe the Democrats--the party that benefited from Andrew Spieles' crimes--that there is no problem.  Ignore the fact that he obtained the information for these forms from the Democratic Party of Virginia.


Maybe, just maybe, it's time for some good audits of voter registrations to see exactly how many dead people were registered to vote, how many people are registered to vote where they can not possibly live, and how many people are registered to vote in multiple places, and how many of them actually did vote illegally.

Chicanery, or bad water?

Two Cuban diplomats have been expelled after a number of U.S. diplomatic personnel had to return to the U.S. with unspecified maladies.  Now perhaps this is true chicanery along the lines of what was consistent in Moscow during the Cold War (or is now?), but I have to wonder if what's really going on is they're going outside the embassy for food and forget warnings not to eat raw fruits and vegetables, and not to take ice with one's drink.


Hopefully our State Department is not quite that stupid, but after the recent spate of leaks, I'm not quite so sure.  At any rate, it strikes me that if State is correct in their assessment, then Cuba's not exactly the friendly nation Mr. Obama assured us it would be.


Update: the problem appears to be an "acoustic attack" with sound beyond the audible range.   Given Cuba's extremely tight control over their economy, it's hard to believe anyone but the "friendly" Cuban government and the Castros are behind this.  Once again, heckuva job, Barry.

There's some great thinking for ya

A professor at San Antonio College has started to come to class dressed in body armor to protest on-campus carry.  Because, after all, it's not like he chose to live in gun-happy Texas or anything.

Coming in 2020!

General Mills will figure out that, indeed, wood does grow on trees.  How do I know this?  On my box of Cheerios, it states that all cereal box manufacture will be sustainable by 2020.  Since cereal boxes have been made of paper, hence wood, as long as I can remember, I can only imagine that this will be the date when the sustainability team at General Mills realizes that paper is made from wood, which grows on trees, and that when you cut a tree down, you can plant a new one.


This is what you get when your "environmental experts" are drawn from a class of people who dropped majors in the hard sciences and engineering because they couldn't do math, I guess.

Island Hopping

Like many, I've been saddened at the GOP's failure to overturn the Health Insurance Deform Act, a.k.a. "Obamacare" and sometimes falsely called the "Affordable Care Act."  But that said, I'm willing to cut the GOP some slack, because like any genius political vandal, President Obama and his minions put a ton of poison pills in there to make it difficult to repeal, from preexisting conditions clause bans to subsidies for those most likely to vote--older people.


And as such, and especially with the media firmly in the hands of the left, maybe it's time to take a look at MacArthur and Halsey's strategy of "island hopping."  Capture weakly defended islands with land for an airstrip while skipping the strongholds, put the Imperial Navy on the ocean floor and use land-based bombers to go to the next island and neutralize the strongholds. 


How would this work versus HIDA?  Simple; you go for the provisions that are most unpopular and build a popular consensus that these are not just "not conservative", but that they are wrong and sinful.  Why, for example, should young, poor people be subsidizing those who are older, even if they're quite prosperous?  Why should nuns be subsidizing birth control for other people?  Why should self-paid healthcare costs be taxed differently than employer-paid?


Win some of those battles, and the rest of Obamacare starts to totter on its own.  So maybe, just maybe, it's time to look seriously at Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

What makes me more nervous?

Is it the fact that Mohamed Noor obtained his place on the Minneapolis Police through an accelerated training program designed for college grads, or the fact that defenders of the standard program describe it as "paramilitary training"? 

Great moments in thinking

First, Texas Congressman Al Green has decided to file a bill to prevent President Trump from pardoning himself.   Since the pardon power exists in the Constitution and cannot be modified by any law passed by Congress, exactly what the Hon. Mr. Green is thinking could be very interesting.  Or depressing. 


Next apparently many fans of swimming great Michael Phelps are quite disappointed that his "race with a shark" was not real, but was done with computer animation.  So we would assume that many of his so-called "fans" are not only clueless that the better measure of Phelps' speed would be his world records (most of which were set at least 8 years ago), but are also not terribly aware of the habit great whites have of making humans into "Purina Shark Chow."


I will, of course, be using CGI to demonstrate that I'm the equal of not only a single great white, but a whole pod of killer whales.  And Joe Louis, and Mike Tyson.  Pay per view will be $50, and all viewers will be given a chance to buy this gorgeous 1870 bridge.

Congratulations, idiots

According to the Washington Post, current and former officials of the U.S. government have not only committed multiple felonies by releasing classified information to the press, but have also notified the Russian government that their secure channels for communication with Moscow are not, in fact, secure.  This, of course, gives them the opportunity to fix this problem.


Thanks, idiots.  You're trying to catch somebody for a minor crime and you pull this dumb*** stunt.  Does the name "Alger Hiss" mean anything to you? 

My advice for Mohammed Noor

If you've been reading the papers, you may have heard about a tragic case where an Australian woman living in Minneapolis was shot and killed by a young police officer of Somali descent, Mohammed Noor.  Suffice it to say that what is known does not look good for him.  The police union, which usually reflexively defends its members, is mostly quiet.  Police chief Janee' Harteau has said the killing should not have happened, and even the Somali community seems to be quiet so far.  So while I'm not a lawyer, I'm guessing that Noor's lawyer is telling him he's looking at 10-20 years unless he does something really smart.


That something smart could be to do the same thing Harteau did to him; throw the Minneapolis Police under the bus.   Admit he was an "affirmative action hire" and note that certain key parts of his qualifications were ignored or falsified--provide evidence if possible.  Explain that because he and other AA hires were not highly qualified, they were partnered together instead of with veteran officers, depriving them of the "street wisdom" that comes with time (Harteau has almost admitted this already).  Finally, make public what has been long suspected; that Minneapolis police officers are trained to keep their fingers on the trigger, despite the official policy.  Bring half a dozen carry permit instructors with combat or MP experience to explain what that policy is a really, really bad idea.


If he does something like this (and does not have some other exonerating evidence of course), my prediction is he cuts his sentence to 2-5 years, and that we really get to watch the fur fly when the family files a civil lawsuit against the MPD.  Time will tell.

Now that's some good thinking

A white professor of classics at the University of Iowa, Sarah Bond, has come out with a remarkable new theory; that the use of white marble in sculpture feeds white supremacists.  After all, who doesn't see a bunch of Aryan Nations types with black combat boots and shaven heads every time one goes to an art museum?  I'm told that Vatican City is virtually overrun with them! 


She suggests that the cure for this is to colorize Sculpture, which obviously is going to irritate white supremacists, as (being Greek and Roman) the models for these great sculptures were, of course, white. 


Hmmm....I see just a tiny little problem with this theory, but thankfully, there is a workaround courtesy of the thousands of diesel trucks going around Italy and Greece.  Simply allow the acids in the air to corrode the marble and turn it gray and black, destroying the world's great artworks over the centuries.  Even though the models were white, nobody will ever figure that out from facial features, body types, long, flowing beards and hair, and the like. 


Well, I guess at least Professor Bond's students might have trouble figuring this out.   If you want to learn the classics, I'm going to have to suggest you might want to skip Iowa City and go to Ames.  Also worth noting is that Bond's work is significantly published by a company in the shadow of the 14th best Big Ten University, and second best Big Ten university in the state of Michigan.   As a Spartan who was born south of Columbus, somehow I find it fitting.

A heartwarming story

A young lady named Kimber uses her father's firearm--which I can only hope was a beautiful 1911 for obvious reasons--to prevent being victimized by a criminal fugitive.