Haight-Ashbury: Hippie Mecca without Peace or Love.
If you are most anywhere USA walking down the street and you are suddenly aggressively confronted by four or five individuals with dogs demanding money; if you refuse, you are threatened with the dogs, spit on your face or worse. Again, most anywhere in the USA you’d be in your right to feel in danger for your life, you’d be in your right to call police and have them arrested, to take the dogs away and to address your grievances against those punks in court. But there is a place where such behavior is not only tolerated but defended: Haight-Ashbury, the birthplace and time capsule of the Hippie Movement.
For a while,citizens tried to get this issued resolved by a simple prohibition against loitering called the Sit/Lie Law, but it was view by the Liberal Powers That Be as a bigoted stance against those poor individuals forgotten by society and blah-blah-blah. Neighbors were scared of these protected gangs and the quality of life (Yes, even residents Hippieville deserves a decent quality of life) suffered accordingly. It wasn’t until one of these peace-loving abode-impaired individuals attacked and almost gauged out the eyes of a resident that the law finally voted in.
How can people be so heartless and vote on the freedom of those less fortunate to sit, lay down, impede pedestrian traffic, strong arm visitors and residents?
Community activist call the new law as “cruel and heartless.” He goes on to say:
More than beacon, SanFran is like one of those blue lights you hang on your back porch during the summer and attracts all kinds of bugs.
Hippie Please!
NYT: You have an opinion? Shut the f*** up you Troll.
I was reading The Liberty Zone‘s take on the New York Times and their complicity publishing of the State Department memos illegally obtained by WikiLeaks and decided to stroll over the opinion page on the Gray Whore On Line. I did not manage to reach the intended op-ed because the picture of a laptop wearing a balaclava caught my attention. Op-Ed Contributor Julie Zhuo’s “Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt” is an amazing piece. Of what I won’t say.
That somebody in the media is actually vying for legislation that come close to resurrect the Sedition Law is just par for the course. Yes, I am not surprised that the NYT would actually demand that the Government should go out and punish those who “troll” their articles. But what is Trolling? According to Ms. Zhuo “is defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums.” The problem resides in how to determine what posting is inflammatory, derogatory or provocative and this is so open ended and subjective, you pretty much can rest assured anything the author or owner does not like (as in a conservative reader expressing a dissenting opinion) can be considered posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative.
Ms. Zhuo tries to inject a shot of credibility by quoting the Classics: ” Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly.” Damn, now that sounds civilized! Problem is that media types are not accountable in 99% of the times they behave “unjustly.” Other than a couple of young journos that stole from other authors or making a big media hash of of false documents (What has Dan Rather been doing lately), Journalists pretty much get away with murder…literally. If you don’t believe me, do a bit of research about Michael Isikoff and his false report on Guantanamo Guards flushing the Koran down the toilet and the people that died in Pakistan because of the riots in protest against such violation of their religion. Last I heard Mr. Isikoff is doing quite well and free as a bird although he got a new laptop on account on the spilled blood all over the keyboard of the old one.
Ms. Zhuo goes on to rant about cyber bullies and other potatoes, but the simple solutions escape her. Pay attention now Julie: Solution One is to delete the offending posts. Solution Two is to ignore them. Solution Three is to make fun of the Trolls. Bloggers have been doing this for a while now and works fine and without government intervention. If you are too busy sucking on the latest Tofu Latte Mochaccino with Organic Sprinkles, you may request from your editor to hire somebody to delete the posts that offend you. Oh crap, I forgot you guys are losing subscriptions and having to fire people. Sorry!
I wonder why.
WikiLeaks, TSA and Homeland Security.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will start the new Extra Enhanced Pat Downs that will include body cavity searches and will augment the power on the Body Scanners so they will be able to search up to 2 inches deep inside our bodies.
The announcement came after that massive document dump by WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange. Over a quarter of a million confidential and secret communications were released yesterday forcing Homeland Security to reinforce security at all airports. In an interview in NPR, TSA’s Chief John Pistole said that TSA Agents are being trained on the new procedures. “We are living in a new world of increased risks and the Extra Enhanced Pat Downs are a small sacrifice we all must make in order to be safe.” When asked by a New York Times journalist if he thought that it made sense to increase security measures because of the WikiLeak affair, Mr. Pistole replied: “We are applying the same protocols we always had since the inception of TSA. Sense, common or otherwise have no relevance in what we do.”
An airline passenger undergoes a full body scan and Tanning Session with the newly released Chertoff-Scan Enhanced at O’Hare International Airport Wednesday,
Brady Bill: Celebrating with pride what didn’t work.
Bruce Kauffmann over the AppealDemocrat.com is commemorating/celebrating/lamenting another anniversary of the Brady Bill. You can almost hear the tears hitting his keyboard as he reminisces the good old times where people of strength stood up to the NRA and passed such important piece of legislation….sure Bruce.
But what I like the best in his article is the following statistic:
and since the Brady Bill’s passage approximately 2 million attempted firearms purchases, approximately half by convicted felons, have been denied.
Seriously? 2 million purchases denied? One million attempted by felons? Really Bruce, Do you actuaqlly said that with a clear conscience or a half functioning brain? Let’s say for the sake of the argument that your numbers are right. Does it bother you at all that one million non-felons were denied of their constitutional rights by a mistake? And it is well known that mistakes were and are still being bade with the background checks; I was once denied by mistake, allegedly I was a felon wanted for murder. My wife had a good laugh about that.
But let’s stretch the argument to its fantastic extreme. Let us say that the 2 million denials were for felonies, bad conduct discharges, misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, restraining order, adjudicated for mental health or known drug abuser, Where are the 2 million prosecutions? Where are the convictions for violations of the gun control act? Where are the fines collected for violating the law (up to $250,00 per violation)? Where are the felons serving or that served up to 10 years in prison for violations of the gun control act?
Two million people violating the Gun Control act during 17 comes around 117,647 Federal Weapons cases cases a year. Don’t you think by now we would have heard that the Federal Courts were flooded and unable to deal with the caseload? I haven’t and neither have you or otherwise you would have mentioned it in your article. The sad truth is that the Brady Bill was a feel good measure and nothing more. When President Clinton flaunted the numbers of the first year of the Brady Bill (some 100,000+ if I recall correctly) word leaked that only 10 cases made it to court and only one conviction was achieved. That is an appalling 0.001% of all the potential cases according to the numbers waved at the public by the Clinton administration.
The Brady Bill like this article by Mr. Kauffmann, was nothing more than an embarrassing collection of misinformation and lies.
I don’t want your guns, just your cash.
Proving once again that hypocrites care about their pockets, opponents of Tennessee’s Guns-In-Bars law had no problem whatsoever welcoming the NRA convention slated for 2015 in Nashville.
Has the NRA convention changed Spyridon’s and Rayburn’s minds? Both men say no. But they welcome NRA wallets.
I would call them shameless whores, but I’d be sued by Ladies of The Night everywhere.
And how about this for a clincher?
As for whether they are concerned that NRA members will go honky-tonkin’ while packing, Spyridon tossed them a back-handed compliment:”I think the city will be pretty safe that week,” he said.
I guess somebody told them about the NRA convention in Charlotte, NC where crime went down 45% during the NRA convention and they had 80,000 visitors spending their cash with lots of peace and love.
Bigots.