7/21/2013

Thoughts On A Sunday

We've gotten a respite from the hot and humid weather over the next couple of days. Temps will be in the lower 70's to upper 80's and the humidity will be lower as well which means the air conditioners will be off. This also means it will be easier for me to attend to some of the more labor intensive yard work without the fear of heat-related health issues.

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I can see the race hustlers are wasting no time, calling for federal civil rights charges to be filed against George Zimmerman. Not that there is a case to be made there, but that won't stop Sharpton, Jackson, and their new bud Eric Holder from pushing forward for a judicial lynching. Not that it was unexpected, particularly with the Number One Race Hustler, Barack Obama, having inappropriately injected himself into matter with his “Trayvon could have been me” comments.

I get the feeling that even if there had been a video of Martin confronting and savagely beating Zimmerman, pounding his head into the concrete, that Sharpton and Jackson would still be calling for Zimmerman's blood.

Yet for all the cries of 'Racism!' by these race baiters, there are many more who wonder what the heck they're talking about. Most of those asking are immigrants who have an entirely different view and wonder what the heck Sharpton et al are talking about.

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When I read this headline of Matt Walsh's blog post, I realized the person he quoted was being hustled by their kid.

I'm sorry, but what is a “gifted” 29-year old unemployed college grad doing living in his parent's basement, living off his parents as if he were still a high-schooler? If he were truly gifted he would have a job, even if it was delivering pizza, digging ditches, or mucking out stalls. No kind of work should be beneath him...unless he's one of those grads with a totally useless and expensive degree that did not in any way help prepare him to survive in the real world. If he's truly “gifted” then maybe he could have started his own business and be on his way to becoming wealthy rather than still leeching off of his parents.

Maybe part of the problem lies with the definition of “gifted”. As Matt writes, “the 'gifted' standard is getting lower day by day.”

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The refrain from a former Detroit City Council member: Nothing works here.

You know it's bad when those with the means to do so hire private security firms to do the job the Detroit Police Department can no longer do, like protect the citizens. So many other services in the city are no longer readily available is it any wonder that few homeowners in the Motor City are paying their property taxes?

One has to wonder, is it time to take Detroit private?

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If you want to see how far journalism has fallen, then consider this about a 'report' by a Guardian journalist that seems to think that name calling is the same thing as journalism. It used to be journalists reported the news or covered topics of interest. Now more often that not they are writing opinion pieces masquerading a journalism.

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It's time for liberals calling out for the blood of George Zimmerman to shut up and listen for once.

The idea that the criminal-justice system discriminates against blacks — and that this bias explains blacks’ disproportionate presence in custody — is a staple of civil-rights activism and of the academic Left. Every effort to prove it empirically, however, has come up short. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Alfred Blumstein has found that blacks are underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their arrest rates. A meta-analysis of charging and sentencing studies showed that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms, according to criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen.

Yes, the justice system is racist. It discriminates against Whites, Hispanics, and Asians.

(H/T Cold Fury)

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GraniteGrok's Skip Murphy recounts a blowout he had with a local reporter who believed our little town – a 'rich' town in his eyes - owed it to other towns who were not as frugal as our town to send our tax dollars to them to bail then out. How is it we were somehow obligated to 'help' towns that were fiscally irresponsible who spent money they didn't have for things they didn't need? As Skip wrote:

...[H]e could not understand (or stand) the idea that I (and my town, and other political entities) refused to raise the taxes on our residents simply to send that money to towns and cities that were broke.  Broke not because the single industry in town just up and left (and to which I would have some empathy) but because of years and decades of Progressive / Liberal / Democrat rule – the largest example now being Detroit. As I have written here before, we had a screaming match over the fact that I refused to send money to the leaders of those towns, who have already proved that they are incapable of wisely spending their taxpayers monies. WHY would I want to send them more and “enable” their bad habits?  His response was that ‘we are all in this together, that there were people still hurting in those cities, that the intent to help was paramount, and it was irrelevant that the political and appointed leaders would just waste that extra money.

--snip--

But [he] believes that I, and folks that believe like me, am the bad guy ’cause I refuse to put my hand in my pocket, pull out the green, and blithely send it away simply because I live in what he believes to be “a rich town”. In short, he exhibits all of the attributes of a Progressive – only intent counts, results don’t matter, the Status Quo demands to be upheld and the only accountability is to demonize those that disagree with them.

Now apply that belief to the Detroit, where you know the Progressives will demand that the rest of us bail out that failed dystopian city, a shining example of decades of Progressive rule. Not that we really needed it as we've had more than a few examples of failed socialist states to learn from. But most progressives are incapable of learning lessons from reality because their ideology – empathy politics – is far more important than the harsh reality of the world: socialism is a dismal failure and will always be a dismal failure.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where cooler summer weather has returned for a day or two, the beaches were still full, and where Monday has returned all too soon.