baldilocks

Notice

I've been reaalllly busy the last few weeks, as if you couldn't tell. At least one more day and then I'm back, God willing. BTW, Saturday I attended the McCain-Palin rally in Carson, CA with Darleen Click (pics!) and Joy McCann (Little Miss Attila) and we hung out for the day with Ace, Patrick (Patterico) and a member of Ace's Moron Nation, drinking finding solutions to the many problems with which we are beset.

Go see what they all have to say--especially Patrick.

UPDATE: Girls' Day Out: one of Joy's contacts from France's Le Monde--a very nice lady--took our photo.

Duty Calling Again

If you've guessed that I have more than one on-going responsibility, you're correct. It's a blessing for sure but it takes up time away from the computer. I'll try to get in some posting this afternoon.

I can throw you a bone: my father is very ticked-off at some American journalists right now--especially Jerome Corsi.

Back later.

Out For The Morning

Duties call. Send links and general comments. Yes, even you, Guest-known-as-'me.'

The Most Important Thing

Old blog friend Venomous Kate is weighed down with family catastrophes and needs your prayers as well as the comfort of your friendship.

(Via Twitter)

Earthquake (UPDATED: It's Not That Serious)

In LA right now...rockin the house.

UPDATE: Alles in Ordnung. For now.

UPDATE:5.6 5.8; felt from San Diego to San Francisco Santa Barbara. LA Times server must have caught something heavy. It's down.

Epicenter: 29 miles east of LA...Chino Hills.

UPDATE:LAT back up.

UPDATE: Breitbart (AP):

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles. San Bernardino County fire dispatch also had no immediate reports of damage.

The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. PDT. Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.

Workers quickly evacuated some office buildings.

"It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," said Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff's suburban Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles.

UPDATE: My great-aunt, a Californian through and through: "Enough with the earthquake coverage already!"

UPDATE: They're still talking about it on FNC. Overheard passing by the TV: "...as soon as we get some video of those [presumably broken] ceiling tiles..." ZZZZ

East Coasters, relax. We're used to this.

UPDATE: Gabriel Malor was taking his bar exam in the LA Ontario Convention Center where the ceiling tiles in question fell and that they're heavy enough to hurt someone. My bad. I'm glad that no future lawyers were hurt.

Seriously, though.

Living Among the Boors

7/27/08 around 4:15PM

I’m sick of this town. I’m sick of this state.

A man, late forties or early fifties, walked out in front of me while I was sitting in line at an In-n-Out drive-thru and while my car was rolling forward, so I said “hey could you make sure that I see you before you walk in front of me? I almost hit you.” He looked at me with a mixture of incomprehension, disgust and bluster, but said nothing. He was Latino, so I asked, “do you speak English?” He did, at least a bit. “F*ck you, b*tch.”

I watched open-mouthed as he walked over to a light-green Toyota Rav 4. As some may remember I carry a camera everywhere I go. So I got out and took his photo and took one of his vehicle. “You want my ID too?” he asked. “No," I said and walked back to my car.

He began cursing me in Spanish so I yelled back: “None of this would have happened if you had just said you were sorry! NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING IF YOU WOULD HAVE SAID ‘LO SIENTO!!’

His wife tried to block the plate but I got a photo of it when I got back in my car. So he gets out and writes down my plate number. I have veteran’s plates and two window stickers: 'United States Air Force Retired' and 'National Rifle Association.'

“You make sure you tell whoever it is that I’m a veteran of the United States Air Force protecting your right to be an A**HOLE!” This was at the top of my lungs also.

If it’s the LAPD he’s telling I should be okay, but if it’s some gang member, who knows? There is a low-level race war going on here, you know. That’s the only reason that I’m making this information public.

I won’t post his face or his plate number unless something crazy happens, but I’ve sent the images to someone I can trust.

I’m tired of people-of whatever race--who can’t even be bothered to display simple manners and who then have the nerve to get offended when you take exception to it.

Go ahead, lambaste me for this post, but I've had enough of this crap.

UPDATE:++undead says that just wearing this outfit would adjust pedestrians' attitudes appropriately.

What I'm Reading

It was written by Hog on Ice's Steve H. who is an Internet friend and a good guy who links to me and who enjoys it takes it with good humor when I beat up on him rhetorically.

Actually I bought the book a few years back but Steve is asking people to promote it again for whatever reason and I'm happy to do it.

I'm not reading it like one would read some other piece of non-fiction, of course. What I'm probably going to do, however, is pick some dish out of it and cook it for my great-aunt's eighty-seventh birthday tomorrow.

As you can imagine, Aunt A. pretty much eats what she wants at this point, allowing for salt content and dentures. As for me, I will be making my pilgrimage to a base gym tomorrow morning, as I have been doing every morning for the last three weeks, Sundays excepted. So we're throwin' down on Auntie's and the USA's birthday tomorrow.

Any suggestions, Steve?

Two Years It's Been

And it seems like yesterday.

I missed the anniversary (June 26th) of the death of my friend Rob Smith aka Acidman, but I don't think he would care. It wasn't his style to get all in a snit about such things. That's why I liked him.

His blog remains updated, using reposts of his excellent missives and the repeats garner few comments; however, on the day in question there are many tributes to that crazy "old" man. Go and see.

Minorities Report (UPDATE: Give me a break, sez baldilocks)

Thank you to the folks who have hit the tip jar.

I wasn’t going to post today--I need to work on a couple of projects--however, when I took a break, I couldn't help but notice that our friends at Hot Air have taken it upon themselves to publicize the difficulties suffered by minorities in this country.

First they note the plight of Fugly Americans:

This morning, Imus discussed the case of Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, the NFL player that sat out 2007 with disciplinary suspensions and has been arrested a half-dozen times since being drafted the previous year. While Imus’ news announcer talks about Jones’ desire to drop his nickname — it’s too “negative” now — Imus startled him with a question:

“Imus: ‘What color is he?’
A: ‘He’s African American [sic].’
Imus: ‘Well there you go… now we know.’”

Then there are Imbecile Americans (pdf; apparently Imus qualifies in this category as well):

21% of atheists believe in God

All kidding aside, someone in HA’s Imus thread laments ad infinitum that white Americans are bound to unofficial Politically Correct speech laws to which their black fellow citizens are not. I’m sorry but I’m less that sympathetic to that particular complaint.

See, when a group of people—conservatives--all but abandons its principles and allows a group with opposing principles to make the rules, this is what you get. As a result, when an Imus insults black women for the "sin" of not being attractive in his eyes and does so using racial language, he will get fired. Conversely, no one will turn a hair when terms like “white trash” or “redneck” are thrown around publicly in serious discussions. (Interestingly enough, these same rules allow for the same Imus—a Democrat supporter of Obama and friend of the MSM-approved "black leader," Al Sharpton—to get his job back and re-offend.)

Sorry but if you allow the Lefties to base “the rules” on the shifty sands of relative truth, don’t be surprised when you come out the loser.

Stop whining and man up.

I won't be on tomorrow until the evening, Pacific time.

[Re-edited]

UPDATE: Oh spare us the coddling of our bad-actors and nutcases, O Hideous One.

"I meant that he was being picked on because he's black," Imus said in a statement released by his spokesman.

Why not just say "they can't help it it's in their nature?" That'd be more honest.

AIDS Alarm Unsounded Except in Africa--and Russia

Remember when the World Health Organization predicted that AIDS would become a heterosexual pandemic worldwide? Now the organization has retracted the prediction.

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients

(And no, considering the name of the physician, I'm not sure that WHO isn't trying to prank the world.)

James Taranto notes the many ominous cries of panic regard heterosexual AIDS since the 1980s and wonders whether there will be a similar reversal of opinion with regard to Global Warming twenty-five years hence.

One thing I found noteworthy in the Independent report is that Russians have a high rate of infection HIV (1%)--the identical rate of that in South Africa in 1991. Seventeen years later, South Africa's rate is 25%.

WHO attributes Russia's rate mostly to the large and growing amount of IV drug-users. That fits with this report on Russian "hypermortality, where, between AIDS, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, avoidance of healthcare and abortion rates, the citizenry appears to be committing mass suicide.

Is this the inevitable final comedown of a wholly atheistic society?

(Thanks to James Joyner)

MORE ON MASS SUICIDE: In...Japan.

Since 1998, when it nearly doubled in a year, Japan’s suicide rate has remained among the developed world’s highest. (Although, arguably, not as high as it is sometimes portrayed as being, with over 30,000 people taking their own lives every year so far this decade.) Recently, suicide in groups, usually by means of a charcoal stove in an enclosed car in a remote park, has been on the rise, with participants usually meeting on line. More recently, suicide has taken a turn toward being a public health problem of the sort normally only considered in areas where the threat of a suicide bombing is a reality: hydrogen sulfide gas and other noxious gasses emerged as a new trend in suicide earlier this year, with people in hotel rooms or other densely populated areas killing themselves, then taking others with them as the gas spread throughout the building or emergency workers tried to rescue them.

I'd call it post-war depression. The war in question is World War II.