Latest FDNY Entrance Exam – No Test At All

The latest FDNY Entrance Exam, given this past January will almost certainly face lawsuits.

The Civil Service Merit System (CSMS) came about as a remedy for government corruption in the form of nepotism and cronyism in public employment.

The CSMS required a single hiring standard for most Civil Service jobs. Since its inception, government has been doing its best to erode the CSMS and the independence of the Municipal workforce. They’ve supported appointments to various high ranking positions, provisional hiring’s outside the CSMS and the much maligned “One in three rule,” where the City can pick one from among the three candidates next in line to fill any given position.

Over the past three decades the City has found some unlikely allies. Black groups have complained that the written portion of the exam “discriminated against blacks,” while women’s groups have argued that the physical exam creates an undue barrier to women. Both of these arguments are based on the specious view that “disparate impact equals discrimination.”

For years the City of New York has done its best to accommodate those complaints – watering down the written and drastically changing the physical portion of the exam, to no avail.

Now, with this most recent exam, they may have cynically found a way around the CSMS for good.

The latest written exam had over 190 questions, many more than half were “judgment questions,” such as “A bowl of chili falls on the floor, who should pick it up?” Many had multiple “correct” answers, some having three and in one case all four answers as “correct.” In short, the City gave a written exam that was, in effect, no test at all.

Combined with a Pass/Fail physical the city has now made entrance into the FDNY a virtual lottery system while cynically maintaining the pretense of the standardized testing mandated by the Civil Service Merit System.

Who does this help?

It certainly does NOT help competent and competitive blacks who don’t need a dumbed-down test to compete, in fact, it places them in the same boat as any competent candidate, on par with the least competent due to a non-test.

It does NOT help competitive women who could pass a real physical and do the job. In fact, it puts them on par with those women who could not compete on a real physical exam.

It DOES help marginal and incompetent candidates greatly! Women who could not compete on a job-related physical and those minorities AND whites who could not pass a real written exam now have the same shot as those who could.

So it certainly does not help/benefit the city or its residents either, as it fails to deliver the best candidates for the job...but it sure does make counting by race and gender a lot easier and that seems to be all that counts right now.

Bush’s Border Problem

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G W Bush just can’t help pissing people off.

He has a gift.

While it’s understandable that Liberals would revile him, he seems to go out of his way to alienate Conservatives as well.

Take his recent South American tour, which highlighted U.S.-Latin American trade relations, and brought Brazilian ethanol to the forefront as a trade topic – one that would produce tens of thousands of jobs in Brazil and help America move away from fossil fuels. A win-win all around.

Sadly, when Bush got to Mexico, he sounded less like American icon Milton Friedman, whose agenda he’d advanced early on, and more like, Ted Kennedy, who he extolled as a “one of the best legislative senators there is," giving an insight into why so many Conservatives have always been tepid, at best, to old G W.

Mexico is a country rich in natural resources. Perhaps the only thing it’s richer in is its culture of corruption. It’s that inbred corruption that’s kept Mexico from becoming a First World nation and a better neighbor to the U.S.

Unfortunately, Bush took the opportunity, while in Mexico to extol the Kennedy immigration agenda – no fence, no increased border security, a faster track immigration process and a “guest worker” (Amnesty Program) for illegal aliens already here.

That inane “Open Borders” policy is suicide for America and disastrous to American workers.

“Cheap” illegal/undocumented labor is NOT cheap!

Illegal immigration costs Americans some 5 times what that “cheap labor delivers.” Moreover, while a select few Americans benefit disproportionately from illegal immigration, the vast majority of Americans (workers) are irreparably harmed by it, as illegal immigration’s “cheap labor,” puts a powerful and persistent downward pressure on U.S. wage rates. It directly suppresses unskilled and low-skilled labor wage rates (the floor) and as the floor is lowered, it drives all other wage rates down with it.

Winking at illegal immigration and even seeking ways to "fast-track guest workers to American citizenship," isn't just bad economic policy, it's a security risk as well.

The Closer You Look, the Worse it Gets for Detective Oliver

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In the wake of the three indictments in the Sean Bell (50-shot) shooting, one thing’s becoming clearer and that is that Detective Michael Oliver may be THE PROBLEM here.

After all, he is almost single-handedly responsible for over 60% of the shots fired that day (31 of the 50), he also exercised equally poor judgment in feting himself and friends to a $4200 “celebration” at a trendy Manhattan eatery on the day of the indictments and now it turns out that he fired EVERY shot that hit the three victims (Bell, Guzman and Benefield).

Had Michael Oliver been replaced with another detective who’d fired four shots, the barrage would’ve been 23 shots and not the fifty shots that have raised so many eyebrows.

At this point, with being responsible for over 60% of the shots fire, and all of the hits, as well as “celebrating” on the day of the indictment, it would seem that Michael Oliver may very well NEED proof of a fourth passenger and gunman in order to avoid a manslaughter conviction.

The circumstances certainly bode better for Gescard Isnora (also charged with manslaughter) and Marc Cooper (charged with reckless endangerment), but Michael oliver certainly hasn’t helped his case much.

What’s the Big Deal?!

So now the Bush administration is being lambasted for "wrongly firing" eight U.S. Attorneys...only there is no such thing as a “wrongful firing” of such an appointee.

They can clearly be fired for ANY reason, or no reason at all.

The Dems are clamoring that these eight were fired, for among other things, failing, or refusing to investigate suspected incidents of Democratic voter fraud.

Like it or not, the White House can direct U.S. Attorneys to investigate pretty much whatever it wants and ANY voter fraud uncovered is a good thing...for both Parties.

I certainly don’t think there are any Democrats willing to go on record supporting any voter fraud that may benefit that Party. So what’s the big deal about a few U.S. Attorneys being fired, if they indeed did take umbrage over investigating voter fraud for what may have seemed like partisan reasons to them?

It looks as though they were given a directive by their boss (Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, pictured above), refused to carry it out (insubordination) and were fired.

But the White House didn’t and doesn’t need to give a reason for firing these attorneys. They serve at the pleasure of the President and can be let go for any...or even no reason at all.

I still don’t see any scandal.

Update on The Knoxville Murders...and Other Things

It’s been nearly three months since the horrific Knoxville murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom and nearly a month since I brought it up here.

No topic has resulted in as many comments, many of them somewhat intemperate.

Such crimes tend to inflame racial passions, but that’s no reason for the MSM to ignore them. They say something about us (ALL of us), how such events are covered says something about us, too. It says a lot about the things we’ll put up with and the things we’re willing to ignore, for one, the dysgenic impact of violent crime.

I certainly don’t believe that such crimes prove anything about black/white relations and I certainly don’t believe they prove anything about the broader racial/ethnic group of the suspects.

In my view, the Newsom-Christian murders no more indicate that “blacks are prone to violence,” then does the James Byrd murder prove that of whites.

Saying that, I firmly believe that the mainstream media’s (MSM’s) virtually ignoring such black-on-white atrocities, while never failing to cover white-on-black ones tends to inflame a righteous indignation among many whites, as anyone can plainly see the media’s double standard.

The fact is that depravity is a part of the human condition, it’s an unpleasant fact, like the fact that dead bodies give off a horrible stench during decay, but unpleasant facts can only be ignored at our own peril.

In my view, there are very few, if any racial lessons to take from the Christian-Newsom, or the James Byrd murders, but many human lessons.

The fact is that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of other such predators out there right now. What we should all take away from the Christian-Newsom murders is that we must deal differently with violent crime. We must (1) seek out such potential predators at an early age, (2) seek to change them, if possible, at a very early age and (3) failing that institutionalize these people so that the danger they pose to society can be mitigated.

All of the above must be done in a race-neutral fashion, as there are predators from every race and ethnic background.

In a separate but related post I discussed the dysgenic effects of violent crime. In this case, like the James Byrd case the victims were more productive members of society than the perpetrators. That seems to hold true in almost every violent incident.

Even in the relatively recent and high-profile Ted Ammon murder, where the wealthy Long Island Investment Banker was bludgeoned to death in his own home, the two suspects handyman, Danny Pelosi and Ammon’s wife (Generosa) were both far less productive, socially valuable people than Ted Ammon was. Mrs. Ammon and Dan Pelosi both had skills that were, at best, quite common, while Ted Ammon’s skills were near irreplaceable – the dysgenic effects of such crimes impacts all of us, as they impact society in a very negative way.

I believe the Rockefeller Drug laws (that mandate mandatory sentences for drug offenses) should be scrapped, in favor of mandatory sentences for violent crimes.

We have never looked at the serious implications of violent crime correctly and still don’t take the scourge of violence as seriously as we ultimately must.

Viacom vs YouTube

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Viacom has recently leveled a $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s YouTube, but it could be an example of Sumner Redstone (pictured above) spitting into the wind, even if Viacom does win the lawsuit, as expected a la the RIAA vs. Napster a few years back.

Intellectual property rights laws remain in effect, and rightly so, a book, song, movies, etc., are commodities 9entertainment commodities) that artists and their agents (entertainment and media conglomerates) sell for a profit.

The purveyors of those medium, both the artists and the corporations have a right to profit from those commodities and no one else has any right to post those commodities online, any more than anyone has the right to bootleg copies of those medium for sale outside the contract signed between artist and agent (distribution company).

Some have argued that Viacom should simply accept YouTube’s running those clips as “free advertising,” but why, especially when the RIAA was successful in reining in Napster?

There seems to be no down side for Viacom here.

They aren’t going to “alienate millions of potential fans,” because they don’t want non-paying fans. Of course, they may not get their billion dollars either, as it’s more likely that some sort of Napster like, pay-as-you-go deal will be reached between the two.

I supported the RIAA against Napster because I support intellectual property rights and I support Viacom here.

Those that want to argue in favor of Napster and YouTube and the free "sharing" of all such property must make the argument that intellectual property rights are an anachronsim in today's world.

That’s Some Gooooood Behavior!!!

Earlier this month we marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Happyland Social Club fire that killed 87 people in the South Bronx back in 1990.

Convicted in the arson-murder, Julio Gonzalez, then thirty-six, was sentenced to 4,350 years in prison.

How time flys!

The fifty-three year old Gonzalez will be eligible for parole in just eight years, which by my calculations is something like 2,900 years earlier than the “one-third off for good behavior” clause would normally deliver.

Wow! Julio must’ve been an especially good boy this past decade.

Detective Oliver Fires a Round Into His Own Foot

Detective Michael Oliver didn’t help himself with his $4200 celebratory dinner at Nello the day he and two other NYPD Officers were indicted in the Sean bell shooting.

One PBA source was quoted as saying, “He just convicted himself and if we don’t rein him in, he’s going to bring the others down with him.”

The problem with the high profile fete was that there wasn’t anything for Oliver to be celebrating! Moreover, that kind of move is indicative of the kind of judgment you might expect from an officer who emptied sixteen initial shots (a full fifteen round clip and one chambered round), then re-loaded and emptied another fifteen shot clip, in accounting for an astounding 31 of the 50 shots fired by the NYPD that night!

Recognizing how difficult police work is, most law-abiding citizens want to give the cops the benefit of the doubt, but this is the kind of judgment that makes you cringe at the prospect of a Michael Oliver taking the stand in his own defense.


See also: http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/03182007/news/regionalnews/havin_a_blast_regionalnews_lawrence_schwartzwald__angela_montefinise_and_melissa______jane_kronfeld.htm

A Real Classic - Liberal Democrat David Obey (D-WI) Calls anti-war loons, "Idiot Liberals"

It's over a week old, but it's still a classic - Liberal Democrat, David Obey (D-WI), pictured left, is confronted by two anti-war proesters (one of ghem, a mother of a Marine) and winds up excoriating "Idiot Liberals" for making it harder to end the war.

An absolute classic!

See? Even those saner Liberals can't stand the hard-Left!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS4wHMCc57k&mode=related&search=

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And Tina Richards gets her day on Hardball;

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2L6xOLfrKo&mode=related&search=

Could a NEW LIE Derail the NY Times?!

There’s no mistaking the fact that the NY Times Editorial board reviles getting tough on illegal immigration. They’ve long supported a veritable and untenable open border position.

Today (3/15/2007), the NY Times may have actually crossed the line and made false charges against the Department of Homeland Security, specifically, its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) division.

Today’s editorial begins, “A screaming baby girl has been forcibly weaned from breast milk and taken, dehydrated, to an emergency room, so that the nation’s borders will be secure.”
The Times claimed that a 27 day old baby was separated from her mother and weaned from breast milk and taken “dehydrated” to a Boston area hospital, insinuating that the child's condition was related to the raid.

However, when challenged, the NY Times acknowledged that they were unable to verify the existence of that baby. A Massachusetts social services official, while critical that the I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials didn’t cooperate with local social services agencies, asserted that two infants were taken to area hospitals suffering from pneumonia, completely unrelated to the raid on Michael Bianco inc., a leather goods factory in New Bedford, MA.

Immigration officials claim that at least 327 of Michael Bianco's roughly 500 employees, most of them women, were detained by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal aliens.

I.C.E. officials also said that no children were stranded and that authorities released 45 detainees who were their children's sole caregiver. Spokesman Marc Raimondi said the agency gave early warning to state social service officials of the pending raid.

In the wake of the raid Raimondi has said that people here illegally know there are consequences and that they risk being detained and removed from the United States. "You can't lose sight of the fact these people were here illegally, they violated the law and they're being held accountable," he said.Francesco Insolia, 50, and three top managers were arrested after 300 federal agents raided Michael Bianco Inc.

Authorities allege that Insolia oversaw "sweatshop" conditions so he could meet the demands of $91 million in U.S. military contracts. U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has accused Insolia of exploiting the illegals in order to maximize his profits on the military contracts to make backpacks and safety vests for soldiers. The owners face up to $3,000 in fines and up to six months in jail for each illegal immigrant hired.

So, it's looking increasingly like the NY Times has falsified and sensationalized the details of this case to press a decidedly dangerous, reckless and frankly anti-American agenda of open borders in an age of rampant international terrorism.

Perhaps this will be THE lie that derails the NY Times?

I’d certainly be completely in favor of that.

Here's the link to the NY Times editorial;

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/opinion/15thu1.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

11th Hour Witness Rocks Queens "50-Shot" Case

Just as a Queens grand jury began deliberations - a janitor walked into a Queens police station house and told detectives he saw a man fire one shot at cops before disappearing into a building, law-enforcement sources said.
This latest eye-witness account would seem to resuscitate the “fourth-man theory,” that the police on the scene have swore to since the investigation started.

The witness, whose name is being withheld, has single-handedly thrown the already tense case into full boil, giving the cops hope of a last-minute reprieve while igniting charges of chicanery among the anxious supporters of Bell, who was slain while two of his friends were shot, just hours before his scheduled wedding.

Bell was killed last Nov. 25 near a Jamaica strip club that hosted his bachelor party. Cops involved said they believed someone in Bell's party was carrying a gun, and confronted the group in Bell's car as they tried to pull off. No gun was recovered.

Of the 50 shots, 31 came from Detective Michael Oliver (photo above).

Sources said the new witness is actually an old one who failed to give cops the information when first interviewed.

"I guess his conscience got to him and he wanted to tell all he knew," one law-enforcement source said.

According to the New York Post, “the witness heard a car crash as he was dumping trash on Liverpool Street in Jamaica. When he turned to inspect the commotion, the sources said, he witnessed part of the shooting - including a gunman, who he did not believe was a police officer, firing in the direction of the cops.”

It remains to be seen if this new witness is going to prove believable and what impact that testimony will have on the Grand Jury.

A Victory for Amputees Everwhere

A ruling by a New Jersey medical board ruled yesterday has brought 34 year-old Isaac Feliciano one step closer to his dream of becoming a firefighter.

That’s amazing because Isaac Feliciano lost his leg to gangrene from spinal meningitis at age five.

Still, despite that disability, he starred on his high school football and baseball teams and ran sprints in the Paralympics.

The medical board’s ruling overturned a decision by the city of Paterson, which had blocked Mr. Feliciano from joining its fire department - despite the fact that he easily passing the Fire Department’s physical exam - because he wore a prosthetic leg below his left knee.

According to the New Jersey Merit System Board’s decision, "There is no state law or regulation precluding an individual who has a prosthetic from serving as a firefighter."

The Merit System’s Board’s ruling orders Feliciano to be retroactively reinstated to the hiring list to enter the Paterson Fire Department Academy - the last step before becoming a firefighter.

Feliciano was expectedly ecstatic over the decision, "I feel like a trail blazer. It's not just about me anymore. It affects many other amputees," Feliciano said.

"My advice to others is you have to put the work in. You have to go beyond the requirements," he added.

A BAD Idea Whose Time Has Come???

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Universal Health Care, the new name for Socialized Medicine has become THE campaign theme for 2008.

Big business has long been behind it because it takes one of the major expenses FROM business and foists it ONTO the backs of ordinary taxpayers.

Currently slightly over 85% of Americans have health care insurance through their jobs, while about 15% do not.

So the natural question is, why shouldn't those in that 85% pay a little more in order to make sure everyone is covered?

But do we want the same people who run Motor Vehicles, the Post Office, the IRS and the VA hospital system (think Walter Reed) running our health care?

First, ANYTHING that will reduce the costs of doing business will help American industry and that is certainly a prime concern. Still, since about the middle of the last century, Canada and most of Western Europe have moved toward "socialized medicine," and they've been struggling, without much success, to live up to the promise of providing "free health insurance and quality health care for all."

Canada's and England's systems are wracked with rationing and restrictions on visits. In Canada, the average wait between a referral and a doctor's visit across the 12 specialtes, in the ten Provinces is almost 18 weeks!

20% of kidney dialysis centers in Europe and an astounding 50% in England don't accept people 65 years and older. In Ontario, a pateint can wait as long as sixteen months for an MRI scan.

What's more, many of the early adherants of socialized medicine have since backed away from it. Starting in 1989 England began introducing "market-based reforms into its health care system. Sweden introduced "managed competition" into its health care system in the early 1990s and New Zealand began offering its citizens tax incentives to purchase private insurance as an attempt to end its forty year stint with socialized medicine and Chile likewise has turned to giving its citizens financial incentives to move from its government run health care system to private insurers.

The problem today is that the die may already be cast. Big business wants out. In fact, all of American business wants out of funding health care, so whether it works well or not (and judging form the reults around the world the answer is not), we're probably going to see some form of government managed, or "Universal Health Care," with provisions for those willing and able to pay premiums for private insurance.

Ultimately we'll see some form of two-tiered system, with those able to pay for private insurance able to avoid the rationing and long waits that those fully dependent upon the government run program will have to deal with.

Expanded Daylight Saving Time

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Back in July, 2005 Congress expanded daylight saving time as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, ostensibly to save energy, but it's also a great boon to retailers as well!

So the new expanded DLS starts Sunday morning (March 11th), so you'd best set your clocks back tonight before bed...and the longer nights won't end until November 4th of this year!

Supporters of extending DLS claim that the longer days will save about 100,000 barrels of oil per DAY!

Senator Jeff Bingham (D-NM) among others actually got the extended period reduced because farmers didn't like starting their worday in the dark. It was originally supposed to start the first Sunday in March (now it's the second) and end the last Sunday in November (now the first Sunday in November)

Say It Ain't So, O!

Lost in the uproar over his religious roots and his middle name (Hussein), is perhaps the more interesting and controversial slave-owning legacy of Barack Obama's maternal side of the family.


OH NO YOU DID-INT!

Oh yes, I guess I just did, but it's not just me, the Baltimore Sun ran the initial article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines titled A New Twist to an Intriguing Family History.

And yazzem, it is all that. It seems the records were first noted by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and does genealogy in his spare time.

Obama's Mama's Dirty Laundry

According to Reitwiesner one of Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfather's George Washington Overall owned two slaves, recorded in the 1850 census and that one of his great-great-great-great-grandmothers, a Mary Duvall also owned two slaves.

The Baltimore Sun claims to have retraced "much of Reitwiesner's work" and confirms that the records show that Overall, then 30 years old, owned a fifteen year old black female and a 25 year old black male, while Mary Duvall owned a 60 year old black man and a 58 year old black woman. A notation makes clear that slaves were listed by owner, age, sex and color, not by name in the 1850 census.

A Good Time Was Had By All

When contacted, an Obama spokesman did not dispute the information, saying only that the Senator's ancestors "are representative of America."

Do tell!

My father's ancestors came from Ireland just before the Civil War and went from the docks right into a war that was at least partly exacerbated by that particular issue.

My Mom's side of the family came here from Northern Italy just prior to the turn of the 20th Century. Barack Obama's ancestors aren't representative of my own, nor those of anyone I know.

I suppose Barack Obama could relate to black America in this way, "I know the roots of slavery personally, as they've touched my family too...well, no, we weren't actually ENSLAVED, but we sure did OWN a few."

The more I think of it, the easier I could see Barack Obama in Bill Murray's Stripes, with Murray as the de facto drill seargent bellowing, "What kind of black man are you?"

With Obama responding, "The slave-master bastard kind, I guess, SIR!"

Jericho

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Awhile back the creators of CBS' new TV show Jericho, stopped by the quarters of the FDNY's HazMat Co #1 to get some information on radiation, more specifically, what the effects of a small thermonuclear device being detonated near a civilian population would be like. My schedule doesn't permit my being able to watch or listen to any specific broadcast at any specific time or day in the week, as I never know when I'll be working one week to the next, with our floating schedule, but CBS has posted all the episodes of Jericho online at http://www.cbs.com/primetime/jericho/videos.php



I've checked them out and while the show's rather apocalyptic premise is incredible, it's probably not all that incredulous any more. Moreover, it's very well cast and written, with Gerald McRaney as the small town of Jericho, Kansas' Mayor.

I really like the idea that CBS put some of its shows online. Although this is the only one I've checked out yet, I'm very glad I did.

Could this guy be Baseball's first BILLIONAIRE?

L.A. Dodger pitcher Matt White (pictured left) may soon be Major League Baseball's first billionaire, though it probably won't come through endorsements, or a record signing bonus.

It turns out that Matt White, whose appeared in seven major league games over nine professional seasons, bought 50 acres of land from an elderly aunt about three years ago so she could pay for nursing home care.

While clearing out a couple acres to build a home, he found a number of deep rock ledges. A geologist has estimated that are about 24 million tons of stone that currently sells for about $100/ton, making tha haul potentially worth over two billion dollars!

The news of the find has prompted some of the 29 year-old's teammates to refer to him as "the billionaire."

For his part, White is pretty modest, "It sounds bogus even saying those numbers. I'm just a samll town guy trying to get to the big leagues. It's beyond comprehension."

His father has already begun selling off the stone, but admits that to date, it's a small time operation. Of course, the processing and transporting all that rock would come off the price of all that stone, but White has begun the process of fielding offers for the property.

Dr. Peter Pannish, a geologist from the University of Massachussetts has surveyed the property and says the property could fetch several million dollars, but doubts it would reach into the hundreds of millions, let alone billions.

Despite the distraction, White remains focused on baseball, "I plan to play baseball until I can't play any more," he says, "My goal is to play in the big leagues regardless of what happens with the rock quarry."

Red Bell-Bottoms, or What in THE hell happened to Keith Olbermann?!

Here's the sad thing for me, I must confess that I really, really liked Keith Olbermann for a very long time.

He was half of perhaps the greatest Sports Center duo ever on ESPN! He and Dan Patrick comprised a dynamic duo that brought sports highlights to, well, new heights.

Today Keith Olbermann is the whole (as in A-hole) of perhaps the most disastrous political talk commentary show on TV.

From "Joumanji" to "Jou-OhMyGodit'satrainwreck" in about four years (3/31/03)? That's gotta be some kind of record.

Sure, he's taken his Countdown right from his old Sports Center day's top highlights and he's added his "Today's Worst Person in the World" segment...a segment so lame that it could be a really bad Daily Show skit, but it's not even crazy enough, or edgy enough to be that.

It's just heart-wrenchingly lame.

How lame is it?

Well, it's so lame that just based on that one segment alone, I'm making Keith Olbermann my "Douschebag Du Jour" (and I just came up with that on the spot and it's funnier and less bulky than Olberman's poor man's Jon Stewart impersonation) for the entire month of March 2007 (what can I say, I'm a lazy bastard....but at least I'm not mind-numbingly lame).

So, where did Keith Olbermann go wrong?

Well, he left Dan Patrick and Sports Center for one thing. What kind of a nitwit would leave a gold mine like that?

But even more disastrous, Keith Olbermann decided that he'd engage in a little thing we like to call "Liberal commentary."

Come on Keith!

Liberal commentary is a lot like red bell-bottoms.

Now go look in the mirror.

What do you see?

OK, look harder.......yeah, you're a white suburbanite punk, same as me.

You have to be either a woman or a black guy to pull off red bell-bottoms Keith and you're neither.

Think about it! Women (sorry ladies) can pull off just about anything fashion-wise (it's true) because, sad as it may seem, no one's paying any attention to the fat chicks and every guy is just imagining all the others naked.

See how that goes? Red bell-bottoms/burqua, it really doesn't mater, because we're all busy trying to picture you ladies naked.

Black guys, well that's another story altogether.

I don't know how they can pull off such fashion faux pas, I guess life's just innately unfair.

You've seen it a million times by now. Your in the 7/11 (stop, don't act as though you don't go there) and in walks....no saunters...a black kid wearing red bell-bottoms...and it's a GUY! They're also low riders, half way down his butt revealing his four pair of underwear....and your stunned...stunned that ANY guy could actually pull off that fashion atrocity, but low and behold, he's doing it. Going where very few straight men have ever gone before.

What's the first thing you ask yourself?

No, NOT, "What's he doing wearing four pair of underwear?" Although that's a fair question.

Right, "I wonder how I'd look in that get up?"

And suddenly, almost instinctively and certainly against your will, a vision as horrific as a fat guy in a speedo slams itself off the four walls of your brain, rattling around in there like the image of some horrific war wound, or Mike Dukakis sitting dorkily inside that tank wearing a helmet seventeen sizes too big...and you realize exactly what you'd look like wearing those low rider, red bell-bottoms - like a middle aged, white dork wearing a grossly obscene, ass-revealing costume guaranteed to drive others around you into fits of uncontrollable violence.

You shudder at the thought and come to your senses. Red bell-bottoms just aren't for the likes of you and me.

But as if to confirm this revelation, a young white kid struts into the same store in almost the exact same get up...and he grins and flashes you a bunch of what you presume to be gang signs, as he stands there looking as ridiculous as a chimpanzee in overalls.

Your first thought is "Should I get a gun, or just a bat to put this poor son-of -bitch out of his misery?" I mean you really feel sorry for this pathetic shitbird even more so because you realize, "There but for the grace of a few horrific images..."

You see Keith? Liberal commentary is the verbal equivalent of those red bell-bottoms. It's hard to look good, let alone manly wearing them, especially for white suburbanite punks like us.

You think I don't sympathize?!

You think I haven't heard that same siren's call?

Sure I have! How many times have I heard that call, "JMK, you're a funny guy and you can really turn a phrase...at least some of the time...and we could really use you over here on the Left......that's aisle NINE, under red bell-bottoms. Sure they don't look good on everyone, but we believe you could pull it off."

Yeah right!

The day I try and squeeze my fat, white-bread ass into a pair of low rider, red bell-bottoms, is the day I finish off that ensemble with what I like to call a twelve gauge necktie.

In short, come to your senses Kieth, just stop it. Give up the ghost and crawl back to Dan Patrick and ESPN....if they'll still have you, but give up on this ill-fated, ill-conceived political commentary show. It's pathetic....as pathetic as a pair of red bell-bottoms on a middle aged white suburbanite punk.

And drop your ridiculous one-sided "feud" with Bill O'Reilly. You're not coming off like a pit bull with a grip on O'Reilly's jugular, but as a bouncing, drooling puppy-dog humping his leg.

The fact of the matter is that O'Reilly has already "deliveranced" you...and by "deliveranced," I mean grabbed you by both ears and butt reamed you like a meth-crazed hillbilly, demanding that you squeal like a pig."

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Sorry, but that's the butt-ugly reality of it all.

You're NOT Ned Beatty and quite frankly, you don't need that. ...and neither does the viewing public - which for you is your entire family and the eight other MSNBC regulars breathlessly waiting for Joe Scarborough.

Please Keith, PLEASE!!! Take off those red bell-bottoms, you look ridiculous.

You Mean DeLay and Abramoff Did Exactly What Nancy Pelosi Did???

One of the things that Tom DeLay was excoriated for was working with Jack Abramoff to keep the U.S. controlled Mariana Islands in the Pacific, free from the U.S. Minimum Wage and immigration laws.

Seems as though the Mariana Islands, including Saipan (pictured above) had been home to a number of Chinese run sweatshops since the very early 1980s. The Chinese loved this arrangement as it allowed them to label their goods "Made in the USA," avoiding both charges of "using slave labor" and the import duties that existed at the time.

A bad bit of business to be sure, BUT no worse than Nancy Pelosi's January attempt to do much the same for a San Francisco lobbyist (StarKist Tuna) who wanted her to exempt Guam from the U.S. Minimum Wage hike - she only caved when the story went public.

Stories like the Chinese sweatshops on the U.S. controlled Mariana Islands are important and they DO highlight a real example of American political corruption. What is hypocritical however is for some in the media to act as though this corruption is the domain of one Party more than the other - many those sweatshops arrived at the tail end of the Carter administration, and have existed there and grown ever since, under Congresses controlled by BOTH Democrats and Republicans, under BOTH Democratic Presidents and Republican ones.

To find out that within weeks of assuming the Speaker of the House position, that Nancy Pelosi would do precisely what Tom DeLay was excoriated for, responding to a lobbyist and trying to exempt an American controlled protectorate (Guam & the Mariana Islands) from the impact of the U.S. Minimu Wage laws is troubling, to say the least.

New York Allows Worst Sex Offenders to be Held Beyond Prison Terms

Newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer worked with Lawmakers in the NY Senate and Assembly to pass a "Civil Confinement" bill that could keep New York's most dangerous sex offnders locked up after their prison terms expire, allowing them to be held in Psychiatric facilities until they are considered "no longer a danger to society."

Under the new law, mental health professionals will decide whether a given sex offender poses a real danger of commiting more sex offenses.

The Bill would creat an Office of Sex Offender Management and Spitzer claims that as many as 1,500 inmates in State prison could be subject to "Civil Confinement," but asserts that only a few hundred are likely to be institutionalized beyond their prison sentences.

Spitzer lauded the Bill saying, "We in government have a responsibility to do everything we can to protect the public. This is especially true when it comes to protecting the public from those individuals whose mental abnormalities cause them to make sexual attacks on others."

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rennselaer) says of the Bill, "We're going to try and pass it as fast as we can."

Workingclass Conservative says, "Long overdue."

Florida Moves to Ban Illegal Aliens!!!

No, not the actual illegal aliens, just the word "illegal aliens."

Makes sense, because "words kill people too."

Or is that "Words don't kill people, illegal aliens do?"

I forget, but at any rate, State Senator Frederica Wilson (pictured above) a Democrat (who'd have thunk it?) has gone on record as saying, "I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, especially children. To me, an alien is someone from Outer Space."

OK, go ahead and roll that statement around your heads for awhile.

I don't know about you, but it seriously creeps me the hell out.

The fact that anyone so incredibly and irrevocably stupid could be elected to any State Senate from any State in this Union is bone-chillingly frightening to me.

My advice to Frederica Wilson is, "Don't drink another drop of anything alcoholic, nor smoke even another joint (if you do engage in such activities) because in your case, one less brain cell and you're a talking mannequin."

Compounding the already stunning level of stupidity, Ms. Wilson amplified her statement thusly, "There are children in our schools whose parents are trying to become citizens and we shouldn't label them. They are immigrants through no fault of their own, not aliens."

Hmmmmmm....OK, let me put this as simply as is humanly possible;

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There are people who are trying to become U.S. citizens through the proper channels and those people are called "immigrants."

They have Green Cards and Work Visas and things like that.

Those people AREN'T breaking any American LAWS!!!

There are also people who've come here ILLEGALLY and most of those people AREN'T really trying (at least not very hard) to become "American citizens."

Those people HAVE broken American LAWS and are thus called "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS" or "ILLEGAL ALIENS."

To date, no "aliens" have yet arrived from Outer Space, but should they arrive here in America and break our immigration laws and try to work and live here without going through the proper immigration procedures, they too will be called "ILLEGAL ALIENS," only in their case, as you (Ms. Wilson) astutely point out, it would probably be "Illegal Space Aliens."

See the distinction?

Illegal immigrants are NOT "immigrants," they're LAWBREAKERS.

Legal immigrants are NOT "illegal aliens," they ARE however, often referred to as "resident aliens," because they don't "come from here."

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Illegal Aliens (1) DON'T come from here (not a major problem) and (2) Have broken our immigration laws and thus DON'T BELONG HERE (a HUGE problem).

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I'm just trying to cure stupidity, one stupid argument at a time.

Global Reparations FROM England???....Think AGAIN!

Steven A. Grasse, the author of the book The Evil Empire: 101 Ways England Ruined the World, has created a website called britishreparations.org seeking reparations from England to the rest of the world to the tune of 31 trillion pounds (appx. $8300/person worldwide). And while I agree that nothing quite says, "Sorry for the historical butt-reaming," quite like eighty-three hundred smackers in cold, hard cash, that one silly-ass "solution" begs a single silly-ass question.

Why???

Well, at least according to Steven Grasse, it's because England has "ruined the world" by inflicting upon it a bunch of "British things" like The Industrial Revolution, and "Bad Inventions," claiming that, "If it hurts people, the British probably came up with it."

NOTE: As an impolite aside to Mr. Grasse; "Hey stupid! Have you ever heard of Nerve Agents, such as Tabun, Soman and Sarin? Yeah, they're called "G-agents" because they were all invented in GERMANY!

"How about Blister Agents? That's another class of chemical WMDs. They're called "Hun Stuff," because they too were invented in GERMANY! And "Genocide," nice try, but that was almost certainly NOT "invented" by the English. In fact, I'd look to blame that neat little "invention" ("discovery" is more likely the word your looking for) on those chimps with spears a few columns down...or at least their distant, hominid ancestors. Here's an idea, try and do a little cursory research next time.

He also calls for a Versailles Refund (oddly enough, France was behind the most brutal points of the Versailles Treaty), an Opium War Refund (oddly enough, again, it was British citizens and not the Chinese who suffered the most from the burgeoning opium trade). According to Grasse, everyone suffered because of Britain's "global misrule."

OK, Mr. Grasse is obviously an imbecile and I say that in the nicest possible way, but only an imbecile could possibly achieve the unlikely scenario of a descendant of an Irish-Catholic lineage defending...(GULP)... England. CONGRATULATIONS Mr. MORON...I mean, Mr. Grasse.

The TRUTH is that the rest of the world OWES England for a whole host of things, INCLUDING the aforementioned and excoriated Industrial Revolution!

Yes, the Industrial Revolution first took hold in England as the age of the Guilds gave way, first to proto-industry, a phenomenon that had taken hold across all of Europe and then moved onto industrialization, starting out in jolly old England. The truth of the matter is that those factories freed untold numbers of people from being tethered to the land by creating thousands of new jobs. This allowed for human advancement through more and more advanced industrialization on to the electronic and information ages that followed in the developped parts of the globe. The Industrial Revolution was a vital and necessary step toward all the advancements that followed, the inane opinions of nimrods like Mr. Grasse, notwithstanding.

England has given the world as close to a unifying language as is possible, as now more than 60% of the earth's people are at least somewhat conversant in English.

England along with its English-speaking Allies (Canada, Australia and the United States) saved the world from Axis Power tyranny in WW I and Nazi tyranny in WW II.

It was also the Irish monks, of "the British Isles" that "saved civilization" during the Dark Ages, by hiding and protecting and copying thousands of volumes of the world's recorded knowledge up to that point.

England was also the very first nation on earth to eradicate chattel slavery, outlawing it in England in 1807. Something the majority of the rest of the world has yet to accomplish, as chattel slavery still exists throughout the entire Islamic world, most of sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia.

But perhaps the greatest gift that England bestowed upon the rest of the world is FREEDOM!

The concept that bubbled bottom-up in Great Britain. From the Magna Carta (1215) that took power from the Monarchy, requiring the King to renounce certain powers, respect certain legal procedures and accept that the will of the Monarch could be bound by the law and it guaranteed the right of all English subjects free, or unfree, to Habeas Corpus.

John Locke's ideas and those of Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776, set the stage for America's Founders who sought to rein in government excess and advance individual liberty even further. In fact, all of America's Founders were themselves of English descent, from Jefferson to Madison, to Franklin to Adams to Paine, all of them were of English descent!

No, if anything the world owes a great debt to England, for it's England that has forged the modern world, with all its conveniences, prosperity and greater individual liberty than any generation has ever enjoyed at any time in man's annals here on earth.

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Please send me your address Mr. Grasse, and I'll send you a pen...in hope of the unlikely event that you ever learn how to write.

A Universal Slavery?

Thats what Boston Abolitionist, American patriot and freedom-lover Lysander Spooner (1808 – 1887, pictured left) believed the American Civil War brought to America.

With one of my all time favorite quotes, Spooner put the Civil War and its aftermath into a proper and clear perspective; “On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby be induced to stay in the Union.

“The principle on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: that men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

“No principle that is possible to be named can be more self-evidently false than this, no more self-evidently fatal to liberty. Yet it triumphed on the battlefield and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, then the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been really increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference in principle – only in degree – between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor.” (Lysander Spooner 1886)

The fact that the importation of slaves into America was outlawed in 1809, is a noble one that far too many Americans seem unaware of. Another little known fact is the legacy of black Confederates, despite the fact that there are now many books chronicling that fact.

In fact, “It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks. Over 13,000 of these “saw the elephant,” also known as meeting the enemy in combat. These black Confederates included both slave and free. The Confederate Congress did not approve blacks to be officially enlisted as soldiers (except as musicians), until late in the war.

“But in the ranks it was a different story. Many Confederate officers did not obey the mandates of politicians, they frequently enlisted blacks with a simple criteria, “Will you fight?”

“Historian Ervin Jordan explains that “bi-racial units” were frequently organized “by local Confederate and state militia Commanders in response to immediate threats in the form of union raids.” Dr. Leonard Hayes, an African-America professor at Southern University stated, “When you've eliminated the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South.”

As the war came to an end, the Confederacy took progressive measures to build back up its army. The creation of the Confederacy States Colored Troops, copied after the northern colored troops came too late to be successful. Had the Confederacy been successful it would have created the world's largest armies (at that time) consisting of black soldiers even larger than that of the North. This would have given the future of the Confederacy a vastly different appearance than what modern day racist or anti-Confederate Liberals conjecture.

“Not only did Jefferson Davis envision black Confederate veterans receiving bounty lands for their service, there would have been no future for slavery after the goal of 300,000 armed black CSA veterans came home after the war.”

http://www.37thtexas.org/html/BlkHist.html

The Civil War was not about slavery, in fact, to his shame, Abraham Lincoln made very clear that he would've accepted an accommodation with slavery had the South acquiesced on the primary issue o preserving the Union.

But the South felt its agrarian economy was being stifled by northeast banking interests and after James Buchana botched things, the die was cast and the Civil War was all but inevitable.

The South fought for the original Constitution (localized governance and State's Rights) and against a growing federal monolith. Even the Confederate General James Longstreet is reported to have said, “We should've freed the slaves and then fired on Fort Sumpter.”

And I say that knowing that many of my ancestors, on my father's side, came “off the boats” in Boston and New York and went right to war.

It was a necessary war and one that had to be fought. Lincoln was right that a divided nation would not last very long, but one of the casualties of that war was the original Constitution.

Wa-Wa-Wa-WHAT!? The troop surge is working!??

How can this be???

At least according to the AP (and we're skeptical), it seems that there's been about a 65% reduction in sectarian killings in Baghdad in just the first two weeks since the troop surge has gone into effect in Baghdad!

While Baghdad saw this past January's total hit 954 such killings, after December's 1,222, there have been a total of 164 killings discovered since February 14th - that would translate to 328 over a month (about a 65% reduction from January's figure, a 72% drop from December's...the AP called it a "small success," while acknowledging that 390 bodies were found over the same two week period last year.

Crickey! An Aussie faces U.S. terror charges!!!

And he's not even one of those Australian's by way of Riyadh....he's a real bloomin' Australian.

His name is David Hicks (OK, it was Mohammad Dawood, but now it's David Hicks again, since he's purportedly given up Islam...at least for Lent) and he's a kangaroo skinner by trade. There's actually a huge need for kangaroo skinners in Afghanistan, especially in June, right after the annual "running of the roos," in Kabul.

Anyway, Hicks has been charged with "providing material support for terrorism," which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He is the first Gitmo detainee to be charged under the new law for military commissions (detainees will be charged and tried in secret by military tribunals).

The U.S. military also wanted Hicks tried on attempted murder charges for battling coalition forces with the Taliban, a charge that carried a maximum sentence of death, but Susan Crawford, the head of the military commissions dropped both the attempted murder and siding with the enemy charges and charged Hicks only with providing material support for terrorism.

This past Fall, Congress passed a law thatoutlined the rules under which such detainees can be tried. it's designed to both protect classified information. The military tribunal provides detainees fewer rights than either civilian or open military courts do, but proponents argue that non-citizens aren't guaranteed every Constitutional right.

Once such formal charges are filed, a preliminary hearing will be scheduled within thirty days.

Australia's John Howard has asked that charges not be filed against Hicks by the U.S. so that he can be tried and punished in Australia.

NAMBLA's mouthpiece (the ACLU) among other organizations have vowed to challenge the new law in court.