Jimmy Hoffa used to say, "always run from a knife and jump a gun". It apparently didn't work for him, but that just means whoever took him was a pro. It's actually damn good advice.Go read.
CeaseFire Maryland Calls for Asking the Right Question in Gun DeathsYeah? Well said gun transitioned - illegally - through the hands of two of your cops. Does that make the Department liable?
CeaseFire Maryland, the state's leading gun violence prevention group, is saddened by yet another massacre of innocent people at work - this time by gunman, Salvadore Tapia, in Chicago yesterday.
The frequency and regularity of workplace killings in America has become numbingly familiar. Commenting on yesterday's murders, Chicago Police Superintendent Cline said, `The problem here is easy access to a firearm. I mean here's someone who never should have had a gun, that had a gun, and its tragic results from it.'
Leah Barrett, Executive Director of CeaseFire Maryland, commented: "This leads to a simple question that should be asked after every such tragedy: How did someone with a past criminal record such as Mr. Tapia's get his gun? Mr. Tapia had been arrested many times in the past 14 years on various charges that included illegal possession of a weapon and domestic battery and assault."Um, Leah, he probably bought it on the street. You know, the black market? The same way British criminals get theirs even though HANDGUNS ARE COMPLETELY BANNED THERE.
This autumn, attention will be focused on the trial of the Washington area snipers who, lest we forget, killed 10 people and wounded 3 last October. Because the three-week shooting binge riveted the nation's attention, questions were asked about how the two snipers obtained their weapon, a Bushmaster assault rifle. And the trail led straight to Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, the Tacoma, Washington gun store from which the rifle used in the shootings `mysteriously disappeared', along with 238 other guns.Although Malvo has admittted that he stole it, it's somehow still a mystery. And I think you need to be pointing an accusing finger at the BATFE for not shutting Bull's Eye down. It's their job to regulate - that's what they're paid to do - not stomp kittens.
It's not a pretty story, but one that must be told if we are to address the root cause of much of the gun violence in America - cutting off the supply of illegal guns to criminals.That's so wrong it can't be a simple error. The root cause of gun violence in America is violent criminals. If they didn't have guns, they'd still be violent criminals. Trying to address the problem through gun elimination is the most hopeless thing imaginable, and we've got England's sterling example to prove it.
Barrett continued: "There are countless other instances where this question should be asked and answered in full. Yet the US Senate doesn't seem to think this question is important. Last spring, Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) introduced S. 659, an ill-conceived and reckless attempt to provide special legal protection for the gun industry at the expense of innocent Americans who have been harmed by the dangerous and irresponsible actions of firearms makers and sellers." S. 659 has so far collected 54 co-sponsors and could be brought for a vote at any moment. Its companion bill, H.R. 1036, easily passed the House of Representatives on April 9th.And I'm glad they did. Let's see, now they're going to sue Walther, who made the gun in 1966, the distributor that sold it to the gun shop, the gun shop that sold it to Beuck, Beuck, the family of the first officer who bought it from Beuck, the family of the second officer who bought it from the first officer, the ammunition manufacturer, and anybody else with suspected deep pockets.
Robert Ricker, who served as Executive Director of a major gun industry trade association and was also a former Assistant General Counsel for the National Rifle Association, maintains that leaders in the gun industry have long known that greater industry action to prevent illegal transactions is possible but have resisted taking constructive voluntary action and have `sought to silence others within the industry.' S. 659 would appear to be just what the gun industry ordered.Given "this volume of lethal weapons" you'd believe that people capable of rubbing two brain cells together would recognize the impossibility of keeping guns out of the hands of the criminally inclined.
A UN survey on small arms released in July reveals that the US has by far the largest number of publicly owned guns in the world, approaching the point where there will be one gun for every American. Given this volume of lethal weapons, one would think that strenuous efforts would be made to keep guns out of the hands of people like Mr. Tapia. Yet we are seeing just the opposite with S. 659, a bill that would undermine the legal rights of individuals harmed by gun violence and provide unwarranted special immunity for the gun industry.
Gun in massacre linked to 2 copsReally? A Walther PP? That would be this gun:
Both had owned weapon illegally before killer got it
A day after the family of three men slain this week by a former co-worker decried the lax control of handguns, Chicago police acknowledged that the two last known owners of the gun Salvador Tapia used in his rampage were Chicago police officers, neither of whom had legally registered the weapon.
One of the officers was Richard Schott, who died of a heart attack in 1997 after struggling with a prisoner in the Deering District lockup, sources said. Schott sold the gun to another officer, with whom he had worked closely between 1994 and his death, the sources added.
The Police Department declined to identify the second officer, who died in 2002. Interviews with their families and the gun's previous owner, who has been jailed in the case, have created a trail of possession that ends somewhere between 1994 and 2002, police spokesman David Bayless said.
Police do not yet know how or when Tapia, 36, acquired the gun. Under a court order of protection since August 2001, Tapia could not legally possess a firearm. But he walked into the Windy City Core Supply warehouse at 3912 S. Wallace St. Wednesday morning armed with the Walther PP .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun and an extra clip of ammunition.
Over the next several minutes he shot to death six men, including three members of the Weiner family from the North Shore. In a statement Thursday, family members said Alan Weiner, his brother Howard Weiner and Howard's son Daniel Weiner were killed because of "lax control over handguns in our community."No, they were killed because the state can't protect them and it refuses to allow them protect themselves. They had reason to believe they were in danger, but Chicago doesn't allow mere citizens to have firearms for self-protection. And it is patently obvious to anyone willing to look that "gun control" up to and including bans does not keep firearms out of the hands of people willing to use them criminally.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the weapon to the Blue Island Gun Shop, which received the gun from the manufacturer in 1966 and sold it to Milton R. Beuck. The last official record of the gun was 1983, when Beuck registered it legally in Chicago.Two thoughts: "Holy sweet freaking jebus, if they implement registration there is no WAY I'm EVER going to comply," and "At least the guy's going to get a bed and some hot meals." A third: charging him is asinine.
Beuck told police he had sold it to a Chicago police officer, identified by sources as Schott, at a bar in 1994, Bayless said. The police officer sold the gun to a second officer sometime between 1994 and 1997, according to a friend of the first officer. The second officer died in 2002 and it is unclear what became of the gun, Bayless said.
"It was not registered and it should have been," he said.
On Thursday, police charged Beuck, who is 58 and homeless, with a misdemeanor for failing to keep records of the gun, authorities said. In Bond Court Friday, Cook County Judge Marvin Luckman ordered him held on $100,000 bond and assigned him to the Cermak Hospital division of Cook County Jail.
The high bond was ordered because of the seriousness of the eventual crime in which the gun was usedWhich he is NOT responsible for
and because there was an outstanding drunken driving warrant for Beuck, said Jerry Lawrence, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.Um, there's something wrong with this picture. Let me see if I can identify what it is...
There is an 18-month statute of limitations on the misdemeanor charge, Lawrence said, but because the law requires a gun owner to maintain records for 10 years, Beuck was currently violating the law by not maintaining a record of the 1994 sale through next year.
Beuck allegedly sold the gun to the first police officer, identified by sources as Schott, in a South Side bar where they met, Bayless said. An employee of the bar, who was friends with the officer, told police the officer later sold the gun to the second officer, Bayless said. Efforts to reach employees of the bar were unsuccessful.DING, DING, DING! We Have A WINNER!
Though civilians have been barred from registering newly acquired handguns in Chicago since 1983, peace officers, military personnel and other exempt people still are required to register their guns with the Police Department, said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department.
Bayless acknowledged it was distressing that two police officers had violated the city's gun law and contributed to the weapon's illegitimacy. But, he said, Tapia's past behavior made it clear that he would have found a gun somewhere if the Walther was not available.
"Salvador Tapia would have gotten a gun somewhere," he said.
The disclosure of the officers' role "also demonstrates we're going to do a thorough investigation documenting the path of this gun every step of the way before it got into his hands."No, my dear. It's impossible to keep them out of the wrong hands. The problem is the right people don't have them.
Alan Weiner's daughter Jamie, 20, said Friday she was troubled to hear that the gun used to kill her father, uncle and cousin was owned illegally by two police officers.
"I want to put an end to the guns ...," she said Friday. "The wrong people have guns."
(O)n April 6, Uday sent for Ala'a Makki, the former director of his television station. He asked Makki what the Iraqi people were thinking. "He was depressed," says Makki. "Since he was disabled in the gun attack on him in 1996 he had become increasingly erratic and inhumane.Gee, Ya THINK?
"His final words to me were: 'This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end'."
Woman wins national rifle championshipThat is one tough competition. Hat's off to her. Read the whole story.
Shooting her M-16A2, Spc. Liana Bombardier, a U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit service rifle shooter, won the Service Rifle National Long Range Rifle Championship at Camp Perry, Ohio. Bombardier garnered the Billy C. Atkins Trophy as the highest scoring service rifle shooter in the National Highpower Rifle Long Range Championships Aug. 15 - 18.
The 21-year-old soldier is the first woman in the 100-year history of the matches to win the trophy awarded to the service rifle (now a M-1, M-14 or M-16) shooter with the highest aggregate score over the entire championships.
"The Atkins Trophy is a hard trophy to win and I was thrilled to find out I had won it," Bombardier said. "I was behind by 5 points going into the last day of competition. I shot well that last day and came up ahead. I never thought I was going to win it."
Bombardier also fired her M-16A2 in matches at 600, 800, 900 and 1,000 yards, and won the Service Rifle Category in the Palma Individual Trophy Match and the High Master Category in the Porter Trophy Match. She also won the Annie Oakley Trophy for being the best female shooter in this year's Interservice Championships at Quantico, Va.
There was also talk of bringing Al Gore to California to help out, but there was concern that Gray Davis and Al Gore in the same state would cause some kind of rolling personality blackout. -- Jay Leno
Ironically, from a terrorist accused not only of the Bali bombing but of church bombings and the bombing of an ambassador's residence in Jakarta, Sawad claimed he had a message of peace for the world.Right. Let's just roll everything back to when human beings were all peaceful agrarians who never had any conflicts.
"For all human beings to stop now in this world, destroy all of the destructive weapons . . . if there were no weapons then peace can be created," he said.
DU is not a shouting board.While I'm not certain exactly what he meant, I responded:
Barney:To which he responded:
I was kicked off DU (Sep-03-02) after a little over 1800 posts and several months - for something I wrote on another site. Not only that, I was booted by Skinner himself - and this is what he said:
"This is a message board for liberals. We don't expect people to vote straight-ticket Democratic, but we do expect our members to be generally supportive of liberal priorities. If that guy is a liberal, I will eat my firstborn."
This was less than a week (Aug-27-02) after a moderator wrote to me in a post:
"Don't shut up. I wildly disagree with most of your positions on this subject, but you are a damn fine advocate. And you make me think. And that is important."
It would appear that making people think is an ejectable offense on Democratic Underground.
I cannot help but wonder why that is.
Kevin: I don't believe you.When I offered to e-mail him the archived threads in question, he responded:
Kevin: It will be adequate to post it to your blog, liar.He seems defensive, doesn't he? Well, I tried posting the HTML code from the archived files here on Blogspot but it makes the system puke. Instead, I've got screenshots, but they won't post here in full size, and reduced they're illegible. You can view them here:
You might be a teacher if...Can I get an "AMEN!"?
You believe "shallow gene pool" should have its own box on the report card.
You want to slap the next person who says, "Must be nice to work 8 to 3:20 and have summers free."
You can tell if it's a full moon without ever looking outside.
You believe the playground should be equipped with a Ritalin salt lick.
You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says, "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."
When out in public you feel the urge to snap your fingers at children you do not know and correct their behavior.
You have no social life between September and June.
Marking all A's on report cards would make your life SO much easier.
You think people should be required to get a government permit before being allowed to reproduce.
You wonder how some parents ever MANAGED to reproduce.
You laugh uncontrollably when people refer to the staff room as the "lounge".
You encourage an obnoxious parent to check into charter schools or home schooling.
You can't have children because there's no name you could give a child that wouldn't bring on high blood pressure the moment you heard it uttered.
You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.
You know you are in for a major project when a parent says, "I have a great idea I'd like to discuss. I think it would be such fun."
Meeting a child's parent instantly answers the question, "Why is this kid like this?"
The proposals include holding gun makers, dealers and importers liable for damages if their weapons are used to kill or injure people in the city, as well as prohibiting gun dealers from selling more than one firearm to the same person within 90 days. Another proposal would require gun owners in the city to obtain liability insurance.So the first thing they want to do is place the blame on everybody but the guy behind the trigger (in direct opposition to the bills in Congress that would prohibit such liability.) The second is, unsurprisingly an extension of the "one gun a month" idea to "one gun every THREE months." Shortly to be followed by "one gun every TWELVE months," to "Gun? You don't NEED a gun."
There was no urgency prior to the shooting," said Peter Vallone Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Committee, which is holding next month's hearing.Why? Not one of the ideas presented would have prevented his death. Again, they're just useless, knee-jerk reactions.
"But now there is a sense that we all want to move as quickly as possible on these bills in his memory."
The city's renewed focus on gun control is also expected to open the door for broader state legislation, in much the same way that the city's ban on smoking in restaurants and other public places did.Right, after New Yorkers were told that the increasing legislation against smoking would never result in a ban on it. Just like we're told that the increasing legislation against gun ownership will never result in a ban on it. Go ahead, pull my other leg.
"I think it would be a good thing if the city did it, and showed the state the way," said the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who represents the Lower East Side.That's because you're a useful idiot, Mr. Silver.
"The ruling class doesn't care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake." - former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wy.)
Hell, I can probably cure you for a lot less. Say $650?HOPLOPHOBIA: (Hoplophobia, Fear of Firearms, and Fear of Guns)
1: hoplophobia: a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of firearms that compels avoidance, despite the understanding by the phobic individual and reassurance by others that there is no danger. 2: hoplophobia: a strong fear of, dislike of, or aversion to firearms.
Our board certified team specializes in helping individuals overcome fears, phobias & anxiety of all kinds, and is particularly focused on problems such as hoplophobia. With a success rate close to 100% we can offer to refund our fee to clients if they are not successful in overcoming the fear.
[I]t leaves open the question of why it is that inner city blacks are so much more at risk, and whether anything can be done to help them. There have been many attempts to do so, and they're something of a cause célèbre in certain circles. Their apparent failure is used by many as evidence that there are still lingering effects of slavery and discrimination, even after all this time.I did not intend to imply that "whatever is going on" is due to "skin color." It just so happens that skin color is one of the recognizable traits. You also have to add youth and sex, urbanization and culture. Steven also wrote:
Is it true? Certainly there are still such effects; things are vastly better now than they were when I was a kid, but we haven't yet reached the point of having a race-blind culture. But there's also the fact that a lot of blacks live in the suburbs, hold professional positions (some with great responsibility), make a good living, and don't seem to be any more prone to crime than anyone else. And recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean who are also Negroes don't seem to have the same troubles. Whatever is going on is more complicated than skin color.
But I'm not sure we can conclude that the correlation of high crime to race is actually significant.I would certainly say that you can't conclude causation, but correlation? Even Jesse Jackson has concluded differently.
Are we rather seeing the result of a residue of natural filtration, whose tendencies to crime are then reinforced through local concentration?If you remove the words "to crime," isn't that another description of culture? Steven concludes with this question:
Before we can solve a problem, we have to understand what the problem is. And we have to begin by asking whether there even is a problem. Are we just seeing a physical concentration of the low end of the curve?Um, Steven, there is a problem. That problem is defined by the fact that young, black, urban males perpetrate and are the victims of violent crime at six times the rate of the rest of their age and sex demographic. The reason is cultural, and it is the same reason that young black urban males do poorly in school. It is not socially acceptable in their peer groups to be academically proficient, and it is socially acceptable to be violent. Recent immigrants from Africa and the Carribean, while sharing the same skin color, age group, sex and urbanization, do not share the culture. This is illustrated well by a May 19 Washington Times Weekly Edition article (no longer available online without subscription) entitled "African immigrants balk at views of U.S. black leaders." Money quotes:
Many immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean do not wish to be classified as black, because black leaders here have failed to reach out to the immigrants and identify their concerns, said members of the panel, which was composed primarily of representatives from the liberal black establishment.”Perhaps because the "color line" is completely overblown, but a fixture in the culture that African and Carribean immigrants reject?
--
Studies have also found that African-born residents in the U.S. are better-educated and have among the highest per-capita incomes of any immigrant group....
--
The Economist reported in 1996 that ¾ of African immigrants have some college experience and that one if four has an advanced degree....
--
Many immigrants are not even aware of the “color line” that prevents minorities here from excelling, other panelists said in amazement.
I want to talk about the bint who wrote the BBC piece, Limey Reporterette Vanessa Collingridge (Nota Bene -- with that sentence, I've just broken 17 laws of the European Union, and have technically committed a war crime in Belgium).HATE SPEECH! HATE SPEECH!
I sometimes think the country is dividing itself into two cultures. The first, and much the smaller, will be of those who read widely and know much, who are cultured and live in a wider world than the merely present. The second will be of those who received high grades without understanding that they were being cheated by their elders. An abyss will separate the two.Much more in the same key. Excellent essay, and a good companion piece to Bill Whittle's Responsibility.
The chain of cultivation, once broken, is not easily rejoined. We are doing everything we can to break it. It is a shame. People deserve more. We are doing this, as nearly as I can tell, so that the dull and uninterested will feel good about themselves. We are doing it to conceal that some of us are better than others.
Yes, better. That word.
In the past it was recognized that certain qualities were superior to others, and that people who cultivated those superior qualities were superior to those who didn't. The honest were thought superior to the thieving, the kind to the cruel, the provident to the shiftless, the wise to the foolish, the learned to the ignorant. Today one must not hold these views. They constitute the crime of elitism, which is the recognition that the better is preferable to the worse.
One must never, ever notice that some people are better than others.
Not to notice the inescapable requires either stupidity or moral blindness. Since few people are very stupid, we have chosen the road of blindness. We feign stupidity for reasons of politics.
Bill Whittle will land just long enough to post a 104 page essay on why America will come out on top.Go read. That one gets archived to the hard drive.
And it will rock.
Cell transplant restores visionIt's not perfect, but it's better than nothing, and a huge improvement over complete blindness IMHO. Go read the whole article.
A blind man can see again after being given a stem cell transplant.
Mike May, of California, had been blind for 40 years since an accident at the age of three where he lost one eye and was blinded in the other.
During that time he had some ability to perceive light, but could not make out form or contrast.
He said he had no visual memories from his early childhood.
The operation transplanted corneal and limbal stem cells into his right eye.
The majority of young men and women who enter journalism do so not because they want to report the news but because they want to make a difference in society. In other words, they want to report certain kinds of news. They do not want to convey facts or explain processes; they want to shine spotlights on abuse. In some cases they are motivated by idealism; in others, by the hope that some of the light will reflect back on them.I read Bernie Goldberg's book Bias shortly after it came out, and when it isn't being a Dan Rather hate-fest, Bernie says much the same thing. And he also makes this point: Journalists don't see the bias because the overwhelming majority of them think the same way. To them, they are "fair and balanced" because their position (as far as they are concerned) is "middle of the road." In fact, in one of the "Dan Rather" bits, Bernie quotes Dan as saying that he considered the New York Times "Middle-of-the-road." In another he provided the story of the New York socialite who couldn't believe Nixon won the presidential election because: "I don't know ANYBODY who voted for him!" Same idea. Reality doesn't match perspective.
The opinion of the press corps tends toward consensus because of an astonishing uniformity of viewpoint. Certain types of people want to become journalists, and they carry certain political and cultural opinions. This self-selection is hardened by peer group pressure. No conspiracy is necessary; journalists quite spontaneously think alike. The problem comes because this group-think is by now divorced from the thoughts and attitudes of readers.The interesting thing from my take is that with the rise of Fox News (which is far from "fair and balanced" itself) the other news organizations are having to respond because of market pressure - liberally biased news reporting is losing its following and its revenue. What a shock. The liberal elite claims that there is no liberal bias in media and point to the fact that Big Media is owned by giant (and therefore obviously conservative) corporations. Like most liberal ideas, that's missing some important facts. For one thing, if the news media (reporters, editors, producers) are of a common mindset, then that's the mindset you're going to find in the news produced, regardless of who runs the company. Second, the giant corporations haven't been interested in directing the tone of the news, but in making a profit - a point well illustrated by Fox News' cometary rise in popularity. Now we're seeing MSNBC and CNN trying out "conservative" talking-heads in an effort to emulate Fox's ratings (and income.) Rupert Murdoch changed the paradigm. He was the conservative force driving Fox News in its conservative direction, but I think it more market-driven than ideology-driven. He just found a way to make more money than his competition.
"I suppose I could have blown up a few trucks, put bad food back on the deli counter or accused the military of nerve-gassing deserters and kept my journalistic integrity throughout. But I realized early on, it is easier to sleep at night if you can say at every step that you reported the truth as you knew it."No wonder the "mainstream" media dislikes Drudge so much.
Carmarthen Journal; A Nagging Pain in Britain: How to Find a DentistHere's another story (complete, this time) on the problem:
Wales is so lacking in British government-subsidized dental treatment that 600 people recently lined up outside dental office in Carmarthen seeking one of 300 advertised appointments to see National Health Service dentist; some pitched tents overnight and others came from 90 miles away; ever fewer British dentists are willing to endure grueling, assembly-line work required to take part in National Health Service.
NHS dentist shortage is exposedHere's ANOTHER story about just how hard it is to get dental care in Wales:
The full extent of the shortage of NHS dentists is exposed today.
New statistics show that fewer than half of Londoners are registered with a state dentist - the worst record in the country.
The figure has fallen to as low as 21 per cent in some areas - raising concerns about the state of dental health in the capital. Critics blame health chiefs for failing to prioritise dentistry and say urgent action is needed to widen access to NHS care.
Thousands of patients across Britain are being forced into private-dental care because of the shortage of places on NHS registers.
Earlier this month, 600 people queued outside an NHS dental practice in Wales because it was taking on new patients.
The latest figures show that on average, only 40 per cent of Londoners are registered with a state dentist, compared to 74 per cent in Great Yarmouth, 71 per cent in Ipswich and 82 per cent in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
The worst affected areas in the capital are Kensington and Chelsea, where only 21 per cent of residents are on the register; City and Hackney, where 29.4 per cent have a state dentist; and Tower
Hamlets, where only 28 per cent have a place. By contrast, 48 per cent in Haringey are registered, with 46 per cent in Westminster.
Many of those who cannot register with a state dentist and are unable to afford private care are forced to visit NHS drop-in clinics, where staff do not have access to their records and only provide emergency care.
Dr Evan Harris, health spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "This is bad news for Londoners' teeth. As dentists leave the NHS in droves, the Government is putting money into providing dental access centres for emergencies, instead of people getting care throughout the year. Also, patients have to travel further."
In 1999, the Prime Minister promised that within two years, everybody who wanted access to an NHS dentist would have it.
However, the number of dentists working for the NHS has declined - many claiming that poor pay forces them to go private. State dentists, who are selfemployed and work as "independent contractors" for the Government, receive about £18 for filling a tooth. The private patient fee is about £50.
A spokeswoman for the British Dental Associat ion said : "Because dentists are contractors, it is up to them where they work and how many NHS patients they treat. We worry that increasingly only emergency care will be available on the NHS."
John Renshaw, chairman of the BDA's executive board, said: "The NHS pays dentists a standard fee. This discourages dentists from working in some areas. The Health and Social Care Bill will give primary care trusts the power to set payments, which should improve the situation."
I broke law to help othersI just shelled out about $1,100 to an periodontist to have my wife's teeth worked on (after she suffered for six months because she hates going to the dentist.) But at least we were able to make the appointment(s) and get her seen.
A NORTH Wales pensioner last night told how he helped scores of people desperate for dental care - even though it was illegal.
For years Russell Hall has fitted people with dentures. He even advertised his services in the Yellow Pages.
The 70-year-old told the Daily Post: "I know what I have done is illegal, but when there are people coming up to you desperate for help, then I was not going to turn them away."
Mr Hall, of Hafod Road West, Penrhyn Bay, is a retired dental technician but not a qualified dentist.
Yesterday, he was fined £1,250 by Llandudno magistrates after client Marjorie Porter, of Penrhyn Bay, complained to the General Dental Council.
He was also ordered to repay her £360 and prosecution costs of £1,616.
In court he claimed less than half the population had access to an NHS dentist, leaving people no option but to seek illegal aid.
A dental technician makes false teeth but is not allowed to work in a person's mouth. That has to be done by a qualified dentist.
Tennessee high schools will need to graduate only 60% of students to stay off the state's low-performing list.I can't do it any better. Go read.
"In a world of political correctness, there is no more reputation-destroying term than racist," Nugent said in the statement. "And the alleged statements falsely attributed to me could not have been more inaccurate or misleading, completely counter to what I stand for."Nugent's full statement is available here. This story is the only one I found that had any clarification on just what Nugent said:
A May 5 interview on Denver radio station KRFX-FM's morning show was cut short because DJs Rick Lewis and Michael Floorwax said Nugent went too far when he used several racial slurs.On this topic, let me refer you to Bill Whittle's most recent essay, Responsibility:
The interview focused on guitars until Nugent used the word Jap, to which Lewis and Floorwax immediately protested, The Rocky Mountain News reported. Nugent then used another Asian slur and the DJs called him on that.
Nugent next used the n word when talking about comedian Richard Pryor's humor and said that, years ago, one of the Funk Brothers used the term to compliment Nugent's guitar playing.
To be Politically Correct these days, you must accept the collectivist belief that words are like weapons, endowed with their own internal, innate power, and this power, like that of a chambered bullet, cannot be trusted to be used responsibly and so must be outlawed and banished from the community."Jap" is a slur? I'm married to one! As I mentioned below, my wife and I went to see Bad Boys 2 last Sunday. The scene I commented on where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence haze a young man, Will Smith uses the "N-word" repeatedly. It's not a slur when blacks use it, but anyone outside that group will be immediately painted RACIST!™ for doing so, regardless of context or intent.
PC advocates have strict rules for what they call Hate Speech, and using such speech essentially makes you a criminal.
So much for the First Amendment. But the Bill of Rights never meant much to these people; indeed, they see it as an impediment to human progress.
Implicit in this belief is that I have the power to harm you by my use of language. Notice that all the responsibility falls on the speaker; the listener, the subject, is completely powerless, and has achieved the highest status with the group: victim. Note also that this worshipping of the victim, is in essence, the elevation of the most powerless and the least responsible to divine status. It is a very basic sleight of hand, that allows the controlling elites to maintain that they are only trying to help the poor and downtrodden, when in reality their actions are clearly nothing more than a naked grab for power that would shame the most ruthless corporate CEO.
Who decides what is hate speech? The group decides. If one person in the group seriously finds something offensive, then that term or phrase or entire concept is added to the list or proscribed terms, and this is how we get to office memo’s being critical of the term “brainstorming” as being offensive to epileptic co-workers.
If we buy into this idea of Political Correctness, we do several things, all ruinous: we give other people the power to demean us, we remove any chance at reasoned debate on any issue, and most importantly, in a group of 290 million professionally offended people, we come to a vocabulary of perhaps twenty or thirty words that have been so bleached of potential offensiveness and meaning that language itself becomes worthless.
If you have not read 1984 by George Orwell, you have deprived yourself of an entire education right there. There lies the eternal dictatorship, the ultimate all-pervasive Superstate. And how did such a monstrosity come into being? By controlling language. Not only controlling what could be said, but by so simplifying and infantilizing language that entire concepts become literally unthinkable because there were no words for them. Here we sit talking about Freedom, Liberty, Responsibility and all the rest. What if the act of speaking one's mind was described only as “ungood.” What if the only adjectives applied to a life of subjection and servility were “double plus good,” the very words subjection, slavery, servility, submission banished generations ago?
You look out into the street and see someone tearing down a poster of Big Brother; the offender is hauled away, never to be seen again. How do you describe such an action without courage, audacity, rebellion, resistance and freedom? You can’t. You can’t describe them to others, and you can’t think about them yourself. Ungood behavior. You’re a prisoner of your limited, puerile language, and that is precisely where the Politically Correct movement wants to take us, to a world where language and thought is rigidly controlled – by them.
To those who want to limit speech they see as hateful, I can only utter these simple words of protest: Go straight to fucking hell you miserable authoritarian cocksuckers!
Forgive me, I know that offended some of you. But remember this: words are words. They are encapsulated ideas, and the only harm they can do us is the harm we ourselves allow them to do us.
How much better, how much stronger and healthier are we, when we dare anyone to use whatever terms they chose, and rather than sitting as powerless victims, rise in angry and righteous indignation to fight the human filth that use words like nigger, spick, gook, mick, kike, dago, and all the rest? How much more secure, how much more inoculated, are we when we can hear these words knowing that those who use them are discredited and terrified infants so out of ideas and argument that they must resort to such childish tactics to reassure themselves? What words can hurt us when we refuse to be hurt by words? What simple and powerful wisdom is bound up in Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me?
I have been called a few choice names in the course of these writings, and I have quickly learned that I do not want to be admired and respected by totalitarians, willfully uneducated idiots, smug and jaded suburban revolutionaries, and apologists for dictators. If people like that agreed with me I would be ashamed of myself. I’m proud to anger those people, and whatever names they choose to call me I consider a badge of pride, considering their source. We can indeed judge ourselves by the loathsomeness of our enemies.
The defense against hate speech is not to put our hands over our ears, our eyes, and someone else’s mouth. The way to fight this human virus is to do what we have been doing: hold those who use such language up to ridicule and scorn, to use our own words as a people blessed with freedom of speech, and to let such archaic and diseased notions and epithets die a quick death in the marketplace of better ideas.
It is a far more dignified, self-respecting and adult way to deal with life’s travails than crying and stamping your feet when someone calls you a bad name. Those people will always exist, even within the competing factions of a PC universe. If we have free will, we can control our own hearts. And if we let mere words hurt us, we have abdicated this responsibility, and given it to someone else.
It is tantamount to surrendering an impregnable fortress without a shot being fired.
The Nuge, never one for his subtlety when it comes to politically incorrect views, recently made some disparaging remarks about Asians while on Denver morning show program Lewis and Floorwax.Ahem. Let me repeat Bill Whittle's words:
Reportedly he began to talk about guitars, complaining that they used to be made by "Japs". It gets worse.
Kathy Lee, Lewis and Floorwax's producer, is Korean-American. Instead of an apology to Lee, Nugent said "Maybe she'd prefer the term gook?" and asked her to "Go get me some sweet and sour," according to host Rick Lewis.
Nugent has said that his words were not harmful as his intentions were only in jest. He then went on to compare his statements to those of other minority artist such as N.W.A. and Richard Pryor - then bandied about a derogatory word about African-Americans.
How much better, how much stronger and healthier are we, when we dare anyone to use whatever terms they chose, and rather than sitting as powerless victims, rise in angry and righteous indignation to fight the human filth that use words like nigger, spick, gook, mick, kike, dago, and all the rest?Nuge? You're an idiot.
"[The US] murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society."I've already discussed the roller-coaster homicide rates the U.S. exhibited through the 20th Century that were unaffected by "gun control" efforts. I touched on the race point (very) briefly here:
WTF????
I'm disappointed, I never thought such a blatantly racist view would be given support here. What's gotten into your heads?
"well the crime rate would be lower if it weren't for the n*ggers"...nah, f__k that.
Posted by: b-psycho on August 15, 2003 11:10 PM
But here's something really interesting that will undoubtedly get me labled as a racist: Who makes up the overwhelming majority of the homicide victims? In 1999 a total of 4,998 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 (inclusive) died from homicide. Of those, 2,453 were black males - 49%. But black males between the ages of 15 and 24 (inclusive) represent only 7.6% of the population of the US of that age. Read that again - 7.6% of all Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 provide 49% of the victims of homicide by all methods for that age group.So, let's look at homicide, shall we?
Now, is it a "gun storage" problem, or is it something else?
15,517 x 100,000 / 5.5 = 282,127,272.
That agrees well with the 2000 Census count of 281,421,906, which is the number I'll use. To check, 84.2% of the population is white, or:281,421,906 x 0.842 = 237,000,000
(Per the Census, 211,460,626, but police statistics tend to include hispanics as white, and they are 35,305,818 thus the total is 246,746,444. Split the difference, 240,000,000. Close enough.)240,000,000 / 100,000 x 5.0 = 12,000.
Say what? There were only 15,517 homicides in total according to the FBI. Something smells fishy. Let's continue, though. Blacks represent 12.1% of the population, so:282,000,000 x 0.121 = 34,100,000
The Census says 36,419,434. Split the difference, 35,000,000. The homicide rate is 31.9/100,000, so:35,000,000 / 100,000 x 31.9 = 11,000.
Oooookay. 12,000 + 11,000 = 23,000. That's an error of 48% Something is obviously awry."Between 1976 and 1999, 94% of black murder victims were killed by other African-Americans. Nearly two-thirds of black homicides were drug related."Homicide is an epidemic in the young black male demographic. If it were a communicable disease, we'd be wearing ribbons and spending money on drug research. Instead we're banning "assault weapons" and trying to pass licensing and registration laws that this very demographic is going to ignore. (See: England, gun bans, "Yardies", etc.) And the public health organizations and independent groups are trying to treat firearms as if they were the disease vector.
There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved. - Jesse JacksonYes, that Jesse Jackson, from a U.S. News & World Report story, January 17, 1994. (I'd seen it before, but Clayton Cramer has the cite.) Even Jesse recognizes the cold hard facts.
"Different countries tabulate, and define, crime in different ways. Comparisons are very difficult.Even international police organizations, it appears.
"People lie about this stuff - a lot! Don't trust anybody if you can't see their data and their methods."
The data indicates that culture is the primary defining factor in crime.I'd like to say this has been fun, but it hasn't. I don't like being in error, but sh!t happens. The question now is, will the gun control forces just keep working to disarm people who are not contributors to the crime problem and continue to avoid addressing the biggest part of the crime problem?
The data indicates that the preponderance of criminal behavior in the young black American male demographic seriously skews the overall criminal data in the U.S.
The response to these facts has not been an attempt to address the specific identifiable problem of crime in the black community, it has been "gun control." And it has been - predictably - a failure.
Continuing this path will continue to be a failure.
One significant reason that the specific identifiable problem has not been addressed is "political correctness" - point out that the Emperor has no clothes and you will be branded RACIST!™ Nothing further will result.
