He who builds to every man's advice
will have a crooked house.
Danish Proverb
Lawsuit of the Year
(Let's Make It a Class-Action Suit)
From South China Morning Post:
Kunming mother sues US central bank over shrinking cash
She claims Federal Reserve has allowed her deposit of US$250 to lose a third of its value
Her attorney, her son Li Zhen, called the lawsuit "litigation for the public good" which aimed to stop the Fed from continuing its quantitive easing policy and promote people's awareness of their rights.
He filed the lawsuit alleging "the abuse of monopoly in issuing currency" last month at the Kunming Intermediate People's Court on behalf of his mother, Liu Hua
"Since the Fed is a private institution which enjoys a monopoly over the issuing of currency, US dollar holders can sue it for printing too much money," he said.Rickards on Real Money
What would make me bearish on gold, what would make me want to sell gold?
Well, if the President and the Chairman of the Fed came out and said, "We're going to raise interest rates, we're going to stop quantitative easing — in fact, we're going to reverse it a little bit — we're going to cut corporate taxes to zero, we're going to eliminate the capital gains tax, we're going to reduce regulation, we're going to make America a magnet for savings and investment. We're going to have an investment-driven model rather than a debt and consumption-driven model, and we're going to have positive real rates."Amen... Rickards for Fed chair/President.
Some Criminals Drop Their Weapons;
Some Cops Drop Their Drawers...
Oh, some of the jobs done by (or should I say, to) public servants: ask Bill Clinton, aka President Zipper:
According to the video liner notes:
Homestead Police Department Detective Ronald DePellegrin claims his actions have been taken out of context, but the context we have comes from the criminal complaint written by DePellegrin himself. He writes that "Becky Dymon," a woman he found online and the target of his sting operation, removed her clothes. The undercover detective disrobed, and explains what happened next: "Becky started to perform oral sex on me, when I said oh shit, the cops were coming."The brothers in blue stand behind him (how about the wife and kids?):
Carl Bailey of the Homestead Police Union argues that DePellegrin did nothing wrong. "In the course of officers doing undercover work, sometimes they have to do what they have to do to effectuate an arrest," says Bailey.Listen to a prosecutor rationalize entrapment:
District Attorney Stephen Zappala declared, "While it's not inappropriate for a police officer to take off his clothes in connection with a prostitution investigation, if an officer engages in a sexual act, this may constitute outrageous government conduct."Apparently "outrageous" means if the prostitute had changed her mind...
On Politically Correct Kitchen Appliances
Williams Sonora has pulled pressure cookers from its Massachusetts stores in the immediately aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings (if any reader doesn't understand the relevance, the bombs used pressure cookers). A pressure cooker was designed to prepare food faster. I don't think any reasonable people should be upset at an appliance. I don't believe our military has been bombing targets with pressure cookers. Did we stop selling box cutters after 9/11? What about the nails, pellets, etc, which injured or killed people? Are hardware stores going to withdraw relevant items from inventory and deprive, say, carpenters of making a living?
I think this is yet another pushing-on-a-string sensitivity run amok, not unlike those store managers whom obsess that a cashier saying "Merry Christmas" (vs. say, some generic "happy holidays") will be a traumatic experience to non-Christians. (It actually annoys more Christian customers .) I don't get bothered by, say, sales of Passover or Cinco de Mayo (from a more ethnic perspective) foods.
Williams Sonora should not give others a propaganda victory, our changing our way of life, including shopping. If customers don't want to purchase pressure cookers, they won't--but they should have that option. And if Williams Sonora doesn't want to offer them, another vendor/retailer will.
Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Menino: New JOTY Nominees
I intended to write this criticism earlier. I did not agree with how there was a virtual shutdown of the city with one fugitive on the run after a gunfight. (I'm a little confused by the details; maybe I've watched too much TV or movies but I assumed the first thing police would do is block escape routes and/or disable the getaway vehicle.) According to NBC:
Dzhokhar -- the [surviving] brother who was wearing a white hat in the surveillance photos from the marathon -- got away when he drove the SUV through a line of police officers at the end of the street, Kitzenberg said.
Law enforcement sources told NBC News that blood found at the scene suggested Dzhokhar may have been wounded in the gun battle.So we have a fugitive,possibly armed, but he knows he's been identified. They know his vehicle (although, granted, he could try to carjack another vehicle). He's been wounded (granted they weren't sure; he can't go to a hospital). I think the last thing this fugitive is thinking about is another attack; his brother is dead, he's all alone, and he knows the law is after him. He did not expect this and he is operating by the seat of the pants.(This to a minor extent reminds me of the Zinkhan murder-suicide, where Zinkhan tried to disguise his own grave from the police.) He doesn't want to die (or he would have killed himself by the time they found him).
I am not arguing Dzhokhar wasn't dangerous, but when I hear the college kids are getting evacuated in their sleepwear and without even their glasses or wallets, the operation comes across as overkill and more like something we would experience under martial law or a police state, not America. I commuted into Chicago frequently when I lived in the suburbs, and Chicago has had its share of violent crime. But I never saw the city come to a standstill during a manhunt for a fugitive from justice.
Lawyers Say the Darndest Things
From the Gosnell murder trial:
Defense Attorney Jack McMahon argued that all charges should be dropped saying, “It’s ridiculous to say a baby is alive just because you see it move.”Say what? One of the criteria in deciding whether a person is alive or dead is whether he moves on his own accord. Rigor mortis (stiffening of limbs, etc.) is a distinguishing characteristic of death (McMahon is likely referring to testimony from an employee witness whom saw the baby's arm move around the time the doctor allegedly cut the baby's spinal cord. It's not immediately obvious why Gosnell would perform this procedure on an already dead baby.)
I accept that Gosnell is entitled to legal counsel and a fair trial. However, I do not believe a state of denial establishes credibility.
Here are a couple of excerpts which discuss unrelated experiences with born alive babies from abortion:
I worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, and when we weren’t busy, I’d go out to help with the newborns. One night I saw a bassinet outside the nursery. There was a baby in this bassinet – a crying, perfectly formed baby – but there was a difference in this child. She had been scalded. She was the child of a saline abortion.
This little girl looked as if she had been put in a pot of boiling water. No doctor, no nurse, no parent, to comfort this hurt, burned child. She was left alone to die in pain. They wouldn’t let her in the nursery – they didn’t even bother to cover her.
I asked a nurse at another hospital what they do with their babies that are aborted by saline. Unlike my hospital, where the baby was left alone struggling for breath, their hospital puts the infant in a bucket and puts the lid on. Suffocation!and this excerpt from a 2002 article in the The Journal of Clinical Nursing:
In the case of late termination, the death of the fetus before delivery, though usual, is not inevitable except in rare cases of extreme physical abnormality[.] … At times the fetus will actually attempt to breathe or move its limbs, which makes the experience extremely distressing for nurses. Also, whereas the woman will probably go through this process once in her lifetime, nurses may go through it several times a year or even in the same week.Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
The Temptations, "Can't Get Next to You"
