The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
What the .Gov Can Do for Cars, They Can Do for Health Care!
The first car off the new “Government Motors” production line:
http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/1stcar.flv
Think about it. Do you really want to laugh?
Your Moment of Zen
Time for another one of these:
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Remember Ms. Margaret Johnson? The disabled lady who shot a mugger outside her apartment building in Harlem a couple of years ago? Ms. Johnson had a NYC premises permit that allowed her to have a gun in her apartment, but did not allow her to carry a loaded gun on the streets of New York. Jeff at Alphecca recently linked to a story that reported that Chicago police often “look the other way” when someone uses a handgun in self-defense, as the NYC police did in Ms. Johnson’s case.
In Jeff’s comments I wondered if Ms. Johnson’s premises permit had been pulled after her incident. Another commenter, “Harvey,” reported that Ms. Johnson is being sued by her attacker. I found the story:
‘THUG’ TAKES $HOT AT GUN GRANNY
This pistol-packing granny, who shot a man she accused of mugging her in her wheelchair, wishes she had finished the job — because now, he’s suing her for millions.
“I’m a peaceful person. I wish that I had killed him,” said Margaret Johnson, 59, whose grandfather, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, once ruled Harlem’s underworld and was immortalized in several hit movies.
“I didn’t think you had to pay to get mugged in New York City,” she added.
Johnson and her landlord, the Lenox Terrace apartment complex, are being sued for $5 million by Deron Johnson, 48, a man with a lengthy rap sheet.
Margaret Johnson, a retired city bus driver who has a dislocated hip and a ruptured disc, said that in September 2006, she was sitting in her motorized wheelchair at Lenox Avenue and 133rd Street when Johnson tried to snatch her purse and gold chain.
She pulled out her licensed .357 Magnum and fired a round into his left elbow. Cops grabbed him moments later.
At trial, Deron Johnson, who has nine previous arrests, denied being a mugger.
He said he kicked the woman’s Shih Tzu, Malika, after it attacked him, and the gun-loving granny shot him.
He was acquitted.
Reading the rest of the story I still don’t know if they pulled her premises permit. Oh, and she’s not getting a lawyer to defend herself in the suit. Hopefully the landlord is. Deron Johnson’s lawyer is quoted as asking, “What’s grandma doing walking the streets with a loaded gun?” That’s easy – defending herself from people like your client. It worked, too.
Quote of the Day
In contrast to yesterday’s:
As the fascist government of Iran begins the massacre of its unarmed citizens today, the world slowly, fitfully wakes to the reality of what it means to have a weakling in Washington.
—
Now he has the job and the enemies of America and freedom have taken his measure. And today the dying started. Only the beginning, folks. Only the beginning.
The only prediction left to me is when the dying will start here. As usual, it’s later than we think.
Gerard Van Der Leun, American Digest: Surprise! No Steel in Obama’s Spine After All.
This is Cute
I just received this via email from my brother:
It is the month of August on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.
Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.
The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower..
The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.
The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town’s prostitute that in these hard times, gave her “services” on credit.
The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.
The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.
No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is doing business today.
And if that doesn’t scare you, then you are brain dead!
Hey! I know! Let’s just declare all debts paid off and start over!
Justice?
By the time the game warden arrived, Kevin Kadamus was sitting down and holding his 17-year-old son in his lap, a blanket covering the boy’s bloodied body.
“He was trying to talk to his son, encouraging him to hang on,” Warden David Gregory said.
Jacob Kadamus couldn’t hang on. With a 12-gauge shotgun, his father had mistakenly shot him in the torso on the opening day of Vermont’s turkey hunting season. He died at the scene.
Now, Kevin Kadamus must cope with more than remorse and grief. The 45-year-old computer consultant and father of three has been charged with manslaughter.
That’s the opening of an AP piece entitled “Hunting deaths pose challenge for prosecutors”. As one investigator put it, “There isn’t an exemption under the law for family members being charged.”
In 2006, according to the CDC (the latest stats available), 611 people age 10 and up died as the result of an unintentional gunshot wound. The CDC doesn’t break that data down into hunting accidents, but you can see that they are pretty rare overall. Some are called “accidents” and no charges are filed, but as one game warden was quoted, “There’s three distinct actions that have to take place: You have to aim the firearm, take the safety off and you have to pull the trigger. None of those actions are ever accidental. The simplest way to avoid an accident is to identify your target.” Shooting someone accidentally requires multiple violations of the four rules of safe gun handling. It’s not accidental. At the very least it’s negligent.
But is criminal prosecution called for when the victim is a family member? Is the purpose of such prosecution punishment? What punishment can be greater than the knowledge of ones responsibility for the death of a loved one? Deterrence? The incidence is so rare to begin with that I find that idea laughable. Justice? For whom? Who is served?
It’s different when the negligence is that of someone outside the family, as in the case of the two Oklahoma police officers involved in the accidental shooting death of a 5 year-old, or the complete negligent misuse of a firearm such as the moron who shot his wife while trying to use his .22 pistol as a drill.
Or is it? I’m interested in your thoughts on this.
Quote of the Day
There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”
Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, Winds of Change?
You Know, If You Put Enough Garlic On It . . .
. . . crow still tastes like sh!t.
Billy’s right.
Again.
I let emotion get the better of me, and leaped with insufficient consideration. Now I sit here impaled on my own fallibility.
Hey, we lesser beings do that from time to time.
Let me be right up front. Billy Beck grates on my nerves. A lot of people do that, but Billy’s the only one who’s right damned near every time, and I’m man enough to admit that. He grates on my nerves because of his 80-grit high-speed carborundum personality, and I let that get the better of me. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. And I mean that, sincerely.
I misinterpreted his comment – the one I used as “Quote of the Day” Saturday. I was wrong. It fit a mental niche I’d carved out, and I slotted him right into that niche. As I said, I knew I was going to regret it later. I do. But when I conclude I’m wrong, I try not to compound the error.
I was wrong. I apologize. The other threads will contain, shortly, a link to this apology. Hopefully this concludes this week’s episode of Drama Llamas, brought to you courtesy of my personal assholeness. I’d blame it on an abscessed tooth, but no, it was just me being me.
Again, Beck, I apologize. I fucked up. You were right. Again.
*Sigh*
And the beat goes on . . .
Beck has responded to yesterday’s QotD post. He copied me via email, so I’ll post my reply to him as I sent it, verbatim:
Billy Beck wrote:
"Beck's threatened retribution over this post,..."
You really are a fuckin' asshole, Kevin. You can complain about me all day
long, but I never do things like that, to you or anyone else.Pot? Meet kettle. Right back at’cha, Billy. You have and you did. I quote:
“You will be exposed as an ignoramus of very dubious motive if you press on in this direction.
If you don’t think so, then make the most of it.“and:
“
I’m going to watch, and then deal.I told you.“That’s a threat, sir. Very similar to the previous:
“
Now: just do it. If you don’t, then the very *least* that you can count on is me making you a resounding hypocrite all over the whole ‘net, and it will never stop. You will go down in history with my boot in your ass. And that’s just the beginning. I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before, and I know the whole course.“That wasn’t a threat?
*I did no such thing*, you chintzy little girl. You don't know what you're
talking about. Words mean things, son, and "retaliation" does not mean what
you think it does.Well, apparently I’m hindered by the fact that I’m one of the “inferior animals that looks like a human being,” so you have to cut me some slack, because that sure did read as a threat. Yes sir, words mean things. We simple creatures take the simple interpretations first.
And the name-calling? Very creative. I’m awed. Truly.
I haven't said a word about it out loud for a couple of reasons, and I
probably won't. (I'm not sure yet.) Everyone in your little high school
class out there will believe you and I'm not going to worry about that.
It's just so puny and shitty, man. I would expect this sort of thing from
a Usenet liberal. As little as I think of you, and didn't have you figured
for that.
I do now, though.And I used to respect you a lot more than I do now. But it has become apparent that you’re a sad, angry little man pissed at the world because it doesn’t meet your high expectations. It’s a bitch when you figure out that your philosophy, however perfectly it functions in your mind, is disregarded by 99% of the people around you, isn’t it? Your schtick of screeching and flinging feces like a rabid baboon any time someone disagrees with you about anything has gotten past old. You’ve got about three emotional settings: one, seven, and eleven, and it appears (at least to me) that you’re spending more time at eleven than at any other. I can no longer hear you over the sound of your own anger. But that’s my fault too, I guess. Your own personal little clique of admirers will believe you, I’m sure, so we’re even on that score.
You once said that you didn’t understand why people didn’t lead themselves. It appears that you’ve finally figured it out, and that realization has embittered the fuck out of you. Well, sorry, but you’re the one whose perspective has changed. Humanity is as it’s pretty much always been. I try to deal with what is, rather than how I think it ought to be. That makes me less than a human being in your eyes, I suppose. Try not to be too disappointed in the fact that I can live content despite your disapproval. You’re disappointed with the world enough already, I’d hate to add to your already crushing burden.
Kevin
As I said, I knew going into this I was going to regret it, but I needed to do it.
I’m sure the poo-flinging isn’t over yet.
UPDATE: The poo-flinging is finished. I was wrong, and I apologized.
Quote of the Day – Going Galt
If that’s what people want, so be it.
I’m done. If Congress passes Obama’s destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.
I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It’s an honest living and Obama isn’t interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants–yet.
Let me be clear. I don’t believe that people have a “right” to health care; because, what advocating such a “right” basically means is that you believe you have a “right” to my mind; you have a “right” to my professional competence; i.e., you have a “right” to enslave me.
Dr. Sanity – THIS TIME, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE…LET THE ZOMBIES TAKE OVER MEDICINE
Yes. That’s exactly what it means. And do read the whole piece. She has a lot more to say that needs to be heard.