perfidy

Just this week the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that there's nothing in the Massachusetts Constitution that says anything about forbidding gay people from marrying. Very nice, I say! Let's see where that takes us. I felt the decision was well-argued, clear-headed, and sensibly construed. Reasonable people may differ as to the implications, but that's another story.

And then yesterday Massachusetts' legislature proved that the Bay State is allergic to doing ANYTHING 100% right, when it passed a bill which simultaneously permits communities to allow Sunday liquor sales and bans smoking in all public places statewide.

That's right: good-bye blue laws, hello brown laws! That is, provided the bill becomes statute. You can marry who you'd like, but NO SMOKING.

For a real insight into the tangled world of half-measures and entrenched interests that is Massachusetts' political landscape, go read the article. I guarantee your eyes will glaze over by the time you get to this part, which decisively proves that Massachusetts is collectively insane:

"In 1990, the Massachusetts Legislature relaxed alcohol rules to allow Sunday sales between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day and in cities and towns within 10 miles of New Hampshire and Vermont, which permit Sunday sales. Border legislators determined to preserve that competitive advantage helped doom a House attempt to lift the ban last month. But the measure was presented as a separate bill, and the idea's inclusion in a broader measure helped push it through last night."

[wik] I should note here that I support smoking bans on personal grounds (I don't like to smell like smoke, the bartender black-lung question, etc.) but don't really like it on libertarian grounds. I'm real conflicted and stuff.

[alsø wik] And don't give me that crap about secondhand smoke being harmless. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

A power company in Akron has been ruled responsible for the Great Blackout Media Event Of 2003.

"the company's failure to adequately trim trees along the lines ''was the common cause'' for the [blackout.]"

Two thoughts:

1) Ohio: Florida North.

2) Seriously folks, if trees can bring the nation from Detroit to DC to its knees, we have a shit-lot of rethinking to do about our national power grid. Good thing there's a strong, decisive energy bill passing through Congress right now that will solve... wha? What's that you say?? It's fatter than John Goodman and weaker than Michael Jackson's cheekbones? Oh. Dang.

"[T]he battle is not over. The battle to acknowledge God is about to rage across the country."

Bring it on, blowpop.

I bet the editor had fun with that headline. I will manfully and humanely refrain from comments about Frenchmen and guns.

Marc at "The Genius I Was" brings us an update on the winner of the October 2003 Perfidy Award for Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery.

Remember next time you see him that Tom Harkin (D - An Intellectual Plane Your Puny Mind Could Never Comprehend) thinks you're stupid.

"So many people are getting suckered into the supersize choice — supersize fries, supersize burgers, supersize soft drinks," Harkin said. "We're being led to believe that bigger means better value. The harsh reality is that if you consistently choose to supersize, the odds are that soon you will be supersize."

Yes, unless this legislation passes, people never once would have considered that twice as much food may in fact be twice as much food. Now in my observations, there are only two types of people who read labels: people on a diet and people with allergies. These are generally not the people who, after reading all the nutritional data in the grocery, walk into a fast food joint unaware that the grease fountain may not be good for them. But maybe this label will finally be the one that won't be ignored by everyone else.

Looks like Senator Harkin is a frontrunner for November!. In fact, based upon his record, I would recommend the Ministry rename the Perfidy Award for Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery in his honor. However, to do so would be to slight other deserving parties such as Berman, Coble, Hatch, Byrd, Kennedy, Santorum, Fleischer, Goldberg, Derbyshire, Bloomberg, and a supporting cast of thousands.

[wik] A Sharpton Prize for Rhetoric goes to Senator Harkin for his remark, "if you consistently choose to supersize, the odds are that soon you will be supersize." The award includes a small cash prize, a souvenir cup from the 1999 MLB All-Star game, and a partially-used box of throat lozenges.

So some of the illegal immigrants who were busted last week working for a contracter who cleans Wal-Marts are suing Wal-Mart for discrimination.

Let's review. Illegal immigrants who were caught working illegally are suing a company that did not employ them charging that said company discriminated against them and therefore violated the civil rights, that they, illegal immigrants, allegedly have in this case.

Can they even do that? Or is Attorney Gilbert Garcia merely cackling over a very small pile of sweaty ones and fives?

My head hurts from banging it against my desk repeatedly.

So the police went in, guns ready, commando-style, and took down...a high school. Awesome!

A few thoughts spring to mind.

It's hard to second guess police in a situation like this...but the fact that they found nothing in their raid is pretty telling...sounds like an over-reaction to me.

Sometimes you can suspect that, well, the school is full of drugs, and when you actually send the men with guns in, you find nothing. But, the dogs smelled something on some of the kids. At least they had that! I am sure the kids had a drug program of some kind. Maybe they were cultivating.

Plus kids get to see what guns look like close-up, and from different angles, like pointing right at you! Cool! It's a learning experience for them.

I am pretty sure these kids are going to realize that we are doing the right thing. If a few of them get killed by mistake, at some point, we really have to think of the greater good.

Don't we?

I wonder if the Patriot Act was helpful in opening up the lockers of those nasty kids.

Yes, yes....there really was a drug problem in this school. I know that. I'm just not sure I'd be all that happy to be a parent of a kid being sent to this particular school, at this time.

In a belated ceremony, the October 2003 Perfidy Prize in Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery goes to the clearly deserving Food and Drug Administration for this genius move:

FDA considers forcing restaurants to provide nutrition information.

The state's job is not to save people from themselves. And yet here we are discussing seriously whether every diner, sandwich cart, and restaurant in the country should tot up fat, calories, and vitamin content for their offerings. And how, exactly, will this work for places who change the menu every day? And what if a restaurant runs out of the salmon special mid-shift and has to toss together a substitute? Will they be fined for serving Undocumented Food?

How long until no small business can survive under the weight of the American Nanny-Regulatory State? "Welcome to America. Here's your helmet and leash. Would you like your nose wiped?"

Jesus Horatio Christ. I need a cookie.

In a stunningly unprecedented display of laughtastic corporate involution, Fox News was all set to sue The Simpsons-- on the Fox TV network-- over an upcoming segment on the show that parodies Fox News.

*covers face with hands, shakes head*

The Fox News Network did back down on its threat, although it has told The Simpsons creators that in the future, cartoon series will not be allowed to include a "news crawl" along the bottom of the screen, which might "confuse the viewers".

So tell me: just how stupid does Fox News think its viewers are?

[wik] So I wonder what Justice Scalia thinks about fox-on-fox action. *ducks*

[alsø wik] One more time. A news crawl on a cartoon show might confuse viewers?

[alsø alsø wik] They really think that?

[starring] Really?

I hope those two fans who blocked the catch make it out of Wrigley Field alive. Helpfully, the network kept putting their picture up on the screen.

Software company sues student under DMCA for use of "shift" key.

[update] Two hours later: Software company comes to senses.

Behold the breathtaking idiocy of the soi disant animal rights movement.

The Online Computer Library Center are suing the Library Hotel in New York City for copyright infrigement. OCLC, the owners of the copyright for the Dewey Decimal System, are suing the hotel for unauthorized use because the hotel, which overlooks the main branch of the New York Public Library, organizes its rooms according to Dewey and puts appropriate reading materials in each (cool!!). CNN reports.

God. I am married to a librarian, and I tell you this: when we visit New York, it is our dream to stay in that perfidous, copyright-infringing criminal institution known as the Library Hotel. The OCLC represent the interests of libraries and librarians much the same way that the RIAA represents the interests of independent music labels. Got it? There's a lot of confusing the forest with the trees here, or more properly confusing the mouthpiece with the horn.

There are a million ways to take the Bush administration to task. There are a million and one ways to catch them in a bald-faced lie, or at least a mendacious prevarication.

And yet Andrew Greeley of the Chicago Sun-Times feels the need to invoke Godwin's Law, corollary 1 with his first sentence in this editorial.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.

Is that the best he can do? Hitlering the President? Pathetic, and approximately as mature as the outrageous canards launched by Benjamin Franklin Bache against John Adams. Except Adams had Bache arrested for treason, and that hasn't happened yet to anyone this time.

<paranoid>Yet.</paranoid>
 

Instapundit links to this this Yahoo! News story via this blog:

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, on Wednesday said it will cut list prices on compact discs by as much as 30 percent in an effort to boost sales that have been stymied by free online music-sharing services such as Kazaa.

Starting in October, Universal, the home to such artists as Mary J. Blige (news), U2 and Elton John (news), will trim its prices on most of its CDs to $12.98 from its current $16.98-$18.98 range of prices.

"Our research shows that the sweet spot is to sell our records below $12.98,' said Universal Music president Zach Horowitz. "We're confident that when we implement this we will get a dramatic and sustained increase."

However, Glennie then notes

"Research?" I'll bet some marketing consultant charged them a lot more than it costs to read Fritz's blog. . . .

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've sat in hundreds of 'marketing' meetings and I know exactly what happened. All the chiefs and their main sidekick indians were sitting around a long-ass conference table like they have every week for years, kvetching about declining revenues. Then, during the open discussion, some incredibly senior sales rep from Minneapolis puts out his Marlboro, streches his legs, and pulls out a spreadsheet showing the bigwigs what he's been telling them for five years: Electric Fetus has been selling shitloads-- shitloads of the U2 back catalog at $9.99, whereas they couldn't give them away when the sticker said $16.99. One of the biggest bigwigs, who's at the end of his emotional rope, not to mention his contract, says, "Fuck it. Let's reduce 'em all. Best idea I ever had."

$13 is the magic number for new releases, and you can sell ANYTHING for $9.99, especially if it's a catalog reissue with hastily chosen and poorly mastered "bonus tracks". Once you see this in action, as I have, it becomes a matter of elementary psychology and pure god-given revelation. I cannot believe that it's taken the industry as a whole this long to figure this out. Unless I'm smarter than most people in the music industry. After all, I was smart enough to get out, right?

At the heart of the refusal by Alabama Chief Justice Ray Moore to remove a monument bearing the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama State Courthouse is a familiar doctrine: nullification..

Moore, who installed the monument in the rotunda of the judicial building two years ago, contends it represents the moral foundation of American law and that a federal judge has no authority to make him remove it.

The 11th Circuit earlier this year agreed with a ruling by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who held the monument violates the constitution's ban on government promotion of religion.

Actually, buddy, I think they do. That question was settled a while back, the last time nullification was seriously advanced as a going concern.

Bum-chapeau.

Over at the USS Clueless, Steven den Beste has engaged in typical logorrhea and produced a masterpiece of technical analysis. He details everything that is wrong with the current system, and what must be done to fix it.

He is, of course, missing the point. The correct solution is to put hamsters on treadmills. Mind you, I am aware of the immense breeding project that would have to be undertaken, as well as the cost of creating millions of advanced treadmill generators. But the benefits are enormous. Power generation will become a decentralized, robust network. Power generation will be entertaining. And, in emergencies, hamsters taste like chicken.

Mayor Bloomberg: nebbish. But an instinctive nanny of a nebbish in charge of a huge bureaucracy. (Kee-rist... I could be auditioning to be Spiro Agnew.... nattering nabobs of something something).

But this is even better (worse). Instapundit has noted that the website for the Department Of Homeland Security, who have been working feverishly to position themselves as the Can-Do Go-To Guys for large-scale emergencies of this very sort, still, as of 11 AM the day after the event, has NOTHING about the blackout on its homepage. Nada. The big story is still the MSBlast virus, which is like, sooooo Tuesday morning. So glad they're on the case.

[update, 4 PM] 24 hours have now passed since the blackout began. Has the Department of Homeland Security updated their website with instructions, news, tips, or an acknowledgement? You get one guess.

What's most remarkable to me is that New Yorkers aren't fazed by anything anymore. September 11th 2001 was a day when millions of people had to invent personal crisis management strategies. It was almost the worst thing that could happen to the city short of a mass-destructive event, and it seems that the hard lessons have sunk in.

Remember what happened in 1977 when the power went off in New York? You could see the fires in the Bronx for miles. Thousands of people took to the streets to loot and rampage. Crowds rioted. It was chaos. It was Detroit.

So what happens in 2003 when the power goes off? Millions of tired, confused and possibly terrified New Yorkers take to the streets in 90 degree heat and. . . deal with it. The news last night showed hordes of people. . . walking home. Thousands of stranded commuters with no way to get home. . . found a piece of sidewalk. Three guys looted in Brooklyn-- they're with the police now. All in all, a remarkable testament to the ability of humans to show some adaptability. Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe would be proud.

The Department of Homeland Security cost billions and did nothing to respond to an emergency that immobilized parts of ten states. Mayor Bloomberg can offer nothing but wildly improbable pledges to restore power within the next ten minutes and some tender hand-holding in the meanwhile. So millions of people with terrible memories of the last time things went wrong did what they have learned to do: get on with it.

There's a lesson here somewhere but darned if I can find it.

We like Lileks. We like him so much, we stole the name of our blog from him. Here is another reason why, from today's bleat:

Just went to nyc.gov - the website leads with a picture of that hapless nanny Mayor. He's about as inspirational and reassuring as a stale blintz. I watched some of the press conference. He's warning people not to eat food from the fridge if it's gone bad. I'm picturing this in 1940s film noir terms - the mayor would have been some tough pol, maybe Broderick Crawford; he'd grip the podium, stare at the press corps with a gaze undeterred by the detonations of the Speed Graphics, and he'd say "Stay home. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Looters will be shot on sight. And don't worry - if all else fails, the sun will come up on schedule."

In the rest of the bleat, he talks about the remarkable calm in Manhattan. No looting. Businessmen sleeping in parks. Patient waiting for power and normalcy to return. There was more violence in Ottawa, where serious looting was reported. Those Canadians are so well behaved.

Compared to the chaos of the next biggest blackout in history, or the one in the seventies that led to chaos in NYC, it seems that everyone basically avoided freaking out. That is a good thing, and makes me feel better about all the people I am forced to share the planet with. But I watched a good bit of Bloomberg's performance, and while the information would certainly have been of some use to the brain dead, the tone was solid, low key patronizing.

"Fellow New Yorkers, in this time of crisis, please remember to keep breathing, no matter what happens. Simply suck in some air, hold it for a second so the oxygen gets in your bloodstream, and then let it out again. Just repeat this as often as necessary. Lack of oxygen is a leading cause of death or injury, so be alert. And if anyone needs help, be there for them, help them breathe, see if they're alright. Together, we can get through this."

I wanted to spew. This milqetoast is much the opposite of Guliani, who could be reassuring without reminding you of the dangers of walking with your shoes untied. 

[Update] Pythagosaurus has seen fit to get rid of his Bloomberg post. But I thought I would rescue this bit, which I liked:

Remember what happened in 1977 when the power went off in New York? You could see the fires in the Bronx for miles. Thousands of people took to the streets to loot and rampage. Crowds rioted. It was chaos. It was Detroit. So what happens in 2003 when the power goes off? Millions of tired, confused and possibly terrified New Yorkers take to the streets in 90 degree heat and. . . deal with it. The news last night showed hordes of people. . . walking home. Thousands of stranded commuters with no way to get home. . . found a piece of sidewalk. Three guys looted in Brooklyn-- they're with the police now. All in all, a remarkable testament to the ability of humans to show some adaptability. Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe would be proud.

Crowds rioted. It was chaos. It was Detroit.

That's fun.

In my effort to post nothing whatsoever of substance about global events, war, or politics, I offer this heartwarmer.

Paintball Pranksters Get Gunfire PITTSBURGH-August 13, 2003 — Two teens who drove around Pittsburgh shooting passers-by with paintball guns were shot with real bullets for apparently targeting the wrong group, police said. 

Tracey Smedley, 19, was treated at UPMC Presbyterian hospital's emergency room and released Tuesday, said spokeswoman Jocelyn Uhl. She could not provide a condition for an unidentified 17-year-old. Smedley, the 17-year-old and an 18-year-old man drove around a city neighborhood armed with paintball guns and wearing helmets and paintball vests, Pittsburgh police Lt. Philip Dacey said. 

During their drive, the teens pelted children at a playground and shot at another group down the street, Dacey said. When the teens turned around to tell the group on the street they were only shooting paintballs, someone returned fire with a gun, peppering the driver's side of the car with more than a dozen bullets, Dacey said. Smedley was shot in the left arm, while the 17-year-old was hit in the buttocks. The teens then drove themselves to the hospital, Dacey said.