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Vegan fist
Naturally I was drawn to Vegans file lawsuit over surveillance at ham store.
That day, two vegans — vegetarians who eat only plants and plant products — were wrapping up an animal cruelty protest with a handful of other vegans when they noticed a man in a CVS pharmacy parking lot taking pictures of them.
Later, they would learn that the man was an undercover homeland security detective, according to a federal lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia filed Thursday on the vegans’ behalf.
Short version: they have some protest, some guy takes pictures of them, they get the photographers tag number, photographer has them pulled over and then takes paper containing tag number.
Grievances: They claim their right to privacy was violated, he claims he needed the car to be used in further undercover work (which is to say he regarded his earlier actions as private).
There are too many annoyances to list individually so I’ll just stick with this one.
The primary complaint of both parties was that the other violated their right to privacy in some way. While the abortionistas have been trying to define privacy as inherently vaginal this goes even further in lunacy.
Both parties were obviously and self-consciously in public when all of this happened, namely in the Honeybaked Ham parking lot.
One can’t be in private and in public at the same time.
However isn’t it nice these three found each other?
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The Hendrix Show
I just returned from the Hendrix show. I had a good time, there was a good turnout and all in all it was a success. It was surprisingly well documented both in audio, video and photo.
Gallery Here (or just click on the Photo.) The photos didn’t turn out to be that notable, but not bad all things being equal.
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Random sample of reaction to the “Weekend of Protest”
Or whatever it’s called.
Daily Kos Guidelines
The Crazies as seen by the shrill (in this case Malkin) -
Politics in the style of Runyon
From the Belmont Club, channeling Damon Runyon
The Gaza withdrawal may turn out to be far more dangerous to the Palestinian Authority than to Israel because it unleashed powerful forces which Abbas has been unable to control. It now threaten to drag him like a man whose foot has been caught in the traces of runaway horses. The sad trainwreck unfolds. Hamas blows up its own parade through stupidity. Unable to lose face, Hamas rockets Israel from Gaza. Sharon, loathe to concede the Gaza withdrawal may have endangered Israel, will kill a score of terrorist leaders and hit the Palestinians in the pocketbook to show he’s tough. That will get the ‘militants’ all jumping up and down, while the PA teeters like a house of cards in a Category 4 hurricane and the peace movement hums an inspirational hymn indistinguishable from the shrieking of the wind.
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Phil Ochs said it first
The world began in Eden and listed in Los Angeles was one of Phil Ochs‘ later and unremarkable songs.
That was in the sixties. Now I see these two headlines
Members of two of the worlds major religions, both getting caught trying to commit terrorism in the same city making news on the same day. Weird.
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Everything’s bigger in Texas
I was just watching MSNBC‘s storm coverage. They sent all 5 foot 4 inches of Rita Cosby to Galveston to be buffered by the wind, eerily resembling a Saturday Night Live skit.
They later cut to a local affiliate who also had sent people to Galveston. Texas newscasters, at least the hurricane covering variety, were around 230 pounds each and barely moved. It was a weird contrast.
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Friday rapid fire
- Assess your risks! – this is the first time I’ve said this, but there is a very good series over at the Daily Kos about disaster preparedness
- Pay for blog pay rates
- Texas Emergency Management blog – oddly enough I’ve heard of this guy before. Good stuff, he quotes Clausewitz with
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war…
Friction is the only conception which, in a general way, corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper. The military machine, the army and all belonging to it, is in fact simple; and appears, on this account, easy to manage. But let us reflect that no part of it is in one piece, that it is composed entirely of individuals, each of which keeps up its own friction in all directions…
This enormous friction, which is not concentrated, as in mechanics, at a few points, is therefore everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus facts take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their chief origin being chance, As an instance of one such chance, take the weather…
Which is a quote well worthy of reflection.
- GreenPeace vs Kennedys – about time.
- An oldie but a goodie by one of my favorite lefties, David Corn, about the infrastructure of the modern anti-war movement.
- Federalism RIP – mandatory evacuations of pets? debated in the US Senate.
- In this rather ordinary column by Steven Moore in Opinion Journal, he does the math and finds that the current numbers currently slated to be spent on Katrina work out to $400,000 to every family displaced by Katrina.
- The AJC on school “Resegregation” – Education central planners are a plague upon our society, a quote
Typically in New York, they’ll go to a high school in which there are 4,000 kids, all black and Latino except for maybe 10 whites and 15 Asian kids, and they’ll say, “This is a diverse population, with many minorities.” Diverse has come to be a euphemism for segregated. And when they say many minorities, it’s very deceptive to readers, as if these were Albanians. No, these are apartheid schools. But if you won’t name reality, you can’t change it.
Why does anyone take these people seriously, let alone regard them as humanitarians? They want to micromanage society in ways that Mussolini only dreamed about, but they precede it with 5 fuzzy adjectives and they’re heroes.
- Kaus has a nice post about the serious and long-term effects of the Davis-Bacon Act
- Chris Nolan has an incoherent post in favor of (as near as I can tell) inertia and the status quo. The criticism she replies to does seem to be very valid though.
Hehe. I do a spell check and the spell checker wants to replace Micromanage with “necromancer”.
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Oddly enough
I decide to check and see exactly where in Texas my upstream web host is located and I see
Many of VIP-Hosting’s customers have been requesting information regarding our data center operations during hurricane Rita. The VIP-Hosting data center is in a reinforced building and is equipped with a generator that will come online within ten seconds of a power outage. All servers are on UPS backups that will sustain power for the few seconds it will take for the generator to come online.
The voice communication system in the Houston area is experiencing heavy traffic so we ask that any non priority support issues and other requests be submitted through the integrated ticket system during this time.
Which is a good sign. It would seem that Texas is much more prepared than Louisiana for one of these things.
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Go Dell!
To my great surprise I received my new laptop today. I hadn’t even received a notice that it had shipped! Actually they said it would ship this coming Monday.
My first impression is quite impressed. The machine is tiny and light, and from what I can tell quite fast. The keyboard is going to take some getting used to, but I think this will work out quite well. And as it turns out I have 2 unsecured wireless access points within range (though I’m currently using my wired network as I type this blog post on the new machine).
Any suggestions as to what a laptop needs?
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The West turns into Rome
Dutch Talk-Show Host Plans to Take Heroin on TV
I’m not one to interfere with evolution, but if there is an audience for this sort of reality TV, it’s a very sad sign.