Dumb Michigan Woman Hires Hitman

"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."
-Frank Zappa
After reading the following recent local story I recalled the above quote by the late musician Frank Zappa. A woman who was apparently not over a bad breakup of some kind decided that the world would be a better place without her former husband. 

And so, like every vengeful yet rational spouse who has reached that conclusion she decided to go online and rent a hitman. Yes indeed. As you might imagine subsequent events didn't pan out in the woman's favor.
A Michigan woman could spend up to nine years in prison for trying to get her ex-husband killed. Wendy Lynn Wein, 52, of South Rockford, used a fake website called "Rent-A-Hitman" to try to solicit the murder of her former husband on July 17, 2020. She used a pseudonym but entered her real information at the end of her "service request." However, the "Rent-A-Hitman" domain was created as a cyber-security test site.

Michigan Woman Sets SUV On Fire

Apparently some women have been watching Waiting to Exhale too many times without understanding that (a) setting someone's vehicle on fire to express your disappointment with them is illegal and immoral and (b) gasoline vapors are just as flammable and dangerous as liquid gasoline. 

I'm sure the next time one Ms. Sydney Parham decides to set an "acquaintance's" vehicle on fire she will consider using a fuse and/or ensuring there are no witnesses or surveillance cameras around. You learn all about such things when you go to prison, which is hopefully exactly where this nitwit is headed.

Donald Trump: Inject Disinfectant to Cure Coronavirus!!

In the movie Sin City, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), the corrupt father of a pedophile rapist murderer, tells the wounded hero that the Senator could shoot the hero dead and walk away without any charges at all, because power is the ability to lie and make other people believe and repeat the lie.

I recall that way back in the day apparently insane and profoundly wicked cult nut job Reverend Jim Jones convinced, tricked or forced hundreds of previously rational but emotionally damaged people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid in Jonestown, Guyana. 

I was reminded of those people, fictional and real, because President Trump, who has also boasted of being able to shoot someone in public and walk away clean, recently asked his experts if it was the case, as he believed it might be, that the coronavirus could be treated or eliminated by the ingestion/injection of disinfectants.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump said. “Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors with — but it sounds interesting to me.”LINK

Unsurprisingly, when someone says something so stupid and can't deny that he said it, he later says that he was joking. And there will be plenty of people happy to repeat that lie. 

But quizzed on his proposal Friday, Trump falsely claimed he was in fact “asking a question sarcastically to reporters” about the efficacy of disinfectants, “just to see what would happen.”

Old Iowa Man Shoots Up Strip Club Parking Lot

We should never underestimate how stupidly men will act in order to get attention from women or even just look at women. It's a weakness, but one which is probably required for the human race to continue recreating itself. 

Women have compatible, though not identical weak spots. But at age sixty-seven, at a time when natural testosterone is in free fall while wisdom and experience should be close to their maximum, I wouldn't expect that a man would be all that interested in or capable of causing a ruckus at a strip club.

Well I was wrong.

In Iowa recently a dirty old man was upset that his debit card was declined in a strip club. So like some men forty years younger, he decided to pull out his gun and do some shooting. 

A 67-year-old Iowa man opened fire outside a strip club after his debit card was rejected following a lap dance, according to authorities. James Wells fled following Friday night’s incident at the Porsches Theater of the Arts in Waterloo and was busted by police on the University of Northern Iowa campus following a short chase and struggle. 

More Flat Earth Dummies

It remains a source of amazement and amusement to me that some people still believe that the earth is flat. From what I can tell this is only a very small minority of folks. Some of them are obvious trolls. Others believe everything is a conspiracy. Still others are just low IQ people with an extremely limited grasp of science and logic. Some think that being contrary by definition means being smart. 

Others flatter themselves that they're just smarter than everyone else. And some are people who reject all science, logic and math as Eurocentric and thus by definition untrue and racist. So it goes. But it's funny to me that when the evidence conclusively disproves the flat earth theory, flat earth adherents drop the evidence and not the theory. 

In what may be one of the most satisfying TV moments we can recall, a group of conspiracy theorists have accidentally spent thousands of dollars to prove that yes, actually, the Earth is round.
The scene in a new Netflix documentary called Behind the Curve, which follows a group of Flat Earthers, a "small but growing contingent of people who firmly believe in a conspiracy to suppress the truth that the Earth is flat".

One of those Flat Earthers is Bob Knodel, who hosts a YouTube channel entirely dedicated to the theory and who is one of the team relying on a $20,000 laser gyroscope to prove the Earth doesn't actually rotate. Except... It does. 

Selfmade Kash Performs Self Own

You know, if you're going to be a criminal it's probably not the smartest thing to do to let everyone know that you're a criminal, brag about your criminal success, offer to teach others how to become successful criminals, and generally do everything just short of leaving a notarized confession of your crimes at the local police station to make sure the police and prosecutors know exactly who, what, when, where and why you've been doing. This kind of extravagant law breaking and taunting tends to annoy and embarrass the local police and prosecutors (especially if you didn't make sure they got their cut); they will go the extra mile to make certain that you are arrested, jailed, prosecuted and convicted. 

The most powerful and successful gangsters are usually the ones you either never heard of or who have everyone scared to say their name. The criminals who last aren't the ones on youtube or Instagram boasting about what they do. It is amazing to me that some people have such massive egos that they would rather let the entire world know of their alleged actions, even if that means they're going to be doing their thing in jail or prison. To this day no one knows who committed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, who murdered Jimmy Hoffa, or who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp. The people who did those things were smart enough to keep their f****g mouths shut. It remains an open question as to whether rap music causes low IQ or if people with low IQ cause rap music.

Detroit — Federal prosecutors threw shade at a Detroit rapper and self-professed god of credit card fraud Thursday by indicting the man, who fancied jewel-encrusted necklaces made out of credit cards and bragged about his alleged crimes on Instagram. Jonathan Woods, 25, who raps under the nickname “Selfmade Kash,” was charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and possession of unauthorized access devices. 

Cops Chase Crazy Crackheads

The obvious takeaways from this story are that (a) crack cocaine is a hell of a drug (b) drug abuse prematurely ages people something fierce and (c) despite what they sometimes claim cops are actually able to refrain from use of deadly force in stressful and dangerous situations when they want to do so. 

And who is stupid enough to light up the crack pipe in front of agitated police officers attempting to make an arrest? Crackheads are stupid enough. That's who. And I can't be the only person who finds it ironic that the other dopehead arrested is actually named Weed. This is less Thelma and Louise than Dumb and Dumber.

A 36-year-old female motorist from Eastpointe who a Macomb County Sheriff's deputy tried to pull over smoked crack cocaine and then led authorities on a car chase, officials said Thursday. The incident happened at about 2 a.m. Oct. 25 in Harrison Township, according to the sheriff's office. 

Flat Earthers and Other Dummies

It seems that there has been something of a slight uptick in media attention paid to people who believe that the Earth is flat. The number of people who believe in a flat earth is growing. Some celebrities have endorsed the idea that the world is flat or claimed uncertainty. It doesn't matter to such folk that science, logic, and observation have conclusively shown that the world is round. Flat earthers remain unconvinced by such proofs. People are free to believe whatever they like. The problem with believing such a ridiculous notion as a flat earth is that the flat earther is going to be more open to all sorts of nonsense. One minute you're stating that you have scientific evidence that the world is flat because you took a level on a airplane flight, the next you're claiming that the Atlantic Slave trade and American slavery never took place. It's not so much just that believing in a flat-earth is wrong, but that deliberately ignoring science and data is wrong. 

I'm not claiming that science always leads you to the proper moral or factual point of view. It doesn't. For example, we probably agree, to a lesser or greater extent, that men and women have differences. That's biology. That's science. That, for some grudging, baseline agreement has little to do with whether we think a given society's gender roles are correct or just. I am saying that believing in a flat earth has a domino effect that leads to the dismissal of more and more science, math, and facts. The flat earther must throw away his reasoning ability in order to hold on to an incorrect conclusion. A political system with dumb voters will have trouble sustaining itself. We may be seeing the outcome of that mindset right now. The same people who claim that the earth is flat are never able to take anyone to the edge of the earth. Not every belief is worthy of respect. Watch the below video in which a Maine meteorologist takes five minutes to debunk the flat earth theory.

Dumb Man Cements Head Inside Microwave

It's one thing when young children or even teenagers do stupid things. We expect that. They don't have the life experiences that adults have. Their brains are still growing. They aren't old enough or smart enough for society to demand that they take full responsibility for their actions. But when adults do remarkably stupid things, I sometimes wonder if society wouldn't be better off letting the adult suffer the full consequences of his stupidity.

 A British YouTube prankster cemented his head inside a microwave, but the stunt backfired so badly that he almost died, and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. Jay Swingler originally planned to fill a store-bought microwave with quick-dry cement, bury his head in it, and wait for it to harden. He hoped to stay alive in the meantime by using a breathing tube in his mouth.
Five firefighters spent an hour working to release a YouTube prankster who cemented his head inside a microwave. The 22-year-old and a group of friends mixed seven bags of Polyfilla before they poured it around his head, which was protected by a plastic bag inside the appliance. Their intention was to use the microwave as a mould, and by the time emergency services arrived at 1.49pm on Wednesday to the garage of a house in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, the group had already been trying to free him for 90 minutes.

The friends had managed to feed an air tube into the man's head to help him breathe.

Watch Commander Shaun Dakin, officer in charge of the West Midlands Fire Service crew who responded, said: "As funny as this sounds, this young man could quite easily have suffocated or have been seriously injured." He added: "Taking the microwave apart was tricky, because a lot of it was welded. "It took us nearly an hour to free him. All of the group involved were very apologetic, but this was clearly a call-out which might have prevented us from helping someone else in genuine, accidental need.

Right. Let me stick my head into a metal box filled with quick dry cement. What could go wrong? I am friends with and related to some people who are or have been first responders. I am 100% certain that all of them would have done their duty and attempted to help this foolish man who cemented his head inside of a microwave. They take their jobs pretty seriously. They're in the business of saving lives and property. I am also pretty sure that at least some of them would have briefly thought to themselves "Well he got himself in there. He can get himself out!" 

LINK  LINK

Taiyesha Baker Fired from Indiana University Health

As has been discussed previously many times you do not necessarily have First Amendment protections if you say or write something widely considered to be offensive and your employer lets you go. This may get a tad more complicated if your employer is a public (governmental) entity and not a private one. But even with public employers, if you run afoul of laws or employer policies regarding speech that is harassing or hateful you can often find yourself unemployed. The First Amendment is about disallowing the government from preventing you from saying something disagreeable. It's about preventing the government from putting you in prison or fining you for your speech. You are free to say whatever you like. But your employer is also free to decide that your speech is not something with which it wants to be associated. Just as social media has made people more comfortable with sharing a lot of private and personal information, many people seem to forget that social media is NOT you talking to your spouse, relatives, close friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, or even long term business associates. Many of these people probably share some of your world views. And even those who don't usually won't take something you told or wrote to them in confidence and tell everyone without your permission. But when you post something on social media you're sharing it with the world.

Taiyesha Baker, a former nurse at Indiana University Health, apparently forgot that when you're not independently wealthy you occasionally have to consider whether the entire world needs to hear your unedited opinion on sensitive issues.

Carmen Chamblee Keeps It Real

There are times and if you live long enough most of us have experienced them, when someone close to you rips your heart out, throws it on the ground, looks you right in the eye, and gleefully does the tarantella all over your bleeding broken heart. Although in later years you may look back at whatever occurred between you and your special rider and find if not exactly humor, some perspective and wisdom, at the moment when this happens most of us will be in a foul mood, caught between sadness and anger. Some among us who are more prone to anger will lash out at the person who did us wrong. If we can't reach them we may even try to hurt someone they loved or damage some of their property. This is of course a remarkably stupid idea. Any thing that involves possible criminal charges is as far as I am concerned not worth doing. And why would you want to give someone you don't even like anymore the satisfaction of knowing that they can still push your emotional buttons? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. However one Florida woman by the name of Carmen Chamblee allegedly decided that she wanted to make a point to her ex-boyfriend by burning his car. I'm guessing Miss Chamblee is a Waiting to Exhale fan. Well there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when you're burning your ex-boyfriend's car as retribution for whatever heinous thing he supposedly did. (1) You should make sure that you're not caught on video setting the car on fire and fanning the flames. (2) You should also probably make sure that the car you're setting on fire is actually your boyfriend's car. Because it would kind of stink to get caught doing something so foolishly vindictive as setting a car on fire and not even get the satisfaction of having burned the correct car.

A Florida woman set fire to a car thinking it belonged to her ex boyfriend but got the wrong vehicle, authorities believe. Carmen Chamblee, 19, was arrested Saturday morning near Clearwater and charged with second-degree arson. She is accused of intentionally setting a Honda on fire earlier this month. Jennings' roommate was the one who alerted him that his car was on fire. The two men ran out with a pot of water to try to extinguish the blaze - but Jennings told ABC Action News it was 'too much'. Chamblee was taken to the Pinellas County Jail on Saturday according to online records. She was scheduled to appear in front of a judge on Sunday morning.

I guess that some will look at this story and think next time she should get the right car but obviously that would be the wrong lesson. As parents teach their children, when you feel that it's necessary to commit physical harm on something or to somebody, instead of doing that just stop. Take a deep breath, count to ten and use your words instead. Chamblee is actually fortunate that she wasn't burned or didn't hurt someone else by her dumb actions. There's a fine line between passionate and crazy. Chamblee crossed it. 

Nine Year Old Girl Armed With Uzi Kills Arizona Shooting Range Instructor

I believe in the individual right to keep and bear arms. I tend to be skeptical of many new gun control proposals. That said I am aghast that anyone would permit a child to attempt to operate an Uzi submachine gun in automatic mode. That makes about as much sense to me as letting a child drive a semi-trailer, fly a Boeing 777, represent someone in a death penalty case, or do anything else where the life of that child or the lives of others around the child will be put at risk by the child’s actions. Unfortunately not everyone agrees with me. You may have heard about the nine year old girl who apparently wanted to fire an Uzi.  Her parents took her to Bullets and Burgers Shooting Range in Arizona where instructor Charles Vacca assisted her in shooting the machine gun in single shot mode.  He then switched the weapon to automatic mode and moved to the girl's left. Unfortunately the recoil of the submachine gun was far more than a nine year old girl could handle. That's unsurprising.  I mean it's not like she was a veteran member of Spetsnaz or Shayetet 13. The Uzi's muzzle drifted upwards and to the girl's left. Vacca was shot in the head and died. It's a tragedy. But it's also a quite preventable one.  While gun safety experts, police or military veterans can review the video to determine if Mr. Vacca was in the proper area and/or can check the gun to determine if there was anything wrong with it, the rest of us can make an even simpler fix. Preteens don't get to fire automatic weapons. That's so freaking simple isn't it? If you wouldn't let a nine year old command a nuclear submarine then why would you let them operate an Uzi. The Uzi will still be there when that child grows up.  There's no rush. Ultimately the blame here must rest with the parents and with anyone else who thinks that children should be playing with guns. Guns aren't toys. Video below (it cuts off before the death).

Detroit woman forced to live with house squatter

Believe it or not I really don't like writing negative blog posts about my home town. So this will be the last one for a while. There's good people in Detroit. You should know that. But there are also some dirty no good bottom feeder parasites. Every time I think I am finished writing about foolishness, lo and behold here comes another story. This story touched a nerve because I think it provides a perfect example of what plagues Detroit. This situation has a legal twist. Hopefully The Janitor or Old Guru can explain it because I am simply not understanding what is going on here.

Imagine that you left town for an extended period of time to work, have a baby, take an overseas vacation, visit a terminally ill relative, settle an estate, wait for repairs to be made on your home, wander the earth or whatever. Let's say that upon your return, you discovered that someone (a previous tenant? mentally challenged write-in presidential candidate?) had moved into your home, changed the locks, altered the wiring and plumbing, taken out liens, thrown out or sold your belongings, and otherwise taken possession of the home that you bought and paid for. Now I think that even the most peaceful person on the planet might get a little upset. And let's say that when you called the police, fully expecting that that they would remove this insolent interloper and drag them away to a richly deserved jail cell, the police said "Hey this is a civil dispute. We're not qualified to make decisions about who owns what. Tell it to the judge. Don't do anything rash. Stop bothering us. Don't call us again!"

If this happened to me I think that someone (not me) would have a rather serious problem. I don't want to think about what other people I know who are not as levelheaded, peaceful and calm as I am would do in that situation. This hard to believe event allegedly occurred in an area I know very well. Watch the video.


To be blunt, this is why many people have fled Detroit. In Detroit, there is a serious chronic problem with lack of respect for law and for other people's property. I have occasionally considered investing in Detroit property or in certain Detroit business opportunities. However I would have to spend an inordinate amount of money on lawyers, insurance and security. All else equal, who would do that if they could invest in another city where there's some basic understanding of the difference between yours and mine?

So when a burglar enters your home, don't call the police. Call a lawyer to start a case to prove you actually own the home??? Does that make any sort of sense? There may be excellent reasons for society not to allow violence to be automatically used in so-called civil disputes. I am sure our legal experts can think of many. But squatters don't squat in places where they will be immediately ejected and subjected to pain for even trying. Say what you like about the Koch Brothers or any other millionaire or billionaire but I bet that they don't have to worry about this problem because anyone trying it would get removed and/or hurt just as soon as they did. If you attempted this in a rich area security would immediately toss you out and maybe throw you a beating before the cops arrived to take you away.

Must we all hire private security to watch our homes and cars 24-7? Squatting lends credence to the idea that law is whatever the strong say it is. Therefore, increasingly people will just ignore the law. If you don't then you're just a sucker looking to get taken. Whichever woman is lying here, she's a predator. She's sought out a weak herd member and is trying to bring them down. You simply can not have a functioning market place without the ability to make and keep contracts and own property. You can't. Economic activity will move to places where people don't think that they somehow deserve to just take your property. I don't mean to sound like a crazed Ayn Rand disciple but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's almost enough to make you vote for Mitt Romney.* If this attitude spreads, and it has, Detroit will remain largely bereft of good businesses, good schools, and young families. Property tax revenue will continue to dwindle and Detroiters will wonder why their city continues its long decline. About a decade ago area home prices were close to eight to ten times the price quoted in the story. I wonder if increased crime, poor city services and squatters had anything to do with that price fall? Nah. Couldn't be. Could it?

Questions

What's your take? Can you believe this? Can this story be real?

What's the difference between a home invasion and a squatter?

Should the proper owner take the law into her own hands?

*Grand Central that's a joke....

Detroit Police Sex Scandal: Ralph Godbee and Angelica Robinson

If it's Tuesday it must be time for another Detroit political sex scandal. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick fired two police officers who, in a separate investigation, were close to discovering evidence of Kilpatrick's infidelity. In the resulting civil trial for damages, text messages confirming Kilpatrick's adulterous relationship with chief of staff Christine Beatty were revealed. Since that time and Kilpatrick's subsequent resignation I would have thought that people would have changed. If you absolutely and positively just HAD to cheat at work, I would have expected you would be prudent enough to avoid creating proof in the form of text or phone messages, emails, Facebook posts, tweets or other electronic droppings that made it clear that your mule was kicking in somebody else's stall. I mean that's in the player's handbook-bolded and marked in red just for any extra special stupid player out there.

That's not how we roll in Detroit. The disturbed woman depicted is Detroit Internal Affairs police officer Angelica Robinson, who is currently (probably not happily) married. Officer Robinson was having an affair with Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee. She posted the picture of herself with her city issued sidearm on her twitter account. She learned that Chief Godbee (who is married but proceeding to divorce) allegedly was also dipping his nightstick into another woman. I don't know if the other woman is also a Detroit Police Officer. I wouldn't be surprised. To paraphrase Moe Green from The Godfather, no wonder we can't get police response in Detroit. The chief was banging officers two at a time!

Godbee only became DPD Chief when the previous DPD Chief Warren Evans was forced out for having a relationship with yet another police officer, Monique Patterson. Evans and Patterson were single during their dalliance. Godbee, who is a minister, was also seeing Patterson. Godbee got the gold mine (promotion to Chief) while Evans got the shaft. So when news of Godbee's troubles first hit, Evans was obviously, shall we say, somewhat less than sympathetic.
Video below:

Detroit doesn't need more bad publicity. So Godbee is no longer DPD police chief. Whether it was a firing, tantamount to a firing (asking for a resignation), or an actual resignation is really something that is only of interest to Godbee and the Pension Board. Occasionally there are different consequences for pension and severance pay depending on how you leave. I couldn't care less. He's out (retired).

What I do care about is that at this time Officer Angelica Robinson has been cleared to return to duty and has been given her gun back. This seems wrong to me on at least two levels. Firstly, unless she is going to allege some sort of sexual harassment, extortion or rape, Robinson was a willing participant in whatever she and Godbee did together. If Godbee didn't scream, she didn't holler. Apparently there is no written policy in the DPD against supervisor/subordinate relationships. On a local radio show other officers questioned Robinson's assignment to Internal Affairs and hinted she was unqualified for the position.

She has no right to make snide comments or judge Godbee or really say anything about him. She was doing wrong herself. She calls him a "sex addict" but if so then evidently she was the dealer. Godbee lost his job for setting a poor leadership example. Robinson should lose hers as well. If you are a Detroit police officer who discovers corruption, shocking idea I know, are you going to take that information to Internal Affairs, knowing that Internal Affairs is LITERALLY in bed with upper management? Is Robinson the sort of sober and judicious person you want in Internal Affairs? She can't handle her own internal affairs. This delicate flower and paragon of purity is now supposedly planning on suing the City of Detroit. Again.

Secondly, what ever happened to the idea of everybody plays the fool? Maybe Robinson got played. Maybe. But she really played herself. She was checking out but someone else was checking in.  Robinson didn't mind cheating on her husband but lost it when she thought Godbee was cheating on her? Since when does that entitle you to angry self-righteousness? Since when does that mean you put a photo of yourself on social media sucking on the business end of a pistol? Should that really be the public perception of the Detroit Police Department? Not only are they telling people that the city is too dangerous to visit but they're threatening suicide? I really don't want suicidal people given weapons and the awesome authority of a police officer. Because when they decide that it's their time to go they might decide to take me with them. And it might not be my time to go.

Questions:

1) If you're cheating with someone, can you really get upset if they're cheating with someone else?
2) Does Officer Robinson (who has sued the city before over wanting (paid) light duty for pregnancy) have any legal case against the city?
3) Should Robinson be fired?
4) Is it ever okay for a workplace supervisor and subordinate to be intimate?

Things I just don't understand!!!

I've been on the planet for a while now and I like to think I'm a little wiser than I was when I first arrived. However there are some things that I've seen that I just don't understand. Perhaps you can help me out because I just don't get them.  After all these years I have to admit these things are still a mystery to me and probably always will be. But maybe I'm just not that bright.  I don't say no to that. Can you explain these things?

• People-usually teens-walking down the middle of the street in a subdivision when the city or township has been thoughtful and kind enough to put sidewalks on not one, but both sides of the street. The low iq people who do this usually have the nerve to give you a dirty look when you blast the car horn to get out of the way. You don't see me driving on the sidewalk so why don't you stay out of the street.  If my car hits you, which one of us do you think will have more regrets? Hint, it won't be me.   

• Women that wear a micro-miniskirt to work and then spend the entirety of their workday tugging down on the skirt or engaged in an epic struggle to either sit down in their chair or get up from it without showing the entire office something special. If modesty is really important, why are you wearing the miniskirt? The way I see it if you've gone to the time and trouble to put all that on display it would be rude not to look.

• A Masons' recruitment drive with the catchy slogan of "Share the secret". Um. Isn't the whole point of being in a secret society that it's secret? Do you know anyone past five years old that tells you that they have a secret and then tries to convince you to listen to them tell it? If you're having recruitment drives I guess the secret must not have been compelling enough to keep membership high. Back in the day if you were in the Masons you kept your mouth shut and if you weren't in you wanted to get in to find out what the deal was. Now they're having forlorn recruitment drives on the side of the road. Sad.

• Sagging pants on men. Do women like this? Do homosexual men like this? What is the possible message sent by a grown man walking around with his over sized pants falling down? What you're too cool to wear clothing correctly? Who was running around saying that they needed to see men's behinds/boxers in public? Fess up!! Cause it wasn't me. Nope, not me. I think I would remember that. I didn't get a survey or anything.

• Police that stop you for speeding or violating some other esoteric moving ordinance and then once you've rolled down the window ask "Do you know why I stopped you?" Well gee, you're probably gonna tell me. Is this a trick question? If I was doing 85mph in a 60mph construction zone I could perhaps take a guess.  If I guess right will you get back in your rinky-dink car and leave me alone? What are they looking for? Contrition? Confession? "Bless me officer for I have sinned. It has been two years since my last ticket". Just ticket me or better yet do not ticket me and send on my way but stop wasting my time with dumb questions, Officer Donut. As you can no doubt tell, I'm in a bit of a rush.

• People (usually men) that think that their ride is not complete without a 10,000 watt power amp blasting vulgar lyrics and/or teeth rattling bass so that everyone within the tri-county area can hear their music, whether they want to or not. Is this a mating behavior? Do women actually come out to judge decibel levels?  Will they be attracted to the man with the largest....sub woofer?

• Creflo Dollar
• Banks that have started printing deposit or withdrawal slips with Spanish next to English. Hmm okay. But what if I speak Farsi? Or Armenian? Or Portuguese? Or Amharic? Or Khoisan? You're discriminating against me! How dare you assume that if I've come to the United States of America I have learned how to communicate in English but a Spanish speaking person hasn't. I demand equal translation slips!!!

• Co-workers who don't understand that when the meeting organizer or boss asks just before the meeting's end "Is there anything else?" , he or she is posing a RHETORICAL QUESTION! That means it's time to go!! That is not the time to pose some long detailed inquiry which a) is designed to make you look smarter than you are, b) was likely already answered while you were coming up with your oh so super smart question and c) is likely to make me stay later while people answer your super smart DUMB question which was already answered. People that do this at the end of the day are just asking for a "correction" which I will be delighted to administer. 

• People who feel that a minimum daily shower and deodorant are optional hygiene choices. If your co-workers consistently arrive to a staff meeting early so that they don't have to sit next to you and /or the minute the meeting is over the whole team breaks Olympic sprinting records running for the door to get some fresh air away from you, maybe you should consider increasing the frequency and efficacy of your showers. Just thought I'd mention it.
• Bosses that ask you are you happy? Now why would I possibly be honest and forthcoming about that answer? All you really need to know is that I am at work and productive. Anything beyond that gets into either my personal life or my career plans, neither of which would necessarily be prudent to share with you.
• People that get dogs and then complain about barking, shedding or housebreaking. Duh. They're dogs!!
• Magazines that charge more for a subscription than for a newsstand edition.
• People who drive way under the speed limit in the left lane. This is called the passing lane for a reason that ought to be obvious. Why are they doing this?

Can you explain any of these? Got any others to share?

Detroit Messes Its Pants

I don't like being negative about my home town. Who does? I have previously written about the financial and criminal crisis that Detroit faces and the reasons that it has those problems. To paraphrase Ronnie Van Zant, there's good people in Detroit. And I hope that you all remember that!!! But sometimes it's hard to remember that because the political leadership has failed so miserably over the past few decades.


If you recall when last I wrote about this Detroit was facing an unpalatable choice among three outcomes.

1. Immediate Bankruptcy
2. Emergency Financial Manager
3. Consent Agreement

Now no one in Detroit political leadership liked those choices but there they were all the same. It wasn't necessarily the fault of the current political leadership that they had those choices but nonetheless they were the ones that had to make the tough call. Again, unless you are from here I don't think you can fully understand the (primarily but not exclusively) racial disdain and divisions that plague SE Michigan. On local message boards and newspaper comment sections the glee expressed by some suburbanites at Detroit's horrible dilemma was in direct proportion to the anger and frustration and blame placed on the state by some Detroiters. But still when it came to it, a consent agreement was the best of bad options. After some posturing and anger, the City Council voted 5-4 to accept a consent agreement. This agreement between the city and state allowed a mutual (though state dominant) working relationship between the city and state to attempt to stave off municipal bankruptcy, which could have unforeseen and unpleasant impact on areas outside of Detroit. The state sent Detroit funds to allow for bond refinancing and avoid missing paydays. So despite some final vituperation expressed by my friends among the kente cloth and kufi wearing set, all's well that ends well. Right? Well not exactly.

No, for you see Detroit had also recently changed its charter to allow the city legal department to act independently of the mayor and city council. And the chief city counsel, Krystal Crittendon, was quite close to the council members that had rejected the consent agreement. And since Detroit had enough money from taking the deal to last a little while longer, Ms.Crittendon decided that it would be a great idea to sue the state for money it allegedly owes the city. And to her mind, the fact that the state "owes the city" means that the consent agreement was null and void. Oh yes, some of the alleged debt includes parking tickets. 

MASON -- Detroit's top lawyer expanded a list of debts allegedly owed by the State of Michigan to include bills for storm-water disposal and lighting, along with $1,255 in unpaid parking tickets, in a lawsuit she filed in Ingham County seeking to nullify the financial stability agreement reached two months ago by state and city elected officials. Corporation Counsel Krystal Crittendon's complaint, filed in Ingham County Circuit Court on Monday, says Michigan is in "default" on an additional $1.6 million in alleged debts, and that the agreement violates the Detroit City Charter, which prohibits contracts with "one who is in default." Crittendon's lawsuit also cites $224 million in revenue-sharing payments and a $4.7-million water bill at the former state fairgrounds among state debts to Detroit, the issues she raised May 11 in a letter to state Treasurer Andy Dillon when she first claimed that entering into the financial stability agreement violated the charter.  Dillon responded that the state-city agreement, an alternative Gov. Rick Snyder had to naming an emergency manager to deal with the city's financial crisis, was valid "from both a legal and commonsense perspective," and had been entered into voluntarily by the City Council and Mayor Dave Bing.

LINK


The State of Michigan was not amused and pointed out that it would withhold the remaining monies under the consent agreement, since Detroit thought the agreement was null and void. And the Mayor's office admitted that without that money the city would be broke within a week.

Detroit— The city could run out of cash by next Friday if the dispute over a lawsuit challenging the consent agreement isn't resolved, opening the door to a state takeover, Mayor Dave Bing's administration said today.Bing, who spoke this morning flanked by high-ranking members of his administration, said he has urged the city's top lawyer to drop the lawsuit but added he is powerless under the new city charter to force Krystal Crittendon to comply. Political pressure on her would not work, he said.The mayor said the lawsuit has made this a "potential worse situation than we were in, meaning that we could eventually in a short period of time run out of cash.""It is an emergency," Bing said, indicating the consent agreement with the state would be violated if the city runs out of cash. "It is a crisis and we've been in a crisis for a long time. This just ups the ante more than anything else. And I think, from a leadership standpoint, it's incumbent upon us as leaders to deal with this expeditiously, which means ASAP."Jack Martin, the city's new chief financial officer, said the city would "probably make payroll, but we'd be in a deficit position." When asked directly if the city would be broke, Martin agreed that could happen.Martin said at least $35 million has been already drawn down from the city's escrow account, but based on a letter sent Thursday by the state Treasury Department, "we don't believe they will let us drawn down any more money against that escrow account." That account was where $80 million in interim financing from the state was deposited under the consent agreement to help the city get through its cash crisis.

LINK

So you see what a mess this is. To make this even more ridiculous the Mayor just admitted that the city could not pay for the annual fireworks show  and would have to ask for financial and security assistance from, you guessed it, the state and suburbs. So let me get this straight, Detroit. You're walking around with a big load in your diapers but don't want anyone to help you, clean you up and make sure you don't do it again? You're independent and reject the consent agreement you just signed but you still want suburban/state money? You're the most violent city in the nation, but think the most pressing problem is whether or not you choose a consent agreement or emergency manager? Okay. Fine. As I've said before I understand the fierce sense of anger and independence that is part and parcel of Detroit. It was passed down. It's part of our history. Heck, the white chairman of Compuware gets it. Racism is real and it has ongoing effects. 


But when it comes to the very particular question of what are you going to do right now at this instant, what happened in the past is just not material. The political leadership of Detroit is a joke. Who signs an agreement and then turns around and sues so that they can go bankrupt and have an emergency manager put in over their objections. Just stupid. I said before and I'll say it again. Given the extreme racial and other hostility between city and suburb, city and state, the state would have been wiser just to stay out of Detroit's affairs all together. Because it is more important to the political leadership in Detroit to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. I can (almost perversely) admire such bullheadedness. I just hope that the citizens of Detroit understand that no one is riding to the rescue. Times are tough all over. I still have friends and relatives in the city who are basically held hostage to the foolishness.
What's your take?

Naomi Schaefer Riley: Arrogance and Ignorance

I can outline but do not fully understand such scientific concepts as Schrodinger wave equation, general and special relativity, Olbers' paradox, Planck's law, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, study of fluid mechanics, Bernoulli equation, or several other ideas that are basic building blocks of modern physics and engineering. I've got the big picture on some of those ideas but definitely can't go into the nitty gritty details or the mathematical equations. Why? Well I took a few classes some decades ago and enjoy reading about them but I'm not a physicist or an engineer. So I'm not the man to speak with authority about any of those topics in either an applied or theoretical sense.

Imagine if I didn't let that little lack of knowledge or any basic credentials in physics stop me. Suppose I sauntered into a convention of physicists discussing string theory and smugly informed them that not only were their equations and calculations all wrong but also their entire field was balderdash, completely worthless. I declared the only reason they were involved in the field was because of a Eurocentric bias against non-Western modes of understanding the Universe. So to me, they were all, by definition, losers and racists with a special hatred of black people.


Let's say that, once challenged to share my credentials and experience in the field, provide some evidence of my claims, or even simply show that I had even read some of the sources which I was categorically dismissing, I arrogantly responded that I hadn't read any of their simple-minded twaddle and had not the slightest intention of doing so. If I were asked to leave it wouldn't be censorship. It would be an incident of experts involved in grown folks' discussion realizing that I was neither expert nor grown and had nothing of value to add.

Former Wall Street Journal writer Naomi Schaefer Riley did what I just described above, only being a conservative, she substituted black studies (history, sociology, everything) for physics. She was invited to give her opinion on the field by the Chronicle of Higher Education. When you're writing critically for something which is read by actual educators and scholars you need to come correct but Riley did not. You can read what she wrote here. Her essay shows that she has such incredible contempt for anything investigating the history, culture, or sociology of black people that she not only thinks such academic endeavors are not worth her time, she doesn't think they're worth anyone's time.  For example:

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them....

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man

OK. By all means please read the entire piece yourself. Riley had more to say, much of it nonsensical in my view but make up your own mind. The biggest problem with what she wrote is that she freely admits she didn't even read the dissertations she was mocking. Because to her it's just not worth her time. In some aspects her know-nothing attitude is akin to what Dubois had to deal with at the turn of the century.

Now I do not believe that social sciences are quite as rigorous as the disciplines of physics or mathematics (personal bias) but I do believe that before you dismiss something you need to at the very least know something about it. That's true in every discipline, soft or hard science, music, sport, art, whatever. It's an academic and logical crime to jump to a conclusion without even evaluating the evidence. Clearly Riley was not willing to engage in fair criticism; her mind was already made up beforehand. So the Chronicle of Higher Education(CHE) decided maybe it would be for the best that she blogged and critiqued elsewhere. On cue, the usual suspects started screaming and crying about academic freedom and political correctness and censorship.

This all misses the point. Riley's puerile and viciously lazy condemnation of an entire academic body of knowledge is really quite breathtaking in what it reveals about the thinking of SOME right-wing, mostly white conservatives.

• There is nothing that black people have done, are doing or will do in America that is worthy of rigorous study.
• The only reason anyone would study black history, sociology, anthropology, etc is because they hate white people.
• Black studies are only of worth to the extent that they agree with a conservative ideology around race.
• Even if some black person somewhere did something worth studying, black studies departments lack the ability to produce such study.

That pretty much sums it up. Never mind that there are such esoteric fields as Judaic studies, seminars on Ottoman economics, scholarly books about music printing in Leipzig during the 30 Years War, or a myriad of other popular or obscure topics in which some number of people study, become expert, teach and obtain doctorates. Only the study of Black people , and especially the study of Black people by Black people seems to call forth such putrid bile by the right wing. 

Riley ignores the fact that there is of course no reason that you could not be both right-wing and an expert on Harlem Renaissance poets or Negro Baseball league economics. You could be damn near fascist and know more than any living soul about sharecropper political economy in the Mississippi Delta of the late thirties or musical sharing between 1920's Cuba, Jamaica and New Orleans. So you can make your own judgments on why Riley is so fearful and contemptuous of Black studies. You can also read what Black Ivy League scholars had to say about their field here.


QUESTIONS
1) Was the CHE right to part company with Mrs. Riley?
2) Do you think black studies is a worthwhile field of endeavor?
3) Is it fair to condemn something without examining it?
4) Can you explain special relativity in ways that I could get it?

Desmond Hatchett-30 children and counting

You have probably heard about this Knoxville, Tennessee man of profound potency and vast virility, Desmond Hatchett, who at the time of this writing has acknowledged 30 children by 11 different women. This may be a county or even state record. Just three years ago he only had 21 children so obviously Mr. Hatchett is something of a crosscut saw that some women like to have buried in their wood. Unfortunately for Mr. Hatchett, unlike other noted men such as Clint Eastwood (seven children by five different women) or Ted Nugent (eight children by four different women) Mr. Hatchett has apparently no marketable skills other than his good good loving. He makes minimum wage. He's 33 years old and only earning minimum wage which is $7.25/hr.

There's a saying that you can't get blood from a stone, though you can apparently get some other bodily fluids. So Hatchett recently went to court to try to get the state to reduce the child support payments. State law allows the state to take up to 50% of a non-custodial parent's income for child support but since Hatchett doesn't earn much money in the first place his children don't receive very much assistance-one child's mother is paid just $1.49/month.
Just where is Octodad? That's perhaps the most pressing question -- among the many -- pertaining to Desmond Hatchett, a Knoxville, Tenn., man who reportedly has so many children that he's struggling to keep up with child-support payments.

Hatchett, nicknamed Octodad by various media outlets, gained considerable notoriety last week after WREG in Memphis posted a story and video describing his struggles to keep up with child-support payments for his 30 children.

To say the story went viral would be an understatement. It was republished, reposted, tweeted, shared and commented on thousands and thousands of times. We wrote about it as well on Friday. That story alone was shared more than 26,000 times.

One of the most common questions among readers who have called, e-mailed and commented on the story is this: If Hatchett is having trouble paying child support for these children, who is paying for them? Tennessee taxpayers?

LINK

Original Story

Now in my opinion he is a sad excuse for a man. And of course most of the media or blog coverage of this situation also promoted that opinion. Some people even called for castration or vasectomy.  That's good for a chuckle and allows people to vent their frustrations with this situation. That's fine. I did the same above. But if we can be serious for just a moment we should realize that unless Hatchett forcibly raped a woman or slept with an underage girl (which is rape of a different sort) it takes two, or in Hatchett's case, 12 to tango. The women's names, photos and situations have not been released but I'm sure that they're all upstanding citizens with great jobs who are not on any sort of public assistance. In any event they are just as responsible as Hatchett for their children. If he's a reprobate and a clown, then so are they. We can't demand that Hatchett be more responsible than the women he's running around with. Can we?  But neither Hatchett nor the mothers of his children have broken any laws. One would wonder why a man would want to impregnate so many different women that he can't support or why so many women would want to be impregnated by such a man but I wonder about a lot of things that I'll never figure out.

The moral of this story is that you can't fix stupid. You can't take more than 50% of someone's income. You can't prevent someone from having children they can't afford. You can't stop someone from valuing short term pleasures more highly than the long term costs of bringing another human being into this world. All you can do is show people the costs of stupid behavior and try to change their incentives. That's what freedom means.

QUESTIONS

1) Should the state be able to take more than 50% of your income for child support?

2) What would happen if we just got rid of all assistance to unmarried women or children born out of wedlock?

3) Should the state be able to force sterilization on irresponsible men or women? 

4) How did people's lives become so empty that someone like Hatchett is considered a good catch by so many women? Why wasn't anyone using protection?