Yawn. Well, El Presidente Jorge Boosh spoke on immigration last night. Words, words, words. That’s all. Until I see some real enforcement of the laws we have now, I don’t give a damn how many troops are sent to the border. If they are just there to greet folks and hand out “Welcome to America� pins, I’d just as soon let them spend time at their bases. It’s cheaper that way.
If you’ve been wondering where the Unions Due catagory has been, as well as scans of the propaganda they send me (and others), it’s not been neglect; it’s been a problem with my scanner. For some reason, it didn’t want to work with that computer any more, and no amount of un/re-installing drivers would fix it. I finally exchanged printers between two of my computers and voila’! It worked. I figure something’s gone haywire in the O/S, perhaps a bit of spyware or one of the more annoying viruses out there got it.
Anyway, my scanner is now operational again, and in fact, it’s in a better place than before; now it’s on my computer, whereas before it was on the family’s, which caused problems. So here’s the first of a very large backlog of stuff. Both sides have slowed down now that the SEIU has met its goal of obtaining enough signatures.
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“And look, not only will your health benefits will be cheaper, your pay will be higher!”
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. . . .Carol Alvarado proves me wrong. (Tip of the hat to BlogHouston.)
Several Houston City Hall employees are upset after receiving fundraising e-mails for City Council member Carol Alvarado, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday.
The employees said they got the fundraiser invitations in their work e-mail asking them to donate money to help Alvarado pay her legal expenses.
Supposedly this isn’t illegal because the emails weren’t sent from a city computer e-mail address or on city time. (Really?) But frankly, this has got to be in the poorest taste and is the single hugest lapse of ethics on Alvarado’s part since the beginning of this sordid affair. “Advising” clients on “how to get city contracts” is garden variety corruption. I’m not pulling any punches here: This borders on being a shakedown of city employees. The very appearance of it should be enough for Alvarado to resign. I’ve shied away from making such an outright call before, due to my position, but this takes the cake: Avarado has to go, if for no othe reason than to maintain the appearance (note I do not say the reality) of honest government in Houston.
Especially given the already shaky history of city hall politics in this regard.
Alvarado denied any wrongdoing and said she did not mean for the fundraising e-mails to upset anyone.
If she’s really that damned clueless, she has no business in politics. Look, we have enough corruption already. Is it too much to ask that we not import even more? What is this, Chicago? Looks like some folks want it to be Tammany Hall. . . .
Update: Notice the hair-splitting on the computer it was sent from — I didn’t catch that at first. It could be sent from a city computer, but not a city e-mail by the simple expedient of accessing webmail. Also, city employees have definate job shifts, with starting and stopping times. What’s the shift of a city council member? How are we to say it wasn’t on “city time”
(To my knowledge, no news media has posted the e-mail itself, yet. Any city employee who received the email and reads this, please forward it to [ubu at houblog dot com] {–(spam guard, don’t forget to change it to “@” and “.” I’d like to put it on the site. That email cannot be accessed from a city computer [barring IT efforts], so it will appear no earlier than this evening. Your name will be withheld, of course.)
I might have to watch this just to see how much of a puff piece it is. I really don’t expect them to take the SEIU to task for its support of illegal immigration. That’s something you expect a union would oppose, wouldn’t you?
Recently, the City of Houston recognized that a majority of city employees want to form a union with SEIU to win better wages, better health care and a more secure retirement.
This week, the CBS national news program “60 Minutes” is expected to recognize the work SEIU members are doing to raise standards for working families everywhere.
The news program is scheduled to run a 13-minute profile of SEIU and its president, Andy Stern, this Sunday at 6 p.m. To learn more about SEIU, please visit www.seiutx.org
Personally, I don’t call supporting the import of cheap labor as raising standards for working families. Unless by “working families” you mean “familes of union bigwigs.” After all, you can’t obtain political patronage if you’ve got no votes to deliver. And gosh, we all know how honest union politics are south of the border, not to mention how separated from the PRI the unions are there.
Will the Democratic party become PRI-North? Only time will tell.
Steven DenBeste writes a serious and lengthy (for Chizumatic) two-page post on the perils of being a science fiction author, and trying to predict the future inasmuch as you are using the technology to establish the setting. He compared the bleeding edge of the past to the present; it is a weighty epistle, probably one of the more serious I’ve seen him post on Chizumatic. (“I thought he gave up serious posts there?” I said to myself.)
I should have seen it coming. (20060511.1310 post.)
(remainder of post removed by request.)
No, I’m not talking about the No Such Agency and their monitoring of phone calls. I’m talking about the Department of Homland (In)Security. (With a h/t to the Rottie.) This is the kind of crap that persuaded me to leave the Republican Party. Update: This earlier post of Michelle’s is even more damning.
Michelle writes:
I remind you of the jaw-dropping directive issued in August 2003 by then-San Diego Border Patrol Chief William Veal directing local Border Patrol agents to ignore suspected illegal aliens on city streets and at worksites in San Diego. The order was made in response to–you guessed it–complaints by the Mexican Consulate over Border Patrol arrests of illegal aliens seeking to obtain Mexican identification cards. In admonishing his agents to look the other way at lawbreakers Veal wrote: “We have a continuing obligation to prevent any public perception that the Border Patrol may be conducting ‘neighborhood sweeps.'”
A continuing obligation to whom?
That’s bad enough, but to make it worse…
May 2005, a dozen Border Patrol agents told the Washington Times that they had been instructed to “stand down� from arresting illegal aliens near where Minutemen protestors had patrolled in April. The agents understood that an increase in arrests would prove the effectiveness of extra manpower on the border and would credit the Minutemen’s approach. Several sources, including the President of the National Border Patrol Council, confirmed the newspaper report.
Yet that is just failure to uphold the laws of the United States of America. It’s a far cry from what is now taking place: The U.S. Government is actively assisting a foriegn power in its efforts to avoid volunteers who are working to uphold and enforce those laws.
I had a perfectly nice chat last night with DHS spokeswoman Kristi Clemens, who insisted that the Border Patrol does not share information about the Minutemen with the Mexican government–and then confirmed, twice and plainly, that the agency does identify when and where civilian volunteers are involved with illegal alien apprehensions if border-crossers call their neighborhood Mexican consular officials to complain about intimidation or harassment while sneaking into the country. (For the record, her boss told NRO’s Andrew McCarthy the exact opposite! As usual, the spinners in CYA mode can’t get their story straight.)
In short, if someone complains to the Mexican Embassy that they were harrased, the DHS will tell them if the Minutemen were working in the area.
Telephone in Mexican Consulate: Ring-Ring. Hello?
Coyote (immigrant smuggler): “Hellow, I’m…. uh, call me Jose, and I just came over the border at Brownsville this morning, and there were these guys there that accosted me, and they weren’t like, in no uniforms or nothing. . . ”
Consulate Employee: “Well sir, we don’t have any information that the Minutemen are in that area. Though El Paso is –”
Coyote, to someone else: “Hey, Diego! Brownsville’s clear — take’em through there tonight! And call off the El Paso train run.”
Consulate Employee: “Ah, will there be anything else?”
Coyote: “Nah, thanks for the tips. I appreciate it.”
Consulate Employee: “Hey, no problemas, amigo, just send your appreciation to the usual bank.”
And the Rottie points out an even more damning fact:
And our obligations under the treaty do not explain how detailed information about the Minutemen and their organization in as far away places as Illinois and Utah show up on the Mexican Consular websites.
What we have here, is the longest, most blatant, and worst failure to defend our borders in history. If the government doesn’t “fall” (i.e.: the Republicans are voted out of power) for such an egrareous failure, it won’t be anyone’s fault but our own.
Or as Gringoman puts it: El Presidente Jorge Walker Boosh, the first Mexican President of the United States.
The Chronicle has the latest report from Houston’s overzealous and not-too-bright crime lab, and once again, it’s not pretty.
The special investigator trying to get to the bottom of the Houston Police Department crime laboratory debacle reports today that 43 DNA cases and 50 serology cases dating back to 1980 have now been identified as having “major issues.”
Previously, he had identified a total of 27 cases.
Writing like that gives me headaches. I have to be precise and clear in what I write for a living (what I write here is for fun, and does not go through a lengthy edit procedure.) Does the above mean that there are a total of 43 and 50 cases with major problems, or are there 43 and 50 new cases? Furthermore, how does the above fit with the following, from January:
Over 1,000 cases reviewed.
20% of serology tests had problems. Serology is an older technology that was replaced by DNA testing.
40% of DNA tests had problems. Three are death penalty cases.
There was some mention of the Ballistics lab but I didn’t catch if it was positive or negative.
It could be that the January report (which was on TV) included all problems; not just “major problems.” Considering that we’re talking about death row crimes in some cases, I’d like some clarification of what “major” is considered to be. Oh, what do you know… for once, the reporters come through:
According to investigator Michael Bromwich’s latest report on the crime lab, released online at 11 p.m. Wednesday, major issues are defined as “problems that raise significant doubt as to the reliability of the work performed, the validity of the analytical results, or the correctness of the analysts’ conclusions.”
Celebrating the most hyper-inflated breasts since Benny Hill, Steven DenBeste has been discussing Divergence Eve a lot lately and posting plenty of captures. Well, this prompted a letter from a female fan named Kacie, who wrote:
1. Ouch! Don’t those things HURT?
2. Ewww… and they bounce like jello, too. That’s so disgusting.
3. Do men really like that sort of thing? The male characters on the show look like they could DROWN in those things! Look, hers are bigger than his HEAD!
Well, I figured there should be a male response forthcoming, and since I had nothing better to do….
1. I repeat my last comment I appended to an earlier post: “At least we know that in the future, chiropracters are miracle workers. None of these girls ever complain of backaches.”
2. Speaking as a male, I find the fact that they bounce far more attractive than the ones that don’t move AT ALL. I mean, big is nice to look at, but if the San Andreas could rip the big one, and you could hang onto her set for safety because you know they ain’t moving at all, then they’re definately over-inflated rocks.
3. No, no, that’s not really what you saw; it’s just the light from Venus reflecting off some swamp gas . . . . (This is how we know the writer really was female. . . . I mean she looked at something else!)
Still, gratuitous bounces and huge breasts can detract. Watching the fansub of Witchblade, ep.1, there’s a scene where Masane, the new wielder, has been drugged and is crawling along on her hands and knees, slowly changing back to normal. Supposed to be tense and dramatic… and then her boobs make this little jump. Not swaying natually, like they should if they were real; they just sort of…. jump. Horizontally bounce. Utterly gratuitous.
Sigh. Definately breaks the tension.
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So the subject of who is a big dog in theHouston blogsphere came up the other day over on BlogHouston. We touched on a few things in passing, like PajamasMedia, political blogging, group blogging, etc. but it seemed that the leading candidate for “local, but well-known blogger” was Laurence of TBIFOC. I was left wondering… what has he got that I don’t? Aside from fame and fortune, multiple blogs, and a wife?
Duuuuuhhhh! He’s got cats! And having cats means catblogging! How could I have been so dense?
So here we go: the first-ever (probably also last-ever) Houblog catblog.
This is Lulu:
“Human, stop playing with that electronic device and bring my food!”
She’s a half-wild cat whose original owner (about two neighbors back) moved, but she chose not to. Since then, she’s lived off the generosity of our next-door neighbors. But then they moved also, and the new neighbor was more interested in trying to piggyback on my wireless network than in adopting a cat. (Shortly after I locked him out, I noticed a new network broadcast showing up on my wireless cards. I ought to return the favor.)
So anyway, now it looks like our turn to play “adopt-a-stray,” and we’ve been feeding her for a couple of weeks now. It’s the only way she’d let me get close enough to snap this picture; Lulu is normally very skittish.
So, now that I’ve catblogged, my fame and fortune are assured. I’ll just be waiting here for all the links, advertisers, endorsement offers, and singing gigs to come through. Well, ok, I’ll turn the singing contracts down, unless it’s to do the national anthem at the All-Star game. You may thank me later. Or thank me now by hitting the tip jar, that always works!
So. . . . here I am. Yep, just waiting here for the money to start rolling in. . .
Still waiting . . .
So I was headed into town Saturday night when I noticed an odd sight, and I was wondering if anyone else had seen it. The TxDoT sign on I-10 had a message about a “futbol” game; I presume it had something to do with parking or shuttles. Yes, the message was in Spanish, butif it repeated in English before I passed it, I didn’t see. And me without my camera to snap a picture of yet more evidence that we don’t own this country any more.
And that us gringos aren’t the target audience for professional soccer matches, it’s just for the folks who still speak a language from south of the border. But then we knew that after the name was changed, didn’t we?
“Fact is, there are no women like this here in the real world.”
(And there are no permalinks at that site; it’s the 20060507.2130 entry. Also see 20060507.1330)
I guess this is what I get for expressing my fandom of the U.S. Army.
Readers of Bloghouston and Houblog will know that the issue of bonuses and overtime pay for City of Houston employees has been pretty big lately. Defenders of the massive amount of overtime paid to some HPD officers point to a DWI trial system that forces the officers to report to courts multiple times for a single case, and blame the lawyers for constant resets. Now the lawyers have fired back, claiming that some members of the HPD DWI task force are manipulating evidicence in order to guarantee trials that will give them lots of overtime.
“Once the officers realized the more arrests they made, the more money they made, the system became corrupted and perverted,” defense attorney Sam Adamo said.
Adamo said he has represented clients who have walked the line for the sobriety test while some task force officers turn their microphone one and off.
Several lawyers said the microphones are being turned off with drivers who look like they have money to guarantee longer trials.
“If it’s a stumbling, falling-down drunk, that man’s going to plead guilty and that officer’s never going to make any money on that case. If it’s a close call, that officer’s going to be down at the courthouse, sleeping for a couple of days getting time and a half,” Adamo said.
We should send Moussaoui pictures like that on the anniversery of his conviction, every year.
So Moussaoui didn’t get the death penalty. I’m probably going to surprise a few folks, especially those who know I favor the death penalty, and those who think that conservative = bloodthirsty baby-killer.
This was the sentence I wanted to see.
I’m a little old-school when it comes to cruel and unusual; I define it the way it was defined back when it was first enacted. It is not necessary to ensure a painless death, just a quick and realtively bloodless one. Hanging isn’t cruel, if done right. Firing squads are a bit bloodier than I care for; they’re borderline. Lethal injection is for liberal wussies. But impaling, drawing and quartering, beheading, and several other methods used in the past are definately executions that fit the bill of cruel and unusual.
Despite that, I favor Moussaoui getting the life sentence, because in his specific case, it’s the best one possible. Best as in the most cruel and unusual.
Consider this:
Moussaoui wanted to be a martyr for his warped religion. The jury has denied him that.
He wants to see his twisted version of God rein triumphant over the decadent West. Instead, while justice has dragged on for five years, he has seen Al-Queda be shattered, its safe haven destroyed, it’s best operatives be killed or captured. Usama’s still on the loose, but so what? He’s a nutcase, not an operative. His pathetic posturing and strategic miscalculations show that he couldn’t plan an orgy in a whorehouse.
Now Moussaoui will rot in a cell for the next 30-40 years, long enough for us to utterly destroy the sick version of the religion that spawned him.
He wanted to die. That’s where his reward is, dying in glorious battle (“Glorious battle” being defined as killing defenseless civilians.) His antics in court show that he’d probably convinced himself that being executed by his captors would qualify–but we refused to oblige him.
Now, he’s going to die from old age, years in the future, after seeing his holy war fail.
He’ll have to sit there in his pen, watching that failure every day, with the knowledge that he’s a total failure as a martyr eating away at him. He couldn’t even convince the captors who have complete power over him to put him to death.
Oh, he’ll bluster.
He’ll sound defiant.
He’ll even taunt us.
But it will be the sounds of a bitter, incoherant, failure of a man (if indeed, the word man could be applied to such as Moussaoui) ranting against the inevitability and power of a storm that blew away his ramshackle hut on the seashore, when the true fault lies with him for defying the fury of nature with such a pathetic structure.
Rot in hell Moussaoui. I cannot think of a more cruel and unusual punishment than to deny you that which you seek the most, and force you to watch the destruction of that which you hold dearest.
It’s only what you wanted for us, after all.
Continuing with the anime fansubs I’ve been watching lately:
Karin: This is the second series that I am not sure why I watch(ed) it. Another manga adaptation, which happens far more frequently in Japan than it does here. You don’t need to take your shoes off (well, not more than one) to count the comic-to-movie or TV show adapations over the last quarter-century here, but in Japan, that many at once on TV isn’t unusual. Since the manga has just been imported to the US, it’s entirely possible that the show will be too far behind. Unlike Melancholy, I won’t be lining up to buy this one, even if I did watch 22 episodes of fansubs. Continue reading