Scotticus Finch

Fun Friday Poetry

2011-08-05T13:06:00.000-04:00

On my last tax return, in the field where the IRS asked me to list my current occupation, I filled in "Steamboat Co-captain". The previous year it was "Freelance Breast-Density Analyst", and the year before that it was "Licensed Poet".

To be honest, though, I'm a lousy poet, and most everything I come up with is based on various rhymes for "Nantucket". A very good friend of mine, on the other hand, has a bard's soul in spades. Writing as "Jefferson T." and inspired by the film For Liberty, this poetic prose was sent to me titled For Wyatt:

The End is coming. We don't know exactly when it will be, but one thing is for certain: We will not forget what you did.

As for our children, they will be starving. They will have no shoes, but they will know Prudence. They will know hardship. And they will know Fortitude. To our children, we will confess our sins, without saying a word. And they will know Temperance.

And we will tell them about The Revolution. And they will know success. And they will know Justice.

And the next generation will carve your name into the trees. And they will know why.

My thanks to Jefferson T. for the contribution.

Did Sarah Palin Trade Sexual Favors for Media Coverage?!? Find Out Below!!!

2011-07-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

No. No, she did not.

In other media-sensationalism news, this piece caught my eye today. Not for the yawn-inducing Presidential double-speak, but for the CBS News picture gallery wedged in the sidebar.

The intro's painful copy (I do this for you, people.) reads:

Summer means fun in the sun, enjoying the great outdoors, and relaxing without a care in the world - right? Don't be so sure. With greater freedom comes greater responsibility, and many typical summertime activities come with their share of - often fatal - risks. Keep clicking to see 11 ways you might risk killing yourself this summer (and to learn how not to)...

Among the sneaky, murderous goblins uncovered by this tireless CBS muckraker: fireworks, "water activities", and lightning strikes.

The best part? He's probably still paying off his Journalism School loans while explaining to us how lightning strikes may actually be dangerous(!), despite decades of Looney Tunes clearly indicating that lightning will briefly expose one's skeleton, then leave one humorously charred and nonplussed.

Public Masturbation, Maricopa County Style

2011-03-23T17:28:00.000-04:00

You have got to be kidding me.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio rolled out the tanks to take down a man suspected of cockfighting.

West Valley residents in the neighborhood are crying foul after armored vehicles, including a tank, rolled into their neighborhood to make the bust.

Neighbor Debra Ross was so worried she called 911 and went outside where a nearby home had its windows blown out, was crawling with dozens of SWAT members in full gear, armored vehicles and a bomb robot.

“When the tank came in and pushed the wall over and you see what's in there, and all it is, is a bunch of chickens,” Ross said.

In a massive show of force on Monday, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant and arrested the homeowner, Jesus Llovera, on charges of suspected cockfighting.

Llovera was alone in the house at the time of the arrest, and he was unarmed.

“I think taxpayers should be shocked,” said Robert Campus, Llovera’s attorney. Campus said he believes the operation costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Deputies had no probable cause to believe Llovera was armed or dangerous, according to Campus.

Campus said he believes the entire scene was basically a stage, to help actor Steven Seagal’s TV show, “Lawman.”

Seagal was riding in the tank.

The Sheriff’s Department has entered into a contract with Seagal and part of that contract gives Seagal carte blanche to go along with the sheriff as he arrests people.

Thousands of dollars in damages were made to the property and 115 birds were euthanized on the spot.

Llovera was convicted of a misdemeanor last year of attending a cockfight and has no history of owning weapons.

Yet the sheriff’s office said they had reasons to believe Llovera might be armed.

“We're going to err on the side of caution. We're going to make sure that we have the appropriate amount of force in case we do run into anything like that,” said Sgt. Jesse Spurgin.[emphasis mine]

I don't know where to begin.

Joe Arpaio. Steven Segal. Tanks and stormtroopers descending on an American neighborhood to wrangle a man who has never even been accused of harming another human being. TV cameras glorifying it all. And Sgt. Spurgin calls it "err[ing] on the side of caution".

This isn't funny. It isn't wacky. And it isn't what life in a free society looks like.

Whole story via Channel 5 KPHO.

Eloy [Vargas], Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?!

2011-03-17T09:29:00.000-04:00

The calls started coming in December.

“Are you doing your coin-flip bracket this year? I can’t wait!” – Gene, Knoxville TN

“Who do the coins like this year?! OMG I LOVED the coin-flip bracket!!!” – Andrea, Chicago IL

“You MUST do the coin-flip bracket again this year! Also, you are very attractive and charming.” – Cecilia, Climax PA

Well, loyal acolytes, Scotticus hears your cries. The man who put the "gnostic” in “prognostication” has once again obliterated the limits of human thumb muscles, flipped nearly 1000 coins, and brought you the March Madness equivalent of a donkey-kick to the gonads:

North Carolina brings home banner number six.

Last year, my system picked Duke. This year: those filthy Tar Heels. I can only assume next year’s bracket will find a way to crown either Kim Jong Il or Michael Bay as NCAA champs.

I’m going to go vomit for the next three weeks. Here’s your stupid bracket:

Go here to see the details of the system I used, and here to see how chance is way smarter than you.

America's Wiener Strikes Again

2010-11-18T09:27:00.001-05:00

This one hits a little too close to home.

The reason Flagler Palm Coast [Fl] High School students won't be performing "To Kill A Mockingbird" boils down to one ugly word.

"I think it's the 'n-word,' " said Ed Koczergo, the school's theater director. "It's in there 23 times and it scares people."

He said the word can't be removed from the script because of copyright laws.

A school committee recommended canceling the production because members didn't want students to be in the middle of a controversy, according to Jacob Oliva, the high school's principal. He said he started hearing concerns from parents, students and other community members about the offensive language in the play when the students were in the third week of rehearsals.

"Nigger" is a despicable word. Its infusion of condescension, dehumanization, and provocation is intentional and malicious. It is a word used exclusively (contemporarily) by bigots and ignorami. And no one in the history of American art has depicted that as clearly as Harper Lee, the greatest author ever to publish only one book.

Atticus Finch is a hero whose time has come again. These Florida hand-wringers do a great disservice to their children and to the cause of liberty by muzzling him.

Doctors in the Senate = Better Soundbites

2010-11-03T08:50:00.000-04:00

After last night's election, I am adding a shiny new quote to the "Freedom Quotes" section (right sidebar) of this blog:

America is exceptional, but it is not inherently so.

That subtle, insightful, and powerfully-true observation comes courtesy of Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky).

No mountains, no plains, no hymn, no eagle, no star-spangled banner makes us great. Only the carefully-crafted protections of the Constitution and the perpetual fight to maintain freedom as our highest ideal keeps us the most prosperous nation in history. Here's hoping Paul & Co. have the necessary verve to escalate that fight in Congress.

I've Got Google™, a Cell Phone, and Confirmation Bias. What More Does a Journalist Need?

2010-10-07T20:49:00.002-04:00

[UPDATE added below]

I have potentially devastating -- for Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway -- information in my possession, and I did everything possible to corroborate it. But I failed, and instead what I have is a rumor. So, sadly, rather than this post being about the facts of a major national development, it is a journal of my unsuccessful attempt to fit together pieces of gossip into a certifiable account of events. Once again, I must be clear that none of this information has been confirmed by a second source or by documentation. I encourage skepticism.

Last week, a trusted source intimated to me that Ky Attorney General Jack Conway had deliberately impeded a police investigation into Conway's own brother by exposing an undercover police informant. My source's details were thus:

Louisville (Ky) Metro Police were using an informant to gather information on Conway's brother, who is suspected to be involved in illegal narcotics. In June or July of 2010, LMPD Detective Roy Irons* placed an unsanctioned call to Attorney General Conway's office to alert Conway to the investigation, and Irons specifically communicated that one of Conway's brother's associates was a police informant. Conway then called and warned his brother. The informant later complained to LMPD that someone had tipped Conway off, and an internal investigation was opened. Detective Irons was moved to the LMPD Property Room pending the investigation, but the investigation itself was to be shelved until after the November 2010 US Senate election.

The first phonecall of my own investigation was to the LMPD Property Room. I called on a Saturday and when a woman answered "Hello, Property Room" I replied, "I am trying to reach Detective Roy Irons. Do I have the right number?" The woman answered, "Yes, but he's not in today. He should be here Monday." With that, I thought I was actually on to something, since under normal circumstances, a detective would not be assigned to work the Property Room.

But shortly thereafter, my Woodward and Bernstein days were over. Calls to the LMPD Public and Media Relations Department and to Internal Affairs were met with a professional stonewall, and I discovered that LMPD is not under any public obligation to acknowledge an internal investigation even exists until that investigation is concluded, which in this case is part of the issue. An investigation that began in July should have been over long ago.

My next step was to try and co-opt an actual working journalist. I chose to contact a writer with the Louisville Courier-Journal who had an impressive history of investigative pieces on the LMPD. That writer indicated that not all of my information was entirely new, but without a primary source or physical evidence, the story was doomed to the "interesting rumor" file. He tried his best to arrange talks directly with my original source, but that individual declined to escalate his/her involvement for myriad reasons. I can only assume the Courier-Journal is also chasing the story on some level.

Two corroborating documents exist, but my efforts to access them were also dismal failures. One is an obligatory letter from a high-ranking LMPD officer -- most likely Chief Robert White -- informing Det. Irons that he is being investigated. This letter would not include any details of the investigation and would certainly not implicate the Attorney General's office, but it would lend credence. The second document would be an official transfer report showing that Det. Irons had been re-assigned to the Property Room. It also would not detail the investigation. If any part of this story is true, both of these documents would be carefully protected.

Ultimately, there are only three people who could truly confirm the juiciest bit of the allegations involving a justice-obstructing phonecall that put a police informant at risk: Attorney General Conway, his brother, or Det. Irons. An official internal investigation may eventually deduce the truth, but if such an investigation even exists, it is unlikely to be concluded before Election Day. Motivations to procrastinate abound.

*Pending additional evidence, this name has been changed to protect the innocent.

UPDATE: Looks like the Courier-Journal was hot on the trail after all. The important part:

Jack Conway’s office said in an e-mail to the newspaper Thursday that his only involvement was to advise his brother to obtain legal counsel.

...

Although he was asked to discuss his knowledge of the investigation involving his brother and the meeting with Adams, Jack Conway’s statement did not address either issue.

When the newspaper renewed its request for elaboration, Allison Gardner Martin, communications director for the attorney general’s office, said Conway “does not deny” that Adams met with him and his brother. But she declined to address what Conway knew about the decision to have Adams visit White.

Going Bigtime

2010-10-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

After an arduous legal battle with an Italian novelty oversized foam finger company also named Scotticus Finch, my team of lawyers has finally secured the rights to the Internet domain "scotticusfinch.com".

You have probably already been re-directed there from the old address without even noticing, but I promised the interns I would publicly laud their work. Nothing else is changing at this time, but feel free to bask in the Internet-age feeling of legitimacy by re-typing the new address in now.

www.scotticusfinch.com: The new and future home for all your freedom-fighting needs.

"Greener Pasture" Exposed After Three Years to be Just a Fenced-In Quarter-Acre of Cow Shit

2010-09-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

As a retired superpowered crimefighter, the bulk of my income comes from appearance fees and action-figure royalties. For the last three years, however, I have allowed my vast fortune to marinate in myriad investment portfolios, and I have subsisted on the mortal salary from a desk job.

The work was high-level stuff – lots of widgets to be built, each requiring a minimum of four conference calls and a WebEx – but clearly beneath me. So on Wednesday I gave notice and set sights on the next opportunity. But instead of a clean break (the norm in this industry for proprietary reasons), the office lumberg convinced me to stick around for three days to pitch in on an ongoing project without telling anyone on the team that I have quit.

Under normal circumstances, I am a patient man. But the poor unaware souls around me continue trying to put long-term responsibilities under the substantial girth of my vocational umbrella, and my gag order prevents me from letting them know they will have to reassign these duties within a matter of days. It seems a poor way to manage transition, but as Grand Ole Opry diva Jan Howard said, “That’s not my problem anymore.”

Work without consequence is beyond boring. To quote noted philosopher Howard “Biff” Tannen (c. 1955), I’m ready to "make like a tree, and get outta here.”

Blogger Finds Himself in the 5000% Tax Bracket

2010-08-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Here is a quick list of activities in which you may have participated in 2009 that would have been more financially-successful "businesses" than the Scotticus Finch blog:

Accepting gas money for a lift to the airport
Returning a modest Christmas gift for a refund
Checking vending machines for forgotten change
Winning a bet that you couldn't eat a tablespoon of cinnamon

Certainly blogger Sean Barry of Philadelphia wishes he'd chosen one of those routes instead. Because of the $11 in Google AdSense revenue Barry earned over the course of two years, the City of Brotherly Love is hitting him up for a $300 business privilege license.

Marylin Bess received the same demand after claiming about $50 in revenue "over the last few years" from her green-living blog and other freelance writing online. And when Bess contacted the city: "I was told to hire an accountant," she says.

You can't blame the city for extorting every dime it can find, though. After all, Chinese hookers aren't just going to pay for their own responsible-drinking seminars.

Read the whole piece at the Philadelphia City Paper here.

Because You're Never Too Broke for Chinese Hookers

2010-08-14T13:27:00.000-04:00

Last week, I bought generic Hamburger Helper to make dinner for baby Wyatt and me.

Hamburger Helper is a food-like product than normally costs around a dollar and a half, but I saved nearly fifty cents by denying the siren song of that creepy severed Mickey Mouse hand mascot. And while the generic version couldn't quite match the lofty prison-cafeteria standards of the real thing, tough economic times dictated I make the sacrifice.

Keep that sacrifice in mind as you watch this three-minute video from the Cato Institute blog:

Here's hoping that many more Congresscritters book trans-Alaskan flights, and soon.

You Think the House was "Disorderly" Before? Just Wait Until SWAT Gets Done with It

2010-08-13T17:02:00.000-04:00

I'm already growing calloused to this never-ending parade of isolated incidences, so I'm going to start at the most important problem I found in this article, and that is:

What in the name of Poseidon's wet wedding tackle does the charge "disorderly house" mean?!?

CEDAR RAPIDS – Police in SWAT gear busted through a door and searched a Cedar Rapids home for drugs Thursday morning, but came up empty.

At least 12 officers surprised the tenants at 1135 33rdSt. NE when they arrived around 7 a.m. with a narcotics search warrant. Sgt. Cristy Hamblin, a police spokeswoman, later confirmed that nothing was seized from the house.

No one was taken to jail, but the tenants of the house, Justin Davis, 28, and his girlfriend, Erica Lewis, 26, were charged with disorderly house and signed a promise to appear in court, police said.[emphasis mine]

The end of the article goes on to explain that "'[d]isorderly house' is [a city ordinance] described as a building or room where someone 'resorted to for' illegal activity involving drugs, alcohol, gambling or prostitution..."

So, I ask again, what in the name of Pinocchio's splintered sphincter is "disorderly house", besides a consolation prize for homeowners who didn't satisfactorily play their role in the local police's action drama?

A New Game

2010-08-12T12:09:00.003-04:00

First, thank you all for the concerned calls and emails. I know I disappeared as abruptly as I initially burst onto the scene. Unlike Scotticus, I was not kidnapped by nefarious ne’er-do-wells. I was in self-imposed exile and on a terribly painful hunger strike, in the vain hope that my deprivation might call attention to the injustices being perpetrated against one Milorad Blagojevic. (Just “Rod” or “Blago” to you racist Anglophiles out there.) Whatever your take on the strength of the Feds’ case, we can all at least agree that Blago personifies the American dream. “E Pluribus Unum” and “Don’t Tread on Me” be damned! Join with me now in solidarity as we cry out the new American slogan:

“"I’ve got this thing and it’s *%$&ing golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for *%$&in’ nothing!”

Whew, that feels better. Now while I slowly rebuild my strength with Red Bull, Doritos and Alpha King, I’d like to introduce a new game. It’s called:

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist or Dropout Populist Grocery Bagger?

It’s easy: I provide the quote, and you try to tease out which summary appears at the top of the speaker’s resume. Here’s today’s quote:

“When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.”

…OK, I know, that was too easy. The elementary understanding of productivity and wealth creation indicated by the “anyone getting paid for anything is a jerb, and that’s unambiguously GOOD” statement, on top of the economically illiterate idea that money invested in stocks, bonds, or bank accounts is “idle” makes clear that this could be none other than… a Nobel Prize-Winning economist.

Thanks, Paulie, and let me know how much you got for your soul.

Repealing the Syntax

2010-08-10T15:56:00.000-04:00

I once stopped Red Leader from stealing the Eiffel Tower on the same day I freed hundreds of political prisoners from a North Korean gulag. US Attorney General Gonzalez used to call me "The Human Paddywagon". I convinced Tom Hanks to pass on Waterworld and to check out a little script called Forrest Gump instead.

In short, I've cleaned up more messes than Gallagher's road crew, but nothing I've ever undertaken has even approached the epic magnitude of these guys:

Incensed by a "no tresspassing" sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs.

He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes.

...

In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos, and were able to correct more than half of them.

For anyone who ever tilted his head in disbelief at a sign advertising "Rice Krispie's Treat's" or warning that "Your Being Watched", Deck and Herson are doing gods' work.

Why is Wealth Always Wasted on the Driven and Motivated?

2010-08-03T11:40:00.001-04:00

I dreamt I had money.

And not just money, but money. It was two hundred yards of immaculate bluegrass from the lakeshore to my whitewashed chair on a whitewashed deck between white oaks and an avalanche of kudzu, and a humid breeze evaporated the traces of grapefruit juice and Bookers on my top lip. There was nothing to pull me away – no meeting, no timeclock, no errand – and if the notion took me, I could have lethargessed in that chair for a month.

And that’s exactly why – outside of a dream – I will likely never find myself in that chair. An interviewer once reportedly asked Warren Buffett why he wasn’t content to stop at, say, a billion dollars and spend the rest of his life relaxing. Buffett tersely replied that anyone who aspired to stop working didn’t have it in them to ever become wealthy in the first place. I’m despondently certain he’s right.

Given the means and the time, I wouldn’t collect cars or finance films or tend topiaries, so there are no secret clues to what my destined vocation really is. Given the means and the time, I would sit in the sun and read for days on end. That’s it. And don’t tell me I’d get bored. Like the midlife salesman who swallows his fury every time someone tells him "Oh, I enjoy traveling! I think I’d like that!", equally complete is my dismissal of the limits of my languidness.

In a literal sense, of course money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy a functional copy of The Great Gatsby*, a whitewashed chair, and two hundred yards of immaculate lakefront bluegrass. Explain to me the difference.

*Yes, I get the irony.

Coeds with Cell-Phone Guns Overrun Several Arizona Farms, Take Our Jobs, Begin Chemtrailing

2010-07-30T14:28:00.002-04:00

My injuries are severe, but not fatal. (It takes more than a blast from Red Leader's feral wave inducer to stop ol' Finchy!) While I'm on the mend, please accept this post reprinted in its entirety from Radley Balko's blog The Agitator.

Another arrest for shooting video of an on-duty cop, this time in Ohio.
When a deputy sheriff began questioning Melissa Greenfield’s boyfriend at a Delaware County truck stop, she began recording video with her cell phone.

She never thought that she, or her phone, could be viewed as a danger as she documented the activities of public employees in a public place.

"I’m a 115-pound, 20-year-old girl wearing a cervical collar with nothing but a cell phone. I was not going to harm any officer," Greenfield said yesterday.

However, a sheriff’s sergeant saw the situation differently after Greenfield announced that she was recording video "for legal purposes and our own safety."

Sgt. Jonathan Burke wrote that he repeatedly ordered Greenfield to place the "unknown" object in her pocket and keep her hands free. When Greenfield refused, she was arrested and charged with obstructing official business and resisting arrest.

Burke wrote in his report that he feared that Greenfield could have been holding a dangerous object such as a "cell-phone gun"...

"Not knowing what the item in her hand was and having prior knowledge of all types of hidden weapons, including a cell-phone gun, I asked her several times to place it in her pocket and to keep her hands free," Burke wrote.

Greenfield said that, while driving her to the jail, Burke said that it was "unacceptable for me to be filming his activities."

"I wish I could be surprised," she said, "but I’ve heard so many stories of incidents like this happening before. ... There’s no law against videotaping police encounters."
Emphasis mine, to draw attention to the utter inanity of Dep. Burke’s report.

Greenfield is right. There’s no law in Ohio against videotaping police encounters. Unfortunately, there’s also no punishment for cops who violate the rights of Ohioans who try to do it. Delaware County Sheriff Walter L. Davis III is defending Dep. Burke and his cell-phone gun fears.

Greenfield says when she got the phone back, the video had been erased. Davis denies any of his deputies erased the video. Must have been a glitch.

Greenfield spent three days in jail. She pled no contest to the obstructing official business charge and was fined $20.

Also, depending on how you like the site redesign, it was either all my own inspired work, or the unauthorized meddling of the interns while I was bedridden.

From Hell's Heart, I Blog at Thee

2010-06-15T12:15:00.002-04:00

I don’t have much time.

For the last month I have been held captive in some sort of highly-secured windowless cell. I am perpetually blindfolded, but based on the sickening odors, I have deduced that I am either downwind of a dysenteric Tibetan yak farm or somewhere in Detroit.

I cajoled a guard into allowing me to use his iPhone by promising him I could copy over all the contacts stuck on his old phone, so I only have time for a quick post and maybe three hands of Party Poker.

Do not forsake me, my Scotticus Finch acolytes. Like the heroic Balloon Boy, I will inevitably pop up inexplicably close to where you last saw me, none the worse for wear, and just as misanthropic as you remembered.

Mostly, I can’t wait to escape so I can finally find out what ingenious plan British Petroleum and President Obama implemented to quickly and efficiently stop that silly little oil leak in the Gulf. Remember that? What a slightly inconvenient nuisance that must have been for a few fish in the immediate area and absolutely no one else on Earth. USA! USA! USA!

It'd Be a Real Shame if Something Were to Happen to One of Them...

2010-05-21T12:19:00.010-04:00

So I've got a case coming up before the local judge. Everybody says I'm going to lose, and that I better prepare for the worst. But I'm not so sure. As I explained to a reporter yesterday about the judge in my case:

"He'll see - maybe he will see the light of day. Maybe he will have an incident and he'll change his mind over night - you know, going to and from work."

You know, an incident.

OK, so that wasn't me. Even if it was me, it wouldn't be credible, seeing as how the closest I get to the city's underbelly is that one bar where the bartenders are a little surly. But it's actually a little scary when it comes from the head of Chicago's Machine himself, Richard Daley, talking about the freaking U.S. Supreme Court.

Later in the press conference Daley got tired of insinuating, or at least hoping for, violence and "jokingly" threatened to shove a bayoneted rifle up a local reporter's butt and also to shoot him with it.

Cleaning House... Or at Least Cleaning a Spot On One Rug Near the Guest Bedroom

2010-05-19T09:41:00.007-04:00

The angry electorate has roared! The nation is gripped by an anti-incumbent furor! It's open-season on the bums!

So whaddaya think - will 40% of incumbents go down in November? 50%? 75%? Hold onto your hats, folks - 2010 will be the biggest shakeup in Washington since the Reagan Revolution of 1980 if we replace... 26% of Senators and 13% of House members seeking reelection. And don't forget that only about a third of the Senate is up for reelection in any election year; we're really getting revolutionary if we toss 9 whole Senators this year (for hardcore math types, that's 100 Senators / 3 * 26%, rounded up to the next whole powerhungry slug).

Count me among libertarians strongly in favor of a Constitutional amendment implementing term limits on Congresscritters.* Because we collectively make terrible exterminators.

*For those interested, yes, this statement is consistent with libertarian views. Libertarian != anarchist. I believe there is a short list of proper functions of a government, most of which can be summed up by its role as enforcer of nonagression. If it must exist, it must have structure (to bind it); term limits give structure just like the seperation of powers and the bicameral Congress.

DHS Asks States to Help Justify Their Bloated Budget

2010-05-14T11:42:00.004-04:00

Jim Harper, writing for the too-good-for-a-comments-section Cato@Liberty blog, remarks on a doozy of a memo from the Department of Homeland Security:

Here’s a window onto the upside-down way government spending works. The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter to states begging them to spend federally provided money on implementing REAL ID, the national ID law.

"DHS is regularly asked by members of Congress, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, if these funds are needed by the states, and whether these funds should be reallocated to other efforts," writes Juliette Kayyam of [the DHS] Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. "As both the states and the Federal government face increasingly tough budgeting decisions, it is more important than ever that these available funds be utilized."

That’s right: Tough budget times make it imperative to spend more money.

Check out the memo here (.pdf), and keep in mind how quickly any branch office of a well-run business would be shuttered for engaging in this kind of accounting tomfoolery. DHS isn't asking states to "use it or lose it," which is defensible; it is imploring states to dig deep into their collective imaginations and come up with ways to spend this money.

As Harper's closing points out: "It's flabbergasting."

A Very Long Straw

2010-05-14T09:09:00.005-04:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Some guys from BP walk into a bar. One of them orders a milkshake. The other pulls out a very long straw...

Freedom Loaf

2010-05-13T13:06:00.006-04:00

Mrs Finch was out of town for a week and I was left to hunt and/or gather my own food. For six out of seven days, I subsisted mostly on packets of unsweetened Kool-Aid mix and potpourri, but on day seven -- glorious day seven! -- I reached deep into the pantry and created a meal. Gentle readers, I give you... The Freedom Loaf*:

1 lb ground beef
1 egg, beaten like Gordon Brown
1/2 cup O'Charley's honey mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot sauce
1 tbsp Dale's Steak Seasoning
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
2 cups garlic and onion croutons, pummeled angrily to dust
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mush everything into a big pale greyish lump and plop into any pan with sides (1" or deeper). Cook uncovered for one hour. Remove from oven using clean(ish) bathmat since you can't find a potholder. Scrape the fat drippings from the edges to give to your dogs, then slice meatloaf and serve with Cool Ranch Doritos or Nutter Butters.

*That's right. Scotticus Finch's milestone 100th post is a meatloaf recipe. Deal.

Goofus and Gallant, Special Illinois Edition

2010-05-12T12:15:00.002-04:00

Gallant says, even though he is a police officer, he should be treated like everyone else.

Goofus tries to prove it by getting drunk, firing a gun outside a bowling alley, and waiting to see if he gets convicted.

He did not.

Bonus seek-and-find for the kids: Try and spot the minor drug possession arrest!

One of These Days, I’ll Give to NPR

2010-05-11T19:37:00.012-04:00

OK, not likely, but they certainly set the clock back a few more months this morning (and I admit, I do feel a twinge of guilt every pledge drive in the seconds it takes me to lunge toward the radio and change the channel). The peoples’ radio also provided evidence that the proliferation of new media sources, and the corresponding decline of the old, allows for a more informed demos (and certainly not a crisis requiring a bailout).

Here’s how it happened: I’m rockin’ along this morning to the sweet sounds of Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne, and find myself being informed about the trusting nature of today’s yoots toward the federal government. I’m hearing about a huge gap in trust between those under 30 and the rest of us toward Unca’ Sam. The evidently trusting Millennials are contrasted with the “never trust anyone over 30” Flower Children. For evidence we get saccharine quotes from Brittany (“I feel like they are trying to do what's best for us and their constituents.”) and Tucker ("It gives you hope, and that hope turns into trust in the government, because you believe that things can change — or like good things can happen.”) Like, indeed. Are we on the verge of a statist paradise, where Potemkin despots dance naked under rainbows with their perpetually naïve serfs?

Alas, that proud day isn’t as close as it sounded this morning. I’ve read the NPR transcript now and can see that I missed the one “it’s worth noting that” that would’ve somewhat clued me in, but it was only upon seeing the survey in question on Hit'n'Run that I discovered the results of the story’s foundational survey. In fact, NPR themselves had previously run the results under a headline of “Trust In Government Hits Near-Historic Low.” It turns out 20% of those over 30 agreed with the statement “Do you trust the federal government to do what is right?” And those youthful revolutionaries? 32% of them agreed.

I have seen our future, and it is cynical. And it is good.

(Also, if you only get your news from one source - start practicing your naked rainbow dance.)

Terrible Title, Depressing Themes, Susan Sarandon... HBO Must Hate Me

2010-05-11T13:12:00.006-04:00

You Don’t Know Jack has been playing on a near-continuous loop on forty-two of the forty-six HBO stations lately. Starring Al Pacino as the infamous assisted-suicide advocate Dr Jack Kevorkian, Know Jack treats the viewer to an interminable* and macabre parade of heart-wrenchingly desperate invalids, each one begging Kevorkian for a means to end their suffering without leaving their loved ones to dig a bullet out of the headboard.

Liberty’s most basic premise is ownership of one’s body, so most of my gentle readers can likely extrapolate their own Finch-worthy argument in support of Kevorkian’s efforts. What struck me from the film, though, was the unexpected nausea induced by his methods. After losing access to the planned site for Kevorkian’s first assisted suicide at the last minute, the doctor carried out the procedure in the back of his VW van rather than pulling the plug* for the day and rescheduling. His apparatus for administering the lethal drug cocktail was jerry-rigged from secondhand bits of mismatched aluminum and binder clips, and –- in the most upsetting scene of the film -– when Kevorkian began trying to reduce how much gas it took to achieve termination, one elderly man was subjected to saying goodbye to his wife from inside a miserable-looking Scotch-tape and Saran Wrap gas-retention tent which bore striking resemblance to a grade-school astronaut costume.

Don’t misunderstand; the melodramatic pageantry of post-death rituals these days is atrocious and generally exploitative. But considering nearly every one of Kevorkian’s cases left behind the deceased’s loved ones who will forever struggle with their own decision to "let" the suicide happen, the doctor owed them a bit more effort in terms of professionalism. According to the film, Kevorkian himself reached this same epiphany from jail but was stymied by a government committed to suffocating* his plans to open an end-of-life clinic in the US.

A life so painful that death seems winsome is positively unimaginable, but an eternal solution that strips any dignity from one’s final moments manages to make it worse. Government needs to stand aside and let the market perfect this process.

*Get it?

Missouri Drug Raid Video

2010-05-09T14:57:00.007-04:00

As promised, here is the video mentioned in (Redacted)'s post on the February Missouri SWAT raid. As the video plays out -- particularly as the man in custody realizes his family pet has been killed in his kitchen and his seven-year old son sits terrified on the floor -- ask yourself why on Earth he couldn't have just been arrested on his way to the mailbox.

Battlefield: Grover's Corners

2010-05-05T21:01:00.013-04:00

Thanks, Scotticus, for making a little room for the O.G. freedom fighter. (Okay, okay, freedom grouser.) Let's just say I was grousing the good grouse back when Scotticus still thought GM and Goldman Sachs were run by Hank Reardon and not James Taggart. But enough with the intro and on with the show. I'll try to post something less painful in the near future to make up for this sucker punch.

First off, I strongly support the legalization of most, if not all, drugs that are currently illegal in the U.S. My fundamental reason for that position is that I believe we are not free while living under an authority that has control over our use of our own bodies in ways that do not violate the rights of others. To paraphrase Bosephus, if you get stoned and sing all night long, ain't none of my business. (Aside to make it painfully clear: I favor strict prosecution of any true crimes - those involving the violation of nonconsenting persons' rights - a person commits, regardless of their state of intoxication; that is, intoxication by any substance is no defense.) I also understand that reasonable people can disagree about drug legalization (though of course I'm right :-)

What I think is indefensible, and a point on which I do not believe reasonable people can disagree, are the tactics increasingly used in the prosecution of this "War on (Some) Drugs". Through the explosive use of SWAT teams over the past 30 years our police have become militarized and are being deployed in ways fit for a battlefield in Afghanistan, not against nonviolent citizens of Grover's Corners, USA (nor South-Central LA) who may posses intoxicating substances not granted the Big Brother Seal of Approval. Tactics include: predawn raids on family homes (yes, with small children present); teams of SWAT police armed with fully automatic rifles, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades (these ain't firecrackers - they are so bright they blind you for 5 seconds and explode with a blast louder than a 747 on takeoff, but in your living room); no-knock entry; and basing raids on the testimony of known liars who receive reduced sentences for providing information - true or not. These raids were conducted over 100 times a day as of 2006 and based on SWAT team funding have likely increased in frequency since then. They have resulted in the violent deaths of "criminals" guilty of nothing but possessing an intoxicant unapproved by our overlords, as well as people innocent of even that "crime" who were unlucky enough to live at an address raided incorrectly. Don't forget the many family pets killed, and even some of the raiding police officers. And it is entirely because the police themselves are taking a nonviolent situation and making it intensely violent.

Unfortunately, most of these incidents go unreported by the majority of our state-tonguebathing media. When they do make news, reporters almost never question the accounts provided by the police involved, regardless of those accounts' preposterousness. There are some true reporters who dig deeper (as Scotticus has mentioned, Radley Balko is exhibit A: www.theagitator.com; he also writes for Reason and for the Cato Institute), so thankfully there is some information available. But as much as all those stories can boil the blood, a video brings it home like nothing else. Presented now for your edification is a 5 minute video of a nighttime SWAT raid of a family home in Columbia, MO with the suspect - a nonviolent man suspected of possession of marijuana - and his wife and 7-year-old child at home. Please watch the video and ask yourself what crime would justify these police actions. I am going to assume possession of a small amount of an intoxicating substance far less dangerous than alcohol makes the list.

Here's the newspaper account.

Bottom line: Police are not soldiers, drug users are not an opposition force, U.S. neighborhoods are not battlegrounds. There is no war and dead citizens are not collateral damage.

"And Now I Know for Sure, I Just Added More Guys to My Wolf Pack"

2010-05-05T13:44:00.004-04:00

The Scotticus Finch talent scouts and headhunters have been hard at work the last few weeks trying to lock down contracts on some new contributing columnists for the blog. After several false starts, the team has convinced me we cannot actually charge writers a fee to contribute here, and that somehow we should be focusing on enticing them instead.

Hrmph. You kids, with your Super Nintendos, your Huey Lewis rock and roll music, and your expectations of being compensated for work...

So keep an eye out for the "posted by" line after each post in the coming months. I am not yet at liberty to divulge the names of our most-promising targets, but let's just say that if you've spent much time loitering behind the downtown YMCA or standing in line for Rob Schneider films, you're already familiar with the type of folks we're after.

(And to Naomi Klein: Please stop sending muffin baskets to the office. It ain't happening.)

Title explained -- as if I needed to -- here.

Seattle Boy Makes a Wish, Superpowered Blogger Cries Like a Woman

2010-05-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

I got a significant amount of flak for my rail against Cormac McCarthy's The Road last month. As an active misanthrope with pessimistic proclivities, the fledgling joy I find in life comes from those bright, unexpected moments -- your favorite song on the radio just as you start the car, clear sunny skies on your day off, a toddler cracking up at his own reflection. Those moments simply didn't exist in McCarthy's world.

Thankfully they do in ours:

Thursday was shaping up to be just another school day for 13-year-old Erik Martin, but then something extraordinary happened: Spider-Man called.

Spider-Man happens to be one of the few people who knows that Erik, too, has a secret identity — he's Electron Boy, a superhero who fights the powers of evil with light.

And Spider-Man needed Erik's help.

Erik, who is living with liver cancer, has always wanted to be a superhero. On Thursday, the regional chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him that wish with an elaborate event that involved hundreds of volunteers in Bellevue and Seattle.[...]

Pulling off a wish like this one required a big story, and a lot of heart. And so, with a note of panic in his voice, Spider-Man explained the dilemma: "Dr. Dark" and "Blackout Boy" had imprisoned the Seattle Sounders [soccer team] in a locker room at Qwest Field. Only Electron Boy could free them.

Erik got into his red-and-blue superhero costume, and called on the powers of Moonshine Maid, who owns a DeLorean sports car. For good measure, more than 20 motorcycle officers from the Bellevue Police Department and King County and Snohomish sheriff's offices escorted Electron Boy to Seattle.

"They shut down 405 — they shut down I-90," marveled Moonshine Maid, aka Misty Peterson. "I thought it would just be me, in the car."

At Qwest Field, Electron Boy was directed by frantic fans to the Sounders locker room, where the entire team was shouting for help behind jammed doors. With a little help from Lightning Lad, the alter ego of local actor Rob Burgess, Erik opened the door with his lightning rod. The Sounders cheered.[...]

Electron Boy seemed a little dazed by his powers. Out on Qwest Field, the Sounders gave Erik a hero's congratulations, posed for pictures and gave him a jersey and autographed ball.

Everyone was startled when, overhead, the Jumbotron crackled to life.

"Electron Boy, I am Dr. Dark and this is Blackout Boy," sneered an evil voice, as the villain — Edgar Hansen, and his sidekick Jake Anderson, both of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" — taunted the young superhero. "We are here to take over Seattle and make it dark!"

On the Jumbotron, a video showed a Puget Sound Electric employee Jim Hutchinson trapped in the top of his bucket truck in front of PSE's Bellevue headquarters. Only Electron Boy could save him.[...]

More than 250 PSE employees gathered outside the company's headquarters and cheered as Electron Boy freed the trapped worker. "It was so loud, people in office buildings were looking out the window," said Make-A-Wish communications director Jeannette Tarcha.

But Dr. Dark and Blackout Boy were still at large. Electron Boy got a tip that the evil duo were at the Space Needle, where they had disabled the elevator and trapped people on the observation deck. Racing back to Seattle, Electron Boy stepped out of the DeLorean to a cheering crowd of dozens of admirers, and confronted his nemesis.

"How did you find us, Electron Boy?" Dr. Dark demanded.

Erik wordlessly leapt at Dr. Dark with his lightning rod, freezing the villain. Then he unlocked the elevator and freed the people trapped upstairs.[...]

Seattle City Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw stepped forward with a key to the city and a proclamation that Thursday was Electron Boy Day. Afterward, Erik posed for the TV cameras, flexed his muscles and spent some time astride a Bellevue police motorcycle.[...]

Watching her son run across the plaza in front of the Space Needle, mom Judy Martin said Erik goes to school when he's able, but is often too tired. "He hasn't had this much energy in a long time," she said. "They called it the power of the wish, and they're right."

Like any good superhero, Electron Boy kept his innermost thoughts to himself. But he did have one important thing to say:

"This is the best day of my life."

From the Seattle Times here. Cormac McCarthy's powers are no match for Erik.

No Title, Just a Sigh

2010-04-29T12:28:00.003-04:00

I give up.

Scenes From Fallujah Quincy

2010-04-29T12:17:00.002-04:00

Sometimes images really can do more to drive a point home than all the words in the world. Just ask Janet Reno. Or Janet Reno. Or Janet Reno.

On Wednesday, Quincy (Ill.) Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer was called upon to bravely show his teeth in response to an imminent threat against President Obama. Jim Hoft of BigGovernment.com has the pictures:

Excuse me, officer? Yes, you -- the one dressed to combat Maximus Decimus Meridius or possibly a Rancor. You look ridiculous. You, your boss, your boss's boss, and especially your boss's boss's boss, are cowards. Please look deep within yourself (I'm sure you signed up with the best of intentions.) and beg the chief to reconsider next time he wants to send a squad in full riot gear to intimidate a peaceful assembly.

Jonathan Swift - Sarcasm = California

2010-04-28T14:15:00.000-04:00

Ask any Tea Partier; there is plenty to dislike in the details of health care reform.

But we of the tinfoil hat brigade have long insisted that the principal problem with government-subsidized health insurance is broad: When government pays for health care, government will inevitably regulate anything and everything that can be even tenuously linked to health.

By ceding the responsibility for the cost of health care, we have sacrificed the freedom to make our own decisions about our health. A nauseating argument to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less true. We saw it happen with seat belts; we saw it happen with motorcycle helmets; we saw it happen with cigarettes. Now, just to prove that no caricature or paranoia could ever be as asinine as reality, we will witness within our lifetimes the end of Happy Meal toys.

...[C]ounty officials in Silicon Valley [Calif.] are poised to outlaw the little toys that often come with high-calorie offerings.
...
Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy in any restaurant meal that has more than 485 calories, more than 600 mg of salt or high amounts of sugar or fat. In the case of McDonald's, the limits would include all of the chain's Happy Meals — even those that include apple sticks instead of French fries.

Ken Yeager, president of the ~~authoritarian nitwits~~ Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, knows unequivocally that you are too stupid and/or incompetent -- all of you -- to spurn the siren song of a Shrek IV wind-up toy, so he is stepping in.

"People ask why I want to take toys out of the hands of children," said Yeager.... "But we now know that 70% of the kids that are overweight or obese will be overweight or obese as adults. Why would we want to burden anybody with a lifetime of chronic illness?"

Did you see that leap? Fast-food toys are responsible for a lifetime of chronic illness. Unless the McDonald's in Yeager's neighborhood has been offering polio pops or asbestos action figures, then he can take his hyperbole and insert it posteriorly.

Even then, whence does Yeager draw his justification for the crackdown? You guessed it:

"We're responsible for paying for healthcare in the whole county," Yeager said. "We pay close to $2 billion annually on healthcare, and the costs have done nothing but rise." A big part of the increase, he said, is costs related to obesity.

The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy; it is the undeniable nature of government power.

The Simpsons Proudly Declares Cowardice

2010-04-26T12:54:00.003-04:00

The Simpsons has a running gag in the opening credits where Bart repeatedly writes something pithy on the blackboard at school.

Here was last night's:

If you are not familiar with the recent South Park controversy, get caught up here.

I don't know what to make of the Simpsons statement. My initial interpretation is that the writers -- and not necessarily the FOX network -- admire South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker's courage, but admit they have none of their own, which is a decidedly odd message to advertise.

So far FOX has not commented, and judging by the implied message I assume they never will. Were I Stone or Parker, my response would have to be "Thanks... for nothing."

Banks Collapse, Kleenex and Jergens See Record Profits

2010-04-26T10:37:00.002-04:00

Most people wouldn't say they "enjoy" their jobs. That is to say, most people wouldn't continue filing TPS reports, fielding customer-complaint calls, inseminating mares, or whatever if there were no compensation involved. Add to that reality the fact that most people plug away at their jobs for at least forty hours every week, and it's no wonder folks occasionally find themselves seeking out cubicle-based diversions. A quick mission sweeping mines, pithy social-networking updates, riveting and hilarious cultural observations -- you get the picture.

But what kind of job must one have that enables him to -- ahem -- jerk around for eight hours a day? Why, a government job, of course!

A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. [emphasis added]

Eight hours a day?! I know pornographers who don't see eight hours of porn in a day. Fortunately for the hoarding horndog, there were plenty of other locked office doors in the building:

The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.

The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.

One amorous accountant attempted (and failed) to access restricted sites more than 16,000 times in a single month, then -- displaying that never-say-die government moxie that won the War on Drugs in the '80s -- the accountant settled for changing his Google Images search settings and "managed to amass a collection of 'very graphic' material on his hard drive" that way instead.

The report surfaced on Thursday, but the story seemed to suffocate quickly, practically dismissed as novelty News of the Weird. But before the sordid tale of the Bishop-Bopping Beltway Boys dies off completely, keep a figure in mind:

$222,418

That is the salary of "senior level" SEC employees, seventeen of whom were implicated in the probe. That's $9.45 million you and I spent since mid-2007.

Talk about fiddling while Rome burned...

Rockets' Red Glare

2010-04-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

Sunburn crept down my unprotected scalp, its progress imperceptible save for the stinging pain left behind every time I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Shaving my head was a dumb idea this time of year; forgetting the sunscreen was even dumber. Just ahead of me, a man in full woodland camouflage struggled to walk -- likely a symptom of the enormous cantaloupe-sized growth protruding from his ilium. A combat shotgun hung taut on a strap across the cripple's back, and I absently fingered the .38 special on my belt. It felt strange to be envious of him.

Sharp, overlapping machine-gun blasts vibrated in my foam earplugs with regularity, but no one in this area was paying any attention. They were here to buy. A hand-drawn tag Scotch-taped to the leviathan rifle in front of me read simply "$56,000" and was set directly behind an upturned Nazi SS helmet overflowing with brass knuckles: "$6 each". A rack of silk-screened t-shirts caught my eye -- the classic Che Guevara design re-imagined with President Obama in relief and letters added to spell "douCHEbag". Noticing my line of sight, the vendor piped up, grinning with half his mouth as he drew me in.

"A colored fella' looked at that one earlier. He said he loved it! Said he hated liberals!"

I've no reason to believe the t-shirt and brass-knuckle salesman was in any way representative of the hundreds of friendly, freakishly-knowledgeable vendors hawking their hawk-wares at the Knob Creek (KY) Machine Gun Shoot last Saturday. In fact, beyond the anachronistic (and innocuous) use of the term "colored", there was nothing terribly offensive about his observation or his shirts. And while crazies were out in force -- I can't shake the image of a man enthusiastically greeting an eight-year-old boy to his booth with a crisp Hitlergruß -- in aggregate the event was more Paula Dean than Anarchist Cookbook.

Firearms unquestionably outnumbered attendees by a factor of ten, both for sale and in personal possession, and I'm fairly certain I've never felt so safe in all my life. Vendors routinely turned their backs on unsecured items worth tens of thousands of dollars; after all, who would try to rob these people? Even US Senate candidate Rand Paul made an early appearance, pressing the flesh with hobbyists and kooks alike with no visible security entourage of any kind.

Had MSNBC been on the scene (like the New Zealand Herald?), it would have been easy to cherry-pick a ratings-grabbing hodgepodge of militants and racists, but the reality is that Knob Creek was ideal family fare. Between rich historical displays, a live band, "feel-free-to-touch!" meteorites, a light-and-sound show that puts fireworks to shame, and a swiftboatload of genuine experts teaching respect for and healthy caution toward weapons, the Machine Gun Shoot is exactly the kind of event Washington, Adams, and Jefferson would have enjoyed.

At eighty-seven degrees, less parking than your average Hawaiian Shave Ice hut, and no beer for sale, 8000 people certainly didn't come all this way just to whisper about "colored" people.

The Road I'd Rather Not Have Traveled

2010-04-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

What are the most horrible things you can imagine? Loneliness? Helplessness? Unceasing mortal fear from morning to night?

What about specifics? A human newborn baby roasting on a spit at an abandoned campsite? A cellar full of naked human livestock, some with cauterized stumps where limbs have been removed as food for their captors? A solemn promise to murder your small child -- to smash his brain with a stone -- rather than let him be captured by sodomites and cannibals?

These are the essential elements of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, without doubt the most terrible, beautiful, miserable, punishing book I have ever read.

Because I care for my readers, I beg you to skip this book. The Road, a Pulitzer winner, has been called the best book of the last twenty-five years and the best book of the decade, but I call the reading of it masochistic. There is no levity. The anemic tendrils of hope are short-lived and emphatically dashed. Even the vast sections of tedium are laced with shivering omen.

Whatever McCarthy's grand intended message, it vanished like so much sugar in a ladleful of ipecac. This is no Diary of a Young Girl; this is exploitative horror from whole cloth masquerading as social commentary -- a literary Marilyn Manson album.

An Amazon Kindle looms large on my Christmas list this year. I know now I'd pay a hefty premium for an "Un-Read This Book" feature.

Adjust Your Queues Accordingly

2010-04-09T16:37:00.002-04:00

The Finch household has grown impressively adept at timing our Netflix DVD returns just right, queuing up new releases to ship on the first day they are available. Thanks to a new deal with Universal and 20th Century Fox, though, we can ease off the trigger.

The agreement -- like one they already have in place with Warner Bros. Studios -- institutes a twenty-eight day delay between a movie's DVD release and its availability on Netflix, and is meant to help the studios boost DVD sales. Netflix's booty in the bargain is an increase in studio content available for subscribers to stream for free from the website.

So, you'll have to wait an extra twenty-eight days to watch Avatar on your home theater system, but you can watch a medium-res, internet-streamed, season-two episode of Fox's Lie to Me on your 2002 laptop right now!

Interestingly, Blockbuster will still offer movies through its mail-order service on the normal release date thanks to the brick-and-mortar behemoth's promise to pay the studios first when it inevitably goes bankrupt.

You probably can't get any additional information by clicking on the Netflix ads that appear on this site from time to time, but it wouldn't hurt to try...

Obama's War on Terrycloth

2010-04-09T13:29:00.001-04:00

Want to see what truly chickenshit trade policy looks like? Then hop on board this crazy train.

The US pays out an estimated $3 billion annually in subsidies to improve American cotton growers' ability to under-price foreign cotton producers, including Brazil. The World Trade Organization determined Brazil had a legitimate beef with this practice, and authorized sanctions against the US. So the US, rather than considering suspending or eliminating the subsidies, instead plans to pay out an additional $150 million annually, directly to Brazil, to help offset the unfair trade policy.

Not angry yet? Follow that money train again: US farmers can't compete with Brazilian farmers, so we give them tax money. This puts Brazilian farmers at a disadvantage, so we give them tax money, theoretically to get us back to where we were before we spent 3.15 billion dollars.

If you believe in protectionism, great; be a protectionist. If you believe in globalism, great; be a globalist. And if you're one of those wacky free-marketeers like me, double-great; we'll hang out, eat some foie gras, and shoot the poor with bullets made of compressed money. But throwing away billions of dollars pretending to be all three and achieving the goals of none is politics at its worst, and it is exceptionally cowardly.

Hat tip to "Ryan", who really should be working.

President Bush's Third Term Turning Out Worse than Feared

2010-04-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head concerning President (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Obama's chilling decision to authorize the assassination of an American citizen without due process of any kind. Greenwald's plenty good at what he does, so I'll just parse out the best bits:

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill [American-born Islamic cleric Anwar] al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield.
...
No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.

Instead, in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist. It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual Terrorist "involved in plots." These newspapers then print this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation as to its truth. And the punishment is thus decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. What kind of person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate government power?

As Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit would say: "Remember when they told us if we voted for John McCain, we'd get Orwellian tactics and an increased police state? Turns out they were right."

And just for the record, here's candidate Obama in 2007 proving once again that he has never even played a game of cards or shared a cab with President Obama:

[Boston Globe]: Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]: No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

I suppose the quandary surrounding the detention of citizens is moot if you grant yourself the authority to simply assassinate them instead.

Legendary Beast Captured, Proves Ancient People Were 'Fraidy-Cats

2010-04-08T11:13:00.000-04:00

Legitimate question to journalists: What exactly would you say you "do" here?

The headline of this UK Telegraph piece reads "'Oriental yeti' discovered in China". Now, ask anyone on the entire planet to describe a yeti, and I guarantee not a single one of them will describe this:

But the Telegraph is in the clear, because, you see, they used apostrophes. They were only reporting that this mangy civet had been "dubbed" an 'Oriental yeti'. "Dubbed by whom?" might be a logical question, though it's one the Telegraph didn't feel the need to answer.

So, now that the standard operating procedure has been established, I would like to announce that Scotticus Finch, 'the world's most-trusted blog', has discovered 'unequivocal proof' that the 'Queen of England' is 'actually a man'.

All claims have been thoroughly dubbed.

Maybe This is How Skynet Started

2010-04-06T09:27:00.000-04:00

Nobody wanted it to be accurate. Contradictory to everything that bracketology represents -- speculation, scouting, team loyalty, soothsaying -- the Coin-Flip Algorithm also doubled-down on the suckage by predicting Duke would win it all. That's like picking Johnny to beat Daniel-san or rooting for Clue Heywood to go yard on Ricky Vaughn in the playoffs.

But there it is. After sixty-three brutal games (the play-in game wasn't included), the Coin-Flip bracket claimed a dominant second-place finish in the office pool amid thirty-six entrants. Earning 109 total points, the bracket was only three points shy of first place but a full twenty-six ahead of third place.

Highlights included the prediction of St Mary's over Villanova in the second round and early exists by Kansas, Syracuse, and Ohio State. Lowlights abounded -- Oklahoma State in the Final Four? Florida State in the Regional Final? -- but the math still wins. CBS evidently doesn't track how many entries they received overall (WTF?) but ESPN estimates a staggering 4.78 million brackets were submitted. The Coin-Flip bracket's ranking worldwide: 27,279^th (That's fifty-three points behind the overall winner, a grizzled old sports guru named "PrettyBritt3", who likely reasoned that actual devils could kill actual bulldogs. NTTAWWT.)

The only portion of the Coin-Flip method that relied on pure prognostication was the tie-breaking final-game, final-score total. I predicted 119 points; the score was 61-59.

Missed it by that much.

Also, "Scottéric Bastiat" Was Already Taken

2010-04-05T11:00:00.003-04:00

Judging by the way several people -- upon making my personal acquaintance -- mispronounce the name of this blog, a bit of appellative exposition is in order.

The name "Scotticus Finch" is a barely-creative take on Atticus Finch, the protagonist in Harper Lee's 1960 masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Finch was peerlessly portrayed in the 1962 film version by Gregory Peck, a performance that netted Peck an Oscar and (forty years later) cemented Finch as the greatest hero in 100 years of American cinema (edging out such icons as Superman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond).

Today, writing a progressive character who fights against racist ignorami is just lazy. In 1962, it was contemporary. In Mockingbird, Finch, a southern lawyer, represents a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The book is written from the perspective of Finch's young daughter, so some of the lessons aren't exactly groundbreaking -- "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." -- but Finch was a practical idealist, a crack-shot pacifist, an eternally-patient single parent, and an anti-authoritarian agent of the state. We don't get heroes like that every day.

Finch on democracy: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Bastiat himself couldn't have said it better.

Incidentally, today would have been Peck's 94^th birthday.

Maybe One Day They Will Make a Book Version of the "Lord of the Rings" Movies

2010-04-02T11:22:00.001-04:00

I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about exactly what I would wish for, given the opportunity. Much depends on the exact circumstances: Is it a standard three-wish genie situation? A four-wish monkey paw? Just one wish like Ray J? And what if it turns out I'm being taught an "important lesson", and everything I wish for turns out horribly wrong?

It's a lot to consider. A constant thread to the fantasy, though, is that one way or another, I would use my wish(es) to permanently remove a single phrase from the collective human lexicon:

"Yes, I saw the movie. The book was so much better."

That sentence has never been additive to any conversation in the history of human dialogue, and 9999 times out of 10,000 it could be replaced by saying "I'm fairly certain I'm intellectually superior to you" instead.

What exactly is the sentiment behind such a declaration? What was "better" about the book? Did our pretentious speaker deftly perceive that characters developed more over 400 pages of descriptive third-person narrative than in 100 pages (mostly white space and stage direction) of a script? Is it that sixteen paragraphs describing the feelings, thoughts, memories, smells, and history associated with a particular location provides a broader context than a five second establishing shot? What is the consistent set of measurable values through which this comparative assessment becomes valid?

Movies and books are such vastly different media that claiming Puzo's The Godfather is "better" than Coppola's The Godfather is as sensible as claiming Pope Benedict is better than eggs Benedict. (Never mind the fact that -- separately and independently -- Coppola's film is fantastic and Puzo's book is lousy.)

Most books cannot emotionally accomplish in two hours what movies can. And very few movies can envelop the consumer and create the kind of sensory investment that books can. Comparing them side-by-side demeans them both.

More unfortunate still, most people who make these claims don't even have a lukewarm basis for it in their own minds. Instead it serves as a way to boldly declare "I READ A BOOK!" in the middle of an entirely orthogonal conversation.

While we're all very proud of you for reading Marley and Me all the way through, your decision to hijack my conversation for the purposes of misplaced self-aggrandizement hath triggered my wrath.

Two wishes left. Maybe I'll wish for innocuous observations to stop making me so grumpy...

More than One in 3,921,568 Americans Visited this Blog in March

2010-04-01T12:01:00.005-04:00

The obsequious team of semi-competent Scotticus Finch interns put together some information about the site's March 2010 traffic. (That was the first full month during which we employed fancy-schmancy analytic software.) The interns shall be rewarded with an extra ration of Bakon; the rest of you will be rewarded with the cold, hard numbers.

In March, the site delighted the senses of 102 unique visitors who generated 745 total page-views.

Twenty-four curious souls meandered over from a Facebook plug; nine drove by on their way to Hit & Run; two stumbled in from a comment on Consuming Louisville (Looks like a lovely little town!); and two sought refuge from the Über-Troll Urkobold (don't ask).

Of the sixty-eight Googlers who found us, twenty-seven used some combination of the following search terms: owl city, firefly, terrible. One visitor somehow came over by Googling the phrase "bubba the punch sponge", though independent experimentation has failed to recreate this anomaly.

Disappointingly, out of 745 page-views in thirty-one days, only twenty-four visitors clicked on any of the ads in the upper-left corner. We here at Scotticus Finch would never violate the Terms of Service by encouraging people to click the ads. We would also never remind you how much baby formula costs.

(Gross revenue for the month of March: $5.73. Booyah!)

Many sincere thanks to those of you who frequent the site, especially those who have been around since the austere (and a bit odd) beginning. Some exciting changes are in the works for the upcoming months, so stay tuned!

No Word Yet on Film Adaptations of "McDonald's" or "Uno"

2010-03-30T11:24:00.000-04:00

Fingers... cramping. Eye... twitching. Teeth... grinding.

Must... Contain... Fury...

Apologies in advance for my lack of commentary on the following link. There simply isn't much to be said.

Obviously Hollywood has reached the point where the only question that matters in getting a movie made is: "Have people heard of this thing?" No layered characterization, no subtle symbolism, no triumphant story arc can trump the simple reality that people no longer want to go to the movies unless they know beforehand exactly what their $12 is buying.

So, rather than marvelous films (but potential risks) like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Memento, or Moulin Rouge, the future of American Cinema instead looks like this:

The Marmaduke Movie

It's the bed we've made, America. Now go lay down!

The One Most of You Can Skip [Working Title]

2010-03-30T10:43:00.002-04:00

The Internet's greatest asset as a social tool is its ability to simultaneously allow users to be anonymous, yet onymous. Pseudonymity, once the pretense of literary atychiphobics, is now the favored bloviation tool for everyone from Publius to Perez Hilton.

But did you know that you too can wax philosophic under a semi-clever name of your choice, be it "Muffintopless", "YouHadMeAtHalo", "BabysatByPolanski", or "Steve"?

By ~~popular~~ singular demand, here is a quick tutorial on navigating the Comments section of Scotticus Finch:

First, select the Name/URL option from the drop-down menu.

Next, enter the name of your choice. Ignore the URL section; that's far too advanced for you.

Finally, jabber away. This ain't Twitter, so there is no 140-character limit. (But for the record, anything more than about three sentences triggers my fight-or-flight. Sheesh, get your own blog!)

That's all there is to it. Now stand up and be heard with no possibility of accountability whatsoever! It's why Al Gore invented this crazy series of tubes!

Japan to New York Times: "All Your Job Are Belong to Us"

2010-03-25T11:31:00.003-04:00

One of the long-standing excuses for journalistic bias is that reporters are "only human".

Well, problem solved:

Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds.

According to the article, the robot can "detect changes in its surroundings", determine their relevance, interview bystanders, take photos, use the Internet to "round out its understanding" of the story, and publish directly to the web.

Surprisingly, researchers have not named the bot. I humbly submit: w00dward.

This is fantastic progress. Most cable news networks have already abandoned the charade of objectivity, and focus instead on naked opinion-driven analysis, something that even Skynet can't synthesize. But fact-finding and reporting should be a rote process, and it is my (now-encouraged) hope that future societies will wax nostalgic about reporters the same way we do about chimney sweeps and elevator operators.

And just in case you were thinking: "Robot reporters? Bah. I was promised a future with jetpacks, dammit! Where are my jetpacks?!" Well, your time has come as well.

Reporter-bot link via Pro Libertate and the Über Troll Urkobold.

Snarky Before it Was Cool -- Scotticus Talks to God in 2004

2010-03-22T17:16:00.000-04:00

In a stunning display of laziness and general contempt for my reader(s), I am going to reprint an op-ed that originally ran in my hometown newspaper in April 2004. The only part that feels especially dated is the John Cusack fawning, but remember that prior to 2004, one could still appreciate the High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Pushing Tin, Say Anything Cusack without knowing that those of us in the distant future would have to endure the Must Love Dogs, Martian Child, War Inc, 2012 Cusack.

Speaking of Cusack, join me in our very own Hot Tub Time Machine:

Dear God: it’s me, Scotticus. First off, I want to thank you for so many things -– springtime, basketball, The Sopranos, John Cusack movies -– so as not to seem overly critical. As for Earth, I love what you’ve done with the place. Your sense for drama is absolutely Scorsese-esque, especially that bit with Saddam Hussein coming out of the spider-hole with his Lyle Lovett hair and Jim Belushi demeanor:

"I wish to negotiate." Classic.

Having said that, I’ve got some pretty serious clergy-stumpers that I’d feel much better having answers to. For instance, I saw Mel Gibson’s new movie about your kid, and it got me to thinking: that was your kid. Yeah, yeah, "part God" and all, but if I have my theology right, when Deus Jr. was on the cross –- bleeding, bruised, broken -– he was flesh, blood, scooped-him-up-when-he-fell-off-his-bike human. So from there I began to wonder, was that really justice?

The way I learned it in Vacation Bible School, Jesus had to die in my place because he was perfect. For me to die wouldn’t have paid even the interest on my debt, having once lied to my mom about drawing on the furniture with permanent markers, so you called in a Holy Ringer. That’s where the logic gets muddy to me. Why am I absolved through the breaking and destruction of the only perfect human you ever made? In which part of your wonderful universe is that just?

If I saw a man murder my family, I wouldn’t sigh the great sigh of closure by seeing his sweet, elderly, Wal-Mart-greeter aunt writhe in the electric chair in his place. People point to your fourth-quarter Messiah substitution as proof positive of just how much you love us, but that doesn’t feel like justice at all; in fact it kind of makes my stomach churn.

I want to be on your team. Believe me, I love Max Lucado books as much as the next guy, and Mike Breaux can flat-out preach. Your theme songs are always catchy, and your pleasant promises of paradise take the acid-reflux out of life, but I’m not the first who needed to put his finger in the wounds to believe -– and Thomas used to fish with the guy.

I see your chosen people getting sand kicked in their face by everyone from Pharaoh to Hitler to Arafat, and that leaves me almost as dumbfounded as the fact that you have a "chosen people" to begin with.

But all digression aside, my overall point is so disturbing that I cannot be content to fully claim it without begging, pleading, even praying to be shown the light which so many insist is there; so here goes:

I think maybe you’re wrong.

Now hear me out. I know the Bible says you are infallible, but to be fair it was your book. Richard Clarke practically claims he foresaw terrorist attacks in tea leaves in his book. If I wrote one, I’d be the coolest character in it too. I’d see the future, possess a perfect sense of justice, love everyone, and be able to pull off that trick where Superman could see Lois Lane’s undies through her nightgown.

It’s not that I don’t think you are who you say you are. Evidence and instinct screams that there is a creative, even artistic force behind the universe, and I believe that force is most certainly you. But I was created with a mind capable of astounding feats of reason (in fact it is my gift just as bears have claws and puppies have cuddliness) and there are moments among your record where you and I seem to simply disagree. Remember that time when you and Moses commanded the Israelites to pike the heads of the Midianites, scolded the army for leaving the women alive, then ordered them to take the virgins -– most likely preteens -– for themselves (Numbers 31:3-18)? I wasn’t on board for that. And earlier, when you put Pharaoh up as a patsy to show off your best tricks, one of which was killing firstborn children (Exodus 10:1-2), well you left me with a little head-scratching then too. But the real rub is the crucifixion. What parent expresses love to his naughty children by nailing the one who behaves to a tree?

In the end, it’s your world. Even if you are wrong, you wrote the rules and you pick the winners. But you created this brain in my head, and if the ultimate gesture of humanity as you created it is to deny the very rationality and morality that sets me apart from the gerbils in favor of blindly following you, then I’m afraid I cannot suit up this time. Give my regards to Walter Matthou, and if I’m wrong, then I truly pray you help me piece it together before the final horn blows.

PS – Thanks again for the springtime.

BREAKING NEWS: Teenagers Unpredictable!

2010-03-19T08:47:00.002-04:00

Out of 36 entries in my office NCAA bracket pool, the Coin-Flip Algorithm entry is in sole possession of second place after one day of games.

My fortunes now hinge on a player from UCSB finding magic shoes hanging from a power line.

Jury Cat, Penny Pursuers, Racist Rhyming, and Mind-Reading Policemen

2010-03-18T11:46:00.001-04:00

It's NCAA tournament time, so here's a few quick stories you can skim while Verne Lundquist struggles to pronounce "Mouphtaou Yarou" and "Othyus Jeffers".

A Boston couple's cat is summonsed for jury duty. The owners filed the appropriate paperwork for disqualification, but were denied exemption. Reminder: These are the people we're being asked to trust to run our health care system.

IRS agents (multiple) descend in person last week to collect past-due taxes from a Sacramento businessman. Tax amount: four cents. Penalty amount: $202.31. The taxee has an October letter from the IRS stating his taxes were already paid in full.

An East Sussex (UK) man was arrested, fingerprinted, and DNA-sampled after someone else in his office used the phrase "do-as-you-likey attitude" in an email to the district planning department. Sussex Police said the man was arrested on "suspicion of committing a racial or religious-aggravated offence" because "likey" rhymes with "pikey", which is a derogatory term for gypsies.

Think the US will never slip down this slope? Really? Really? Really? Really? Really:

Oregonian David Pyles woke up to two SWAT teams pointing guns at his home and demanding he surrender himself. Police admit he had committed no crime. But, Pyles had recently been placed on administrative leave from work, then legally purchased firearms (which he collects) with his recent income tax return.

Police say Pyles was "disgruntled", but did not bother to seek a warrant for either the arrest or the search of Pyles's home. Chillingly, Oregon State Police Sgt. Jeff Proulx proudly explained: "Instead of being reactive, we took a proactive approach."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I need a drink. Enjoy the games!

Accepting the Award on Behalf of the Internets Will be Ted Stevens

2010-03-16T10:28:00.000-04:00

According to those tea-sipping pitch-joggers over at the BBC, the Internet has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Finchy! The Nobel Peace Prize is an honor traditionally reserved for tempered humanitarian activists or elder global statesmen with a long history of working toward a more peaceful world!" Well, gentle reader, that attitude is so 2006.

It's 2010, and the Barack Obama GoDaddy.com™ Hope & Change© Warm Fuzzies Award® has a new reputation to uphold. Never mind those boring doctors treating rape victims in the Congo, imprisoned electricians championing Democracy in China, or mountaineers building secular schools in rural Pakistan. No one has even heard of those people. But everyone knows Perez Hilton and LOLcats.

In addition to the Internet, I say it's high time we nominate hugs. Or rainbows. Or the very concept of peace itself. Why not nominate a fictional amalgamation of Jesus, Buddha, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat, and long summer afternoons sippin' lemonade? No matter what, Nobel Committee, you've already been bested in the race to the bottom.

Enjoy your newfound irrelevance.

St Paddy's Day tip o' the hat to "Andrea" for the link.

It's Like Hoosiers Meets Dungeons and Dragons

2010-03-15T16:58:00.007-04:00

I like college basketball. I like it almost as much as I like math. So what could be more fun than devising a seed-weighted coin-flipping algorithm for completing my 2010 NCAA bracket?*

After a couple false starts using systems which refused to produce any first-round upsets, I enlisted my most nerd-tastic adviser** to help tweak the details. The result was a copacetic waste of nearly three hours, followed by the most maddening conclusion I could ever have feared.

Teams begin their matchups with 100 points each. I flip a coin*** according to the team's seed number -- thrice for a three-seed, eleven times for an eleven-seed, et cetera -- and for every flip that comes up tails, the team loses three points. To give the underdogs a fighting statistical chance, the final two flips are always worth ten points instead of three. We'll call that the Rock n' Jock Factor.

For example, Texas A&M and Utah State meet in Round One. The Aggies are a five-seed, which means they have five coin-tosses coming their way. Tosses one, two, and three all come up heads. No points deducted. Now, the final two tosses are worth ten each, so I take myself very seriously for those. Toss four lands on tails, and just like that, A&M is down to 90 points. The final toss goes back their way, giving them only one bad toss out of five.

Now Utah State is up, and it's time for the fighting-- Wait... Goddammit. Utah State is also the Aggies?! So the University of Utah are the Utes, and the Utah State Agricultural College are the Aggies? Utah's most famous resident made up a whole religion based on magic invisible golden plates that he got from angels, and the most creative his descendants can get is "Utes" and "Aggies"? Weak.

Anyway, now the Utah State Fighting Narwhals are up. As a twelve-seed, they get twelve coin-tosses. Seven out of the first ten come up tails, and at three points each, that puts USAC down 21 points. Of their final two tosses (the ten-pointers), one more comes up tails, pushing USAC down to a humiliating total of 69 points. Texas A&M wins; dozens of people briefly celebrate.

Everybody got it?

In Round One, a few underdogs managed to find a bone, most notably Minnesota over Xavier, Sam Houston over Baylor, and -- wait for it -- University of California Santa Barbara over Ohio State! I can only assume Evan Turner missed the game while saving a busload of orphans from falling into a crevasse.

Florida State makes a deep run, knocking out top-seeded Syracuse and Butler before succumbing to Kansas State in the Regional Finals. Villanova can't match up with the mighty mighty Gaels**** of Saint Mary's College, and Oklahoma State (now that's more like it) hands Kansas its surprise third loss of the year, setting up a Final Four of Duke(1), Kentucky(1), Oklahoma State(7), and Kansas State(2).

Kansas State can read a map, so they top Oklahoma, but Duke is not to be denied. After six consecutive coin-flip ties, they rip out Kentucky's heart once again. The Blue Devils then change the "K" in K-State to "Krzyzewski" before finally cutting down the nets in Indy. (Click to enlarge.)

*Nothing
**Commenter "Ryan", who at age nine submitted an alternative energy proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers
***A 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, since you asked
****Seriously? What ever happened to Bears, Wildcats, and Tigers?
*****HA! There was no fifth footnote!

"Excuse Me; Meryl Streep Could Play Batman and Be the 'Right Choice'."

2010-03-09T17:10:00.002-05:00

A friend recently emailed me a breathless lamentation concerning a random Twitter update by comedian / actor Dane Cook claiming that he was auditioning for the upcoming Captain America movie. The wildly unpopular rumor was confirmed, though it is still unclear if Cook was actually auditioning for the title role.

Fear not, gentle reader; I have no intention of writing yet another speculative piece on who will play Cap. Instead, I am writing in defense of acting.

There was a time in Hollywood when a role was created, then James Stewart played it. Need an earnest bumpkin raging against the machine? Call Jimmy. An alcoholic who cynically chooses to be pleasant rather than smart? Call Jimmy. Hard-nosed loner? Acrophobic cop? Pacifist lawyer assassin? Jimmy, Jimmy, and Jimmy. Casting wasn't an epochal event in those days because Jimmy Stewart & Co were all professional actors. These days we're lucky to get someone whose chops range from skinny wisecracking schlub to fat wisecracking schlub.

The art isn't dead. In the span of two decades, Dustin Hoffman went from Rain Man to Hook to Wag the Dog to Meet the Fockers. Tom Hanks has been believable as gay, stupid, and super-duper lonely. Hell, Robin Williams was Mork and Professor Keating.

Acting -- if it is indeed a craft at all -- is the craft of communicating inauthentic emotions authentically, and traditional comedians have lately proven themselves surprisingly adept at that particular skill. Just ask Bill Murray, Adam Sandler, Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, Monique, Jeff Daniels, or Hugh Laurie. If Dane Cook knocked the audition out of the park, I'd cast him as Harriet Tubman.

And remember, not that long ago somebody suggested this guy be cast as The Joker.

Coffee? Tea? Diet Ski?

2010-03-08T12:42:00.000-05:00

A quick timeline:

November 2008 - Social/foreign-policy liberals, angry at social/foreign-policy conservatives, elect Barack Obama as the 44th President. Optimism ensues.
February 2009 - Fiscal conservatives, angry at fiscal liberals, form the Tea Party Movement and help elect Scott Brown as a United States Senator. Optimism ensues.
April 2009 - Social/fiscal liberals, angry at all the anger, initiate the reliable Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo offense, normalize network-television references to testicles being put in people's mouths.
February 2010 - Social/fiscal/foreign-policy nihilists, angry at the anger over all the anger, form the Coffee Party. Their platform (not to be confused with kindergarten curriculum) includes hugs, sharing, and following the leader.

Clearly, grassroots political organizations are the new black, and for once I intend to finally be on the inclining end of the graph. Therefor, I am proud to announce the formation of the Scotticus Finch Diet Ski™ Party.

For those of you who have never been in a situation where it was necessary to purchase a beverage from a service station out of a foam bait cooler labeled "POP - 50¢", Ski is like Mountain Dew infused with Ted Nugent's sweat. In 2005, Diet Ski changed its slogan from "Ain't Y'all Thirsty?" to "Sip it with Supper!", and in 2008 they celebrated the first confirmed purchase of Ski by a black person. But I digress.

There are three major planks of the Diet Ski Party platform. First, we demand that the Federal Government finally take responsibility for forcing NBC to cancel Bonanza after a mere 14 years. (And just when Little Joe was beginning to get into his stride as a character!) Second (as envisioned by blogger Pro Libertate), we will create a (budget-less) Office of Skepticism headed by James Randi, whose only responsibility will be to shame superfluous governmental agencies into voluntarily disbanding. Lastly: Congressional term limits, measured in "hours remaining" and continuously displayed on an LED lapel tag.

The symbolism is appropriate. The Diet Ski Party, like Diet Ski itself, is just another knock-off of the two major brands that are, themselves, practically identical. Despite the fact that it's a cheap imitation of a branch of a branch of a branch of a major brand, thousands of yokels would inevitably become Diet Ski Party fans, create Diet Ski Party Facebook groups, organize Diet Ski Party marches, and blog endlessly about the tragic underexposure-treatment the Diet Ski Party is getting from Big Media, which is of course snugly in the pocket of every party except the Diet Ski Party. The point is that Internet connectivity and 24-hour news cycles lend a misleading implication of ubiquity to even the silliest of communities. Some of us have learned that "revolutions" most often... aren't.

I appreciate anything that puts a bee in the bonnet of either major party, but to affect real change it's going to take something with a lot more kick than tea.

Leading Saudi Scientists Say Earth "Probably Less Flat" than Once Believed, Possibly Toroidal

2010-03-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Check out this interesting translation from a 16th-Century Babylonian manuscript. The ancient text chronicles the journey of a Lebanese fortuneteller named Ali Sibat, who was something of a celebrity in his day:

[W]hile on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was spotted by religious police in the holy city of Medina. Their job it is to battle vice and uphold virtue in the ultraconservative kingdom. So they arrested Sibat in his room at the Medina Hotel on charges of sorcery.

...Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft.

Sibat’s fate is common in Saudi Arabia.

Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft.

Wait a tick. Did that last line say Falih has been on death row since 2006? As in Anno Domini?

Indeed it did. Because -- believe it or not -- the whole passage is actually from a 2009 Los Angeles Times piece about contemporary human beings and a 21st-Century state that still murders its citizens on suspicion of devilry. So what constitutes evidence of buddying up to Beelzebub? Bilingualism, apparently:

Take the case of Muhammad Burhan, who carried a phone booklet with writings in the Tigrinya alphabet from his native Eritrea. Perhaps it was his way of protecting himself against the evil forces out there. Maybe it was his lucky charm for a little extra success in his love life or in business.

But the booklet convinced Saudi authorities that Burhan was a black magician and charged him with "charlatanry," for which he was lashed 300 times and sentenced to 20 months behind bars. He was then deported after having served more than double the prison term he was sentenced to, according to Human Rights Watch.

As I've pointed out before, Saudi Arabia is still considered among the least-free places on Earth. Evidently, their goal is to move up that list, rather than off of it.

Munich Motel Sign: "Heisenberg Might Have Slept Here"

2010-03-05T11:22:00.002-05:00

Any closeted fan of junky extreme TV science like SpikeTV's Deadliest Warrior (Tonight: who would win in a real-life fight between a 1st-Century Gallic Warrior and a tweeked Aerosmith roadie with nunchucks?!?) or ESPN's Sport Science (As this graph shows, the centripetal force of LeBron's dunk could literally kill a vampire!) will appreciate this cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Click to enlarge.):

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 2

2010-03-03T14:02:00.008-05:00

[Catch up with Volume 1 here.]

Election finance is a minefield. My campaign fund-raising sources consisted entirely of people who had once tussled my hair and/or used their thumb to wipe chocolate from my face, and I still narrowly escaped a $5000 fine for late paperwork -- the third consecutive required pre-primary finance report showing that I still had an operating budget of $0 for the primary election in which I had no opponent.

So I welcomed the navigational assistance of a sitting City Councilman, even after it became abundantly clear that he was certifiably insane.

Councilman Jimbo Faile* was utterly convinced of two things: I was capable of unseating the incumbent in District 14, and the gays were out to get him.

Diabolical homosexuals, it seemed, had been secretly plotting against Faile for most of his public life, and like some sort of bizarro pink Illuminati, their incognito influence was virtually boundless. Even our state's twice-married, Republican United States Senator was an undercover homosexual operative with dastardly designs, Faile confided to me during our first conversation ever. He had this information on good authority, of course.

After deftly avoiding any implication of agreement with Faile, yet simultaneously not laughing my ass off (Maybe I was built for politics after all...), we got down to the business at hand: How does a first-time candidate with no money and no connections topple a three-term incumbent with a 3-to-1 party-registration advantage in the district and a husband who works for the Mayor?

I'll tell you how: Fat jokes.

My nemesis, you see, tipped the scales at about 21 stone 6, and Faile's plan for me to drown this manatee involved a busy intersection, an unflattering picture, and a dusty cultural reference to a 1970s puppet show.

"I had this idea last election, and the guy wouldn't do it. But I'm telling you, it would work!" Faile told me. He spoke in insistent whispers, as if the whiffleball kit in the corner of his basement home-office could be selling his secrets to the Chinese. "There's this picture of her on the phone, and she looks even fatter than usual. If you could take that picture and photo-shop it--" He warily enunciated the word as if it were a process which conceivably involved blood moss and eye of newt. "--You photo-shop in a picture of Kermit the Frog saying 'I'm sorry Ms Piggy, I can't vote for you. I'm voting for Scotticus Finch!' You put that on a billboard and you'd win in a landslide!"

After an initial period of stunned paralysis, I gathered my sense of humor and began looking around for Allen Funt, or at least Ashton Kutcher. Unfortunately, it was just me, Faile, and those communist whiffleball bats. He wasn't kidding.

Maybe the "No Fat Chicks" tactic is underrated; I did lose the election, after all. But somehow I couldn't bring myself to hinge my first campaign on a Wayans Brothers routine. And anyway, I've heard Jim Henson Company's a real jerk about usage rights. I also have it on good authority that Kermit was secretly gay.

*Names and locations have been changed to protect my supersecret identity.

A is A

2010-03-02T12:55:00.002-05:00

Dear Radley Balko,

First off: huge fan. In a world of stenographers, you remain a journalist; and without journalists, the Republic falls.

Having said that, I take issue with the issue you've taken over the use of the word "looting" in the aftermath of Chile's massive earthquake Saturday. You say, instead, these people are simply "surviving", as long as what they purloin consists of food, water, and clothing. Lifting iPods would be another story, you concede.

Two points of contention, one semantic and one ethical: First, whether the storefront is open, vacant, abandoned, or not, that storefront and the goods within -- Evian and iPods alike -- have a rightful owner. I would hope that the owner gives his absentee blessing to those who steal his property as an alternative to dying -- and shame on him if he does not -- but that decision is his. If he were standing there, present and defiant, as people disregarded his rights and confiscated his goods, what else would be dismissed as "survival"? Trespassing? Assault? Murder? And if he were to defend himself with lethal force, which one then is the "survivor"?

Which brings me to the semantics. A lie is a lie, even if it eases someone's pain. Speeding, in a legal sense, is still speeding even if you're trying to escape a pursuing Decepticon. How individuals (and the state) choose to react to others' actions can -- and should -- vary based on circumstances, but to redefine those actions as not only moral, but also beyond reproach is a step too far, especially in such a broad sense where individual motives are indiscernible.

I would steal to keep from starving. It doesn't make me less of a thief.

(Image via NY Daily News.)

Brother-in-Law Links™

2010-03-01T12:14:00.001-05:00

Canada is now the world's number-one importer of American-style paranoia.
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... OK, frankly, it's a dick.
Seven-year-old child looks on as police officers forcibly enter home, fire seven rounds into his two dogs (including a corgi), and confiscate a misdemeanor amount of pot from Mom and Dad. Now guess which characters in this story are charged with child endangerment?
Nothing more after the link, but check out this survey from a 1970 issue of Detective Comics:

If Only We Could Identify the Addictive Chemical Which Makes Me Crave it Fortnightly

2010-03-01T10:55:00.001-05:00

My position as a massively influential member of the media is not a mantle I bear lightly. With a keystroke, I could release the obsequious ScotticusFinch horde and likely topple even the most stubborn of institutions, yet I am tempered by perspective. No failing bank, no Haitian earthquake, and no case of kitsch larceny had yet been dire enough for me to fully wield the awesome power of my pulpit.

But that threshold has been breached. Friends, there is a chicken-wing shortage in America.

According to USA Today, skyrocketing demand for the ambrosial avian appendages fueled a 39% increase in the wholesale price of wings over last year.

The primary factor driving up wing prices is the growing number of restaurants, including many national chains, that are adding wings to their offerings, says Richard Lobb, spokesman for the Washington-based chicken industry trade group the National Chicken Council.

(On a side note, the National Chicken Council once mistakenly booked the same convention space as the American Egg Board, and the two groups spent six weeks trying to decide who should go first.)

Lobb says it's not a matter of simply raising more chickens. The nation's chicken producers turned out 9 billion birds in 2009, he says. Other than for wings, the recession has slowed demand, and the overall price for chicken has been soft. "As expensive as wings are, they cannot carry the entire bird," he says.

How true, both ornithologically and metaphorically. The problem is vexing. While I'm pheasantly pleased (Man, I'm on a roll!) to be able to grab a box of mediocre wings from every Rally's, Little Caesars, and KFC, I also have to face the reality that 20¢ Wing Night at Buffalo Wild Wings is as likely to make a comeback as Rod Blagojevich.

Ken Moran, owner of Rochester, NY's "Jeremiah's Tavern", remembers the halcyon days of cheap chicken:

"Chicken wings once were so cheap. ...It was an attempt to use all the parts of the bird. Now it's reversed. They've gotten pretty crazy in terms of popularity."

Most of you have probably already noticed the end-around that restaurants have been running:

To offset wing prices, numerous restaurants are adding "boneless chicken wings" made of breast meat, he says.

"The boneless wing is a much higher profit margin and it also attracts a lot more people who don't care to eat things on bones," he says.

"Boneless wings". Ever heard a boat salesman say he has a great deal on "wheel-less cars", or a paper company selling reams of "wordless books"? Still, if it lowers the price of my delicious dark-meat treats (Can I say that?), then KFC can call its spicy breast chunks whatever it wants. Until they start taxing napkins, I'll be at the bar.

(See the unparalleled scene that inspired the headline here.)

At One Point in Time, in Our Very Own Universe, Kanye West Did Something that Wasn't Totally Douche-y

2010-02-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

Alex Leo at the Huffington Post interviewed "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about their thirteen years of being the funniest, most non-partisan satirists in America.

When asked about the varying perceptions about the show being either "conservative" or "liberal" in its messages, Parker responds:

"I look at it like this," Trey added. "I have a cat, I love my cat and it's like someone coming in and saying, 'Hey, is that cat a Republican or a Democrat?' He's my f---ing cat, leave him alone."

Over the years, Parker and Stone have been particularly aggressive (and most hilarious) when it comes to their jabs at the Hollywood community, but that focus has created a false perception in come circles that the duo fancy themselves as GOP-ers. Absolutely untrue, they say:

"Ripping on Republicans is not that fun for us only because everyone else does it," Matt explained. "It's so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it..."

..."There's something uniquely aggravating about the smugness of liberal Hollywood," Matt said. "You have to laugh at Alec Baldwin when he gets political. You have to. He is an amazing actor, he may even be a great guy, but that shit is funny. Sean Penn getting on TV on CNN and talking about politics, Sean Penn running around Katrina and Haiti that is funny. That's all. That's f---ing funny. And we're going to make fun of you, Sean Penn."

Leo then asked which celebrity had the "craziest reaction out of any they mocked".

"Well the craziest was probably Kanye [West] last year. We thought we would be more like 'Holy shit should I get a body guard? Should I get a gun?' and instead the next day he wrote in all caps 'YEAH YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT. I'M SORRY,'" Matt said in wonder.

"We were like 'Dude, what?' and for the first time it made us feel bad. If Sean Penn is like, 'Hey what do they think they're doing,'" Trey said in a voice halfway between Cartman and Penn, "We're just like, 'Hey dude, f--k you.' But for someone to actually say, 'Yeah it really hurt my feelings and I really should look at myself,' it's kind of like punching the kid and then he just sits there and cries."

Don't beat yourself up too much, fellas. If there's ever been a kid who desperately needs a punch to the gut, it's Kanye. A guide to the episode here.

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 1

2010-02-25T16:00:00.006-05:00

Years ago, I ran for City Council in my hometown. There was no primary challenger, so had I won the election, I would have represented roughly 35,000 constituents. [SPOILER ALERT] I lost. But before the last of the dimpled chads had even been scrutinized, thousands upon thousands of you began filling my inbox, begging me to recount my tales from the campaign trail.^{[citation needed]}

That din of adulation can no longer be ignored.

With an operating budget that would dwarf the average garage sale, my most effective commodity was shoe-leather, which is unfortunate because I am naturally very lazy. Plus, I don't particularly like people. One example why:

On a sunny Wednesday evening in October, I eked a hesitating path toward a beige-ish one-story on a dead-end street -- one more of a hundred houses I'd approached since five o'clock. An elaborate zigzag of a homemade redwood wheelchair ramp consumed the grassless front yard on its way to an unhinged aluminum screen door, and the roof over the front stoop sloped under the weight of a large dead tree limb that certainly hadn't dropped there recently. Standing there in the yard, propped against one corner of the ramp, a messy-looking fellow dragged deeply from a filterless cigarette, then stared daggers into me as he exhaled through his nose like an angry cartoon bull.

"Evenin'," I said, in my most condescending faux-folksy drawl.

Smoking Bull tugged his lips in over his dentureless gums, then spit heartily onto his own shoe. "Shit," he said, before scraping at the spot with the sole of his other foot. The shift in weight distribution wrecked his entire world, evidently, since he immediately flailed his arms and grabbed at the railing to keep from falling backward. By the time he'd re-situated and located my face again, I had a pretty good idea of just how drunk he was.

"I'm running for the City Council this year," I plowed on despite the fact that his entire head had acquired a slow sway, and one eyebrow seemed to be stuck in the 'surprised' position, "and I'd like to know if you've decided who you're going to vote for." (Insert thousand-watt insincere smile here.)

"She's a sonuvabitch...," Bull managed. Despite the odd gender confusion, I assumed he was talking about the incumbent, which was promising for me. "She voted for the... the smoking bans."

"That's true. Now if I'm elected, one of the things I'd like to--"

"She passed the smoking bans and we didn't get trash picked up like... like she promised." Bull drew his sleeve mightily across his nose, then gestured with his cigarette. At this point I could no longer determine if he knew I was still there. "Branches from... branches from the... sat out on the curb for a month."

"You mean after the big storm last summer?" I asked, but I might as well have invited the wheelchair ramp to prom. Bull -- more Wild Turkey than man -- was having a conversation to which no other human being had been invited.

"And I called... Mom called and all she... She didn't even return the call." After two or three attempts, Bull's cigarette found his lips. Drawing again, his limbs seemed to settle a bit around him as each toxin fought for dominance.

I sensed my opportunity, and pounced. "So then I guess I can count on your vote in November?" (And yes, the question feels just as desperate the thousandth time as it did the first.)

Bull seemed to notice me again. Then, somewhere in his mind, swizzled as it was with sour mash and nicotine, he dug deep and drew upon a faith more stalwart than any religion: party loyalty.

"I'm voting for her... same as I did the last two times," he told me. "She's the Democrat."

And that was that.

Part-Time Athletes of the Northern Hemisphere, Unite!

2010-02-22T10:56:00.005-05:00

[UPDATE added below]

The casual observer might have thought that everything that can be done while skiing is already an Olympic sport. Fast skiing, slow skiing, drunken skiing, weird Princess-Toadstool-from-Super-Mario-Bros-2 levitation-trick skiing, "Look-Ma!" skiing, Nordic thug life skiing -- it's all there. But somehow, somewhere between "What if we shoot rifles on skis?!" and "What if we ski on flat terrain for hours?!", no one ever thought -- until Vancouver 2010 -- "What if we race?"

And thus Ski Cross was born.

Skicross [sic?] pits four racers through a course of banked turns and washboard jumps that lends itself to close contact.

"That gives you eight poles, 12 edges, and guys are racing down a course with huge jumps up to 100 feet through the air," said Errol Kerr, a New Yorker who competed for Jamaica.

Granted, those three numbers that Kerr emphatically tossed out mean nothing to me, but I've never been anywhere with eight poles and not enjoyed myself. (See what I did there?)

Honestly, I find almost nothing about the games compelling, but the top-notch (and never-ending) network coverage with all our favorite faces could make a darning convention seem interesting, so I've watched more of these Olympics than I could possibly explain away with a just-out-of-reach remote. It's like Tool Academy is suddenly being hosted by President Clinton, or Bruce Willis is starring in a Kevin Smith "film".

It also doesn't hurt that the US is making a surprisingly good showing, or that our National Snow Bunny reminds us that Michael Phelps looked like a homeless meth addict from the neck up. Now if only we could go back to the days when the Olympic Games provided a stage for a proxy war in place of soldiers on the ground. Unfortunately, I don't see the Afghan Olympic Team giving us a Miracle on Ice opportunity any time soon.

UPDATE: In light of the hoopla surrounding the US ice-hockey team's win over Canada yesterday, I find it necessary to quote a Facebook status update:

"Miracle on Ice 1980" is to "US v CAN 2010" as "Gandalf" is to "Judge Harry T Stone".

"Fireflies" by Owl City is a Terrible, Terrible, Terrible Song

2010-02-16T10:53:00.003-05:00

There's a lot of downtime as a super-powered crimefighter. To help ease the boredom of sitting around in a secret underground lair waiting for evil to rear its head, I had satellite radio installed, and the team settled democratically on the "Top-40 Hits" station.

Now, at least four times a day, I am subjected to "Fireflies" by Owl City. To complement the grating, ubiquitous robot voice that's now overused by everyone from Cher to Ke$ha to T-Pain, "Fireflies" employs some of the most pedantic, saccharine lyrics since Raffi rowed a boat. Masticate, if you dare:

You would not believe your eyes
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems

[The song breaks for a moment here to allow the listener to empty his vomit bucket and replace the liner.]

'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
As they tried to teach me how to dance

A foxtrot above my head
A sock hop beneath my bed
A disco ball is just hanging by a thread

Sheesh. Singer / "songwriter" Adam Young says he was "inspired" to "write" the "lyrics" while camping. He saw a bunch of bugs and "After that night, it got me thinking", he said. So a swarm of bugs got you thinking about writing a song about a swarm of bugs? That's deep, man.

As a public service, I offer the following palate-cleanser:

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth"

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

From Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". What are your favorite / least-favorite lyrics? Share with the class in the comments section.

I Don't Think All "People" Are Idiots, But All "Homo Sapiens" Are

2010-02-12T11:18:00.004-05:00

Thankfully, President Obama is attempting to follow through on his 2008 campaign promise to repeal the ridiculous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy regarding gays serving in the US military.

Despite the fact that DADT is a Bill Clinton political brainchild from the go-along-to-get-along days of the early 1990s, the push to scrap it has mostly come from the political left, whose insistence that all homosexuals aren't necessarily shaved Chupacabra brings some sanity to one of America's fiercest debates.

Or at least that's what I thought. Turns out, though, that liberals are just as irrational as conservatives when it comes to Adam and Steve sharing a foxhole. Look upon these poll numbers and weep:

79% of Democrats support allowing gay men and women to serve openly.
43% of Democrats support allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

That is not a typo. I checked.

Sixty years after the Mattachine Society, forty-one years after the Stonewall Inn raid, thirty-three years after Anita Bryant, and seven years after Lawrence v Texas, there is a thirty-six percentage-point difference in what employment liberals think "homosexuals" should be allowed to pursue versus "gays".

Whence comes the discrepancy? We can speculate that the term "gay" elicits a much friendlier (literally) image than the taxonomic "homosexual", but doing so insinuates such an immense level of epidemic puerility that even my epic misanthropy won't abide it. In order to prevent the impending voluntary collision between my head and the nearest brick wall, I'm going with "transcription error" and calling it a day.

Shape up, folks. If anyone wants to start his own army that won't allow gays, or blacks, or Jews, or even homosexuals (!) to serve, then I'll help him pick out snazzy uniforms. The right to set up whatever backward, bigoted clubhouse that revs your engine is inviolate, but the United States Armed Forces -- a public institution -- has no more right to bar qualified homosexuals than they have to bar Catholics or Jersey Shore fans.

And that, Alanis, is Irony

2010-02-08T16:53:00.002-05:00

I didn't watch the Super Bowl. I have a rare genetic aversion to post-season NFL games called "being a Kansas City Chiefs fan". Plus, there are precious few diversions in life to which I'm willing to commit four straight hours, and staring at a glowing box isn't one of them.

Thankfully, the unshaved girl-power dames over at Jezebel had nothing better to do. Watch with glee as they complain about commercials that portray women as complainers.

A couple choice quotes ([sic]s abound):

Amazing how there is no personal responsibility from the male characters in these commercials "being told what to do" maybe if men paid rapt attention when we were speaking or showed some leadership as the men of the house they wouldn't have to be marketed to as such passive aggressive, irresponsible babies.

And:

Yeah, asshole. You deserve a big, gas-sucking car for DOING SHIT YOU SHOULD ALREADY BE DOING. It's called being a grow up! You think women don't have endless boring work meetings or that maybe birthing that kid was super fun?

Hat tip to the tireless SugarFree.

Brother-in-Law Links™

2010-02-04T17:00:00.007-05:00

Trippy theories on some classic films, and one on... Radio Flyer?
I've always preferred the term "'That Guy' Pics" to "Photobombs", but I still tip my hat to the special appearance by Osama bin Laden.
You think the guy sitting alone at the corner table of the regular strip club is creepy? Just wait 'til you see the winners at the Star Wars-themed strip club.
Farmer has sex with a horse while his buddy records it, then dies from massive internal injuries. Just another day in WAVE Country.

Hat tip to Darrell for marrying my sister.

Will Google Actually Deliver my Earnings in Canvas Bags Stamped with Dollar Signs?

2010-02-04T09:30:00.006-05:00

[UPDATE added below]

Curiosity has overcome me. Today I signed up for Google's AdSense program, which will post ads on ScotticusFinch based on content. I simply must know what Google's automated server squirrels will come up with.

Will my general malaise trigger ads for posh Miami depression-treatment clinics? Will a foaming conniption about the Deflector-in-Chief lead to a pitch for Dreams from My Father? Or will every day simply be a rotating parade of ads for Guatemalan Viagra, low-interest ARMs, and mail-order brides? Stay tuned.

I'm also instructed not to actively encourage you to click on the ads (which should start appearing in about 48 hours). So don't. Or whatever. It's not like I pay my interns anyway.

UPDATE: Day one -- all lawyer ads. Could Google be foreshadowing a police confrontation in my future?

How to Win Friends and Influence Peasants

2010-02-02T11:50:00.006-05:00

Check out this fascinating collection of North Korean propaganda art.

Seldom seen by the outside world, North Korea's propaganda art colors the cities and countryside with vibrant images of brave soldiers, happy and well-fed peasants, and a heroic and compassionate leader.

You think Coca-Cola ads get inside your head? Imagine living every day within a totalitarian state ruled by a fighter-plane-flyin', 38-under-par-golfin', opera-writin' despot.

The Korean text reads: "Do not forget the US imperialist wolves!"

Copenhagen Special: Two Nights for the Price of Six

2010-01-26T11:42:00.005-05:00

CBS News has a story on the just-released Congressional Expense Report (pdf) from the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark that illustrates the clueless, obtuse attitude among our very own ruling class.

First, the costs:

For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day...

Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000.

Flights weren't cheap, either. Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.

I know, I know. Stop the presses; government is wasting money. But look at the reactions to reporters' questions about the excessive expenditures:

Last week, we asked [Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.,] about the $2,200-a-day bill for room and food.

"I can't believe that," Rep. Waxman said. "I can't believe it, but I don't know."

Waxman thinks CBS News is making shit up again, I suppose, despite the fact that his name is right there on the report. And how about House Speaker and stalwart swamp-drainer Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.:

The group expense report was filed by [Pelosi]. She wouldn't talk about it when our producer tried to ask.

The "Run away!" approach. Nice. I'll try that tack next time Mrs Finch asks me about fishy charges on the MasterCard. But, in fairness, it's not as if our representatives wanted to pay such high prices:

Pelosi's office did offer an explanation for the high room charges. Those who stayed just two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five-star Marriott. One staffer said they strongly objected to no avail.

See? They strongly objected. So, in summation, the folks we sent -- at a cost of more than a million dollars -- to negotiate a global climate treaty between 194 nations was hoodwinked and pig-ironed by the cast of Fawlty Towers.

Well done, America.

This is Madness!

2010-01-22T16:39:00.004-05:00

Many before me had the idea, but this was my Friday art project:

If it's still there on my way out today, I may have to swipe it for casa de Finch.

Decimating Diversity

2010-01-19T16:08:00.009-05:00

As a member of a cushy ethno-socioeconomic majority, my capacity to empathize with the deep, victorious feeling of pride that Barack Obama's election must have elicited among many blacks is limited. Given the tumultuous year that followed, though, how is this possible:

Over the time period covered by the poll, Obama's approval is down among Republicans (unsurprisingly) by 24 percentage points. Among Independents, his approval is down 18 points. Among young people: down 13. The elderly, females, Midwesterners, college graduates, married people -- Obama's approval is down at least 16 percentage points in each group. In fact, the President's approval rating is down in every single category Gallup looked at, including liberals and Democrats.

Except among blacks. Though it is within the poll's margin of error, Obama's approval actually increased among blacks between February and November, maintaining an average of 93% approval for the year.

In the entire scope of politics, religion, philosophy -- or toothpaste preference for that matter -- where would anyone expect concurrence exceeding nine out of ten? In a separate poll about abortion by the same polling company, only 52% of respondents categorized themselves as "pro-life" when the question was asked exclusively to Catholics. To put it in another context, the percentage of blacks who disapprove of Obama as President is identical to the percentage of people who ranked car salesmen as "very high/high" in honesty and ethics, and the same percentage of self-identified Christians who say they don't believe in God.

A generations-long (and continuing) struggle for equal opportunity has got to make it difficult to admit you backed a turkey, but blindly supporting a President because he looks like you is every bit as dangerous as blindly opposing him just because he doesn't. Not all of Obama's support is blind, obviously, but approval approaching unanimity in one group simultaneous with near-universal disappointment outside that group displays a disturbing lack of ideological diversity.

The Man Who Would be Blog King

2010-01-15T13:08:00.004-05:00

Jim Treacher (né Sean Medlock) has created my new favoritest blog on the Internets. The DC Trawler is Treacher's blog within Tucker Carlson's new breaking-news and analysis site, The Daily Caller, which was itself admittedly conceived as a right-libertarian version of The Huffington Post. (Got all that?)

Treacher's posts read like some of the very best of Dave Barry over the years, updated with Internet-age (read: delightfully obscure) cultural references and vicious self-deprecation.

From Thursday's post:

[Reason Magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch] was nice enough to invite me to a Reason event or get-together or whatever the smart people call it. It was for a very important book, the title of which I did not think to ask. I went and had a couple of beers and met some people. ...

Also, their offices look like CTU.

I guess that’s all I had on that one. Quite a build-up for nothing. Well, I’ve already typed this out, so I might as well post it. I really have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m glad the fine folks at Reason are doing what they’re doing: giving me free beer. I did tip the bartender a buck a beer, because I’m not some sort of fascist.

The team of semi-talented ScotticusFinch interns added The DC Trawler to the blog list in the left sidebar, so check it out from time to time.

"Downhill" Policing Trend in the UK

2010-01-15T08:22:00.008-05:00

The sarcasm is on the shelf. The snark is switched to "off". This is good policing:

Some British bobbies have been reprimanded after they used their riot shields as makeshift sleds during the country’s cold snap.

A passer-by filmed the bobbies goofing around on a snowy hill in Oxford and posted the clip on YouTube. It shows a policeman barreling downhill while another shouts, “Whatever happens, keep smiling!”

Rick Latham, who filmed the scene on Tuesday, said he was pleasantly surprised by the officers’ actions. He thought they were going to scold him for trying to slide down the hill in a kayak.

Still don't believe I'm being earnest in my praise? I am. Consider the American plainclothes officer who recently felt it necessary to pull out his gun in response to a snowball fight*, and tell me which kind of officer would make you feel safer in your neighborhood.

Violent crime rates are way down, and policework is no longer triage. Effective police must be part of the communities they serve, and it wouldn't hurt to be trusted, respected, and liked by their fellow citizens. (A good start would be to stop bragging about how much they enjoy beating people up.) There is something undeniably heartening about a policeman taking five minutes to have some fun with a member of his community, especially when the tool he uses is the same one designed to facilitate domestic warfare. It is strikingly reminiscent of Flower Power, even if it was entirely unintentional.

Sure, this isn't Norman Rockwell's America. But it also isn't J Edgar Hoover's. Cheers to the Thames Valley Police.

Watch the bobsledding bobbies here.

*The snowball fight participants were punks itching for a fight, which is why I didn't blog in their defense.

In Communist Russia, TSA Plays with You!

2010-01-14T10:54:00.007-05:00

Presenting the Playmobil Security Checkpoint:As Christmas 2009 came and went, I often lamented the fact that I couldn't find an appropriate toy to help me illustrate the realities of the police state to baby Wyatt. Granted, the happy little Playmobil traveler is unable to remove his shoes, open his bag, or relinquish his fingernail clippers -- which is misleading -- but the basics are covered.

Assuming the tiny plastic globetrotter didn't refuse to disclose his salary, attempt to carry on boomerangs, request to actually watch the screener rifle through his belongings, dare to carry cash, or consort with suspicious eight-year-olds, he will make his flight just fine.

Rumor has it a Playmobil S.W.A.T. No-Knock Raid playset is in the works, complete with a terrorized old woman, dead dogs, and a County Executive who thinks everyone involved deserves a pat on the back.

Taser Wednesday™ Continues

2009-12-30T10:44:00.006-05:00

[UPDATE added below]

And now for the good news.

A federal appeals court this week ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man he Tasered during a traffic stop. The decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use the weapons and would force some law enforcement agencies throughout the state -- and presumably the nation -- to tighten their policies governing Taser use, experts said.

Michael Gennaco, an expert in police conduct issues who has conducted internal reviews of Taser use for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and other agencies, said the ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibits officers from deploying Tasers in a host of scenarios and largely limits their use to situations in which a person poses an obvious danger.

As for the immediate trickle-down:

[Orange County Sheriff's Department s]pokesman John McDonald said the department's policy allows officers to fire Tasers at people who try to flee an encounter with police or who refuse, for example, to comply with an officer's order to lie down during an arrest. Those scenarios appear to be prohibited under the court's ruling.

Read the whole ruling here (pdf).

UPDATE: Reason Online wants to be just like me when they grow up.

...And, um, He's Coming Right For Us Too!

2009-12-30T10:03:00.003-05:00

Ah, Chicago. There's two things you do better than anyone: hot dogs, and Taserin' folks in the midst of a diabetic seizure.

Prospero Lassi says he suffered a diabetes-induced seizure at home on April 9. His roommate called 911, and police from LaGrange Park and Brookfield responded, with EMTs from LaGrange Park.

Lassi says his roommate explained to police that he was having a diabetic seizure. Lassi "was not alert and could not move his body."

When the EMTs asked the cops to help them move Lassi from where he was lying on the floor, Lassi says, one of his "arms flailed during his diabetes-induced seizure, striking one of the LaGrange and Brookfield defendants. At no time did Mr. Lassi intentionally strike or offensively touch any of the LaGrange or Brookfield defendants."

Lassi says LaGrange Park Officer Darren Pedota responded by Tasering him 11 times, for nearly a minute, as he lay helpless. [italics added]

The story is exclusively drawn from Lassi's lawsuit, so we do not know the defendants' version of the events. Also no word yet if Lassi exacerbated the situation by refusing to take a shower before bedtime.

She's Coming Right For Us!

2009-12-30T08:14:00.008-05:00

[UPDATE added below]

Anyone who's seen Poltergeist, The Exorcist, or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants knows how terrifying little girls can be. Your humble correspondent grew up with two of them, and if Santa Claus had seen fit to deliver a Tiny Taser in 1985 rather than yet another Husky Helper toy, the Finch household would have been a very different place indeed.

Apparently Arkansas police officer Dustin Bradshaw shares our hypothetical six-year-old's mentality:

When [Bradshaw] arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming, and resisting as her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed.

"Her mother told me to take her if I needed to," the officer wrote.

The child was "violently kicking and verbally combative" when he tried to take her into custody and she kicked him in the groin.

He then delivered "a very brief drive stun to her back," the report said.

Bradshaw's boss, under pressure from the Mayor and the media, eventually suspended Bradshaw with pay (a.k.a. "vacation"), but not for Tasering the girl. The reprimand was for failing to videotape the encounter per department policy. Police Chief Jim Noggle actually defended the action itself as a benevolent alternative to breaking the girl's bones:

"We didn't use the Taser to punish the child - just to bring the child under control so she wouldn't hurt herself or somebody else," Mr Noggle said.

Had the officer tried to forcefully put the girl in handcuffs, he could have accidentally broken her arm or leg, Mr Noggle said.

And golly, it's not like he killed her or anything. The wholly incompetent mother is not off the hook, by the way, but had she electrocuted her ten-year-old for acting like a ten-year-old, she would be the one in jail.

Finally, just in case anyone is thinking "what's done is done"; Noggle also says the girl will face disorderly conduct charges. Stay classy, Arkansas.

UPDATE: Officer Bradshaw has been fired for alleged repeated failure to adhere to the department policy regarding the use of video cameras.

Your Kung Fu is No Match for My Scotty Karate

2009-12-28T15:31:00.005-05:00

Drawn almost exclusively by its name, I recently tried a four-pack of Dark Horse Scotty Karate Scotch Ale. Expectations were high, especially considering the brew had to be imported by hand from the dreary plains of central Indiana (a wonderful birthday gift from my wonderful baby sister).

The wee heavy did not disappoint, and I was inspired to sing its praises on the Internets. At the same time, I did not want to cause Ted Stevens's email to be delayed, so first I looked to see if there was already a good review posted elsewhere.

There was:

...When it comes to flavor, Scotty Karate delivers in a major way. *This* is what I expected this big American-brewed Scotch ale to taste like. With a bigger body, we could be looking at greatness. Although there isn't an abundance of barrel-aged character, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Dark Horse put SKSA in bourbon barrels for at least a brief time.

Flavors include chocolate, golden toffee, butterscotch, sugared pecans, medium-dark fruit, and a tobacco, tea, and hop leaf bitterness that concludes each mouthful with a gradually tightening, focused flourish. It may be nothing more than an overactive imagination, but a phenolic peaty tanginess and a puff of smoke are present as well.

...I don't drink beer because of the way it looks or smells. I drink beer because of the way it tastes. Scotty Karate Scotch Ale is the real deal and should be sought out by anyone who loves a good wee heavy...

My own review would have relied heavily on phrases like "hells yeah!" and "way more beer-y", so muchas gracias to BuckeyeNation. Now venture forth, ScotticusFinch minions, and consume.

Wholesale Healthcare (and Eunuchs)

2009-12-28T09:28:00.004-05:00

Over at Hit & Run, reliable commenter P Brooks sums up Obamacare quite well:

And- goddammit!- if you make it mandatory for everyone, and prohibit risk-based pricing, it's not actually "insurance" anymore. It's a "buyers' club" for medical services.

Obviously, a buyers' club is great if you're an unemployed 50-year-old base-jumping, gator-wrestling smoker with diabetes and chronic dry eye; not so much if you're a healthy, risk-averse person forced to participate.

That's all I've got. Celebrating the birthday of the non-denominational Holiday Infant has evidently quelled my indignation.

If you absolutely must have something else today, hop across the virtual pond and read about Pakistani eunuchs winning the right to be recognized as a distinct third gender.

Are You Sure Officer O'Malley Was the One Who Broke Your Camera?

2009-12-14T12:15:00.004-05:00

The growing national frustration with municipal police departments is not couched in a belief that all -- or even most -- officers act inappropriately. Rather, the frustration stems from the apparent unwillingness among police departments to recognize, condemn, and respond to misconduct when it arises.

In fact, police departments continue to innovate ways to make accountability more chimeric. Consider Chicago's new policy threatening criminal charges against people whose official claims of police misconduct are found to be without merit. While most people agree it would be satisfying to slap a fine on the Richard Heenes of the world, we have to remember exactly who's guarding the henhouse here:

A 2008 study by University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers between 2002 and 2004. That's more than any city in the country, and proportionally it's 40 percent above the national average. Of those 10,000 complaints, just 19 resulted in significant disciplinary action [suspension of a week or more]. In 85 percent of the cases, the complaint was dismissed without even interviewing the accused officer.

Furthermore, the 19-in-10,000 statistic deals only with complaints that were actually filed. According to the June 2006 US Department of Justice report on citizen complaints about police use of force, only one in ten people who believe that they have been abused by the police ever report the abuse.

Threats -- both explicit and implicit -- of financial and legal retribution are certainly one reason why.

Police officers are necessarily entrusted with authority over life and freedom, the two most important concepts in existence. It is unprecedented madness to also extend to them the continual benefit of the doubt. An officer wrongfully losing his job is terrible; a man wrongfully losing his life or his freedom is irreparable.

Man Outruns 12,000-Foot Tall Elephant, Makes Movie

2009-12-01T11:11:00.007-05:00

Al Gore's advocacy film about the potential dangers of global climate change won an Academy Award.

Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy, being called "the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted [in the struggle against climate change]" by the Nobel committee.

Al Gore recently appeared on the cover of Newsweek as a 21st-Century Isaac Newton and was called an "Eco-Prophet" and "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man".

And Al Gore thinks the temperature at the center of the Earth is "several million degrees":

Conan O'Brien: Now, what about ... you talk in the book about geothermal energy...

Al Gore: Yeah, yeah.

Conan: ...and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth...

Al: Yeah.

Conan: ...to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?

Al: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot...

National Review Online blogger John Derbyshire goes ahead and tidies up the science for us laymen:

The temperature at the earth's core ... is usually quoted as 5000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.

To illustrate the enormity of Gore's wrongness, his claim is mathematically identical to saying the average height of an African Elephant is 12,000 feet, or that the fastest a human has ever run a mile is 0.223 seconds.

Did I know off the top of my head that the center of the Earth is actually around 5000 degrees? Of course not. But the spot on my mantle where there isn't an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and a framed copy of Newsweek serve as my excuse.

What's Al's?

Check out the whole Conan clip at YouTube here.

I'm Thankful for Howard Hesseman

2009-11-23T16:49:00.005-05:00

Has there ever been a television series that didn't air the obligatory Thanksgiving episode, where everyone in the peer group is somehow (wackily!) prevented from having dinner with their actual family, and instead spends it with the rest of the (wacky!) cast?

From Cheers to Friends (a multiple-repeat offender) to Felicity, the recipe is a stalwart, and I guarantee if your DVR keeps even moderately busy this week, you'll catch at least one of your new favorite shows dusting it off again.

Fortunately, thanks to Al Gore's Internets, everyone on earth can bask in the glory of the WKRP in Cincinnati "Turkeys Away" episode. For those enslaved by IT overlords who refuse you access to Hulu.com, whet your beaks here, then check it out from home.

Learn all about the first Thanksgiving here.

Learn how to say "thanks" in two dozen languages here.

Read Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation here.

And remember the words of Johnny Carson:

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then they discover once a year is way too often.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Whose Palm Do I Have to Grease to Move Up this List?

2009-11-17T17:01:00.006-05:00

Back in July, I blogged about the Freedom House list of The Least Free Places on Earth. Not to be outdone, Transparency International has now released their annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which “measures the perceived level of public-sector corruption in 180 countries and territories around the world”.

Since Somalia was ranked as fifth on the Least Free Places list, and dead last on the Corruption Index, ScotticusFinch is prepared to annouce the 2009 winner of the “Place in Which Even a Superhero Should Hope to Never Accidentally Wake Up Award”...

Okay, it’s Detroit for the fourth straight year. But Somalia is a close second.

Unsurprisingly, Transparency International ranked New Zealand as the least-corrupt nation on earth. This is due mostly to the well-documented nigh-incorruptable nature of Hobbits.

It's a Wiggly Sack of Potatoes! It's a Smelly Plush Doll! It's... It's... Okay, it's my Kid in a Costume

2009-11-17T10:14:00.011-05:00

Granted, so far it's all just playing dress-up, but the seeds are officially sown. I wonder if this is how Gandhi felt the first time he saw Gandhi Jr in a dhoti, or when Rollie Fingers first saw his boy sporting a dirty junior-high mustache.

On a superpower-related note, I can't help but notice that several of the millions of daily visitors to ScotticusFinch have neglected to vote on the last two polls (left sidebar). How can I be expected to advance the science of personal opinions unless you people participate? If you have already voted, go to your neighbor's cubicle while she's at lunch and vote again*. My bloated self-esteem could be at stake.

If you want to suggest a more click-worthy poll, please do so in the comments.

*See what I mean about being devoted to science?

14 Days Without Sleep Makes One Weak

2009-11-05T15:46:00.004-05:00

A full two weeks ago, I drifted off under anesthetic while some eight-year-old with palsy practiced pumpkin-carving in my sinuses. Since then, and into the foreseeable future, I have been spending the hours between 10pm and 6am on the sofa, sitting straight up, pretending that I might eventually sleep. This overnight posture is required because of the 74 gallons of drainage (the medical term for snot) I now generate per night.

Every hour or so, I abandon my post on the sofa, stumble in the dark through the gauntlet of baby paraphernalia and empty tissue boxes to the bathroom, and force saltwater up my nose in direct conflict with everything I learned at YMCA swim class. The commotion, of course, convinces the dogs that it’s time for breakfast, so even after I find my way back to the couch, alternately dripping tainted saltwater and “drainage”, they sit attentively by my side, reminding me in that whiny dog language that their bowls are still empty. Never mind that it’s 1:45am.

Eventually baby Wyatt wakes up, and we go about our morning as if the night was somehow rejuvenating.

59 minutes out of every hour during the day, I hold my breath. Not by choice, but because my nose is clogged full of that stuff inside Cadbury Crème Eggs and breathing through my mouth all night has turned my throat into some sort of parched, scorched Taliban survival course. I try to save that one breath per hour for when the boss comes around to ask if everything is okay. “Yep,” I bark, which is code for “Please ignore the fact that I look like Martin Landau three days into a meth bender; I do not actually have the swine flu.” At least I assume it’s my boss. The hallucinations lately make it difficult to tell him apart from the giant Pillsbury Dough Boy who lives in the supply closet behind me.

Assurances have been made that I will eventually heal, although the “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” banner hanging behind the Doc at my follow-up appointment was a bit disconcerting. And I’m pretty sure it was his lawyer who poked his head into the exam room, telling the Doc, “Hey, the judge totally isn’t buying it. You should probably have a bag packed and keep your passport on you.”

So for now, it’s back to the sofa and the Scotticus-shaped indentation that has formed within it, where I offer a fatted calf to the gods Kleenex, Ocean, Afrin, and Advil. I pray that they are appeased and benevolent, but I’m not holding my breath.

You'll Have my Story as Soon as the White House Writes it for me, Chief!

2009-10-29T12:06:00.008-04:00

I’ve been meaning to blog about this fantastic Glenn Greenwald piece (originally posted October 6 at Salon.com) for awhile now. It deals with the media’s use of unnamed sources and specifically skewers Washington Post stenographer-as-journalist Anne Kornblut.

First, here is The Post’s own ombudsman:

The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. ...News organizations can pay dearly if they're not vigilant about sourcing. At minimum, credibility can suffer. At worst, a damaging journalistic transgression can occur. ...

Post policies say that readers should be told as much as possible about the quality of a confidential source ("with first-hand knowledge of the case," for instance). They also say "we must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence."

Now, here is Greenwald taking Kornblut to the woodshed:

The Post depicts Obama as heavily and heroically engaged in disrupting the alleged Najibullah Zazi domestic terrorist plot and -- repeatedly highlighting that success -- claims "the White House has been charting a delicate course as it attempts to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies," whereby "the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." Here are all of Kornblut's cited sources for the article -- every last one of them -- in the order she cites them:
Obama aides pointed ... administration officials said ... a senior administration official said ... officials said ... a senior administration official said ... senior Obama officials stressed ... a senior administration official said ... aides said ... officials said ... one senior administration official said. ...one senior official said. ...The official said ... a senior administration official said ... a senior administration official said ... administration officials said .... a senior official said.
Not a single named person is cited, and there's not a syllable of quoted dissent in any of it. Virtually every sentence in the long article does nothing but praise Obama and depict him as stalwartly safeguarding America's civil liberties ... even as he protects us from the dangerous Terrorists, so why is anonymity needed for that? It's nothing more than what [White House Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs is eager to say every day. Nor is there a hint of who these officials are, what the basis is of their knowledge, or why The Post granted anonymity....

...The Post's article ... doesn't even claim that these anonymous officials have any knowledge at all -- first-hand or otherwise -- of what actually happened (are they national security officials, press people, political advisers?). The article doesn't even pretend to justify why anonymity was granted (there's not a word about that).

...[W]hat happened here is obvious: the administration wanted to issue a Press Release exploiting the fear surrounding the Zazi case to justify Obama's Bush-copying civil liberties policies ... while depicting Obama as our careful yet forceful protector. So they dispatched an official (or officials) to dictate the sanctioned administration line to Anne Kornblut. She then unquestioningly wrote it all down (after granting them anonymity) and The Post uncritically published it as a "news article."

The whole piece is worth a read. (It goes on to point out that in addition to being a lapdog, Kornblut is also dead wrong in her assertions.)

Kornblut's piece in question is not an editorial or opinion column, mind you. It appeared in the National News section of The Washington Post. Remember this lazy, irresponsible work the next time someone tells you that the death of newspapers will be the death of “real” journalism, or when you hear the White House declaring who is and is not a news organization.

Jeff Flake: The Fozzie Bear of Congress

2009-10-28T17:03:00.005-04:00

Don't get me wrong. I would rather Congress spend 100% of its time writing bills to congratulate Super Bowl-winning teams and whatnot, than slopping together more consequence-ignorant, corporate-welfare, nanny-state, liberty-reducing laws.

Still, to see Representative Jeff Flake's (R-AZ) response to HR 784 is just plain fun. The bill was introduced to "honor[] the 2560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognize[] his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought." Seriously.

Flake's response, which accompanied his vote against the bill:

He who spends time passing trivial legislation may find himself out of time to read healthcare bill.

At press time, it is unconfirmed if he followed his statement with a hearty "Wokka wokka!"

Check out Flake here.

Even Superheroes get the TSA Blues

2009-10-21T11:36:00.006-04:00

In the past, Avian Silver handled all of The Guardian Force's air travel manually. Since his extradition for trafficking in illegal stomp porn, however, we have all been subject to the carnivals of ineptitude formerly known as commercial airports.

Recently, a stalwart minion of the TSA relieved me of my nail-clippers, despite the fact that the clippers were already missing the little under-nail gunk extraction blade. Very well. But my ultra-stabby, spring-loaded, aluminum-tipped umbrella of doom? No sweat; step right through, sir.

Que será, será. Really, I'm just excited for an excuse to post this:

Cartoon via XKCD; link via (surprise, surprise) Hit & Run.

We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself the Ghost of John Henry

2009-10-15T16:28:00.005-04:00

So there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security this year.

Except that there will be.

For those keeping score, this:

Obama said he would not allow the money to come out of the Social Security trust funds, which would further erode the finances of the retirement program.

counts as a lie, since the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist.

Furthermore, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is this:

Thursday's announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

Retired railroad workers? Why not retired calligraphy tutors? Why not left-handed Civil War history enthusiasts? Why not grumpy super-powered bloggers?

Your humble correspondent decided to go straight to the source and find out what’s so damn special about retired and veteran railway employees.

Well, crap.

Scotticus's Netflix Reviews: Marley and Me

2009-10-12T17:22:00.003-04:00

[SPOILER ALERT]

Screw you, Marley and Me. I’ve got dogs, and they do a perfectly good job of getting me to spoil them rotten without your help. I already feel guilty enough every time I make them jump down off the warm, cozy spot they’ve eked out on the couch. Now thanks to you, alongside my own anthropomorphizing issues, I will always add this thought: “One day these pups will die. Your children will cry; your wife will cry; you will cry; and you will feel like a complete asshat for every time you snapped at them instead of feeding them foie gras and rubbing their bellies.”

I didn’t need that. I’d already had a long day. I was tired. I had nine episodes of Big Love on my DVR. Instead, I chose to watch your heartfelt, adorable movie and then I spent forty-five minutes trying to swallow back the billiard ball in my gullet and blaming my blubbering on allergies. Do you know how many hours of Grand Theft Auto I’m going to have to play just to feel like a man again? Do you know that the last time a movie made me cry was when Gone in Sixty Seconds destroyed that beautiful 1967 Shelby GT 500, and the time before that probably involved being scared of oompa-loompas?

So go to hell.

And if you need me, chances are I will be in the backyard, installing a window unit on the new doghouse.

BREAKING NEWS! SCOTTICUSFINCH EXCLUSIVE!

2009-10-09T08:11:00.003-04:00

ScotticusFinch has received reliable information indicating that later today Barack Obama will be announced as the winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or for his VHS film "~~Bears @ Browns~~ Sasha's Swim Meet".

Developing...

UPDATE: According to exclusive ScotticusFinch information, this afternoon President Barack Obama will hold a press conference accepting this year's Fields Medal for his work in calculating an exact 15% tip on a $109 dinner bill split two ways.

Developing...

UPDATE: Insiders have confirmed to ScotticusFinch that yesterday Barack Obama was unanimously named "World's Best Grandma" by the Association for Research on Mothering. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs describes Obama as "glib".

Developing...

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help: Update!

2009-10-08T09:57:00.004-04:00

On Friday I posted a graph showing how actual unemployment numbers resembled the White House estimates on Cialis. Today, via Veronique de Rugy and The American, we see that as the stimulus has been spent, unemployment has actually accelerated.

Give us money, and we’ll give you jobs. That was the promise President Barack Obama made when he asked Congress for a $789 billion stimulus bill back in January. The cash, the administration said, would create millions of jobs over the next two years.

Here was the argument as presented in the January report by the Council of Economic Advisors' Christina Romer and chief economist to the vice president Jared Bernstein, called “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”:
The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million … even with the large [stimulus] prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.
Based in part on this argument, President Obama got his money. So what happened since then?

Using data from the president’s website Recovery.gov and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this chart shows the monthly increase in the unemployment rate in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending.

Note that these are not promised dollars and estimated unemployment numbers; this is stimulus money that has been already been spent, and actual unemployment.

"New Professionalism" Once Again on Display in Georgia

2009-10-07T12:06:00.006-04:00

Having already asserted their authority to beat the handicapped and murder (then frame) the elderly, police officers right here in the USofA have now decided it’s time to start killing the clergy.

On September 1, Jonathan Ayers, a Georgia minister, had just withdrawn money from a convenience-store ATM and started his own car when an unmarked black SUV pulled in behind him. Plainclothes officers (which is exactly the same as saying “some guys”) jumped out of the SUV and pointed guns at him.

We cannot know if Ayers thought he was being attacked or robbed. We do know that Ayers was not the intended target of the stop. What we see in the surveillance video is that Ayers tried to drive away, and in doing so backed into one of the officers. At least one officer then shot into Ayers’s vehicle, fatally wounding him.

Ayers left behind a wife who was four months pregnant with the couple’s first child. He was pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, and he recently blogged: "I have three loves in my life: Jesus Christ, my wife Abby, and the Church."

For those questioning my growing animosity toward the police, please at least desist with the argument that this was just another isolated incident, etc., etc., etc.

Dom "Woogie" Woganowski Now Second-Best Athlete at TSAM Reunion Party

2009-10-06T16:59:00.006-04:00

Evidently the terrible actor who played Mary’s old boyfriend Brett in There’s Something About Mary went on to become a professional football player. True story.

Even more impressive: last night that very same actor-turned-athlete, Brett Favre, became the first quarterback in history to defeat all 32 NFL teams by serving a lukewarm dish of revenge to Packers’ GM Ted Thompson.

This was a highly anticipated and heavily hyped game. Everybody in the stadium stood all the way through the Vikings’ first possession, instead of sitting after the first few snaps like usual. Cameras flashed constantly.

...

Favre was clearly uncomfortable this week with all the attention on this reunion, trying to downplay the significance and stumbling through denials that his main motivation to unretire last year was revenge on general manager Ted Thompson for not letting him come back and compete for his old job with [Packers QB Aaron] Rodgers.

”My statement has been what I’ve done over my career,” Favre said. “One game does not define my career good or bad. I know what I’ve done. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I know I can play. I wanted to do what it takes to win.”

And win you did, Brett. Just please don’t go back into acting.

Fun trivia for observationally-masochistic fans like me: the last team on the list Favre had to beat besides his own former Packers? You guessed it; the Kansas City Chiefs.

Bastiat Surrenders, Goes to Work for GM

2009-10-05T12:54:00.006-04:00

In the long history of minor-league sports, no fan has ever planned to go to the ballpark because they heard it was Mini-Bat Night or Bobblehead Night. If the giveaways are limited, people may show up earlier than if there had been no handouts (say, fifteen minutes after the first pitch instead of sixty), but their decision about buying a ticket was un-phased. So rather than serving as a small cost by which overall revenue increases, the prizes amount to a fun bonus for people who were coming to the game regardless.

New numbers on the government’s Largesse for Lemons program proves it was one giant, $3 billion Bobblehead Night for car dealerships.

Consider the numbers via Bloomberg.com’s report:

GM’s September deliveries tumbled 45 percent, while Toyota dropped 13 percent, both worse than analysts had estimated. Ford slid 5.1 percent, and Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler Group LLC plunged 42 percent.

Honda Motor Co. posted a 20 percent decline, and Nissan Motor Co., which like Honda is based in Tokyo, said sales fell 7.1 percent.

The larger problem, though, is that the C4C program is being heralded as a success, and a model for future government interventionism. Never mind that the program’s biggest beneficiaries were Japanese and Korean carmakers, or that C4C served as a very effective poke in the eyes to the poor by increasing the median cost of used cars, or that the whole scheme was one tragi-comic lesson in Bastiat’s broken window fallacy.

Reason Online web editor Tim Cavanaugh sums it all up:

The evidence was there going in, and now the evidence is there going out: As soon as the government turned off the current, the corpse stopped twitching. But everybody in the lab saw the corpse twitch. So if GM survives, the history will read that while free market extremists objected to the Cash for Clunkers program, even they came around when they saw how successful it was at saving U.S. auto manufacturers.

In the interest of full disclosure, the Guardianmobile is an Aston Martin Lagonda. Red, white, and blue of course.

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help

2009-10-02T14:22:00.009-04:00

The day may come when Wyatt -- after watching Mary Poppins, perhaps -- will ask me for $9 to go buy an umbrella. Deep in his little heart, he will be convinced that for only $9, he can achieve his dream of flight (or perfect pitch, or whatever aspect of Poppins inspired him), and I have no doubt I will indulge him. The lesson and the adventure will be a bargain at $9.

Not so much, when the lesson costs $787 billion.

President Obama's words at the ARRA signing ceremony eight months ago:

...today does mark the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.

Chart via Don Surber. Link via Hit & Run via Instapundit. Sheesh.

Free Jackboot with the Purchase of a Dozen Glazed

2009-09-28T17:10:00.008-04:00

Most of us long ago gave up the Fourth Amendment ghost when it comes to random police checkpoints. Still, two things strike me funny about this particular Constitution-as-urinal exercise.

First, this:

Vehicles will be randomly chosen and drivers will be asked for valid paperwork and driver's licenses. No delays are expected.[emphasis added]

Evidently the police (astride flying unicorns no doubt) will collect your papers through your window as you cruise full-speed along your route. Handy.

Second, I couldn’t help but Monday-morning-quarterback their choice of location. According to the Sun Sentinel piece, “The checkpoint will be from 7 to 11 a.m. on the 900 block of West State Road 84 [in Fort Lauderdale].” I submit, without further comment:

Read all about the bass-ackward effects of DUI checkpoints here.

Double Clubcard Points, Wine by the Case -- the Jedi Craves Not these Things

2009-09-22T15:45:00.005-04:00

When Daniel Jones entered a Bangor (UK) Tesco store, he certainly wasn’t looking to cause a confrontation. So when store employees escorted him to the front of the store and insisted he either remove his religious headwear or leave the premises, Jones was understandably shaken.

“They said: ‘Take it off’,” Jones recounted to reporters. “And I said ‘No, it’s part of my religion. It’s part of my religious right.’ … They weren’t listening to me. It was intimidating.”

I should mention at this point that Jones is a Jedi.

A Jedi; a Jedi; a Jedi.

Tesco responded to the tempest following the ejection by saying: “He hasn’t been banned. Jedis [sic] are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.” Then, proving themselves to be giant winners in life’s game of perspective-based humour, Tesco’s spokemen continued: “If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they’ll miss lots of special offers.”

Find the droids you’re looking for, and the whole story via The Guardian (no relation), here.

Learn more about the 500,000-members-strong Church of the Jedi here.

His Out-of-Frame Hand is Choking a Puppy

2009-09-17T13:41:00.004-04:00

1000 Guardian Force Superbucks to the first person who puts this on a T-shirt and sends me a picture.

(Incalculable thanks to the Internet's most disturbed librarian: SugarFree.)