Category: Current Events

Lots of stories built up in the tabs this week that don’t quite warrant their own posts, but are interesting, nonetheless:

The Crimes of Gun Grabbing Mayors from Emily Miller. We have Google Alerts looking for criminal mayors, and let me tell you, this is not a group of people who should be lecturing any gun owner about gun ownership leading to crime. What we don’t publish is all the non-MAIG mayors who end up in trouble with the law, and as you can imagine,it’s far more numerous. Guns don’t cause crime, but mayors sure seem to.

Learning from the Election. I agree with much of Victor Davis Hanson’s take on this election. I’m challenged my his section on the Latino Vote. Much of what I’ve seen in regards to the Hispanic vote suggests it wasn’t immigration that drove them, it was the fact that they support Obamacare and the Stimulus in large numbers. Hanson’s prescription is “the Italian strategy” — to close the border and allow upward mobility to work its magic. I generally favor liberal immigration policies, but if the people you’re letting in believe in big government and social democracy rather than limited government and American republicanism, to what degree are you just committing national suicide?

The GOP ignores low-information voters at their peril. Bitter once talked to the daughter of a Democratic strategist when she lived in DC, who shared a disdain of this voting group. Partisans on both sides generally are much more informed than the average voter. But the person she talked to admitted Democrats encourage this voting group because they tend to break for Democratic candidates. This article suggests Democrats are doing a much better job marketing to this group than the GOP.

Sending in the health teams. Apparently the New York City Department of health is busy making sure restaurant standards are busy being kept up in relief tents. The response to this storm in New York has been at least as bad, if not worse, than Katrina, but you don’t hear the same wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media. Instapundit‘s characterization of this as “Katrina on the Hudson” is apt.

Billionaire’s Gun License is Suspended Amid Inquiry. It’s funny how millionaires and billionaires always seem to have “good cause” to get a license in New York. This, the 2nd Circuit has ruled, is a completely objective, and constitutional standard. That panel of judges is a disgrace to the Constitution, and we’re only going to see more of it now that Obama has been re-elected and Harry Reid is preparing the nuclear option. This is what happens when you elect people who care more about their own power than the document which limits it.

I have not seen it, but Tactical Tupperware has, and liked it, suggesting it had better production values and was more polished than the original. I had not planned to go see it, but considering the movie is upsetting the right kind of people, perhaps I need to get to the theaters and support this kind of film.

The Zombie Apocalypse can’t be far away:

And of course, always look for the Union Label:

Yes, look indeed:

An early step in running out of other people’s money. The Twinkie of today is not the same as the Twinkie I grew up with, so I will not mourn their demise very much. The cake is a shell of its former self, and I always preferred Tastykakes anyway (another company with legacy costs related to unions that very well may drive it out of business).

But if you do like the Twinkie, friends of mine in college did an experiment involving the shelf life of an unwrapped Twinkie, and the results were, shall we say, unnatural. If you go out and buy a few cases now, I’m pretty sure you can still be eating them a decade from now.

Today is Veterans Day, also known as Armistice Day, remembering the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the guns fell silent. In honor of those who served, a link to this excellent photo series of street scenes from D-Day overlaid with the modern day view.

A resident of the Rockaways asks Mayor Mike:

“When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look.

“When are we gonna get some f–king help?” she demanded.

“There’s old ladies in my building that don’t got nothing,” lashed out a man on video caught by a NY1 reporting crew.

Why, he’ll help you just after he makes sure you’ll drink your soda out of sippy cups, finds emergency rations that don’t have too much salt or trans-fats, and cures the rest of the country of its strange obsession with its Second Amendment rights. What makes you think you matter to Mayor Mike? He’s America’s Mayor. He’s not your mayor.

People here in our county are already starting to get irritated by the power outages that are predicted to last until tonight – with the last few households in more remote areas not getting turned back on until the weekend. Yesterday morning, our county had more than 1/5 of the outages in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Obviously, New York and New Jersey are in far worse shape with the most optimistic predictions being that they’ll have most power back on at the end of next week.

Regardless of the clear need for all of the skilled workers they can get, it turns out that NJ utilities are turning away the needed assistance. Why?

Crews from Huntsville, as well as Decatur Utilities and Joe Wheeler out of Trinity headed up there this week, but Derrick Moore, one of the Decatur workers, said they were told by crews in New Jersey that they can’t do any work there since they’re not union employees.

The crews that are in Roanoke, Virginia say they are just watching and waiting even though they originally received a call asking for help from Seaside Heights, New Jersey.

The Alabama news site says that most of the crews found that New York was willing to accept the help regardless of their union membership, but some have already headed back home after New Jersey crews turned them away.

I guess for some union members, it’s more important to only work with those who agree with you than to ease the suffering of customers who can’t cook, can’t heat their homes during this cold snap, or can’t communicate with the outside world as their phones lose power.

New Yorkers are dumpster diving for food. Manhattan residents are increasingly concerned about safety. Meanwhile, guns are being drawn on fellow citizen in New Jersey (I don’t know how this happens, they have such strict gun laws).

Do you think perhaps the people of New Jersey and New York may stop for a moment and decide whether it might be beneficial to make it easier for good people to protect themselves? Ever notice how no state that is prone to getting hurricanes have particularly strict gun laws?

I didn’t plan on blogging much more about Sandy, but then I made the mistake of reading a NYT profile of several deaths related to the storm. The headline reads like they were all simply unavoidable tragedies: “In Storm Deaths, Mystery, Fate and Bad Timing.”

The only problem is that they highlight two deaths in detail with profiles of the victims, but neither of those deaths were “mystery, fate, [or] bad timing.” They were consequences of very bad decisions.

The first pair of deaths the NYT focuses on is of two 20-somethings who decided to walk a dog. Okay, Sandy was a pretty long storm, so it’s understandable that the dog might need to be let out on the lawn at some point either before the storm really got going or as it was dying down. Nope. These two brilliant folks decided to go out at about 8pm (pretty much the worst part of the storm) and walk the dog under some really massive trees. At least the dog survived.

The second instance they profile I had initially seen reported last night as a woman who accidentally stepped in a puddle that was electrified. That would truly be an accident of bad timing. However, with a few more facts, we learn that wasn’t really the true scope of the story. Apparently, a giant power line came down in the neighborhood and was wildly sparking. The 20-something decided to grab her camera (also around the height of the storm) and run toward the sparking power line so she could get a picture. Responsible neighbors who were monitoring the situation from the safety of their homes apparently ended up witnessing a horrific sight when she ended up running into part of the wire and caught fire. Obviously, no witnesses could do anything in the dangerous situation, and it took emergency crews nearly half an hour to arrive while she burned.

Now, I’m not heartless, so I do feel sympathy for the family and friends of the victims. However, I can also recognize that in these cases, based on the facts the NYT has presented from witnesses, the loss to those family and friends can be directly attributed to supremely unwise decisions made by the deceased individuals. I’m irritated at the NYT because it doesn’t do us any good to call these deaths cases of bad timing. That doesn’t help others learn from the situations. It’s pretty clear by these deaths that there are plenty of people who need to learn that electricity is not some magic thing that you chase after for a fun picture and wind can kill.