Of course he is.  Any street fighter knows that the best locations to deliver a punch are the back of the head (a "rabbit punch"), or the temple.  These sites are more likely to produce a concussion, temporarily or permanently incapacitating one's opponent.  The goal of any accomplished fighter is to produce an immediate brain injury.

But Officer Ian Walsh?   He can barely beat up a teenaged girl:

Fortunately for Officer Walsh, the Seattle Police Department will not fire him for his incompetent pugilism.  Instead, he's been sent for retraining.

Maybe next time he punches a jaywalker, he'll land a better blow.

Update: According to Packratt from Injustice Everywhere (a blog that everyone should read), this is only one incident in a long string of Seattle officers using force to eliminate the scourge of jaywalking.

There are some government programs that are small, but make one yearn for the late Democratic Senator William Proxmire, and his Golden Fleece Award, given to the government agencies or programs which did the most to sheer tax-paying sheep.

On that note, what genius commissioned the official United States "Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation" page?  Here you'll find, in vaguely worded prose with few or no supporting facts, the official government position explaining that the government did not, in fact, blow up the World Trade Center towers; that Neil Armstrong actually landed on the moon; and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

The website is cheap.  It looks like an advanced end product of the Geocities era, but it was created in the past year.  I could have created a better site for the government on my own for two hundred dollars, and each of us would have felt we were suckering the other.  God only knows what the government spent on this lameness.

But if I ran the office that created this site, I'd have put the kibosh on the entire idea: those who follow the conspiratorial, "secret history" view of life aren't going to a government website, because they know their IP addresses will be tracked and monitored and placed into a database.  Hell, Popehat tracks your IP addresses and monitors them and puts them in a database, as the guy I banned this morning can now attest.

So the target audience is utterly unserved by this site.  Nor will it believe a single word written at the site.  The government would be better served by sending 9/11 doubters to Popular Mechanics, which wrote a better report of what actually happened on 9/11 than anything except for the one sent straight to the Illuminati themselves.  Unlike the government, Popular Mechanics has some credibility.  I daresay that this site will be taken, by those inclined to believe in the secret history, as further evidence of the coverup.

So why create it in the first place?  I can only surmise that there is a conspiracy, deep within the government, to keep as many of its employees working as possible, and to expand the number of federal employees as rapidly as possible, by creating programs of dubious value which have surface appeal but in fact accomplish nothing.

"See?  We gave you this wonderful conspiracy webpage!  The staff and appropriations to America.gov must be expanded, so we can give you more!"

Of course this is only a lower-case conspiracy:  The real, Capital-C Conspirators have better things to do than to insist they're innocent.  They keep a low profile.

"Those who know, don't say.  Those who say, don't know."

— Lao Tzu.

What a momentous week in sports, and I don't mean the world cup.

What I mean is that henceforth the Big Ten will have 12 teams, and the Big Twelve will have 10 teams.

I'm confusticated.

Today, one site of the blogosphere (a term I use almost exclusively to irritate Patrick) is agitated about something, and the other side is making fun of them for it.

Yes, I know you can say that nearly every day.

Today's issue: schoolkids encouraged, on video, to chant "I am an Obama scholar." The freakout, by Gateway Pundit on the right, has a partial quote:

For I, am an Obama scholar.
An Obama scholar.
And I will strive to be.
Outstanding. Brilliant.
I will achieve. I will be motivated with a positive attitude.

The ridicule, by Media Matters on the left, has the somewhat longer context:

Mountain. Move out of my way.
Mountain. Move out of my way.
Mountain of guns.
Move out of my way.
Mountain of drugs.
Move out of my way.
Mountain of violence.
Move out of my way.
Mountain of ignorance.
Move out of my way.
Because I. Am somebody.
And I can be. And I will be.
Anything. Anything. I want to be.
Doctor. Lawyer. Judge. Journalist.
Writer. Firefighter. Principal.
President. President. President.
Anything. I want to be.
If my mind. Can conceive it.
And my heart. Can believe.
Then I know. I know. I know.
I can achieve it.
For I, am an Obama scholar.
An Obama scholar.
And I will strive to be.
Outstanding. Brilliant.
I will achieve. I will be motivated with a positive attitude.
Mountain. Move out of my way.

I'm somewhere in the middle here.

I've already talked at length about why I find such stuff creepy and distasteful, and why I strongly oppose using children for political theatre. creepy. I understand, and acknowledge, the argument that these children — in a class made up mostly of African-Americans — need a strong role model. I just think that there's a line between acknowledging the success of one man, on the one hand, and making him a saintlike figure, on the other. I also don't care for associating actual achievement with political achievement, but that's just me.

By contrast, some of the reactions to this are just plain nutty. This isn't Obama's own fault. It's the fault of the culture, in which he is but one participant.

This is another one of those posts in which the header is longer than the actual post.  Nonetheless, it's important.  A few thoughts:

1) As Walter Olson points out, President Obama's assertion that he is going to make BP pay for all of the costs of its negligence is ludicrous.  President Obama is lying to people in the gulf region, most of whom are injured because they've lost their jobs.

1a) The tort system won't allow those people to recover from BP.  A business owner, or a corporation, which goes under as a result of another's negligence may recover its present net worth, an amortization of income after deduction for costs over a reasonable period of time.

1b)  Many of the people hurt most, the employees of fishermen, shrimpers, hotels, restaurants, and the like, who will lose their livelihoods, have no cause of action against BP.  They are merely costs, their salaries or commissions to be deducted from their employers' revenue forecasts.  That's right.  The more they made before the spill, the less their employers recover.  They get bupkis.

1c) As if I haven't made it plain, the employees, as opposed to the owners, have to get another job, move to a part of the country that isn't wrecked, or go on welfare.  You will pay for the welfare, not the government, and not BP.  You will also pay for the crime and natural blight (how does one value the extinction of loggerhead sea turtles, which may well occur as a result of this spill?  The courts won't) created by this displacement.

2)  Everyone who promises compensation is lying.  Unfortunately, most of the people (the employees) who are told that "BP will pay" hear that they'll recover the income lost as a result of their lost jobs, unless they're cynics (probably most of the people in the gulf region are cynics now).  The people propagating this lie know that's what the suckers hear.  They also know that that isn't what they're, technically, saying.

3)  To make BP pay for these "non-consequential" damages, the government would have to upend tort law, federalizing it across all 50 states and also passing an "ex post facto" law which would require a constitutional amendment.  This would, unfortunately, wreak more economic havoc than the oil spill.  Far more.  So it isn't happening.  Obama, a constitutional law professor as he pointed out endlessly during his campaign, knows this.

4)  All human morality is founded on punishment for crimes, and compensation for wrongdoing.  Therefore, as an American, as a human, it is your duty to boycott BP in perpetuity.  Otherwise, the company will not be punished.  BP will not go to jail, nor will its executives.  BP will not pay full compensation for the damage its negligence caused, far from it.  It is your moral duty to supply the punishment. The government won't do it.  BP won't commit seppuku.  You have to do it.

5)  But what, as NPR pointed out during a disturbing story aired this morning, of BP's employees and franshisees?  You do know that BP doesn't own a gas station in the US?  It's all franchisees, like independent contractors aboard the Death Star.

There's the poser.  You have to hurt innocent people, in order to carry out your moral duty to hurt BP.  Should that stop you?  No.

The law, though it doesn't provide you with an adequate remedy against BP, does provide a way out.  The concept of "mitigation of damages."  Now ordinarily, the duty to mitigate damages applies to claimants.  A claimant who refuses to go to the doctor, to get medical treatment which will end his pain, deserves not our sympathy.  He deserves nothing.

In this case, you're a claimant.  But there's no reason we can't reverse that idea, as moral actors.  We can minimize the pain of BP's franchisees and their employees.  We can buy cigarettes, coffee, soft drinks, and junk food from them.  In fact, if you see a BP franchisee, you should go out of your way to stop in and buy a small bag of potato chips.  And you you should tell the guy at the register that you're doing it to help him.  And that you're never buying another gallon of gas from his station, as long as it's affiliated with BP.

You should do this for the rest of your life.  Because you'll be paying for the consequences of BP's negligence for the rest of your life.

Sonofabitch!

Update: w00t!!!

Halftime: tie.  Have you seen the trailer for the new Mortal Kombat movie?  BITCHIN! I'm serious.  Lots of people make Mortal Kombat movies, and they all suck.  This one is different.  It rules.  Someone's been watching Ridley Scott.

End game:  I sort of missed it.  I had to mop the kitchen floor and clean the cat litter box.  Sure seems emotional from the footage though, especially for a tie.  American media tell me that this is the most exciting game in the world.  Why won't American sports fans agree?

The older I get, the more that I realize I don't know. This morning's example: I realized I don't know what, if anything, prevents Congressmen from participating in official action that directly impacts their stock holdings.

Oh, I know the answer for judges. Just ask No-Mercy Percy. I know the answer for the Executive Branch. But I don't know the answer for Congressmen.

That's even after I dug around for a while trying to find any statute or regulation or House Rule preventing a Congressman from participating in legislative action that would directly impact his bottom line. I couldn't find jack shit. Now, granted, I'm really not into these whole reading and legal research crazes. The best cases are the ones you make up. I like ones that appear to support my argument by reference to classic philosophical conundrums. (Predestination, Inc. v. Will Free, 123 Hobbes.App.3d 321 (2010).) Still, you'd think that if there's any rule that says "Congressman, if you hold a quarter-million dollars of shares of BP, you can't use your official position to shield them from criminal investigation and guide Congress' response to their Valdez-exceeding incompetence."

You'd be wrong, I guess. Just ask Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin, R-BP).

Worth more than $251,000 just a few years ago, Sensenbrenner's 3,604 shares of BP PLC stock had plunged in value to just $118,000 by the end of trading Thursday. That's roughly half their value the day before the April 20 oil spill. Sensenbrenner has said his net worth is about $10 million.

The No. 2 Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a former chairman, Sensenbrenner has kept a low profile on the issue, but now he's coming out swinging: He has written a letter to President Barack Obama questioning BP's actions and the adequacy of the White House response — but refrains from directly criticizing BP for the spill.

Sensenbrenner also has complained about the government's criminal investigation into the circumstances of the oil spill. He said the Justice Department should have identified specific companies it might be targeting for its investigation and that threatening to prosecute BP in court could prevent the company from cooperating fully with Washington.

"BP and the government need each other," Sensenbrenner wrote in a column published Thursday on his website. "So, I question again, how is the president publicly chastising and threatening BP with criminal actions — a company that has pledged to pay for the damage caused by the oil spill accident and who likely wants this resolved more than anyone — helping to stop the oil?"

Tex (a nickname Sensenbrenner apparently carries not because he wears big hats or hates Thomas Jefferson, but because he's heir to a Kotex fortune) thinks he doesn't need to recuse himself. "He plans to participate in the Judiciary Committee's investigation surrounding legal liability issues of the spill."

There are surely complex and thoughtful solutions to the lacunae in the rules that bind our leaders to decent and ethical conduct.

But don't ask me about them. I have a conflict of interest.

I'm investing in rope.

Last night I had a dream.  It was a dream deeply rooted in the American nightmare, usually one featuring zombies but always involving astonishing amounts of blood.

I had a dream that one of my best friends, who lives in a distant land, came to visit us.  We were watching a World Cup soccer game.  My friend was slicing cheese to place on a cracker.  His hand slipped, and the knife went astray.  My friend ended up cutting his own throat, slicing his head off over halfway through the neck.  My friend's head was hanging by a thread, a thread of muscle and skin.  Yet my friend could still scream.

My friend begged me to help, by reattaching his head to his body.  I attempted to do so.  I dialed for an ambulance.  Then I took a needle and thread, sewing around the cut.  But my friend's head, barely hanging on by a sinew, screamed in pain at the needle, and then detached from his neck.  The room was showered by a death geyser of blood.  I heard sirens in the distance.  I knew that I would go to prison, an innocent man, for the accidental death of my friend.

I should call my friend, to warn him.  This has to mean something.

Awwww, poor muffin:

A two-year bowl ban and a loss of more than 20 football scholarships are among the sanctions that the NCAA has dealt USC, a source with knowledge of the situation said Wednesday.

I try to be a decent person and not despise anyone for tribal reasons. But the truth is that I root against USC no matter what, like all decent people. If USC were playing the University of Gehenna Fighting Schutzstaffels, I'd be buying a big foam finger with Hitler on it. If USC were playing a game against the Proxima Centaurians to determine the fate of the human race, I'd be screaming obscenities at the guy in the stupid Trojan outfit and then chortling as I lined up afterward for the Centauri humane elimination chambers.

There is no joy in Birtherville, mighty Orly has struck out. Ms. Taitz, the crazed and frequently sanctioned Ahab to President Obama's Moby Dick, was running for the Republican nomination for California Secretary of State, a process she made predictably, if not entirely un-pleasingly, bizarre.

Yesterday, despite worries on both sides, Orly lost to her opponent Damon Dun, another troublesome black guy whose eligibility she attacked. It's hard out there for a dentist/real estate broker/lawyer/vexatious litigant.

So it's all good, right? Well, sort of. Except that as of this morning, it looks like about 375,000 Californians voted for her.

What does that mean? I see several possibilities:

1. 375,000 Californians don't give a shit and marked the ballot at random.
2. 375,000 Californians agree with the typical California voter stance that strange names are scary, but found "Damon Dun" more scary than "Orly Taitz."
3. 375,000 Californians are ironic hipster douchebags.
4. 375,000 Californians were annoyed by Damon Dun being a former NFL player, or by his irritating campaign catchphrase ("Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNN!!!!!!")
5. 375,000 Californians prefer a sack-full-of-crazy Modovan dentist/broker/lawyer who gets sanctioned a lot to a Negro.
6. 375,000 Californians think Barack Obama is concealing his birth in Kenya.
7. Some combination of those.

Bear in mind that here in California we have a vigorous ballot initiative system. So those 375,000 people are also voting directly on our tax system, whom I can marry, whether I can smoke a joint, and any other number of things about how I can live my life and run a business. Also, they are on the road when I drive, and they touched doorknobs before I did.

Swell.

My friend Ken, who has an advertising contract with Martindale Hubbell, once a venerable peer rating agency for lawyers but now a source for tin foil hatted freak-clients, neglects to mention the reason lawyers still deal with Martindale.

It isn't for the AV rating.

It's because Martindale owns the domain name, lawyers.com.

What sort of client comes from lawyers.com, you may ask?

The sort of client who isn't immediately turned off by this:

Ripped staight from the headlines, with a little bit of T, but no A.  All she needs is a whip in her hands and a safe-word, and she's every lawyer's dream client.  Well, every lawyer except for Ken and a few others who maintain some shred of self-respect.

I don't work with Martindale in any way, because I don't want the sort of clients who come from lawyers.com, and I don't need them.  Insurance companies don't evaluate their lawyers based on who has the hottest softcore site.

As for other lawyers, aren't there alternatives?  Do you really want to represent Lucy Ewing from Dallas in her employment suit against Uncle J.R., who fired her because her skirt wasn't tight enough?

And more importantly, do you want the sort of clients who would be attracted by Lucy's lawyer?  Isn't there some better way?

I was dismayed that it has been more than twenty days since our monthly payments to Martindale-Hubble has yielded someone wanting us to sue because of involuntarily implanted microchips.

Mind you, there have been plenty of other calls, by deadbeats and yahoos and crazies of every stripe. We've had a run recently on people who wanted to hire us to sue their prior lawyers. Often those prior lawyers had been hired to sue the lawyers before that, and so on. These people are mortally offended when I pass.

But there had been no secret-implant cases for, as I said, more than 20 days. I was feeling lonely and unloved by my fellow mentally ill people.

Fortunately I got a call today. It's wasn't a microchip. It was a medical device with a very long name that releases mind-altering substances at a precise time every day to enable a medical cabal to interfere with the proper operation of the potential client's business. Secretly implanted, of course. And not in the head this time. Somewhere in the abdomen region.

I feel loved again. I let her down easy.

That is, by my count, five calls from people wanting us to sue for involuntary mind-control or surveillance devices since we started paying Martindale.

Who is more unbalanced — them for calling, or us for having a contract with Martindale?

That's the gist of the "apology" from South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts (R – Lexington) to Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley (who is of Sikh extraction) and President Obama, who was born in Kenya.

Speaking on Columbia's "Pub Politics" radio show, Knotts joked about Haley:

“We already got one raghead in the White House. We don’t need another in the Governor’s Mansion.”

Sensitive raghead that she is (and a woman to boot), Haley complained.  And now the PC Police have forced Knotts, a white man:

to apologize to a bunch of ragheads for the crime of having a sense of humor.

My ‘raghead’ comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like a local political version of ‘Saturday Night Live.’

Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize. I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur.

You see, it was all a joke.  But of course the speech Nazis will probably call for Knotts, a decorated prison guard with an Associate's Degree in Correctional Science before he entered the jungle of politics, and a God-fearing white man at that, to resign from the Senate.

I for one don't believe that the censors should win.  I encourage you to contact Karen Floyd, chairwoman of the South Carolina Republican Party, at chairman@scgop.com, and Glenn McConnell, President of the Senate, to let them know how you feel.

Tell them that the Republican Party will never take back control of this country if it knuckles under and censors a decorated, white prison guard, all to please a bunch of politically correct ragheads who don't worship God and can't even take a joke.

As for Senator Knotts, maybe he should console himself with the words of the greatest poet in the whole entire history of the English language:

Take up the White Man's burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

I just had one of my facebook friends become a fan of "Fighting Zionism." Now, I know that I am one of those self-hating Chomsky Jews, but still – has he met me? Sheesh.

Contrary to some gun-jumping obituary monkey who probably went to Stanford, John Wooden, the greatest and classiest basketball coach in history, is not dead yet.

Don't tell the Washington Post.  They already know.  They just haven't updated their headline to reflect it.

The headline was published around 9pm last night.  It was still an obituary at 7am, eastern time, this morning.