Slut walk? How about a pimp walk, too?

Just a little while ago on Twitter, Brittany Cohan tweeted this bit about an upcoming "Slut Walk" in DC:

So this is the first time I am seeing this...... http://www.slutwalkdc.org/about (Late, I know- but WOW)

I've been hearing about these events for several weeks now, most recently about one in Boston. The link Brittany tweeted provides background on the rich history of the Slut Walk, which goes back, gee...nearly four months:

SlutWalk Toronto started because of a statement made on January 24th, 2011 by the Toronto Police advising young women not to "dress like a slut" in order to be safe. Toronto's Slutwalk was an organized response on April 3, and many cities have followed in its wake, including the upcoming Washington DC participation scheduled for August 13th of this year.

So maybe the Toronto police were a bit crass with their advice, but were they wrong? Is it really wrong to advise people to engage in a little common sense to avoid crime?

For as far back as I can remember we've been advised not to advertise wealth when out and about, especially in strange locations; leave the Rolex watch at home, don't flash lots of cash, that kind of thing. Should there also be a PimpWalk in DC, then? You know...everyone put on their finest Armani suit, wear lots of expensive bling and parade around SE Washington DC at night?

I don't subscribe to the notion that a woman asks to be raped by the way she dresses any more than a wealthy-looking man asks to be robbed by the way he dresses, but there is such a thing as sensible risk management.

The latest TSA abuse outrage

Well, maybe not the latest because of the age of the incident, but it doesn't seem to have been widely publicized at the time.

Yeah, I know. Everyone's sick of hearing about TSA enhanced pat-downs and such, but this story is a bit different. This seems to have occurred in February of this year so it took place before the junk-touching policy went into effect, and in fact has nothing to do with junk-touching or full body scans. Rather, this is about the mindset of some TSA security screeners who, out of pure spite, wield their petty authority over a citizen with the audacity to challenge them to follow their own published policy.

The video below weighs in at over 11 minutes, so here's the gist of it:

A new mother evidently pumps her breast milk while away so that she can feed it to her son upon her return. Armed with a printed copy of TSA's policy, she asks that her breast milk not be x-rayed and that TSA follow their alternative inspection policy on medical liquids, which applies to baby formula and breast milk.

Thus challenged, the TSA screener sets her belongings aside and confines her to an inspection holding area for nearly an hour, resulting in the young mother missing her flight home.

Here's the clip:

Now, here's what the Transportation Security Administration's own web site has to say about breast milk (emphasis theirs):

When carrying formula, breast milk, or juice through the checkpoint, they will be inspected, however, you or your infant or toddler will not be asked to test or taste breast milk, formula, or juice. Our Security Officers may test liquid exemptions (exempt items more than 3 ounces) for explosives.

Now maybe, just maybe, the TSA screeners here gave her a hard time about it only because she wasn't actually traveling with her baby. Maybe. But that doesn't negate the petty vindictiveness of the TSA employees shown here.

Watch the World Cup, you racists!

From The Nation by way of NPR, über-enlightened opinionator Dave Zirin explains why righty wingnuts hate soccer...it's because they're racists, of course:

Among adults, the sport is also growing because people from Latin America, Africa, and the West Indies have brought their love of the beautiful game to an increasingly multicultural United States. As sports journalist Simon Kuper wrote very adroitly in his book Soccer Against the Enemy, "When we say Americans don't play soccer we are thinking of the big white people who live in the suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans [and other nationalities] do play, and watch and read about soccer." In other words, Beck rejects soccer because his idealized "real America" - in all its monochromatic glory – rejects it as well. To be clear, I know a lot of folks who can't stand soccer. It's simply a matter of taste. But for Beck it's a lot more than, "Gee. It's kind of boring." Instead it's, "Look out whitey! Felipe Melo's gonna get your mama!"

Makes sense. So instead of soccer, racist Americans would much prefer to tune

in to baseball and American football, sports clearly dominated by all-white, all-American players. Oh, wait...

But that's just the NFL! Major League Baseball is nothing but white guys! Oh, wait...

And David "Big Papi" Ortiz is from Dominican Republic. He's a twofer! Not shown here are Hideki Okajima, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Junichi Tazawa, all from Japan.

Ace makes some great points about why soccer hasn't exactly caught fire here as a spectator sport.

I obviously don't get it

The Daily Caller has an amusing story about a Pennsylvania state house Democratic party primary race in which Gregg Kravitz claims to be bisexual while his opponent, Babette Josephs, counters that Kravitz is a "closeted straight man" trying to curry favor with gay voters.

The part I don't get is a quote from Kravitz:

I want to be completely open with how I am proud of my bisexuality.

Why does one feel the need to express pride in their sexual preference? Isn't that a bit like expressing pride in your preference to, say, brunettes over redheads?

Stupid crap that bugs me

Just caught a teaser for the upcoming local news show in which the anchor said "Pakistan" with the Obama-approved pronunciation "PAH-kee-stahn", and it made my eyelid twitch. I know it's a running gag on the right, but it bugs me beyond all reason.

Presumably they pronounce it that way because that's how a Pakistani would pronounce it, yet you never hear Obama or any of the other assclowns pronounce Afghanistan the way someone from that region pronounces it. For that matter, you never hear one of them pronounce "Germany" as "DOYTCH-lahnd".

Fucking poseurs.

Paint it white

Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees a black roof, and he wants to paint it white.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday the Obama administration wanted to paint roofs an energy-reflecting white, as he took part in a climate change symposium in London.

The Nobel laureate in physics called for a "new revolution" in energy generation to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

But he warned there was no silver bullet for tackling climate change, and said a range of measures should be introduced, including painting flat roofs white.

I don't get it...silver bullets work on werewolves, and the climate change "crisis" is about as real.

Chicken Littleism

I think I heard something about this nearly a year ago, but I'd never seen or heard video or audio of the comment itself. Behold the spectacular level of ill-informed jackassery from noted climatologist moonbat Ted Turner.

Stupid affectations

Every time I hear Barack Obama or some other poseur say "PAHK-ee-stahn" I cringe a little bit. If you speak American English, it's "PACK-ih-stan". But in an effort to sound like someone with a broader worldview, these idjits can't resist saying "PAHK-ee-stahn" in a herniated effort to sound more culturally aware by pronouncing the country's name the way a Pakistani would say it.

You never hear these phonies pronounce "Afghanistan" the way an English-speaking Afghani or Pakistani would say it. They'll say "Afghanistan" the way you or I would say it because to pronounce it as an Afghan or Pakistani would say it would sound too contrived: "Ahf-GWAN-ee-stahn".

Gawd, I can't stand poseurs.

Update: I rest my case...

Scenes soon to be forgotten

During the Bush presidency, the left memorialized and exaggerated every petty Bush blunder. But since they'll quickly flush down the memory hole any similar acts by their man Obama, we'll just set this picture aside for safe-keeping.

It seems that the most intellectually gifted president ever can't quite tell a window from a door.

H/T Iowahawk

State Department stupidity

Widespread computer illiteracy at the State Department recently brought their e-mail system to its knees:

A cable sent last week to all employees at the department's Washington headquarters and overseas missions warns of unspecified "disciplinary actions" for using the "reply to all" function on e-mail with large distribution lists.

The cable, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was prompted by a major interruption in departmental e-mail caused by numerous diplomats hitting "reply all" to an errant message inadvertently addressed and copied to several thousand recipients.

[ ... ]

Officials said the storm started when some diplomats used the 'reply all' function to respond to a blank e-mail sent recently to many people on the department's global address list.

Most demanded to be removed from the list while others used 'reply all' to tell their co-workers, in often less than diplomatic language, to stop responding to the entire group, the officials said.

Some then compounded the problem by trying to recall their initial replies, which generated another round of messages to the group, they said.

Stupidity compounded by more stupidity. But this comes as no surprise to me, personally.

In 1995, right after I got off active duty with the Air Force and went back to being a reservist, the company I'd gone to work for was awarded a contract with the State Department to provide training on a new Windows-based e-mail application. Our statement of work clearly stated that a prerequisite to taking the class was knowledge of the Windows desktop environment.

Since I was the lucky one chosen to teach the classes, I showed up at Foggy Bottom for the first session - it was a one-day class, and our contract called for five of them to be delivered over the course of a week - to find that only about a third of the people in the class had ever used a computer. I could have been a dick about it and declared a "customer-induced delay" and walked out, but instead decided to improvise a one hour crash course in using Windows.

When I started to explain the concept of "point and click", one guy (I shit you not) picked up his mouse and, aiming it at the monitor, complained that his mouse wasn't working. I was one happy IT geek when that week was over because each day at least half the class was computer illiterate.

Anyway, I guess I should have spent a bit of time on e-mail etiquette. But the contract didn't call for it.

Gender roles

The city of Gainesville, Florida last year made an amendment to their anti-discrimination ordinance allowing "transgender" people to use which ever public restroom they feel comfortable using, and not everyone's happy about it.

A blond girl heads from a playground into a women's restroom. A scruffy man, lurking outside, darts in behind her. "Your City Commission Made This Legal," the words on the TV screen read.

The dark ad came from opponents of a gender identity provision added last year to the city's anti-discrimination ordinance, which now allows the city's roughly 100 transgender residents to use whichever restroom they're most comfortable using.

Foes want to repeal the new protection with a March 24 ballot measure that has divided Gainesville, a generally gay-friendly university city surrounded by staunchly conservative north Florida.

Whether Gainesville is "gay-friendly" or not is orthogonal to the discussion. A lesbian or a gay man is not necessarily "transgender". According to the dictionary, a "transgender" person is one "appearing or attempting to be a member of the opposite sex, as a transsexual or habitual cross-dresser." In other words, they're by definition weird.

What Gainesville is effectively saying here is that if some perv is feeling a bit frisky, he can throw on some make-up and a dress and cruise public womens' toilets all day long.

This really isn't all that goddamn difficult...if your driver's license says "male", you use the men's room, if it says "female", you use the women's room.

In their own words

Lifted shamelessly from Uncommon Sense. I'd heard about Rep. Jim Moran (D- (natch) VA) preaching some good ol' down home Marxism, but I hadn't seen the video clip until today.

Jason grounded by Mom

Is this really what passes for news these days?