Snowflakes in Hell

If you’re a Virginian, and just had this happen to you, VCDL wants to talk to you.

Much to Bitter’s dismay, I am a cat lover, rather than a dog lover. She’s trying to convince me of the merits of having a small dog. I actually have no real problem with dogs, I just prefer cats. A small dog would be fine, as long as it’s not a foo foo dog. If Bitter wants a foo foo dog, she has to walk it :) But despite my preference for felines, I’m not this crazy:

I recently paid $11,000 in veterinary bills for my cat, Fritz. I’ve been hesitant to tell friends about this expenditure, which I know seems extravagant. But after hearing a radio financial guru answer questions from two callers about tapping their 401(k) accounts for veterinary bills, I realized I am not alone.

Read the whole thing. If you’re my cat, and the vet estimates 11 grand, it was nice knowing ya cat! I can always get another one that looks just like it. But seriously, people understand why they have to suffer to get medical treatment. Animals don’t. That why we don’t put them through prolonged pain.

I could not help wondering how poor families with fixed budgets and work schedules cope with such matters. How do parents tell their children that they cannot afford to treat a beloved pet? And how do vets deal with clients who refuse to pay much of anything for a sick pet, perhaps requesting euthanasia for an otherwise healthy animal?

Having a pet die is part of growing up, and actually, I think a pretty important lesson for kids. I had more than a few pets growing up, all dead now, the small ones buried in the back yard after my mother vacuum sealed them, so dogs wouldn’t dig them up. Every once in a while, I would dig them up, and see what they looked like. I have to wonder if the new owners of the house have done any landscaping yet, and wondered why there are bags of goo buried in the yard.

Hat tip to Rand Simberg

You gotta love the Israeli Defense Forces.

Via John Lott (who’s book I’m finishing up, and will write a review on shortly), Senator Specter is trying to inflate his own sense of importance again:

Specter, who championed their confirmation, said Tuesday he will personally re-examine the testimony to see if their actions in court match what they told the Senate.”There are things he has said, and I want to see how well he has complied with it,” Specter said, singling out Roberts.

The Specter inquiry poses a potential political problem for the GOP and future nominees because Democrats are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court moved quicker and more dramatically than advertised to overturn or chip away at prior decisions.

Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who served as chairman during the hearings, said he wants to examine whether Roberts and Alito have “lived up” to their assurances that they would respect legal precedents.

Hey, GOP leadership, are you regretting throwing Pat Toomey under the bus yet? I am. I’ve always voted for Snarlen Arlen, because the other choices have been worse, but I’ve never enjoyed it.

Eric takes the Inquirer to task for classifying a felonious violation of numerous state gun laws and laws against murder as a “road rage incident”.  Race is coming into the issue.   This could get ugly.

People might take this as a racially charged remark, but so be it: black males are shooting other black males on a daily friggin basis in the City of Philadelphia, and police are having a hard time getting anyone to come forward to finger who’s doing it, or cooperate in investigations.  A white guy shoots a black guy, and suddenly there’s outrage, and there must be justice.

Sorry, but if Philadelphia communities don’t start treating black-on-black violence in the city with the same energy and vigor as incidents like this, the body count will continue to increment.  Treating murder as a racial issue is the road to hell for the city.  Let’s not go farther down that road than we’re already going.

… to piss off politicians and community leaders who need to learn to mind their own god damned business.

Given all the problems the city has with, you know, murders happening at least once a day, most of the times more, you’d imagine city council didn’t have time to worry about this:

The ads for Colt 45 malt liquor are wrapped over two SEPTA buses, top to bottom. The buses are being deployed each day on different routes so they get to all parts of the city and suburbs.

Fine with me. I don’t drink the swill, but if it helps offset my tax dollars going to fund SEPTA, I’m all for it.

“People have been fighting these take-out beer delis for years now. And now, to reinforce it on a SEPTA route that this is an acceptable product and behavior, I don’t think is appropriate for a government agency to be doing.”

As someone who frequents take out beer delis, Councilman Kenney, you can go to hell. It’s already hard enough to get decent beer in this state. Plus, let me ask the Councilman this: if it was white people who liked to drink Colt 45, would you care? No? I wouldn’t want to accuse you of engaging in masked racism or anything.

Jim Kenney is another boneheaded politician who needs to stop pretending his constituents are children and unable to make their own decisions in life. I think Billy Dee Williams needs to come to Philly and personally kick his ass.

UPDATE: Councilman Kenney, or someone claiming to be him, at least, responds Philly style in the comments: “F*** you.”

UPDATE: It’s him.  The referrer comes from the Vitetta group, who Kenney is associated with, according to this post.  While I’m honored to have The Councilman come visit my blog, you’d think they’d be more concerned about the fact that their city is currently circling the bowl, than with whatever I’m saying :)

Philadelphia politicians are good at at least one thing: pretending to do something while in reality doing nothing. Philadelphia’s media culture, generally content to play along with these games, may be starting to get real:

Of course, no civic effort can work if law enforcement doesn’t do a better job of protecting witnesses who do try to help.

Political leaders have not been passive. City Hall points out that Mayor Street has hired 200 more police officers, opened five curfew centers, and organized mayors in cities throughout Pennsylvania to campaign for more gun controls.

At first. it seems they will fall back to the idea of blaming the cops for not doing their job, while the politicians fiddle, but then they surprise me:

All of that is good and necessary, but Street has failed to effectively use his office as a bully pulpit to rally residents around a public-safety crusade. He and Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson have not been the public leaders this city so badly needs.

Most of the killings fit patterns among victims and perpetrators that show where much more aggressive action can be taken.

Thirty percent of last year’s gun-homicide victims were in the middle of criminal proceedings when they were fatally shot. Many of the victims also have records. They are in identifiable groups of people known to authorities.

More parole and probation officers may be of greater service than more police for monitoring the felons who end up shooting someone or being shot. They can cut parolees’ access to guns.

They are completely correct to question Street and Johnson’s leadership. I’m glad to see them doing this! Where I disagree is that the city needs more probation and parole officers, rather than police officers. No! The city needs more criminals behind bars where they belong. If the justice system does not stop becoming a revolving door, that keeps putting dangerous individuals back on the street, this isn’t going to get better. Police are important, but police can’t do their job in the face of a criminal justice system that treats criminals as victims, to be coddled, rather than as miscreants, to be removed from society.

The Navy retires its last M-14s.

You know things in our political climate are getting unhinged when a reasonable person like Glenn Reynolds makes an allusion to tar and feathers.  It seems the Senate says we all need to be babysat:

“While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child’s online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material,” Sen. Inouye said. “In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections.”

Ted Stevens is trying to build the filter to nowhere, along with his buddy Inouye.   Can the citizens of Hawaii and Alaska please do us all a favor and get rid of these clowns?  I don’t even think there’s a base they are appealing to here, this is just an example of being completely out of touch with reality, and out of touch with constituents.