Thursday, July 25, 2002

Obese Man Creates Super-Sized Court Controversy, Sues Fast Food Chains. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC Corporation were deemed "irresponsible and deceptive" by an obese man's lawyer recently as he announced his intention to sue the four largest fast-food chains in America. [kuro5hin.org] Two years ago this was just a joke. It's amazing how fast a society can go downhill. comment () trackback ()  3:07:55 PM     Time to join the ACLU and EFF (BTW, the EFF needs a better donations page).  If you haven't already, its time to pony up a couple of bucks for the only people defending our freedom. A simple $100 donation a year would help.  [John Robb's Radio Weblog] So the ACLU and the EFF are the only people defending our freedom, are they? Frankly, I find that claim rather insulting. comment () trackback ()  2:50:35 PM     Worse Than Drunken Sailors. Despite the fact that the Republicans control the White House, the House of Representatives, and 30 governorships, the nation is now in the midst of the biggest government spending spree since LBJ. Incredibly, the domestic social welfare budget has expanded more in just two years ($96 billion) under George W. Bush than in Bill Clinton's first six years in office ($51 billion). [National Review] Something to consider when deciding who to vote for. Republican politicians make conservative noises when running for election, but their record shows them to be at least as bad as the openly liberal Democrats. Spending isn't the only example of this--most of the oppressive stuff that the Bush administration is doing was originally proposed by the Clinton administration. comment () trackback ()  1:59:16 PM     Dearth of a Nation. Yet in today's Zimbabwe what looms large is not paradise but famine. "The situation is deteriorating fairly rapidly," says Kevin Farrell, country director for the U.N.'s World Food Program, reached by phone in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. He says that in any village right now, "you will see people clearly hungry." The U.N. is appealing for $611 million worth of emergency aid for sub-Saharan Africa. Almost half of that is for Zimbabwe, the region's former breadbasket, where aid workers now predict that without massive help, hundreds of thousands may soon starve to death. [Wall Street Journal] This famine, which will affect neighboring countries that depended on food exported from Zimbabwe, is the result of Mugabe's deliberate actions. There are some details in the article beyond the widely reported destruction of the farming industry--it seems Mugabe is blocking food imports as well. What is it with communist dictators and famine, anyway? comment () trackback ()  12:45:31 PM     It seems that the roots of New York's crime problem go back a good deal further than I thought. I encountered this item in Jeff Cooper's Commentaries: The 22 rifle is considered to be socially acceptable in New York City where, for example, a 22 pistol is not. This is presumably because it is difficult to consider a 22 rifle as a defensive weapon with any sort of combat potential. Legislators are not called upon to think things through, generally speaking, but I know of one case personally in which an innocent and "socially acceptable" 22 rifle brought about desirable defensive resultsÊ- in the long run. It so happened that when I was boy of about thirteen I ran across an incident in the "American Rifleman" in which a young woman alone in her apartment in New York City used her husband's 22 single-shot rifle to good effect. It can get hot in New York and this was before the age of air conditioning, and this girl found that a goblin could easily make it through her bedroom window by way of the fire escape. With admirable presence of mind, she gathered up her husband's plinker and held the intruder at bay until the police could be summoned. When in due course they arrived, both parties were arrested and taken down to the station, where the goblin was released before his intended victim. This report filled me with indignation, and I immediately rushed out and joined the National Rifle Association (which turns out to be a pretty round-about way of increasing membership). I don't know exactly how old Jeff Cooper is, but since he was a young officer during World War II I presume this must have happened in the early 1930's. This business of arresting the victim and letting the criminal go first is just the sort of thing I would expect of New York City today. comment () trackback ()  10:32:59 AM

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