Hypocrisy

MSNBC reports on pre-teen prostitution in Pakistan.  Some of the article is unintentionally ironic:

Others in the country have targeted the police’s inability to protect children as a reason to rally the people against the government.

“This is exactly why all the religious parties are campaigning for Shariah law,” said Maulvi Noor Mohammed, a hard-line Islamic cleric, known for his ties to the Taliban.

[...]

“What these men are doing is against Islam and they must be punished accordingly,” he said.  “Islam guarantees protection for these young girls.”

...Just so long as they don’t, say, show their hair or ankles outside the house, or, kiss someone in public, or, Allah forbid, kiss someone before marriage.  In which case we’ll stone them to death in the name of Allah.  For their own good!

Hypocrisy II

Is there ANYONE among Obama’s cabinet, staff and appointees who doesn’t have skeletons in the closet?

Quoting writerspleasure,

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel - now chief of staff to President Barack Obama - who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

(In case you missed it, Obama’s pick for deputy EPA administrator stepped down the other day, after learning that a nonprofit he served on was “under scrutiny” for some kind of financial shenanigans.)

Leading the world in mission creep

UK town councils are using aerial observation with thermal imaging cameras to identify a new class of dangerous offenders against society.  Their offense?  Growing marijuana in their homes?  Night-time smuggling?

Nope ... turning their thermostats up too high or not having enough insulation.

Notice that amid the discussion of sending people to talk to those who are using too much energy, it’s also mentioned that the aerial thermal surveys could spot “people on low incomes who are not heating their homes because they cannot afford to” ... but there’s no mention of doing anything about them.

Glass cockpit

The upcoming Tesla Model S sedan has a very large color display in the center of the dash where things like sound and air-conditioning controls typically go.  (See this photo.) Speculation is it’s a touchscreen.  Its rectangular outlines seem to be mostly diguised behind the center-dash trim.

This looks to be pretty close to a full glass cockpit.  There’s another view here, from a different angle, in which we can see (top to bottom) a navigation system, what looks like an MP3-capable audio interface, and air conditioning controls.  It looks from here as though the rest of the dash is glass as well.  No telling how much of the interface is configurable, but if it is touch-sensitive, I’m guessing it’s a significant improvement over iDrive.

Bush and Obama deficits compared

Or, giving new meaning to “spending money like a drunken sailor”.

(Pointer from mrmeval)

Under the skin...

Gun control in the United States started out from racism.  The first gun control laws were designed to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.  New York’s 1911 Sullivan Act was to keep them out of the hands of Irishmen (and, arguably, Italians).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  It’s now 2009, and the Illinois legislature is considering a zip-code-by-zip-code gun ban against “any assault weapon or .50-caliber rifle”, that specifically targets mostly-black neighborhoods in Chicago — and ONLY those neighborhoods.

While we’re on the subject, if you STFW for articles on the Sullivan Act mentioned above, you may stumble across a very interesting fact.  Pop quiz time!

• Q:  What senator from New York is among the three or four most vocal opponents in Congress of civilian gun ownership in the United States?  (Particularly handgun ownership, and GOD FORBID any mere citizen actually carry one?)
• A:  Senator Charles Schumer.
• Q:  What public figure is currently among the most highly-placed holders of a New York City Sullivan Act handgun carry permit?
• A:  ...Yup, you guessed it.  Senator Charles Schumer.

Oh, hypocrisy, thy name is irony.

So, let’s see, who does that put in the gun-control hypocrites club?

• Dianne Feinstein
• Chuck Schumer
• Ted Kennedy
• Josh Sugarmann

Who else?  Where does it stop?  (John Kerry’s idiotic duck-shoot photo-op hardly counts.  We want the MAJOR hypocrites here.)

Speaking of the Tesla S ...

...Tesla Motors unveiled it today.  Seven passengers and a 300-mile range (for the top-of-the-line model) on a single charge.  (It’ll take four hours to fully recharge after that, but can do a partial quick-charge in 45 minutes.)

Tesla hopes to have the S in production by the final quarter of 2011 and have production up to 20,000 per year by the end of 2012.  Those seven passengers are five adults, plus two children in a third-row jump seat.

And while on the automotive front...

Word is, Saturn would like GM to spin it off as a fully independent company free of GM’s corporate culture and let it get back to being the “different kind of company” it was originally supposed to be.

According to Business Week, GM’s been discussing a slightly different plan.  It involves tying Saturn’s ankles to a huge chunk of GM’s debt and tossing it off a bridge, along with Hummer and a bunch of “underperforming operations”.  GM walks away debt-free and smelling of roses; Saturn washes up on the shore of the Detroit River.

I guess that’s just how they do business in Detroit.