High Gas Prices Cause Parents To Murder Children

Murderous impulses abound these days. In Houston, children seem to be particularly vulnerable to their parent's frustration. It's a new phenomenon, really, child abuse, and the local government officials are grasping for reasons what has so recently gone horribly wrong. The Houston Chronicle's Dane Schiller reports:

With word Saturday that yet another parent was implicated in an attack on his children — police say he led them to the partially burned bodies — there was a feeling that something is horribly wrong with some families in the Greater Houston metropolitan area.

"Whether it is high gas prices or people not happy with their jobs or whatever, we have got a lot of anger and violence in our society, way too much, particularly family violence," Houston Councilman Peter Brown said.

Later, another expert gives his explanation:

Still, Klineberg said, they speak to growing stress for families, including the challenge of making ends meet.

"It is tough out there. People snap," he said. "And when you have 6 million people, one or two are going to snap in a bad way."

A few years ago, Andrea Yates drowned her kids in a bathtub. The gas prices were a moderate sub $2.00/gallon. Houston didn't want for violence in 2005 and gas prices were fantastic.

Houston's unemployment rate was higher in 2006 than it is now, so murders should be lower now. And maybe they are. You won't find this out from the local press, though, because it doesn't fit the narrative. And what is the narrative? The economy is horrible. Life is horrible. Gas prices are high, oil companies are bad and that's horrible.

Oh wait, when looking at the numbers, though, murders were up in 2006, but it wasn't unemployment, it was the fine folks from New Orleans. As those yahoos got put in the clink, the murder rate declined in 2007. And looky here:

HPD officials say that the City of Houston has recorded the fewest numbers of murders for the first quarter of this year since 2005.

The unofficial numbers show 78 murders were recorded through the first three months of this year.nThere were 88 murders for the same period in 2007. That’s an 11.3 percent decrease.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt said the decline shows that the department’s targeted crime initiatives and overtime programs throughout the city are paying off. “While murders are nearly impossible crimes to predict and prevent, we do feel our overtime programs in place, including those officers assigned to our Crime Reduction Unit, can impact crimes that could escalate to murder,” said Chief Hurtt.

Wow, those are dramatic numbers and not at all the impression one gets from reading something like Dan Schiller put together. The notion that there are always going to be nutso crazies killing their kids doesn't occur to these people. What occurs to them is that it's politically expedient to exploit a child's horrific death at the hands of a parent and blame......the latest trend.

Whether it be Twinkies (really depression) or oil or the economy or global warming or fill-in-the-blank excuse, according to Leftists no one is responsible for his murderous impulses and it's always worse Right Now! because it fits the latest trendy, alarmist call to action. It's stupid. I hope no one is paying attention to them.

Oh wait, they're not.

H/T Rorschach

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Tornado

Mother nature big, mankind small.

Hurricanes in 2008

Guess. I want you to guess: Will there be a slow hurricane season this summer or will there be a catastrophic level of horrendous devastation and destruction secondary to Global Warming? If you get the answer wrong, you're stoooopid. Go to the link for the answer.

We Are Witnessing The Demise of Western Civilization--UPDATED

I get ribbed for being hyperbolic. A German lady from Germany (and no that's not stating the obvious, she could have been Austrian or something) called me polemic a year ago. Well, hell, sometimes my emotionality has a basis in reality. This time, Western Civilization is doomed and that is no exaggeration.

There is a new Playstation 3 advertisement over in Europe that is so vile that I cannot put the picture on my blog because my mom reads this (probably not safe for work, but it might be ok if you just look really fast). Go look at it and come on back. You need to do three Hail Mary's to clean your mental palate after looking at that ad.

Okay, now we can talk.

Europeans are supposed to be enlightened. Yeah, I know. Whatever. But still, on the one hand they're turning into frigging Eurabia with all the conservative Muslims running around in burqas and on the other you've got thumbs that look like penises in public advertising aimed at children. One of those philosophies is going to win, right? And which winner leaves Western Civilization the winner? The correct answer boys and girls is neither.

That seems to be the choices. Either nothing goes or everything does. Both ways lead to depravity and sexual dysfunction, ironically enough. One way leads to the objectification of women as vessels for male dominance or child bearing--underneath the black cover there's a vagina. The other way leads to the objectification of women and men and children as sex objects--no black sheet needed.

Americans, take note. This dichotomy, these two paths to destruction, is coming to a city near you. A relative was talking about the neighborhood he and his wife were considering moving to but he refuses to live near two (not just one) mosques. Now, you can call him prejudiced. Go ahead. But while listening to the call to prayers a zillion times a day, you're listening to an ideology that is not, or hasn't shown itself to be, congruent with modern times.

But the choice laid before us by multiculturalists is that anything goes. So, they can, with a straight face, extol the virtues of clitoral mutilation for those people, while defending advertising that has only one purpose: to degrade and debase. Hey! We are free! It's okay to sexualize children. It's okay to abort inconvenience. It's okay to sell a piece of technology geared toward teens and young people with penis pictures. Everything is okay and who are you to judge?

No one is judging much anymore, are they? Few seem willing to draw a line in the sand. So, brace yourselves. Ten years from now, there will be racy Playstation billboards towering over the shiny new, huge mosque coming to a suburb near you. Can you blame people? The disgusting decadence begs for an equal and opposite reaction. Islam gives people lines to not cross that's for damn sure.

Either way, we are witnessing the end. You've been warned.

UPDATE: More evidence coming from Europe that the end is nigh.

And for those who think there is no way this ad can be real, here is this from a dear reader.

Stop It Already With The Antibacterial Soap

Tigerhawk has a smart sister and she says:

The active antibacterial agent in question is triclosan. The only real question that can result from numerous scientific studies about triclosan is whether or not its potential negatives are strong enough to stop using it. (Indeed, the only piece (opinion) questioning the validity of the research showing both potential resistance problems and toxic byproducts of triclosan (Swofford, 2005) was written by a member of the soap industry.) However, given unambiguous results showing that soap containing triclosan is indistinguishable in its effectiveness against bacteria as regular soap (and, frankly, given that most illnesses most household users of antibacterial soaps are concerned about are actually caused by viruses, which do not respond to antibacterials) any potentially negative side-effects of its use should be unacceptable.

Here is the problem. Humans are dumping all kinds of chemicals into our (and other organisms') water supply, that are not removed during sewage treatment (even when the water properly goes through sewage treatment). Among these is triclosan (Gomez et al., 2007), which has been found in large proportions of human urinary samples (Calafat et al., 2008). Not only do we know nothing about how ingesting all these various chemicals may be affecting us over the long term, we cannot begin to know the complex ways in which they are interacting with each other to create new, and potentially more toxic compounds. Both laboratory (DeLorenzo et al., 2008) and field research (Kinney et al., 2008) suggests that triclosan bioaccumulates, which means its concentration could increase up the food chain (the same phenomenon responsible for the crash of bald eagle populations a few decades ago, due to DDT). Other laboratory studies suggest that it reacts with light and chlorine (ubiquitous in our drinking water) to form types of dioxin, a toxic compound (Sanchez-Prado et al., 2006). These studies are just scratching the surface of potential interactions between triclosan and other ubiquitous pharmaceuticals such as painkillers and sex hormones from birth control. Laboratory studies have also demonstrated that bacteria such as E coli and Salmonella can become resistant to triclosan (Yazdankhah et al., 2006).

Use soap and water people. Wash your towels regularly. Wash your hands before prepping food. Wash your hands after bodily functions--including blowing your nose. People forget that one.

Quarantine sick people. Don't go to work when sick. Don't go to school. Don't beg for antibiotics. Don't use medications that are unnecessary. Rest. Hydrate. Stay warm. Let the fever do it's job.

Antibacterial soaps are stupid. Stop using them. Now.

Interesting Things You Should Know

I'm going to start on a spiritual note. What is it like to be spiritually abused? A Christian talks about how her ten years in spiritual darkness.

"Did Wright matter?" Yes. Wright will matter in the general. And Gaius writes about the failure of the press in dealing with Obama. As an aside, BlueCrabBoulevard has such a pleasing layout. And I really like the date next to each post. The whole website is restful. Obama is omniscient. Aren't all saviors? Oh, and MKH highlights the press bias with photographic proof (via Cassy at Wizbang) . Amazing that the MSM can do what they do with a straight face. Give me a break.

Something more to worry about if you're so inclined: Geomagnetic storms.

I love Firefly. You know this. Nerd alert: So does Rachel. Shiny! (For what it's worth, I'm a Mal girl, myself, but I do so, so love Kaylee. She is just yummy!) And I'd like to remind Firefly lovers why Mal is hotter than Jayne. When Jayne sold out his crew Mal nearly blew Jayne out the hatch. Captain Malcolm Reynolds showed Jayne who was boss. Yes, sir!

Why is there no sympathy for Muslims claiming discrimination? Canadian Muslims cry foul and Mark Steyn defends himself and answers.

It is time to discuss the ugliness that are Crocs. They are fine for children. Although, they do leave kid's feet stinky in adult rugby player ways. Whew!

No freaking way! Al Gore is an opportunist? Nooooo..... It's perfectly fine to exploit the deaths of over 60,000 people to bring up your pet theory. Perfectly. Fine.

Is the middle class drowning in debt? No.

Cry a sartorial tear for Hillary. If you can muster the emotion.... No tears here.

Stephen King hates the military and he's a moron. Sorry, to family members who love him, or rather, love his freaky writing.

Be careful talking sexy on the internet. Don't say you haven't been warned.

The right to free speech is trumped by the right to an abortion. What?

You know the dude who imprisoned his daughter? Yeah, well he raped someone back in the day, was convicted and spent time in prison, but guess what? Stupid Austria doesn't keep that crime on the books after fifteen years so it's like it never happened. And when his daughter went missing, no one asked because no one had the info to ask. You have got to be kidding me.

60 years of Israel. Why weren't they named Jewland?

Just a reminder to hit the awesome blogs in my blog roll. They are there for a reason. I love them!

The End Is Nigh

Jeff Goldstein laments the state of the world: Amanda Marcotte wins a book deal and is on a book tour? The Apocalypse is upon us.

Being Green: Why Try?

Does anyone feel like littering, leaving a mess, chopping down trees for sport or eating chemicals is a good thing? No on feels that way, do they? And yet Americans are being treated like apathetic no-minds most days.

But really, what can be done about the environment other than caring for our own little patch of land the best way possible? That question is explored nicely in this article.

Earthquakes In Mid-America

God must be mad at Madison and St. Louis. Earthquakes hit there and people are a little shocked. I, however, am not shocked, because I watched the most terrifying National Geographic special ever not too long ago that predicts a cataclysmic earthquake in that region that would flood hundreds of miles and reroute the Mississippi. So, it could get worse up there people. Don't say you haven't been warned.

I lived through a 6.2 magnitude, I think it was, in California back in the day. The epicenter was about five miles away, maybe less, and it was disturbing, to say the least. I was actually underground, working in a building as a janitor, essentially, and had no escape. So, I stood in a door frame, waited for it to pass, and then came the aftershocks. But the mot distressing thing was the reaction of some people. A friend of mine continued to work. He just couldn't fathom the danger or what happened. I had to guide him out of the building. He was completely checked out. Another friend, sat, bug-eyed for about three hours and shook. He could not integrate the experience.

A weird thing: While walking to work that morning, I didn't notice but later realized that it was deathly quite. No animals were singing. No usual sounds. And it was quiet for some time afterward, too, as the aftershocks rolled through.

Another weird thing: When I lived in Michigan, a tornado ripped through our town, skipped our house, but not our neighbors houses. Typical weird stuff, like furniture being pulled through windows. Anyway, the sounds from that tornado and the sound, underground, from the earthquake were exactly the same. Both sounded like a huge herd of horses or a train rumbling toward you. It was the sound of massive, unchecked power and it was terrifying and humbling. All you can do is hope you live and surrender to it, because there is nothing you can do besides try to get to safety. And many people were too overwhelmed to do even that.

Nutter Richard Falk Heads UN Human Rights Commission

Maxed Out Mama explains the significance:

Among Mr Falk's qualifications is that he was an international law professor at Princeton University. Of course! And he is distinguished for his openmindedness and critical thinking abilities, as demonstrated by this lovely quote:

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess."

And also the manhunts, Mr Falk! Don't forget the North Carolina and Virginia manhunts! In 2004 Richard Falk wrote the foreword to Griffin's book claiming that the US attacked itself, so in fairness to Mr. Falk one would have to say that he did not adopt this theory as a UN Human Rights campaign strategy. He's been barmy for a while, to put it in Brit-speak. One would say that Mr. Falk has spent too much time sniffing the academic glue in extremely progressive Princeton University circles.

Great, just great. Why is the U.S. even in the UN? Move the whole blasted enterprise, to, say, Riyadh.

Short Car Trips More Environmentally Friendly Than Walking?

Say it isn't so! Actually, this article is kinda funny and illustrates the absurd lengths people go to to ensure righteousness. In the absence of God, people will create one anyway. And environmentalism gets more Pharisaical by the day. For example:

If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.

How can one keep up?

Green Energy Will Be Driven By Green Money

For those who want to change the world into a better place, do it with dollars. The world will become environmentally friendly when there's money in it. For example:

The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

“That’s just money you’re hearing,” he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.

“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.

And money, more than insipid moralizing, will drive green energy. And that's the best way. The American Way.

Apocalypse Now? It's The Gays Fault

Around the web, commenters shared fears about the apocalypse starting with the Red Moon. And now, an MP in Israel believes that earthquakes around the country are being caused by immoral activity:

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave "legitimacy to sodomy".

Israel decriminalised homosexuality in 1988 and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.

Two earthquakes shook the region last week and a further four struck in November and December.

It does seem that the Judeo-Christian world is diverging further. There are the ultra-conservatives who see signs everywhere and the increasingly secularized, marginally churched who hold their noses at such archaic notions. I guess we'll find out who is right soon enough.

Climate Sinners

More religious talk from the Global Warming types. Now, the United States, along with Saudia Arabia are the chief sinners.

The only conclusion I can come to is that mankind needs some sort of religion. And since going to church is passé and reading the Bible marginally literally categorizes one as a medieval ignoramus, the only choice is to make up rules, laws, and damnation on the fly.

Enter environmentalism.

You can't even talk to these people anymore. It's not enough to renew, recycle and reuse. Oh no! Now we must reduce the number of children, if have any at all. We must reduce our refuse--go on a third-world diet to produce third world amounts of poop. We must downsize everything from our houses to our trucks. We must not light a candle. The list is getting so long and Pharisaical, who needs church? The nightly news is a sermon.

Like all cults, the Environmentalist religion has a shred of truth. It's a good thing to live modestly and within our means. It's a good thing to not trash the environment--to dress and keep what we're given. It's a good thing to respect all living things, including plants. It's a good thing to treat animals humanely. These are all good things.

But this condemning language and apocalyptic fervor is going to drive people away from saving the planet. It's just too....weirdly religious. If environmentalists want to save the environment they could start by saving their message. Make it factual and doable. People will try. Find a way to work with human nature. People will buy it because they want to.

The church lady rarely ever gets listened to.

Tree Hugging

This link goes out to my tree-hugging friend. You know who you are!

P.S. My socialist San Francisco buddy probably is sorry he missed this.

I Trust The Government.....To Be Incompetent Boobs

Stories like these are why I'm not a government-knows-all conspiracy nut. There are just too many layers of lazy and stupid to make the whole organism out to be some efficient, fit, evil machine.

Flesh-eating Bacteria

A solution? And a natural one at that.

Tap Water: The New Leftist Sacrament and It's Green TV Not Green Tea To You, Bub

Religion looks different. No need to go to church to get a guilt trip these days. The local university or turning on the TV will do just fine. Eric from Classical Values laments the new wrinkle on the Leftist religious folk:

Well, hey, I drink tap water, but only because I'm a cheapskate. However, all this talk of taking a politically correct "pledge" not to drink bottled water makes me feel like running out and buying several cases on general principle.

The activists are also screaming that bottled water leads to war:

The Women's International League of Peace and Freedom has launched a three-year "Save the Water" campaign, on the notion that drinking bottled water encourages privatization, which can lead to wars over water.

This really shouldn't come as a shock, because I heard about a recent incident involving an employee who was scolded at work for drinking a bottle of water from Fiji. Until then, I hadn't known there was such a thing about politically incorrect water, so I asked, and I was told that the objection was that because bottled water is transported, while tap water comes out of the faucet, that bottled water eats up more carbon than tap water, and the longer the distance from the source, the more carbon is burned.

Gaia might unleash her wrath--wild fires, hurricanes, general tohu and bohu will commence.

The water obsession is just the most recent wrinkle on the purity Ché shirt. Last night, while iChatting with my brother, he tells me to go turn on NBC. Why who is it but that smug little troll Bob Costas and his band of merry metrosexual men airing their greenness via candle-light while the fifty big screen TVs blare behind them. Keith Olberman looks much better in low lighting, though, so there's that.

How very conscious of NBC. How noble! The guys looked like they were on a candle-lit date. It makes all kinds of sense if you go to the Church of Gaia. Turn off the lights and leave the place buzzing with EMFs from TVs and sound equipment. They probably hopped on the corporate jet to get there in time to moralize. Nothing like a good hypocritical preacher to make you catch the spirit.

And the best part? The little peacock turned green, too. Cute! Who says football announcers are block-headed jocks? It's great to seem them get in touch with The Feminine.

To get serious for a moment. If people want church there are better religions with much better preachers. And the newer preachers seem far more tolerant than our Leftist brethren.
Listen to Joel Osteen's morality and then listen to Keith Olberman. Whose church do you want to attend?

File This In "Be Careful What You Pray For......

You might just get it. " The Southeast is a parched land these days. Clark Stooksbury says:
"The irony is that most of the Southeast could use a hurricane. Whatever damage one might do on the coast, if a tropical depression were to dump heavy rains over Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, it would be a blessing."

Glenn Reynolds chimes in, "Yeah, I've been watching the computer models for Noel and wishing that the tracks would shift westward."

Prayer works. Prayer power people might want to remember to reverse course. And for those who worship Gaia commenter 3R says:

Point well taken. The very slow 2007 hurricane season has featured two Category 5 storms, both of which made landfall in Mexico. According to reports, the liklihood of two such storms making landfall anywhere in the same season is low.

But then there's the very slow 2006 season to explain, which if I recall correctly featured NO Category 5 storms. And then there are the reports of unusually cool Atlantic waters...heck, let's blame this year's California fires on global warming, make some more dire predictions, and see how the 2008 hurricane season turns out. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Is God listening and Gaia ignoring the pleas?

Paul Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome Caused By Bush Derangement Syndrome

Whether it's his zeal to limit a person's choice about rock music or his zeal to limit a person's use of the atmosphere, the impulse within the man that desires to control others is what gives me a visceral response to Al Gore's policies and positions. Mr. Gore seems to have a real need to be the sanctimonious voice of morality. And since he's a Democrat, he certainly can't go back, finish seminary and actually preach in a church. No, in Mr. Gore's case, he created a mega-worldwide church and invokes damnation on anyone who refuses to believe.

And Republicans interested in science or economics who don't buy the gospel are deranged. So says Paul Krugman. Who can rationally disagree with Al Gore? Why would the Right be against his beliefs? Krugman thinks it goes back to the Right's insecurity over the Presidency of George W. Bush. Ultimately, disliking Gore's means and methods and the actual substance of his policies can be pinned on the defense of an illegitimate President Bush:

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

***

Climate change is, however, harder to deal with than acid rain, because the causes are global. The sulfuric acid in America’s lakes mainly comes from coal burned in U.S. power plants, but the carbon dioxide in America’s air comes from coal and oil burned around the planet — and a ton of coal burned in China has the same effect on the future climate as a ton of coal burned here. So dealing with climate change not only requires new taxes or their equivalent; it also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

Was Mr. Krugman writing about Gore Derangement Syndrome? Because this whole piece certainly feels like B.D.S. President Bush is al Qaeda's best friend. President Bush is a stupid rube. President Bush is an illegitimate President.

And then there's President Bush's policies. It's axiomatic to Democrats that dealing with climate change (and of course, the climate change is a bad thing, it must be, if it exists at all as anything more than the natural order of things) we must raise taxes, give in to foreign governments and "acknowledge these truths".

There's no debate in the Democrat-o-sphere. Human-caused climate change isn't science, it's an inconvenient truth. And Al Gore is the chief evangelist. And the only reason Republicans can't see the truth is that they hate Al Gore and sensible policies like raising taxes. And the Right just can't abide when the greatness of guys like Gore are acknowledged with prizes like the Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize.

While the Left has been bereft of zealous sermons for as long as they've been hippies, most Republicans still know a good sermon when they hear one. And they recognize a preacher posing as a politician. For all the Left's projection about George Bush, it's Albert Gore, Jr. who carries himself as the Gaia-ordained apostle of light and "truth". His faith isn't in the science of climate change, his faith is in his own rightness. If he actually believed his sermons, he'd live in a mud hut and restrict his caloric intake so he'd reduce his carbon and methane emissions.

So, Republicans are unreasonable and haters and deranged because they dare to doubt the dubious "truth" and the man who delivers it. Who's deranged again?