My view of the world

Picture, from the NY Times, of Gail Sacco and some of the homeless she feeds in Circle Park.

Well, Las Vegas made the news again, it seems that as of Friday, it’s illeagal to feed the homeless in any public park.
This came about in part, because of Mayor Oscar Goodman’s tyrades against the homeless, and in part, because of people like, Gail Sacco, who has fed the homeless in Circle Park for several years.
Activities like this have caused a number of homeless people to spend as much time as they can in city parks, leading to complaints about, crime, drunkeness and litter. People with families, who live in the area of circle park, say that they are afraid to go to the park.
Las Vegas has a number of ordinances on the books about large groups, and who can be banned, but this is the first law aimed specifically at the homeless. Las Vegas officials say that the enforcement of this new law will not be aimed at the casual handout, but at people like Ms. Sacco, who encrourage the homeless to gather in these parks.
We have a number of shelters here in town, but, aside from the fact that at times these shelters are overcrowded, the homeless complain that the shelters are too far to walk to.
Ms. Sacco, said that another reason the homeless do not flock to shelters here,is that the chronically mentally ill who make up a sizable part of the homeless population typically resist treatment and services.
Ok, so now, the ACLU and a number of other groups, are planning on suing as usual.

The problem I have, with these wonderful, caring, advocates for the homeless, is that they quite obviously don’t give a shit about the safety of our children, or the people who live near these parks, who are not “chronically mentally ill”, and who paid the taxes that were used to build those parks.

Just a thought:
How come the guys in the picture look so clean and well dressed, do you think, that, maybe, they’re afraid that if they showed what the less, politically correct homeless looked like, they wouldn’t get as much sympathy?

I’ll end this rant with Oscar’s statement about the coming lawsuits.
“For 35 years, I represented reputed mobsters and was never afraid to go to court and I am not afraid to go to court against the A.C.L.U.’’

I decided to put in a couple of comments on Nevada politics.

Jack Carter, appears to me to be, a libertarian disguised as a Democrat.
“I am who I am. I like who I am,” he said. ” I’m a personal freedoms person. I don’t want the government to come in and tell my child or whoever it is that they can’t have an abortion. I’m pro-choice as far as a woman choosing, but I’m against abortion.” He also says “sort of” a lot in his interviews. …That’s what I want in a politician, real decisiveness.
In 1970, he was discharged from the military after he admitted using drugs. Carter said he’s not concerned that the administrative discharge will affect his election chances, at least he admitted that he inhaled.

In the Titus vs Gibson silliness, Titus put up a website titled www.monorailjim.com. And these two, both say, that they’ll each support the other against the Republicans.
Ok, I’ll buy that, but, this means they’ll have to put off the “pistols at dawn” until after the elections.

Politics, the ultimate sitcom.

In case you missed it, according to an article in the NY Times, the Feds busted David Carruthers, the head of BetOnSports, in the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, during a layover on his way to Costa Rica, he was charged with racketeering conspiracy for participating in an illegal gambling enterprise.
The government also filed charges against 10 other people involved with BetOnSports and with three Florida marketing companies that prosecutors say were involved in promoting illegal gambling. Prosecutors assert that under the Federal Wire Act of 1961, the providers and promoters of Internet sports books and casinos are participants in a criminal enterprise.
Sue Schneider, publisher of Interactive Gaming News, an online magazine focusing on the Internet casino industry, said the charges would have at least one major chilling effect on the industry’s officers. “I imagine the number of executives coming through the U.S. on connecting flights will come to a screeching halt,” she said.
BetOnSports is publicly traded in Britain and their stock fell roughly 16% on the news of his arrest.

There’s also a bill that passed the House and is now awaiting a vote in the Senate, that criminalizes, the processing of payments to internet gambling operations by financial institutions, this includes online Poker.
When are those idiots in DC going to figure out that you can’t legislate morality, can you say, Prohibition?

Ebay has banned the use of the newly launched Google Checkout, they’ve also banned Netpay, Qchex.com, ePassporte.com and BillPay.
Their acceptable payment policy says that they will “evaluate” any new online payment services.
After reading the terms, I could see nothing that would indicate that Google violated Ebay’s rules.
It looks like all they’ve done, is give themselves an excuse to block anybody but Paypal, which they happen to own, surprise, surprise.
At this point in time, the new Google Checkout doesn’t compete directly with Paypal, but most folks can see what’s coming.
Ebay has no intention of allowing any potential competition to their cash cow.
It’s good to be the king.

Waiting for the missus.

Well, Spook Central Langley has decided that Osama Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda are no longer a threat. They shut down the unit that was hunting him. One former member of this team called the decision “sophmoric.”
These are the same lusers that said Sadam had weapons of mass destruction and was trying to buy nuke building material in Africa, neither statement was true, but, that’s what the powers that be wanted to hear, so that’s what was said.

Does anybody else remember our glorious victory in Vietnam, we were getting our butts kicked, so the President said, we won and our allies could handle the clean up, at which point our troops were called home, and the tanks rolled in.
It’s starting to feel a bit like that.

The CIA was designed to analyse data, now they’ve turned into a bunch of brown nosing, back biting, weasels, who say whatever the white house wants them to say.
The CIA had this to say about the disbanding of the unit:
“The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever,” said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. “This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus.”

Alec station was established back in 1996, after Bin Ladin started calling for a global Jihad, most of the rest of the company thought they were a bunch of fanatics, and maybe they were, but 9/11 proved that they were also right.

Well, M$ is at it again. Somebody suggested that the WGA could be used as an off switch for Winblows.
When M$ was asked about this, they refused to deny that it would be used for that purpose.
As stands, it appears that this piece of M$ spyware becomes mandatory come fall.

There have already been numerous cases of M$ saying that a copy of xp that came with a computer that was purchased at a legitimate retailer was bogus.
M$ denies that they ever made a mistake, and the twit you get to talk to on the phone, always has the same answer, “uninstall and buy a new copy,” I don’t know about you, but I certainly wish I could afford to run out and buy software I’d already paid for, every time M$ screws up.
We won’t bother to go into detail on the number of b.s.o.d. and driver problems they’ve introduced.

As far as I’m concerned, Winblows is still the best desktop out there, and their servers are still crap, especially with the new, per device licensing.
As I understand it, with this licensing scheme, if a printer connects to your server, you need a cal and if a router connects to your server, you not only need a cal for the router, you need one for every device connected to the router.

They’ll have to forgive me if I stay with some flavor of Linux or BSD.