Gullible Is Written on the Executive Chamber Ceiling

Governor Spitzer falls victim to a hoax.

(via the Daily Politics)

Quote of the Day

“It’s probably better than anything we would have passed, if we were still the majority”
-- a conservative Republican Senate staffer on the $900 billion omnibus spending bill that keeps spending contained at President Bush's requested levels.

So That's Where My Green North Face Went

Missing items that turned over to the MTA are often stolen by the MTA, The Daily News reports:

At least the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board is upfront when it picks riders' pockets.

With the MTA board poised to approve fare and toll hikes, a probe found dozens of instances where lost property turned over to workers simply disappears.

Investigators, posing as commuters, handed 26 items to bus and subway workers, saying they were found and must have been lost by a rider.

Only three of the items made it to the lost property storage unit, according to one report.

"Despite repeated attempts, we could not locate these items," auditors from the MTA's inspector general's office wrote.

The property - including cell phones, watches, glasses and clothing - were given to NYC Transit and Long Island Rail Road personnel.

TREND WATCH: Proposed NY Bans

List is current as of 5:47 PM, Friday, December 14th ...

New York City:

2007:

1. The display of nooses
   
2. Homework that takes more than 2.5 hours/night
   
3. Horse-drawn carriages from Central Park
   
4. Feeding pigeons
5. City Council ads with holiday messages that are taxpayer financed
6. City Councilmembers using public funds for personal ads
   
7. Styrofoam containers in food services
   
8. Various contributions to city politicians
9. Etching acid
10. High rises in the Upper West Side
    
11. 'Stealing' recyclables
    
12. Peeping toms
13. Videotaping in public without a permit
    
14. Smoking in cars with minors
    
15. The word "bitch"
16. The word "ho"
17. Free formula samples for new mothers at city hospitals
18. Teenage possession of spray paint
    
19. Businesses from leaving their windows or doors open while air conditioners are on inside
    
20. Dogs from being tied up three-plus hours
    
21. Talking/listening/playing while walking crosswalks
22. Skinny models
23. The "N-word"
24. Electric-assist pedicabs
25. Public pension investments in companies with business in Sudan

2006:

1. pit bulls
2. trans-fats
3. aluminum baseball bats
4. the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds
5. foie gras
6. pedicabs in parks
7. new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods)
8. lobbyists from the floor of council chambers
9. lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency
10. vehicles in Central and Prospect parks
11. cell phones in upscale restaurants
12. the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute
13. mail-order pharmaceutical plans
14. candy-flavored cigarettes
15. gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily
16. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
17. Wal-Mart
18. the process that makes steaks pink
19. subway ads poking fun at outer boroughs

2004:

1. Loud car alarms
2. Vendors from Ground Zero
   

2003:

1. Cell phones during public performances

2002:

1. Toy guns
2. Soft drinks and snacks in city public schools
   

New York:

2007:

1. Texting while driving
   
2. Using I-pods/cell phones while crossing the street
3. Plastic bags
4. Nooses
   
5. Spectating dog fights
   
6. Smoking in cars with minors
   
7. Plastic water bottles
8. Styrofoam used in food services
9. Thin models

A Christmas Cartoon

(via the Center for Consumer Freedom)

What I'm Thankful for Today

Not being a Muslim-to-Christian convert.

Interesting Reading

A gay University of Virginia undergrad student explains his opposition to gay marriage. All I'll say is that it's an argument that can't be reduced to smug sound-bites.

Today's Funk Special

Paul Dateh & inka one = hip hop, strings style!

Why Hillary Can't Win

Americans declare her the candidate they would "least like to watch on television for four years." Rudy Giuliani is the candidate Americans would most like to watch.

In this age, is there a poll that matters more?





















(via AEI's December Political Report)

Snoop's Sensual Seduction

This being funkypundit.blogspot.com, it seems mandatory to note that Snoop is declaring the G-Funk Era back on:

Well played, Mr. Snoop -- well played.

Stop the Checkpoints

If you were me, you would already be well aware that there's nothing quite as aggravating as a DWI checkpoint. But since you're not, a friend of the FunkyPundit, Sarah Longwell, breaks it down for you in the pages today's New York Sun:

Federal funding policy requires roadblocks to be "highly publicized." So authorities regularly publish roadblock times and locations in advance, allowing veteran drunk drivers simply to drive around them. The word also gets passed around via the word-of-mouth and cell phone networks, which are similar to truck drivers who tell their friends about speed traps.

Testimony from an official at Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation, Louis Rader, demonstrated that roving patrols, where cops swarm the roads looking for erratic drivers, are a superior tactic for catching drunk drivers. Mr. Rader testified that only 0.7% of all drivers stopped at DUI checkpoints are charged, while 7.7% of suspicion-based stops made by roving patrols yield charges. That's 10 times more arrests per car stopped.

In the war against drunk driving, setting up roadblocks is like expecting the enemy to walk into your camp and surrender. It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

To which a pundit of the funkiest variety could only add: Word.

Diversity Enthusiasts Beware!

Irish Independent columnist Ian O'Doherty declares he has "no respect or tolerance" for Sharia:

Anywhere in the world where Sharia law is practised, such barbaric and disgusting practises take place on a regular basis.

Don't believe me? Well, Iran has been in the news for the most recent example of a woman being sentenced to death by stoning. But they are also partial to hanging gay people and women with too much attitude.

And they quite like a bit of eye-gouging as well, when the mood takes them, such as the woman who had her eyes gouged out in a public square because she fought off a man who tried to rape her. Check that out on the internet when you fancy losing your lunch.

Or what about precious little Palestine, where 50 women have been killed by their own families this year alone, and where the beating of women who aren't sufficiently "modest" is common under the fanatics of Hamas.

Or Afghanistan, where women are routinely raped and murdered by family and strangers with impunity? Or Chechnya? Or Somalia? Or anywhere Sharia is practised.

And yet we are constantly instructed by the multicultural, liberal, chattering classes to show "respect" and "tolerance" towards Muslims who want to practise their cultural heritage in Western countries.

Well, you know what? I don't have any respect or tolerance for not just the actions, but also the mentality.

And, yes, he concedes, this makes him "Islamophobic":

Well, I am Islamophobic in the sense that I'm phobic towards the notion of treating women as third-class citizens, flogging people and killing them for having an independent thought.

I'm phobic towards the idea of killing Theo Van Gogh because he made a movie they didn't like. I'm phobic towards killing a Japanese translator because he worked on the Satanic Verses.

I'm also rather phobic to the notion that the Muslim world has the right to riot and kill each other because of a few unfunny cartoons in an obscure Danish publication.

Protestations from the Ivory Tower notwithstanding, there's nothing high-minded, chic or compassionate about tolerating barbaric acts of intolerance. Indeed, tolerating intolerance feeds its growth and provides its sanctuary. O'Doherty also reports that the Saudi woman who recently suffered the misfortune of being gang-raped and later sentenced to 200 lashes for the offense was also targeted for death by her very own brother. She had violated the family's "honor," after all.

It's too bad President Bush and many of his Anglosphere allies are so jaded with misplaced notions of "tolerance" that almost nothing is said of women's abuse under Sharia law. Why not push for a United Nations resolution that simply expresses the belief that state-sanctioned abuse of rape victims is inhumane? It wouldn't have much practical effect, but it could go a long way reminding people there's no shame in being intolerant of barbarity.