Quick Roundup 118

Cat and Hawk?

Bubblehead comments on a recent Bill Gertz piece about a Chinese submarine reported by Matt Drudge to be "stalking" an American aircraft carrier (and gets a Malkalanche in the process). Sez he:

The media will probably try to make a big deal out of the presence of Asheville and Seawolf in the exercise, and claim that even our vaunted nuclear attack subs couldn't stop the Chinese sub from approaching the carrier. Even if that is true, it's more likely that the subs would have been some distance off, tasked with preparing for the exercise. To re-iterate: any decent diesel boat could approach this close to a carrier during peacetime. This doesn't mean they could do it during periods of heightened tensions.

His third commenter adds, "Have to wonder how a diesel sub could track a carrier group for several days. At some point it had to crank up the knots to keep up."

Yup.

1836 Dynamo take it all!

Houston's professional soccer team got off to an inauspicious beginning shortly after arriving in town from San Jose. Recall that its management caved in to nonexistent Latino pressure to change its name from "1836" (the year of Texan Independence) to "Dynamo".

Fortunately, its players showed far more mettle, winning the Major League Soccer championship yesterday.

Houston to Landlords: Welcome to the HPD

Myron points to a bit of fascism that passed under my radar: Houston's City Council, which recently banned smoking in restaurants citywide, has decided to force landlords to take measures to reduce crime -- often from the very tenants the city sent their way!

The recent spike in violent crime in Houston has its epicenter in so-called "hot spots," mostly apartment complexes in the southwest and northeast sectors of Houston. After more than a year of negotiations and planning, City Council approved a measure that wisely (!) requires those complex owners and others to become crimefighters as well as landlords.

It's a necessary measure. The Houston Police Department still struggles with a manpower shortage caused by the high retirement rate of officers. While expanded cadet classes and increased funding will provide some relief, immediate, additional effort must be made to combat crime in apartment complexes, where more than half of Houstonians reside.

The situation was exacerbated by the high number of Katrina evacuees living in some of the worst-run complexes, where evacuees have been both perpetrators and victims of violent crime. A third of the 320 homicides so far this year occurred on apartment properties. Police attribute most of the 25 percent rise in homicides to killings committed at apartments. [bold added]

Here's the gist: Our government confiscated our money to extricate thousands of residents from New Orleans who did not leave before Katrina and pay their rents for a year, pretended these evacuees did not pose a crime risk for as long as it could, and now intends to force the landlords to clean up its own mess!

And oh yeah. The useful idiots at the Chronicle think all this is "wise". Their subtitle for the complete story illustrates perfectly the moral inversion that has occurred here: "New city ordinance requires owners of apartments with high crime rates to do more than collect rent." [bold added]

The nerve! What about the criminals who sit around -- when they're not contributing to a spike in the murder rate -- "collecting" government checks for their rent? And what about a city council that ought to "do more" about crime itself, rather than passing the buck to ordinary citizens?

The purpose of government is to wield the delegated retaliatory force of its citizens to protect them from the initiation of physical force. This includes fighting crime. It does not include increasing the supply of criminals and then shaking down the wealthiest crime victims after the fact!

Paris Does Linux

For the various fellow Linux fans who frequent my blog: This is old, but worthwhile.

The Linux world grew by yet another distribution this summer, as Paris Hilton announced the release of Tinkerbell Linux.

On her MySpace blog, the New York socialite announced the release named after her famous Chihuahua, Tinkerbell.

Found it as I was cleaning out my mailbox.

-- CAV