'Problems'

Some classic Sex Pistols:

Too many problems
Oh why am I here
I need to be me
'Cos you're all too clear
And I can see
There's something wrong with you
But what do you expect me to do?
At least I gotta know what I wanna be
Don't come to me if you need pity
Are you lonely you got no one
You get your body in suspension
That's no problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you

Eat your heart out on a plastic tray
You don't do what you want
Then you'll fade away
You won't find me working
Nine to five
It's too much fun a being alive
I'm using my feet for my human machine
You won't find me living for the screen
Are you lonely all your needs catered
You got your brains dehydrated

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do

Problem, problem

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do with your problem
The problem is you
Problem

I ain't equipment, I ain't automatic
You won't find me just staying static
Don't you give me any orders
For people like me
There is no order

Bet you thought you had it all worked out
Bet you thought you knew what I was about
Bet you thought you'd solved all your problems
But you are the problem

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do with your problem
I'll leave it to you
Problem, the problem is you
You got a problem
What you gonna do

They know a doctor
Gonna take you away
They take you away
And throw away the key
They don't want you
And they don't want me
You got a problem
The problem is you
Problem, what you gonna do
Problem, I'll leave it back, I have a
Problem, you got a problem

Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem

Problem, problem,
Problem

'Kids on the Street'

Angelic Upstarts.

Off of 1981's "2,000,000 Voices."

Here's a recent live clip and the awesome studio version below.

Communists March Against Police Brutality in Anaheim!

Here's the announcement for today's protest, at ANSWER LA, "STAY IN THE STREETS! FROM THE RACIST POLICE TO THE RACIST 'JUSTICE' SYSTEM - STOP THE WAR ON BLACK & BROWN YOUTH!"

Also at WORD: Women Organized to Resist and Defend, "July 21 in Anaheim: Statewide March Against Police Brutality: Demand an end to the war on Black and oppressed youth!"

And the response at the Anaheim Blog, "Radicals Working to Make Anaheim March More Combustible":

The left-wingers working with Genevieve Huizar and Donna Acevedo to bring a cavalcade of radicals and anarchists to protest in Anaheim this Sunday are now trying to mix in the explosive George Zimmerman verdict, with a healthy dose of race-war rhetoric.

I blogged about Anaheim's political disfunction after last year's riots. ANSWER LA certainly knows how to take advantage of circumstances, although they don't usually push for violent unrest. But we'll see.

#TrayvonMartin and the Moynihan Report

It's Erin Aubry Kaplan, at the Los Angeles Times, "Trayvon Martin, an American son."

She gives the standard review of the Moynihan Report, which was perhaps the most important piece of sociological research in the second half of the 20th century, but which was attacked by blacks and leftists for putting the blame for black American family dislocation at the individual level level rather than the structural level, with its easy excuses of "institutional racism."

Her piece then goes on:

All of which brings us directly to Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old was killed because he was seen by Zimmerman and many others as a potential threat, a conflation of racial fact and fantasy that obscured the more critical fact that he was a child and somebody's son — a loved member of a family.

The battle lines were drawn long before the trial even started. Zimmerman supporters circulated images of Trayvon as a wannabe bad guy and lone predator who seemed much older and harder than 17, complete with a gold grill on his teeth; Trayvon supporters emphasized the dignity and caring nature of his parents in an attempt to counter not just those stereotypes but the bigger assumptions that broken black families produce broken and potentially dangerous kids.

Trayvon's parents were divorced, hardly uncommon in America, but viewed through a racial lens, that was seen as just one more bit of black pathology. But the truth is that black families, whether nonnuclear or traditional, poor or middle class, are all subject to damning stereotypes and to a deeply rooted belief that they are somehow lesser.

The recent acknowledgments of high-profile black men such as Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. that they have been racially profiled by police speak to this long-standing truth. Black pundits such as MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry have also aired their personal frustration and a sense of what she poignantly called the "demoralization" of all black people in the wake of the not-guilty verdict.

The question now is whether Holder or anyone high up in the government, including our first black president, will be able or willing to make black crises a matter of national import again.

I have to say, I am not hopeful. Obama's unscripted remarks on Friday about race and his own experiences — an elaboration of his comment last year that "if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon"— were undoubtedly a relief to many who've been frustrated by the president's calculated silence on everything racial. There are reasons for that silence. From the beginning, he has gotten fierce blowback for even the mildest expressions of empathy with other blacks. His public addresses to black audiences have stressed so-called family values and personal responsibility on the part of black men, steering clear of systemic problems such as racism and employment discrimination. The Moynihan Revisited project, despite some laudable goals, has more than a whiff of that do-it-ourselves conservatism about it.

Personal responsibility has a role to play, of course, but that conversation can only take place in a society equally determined to address the broader systemic issues.

Pulling back from the philosophical extremes that all Americans — black, white and other — have accepted for far too long as normal will take much more than another report or retooled initiative. Real and sustained change on the racial equality front has to be a family effort, an effort of the entire dysfunctional American family to which we all belong.

Yes, the "broader systemic issues."

Those always help take the onus off personal responsibility, and they keep the left's perpetual race-grievance machine in business.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Other McCain, "The Greater Good’: Heretical Facts vs. the Myth of St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie."

Heidi Klum Goes Topless in Bora Bora

She posted to Instagram, via Londons' Daily Mail, "No clothes? No problem! Heidi Klum posts yet another topless Instagram snap as she adds to her collection of raunchy selfies."

The Militarization of American Policing

From Radley Balko, at WSJ, "Rise of the Warrior Cop":

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

I pretty much hate cops, but to be sympathetic here you have to think having 16 plants growing downstairs is just routine. I don't. But RTWT. I think any decent person's going to be more of a civil libertarian these days, what with the criminal Obama gang still in power. Sheesh.

Demonstrations Across the Country Commemorate #TrayvonMartin

A report at the New York Times (via Memeorandum).

And at Twitchy, "Rally we much: Al Sharpton’s tweet about Jay and Bey sparks mockery."

'The Whole System is Racist!' — The Left's Poisonous Post-#Zimmerman Untruths

From Heather Mac Donald, at National Review, "The Post-Zimmerman Poison Pill":

The most poisonous untruth being peddled in the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal is the claim that American justice is racist. The criminal law regularly announces that black Americans are “worth less than other Americans,” Cardozo Law School professor Ekow Yankah wrote on the New York Times opinion page this week. It wasn’t activists who “injected” race into the discussion, scoffed The American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie on Monday, the “criminal-justice system” is “already” racial. An e-mail alert on Wednesday from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School proclaimed: “An ugly truth rears its head again: Racial disparities are alive and well in our criminal-justice system.”

The idea that the criminal-justice system discriminates against blacks — and that this bias explains blacks’ disproportionate presence in custody — is a staple of civil-rights activism and of the academic Left. Every effort to prove it empirically, however, has come up short. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Alfred Blumstein has found that blacks are underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their arrest rates. A meta-analysis of charging and sentencing studies showed that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms, according to criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen.

Criminal-law professors across the political spectrum agree that the Zimmerman verdict resulted from prosecutorial overkill, not juror bias. The trial was scrupulously fair and presented the prosecution with full opportunity to make its case.

Close on the heels of the “biased justice system” conceit, however, is the preposterous implication that the primary homicide threat faced by young black males comes from honorary whites such as George Zimmerman. “Our children are targeted. Our community is targeted,” Martin Luther King III told the NAACP national convention on Wednesday. Protesters at the Orlando, Fla., courthouse this week held signs proclaiming “Endangered species: young black men and boys.” The New York Times ran an article today about the “painful talks” black parents are having with their children about how not to get gunned down by whites. A nurse’s assistant in Missouri told the Times: The whole situation ‘“would just make me skeptical about what crowd of white people I put [my son] around.’”

In fact, if a black parent wants to radically reduce his son’s chance of getting shot, he should live in a white neighborhood. New York’s crime profile is typical of urban-crime disparities across the country. The per capita shooting rate in predominantly black Brownsville, Brooklyn, is 81 times higher than that of predominantly white and Asian Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, according to the New York Police Department. Blacks in 2012 committed about 75 percent of all shootings in New York, and whites a little over 2 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the city’s population and whites 35 percent. Blacks are 60 percent of the city’s homicide victims. Their killers? They aren’t white.

Well, the entire leftist model is predicated on lies. It keeps the protesters in the streets and the president can make distracting speeches about how he was racially profiled. Meanwhile, dead cities like Detroit proliferate.

That's the program of the regressive left in action.

The left's battle cry right now: "The whole system is racist!" (See, "Justice for Trayvon Martin! Shut Down the Racist System!")

Hat Tip: Blazing Cat Fur, "This is just getting freaky… NRO goes all Derbyshire on Trayvon."

PHOTO CREDIT: Twitter.

Kelly Brook – Nuts Magazine July 2013

Cover girl.

How beautiful does @IAMKELLYBROOK look on this weeks cover! More stunning pics inside, be sure to check it out! pic.twitter.com/kro1lyHzfL

— Nuts (@nuts_official) July 16, 2013

Photos here.

The Italians Are Coming!

I keep seeing this commercial.

I like it, but it's not enough to get me to buy a Fiat. They look so small. Not much smarter than those "smart" cars which will get 100 percent killed in a collision.

Protesters Heckle Oakland Mayor Jean Quan at #TrayvonMartin Rally

I just mentioned this the other day, hilariously:

Idiot city leaders like this are completely bum-f-ked when they realize the protesters with whom they share ideological solidarity couldn't give a rat's ass about them and their words of "beautiful" peace and freedom speech.

Crowds are heckling and booing Mayor Quan as she tries to speak at Trayvon Martin rally. pic.twitter.com/Izx2YQBQGx

— John Alston (@JohnAlstonABC7) July 20, 2013

And heckling the mayor is not a good sign that protesters want to keep it peaceful today. But we'll see.

Nick Gillespie on Detroit's Tragedy

A nice little clip:



And Obama's former car czar Steven Rattner wants a bailout, naturally.

At NYT, "We Have to Step In and Save Detroit" (at Memeorandum).

Jay Z and Beyoncé Attend New York #JusticeForTrayvon Protest

Star treatment.

Commentary from Becca Lower, "Why We’re Losing the Narrative on Race."

Beyonce and Jay Z with Sybrina Fulton & me at the #100CityTrayvon vigil pic.twitter.com/7ZMLR7L1zj

— Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) July 20, 2013

And at the Los Angeles Times, "'Justice for Trayvon' rallies unfold across the U.S."

#JusticeForTrayvon March in Los Angeles

So much for solidarity.

At the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. marchers for Trayvon Martin continue on Wilshire Boulevard":

Several hundred participants in a “Justice for Trayvon” march in Los Angeles split up Saturday in the Mid-City area, with one group continuing west on Wilshire Boulevard while another faction headed north on Coronado Street.

Blowing whistles, beating drums and chanting “No Justice, No Peace,” the protesters made their way from the federal building downtown to the Mid-City area. The group was followed by more than a dozen officers on motorcycles and bicycles, while a police helicopter hovered overhead.

But no arrests and no problems were reported during the march. Police closed intersections as marchers passed and eastbound Wilshire remained open.

It was unclear where the marchers were headed.

Demonstrators have split into two groups. One is heading north on Coronado Street. The other west on Wilshi... https://t.co/FdnzA5iSYz

— Ruben Vives (@LATvives) July 20, 2013

Oakland Police Cancel Days Off So That Every Officer Available on Saturday

The video at this report is worth your time, at NBC Bay Area, "Oakland, San Francisco Join 100 Justice of Trayvon Rallies."

Hopefully it all stays peaceful today. Either way, the authorities aren't taking any chances.

Sybrina Fulton Wears #HoodiesUp T-Shirt at #JusticeForTrayvon Rally in New York

The story's at CBS News, "Trayvon Martin's Mother Speaks Out With Sharpton at Rally Outside NYPD." (Added: A Memeorandum thread.)

I guess the #HoodiesUp shirt is more honest than the baby pictures the media keep blasting of St. Trayvon.

Obama's Race Talk Gets Marquee Treatment at the Los Angeles Times

Almost six years into his administration, the president's personal race reflections have made the press corps drop to its knees in worship.

Here's the coverage at LAT, "President Obama speaks personally on Trayvon Martin and race":

On the eve of more protests over the George Zimmerman verdict, Obama discusses black skepticism of the legal system and his own experience with prejudice.

Controversial Journalist Helen Thomas Dead at 92

A raving anti-Semite, Helen Thomas ended an otherwise pathbreaking career in ignominy.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "White House Gargoyle Helen Thomas Dead."

And at the New York Times, "Helen Thomas, Barrier-Busting White House Reporter, Is Dead at 92." (At Memeorandum.)

The video covers her entire professional life, including her shift to radicalism and Jew-hatred.

Australian Scientists Develop 'Invisibility Suit' to Protect Surfers From Sharks

This is really cool, at National Geographic, "Invisibility Suit Aims to Protect Humans From Sharks."

It's surfers, divers, and anybody at risk of a shark attack. But you can fool 'em.

Bill O'Reilly Repudiates the Nanny State on 'CBS News This Morning'

This was on earlier in the week. As readers will recall, I rarely watch GMA anymore, with George Stephanopoulos especially making me sick. I like the morning news shows, however, and I'm often pleasantly surprised with Charlie Rose and Co.

And this segment with O'Reilly roiling the leftist waters was great, especially with soft and squishy liberal Norah O'Donnell all discombobulated listening to the highly popular Fox News bloviator.