The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

Chip Off the Old Block… Malia Obama Wears T-Shirt of Nasty Anti-Cop Rap Group

Today she’s wearing a T-shirt supporting an anti-cop gangster rap group. Tomorrow she’ll be attending Socialist meetings at Columbia College. And, before you know it she’ll be dining with Al Sharpton.

On Monday a grainy photo of a 16-year-old wearing a hip-hop group’s tour T-shirt was posted on said group’s official Instagram account.

One of the members of the collective, which consists of rappers, producers, and non-musical members, such as photographers and publicists, told Gawker that Mr. Bada$$ had allegedly been sent the snapshot by “a mutual friend of Malia’s and the pro era member.”

This is a sample of some of Pro Era’s “lyrics:”

I’m on my XXL Freshman shit [laughs]
These folks know what I’m smoking on
And a nigga smoking on that strong
My niggas smoke so long we like Cheech and Chong nigga
In these bars tell me one thing we do wrong nigga
CJ, you ugly nigga
Dessy not eating nigga
This nigga ugly nigga
I’m high as shit doe

…and here’s where they earn their cop-killer cred:

Where syringes were pressed: dirty kitchen
I’m spillin’ all my kids on her dress, Started living what I’m thinking
Decider, we next stop
Stop and then frisk
Slaughtering pigs anybody can get it

Shooting stars, now make a wish
Rocking skins like the skins we rocking
Powerpuff smoking on that blossom
We’re running the game and this shit is exhausting
But I don’t give a fuck cause this shit is awesome
4-7

Wonderful, isn’t it?  Her parents must be so proud.

Gentoo Linux, HPLIP, and the HP LaserJet 1320 don’t mix

If you try following the advice at the Gentoo Wiki, you would install HPLIP and use its hp-setup utility to add the printer to your system.  That way, however, lies madness…and printer communication errors.  I think this was the previous source of errors when I was using a JetDirect 175x between the computer and printer, but it’s not behaving any better with a direct USB connection.

Here’s what I ended up doing to get my printer working:

  1. emerge -C hplip && emerge foomatic-db-engine && /etc/init.d/cupsd restart
  2. Make sure USB printing support (CONFIG_USB_PRINTER) is enabled in the kernel…note that genkernel builds a kernel without it!
  3. Generate a PPD:
    foomatic-ppdfile -p `foomatic-searchprinter "HP LaserJet 1320"` >lj1320.ppd
  4. Go into the CUPS web interface and add the printer.  It should show up as a USB device.  When the option comes up to provide CUPS a PPD file, take it and use the file generated in the previous step.
  5. Once set up, double-check the printer default options to make sure the right paper size is selected.  (I think this method defaults to letter, but HPLIP used A4 as the default.  Either way, make sure it’s correct for what you’re using.)

Figuring all that out was three hours I won’t get back due to either buggy software (it wasn’t this tricky to get running on Kubuntu) or inadequate documentation.  At least now it’s written down to save others the aggravation.

The real “war on women” is Democrats’ attempts to disarm them

Rape Survivor Goes Off on Lawmakers Over Anti-Gun Law: ‘Why Can’t I Have a Firearm to Protect Myself?!’

A rape survivor made a compelling case in favor of reforming Maryland’s “may issue” concealed carry laws during a Senate committee hearing last week, explaining to lawmakers why women need to be able to defend themselves.
“I need you to know this is so incredibly difficult for me, but I feel like if I don’t humanize this, if I don’t make it clear how this legislation actually affects your daughters, your mothers, the women of this state, then it’s all just a bunch of numbers,” Jacqueline Kahn told Maryland lawmakers.
Kahn then claimed that a man was arrested in her backyard. He was in possession of duct tape and scissors, she said.
“I wish I could tell you that’s the only time I’ve been stalked, or that’s the only man who has stalked anyone in the state of Maryland. But there’s a huge number of women, who like me have been raped, who like me have been sexually assaulted — and we want the right to be able to do what we would be allowed to do throughout the majority of the rest of the United States,” she said.

Must-see video, which starts with one feckless legislator trying to flee the session:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4J1kscK1Q]

Race card declined

scissors-cutting-cardWhere was Little Dick Durbin when Condoleezza Rice was nominated for Secretary of State? The hypocritical son of a bitch no doubt got in line with all of the other regressives to oppose her nomination:

Does Dick Durbin Believe that Only White Males Can Bear Public Scrutiny?

With a dull and dispiriting predictability, the insinuations have begun to fly on Capitol Hill. Lamenting that Barack Obama’s pick for attorney general has not yet been confirmed, Senator Dick Durbin told the press this morning that her critics were almost certainly motivated by bigotry. “Loretta Lynch,” Durbin contended, “the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar.” In taking this ugly road, Durbin has joined in with Representative George Kenneth Butterfield, who argued yesterday that race was a “a major factor in the reason for this delay”; Representative Marcia Fudge, who suggested that “there is some racial bias” at play; and the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, who proposed that “women are watching, that African-American women are watching,” and that neither of them would like what they were seeing.

[…]

Because they regard themselves as the unimpeachable champions of American progress, it is unlikely that Durbin & Co. will recognize just how acutely this mindset damages their cause. But damage their cause it unquestionably does. As Aesop taught us in his “Boy Who Cried Wolf,” dramatic claims eventually have to be backed up with demonstrable facts or they will begin to invite indifference and ridicule. The sins of America’s past are real, and they are often overlooked by those who would prefer to talk about something else. And yet, in the political realm at least, the charges of “racist” and “sexist” have become so ubiquitous that it is becoming difficult for most listeners to determine when they are legitimate and when they are opportunistic. Jim Crow involved the systematic subjugation of an entire race of people; Loretta Lynch is seeing her nomination delayed because the two main parties in Washington disagree as to what constitutes the best way forward. If both these occurrences are to be described in exactly the same language — indeed, if the two are to be directly compared — our historical and linguistic comprehension will eventually become damaged beyond repair. Then what?

Gun industry’s helping hand triggers a surge in college shooting teams

A surprisingly even-handed look at the increasing popularity of collegiate shooting teams:

Gun industry’s helping hand triggers a surge in college shooting teams

In between completing problem sets, writing code, organizing hackathons, worrying about internships and building solar cars, a group of MIT students make their way to the athletic center, where they stand side-by-side, load their guns and fire away.

They are majoring in biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, aeronautics, mechanical engineering, computer science and nuclear science. Before arriving at MIT, nearly all of them had never touched a gun or even seen one that wasn’t on TV.

“Which is strange because I’m from Texas,” said Nick McCoy, wearing a ­T-shirt advertising his dorm and getting ready to shoot.

McCoy is one of the brainiacs on MIT’s pistol and rifle teams, which, like other college shooting teams, have benefited from the largesse of gun industry money and become so popular that they often turn students away. Teams are thriving at a diverse range of schools: Yale, Harvard, the University of Maryland, George ­Mason University, and even smaller schools such as Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and Connors State College in Oklahoma.

“We literally have way more students interested than we can handle,” said Steve Goldstein, one of MIT’s pistol coaches.

The real minimum wage is zero

That’s what you end up with when the job you were working is no longer worth whatever the government decides the “minimum” wage should be:

Ruinous “Compassion”

It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious.

A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

At an angry meeting between local small business owners and city officials, the local organization that had campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane “living wage” law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more than they need the money.

Multiple standards aren’t better

Singing a stupid song is an unpardonable offense, but knocking a girl out so hard she was left with broken facial bones is OK?  This sort of moral inversion is what happens when you put Democrats in charge:

OU: Tough On Racism, Weak On Assault, Burglary

University of Oklahoma president David Boren’s immediate expulsion of students involved with a recently-leaked racist video stands in sharp contrast to the lighter treatment the school has given to football players found responsible for violent crimes.

Just two days after a video leaked of Oklahoma students, mostly freshmen, singing a racist song on a bus, Boren took decisive action by summarily expelling two students he claims played a leading roll in the chant. The students, he said, had created a “hostile learning environment” for other students and had to be kicked out immediately, with no opportunity to reform. Boren has suggested that more expulsions could be on the way.

“There is zero tolerance for this kind of threatening racist behavior at the University of Oklahoma,” Boren said.

However, while Boren might have zero tolerance for racist songs sung in private, Boren and OU have taken a very different approach to the privileged members of the school’s elite college football team, emphasizing the importance of second chances and allowing the team to welcome back players with a history of violence and even sexual assault.

One such player was Joe Mixon, a freshman and one of the top football prospects for the Sooners. Last July, Mixon was caught on video in an altercation with another OU student, 20-year-old junior Amelia Rae Molitor. During the altercation, Mixon punched Molitor so hard he broke four bones in her face and knocked her unconscious.