Patterico's Pontifications

3/31/2013

Happy Cesar Chavez’s Birthday!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:53 am



He is risen, and the occasion is memorialized at Google (via Twitchy):

Turns out they’ve almost never run doodles on Easter, and the one time they did, it was with a secular theme. It also appears that they don’t have Christmas doodles (or, to be fair, Ramadan or Kwanzaa or Hannukkah doodles either). At Christmastime you get the inoffensive, politically correct “Happy Holidays” themes. Other religious holidays or festivals, like Passover, are largely snubbed. As you browse through their collection, you see a lot of “Bangladesh Independence Day” or “Joseph von Eichendorff’s 225th Birthday” type themes, but almost nothing for religious holidays. Unless the holiday has been completely secularized, like St. Patrick’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Those are apparently kosher, er, I mean, acceptable.

So enjoy this very special day: Cesar Chavez’s birthday. And please. Don’t over-commercialize the day. Remember to take a moment to stop, bow your head, and have a moment of prayer for the continued vitality of the United Farm Workers.

Cyprus Raid on Deposits Waaaaaaaay Bolder Then Initially Predicted

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:32 am



Anyone who flies has experienced it. The voice comes over the loudspeaker and says your flight has been delayed 20 minutes. Well, that’s annoying. But you have two hours to make your connection, so you’ll be OK. A little while later, it turns out the delay is 40 minutes. Still no problem. After another wait, it turns out the delay will be an hour. Then, after another long wait, they say the flight has been delayed an hour and a half. Now that connection is looking pretty tight. But don’t fret! You won’t have to worry about rushing to make the connection . . . because, you see, as the new boarding time approaches, there is another announcement: It turns out the flight is delayed three hours and you have no chance of making it.

But this news always drips out, one announcement after another — and you always suspect that they knew all along that the delay would be three hours.

Which brings us to Cyprus. First, depositors were told that their accounts would be hit for 7 percent — 10 percent for the rich folks. Then — whoops! — it turned out it wasn’t 10 percent, but 30 percent. Whoops, we meant 40 percent.

What was next? Half?

HALF! (Language and content warning.)

(That clip is profane, misogynistic, and horrible. I don’t even know why I posted it.)

No, Cyprus is not planning to take half. No, no, no. Nothing of the sort.

More like . . . 60 percent.

Major depositors in Cyprus’s biggest bank will lose around 60 percent of savings over 100,000 euros, its central bank confirmed on Saturday, sharpening the terms of a bailout that has shaken European banks and saved the island from bankruptcy.

Initial signs that big depositors in Bank of Cyprus would take a hit of 30 to 40 percent – the first time the euro zone has made bank customers contribute to a bailout – had already unnerved investors in European lenders this week.

But the official decree published on Saturday confirmed a Reuters report a day earlier that the bank would give depositors shares worth just 37.5 percent of savings over 100,000 euros. The rest of such holdings might never be paid back.

See, they did it again! Did we say 60 percent? We meant 62.5 percent! In the space of just two paragraphs, depositors lost another 2 1/2 percent.

Officials are assuring the public that this is a “one off” — it certainly couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Oh hey, by the way? Your taxes went up a little at the beginning of the year, but Obama says you have to pay just a little more.

UPDATE: Thanks to Stashiu3 for the link.

Racist Supreme Court Justice Compares Homosexuality to Incest

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:02 am



A brilliant post by John Nolte, who notes that Ben Carson was accused of “comparing” gays to NAMBLA scum and practitioners of bestiality — when all he did was make a slippery slope argument. Guess who else made a similar argument this past week? Sonia Sotomayor, questioning Ted Olson in the Prop. 8 case:

Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you’re being asked — and — and it is one that I’m interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what State restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what State restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to — that could get married — the incest laws, the mother and the child, assuming they are of age — I can — I can accept that the State has probably an overbearing interest on — on protecting the a child until they’re of age to marry, but what’s left?

SHE COMPARED HOMOSEXUALITY TO INCEST!!!!1!!

*

North Texas D.A. And His Wife Murdered

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:51 am



North Texas prosecutor is murdered outside a courthouse in January. Now his boss and his wife are executed at their home:

Kaufman County’s district attorney and his wife were found slain Saturday, raising fears that their deaths may be part of a plot that included the death of one of the county’s assistant district attorneys in January.

Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh and other officials confirmed that Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia Woodward McLelland, had been shot at their home near Forney.

Their deaths followed the Jan. 31 slaying of Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse.

The murders have to be connected. They have to be.

It sounds like it could all be retaliation by the Aryan Brotherhood. I hope they solve it.


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