View from a Rhino House: fashionistas vs fashion victims

In returning to a measure of sanity the city of Ocala (in Florida) has joined most of the developed world in deciding that “saggy pants” are a (dubious) fashion choice rather than a matter for the police, rescinding a two-month-old ban that threatened a criminal record for citizens “intentionally exposing their underwear or buttocks”.

“Putting someone in jail for 60 days and fining them $500 for wearing their pants two inches below their natural waistline, wherever that is, that’s not smart justice,” said Kent Guinn, mayor of Ocala; a sentiment that some might argue was valid back in July when the ordinance was passed. It’s worth noting, in passing, that the number of arrests, police cautions & complaints from members of the public during the 2 months that the city’s very survival was threatened by hordes of saggy-panted radicals came to exactly 0, in every category.

The Ocala ordinance banned saggy pants on city property, including streets, sidewalks, parks, public pools & municipal buildings. But critics accused city officials of racial discrimination & potentially violating constitutional free speech (nobody seemed to care how much money the good citizens had pissed-away making the Ocala streets safe from persons of doubtful taste in the trouser department).

“I don’t think government should be in the business of legislating how people are dressed,” city spokeswoman Jeannine Robbins said. “We’ve got here in Ocala a lot of things the police department should be dealing with other than that.”

Mary Rich, a city councillor who had campaigned for the law for six years, calling it a matter of public decency, voted against its repeal. “You wouldn’t want your mother coming to an affair downtown at the square & having people with their pants down to their knees,” Rich said in a statement to the world’s media when the law was passed; although she has yet to issue a statement concerning its abrogation.

She’s probably hiding in a bunker & praying the rapture takes her before the saggy-trouser brigade break down the door & drag her off to sartorial damnation.

Unless of course they are paying you for a (perfectly legal) lap dance.

Sorted #49

Wherever you look, you can see solutions just crying-out to find a problem.

View from a Rhino House: vicious attack on US banks

In San Diego a protester is standing trial on criminal vandalism charges (with a possible sentence of up to 13 years if convicted) for a scribbling a series of anti-bank slogans in chalk on a city sidewalk.

Mayor Bob Filner has denounced the prosecution of Jeff Olson as a waste of taxpayer money & an abuse of power that infringes on the First Amendment.

The city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, defended his pursuit of the case in remarks published yesterday on a San Diego news website, saying: “We prosecute vandalism & theft cases regardless of who the perpetrator or victim might be.”

“We don’t decide, for example, based upon whether we like or dislike banks,” Goldsmith added. “That would be wrong under the law….”

To add to the air of farce a Superior Court Judge yesterday issued a gagging order in the case, forbidding all parties from discussing the trial further. He previously ruled that Olson would not be permitted to invoke freedom of expression as a defense in the case.

Olson is charged with 13 misdemeanor counts of vandalism, each carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail plus a $1,000 fine.

He is accused of writing a series of protest slogans between February & August 2012 on sidewalks in front of various Bank of America branches.

Olson has admitted to the graffiti protests, but said nothing he wrote was profane or vulgar & suggested his prosecution was politically motivated.

“I wrote, ‘No thanks big banks.’ I wrote, ‘Shame on Bank of America,'” he said, adding: “If I had drawn a little girl’s hopscotch squares on the street, we wouldn’t be here today.”

The mayor’s office would not rule out the possibility that the mayor might appear as a witness for Olson.

The mayor & city attorney have previously clashed over the mayor’s recent successful effort to cut $500,000 from the city attorney’s budget.

So much for the land of the free. In France he would by now be a national hero with a promising career in politics (a younger M. Bové).

The weapon of choice... — The weapon of choice…

View from a Rhino House: “would I lie to you…..?”

In the annals of “If-you-believe-this-you’ll-believe-anything” propaganda so beloved of the much misunderstood People’s Republic of China (PRC), last week saw the zenith (nadir?) of bullshit-shoveling as a political philosophy. According to officials ethnic minority people in China’s Xinjiang provide are far too busy dancing, singing & partying to make trouble, dismissing completely the idea that the far western region continues to be the scene of riots & violent anti-government protests.

The original local people are Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group who regularly protest at Chinese restrictions on their culture, language & religion, & already this year the region has witnessed deadly ethnic violence & continuing repression.

Last month, over 20 people were killed in clashes in the heavily ethnic Uighur part of Xinjiang near the city of Kashgar, the deadliest violence since 2009, when about 200 people were killed in riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi.

The government says it offers an unusual degree of autonomy in Xinjiang, yet few Chinese officials can speak the Uighur language or are sympathetic to Islamic mores & traditions.

Deputy Xinjiang governor Shi Dagang said in a press conference, that he had worked in southern Xinjiang for more than a decade & never had to carry a gun or have a police escort (although he did make this claim from the safety of an office in Beijing).

He went on to claim that this was “the common experience of government officials who are members of the majority Han Chinese ethnicity, many of whom work in areas heavily populated by minorities.” (Although, of course, they weren’t actually minorities before the PRC started shipping-in outsiders.)

“There is mutual respect by Han cadres & the ethnic minority & we are friends. When we go into their houses as guests we are treated to meat & wine, with song & dance,” Shi added (thus demonstrating a breathtaking lack of knowledge of Islam which rather undermined his entire presentation).

The government claims armed Uighur groups have links to Central Asian & Pakistani Islamist militants, & of carrying out attacks to establish an independent state they call East Turkistan.

“Those minority of people, the violent terrorists, ethnic splittists (sic) & religious extremists who want to cause trouble, their organizations are all outside the country, as are their backers behind the scenes,” Shi said.

I’ve always rather admired the PRC, its rotten human rights record & Tibet notwithstanding, considering everything that went before the Party has made a decent go at feeding the population & offered a degree of relief from centuries of external & internal wars; but every now-&-again it manages to offend even my limited intelligence.

"Don't you just love a man in uniform?" — “Don’t you just love a man in uniform?”

View from a Rhino House: dangerous women

In the US a woman in New York state pleaded not guilty last week to multiple charges of child endangerment after other parents complained that she hired female strippers for her son’s 16th birthday party. If convicted, Judy Viger faces up to a year in jail.

Viger was arrested after the parents of 5 teenage partygoers saw Facebook pictures of the scantily clad dancers performing dance routines at the party last November.

“The parents of the children who attended had no idea that the adult female entertainers would be present & were shocked & stunned when they discovered what had occurred,” the Saratoga County district attorney, James A. Murphy, III, said (with a straight face) in a statement released at the time of Viger’s arrest.

“Pictures of the event & the dancers first surfaced in the media after they were posted to one of the attendees’ Facebook page,” Murphy said.

If convicted of any or all of the counts of “endangering the welfare of a child,” Viger faces a maximum of one year behind bars as any sentence would run concurrently since the counts stem from a single incident, according to a court spokesperson (she must be relieved to hear that, & of course it is always possible the strippers were armed, in which case it’s going to be hard to get an acquittal anyway).

For her son’s 17th birthday it is reported that she intends to give out fire-arms as party favors & will encourage at least 5 of the putative guests to go home & demonstrate to parents just how “un-endangered” they are by the event.

Way to go, mom!