"Don't" Woody

Dunwoody has banned wood construction in buildings above three stories tall. The claim, coming from Dunwoody and Sandy Springs, attempts to hide behind public safety by arguing these construction techniques amount to little more than building a funeral pyre. Stealing some candy from the babies:

This is not to suggest that politicians would be lying to the public. No, it would be screaming it from the mountaintops. They are lying. They want you to believe this is a disaster in the making and they are going to do something about it.

But this isn't about safety and certainly not fire safety. Remember, Dunwoody is the City that refused to inspect and issue Certificates of Occupancy for edu-trailers in the City limits. It is also the City that tried to tear down apartments saying they wanted ball fields when they really wanted the "wrong kind of people" out of their City. Nearby, Rusty Paul says he has "seen these things burn," but has he seen a trailer burn? If this were about fire safety, and you simply must have a Permission Society, then you should address the real problem. Require fire retardant materials, which includes treated wood products. Require fire suppression systems, which would arguably be of immense value when their metal and concrete semi-urban gulags become pizza ovens fueled by Ikea furniture. Or is that next? Should our lords and masters ban furniture made of particle board? After all, they are wood and adhesive, practically the same as a fire log. Have you seen THOSE burn? Will Dunwoody ban fireplaces? How about candles? Must they be LED-only? Why not?

Because it isn't about fire safety. Just like the previous apartment Blitz-Krieg it is about social and demographic engineering. It is about economic segregation. Earlier a slip of a ruler's lip let it out that the real concern was that within five years economically constructed housing would fall into disrepair, rents would drop and the "wrong kind of people" would invade our community and our schools. That is what this is really all about.

Oh. The. Humanity. 

Is Shoplifting A Crime?

To hear Atlanta's Top Cop, maybe not so much. Or like cops everywhere it really isn't worth the time and effort. Emphasis on time. And this defective Blue Gene is also found right here in the daVille where our top cop doesn't feel he can make enough money enforcing some laws, so, well, those laws might just as well not even be on the books. Except when he wants to enforce them.

While Dunwoody does not have nearly the similarities to Buckhead, ground zero for ATL's crime wave, that Dunwoody Poser's would have you believe, there are some. Dunwoody has a major mall, not Lenox plus Phipps but a significant shoe shopping and dining destination nonetheless. And we have what the AJC refer to as "well-heeled" folk thereabouts. Think: Manhattan Condos. There is even a gas station, a popular pit stop for car jacking.

Should we be worried about a wave of shoplifting and car jacking descending on our slice of heaven? Probably not. See, the Dunwoody PD is not going to waste time schlepping perps down to Decatur. Unlike the ATL this isn't because they'll not make the arrest but because DPD has a "take no prisoners" shoot first policy. Make an offensive left turn? Bang. Making the fool outside a bookstore? Bang-bang. Fleeing another jurisdiction and even thinking about crossing into daVille? Boom! While this may be news to you, rest assured, the hoodlums know what they're up against in daVille.

Entitlement Logic

Some parents in Snobb County are miffed that Buffy and Biff will suffer the tragedy of in-school suspension for their 17-minute Flash Mob Comedy Routine. One mother of an entitled li'l darlin is particularly bothered that this means Biff will miss one session of AP Physics and Macroeconomics, pondering aloud: "I am just really wondering what the lesson is supposed to be if the goal is student success." Wonder away Biff-mom, the answer will continue to elude you.

Perhaps Biff-mom might ponder what student success, for OTHER students, not just her li'l darlin, was achieved by exiting the classroom and disrupting the educational mission of the school and the learning experiences of classmates--who just might have their asses in classes to learn what is being taught rather than be subjected to the ego-displays of the cool-kids. Especially when that is on offer in the cafeteria any weekday that ends in 'y'. But that is not how the entitled operate. Consideration and respect require a bit too much critical thinking, and thinking, critical or otherwise is not in their wheelhouse. Grabbing attention is.

If schools wanted to make a real statement they would have awarded Buffy and Biff OUT-OF-SCHOOL suspension. This would pull the public-funded daycare right out from under Biff-mom and she, or Biff-dad would have to consider taking a "stay at home with your kids" hit. If you've ever met Buffy or Biff you know it would be more fun to bathe the cat in ice water. It would so annoy them they might show up at school as angry as that wet cat, perhaps even armed [think 'Kennesaw', which IS in Snobb County], putting  a cherry, red with irony, atop the 17-minute ego sundae. 

No Pain No Gain

You have to give Kneelin' Colin Kaepernick his props. Whether or not you agree with his cause he believed in it so deeply that he was willing to risk losing his career. Which he has.

Not so for those who "committed" to The Seventeen Minute March out of the classroom as these staunch defenders of righteous protest first demanded assurance from the titular, if not actual, powers-that-be that there would be no consequences for their actions. It reeks of the inmates running the asylum but punishment-free violations magnified the effectiveness of peer pressure: all the cool kids are on the Seventeen Step Program so everyone should join it. Plus, you can skip Pre-Remedial Intermediate Math I that day. This was hailed as a movement of seismic proportions by the very same folks who claim these munchkins' brains aren't fully jelled until they are twenty-six and that most of them occupy some space on some spectrum. But now they are the voice of reason. Right.

The only thing these spineless, entitled whiners have done is virtualize the Cool Kid's table, moving from the cafeteria and placing it squarely in front of the pandering media's TV cameras.

Zombie City Staggers On

The wannabe City of Cliffside, in this incarnation hash tagged as "Greenhaven," has been put back on the shelf for another year. It isn't clear if "Green" refers to the money already sunk into the effort, the money the aspirants hope to syphon off their fellow, unwitting and perhaps unwilling citizens or the moldy bits taking root on this stale idea. Perhaps all three.

More of everyone's green is being syphoned off and handed to the Carl Vinson Institute for a commissioned report to beat back the forces of incorporation supporting Cliffside or any other new city or annexation. The only way to get real bang for our bucks would be for DeKalb to commission a CVI study showing that the proposed city is NOT viable all the while City Quixotes commission studies showing exactly the opposite. This would be best if both studies come from the same "objective" source, but likely one would be from the UGA region while the other would come from Ga State. Hashtag toobadsosad.

Perhaps the two teams will take it up a notch in the next go round. And there will be another round as the zombies simply will not die and the overlords of DeKalb have built a moat filling it with sewage from uncontrolled overflows and water from broken mains to keep the zombies at bay. 

Left Wingnuts: Seeing Stars

Some left-wing-nut from the upper left coast whose claim to fame is a book on the NYT best seller list and a keyboard that is faster than the brain went open loop nutzi kukoo upon seeing the flag of Norway flying in HER neighborhood. HER NEIGHBORHOOD for chrissakes. Who the hell do they think they are? Or so she blasted on social media. But not to cause a stink or anything. Because she did not say it was the flag of Norway. No. She said it was the Confederate flag.

And what was her problem? Manifold. First, this was the flag that was flying (below a US flag it is worth noting):

Flag of Norway

But what this voice of politically correct "progressive" America saw was:

Confederate States of America BATTLE Flag

Mainstream media, you know, the ones with the real facts, reported her as claiming she saw "The Confederate Flag" when in fact it was nothing of the sort. Because that would mean she mistook the Flag of Norway for this flag:

Flag of the Confederate States of America

Hardly.

After a daily dose of this, posing as "real" news, what do most folks see?

Never Mind!

Electing Idiots

You'd think in Red State Georgia where guns are red meat politics we'd elect someone other than an idiot, or someone who plays around with idiots, to government positions. But no. We elect someone who gets pulled driving drunk enough for two riding around with foreign exchange students in the car and a Glock in his possession. Thankfully he is exiting, stage right. For now.

Unfortunately we have more like him. Seems U.S. Representative Tom Graves and a staffer, the son of another U.S. Representative (who says politics isn't incestuous?) managed to part ways with some firearms they left in a vehicle. Fine. We get it. Guns. After all you were in downtown Atlanta.

And this was a GMC Yukon. Why is that important? Well, in some ways it isn't, but it just so happens that there are pretty good console vaults available for that vehicle. In other ways it doesn't depend on the vehicle as there are some secure car gun safes that attach in a variety of ways and some provide a secure way to transport your weapon and secure it at your destination. And some are priced in the range of a few boxes of ammo.

Losing control of the guns is bad chi, but then it gets really odd. They also parted company with a driver's license, credit cards and...wait for it...birth certificates. WTF? But do you really walk around with birth certificates? Whose, pray tell? And who leaves their driver's license in their car, or worse yet, someone else's? Along with credit cards? REALLY? Does this pass the average Dem-Lib "smart enough to carry a gun" test? Perhaps not, but what is really scary is they're smart enough to get re-elected. Or we're just dumb enough to keep sending them back.

Dick's Grows A Pair

Balls or boobs, the jury is still out but based on the likelihood of getting bitch-slapped the smart money is on the latter. Responding to the hashtag hysteria following yet another public school shoot-em-up[1] Dick's has decided to cease all sales of "assault rifles"[2]. Fine. It is a business and it is their business and if they want to take a product off the shelves, for any reason, that is really no one else's business.

But then they went a bridge too far. They decided that they would not sell firearms and ammo to anyone under the age of 21. Hypocritical hashtag hurrahs all around. But imagine they didn't want to sell a weapon to someone over 60 or a 20-year-old soldier, or that someone didn't want to sell a fast car to someone under 25, or an expensive house to someone of "a certain skin tone" or, hey, how about this, what would these hashtag heretics think of a baker who doesn't want to make a cake for a gay couple's marriage? Exactly! That would trample the Constitution along with the enumerated rights of several groups.

Dick's is a business, not a sovereign country and they do not get to pick and choose which laws of this land they consider worthy of their consideration or observance. The Constitution of the United States protects the 19 year old shopping in their store every bit as much as the gay couple wanting that special cake.

Even in the United States of Hashtags you cannot just make laws on your own because you're terrified of a zombie army of Twitter Stormtroopers.

[1] You know that these are drug free zones as well as gun free zones. "Soft Target" is the term nutbags use for these sites.

[2] Unlike a similarly capable "hunting rifle" an "assault rifle" has no shiny bits and is exclusively black making it the only thing left in America where it is politically correct to declare that something so black can be so evil. 

Any Excuse Will Do

When a politician is justifying a pay raise for their cronies holding patronage positions or, gasp, themselves, it seems almost any excuse will suffice. No matter how vapid. Case in point: DeKalb commissioners, failing to get the Gold Domers to do their dirty work, gave themselves a raise and erected a Ruben Golden mechanism to ensure future raises. Justification: "we put in a lot of hours." Apparently "by any means necessary" also applies to these politicians' hijinks.

Pardonne-moi, mon chéri? Was the work schedule a surprise? Aren't you the best and brightest? Do you have something better to do? Like, something where someone pays for your services? Then go do it.

It was a part-time job when you got it. It is a part-time job now. But...it comes with a staff budget supporting generous payola for friends and family. Yes...Yes...the whole P-Card kerfuffle cut into the rather indiscrete payola but the official compensation for scheduling photo-ops is difficult to match in the private sector. And the benefits...

What is interesting is the excuse this time is "hours worked" but when justifying outrageous paychecks for patronage it is almost exclusively "we have to compete with the private sector." But there isn't a job in the private sector where you give yourself a raise with other people's money.