It turns out the Dykefish is an evolutionary dead-end

The Blue Tang fish, which exploded in popularity thanks to Finding Dory, has for the first time been successfully bred in captivity.

Hilariously, it turns out that the fish famously voiced by notorious carpet muncher Ellen DeGeneres hasn't been able to reproduce in captivity. Do you think that's maybe connected to the fact the most famous Blue Tang thinks she's a boy and made immoral lifestyle choices?

The Turkish military seizes the country every time they make a Fantastic Four movie

The UK Independent talks about last week's failed military coup in Turkey with the most misleading headline of all time.

"Turkey's coup may have failed – but history shows it won’t be long before another one succeeds".

If you can believe it, the article talks about Syria, about Pakistan, about President Monkey, about Armenian genocide...but it doesn't talk about Turkey's insanely common military coups.

They went pretty smoothly during Ataturk's reign, but it all went south in 1960 when socialist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes went to Moscow to try to get Communist backing for his regime (which was imprisoning journalists, creating kangaroo courts stacked with far-left judges, and personally controlling the curriculum at universities and sounding an awful lot like Rachel Arab in Alberta come to think of it). A military coup took place and Menderes and his top government officials were imprisoned. Menderes lost his head in the subsequent trial and a mausoleum of his was constructed in Constantinople.

Turkey managed an entire decade without a coup, but in 1971 the military again seized power: this time through a memo (no, seriously!) Civil unrest, Marxist protests, and terrorism were occuring throughout the land (and this sounds a lot like President Monkey's final year in office down in America), and the army moved in to force the government's hands. Not much happened though, and it ultimately meant no actual change took place. A technocratic cabinet was created (again, this is eerie...), and ultimately martial law was declared. It took until 1973 before the aftermath was finally settled.

And this time they didn't even last the decade. In 1980 Kenan Evren took over after months of official deliberation in senior army ranks which really makes very little sense if you think about it). Martial law was again established, Parliament was abolished, and state secularism took over from the burgeoning Islamic sub-revolution. The end result was economic chaos: triple digit inflation, free foreign exchange, and wage freezes. 650,000 people were arrested over the 2 year instability, ending with Evren being appointed President in 1982. This period of economic strife meant that American movies weren't available to the general populace, and gave us the glorious debacle which is Turkish Star Wars.

Another decade later, another (attempted) coup: in 1993, the military (probably) tried to take over the government on the sly, executing President Özal and numerous journalists and orchestrating the infamous PKK Ambush.

Half a decade later, another sorta-coup: in 1997 the Turkish military against used the awesome destructive power of a well-written memo, ending the reign of religious PM Necmettin Erbakan and his centre-left government. Again, the secularism of the modern Turkish state was a key factor in the coup. For those keeping their boxscores up-to-date, good ol' Erdogan played a role in this one: he read a pro-Islam poem in his role as mayor of Istanbul and was given a 5 year exile.

So that brings us to 2016, and another military coup in Turkey. It seems to have failed, but indications are that we'll see another one eventually. A decade seems to be the typical separation, something tells me you should bet on the "under" this next time around...

"America should have picked its own cotton"

The far-left British tabloid The Guardian has waded back into the gun control debate, showing "Republicans representing cities with a higher murder rate than Chicago" and their refusal to back tough gun laws.

The thing to remember, of course, is that when you see a discussion about "high rates of crime" in the United States, you're really talking about "America has a lot of black people" in it. (You can do a similar evaluation in Canada, though our violent blacks are only out-done by our violent Red Indians)

The Guardian won't tell you this, of course: the comfortable lies of the left is their business, and business is good as long as ignorant lefties continue to succumb to their echo chambers.



The Guardian wants you to think that the problem in these cities are all guns. But in blue I have indicated the "increased share" of blacks in these cities compared with their proportion of the U.S. population (12.61%)

Jackson, Mississippi has a high murder rate. But while Mississippi's black population is 37%, Jackson's black population is a whopping 79.4% black 79.4 is 6.29659 times higher than 12.61, so 6.3 is the "index" for Jackson.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana has a black population of 50.4%, for an index of 4.0. Little Rock, Arkansas is 42.3% black for an index of 3.4. Cincinnati has a surprisingly 44.8% black population giving it a 3.6 index. Dayton is 42.9% black, for an index of 3.4.

You don't have to stick to the Republican-controlled cities, of course, though I did just to mess with The Guardian's writing team of Lois Beckett, Ryan Felton and Aliza Aufrichtig. The Democrat-controlled cities have their own ridiculous indexes. St. Louis, the murder capital of America, is 49.2% black (3.9 index), Detroit is 82.7% black (6.6 index), and NOLA is 60.2% black (4.8). The poster child for violent American blacks, Chicago, is only 32.9% black (index of only 2.6) befitting its position at the bottom of The Guardian's chart. Of course, the inconvenient truths keep piling on: non-violent blacks are exodusing out of the infamous "black belt" of South Chicago.

The city’s violence turned Tierra Winston into a suburbanite. She and her 14-year old son, Tyriek, were constantly worried about their safety in their old neighborhood, Roseland, one of the city’s most economically depressed.

American blacks cause crime. Colby Cosh once noted if you removed blacks from the equation, gun-toting America was no less safe than Canada.

The answer is that if you account for one obvious cultural difference--the larger black population in the United States--the United States of America's murder rate is pretty much the same as ours, despite the huge disparity in handgun ownership. Black Americans are 13% of the U.S. population and commit over half of America's homicides.

Follow that last link and you'll see that, according to the FBI at least, the non-black U.S. population of 244 million committed 5,447 murders in 2001. (That's not counting the statistical outlier of Sept. 11, of course.) The Canadian government doesn't break down its figures by race, but the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics' 2000 figures show 542 homicides in Canada--a typical figure--amongst about 28 million Canadians. Our murder rate for the whole populace is 87% of the rate amongst U.S. non-blacks. If you were to try and establish a non-black Canadian murder rate by removing the negligible number of Canadian blacks from the numerator and the denominator, the resulting rate would certainly be lower than 87%, but not by more than a couple of points.

Far-left British newspaper writers should probably get themselves up to speed on that topic before they feel like lecturing American politicians about their opposition to denying citizens their fundamental freedom to own firearms (a freedom that Britain herself should get up to speed on).

"The Firearms Act of 1920 was just a licensing law; the Harrison Narcotics Act was just a prescription system; and the serpent only asked Eve to eat an apple"

In a beautiful essay, Professor Joseph E. Olson and Professor David B. Kopel talk about how a fundamental freedom became an illegal action in a single century.

With gun ownership for self-protection now completely illegal (unless one works for the government), Britons have begun switching to other forms of protection. The government considers this an intolerable affront. Having, through administrative interpretation, delegitimized gun ownership for self-defense, the British government has been able to outlaw a variety of defensive items. For example, non-lethal chemical defense sprays, such as Mace, are now illegal in Britain, as are electric stun devices.

Some Britons are turning to guard dogs. Unfortunately dogs, unlike guns and knives, have a will of their own and sometimes attack innocent people on their own volition. The number of people injured by dogs has been rising, and the press is calling for bans on Rottweilers, Dobermans, and other "devil dogs." Under 1991 legislation, all pit bulls must be neutered or euthanized.

Other citizens choose to protect themselves with knives, but carrying a knife for defensive protection is considered illegal possession of an offensive weapon. One American tourist learned about this Orwellian offensive weapon law the hard way. After she used a pen knife to stab some men who were attacking her, a British court convicted her of carrying an offensive weapon. Her intention to use the pen knife for lawful defensive purposes converted the pen knife, under British legal newspeak, into an illegal "offensive weapon." In 1996, knife-carrying was made presumptively illegal, even without the "offensive" intent to use the weapon defensively. A person accused of the crime is allowed "to prove that he had a good reason or lawful authority for having" the knife when he did.

Early one evening in March 1987, Eric Butler, a fifty-six-year-old executive with B.P. Chemicals, was attacked while riding the London subway. Two men came after Butler and, as one witness described, began "strangling him and smashing his head against the door; his face was red and his eyes were popping out." No passenger on the subway moved to help him. "My air supply was being cut off," Butler later testified, "my eyes became blurred and I feared for my life." Concealed inside Butler's walking stick was a three-foot blade. Butler unsheathed the blade; "I lunged at the man wildly with my swordstick. I resorted to it as my last means of defense." He stabbed an attacker's stomach. The attackers were charged with unlawful wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon. The court gave him a suspended sentence, but denounced the "breach of the law which has become so prevalent in London in recent months that one has to look for a deterrent." Butler's self-defense was the only known instance of use of a swordstick in a "crime." Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, using powers granted under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, immediately outlawed possession of swordsticks. The Act has also been used to ban blowpipes and other exotica which, while hardly a crime problem, were determined by the Home Secretary not be the sorts of things which he thought any Briton could have a good reason to possess.

No prosecution for defending oneself is too absurd.

While the essay is primarily regarding firearms restrictions, it's worth noting that the slippery slope applies to all rights, even as it appears some are being strengthened. Jury rights (long since lost in Alberta, one notes), speech rights (under constant attack), even freedom of association flies at the merest nudge from SJWs on Supreme and Appellate Courts.

It's worth then noting that the first of the "seven key factors" in the loss of British gun rights was...

The first factor that undermined the British right to arms was a technological change when revolvers came to be seen by some persons as much more dangerous than previous weapons. This same phenomenon can be seen in the treatment of other technological advances, such as the automobile, which from the 1920s onward, has often been treated by the United States Supreme Court as a "Constitution-free zone", where searches and seizures in contravention of normal Fourth Amendment standards may take place.

Indeed, thanks to the web free speech is now considered so "dangerous" that it can be trampled upon (almost) with impunity. Likewise...

The shifting of the burden of proof, both at law and in popular discussion, was the fourth factor degrading the British right to arms. Rather than the government having to prove that a particular gun-owner or a particular type of gun was dangerous, the gun-owner began to have to prove his "good reason," and the government began deciding to outlaw weapons that the government did not think anyone outside the government had a good reason to own.

One recalls that when "Fuck Her Right in the Pussy" was a major issue, the far-left CBC that has no problem demanding tax dollars to fund its political communication while saying YOURS is "hurtful" and has "no good reason" to exist.

And as for the government banning the truth about the sick Sodomite Agenda, look at the sixth factor...

Additionally, how many people are there who care to resist infringement of a right? Few politicians seriously propose a total gun ban in the United States because there are seventy million gun-owning households--about half the population. But only about four percent of the British population legally owns guns--a much smaller interest group. If, over the course of generations, the percentage of a population that is interested in a right can be gradually reduced, stricter controls become more politically feasible, and the stricter controls can further reduce the long-term number of people who exercise their rights.

This suggests the long-term importance of young people exercising their rights. If high school newspapers have large staffs that fearlessly report the truth, the future of the First Amendment is better protected. If, conversely, laws prevent teenagers from target shooting or hunting, the future of the Second Amendment is endangered.

No wonder the huge push for Faggot-Familiar-Alliances in Alberta schools!

The essay is particularly vicious on the favourite topic of the left: "balancing" rights.

The rhetoric of balancing is dangerous because it tends to give too much weight to the short-term concerns of public safety. Thus, the American right that has been most subject to balancing, the Fourth Amendment, has suffered badly in the United States Supreme Court. More fundamentally, the "balancing" that legislatures or courts sometimes do is not their job, because the balancing has already been done. Whether in the 1689 Bill of Rights, which was to apply "for all time," or in the 1789-91 United States Constitution, a balance was struck. Because of this balance, governments were prohibited from doing certain things since, in the long run, public safety and liberty were both enhanced by preventing short-term considerations from controlling. Thus, when the Blaisdell Court "balanced" its way around the Constitution's absolute ban on the impairment of contracts, and upheld Minnesota's debtor relief law, the Court did not merely err--the Court usurped power and attempted to re-open the question that the Contracts Clause had decided with finality.

When rights are protected with bright lines, as the First Amendment usually is, then rights are particularly secure against slippery slopes. When rights are subjected to "balancing" (a/k/a "reasonableness") tests by courts, as the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause often is, then rights are particularly vulnerable. And when a society has lost the theory of constitutional absolutes as Britain has, and replaced this with "balancing," then every right is in danger.

In this way, the essay unintentionally but notably takes aim with the NRA. The NRA, one notes, in an implicit "balancing" organization that says strict adherence to existing gun laws should be performed, but oppose (most) new ones...until passed. And then they are to be strictly enforced. In a way, the gun owners' biggest and most effective lobby is also subtly and slowly disenfranchising them.

The BASC's stance may appear to be a "reasonable" position, which demonstrates that gun-owners are not bloodthirsty nuts wanting to shoot people. Rather, shooters are harmless sportsmen, and licensed guns belong in the same category as cricket bats or golf clubs. In practice, however, the concession that guns are only for sports undermines defense of the right to bear arms. If guns are not to be owned for defense, then guns make no positive contribution to public safety. If the sovereignty of the central government is absolute, then the people's ownership of arms makes no positive contribution to a sound body politic.

Their final paragraph is awfully important. Please read it twice.

Slippery slopes are not inevitable, but neither are they imaginary. The British experience demonstrates that many civil liberties, including the right to arms, really can slowly slide all the way to the bottom of the slippery slope. While we have not aimed to convince readers to value any particular civil liberty, such as arms, speech, or protection from warrantless searches, we have attempted to show that it is reasonable for groups that do honor such rights, like the NRA, ACLU, or NACDL, to refuse to acquiesce in "reasonable" infringements of those rights. Even though, as John Maynard Keynes observed, we are all dead in the long run, persons who cherish a particular civil liberty want that liberty to endure not just in their own lifetimes, but in the lives of subsequent generations. In the long run, the best way to protect a given civil liberty from destruction may be to resist even the smallest infringements in short run.

Hear hear.

Dave Beninger: still a liberal coward with horrible opinions

Liberal cowards who hide behind their Twitter block button everytime they hear a dissenting opinion don't win. They just slime away...

Monkeys can't handle blame

The legendary Thomas Sowell: President Monkey is a fascist, not a socialist, because he doesn't broach criticism.

Reasons

Whither the Saturday afternoon game

Last night in a thrilling overtime contest, the Edmonton Eskimos defeated the hated Saskatchewan Roughriders 39-36. It was the second half of a Friday night doubleheader for the CFL, and didn't finish until about 11:20pm local time. It was also played in front of a mere 34,000 fans.

It's just the latest data point in what can be charitably called a very disappointing 2016 Edmonton Eskimos schedule.

The season opened June 25th with a Grey Cup rematch against the Ottawa REDBLACKS^†, and then an immediate bye week^‡ before resuming in last night's victory against the Stubble Jumpers (which was also be our Purolator Tackle Hunger® game). Weeks 5, 6, and 8 also feature home games, meaning that Edmonton's schedule is front-loaded with home appearances. This is (mostly) good, considering what the climate is in this neck of the woods.

Edmonton is still stuck with that CFL failed-experiment-that-won't-ever-die though: the Thursday night game. This one is especially bad since it's going to be on Thursday July 28th; that means in the middle of Klondike Days the Eskimos are going to have to fight for your entertainment dollar. This shouldn't be entirely difficult: the Klondike Days performers that night are something called "Coleman Hell" and "Andee"^§, so it's not like they're up against X-Ambassadors or Moist, but it's still yet another thing that will leave Commonwealth Stadium mostly empty. More people then the best-attended Argonauts home game of the season, most likely, but still disappointingly small.

But as I peruse the schedule, I notice that what the 2016 Eskimos season (and the 2015 Eskimos season, for that matter) is missing is the most enjoyable Esks game of the year: the mid-July Saturday afternoon game.

The closest we get this season is the Hamilton vs. Eskimos tilt on Saturday July 23rd, which will be at 5pm. It's not bad, but that means the game ends sometime in the 7-8pm range and therefore it might start cooling off and/or be starting to thunderstorm. It isn't going to be like the great day we had out at the stadium on June 29th 2013 (1:30pm Saturday start time, +26°C) where...while the Esks lost (this being the 2013 season we went 4-14 after all) we at least got to enjoy a beautiful day out in shorts and tanktops, and when the game ended and we needed to get far away from the Sister Kisser fanbase, it was still late afternoon and we were able to get in some time at a Whyte Avenue patio while still in the aforementioned shorts and tank-tops.

There's definitely a different atmosphere at an early afternoon Esks game. You get a more casual crowd, you don't feel bad about slamming an extra half-dozen beers, and of course the hot dogs and burgers taste extra good when the hot sun is bearing down upon you! When it's all over, the hot sun is still bearing down upon you and then you can go out and enjoy some more wobbly pops before it starts to cool off/cloud over. And for the second consecutive year, we've been robbed of it.

I'm not even entirely sure why. The game is against an Eastern Conference opponent (the Tiger-Cats), which means that it's going to start at 7pm Hamilton time and run until about 10pm. It's the only CFL game of the day, so it's not like there's an afternoon matinee in Montreal that an earlier start time would be in competition with.

The earliest afternoon game in Edmonton is going to be 2pm all right, but it's in Week 20...and November 5th is highly unlikely to be tank-top weather. Other than that, Esks home games are all evening affairs. It's a lost opportunity, and one that hopefully (along with the end to Thursday night games that only serve to keep the NFL at-bay in the Toronto market) is rectified in the 2017 season.

^† Remember: by law you have to shout it, even when reading this blogpost on a crowded LRT train. Go ahead, do it. Shout it out. REDBLACKS.

^‡ The CFL has to sabotage Edmonton's chances for a repeat, after all.

^§ Andee is a singer-songwriter from Quebec whose websites "tour dates" section only shows her upcoming Edmonton show. I have friends whose bands have bigger tours coming up.