Gallery of Halloween advice

From Patrick, LabRat, Old NFO, and (for the psycho) Stingray.

And Brigid has a tale of ghosts.  And another of Zombie Spiders.

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U.K. Security Theater Lays an Egg

The Register:

When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be...the police.  That, at least, appears to be the conclusion of the Home Office.  Its official statistics, published today, show that while police stopped over 100,000 individuals last year to “prevent acts of terrorism,” there was not a single arrest for a terror offence as a result of these stops.

In the comments, readers wonder how many photographers the police picked up.

RELATED:

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What it’s about

Mark Steyn, on why voting out Democrats is only the beginning:

Where do you go to vote out the CPSC? Or OSHA? Or the EPA?
 
Or any of the rest of the acronyms uncountable drowning America in alphabet soup. “We the people” has degenerated into “We the regulators, we the bureaucrats, we the permit-issuers”.  “Ignorantia juris non excusat” is one of the oldest concepts of civilized society.  But today we’re all ignorant of the law, from the legislators who pass the laws unread to li’l ol’ you on the receiving end.  How can you not be?  Under the hyper-regulatory state, any one of us is in breach of dozens of laws at any one time without being aware of it.

Related:  “So, where do I go vote... for whoever's gonna fire you?”

Also:
Megan McArdle (via Insty):

...more and more of the elites [are] drawn from a narrow class of extremely well-educated people from a handful of metropolitan areas, few of whom have ever, say, been responsible for a profit and loss statement, or tried to bring a gas station into compliance with local and federal EPA regulations.

Yep.

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Death of the social contract

Karl Denninger:

Our society relies on the general premise that you can walk from the grocery store door to your car, and from your car into your apartment, in reasonable safety. That's part of the unwritten social contract that binds all of us together.

Nobody passed a law to make it thus - those laws were all passed for other reasons (e.g. "no murdering, no raping, no pillaging") - but the general agreement among the population that these laws apply to everyone, and the people who disobey them will be punished, is why you can, in fact, walk from your car to your apartment with a reasonable expectation that you'll get there without any extra holes added to your body.

If this element of reasonable expectation is lost, we have instant madness.

Once the population gets into its head that the very legal code that says you can't steal someone's house by lying about debts in court only applies to them, and not to banks, we're not far from the general population deciding that the rest of the law doesn't apply either - and if the banks aren't going to play it legal and straight neither will they.

Society cannot survive in its present form if that decision is taken by even a tiny percentage of the population.

Not dead yet, but gravely ill.  RTWT

HT:  “fairwhether,” in the comments at ++undead

Related:  More stuff that’s only “for the little people”

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Cameo appearance by two old friends

at Sinfest. Glad to see that Albert hasn’t lost his touch.

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Fisk of the day - October 27, 2010

Richard Cohen:

As I recall, the original Tea Party was open to anyone. All you needed for admittance was anger.

J.S. Bridges:

There was one other requirement - you needed to be a patriot, too…

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Well, we’ve had 36 more years of experience...

Public Optimism in U.S. System of Government Hits a 36-year Low.

(via Insty)

RELATED, later (101028):

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Clipfile - October 23, 2010

“If you want to see some racism, easiest way is to get a minority to disagree with a white liberal.” - Frank J.

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Here come the RINOs!

The Wall Street Journal:

Republicans are bashing the president and his agenda, and some are vowing to shut down Washington if they don’t get their way.  Behind the scenes, key party members are talking a different game.

A number of House Republicans, including some who are likely to be in the leadership, are pushing a post-election strategy aimed at securing concrete legislation, even at the potential cost of compromising with Democrats.
...
“It’s pretty clear the American people expect us to use the existing gridlock to create compromise and advance their agenda,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.).  “They want us to come together [with the administration] after we agree to disagree.”

Because “more of the same, only slower” is exactly what we want from the next congress.

Right.


UPDATE:  Rush Limbaugh locks and loads.
’NOTHER UPDATE (101020):  Nathan has the quote.

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Another inadvertent truth

Representative Nick Rahall (incumbent D-WV), warmingist supporter, gets tangled up in his analogy:

Climate change — to deny it exists, to just put your head in the sand and, ‘oh no, it doesn’t exist, what are you talking about,’ is about like standing on the floor of Macy’s during the month of December and claiming Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

Via Warren, who reminds us that “saying Santa Claus does not exist is absolutely correct, but doing so would get in the way of everyone around us making money off the myth.”

Previous inadvertency.

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