The details of the Toys-For-Cops program have been neatly sorted, and while almost all of it is appalling and ridiculous, these two jumped out at me in a quick scan:

Monterey County Sherrif Dept:
    COFFEE MAKER,AUTOMATIC        2   $1,081.52
Monterey Park Police Dept:
    PISTOL,CALIBER .45,AUTOMATIC  5     $293.55

I think we’ve found the world’s worst .45 pistols, and the world’s best coffee-makers.

My own local cops got an MRAP and 30 M-16s, so those vegetable-pickers better mind their manners!

I’m guessing that after a few more muggings, this little snowflake won’t be quite as sympathetic:

"Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as 'thugs?'" asks Friedfeld. "It's precisely this kind of 'otherization' that fuels the problem."

Police also aren't the solution to the problem, Friedfeld argues.

"If we ever want opportunistic crime to end, we should look at ourselves first. Simply amplifying police presence will not solve the issue. Police protect us by keeping those 'bad people' out of our neighborhood, and I'm grateful for it. And yet, I realize it's self-serving and doesn't actually fix anything."

Friedfeld suggests that the "privileged" adapt to normalized crime, until the wrongs of the past are righted.

I suggest to Friedfield that it will be my privilege to respond to “normalized crime” with 230-grain hollowpoints, because his blaming criminal acts on the “wrongs of the past” makes him a bigoted racist idiot.

There are a lot of accusations surfacing. It’s still all hearsay, and much of it is decades-old and can never be substantiated, but now that a friend of mine has come forward as a victim, I believe it to be true. I have no doubts about Victoria Valentino’s integrity.

Of course, the people who gleefully latched onto it as an excuse to undercut his advice to the black community are also despicable, just not criminal.

Upstate New York:

8.5 miles from my house:

I only felt two of the little quakes they had in San Juan Bautista over the past day, and both of them were short, sharp shocks. Generally, anything on the other side of the hills goes unfelt in my area, so it was more surprising than anything else, especially since it felt more like the pressure wave from an explosion than the usual ground effects.

…couldn’t it have waited until after trick-or-treating? I may have a few tens of pounds of candy left over if the kids don’t brave the storm.

[Update: about 35 kids. Unfortunately, based on last year, I planned for at least 130, which means I’ve got over 50 pounds of candy left.]

When Jimmy Carter calls you a sissy, you have failed utterly at foreign policy.

One K-pop singer dead, another one in critical condition, and a third hospitalized, because:

"Around 1:30 AM in Suwon, an issue occured with the car's back wheel coming off. With the rainy road and wheel coming off, the vehicle spun several times, hitting a guardrail."

Brian Cates has a healthy dialogue about modern feminism. Only work-safe if everyone around you admires the sight of Sofia Vergara in very little clothing.

I wish they’d run reruns of Fuera de Serie sometime; while the main attraction was Sofia’s amazing body, it was actually a fun little travel show, even if you don’t speak any Spanish.