Apparently, if your leaders keep telling you long enough how awesome guns are, you eventually lose the ability to stop shooting yourself in the foot.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) has been released through 2012. While crime is generally down, it is interesting to notice the geographic distribution of property and violent crimes (Image 2/20). The highest rate of violent crime - 423.7 per 100,000 inhabitants - is in the south (Texas to Florida up to Maryland). The highest rate of property crime - 3,226.8 per 100,000 - is in that same region.

When i was looking at my email today (yes, damn.registrars@gmail.com is real) I took a moment to check for slashdot-related mail in there. I noticed that there was an email that I sent to admin@slashdot.org back in November when the message system was borked. Almost two months to the day and ... nothing.

While Taco was incompetent and irrelevant, he at least responded to email.

I noticed that my friend the fake conservative has shown up again recently to grace slashdot. I recall that some of the conservative regulars here have before claimed to not profile comments based on their authors but rather to judge them based on their content. So to see if my friend would follow their previous claims, I wrote a reply to one of his comments in a different style. We'll see if he - or any actual slashdot conservatives - bite.

hint: It's not an open letter if some people aren't allowed to respond to it. Even if there are only two people not allowed, it still isn't open.

To Nick Saban:
You can tell your team all you want that they "don't need a trophy to know they're the best" -- your team isn't the best. You got beat by a better team 42-35.

To the SEC Fans:
Your "the SEC is invincible" narrative, primary fed to you by the talking heads on ESPN (which owns the SEC Network), has been shattered. Your top teams all LOST. The so-called mini-NFL, the SEC West, was 2-5 in Bowl Season.

Ohio State beat Alabama, Wisconsin beat Auburn, TCU beat Ole Miss, Georgia Tech whipped Mississippi State, and NOTRE DAME beat LSU. That's right, LSU lost to Notre freaking Dame. You know, SEC, when your signature bowl win is against Louisville, you need to drink a nice, tall glass of warm STFU.

To Mark May of ESPN: Mark, I saw you on TV still not admitting that Ohio State deserved to be in the National Title tournament even after they handed Alabama their asses. Still think the 2014 National Champions didn't belong there?

And who was that asswipe on Fox Sports who stupidly claimed that if Ohio State played Alabama next week that OSU would lose? Butthurt much? Who's to say Alabama would even beat Wisconsin or Sparty next week much less the 2014 National Champions?

Besides, Alabama had their shot at Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

Ohio State 42, Alabama 35

To the fans of TCU, who thought they should have been in over Ohio State or Florida State: Dude, seriously? Win that piece of shit overrated conference you call the Big 12, then maybe we'll talk. Besides, the team that had a better argument (not a good argument, just a better one than yours) was your conference Champions, which leads me to...

To the Fans Baylor of who thought they should have been in over Ohio State or Florida State: You lost to Sparty at the Cotton Bowl, a stadium that's about 90 minutes from your home field. Any team that plays in a shitty conference that loses essentially at home TO MICHIGAN STATE has no business trying to claim that they deserve to be in the National Championship Tournament. Yeah, you were a 1 loss team who won a conference that was marginally better than the MAC this year. Big f'n deal. Seriously Baylor, the Toledo Rockets would give you all you wanted in a Bowl Game. The Big 12 completely sucked this year, and went 2-4 in bowl games thanks to TCU drumming an overrated SEC team and Oklahoma State beating Washington, a Pac-12 patsy team. Big Whoop.

Finally...

To the Big 10 Haters:
2014 National Champion Ohio State 42, Oregon 20
Ohio State 42, Alabama 35
Michigan State 42, Baylor 41
Wisconsin 34, Auburn 31

My prediction: Ohio State 35, Oregon 17

The reality: Ohio State 42, Oregon 20.

But the end result is the same -- the 2014 National Champions are THE Ohio State Buckeyes.

YES!!!

Accusing someone of something - be it criminal, trivial, or somewhere in between - when there is no way for them to prove that they have not done that something, does not mean you are automatically right. If I accuse someone of being a time-traveling alien responsible for the assassination of Lincoln that doesn't mean they are just because they can't disprove the allegations of being a time-traveling alien.

Haven't seen this in a while:

I'm not sure why he moderated me down but it might relate to his lack of understanding of communism.

Urban Meyer is taking his 12 Gauge and going Duck Hunting.

My Prediction: Ohio State 35, Oregon 17

One of the funny (tragic?) things is that my son and I traveled to Paris and bought tons of bandes desinnees including ones by some of the cartoonists that were murdered by terrorists today.

I stand with them.

Your right to claim blasphemy ends when you set foot outside the mosque.

The House did their own investigation on the Benghazi attacks from 2012. This was after a slew of other investigations into the same, which were of course all promptly discarded by conservatives for not coming to the "right" conclusions. Naturally, when the house released this, the conservatives who were so certain all the other ones had it wrong jumped for joy in the vindication of this report (which was of course steered by the conservative-controlled house), right?

After all, it was covered by all the media, wasn't it?

Well, at least the conservative-leaning paper in DC covered it.

But go ahead, ask for another investigation. We don't really have anything better to do with billions of dollars, do we?

... your excellency. Mod-bombing me still doesn't move my karma, dumbshit. I'm honored that you're willing to waste your points on me, though. Do you talk with the other kids on your short bus about how this makes you feel?

So, while I can't admit what I may or may not have done in detail myself, one of the most interesting things at Christmas was finding out my dad was indeed part of the precursor to the NSA, confirming what my mom had thought.

Life is fun.

I'm sure the fact that my 6 most recent comments were all moderated down "flamebait" in spite of being in different discussions and written on different days is just coincidental. Nonetheless, dear idiot, you haven't moved my karma. I told you that before.