Sure Glad We Didn't Move

From the Nosek article:

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji



Geeee, ya think?

Maryland Went to Kerry So I'm Not a Racist

Seen that Washington Post article by Brian Nosek regarding
evil Republican Racists? No? How about the first time it was published? (a year ago)

See, it didn't cause enough of a stir the first time around so they figured a way
to add George Bush to the equation and republished it. Well, no, not to a scientific
journal yet. No, it's not ready for that yet.

I downloaded the study and I wonder if it's ever going to be ready for
peer review. Look at this chart:

Main thing is that the description doesn't match the graph labels. But regardless,
look at the explicit (what they claimed) vs. the implicit (what we measured).
It would appear that the strongly liberal are maybe 25-30% less biased than
the "strongly conservative" but they claim to much, much less biased.
Look at the gap between what liberals claimed and what these Democrat scientists
found. And look at that, the gap between what is claimed and what is measured
gets less and less the further you travel towards "strongly conservative." How did
these good Democrat scientists miss the obvious conclusion: that liberals lie
more. (and the "strongly liberal" lie the most)

The "study" is at ('harvesting.GroupDynamics.pdf')
Scroll down to "harvesting"

Cold day in DC

64861405_201001578_0, originally uploaded by lumberjack.

This is why I wasn't enthusiastic about the kid marching:

I figured I'd feel better about it if I was with. But then pop-pop's inability to
do a doctors appointment without upsetting hospital operations pulled me
away at the last minute. So the kid went alone and of course everything went
fine. We don't have the same crazies here as they've got in SF. Well, we do but
we keep them locked up in the Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn House office
buildings.

For Her a Killer Was Freed?

From Reuters:

Report says ransom money found on Osthoff
Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:35 PM GMT
BERLIN (Reuters) - Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on Osthoff after her release, the German magazine Focus said on Saturday.

Without citing its sources, Focus said officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the 43-year-old German archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the embassy shortly after being freed.

The serial numbers on the bills matched those used by the government to pay off Osthoff's kidnappers, the magazine said...

This, by the way, is the same Susanne Osthoff who campaigned to stop the looting
of artifacts and brought reporters to areas where looting was still going on after the
US invasion.

So was she part of the kidnapping? I mean, the planning part, not the
getting kidnapped part. She, who said, “poor people [and I] cannot blame them for
kidnapping me, as they cannot enter the [fortified and heavily guarded] Green Zone
[in Baghdad] to kidnap Americans. I was treated well … they were not criminals
[and their action] was political”
Yeah, and quite profitable for all concerned.

PCs

I finally saw it, knew it was coming, only a matter of time.
I got a Tiger Direct ad in the mail and on page one there
it was; a computer, and a video card, and the computer was
selling for less than the card.

I may skip the next upgrade. By then they may be giving you
free computers with every fill-up. Hope macs get that cheap
one day.

My Oprah

Oprah finally throws in the towel:

In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about "A Million Little Pieces" and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.

She was beginning to remind me of the Black Knight from the Holy Grail.

King Arthur: [after Arthur's cut off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left.
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.

Course Oprah finally admitted the obvious. She didn't do a Dan Rather
Black Knight; she didn't "it's-just-a-scratch" all the way down to total
limb removal. So kudos Opie, you woke up while you still had a leg
to stand on.

More ACLU

From My Way:

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) - A male high school student can wear a skirt to school after the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement with school officials.
The ACLU announced the deal Tuesday. It will allow a Hasbrouck Heights School senior to wear a skirt to protest the school's no-shorts policy......

The ACLU, protecting your right to be beat-up, wedgied, wet-willied,
Indian-burned, noggied, and laughed at. Good news: this kid will
be protected from unsafe sex, and safe sex, for the foreseeable future.

New Position

LATimes:

Warriors and wusses
I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.....

Didn't read the rest; I got the idea. And it's one I heard the famous
boater Sean Penn allude to: I hate this war but I'm not a pansy.
Whatever other drivel he spews, the not a pansy part was what this guy,
Joel Stein, wanted to get out there.

Nobody called you a pansy. Stop denying it, or, well Joel, embrace it.
Let your inner pansy blossom.

galloway

Seems that Saddam's hand puppet has gone into dignity-who-needs-it mode.

Why bother

From an AFP story on Yahoo:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Well before President George W. Bush said in 2003 that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, a high-level State Department intelligence assessment deemed the deal "unlikely" for several reasons, a US daily reported.

Who said that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger? Bush never did.
What he said, and what American, French, and British intelligence
services were saying was that Iraq had *sought* to buy uranium
from Niger. It was the 16 words we heard so much about. There is
still no good reason to believe that they weren't trying to
buy yellow-cake.

So why pretend that the
president said Iraq was buying uranium?

they're everywhere

From Breitbart:

The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans.

At the center of a congressional bribery investigation, Abramoff gave money to Republicans while he had his clients donate to both parties, though mostly to Republicans.

In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog.

There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff," and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.

Imagine that, liberals posting "pretty filthy stuff."
Who'd a thunk it?

Quick Draw

Bad guy picks the wrong house to rob.

AFTER a burglar broke into caricaturist Bill "Weg" Green's Heathmont
home on Sunday, it took the 82-year-old just seconds to draw his attacker.
Fifteen minutes later, patrolling police caught a suspect — and Mr Green's
drawing proved they had the right man.

Only disappointment: he didn't draw the guy with little running legs
and money bags clutched to his chest. Now he needs to redraw him
in a prison uniform behind, and clutching, prison bars.

one down

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The main defendant in the nation's first prosecution under a 2004 federal anti-spam law pleaded guilty Tuesday to three felony charges, federal prosecutors said.

Ted

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel
Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going
to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.”
Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member
of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women
from membership.
In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night,
Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club,
which was basically a fraternal organization.”
Asked by Hiller whether he is still a member, Kennedy said, “I’m not a member;
I continue to pay about $100.”
He then said of being a member in a club that discriminates against women,
“I shouldn’t be and I’m going to get out of it as fast as I can.”
The Harvard Crimson reports that, in 1984, the university severed ties with
clubs like the Owl, citing a federal law championed by Kennedy.
Meanwhile, Kennedy admitted to Hiller that he himself probably couldn’t pass
Judiciary Committee muster.
“Probably not . . . probably not,” Kennedy said.

Not a member but he's going to quit as soon as he can? So he was
lying™ when he said, seconds before, that he wasn't a
member. Lying™, lying™, lying™.
Here's the thing though. Who cares? He probably has had nothing to
do with the club for the last 51 years. Hardly worth mentioning.
Certainly not worth brow beating him about. And having several days
worth of hearings about it would just be silly.

Ann says

She says,

"Leave aside any moral questions about baby-killing – a term
I have come to understand the baby-killing party dislikes."

I know it's not conducive to meaningful dialog
but it's fun to watch her play their game.

It figures

It was just a matter of time:

MINEOLA, N.Y. -- A shrimp a hibachi chef tossed at a man eating at a
Japanese steakhouse ultimately led to the diner's death, his family
claims in a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against the restaurant
chain Benihana.

Makes a guy wonder if he should pursue a wrongful-shrimp-up-the-nostril
law suit. And those things are *hot*. [really]

Oprah's books

Heard about it? another Oprah book:

Smoking Gun casts doubt on Frey's 'Pieces'
By Gary Strauss and Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
A popular investigative website and author James Frey are in a dust-up over the authenticity of Frey's best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
By Gino Domenico, AP
TheSmokingGun.com says in a lengthy article that a six-week examination of police and court records, as well as interviews with law enforcement personnel, show that Frey fabricated or embellished details of his law-breaking days.

A Million Little Pieces, published in 2003, is Frey's account of his criminal past and rampant drug and alcohol abuse. It became a hit after Oprah Winfrey in October anointed it one of her book club picks. It has sold more than 3.5 million copies and now is No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

I can see rampant drug and alcohol abuse, especially in readers of
Oprah's books. Maybe I've been foolish but over the past few years
I've attempted to read several of her book club selections. (OK, reason for
this: they were free) Man. Never again. The only one I finished, I did so
because I just couldn't believe it was going to be that bad all the
way to the end. So is Frey's book fiction? Who cares? If it's readable it's
got a leg up on most of the other stuff Oprah endorses. The question of
whether this guy is a self aggrandizing (self deggrandizing?) liar is another
thing. But, you know, who cares?

truth

"We've all made mistakes," Kennedy said, "and I've certainly made mistakes."

-the captain of the swim team

Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.

It's true.
"A Handicap parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there."

Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.

(some rough language)

WTF?

A UPI story:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Susanne Osthoff, the German archeologist kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen on Nov. 25 and released before Christmas was connected with her country's intelligence service, the BND, and had helped arrange a meeting with a top member of the terrorist organization al-Qaida, possibly Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi himself, according to well informed German sources Sunday....

....A day after Osthoff's release, the Germans had quietly freed and sent home to his native Lebanon Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah militant serving a sentence for killing a U.S. Navy diver in a hijacked TWA jetliner in 1985. Berlin officials denied any connection between Osthoff's release and Hamadi's after serving only 19 years of a life sentence....

Working for the BND? So the question is, is that pro AIF or anti-AIF? Whatever, releasing
Hamadi was a slap in the face. I'm hoping W doesn't forget it.

Sheesh

A ban on older fans seeing the Rolling Stones perform at the Super Bowl has been lifted, organisers say.
People over 45 were initially not invited to take to the field and dance during the concert, as the task was considered too physically demanding.

But US National Football League (NFL) spokesman Brian McCarthy said: "We wanted to open it up."

The youngest member of the veteran rock performers is 58, while the band has a combined age of 246.

Oh man, It just got harder to climb the stairs.

Ted's a Hoot

From the WashPost:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), hosting a morning roundtable with reporters, had nothing nice to say about Alito. "We here in the United States are not going to stand for monarchial tyranny," he said, protesting Alito's support for "unfettered, unlimited power of the executive." He faulted Alito for belonging to a group that was "anti-black and also anti-women." Kennedy wondered if "the average person is going to be able to get a fair shake" under Alito.

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."

A questioner pointed out that Kennedy sounded like a sure bet against Alito. "I haven't reached a final conclusion," the senator demurred.

Now it's all clear

Stuck in the office I have a chance to keep up with the news. So far
Ariel Sharon has died, barely survived, and shown significant improvement.

Or vice-versa.

So Who Cares?

NORFOLK, Va. - Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested
Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for
"dividing God's land."

Why do they still report this guy's opinion? OK, So I couldn't find
a parking place because of divine punishment for running that
red light. Who thinks like that? nobody *I* know.

Walking Vegitation

No, not Barbara Streisand, this is a walking artichoke petal.