Oh man this will haunt me for a bit.... I know. I know. The camera just happened to catch the boys at an odd moment. John Kerry had made a joke about Khatami's feet smelling better than Theresa's or something. But still. If my subconscious works these faces into the chased-by-a-bear dream, I'm a goner.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Bug Eyed Monsters
Finish the Job, or Cut and Run?
Wish Pelosi would be as clear to the American people:
Iraqi MP Hassan Snid has said that during her meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed admiration for Al-Maliki and for his program for security and democracy in Iraq.This means either "We'll let the Republicans continue the effort, but we'll carp and complain all the way," or it means, "We'll let the Republicans continue the effort until we don't anymore."
Snid said: "When Nancy listened to the details she told Al-Maliki: 'Go forward. We are all with you.'"
Snid added that Pelosi confirmed to PM Al-Maliki the support of the Democratic Party for him, and stressed that some disagreements with the Republican Party would not in any way affect U.S. support for Iraq.
Source: Al-Rafidayn, January 30, 2007
Twilight Zone
The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act" would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.Ah, fluorescent lightbulbs, is there anything they can't do? I mean, besides not lighting up the room worth a damn. "But they use less electricity! And we've got scented candles for light."
California, the land of dim bulbs.
Biden and Obama
Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”The very first. Oh man. The contempt of the Democrat party just drips. Will black voters notice? They never seem to.
And in Obama news, he says:
“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact,” the Illinois Democrat wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” a memoir published last year. “Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal.”Grounded in reason and fact, like we went to war for Halliburton, or the government planned 9-11, or Cheney shot his friend to shut him up. But my favorite is: The documents ended up in Sandy Burger's pants because he was sloppy. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
How Can This Be?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Nova?
Filling the void (?) left by AAR's slow circling of the drain, is Nova M Radio. Which, like a Nova, should burn out spectacularly, either that, or it will be a fairly light Chevrolet product from the 60's, once easily modified for speed, but now mainly found rusting in junk yards.
Do these guys never learn? From their site:
For only $100 per year you can support Nova M Radio by becoming a founding member of Nova M Founder's Club online service and get a fantastic service right away.Plus there's the old AAR, being sold and no doubt resurrected, and relaunched at a different point around the drain spiral. It will be fun to watch these two battle for their shares of a market that isn't really there.
Nova M Founder's Club members have total access to podcast and download segments, interviews or entire programs. You can listen to your favorite Nova M Radio shows whenever and wherever you want.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Taxing Matters
Picture dollar bills with wings, flapping their way into the distance...
On January 12, 2007, Representative Anna Crook was in the local Clovis, New Mexico newspaper when the Chamber of Commerce honored her with its 2006 Citizen of the Year Award at a black-tie affair. She was recognized for being instrumental in bringing to New Mexico the Second Chance Program, a holistic treatment program for substance abuse inmates. She had secured $350,000 in federal funding for the alternative program in Albuquerque. Another $160,000 in state funds had been earmarked and it had just asked the state for $3.6 million to continue operations.More Scientology crap? So they can get these guys off drugs and make them what? Sane as Tom Cruise? There's something to shoot for. Read all about it.
Earlier in the month, four articles praising the program appeared in publications everywhere, saying “a unique social rehabilitation model is now in place in the criminal justice system of New Mexico, which offers not only drug rehab but also a program that engenders self-respect in the incarcerated as a way to help reduce criminal tendencies.”
........The program is based on “The Way to Happiness” by L. Ron Hubbard, described by Nickerson as “a non-religious moral code.”
The Report is Everywhere
No, not the ISG or 9-11 reports, the latest blah-blah-blah from Scientists:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eating less and exercising more are equally good at helping take off the pounds, U.S. researchers said on Friday in a study that challenges many of the popular tenets of the multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry.So now I have to decide: Do I not lose weight by not dieting, or do I not lose weight by not exercising? I liked it better when I only had to not decide on not doing one thing at a time.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Honest Government.. Any Day Now
"Chris, we all acknowledge, I hope that together America can do better than what we’ve done. The most corrupt congress in the history of the country. We have such significant problems with what’s going on in this country."Hmmmm, yes, significant problems:
BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ. — It's hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled..Read the article. Could be I'm wrong. Reid could be an honest guy. And Rosie O'Donnell could be a Rhodes Scholar.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Jane (Who?) Shows Up
I think that since Hanoi Jane has become part of this century's anti war movement, it's a good time to commemorate this incident from April of 2005:
At about 9 p.m., police said 54-year-old Michael A. Smith, who had been waiting in line for about 90 minutes, passed a book to Fonda and then spit a large amount of tobacco juice into her face.Now normally I'm in favor of civility... And I've worked with tobacco chewers -- that would be some nasty stuff to have spit in your face. So I can't condone what happened, except to say that the world is a little bit brighter for it having happened. But it's wrong. And I just wish there was a video of it that I could loop and set as a screensaver. But that doesn't make it right. And I don't think we should set aside April 20th as a national holiday. I think quiet parties at home and in the workplace would be celebration enough.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Nonfiction
I like Boing-Boing, but the sand in my swim suit is the liberal/atheist/puppy-smotherer slant that many of their links are given. Well not really sand I guess. It's just distracting that if a link to something about the bible is given, the linker feels compelled to refer to it as a novel. Or fairy tale. What's the reason? I mean, that was a clever thing to say 5 years ago. I suspect the linker thinks that this is being in your face to those mean Christians.
I guess I can live with hearing "it's a novel" every time I turn around. It probably keeps them from having it tattooed on their foreheads.
Brilliant!
However often I ask, "what would we do without scientists?" it's not often enough:
DURHAM. N.C. - That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That's what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine.Welcome to the future. Think I'll go jump in my rocketcar and just go driving, now that I'm free from the drudgery of dunking my own donut. No more will I have to sit around the Coffee Shop in the morning listening to the other rubes complaining, "Oh darn, got coffee on my fingers," "Damn, a piece fell into the coffee," "Oh when will some scientist come along and free us from all this?" "I'm going to shoot myself if this goes on another single day."
Jimma, Jimma, Jimma
Jimmy Carter keeps chipping away at my desire to see him as just a well meaning old fool. The old fool part stays, but more and more he's starting to look like an old-time Southern Christian bigot. What to make of this:
TEL AVIV – Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were "too many Jews" on the government's Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council's former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview.Photo, I think, is from 2002. You can tell because Castro is standing and Carter's mouth is shut.
Freedman, who served on the council during Carter's term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council's board by Carter's office because the scholar's name "sounded too Jewish."
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Jobs
An AP economist reported:
WASHINGTON - The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits shot up last week by the largest amount in 16 months, reversing two weeks of big declines.And nowhere in the article does it even speculate that the new minimum wage legislation could have anything to do with the decline.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that 325,000 newly laid-off workers filed claims for jobless benefits last week, an increase of 36,000 from the previous week. That was the biggest one-week rise since a surge of 96,000 claims the week of Sept. 10, 2005, when devastated Gulf Coast businesses laid off workers following Hurricane Katrina.
Global Warming
A gloating bird struts around its kill. Old timers say than starlings never used to kill polar bears, and many suspect global warming has brought about this situation. A Greenpeace representative who wished to remain anonymous commented, "The only upside of this is that a fully grown polar bear can feed a family of starlings for something like seven decades."
Consumer Mayhem
I knew something was wrong with the "microwave your sponges to get them sterile just like the Jetson's do" story. Well, and it's still wrong, though they've corrected it some:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week -- with sometimes disastrous results.So now they're telling everyone to wet the sponges first... but that's still not right. A small sponge will go supernova in my microwave if you give it 2 minutes on high, no matter how wet you've got it. And wet sponge the size of Oprah's pillow wouldn't even get warm after two minutes.
A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.
They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge.
"Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters."Smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," sounds a little like the lyrics to a country song, huh?
"First, the sponge is worthless afterwards so you have to throw it out instead of using it. And second your entire house stinks like a burning tire for several hours, even with windows/doors open," complained another.
Sadr
Michael Yon e-mail on OPFOR:
Petraeus is just the man who can do it. He's brilliant and is ready to slam those militias. We need to kill Sadr. We will lose a lot of people taking on the militias, but we should either take them on or pack up and go home. I vote for killing them.Remember when we had Sadr the first time? We knew his negotiating was just a tactic escape alive, and resume his bad acting. I was puzzled why we didn't take him out then. Were we afraid of creating a martyr? Or were domestic political considerations any part of it?
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Don't Try This at Home
The Seattle Cossacks attempt the dangerous Flying Webb, an homage to the freshman senator from Virginia.
One's Out of Focus - The Other's Shrinking
Great picture.
I've been busy reading what other people think about the SOTU speech. The criticism of Pelosi may be a little unfair... I'm pretty sure she's got a set of both inner and outer eyelids, so 30 blinks per minute isn't that bad. And Webb criticism, well, he had me at the Cambodian-hello...
***Update: It gets worse - in his shadow:
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Well Good
The kid didn't take her camera to the March for Life. Just one of the things forgotten when you get up that early. So I was a little disappointed that a Yahoo news photo search turns up only 22 photos. 22? This was a huge gathering. But 22? And several of those are of counter-protesters.
Ah well. I've come to expect it. Fortunately, Michelle Malkin links to one source for pictures. Check them out.
Like snowflakes, no two alike
Andrew Sullivan says that this "outs the rigid theology of Robert P. George."
Basically the letter (from Lee Silver, Princeton) is asserting that one of the above images is an embryo and one is a collection of stem cells and that because you can't tell one from the other, it is wrong to call one a human being and the other a clump of cells. Also, if you believe otherwise - you're a fundamentalist.
The difference, of course, is that if left alone, one of these clumps of cells can grow into a totally unique human being - a walking, talking, thinking, human being. Outward appearances do not define him. Last October 31, from all outward appearances, I was a nun. Would Silver assert that I'm a nun now because I looked like one on Halloween? Or would he look at me now and assert we're all nuns?
Ah well, his argument is hardly worth the pixels needed to refute it. Here's a better quiz. Look at the images and guess which one is the liberal weenie:
Monday, January 22, 2007
Animal Lovers
Robert Redford's circus:
Documentary on bestiality premieres at Sundance Film FestivalObviously they don't quite get the meaning of taboo.
PARK CITY, Utah -- "Zoo" is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as "the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible."
March for Life
I just saw the kid off to this year’s March for Life. What a kid. Getting up at 5:30, getting dressed, getting dressed again with the clothes on right-side-out this time, going down to sit in a freezing bus, to go downtown on a freezing day, to tell the world she thinks it's wrong to kill babies. Lucky me. I'll tell the world from right here, with a cup of coffee. Oh, I would have liked to have gone too, but the kid is now a teenager and I've detected a sensitivity to having her dad around... which is odd because I've made it a point, whenever she is with friends, to dance to whatever they're listening to and even sing along whenever I can understand 50% of the words... No, really, she would have been happy to have me come with. But being wise in the ways of the forrest, I know that it will be more of an adventure if she goes with her friends.
I know, by the way, that my child is showing a callous disregard for many women who would be just very, very inconvenienced by not having the babies sucked out of them. Not to mention the poor women with nobabyformetosis, that semi-rare condition in which a woman can carry a baby through an almost full term, and even go through 90% of giving birth, but then would surely die if forced to go that last 10%.
This year I'm not going to say aloud how it is that the good, and selfless, and just incidentally rich, doctors save women from that last 10% of the birth process. You all know. And truth is, I just woke from a dream of being chased by a bear (no, really) and I don't want to think about babies having their brains sucked out. D'oh! I said it anyway.
Maybe more coffee for me.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Calling CAIR
We're never going to end Islamophobia if people are going insist on noticing that Muslims kill their critics. I admit I'm not perfect. Upon hearing the news that Hrant Dink was murdered, my first reaction was, "that's wrong." I'm working to accept these things as just part of the Muslim dialog. It seems to be how they express themselves.
The Wife's Birthday
Just information some of you might find useful one day:
"But I think of my life as one long birthday present to you," does not work two years in a row.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Smash the State
In between herbal enemas at Robert Redford's Park City get together, they showed the documentary "Chicago 10." It's by Brett Morgen, and it's about the Chicago Seven, a group put on trial for their protests at the 1968 Democrat convention:
One of his goals in making the documentary, he told the more than 1,000 people in attendance, was to "mobilize the youth in the country to get out and stop this war." He was, obviously, referring to the current war in Iraq...All well and good. I haven't seen it but I'll take Hayden's word that it was well done. But what I don't see is how it relates to the war in Iraq. Really, the Chicago Seven trial wasn't even about the Vietnam war. It was about the right to protest. The Chicago police were brutal and the trial pretty much pointed that out. So where is the relevance today? Protests today are protected. Billy clubs don't come out. Protesters have to try to get arrested. Is the message, "protest now because they'd like to brutally oppress you"? Regardless, you really have to squint and turn your head to the side to see this as a reason to protest the action in Iraq. It's in the same league as treating Sands of Iwo Jima as a pro-Iraq film.
Hayden, who attended the premiere, was impressed. He took the stage after the premiere and wondered aloud how Morgen, who was born after the 1968 protests and trial, could have captured the intense emotion of the time.
Defamation
You knew 24 was going to catch some heat this season:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said "24's" season premiere, in which Islamic terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb near Los Angeles, risked stoking racial hatred.
In other news, an unMuslim editor hears from an irate reader in Turkey:
NTV television said Dink had been shot three times in the head and neck.I disagree - Bam, bam, bam! You have to wonder if CAIR thinks the "non-Muslim" shooter could possibly be "stoking racial hatred."
Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner near the newspaper, said the assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted "I shot the non-Muslim" as he left the scene.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Partisan?
a Fox News poll (pdf), via the Corner
Dumbfounding as it is, 34% of democrats don't want us to succeed in Iraq. Even odder, 11% of republicans and 19% of independents don't want us to succeed. What goes on here? I'd like to think I'd want foreign policy success regardless of whose plan it is.
Wait for the Hillary speech, "I am sick and tired of people who say that if you want your country to fail you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say, 'We are Americans and we have a right to want our country to fail!'"
Black Gold, Texas Tea
Oil prices falling?
NEW YORK – Oil prices plunged to a 20-month low toward US$50 a barrel today...OK, I've got a question. Now that the elections are over, why is Bush still lowering oil prices? OK, and a follow-up... Why is there a terror alert in Russia? They aren't having elections anytime soon.
Doomsday
Didja see? The clock keeps ticking, and Concerned Scientists just moved us x amount closer to disaster. For now anyway. They'll back the clock off again (when we're not looking) so as to allow them to move it forward, with much drama, the next time the humans veer off the path of righteousness. All this doomsday stuff got you down? Think of it this way: we're two and a half times safer than we were in 1953.
BTW, isn't this version of Concerned Scientist better than the guy they trotted out this week? At first I thought he was gesturing with his scientist pipe, but inspection of the shadow shows that it's his glasses. Just as effective, I think. "I use these glasses to pour over equations all day long, but the news I bring is so important that I'm going to remove them and gesture for all to see."
So, thank Science we've got Concerned Scientists. And just imagine how much better off we'd be if we'd had them a thousand years ago. Concerned Scientists back then would have been able to point out our reckless use of oxen and, in doing so, save humanity from the Medieval Warm Period.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Photoshop
Looking at the Castro post below, I realized that I overcorrected the color. Above, on the right is the original (oversaturated) Fidel. Compare that to the left side, taken the same day, and you can see that the Reuters people put a little extra color in el Jeffe Grande's cheeks. I tried to tone it down a little is all. Of course the Cuban health care system is responsible for taking most of the color out of the tyrant's face.
Phunny Looking Phil
Alyssa Milano
Alyssa Milano may well be contemplating Carathéodory's proof that showed "entropy increase" is not so much the general statement of the second law as it is its most fundamental observation—that all natural phenomena are irreversible.... or not.
Nazanin Fatehi
Some good news. The death sentence for Nazanin Fatehi has been vacated. Does this mean Islam is becoming civilized? Look at what the case says about Muslim men:
Fatehi and her niece were in a park outside Tehran with their boyfriends in February 2005 when three men approached them. The boys fled after the men pushed the girls to the ground. Fatehi drew a knife and stabbed one man in the arm and another in the chest, killing him, according to the court documents.The boyfriends did what when the girls were pushed to the ground? Ran away? I wonder if they put up any kind of fight at all. Regardless, you can't blame Nazanin for carrying a knife and being ready to defend herself. She no doubt knew that she and her niece were considered only "uncovered meat" by all five of the distinguished Muslim men in the park that day. The girls were a prize the three rapists came across, objects to be exploited. And what were they to their boyfriends? A prize lost? Just meat to be given up to the bigger dogs?
In June, an appeals court stayed Fatehi's death sentence and ordered a new trial. A retrials court decided last week that the killing was not premeditated and did not warrant the death penalty.
Now Nazanin Fatehi needs to pay the dead rapist's family what his life was worth: nothing.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Peace Clothes
LGF pointed out that the kaffiyeh was being sold at Urban Outfitters as an "antiwar woven scarf." It's no longer for sale.
What I have to wonder is: Did anyone at Urban Outfitters really think the kaffiyeh was a peace symbol? I can't believe they're really that out of the loop. And I also don't want to think they would deliberately mislead the clueless just to make a little money. Really, I like the company. If I ever have to outfit an urban, they're going to be my go-to guys. Let's hope we never see:
Cute Picture Day
Cute enough for you? This is a baby Slender Loris.(?!) It's shown here to illustrate how incredibly big this guy's thumbs are. Supposedly it took him a day and a half to chew his thumbnail down that far.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Fashion
Here's proof that you don't have to be sober or even forgo hallucinogens when you design clothes. I'm sure this get-up made sense to Vivienne Westwood at the time. I'm also sure this model took some big wig's parking place or ran over someone's dog. "That sonofabitch? He threw up on my Benz. Make him wear the two sweaters sewn together at the waist."
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Memories
Odd news:
Madonna has received much flack for all her attempts as an actress in front of the camera. But being the fierce performer that she is, the criticism has not stopped her. Madonna is about to turn the camera around and attempt a go at directing.Know the story of Benny "Kid" Paret? When I was a kid you could watch boxing on free TV, well, up to a point you could. You could watch boxing on free TV until I made my first bet on a boxing match. I bet 5¢* on Benny "Kid" Paret. Paret did ok early in the fight but was knocked out in the 12th round. The problem was, he got tangled in the ropes and couldn't fall down. So, Emile Griffith just kept wailing on him. The Kid never woke up from the coma. He died a week or so later.
Her directorial debut will be attached to a film entitled Blade to the Heat. The movie is a real life story based on the boxer Benny Kid Paret.
Oh, I forgot to say, Spoiler Alert. I just told you how it ends. Well really, it can't be a secret, the story is about how the ref should have stopped the fight and how you could only listen to the fights on the radio after that. You could. I couldn't. I never felt the same about boxing again. Being a kid, I assumed that my bet is what killed him. I've never cared much for boxing since. Though I did go to a Muhammad Ali fight late in his career. That was when he was fighting bums and I knew nobody would get killed. Most people hated those last Ali fights because he was just sparring with the guys. Not me. Sparring was fine with me.
* I know 5¢ sounds like a terribly small bet but I was just a kid. Plus, back in those days you could get a good used car for a dime. (with a full tank of gas)
Reputation
clicking around I see - too funny:
Mr. Nifong’s friends told him he had two choices: dismiss the case or ask the attorney general to take it over. It was a bitter decision, friends said. His reputation hung in the balance.Ya, in the balance. I think it was the poet said:
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
more balancing:
click the photo to see what happens next, and next, and next
Friday, January 12, 2007
Just Another Barbara
Git-um girl
Finally another cat for lumberpuppy to chase. Actually the timber dog has gotten even chubbier since this picture was taken. The floor shakes when she jumps down from the couch. Luckily for us that isn't often because she can't get up on the couch unless someone lifts her up. And very few of us outside of the World Wrestling Federation can lift her up.
They're Not Like You and Me
The rich aren't. Steve Wynn isn't at any rate. From AP:
Casino mogul Steve Wynn smiles at the start of his meeting with officials in Macau on Feb. 20, 2002. Wynn sued Lloyd's of London Thursday, Jan.11, 2007, saying the insurance company failed to act properly on his demands to pay $54 million in lost value for a Picasso that was damaged when Wynn accidentally poked a hole in the canvas with his elbow. (AP Photo/Anat Givon)How stupid do you have to be to spend 135 million on a painting and then put it into a situation where it could get bashed by the first idiot that walks by? Icing on the cake is Wynn himself claiming the title of First Idiot. I mean please. And now he wants insurance to pay? Insurance shouldn't have to pay unless Wynn made it clear from the begining that he was a dumbass.
And I always thought the very rich were smart. Warren Buffet is smart. Steve Jobs is smart. Steve Wynn? Not so much.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Jane Who?
I came across this fine picture of Jane Fonda at mugshots.net. Look how righteous she is. When my kid asks why she's holding up a fist, I'll be too embarrassed to tell her that we all did that back then. Yeah, see, we were tough. And, though it started out as the Black Power fist, Jane and the rest of us were oppressed black people on the inside. Jane's oppression was subtle. Much of it had to do with riding coach when first class was over booked. God we must have been insufferable.
This picture was taken in 1970. Later that year I heard her speak at the University of Maryland. She called for the deaths of our GIs in Vietnam. She called shrilly for the filling of body bags. Strident, that's what her voice was. You got the feeling that if she had a gun....
Anyway, the best part of finding this picture was the text at the top of the info section: Jane Fonda - Who Was She? Reading that, it struck me. One day nobody will know the answer to that question. I take comfort in that.
Hey, they've got color mugshots too. Don't know if I've ever posted this one before. I'm pretty sure I own that shirt. I know I've had that hair before.
Iran
Sometimes things get serious:
ARBIL, Iraq, Jan 11 (Reuters) - U.S. forces stormed an Iranian government representative's office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil early on Thursday and arrested five people, including diplomats and staff, Iranian officials said...."Representative's office"? Is that an embassy? If so, we better find what we were looking for. I think it's clear that Iran has been providing help to the AIF, but look for the French, in this country and in France, to get panty-bunched over this.
....The official Iranian IRNA news agency said documents and computers were seized after the 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) raid and Iranian state television said those arrested included "diplomats and staff".
Looks like the gloves are coming off regarding Iran and Syria.
Don't Mess With Us
From a Yahoo slideshow:
Members of the Special Warfare Command scrub their bodies with snow during an annual severe winter season drill in Pyongchang...The idea being, I think, that your enemy will hesitate to engage if he thinks you're insane. "Lieutenant, the enemy is attacking in force from the East. We've taken off our shirts and rolled on the ice, but still they come... should we start whooping, or stuffing snow down our pants?"
Also.... "Retreat? This isn't a retreat, were just sliding down the hill on our bare asses in a different direction..."
soldier's diary... "We were ambushed today. Twenty to thirty ROK special forces, naked, making snow angels and doing somersaults.. we didn't even get a chance to take off our shirts..."
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Talk to Iran and Syria
The Dems who called for talks with Iran and Syria were right and I'm glad the President followed their advice:
Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity – and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.There. Talk over.
AFP
It's fun to play spot-the-bias in AFP articles. This one is about the proposal to use federal dollars to destroy embryos. (See? There's my bias, I could have said, "the proposal to use federal dollars to cure horrible diseases.") Anyway, what jumped out at me is a small thing but I think it indicates where the writer's head is at:
Yet the new offensive in Congress against the funding restrictions appears destined for a second presidential veto, the bill's co-authors acknowledged Tuesday.And despite their strong majority, the Democrats do not have enough Republican allies backing the measure to muster the two-thirds majority need to override a presidential veto in both chambers of Congress.
Strong majority? The Dems have a majority but it's about as slim as you can get. Like I said, a small thing - maybe just wishful thinking?
Chill
Well, this is the new blogger... we'll see. From what I can tell, the upgrade now gives me the power (power!) to change font color. There's an improvement, now I can ridicule the French in blue type. Give me a month and this will look like a MySpace page made by an adolescent Eastern European. OK, so does it do images ok?
Seem to. Well ok then.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Blogger working?
Blogger is currently down... still down.... still down....
But if this finally posted, I guess Blogger is up. Don’t get used to it, that’ll change.
Ah well, It’s free so I shouldn’t complain. Course lightning strikes, Alzheimer's, and head lice are also free so maybe some grumbling is ok. So, what I would have been blogging about if it weren’t for evil Google’s evil outage: Rosie O’Donnell calling Barbara Walters a liar, and C130 gunships opening up on al Qaeda in Somalia. Or was it al Qaeda calling Barbara a liar, and C130’s opening up on Rosie? Ah, six of one, half dozen of the other. Barbara’s first mistake:
The fight started around 8:30 a.m. when Walters, back from a two-week vacation, walked into the hair and makeup room at ABC studios and tried to hug O'Donnell, whom she hired onto the popular show.Really, hugging Rosie - why would anyone start a job like that on a Monday?
Monday, January 08, 2007
Tigger Had Too Much Coffee?
From Yahoo News:This screengrab from a family video provided to CBS 2 New York shows a Disney employee dressed as 'Tigger' hitting Jerry Monaco Jr. in the face. (Screengrab From CBS 2 Video)How much you want to bet the kid put a hand where one oughtn't on a tigger? Course, there will be a lawsuit. I say make them prove their case.
Think it's Tigger?
Think again....
Not so sure now, are you? No, don't thank me. Social justice is what I do.
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Keep Your Eye on These Little Guys
This little fella is a transgenic fluorescent green pig, bred by the National Taiwan University, the same people who brought us transgenic glowing fish. And sure, he looks funny, but he may be the light at the end of the tunnel for those who have long prayed for transgenic glowing bacon. I'm going to take a wait and see attitude on the bacon, but I think this new animal may have a more important role to play. I suspect that if this porcine little guy sprouts (transgenic glowing) wings, and starts flying circles over Taipei, we'll soon see the Democrats giving us a middle class tax cut. Fingers? Crossed.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Democrats
The new Democrat majority is happy that the president finally made up his mind to send more troops. Now they know what to oppose:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 -- As President Bush prepares to present his new strategy on Iraq to the American people, Democratic Congressional leaders said today they will fight any approach that calls for deploying more United States troops there.
“We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, wrote to Mr. Bush.
So those who criticized the president for not sending enough in the first place -- and here I'm thinking about two especially, the new star Obama and the burn out Kerry -- those people will have to "evolve" their views. The president didn't project enough force, and he projected too much, using both too many troops and not enough. Ah, the Democrat stance emerges...
Friday, January 05, 2007
Wasted Lab Rat
Via NRO, a link to silly thinking by Richard Dawkins:
THE OBVIOUS objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces. This was an opportunity to set a good example of civilized behavior in dealing with a barbarically uncivilized man. In any case, revenge is an ignoble motive. If President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.What a fine secular humanist Dick is. He won't be calling for the execution of the president.
But I want to add another and less obvious objection: Hussein's mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research, a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars.Right. We could study Saddam and then, once we knew what made him tick, we could maybe talk the next blood thirsty dictator out of it. Sure we could. Because people like Saddam must be motivated by something other than a desire for absolute power and inexhaustible riches. One thing the gallows did pretty much do though: it guaranteed that the next dictator won't be Saddam Hussein. When Dawkins shows up on the next dictator's doorstep, he'll be trying to dissuade the last dictator.
....Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.
Anyway, here's where the antitheologian who couldn't tell that Mr. Garrison was a man really shows his intellect:
He should have been locked up, by all means. Kept him in jail for the rest of his life, to be sure. But to execute him was irresponsible. Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran-Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the invasion. Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government's enthusiastic arming of Hussein in the 1980s is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties; it is surely no accident that the trial of Hussein neglected those of his crimes that might — no, would — have implicated them).It is not disputed that we aided Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. We assumed that an Iranian victory would have been a bad thing. When you know that the government approved something like $200 million in arms sales to Iraq, why would you need Saddam to say, "Yeah, I got the stuff."? And how stupid do you have to be to assume that any input from Saddam would have historical value? He would tell you his side of the story. The Kuwaitis were stealing my oil. Iran stole my land. And Hitler would tell you those Jews died in an escape attempt. Insight. Yeah, Dick, kudos on your relentless pursuit of the truth.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Tara Reid
You've probably seen the video of Tara Reid counting down, "20, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5....errr....14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Happy New Year!"
And winking Britney Spears "fell asleep" in a club the same night.... Or, I'm guessing, "fell asleep, vomited on Paris Hilton, and woke up with strangers, thinking it was the 4th of July..."
And, really, this isn't a complaint, I'll just note that this is the decadent western culture that makes the Jihadists seethe. Worth fighting for? You betcha.
Sure Glad I Don't Make Mistakes
From Breitbart:
CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?"
A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted.
The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday.
CNN called it a "bad typographical error" by its graphics department.
"We want to apologize for that bad typo," Blitzer may have said, "We also want to apologize personally to Sen. Barack Obama. I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology, you know, if they have phone service up in those caves..."
Speaking of Baghdad Bob...
Spanish doctor Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, head of surgery at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital, arrives to a press conference in Madrid after he examined Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Cubans concerned about the health of ailing Fidel Castro -- for most the only leader they have known -- were kept in the dark by official Cuban media, as a Spanish doctor who examined him refuted reports he is near death.(AFP)So the race to hell is on, with Saddam taking an early lead...