More Hillary

"Speaking at a forum organized by Lance Armstrong on cancer research, Hillary Clinton told Chris Matthews if she is elected president, she will declare war on cancer, and then she will support the war on cancer for two years, and then she will be against it for a year, and then she will back out of it all together" -- Jay Leno, host of NBC's "Tonight Show."

via Opinion Journal's Political Diary

Brian De Palma: Choking on Smug

Brian De Palma's antiwar movie:

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

Material he found on the internet? OK, they do admit, later, that the film is "halfway between documentary and fiction". But Why does there need to be fiction mixed in with truth? Maybe because the truth wasn't bad enough? But never mind that. Bad things have happened in Iraq, and in Newark, and in Paris, and Antwerp, and everywhere across the globe.

De Palma's film is about the rape and killing of a 14 year old girl and the murder of her family. Serious, sad stuff, the parts of it that are true. But De Palma's goal, to get us out of Iraq would bring about thousands of times more deaths. Can't De Palma count? Or does he not care so much about the people as he does about feeling good about himself. Go screen The Killing Fields, Brian.

Goose Bumps

See the skin on the glacier pics? Notice that the same people turn up for these photo-shoots no matter what city they're in? Please, put your clothes back on, people. Seriously, it should be against the law for some of those people to even be undressed in their own homes.

If I don't get back, have a good weekend.

Campaign Finance Reform

We did control the congress all those years. Would it have killed us to add something that would cover this sort of shenanigans?

Only Good Things, None Bad

The Onion finds the gist of John Edwards campaign, John Edwards Vows To End All Bad Things By 2011:

"Imagine a world free of procrastination, class disparity, and itchiness," Edwards said. "It will only be possible if we try."

Edwards told the gathered audience that the second half of his presidential term would be devoted to a $125 billion effort to supplant the abolished bad things with good things, such as flowers, the laughter of children, butterflies, sunny days, financial stability, Skittles, and medicine.

Instructing the AFP

Watch the video here.
via LGF

***Update: As you can see from the link, the Dissident Frogman is back blogging again. He took a years vacation and I somehow lost track of him. If you have a spare moment, check him out, a witty, intelligent guy, and, ya-hoo, this brings the count to at least four Frenchmen you can trust. (Sarkozy, U*2, the Frogman, and Jerry Lewis)

Rageboy

ragerock

Castro Speaks

She can do for America what I did for Cuba.
Apparently.


h/t: PGP

Let's Be Fair

Everyone is making fun of Miss South Carolina's map answer. Keep in mind that fifth grade, when her class learned about maps was "the worst four years of my life," according to the contestant.

School

Woo-hoo, first day of school and it was good. No more being a freshman and wondering when the upperclassmen are going to eat you. No more lockers in the gas station off campus. And no more carrying a backpack knit from your own tears! Life is good! (for now)

Imagine if George Bush Had Said This

Don't like the sound of this:

Iran and neighbouring countries are ready to fill the "power vacuum" emerging in the Middle East as US power in Iraq wanes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.

I Left My Other Jewelry at Home

from the amazing photos here

Now I Fluff Your Brain

Good News

It's been reported that the Taliban have agreed to release the 19 Christian hostages. Way good news, if true.

Dishonesty at AFP

From AFP, puffery about a kindred antiwar photog who takes pictures of the wounded in order to advance her cause:

Berman said she was first spurred into taking the portraits out of frustration, sickened by the early media coverage of the war.

"I started working on it out of exasperation at not seeing any visual representation of the human cost of war. In the press you kept hearing reports or reading reports about wounded but never seeing any images," she told AFP.

OK, fair enough. She most likely hides her agenda from her subjects, but what the hell, it's no doubt for the greater good. Honesty is optional for the antiwar folk.

But not content to tell the story of this dishonest antiwar operative, they try to paint her as objective... forgetting apparently that they've already explained her motives:

Berman says that although she sees herself as a neutral observer, the photographs are almost inevitably anti-war.

"I think it's very hard to stomach the idea that war is acceptable when you see the damage to human beings," she said.

Come on. Why is it so hard for these people to be honest? You have an agenda, Berman; saying you're neutral is a lie.

My idea: do a series on the hardship of the forgotten protesters. Show the sadness that surrounds them. How many lonely hours of practice did this poor man invest in order to come up with this sad, sensitive, intelligent, innocent, and concerned pose?

Recalling My High School Latin

Bill Buckley gives the Brits some advice. It seems reasonable to me. And for those nonAnglophiles among you I can give you a little help with this bit:

In Britain the situation is different. For one thing, we have there the mother of parliaments, which has weathered tumult and war and devolution, without any sense that the vital organs of British life had been anachronized. Consider only the monarchy. It is easy to think of it as Punch and Judy, but it is more than that, never mind the annus horribilis about which the Queen complained.

I figured it from the Latin: "annus horribilis" must refer to George Galloway, I believe. Yeah, he's a horrible one.

Incognito

Deer Ticks, Michael Vick, trips to the Vet; is it any wonder she wears a disguise?

Fisk

Robert Fisk talks crazy:

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

Well yeah, I guess there would be a "raver" every place you go. Maybe bin Laden was kidding when he claimed responsibility for 9-11. And maybe Bush is having our guys smuggle oil out of Iraq in their canteens. And, just maybe, you're the raver.

Apologies for the overdone photoshop; it sat on the screen for two days and every time I went past I'd add something new. If it'd stayed any longer, the poor befuddled fool would have wound up with hood ornaments and no-pest strips hanging from his ears.

Watch Out, It Will Take Your Quarter

Arm-wrestling game recalled in Japan

TOKYO - Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Reminds me of the pinball machines of my youth. There was one that would give you a real wallop of an electric shock at random times. Heck of it was that it'd freeze you to the machine so you'd be stuck there, an involuntary conductor, until somebody noticed the smoke coming off your head. Odd, we never thought to complain about it. Course, we were really starved for entertainment.

Drudge

Drudge headline all day:

STATE SCREAMS 'DISENCHANCHISEMSENT'...

Disenwhatchisment? I have this vision of a drunk being cut-off, "Yur disem, disan, dissa, YOU'RE Disenchansisin me!"

Castro Flow Chart

In case you have trouble determining if he's dead:

Woo-Hoo

I'm signed up for Blog Action Day. That's right, on October 15, I'll join thousands of others in Scolding the World. Bad world, bad, bad!

Hey, it's not my fault they set the bar so low. Consider: 1.) You don't have to know anything about climate science to become a Global Scold. 2.) You don't have to change a thing about the way you live, in fact, some of the Lead Scolds are among the biggest CO2 producers on the planet. and C.) All that is required is self-righteousness and a desire to feel good about yourself. Bingo - I qualify.

I imagine on October 15th I'll go out and stick my nose into somebody else's business. I'll call them Gaia rapers and try to get pictures of them reacting to my unprovoked attack. Sweet. Oooorr, I'll ridicule Al Gore, haven't decided yet.

h/t: Tim Blair

Hot Air

I've always had a soft spot for hot air balloons. Even though the people in those baskets are likely to have 'magical' crystals around their necks, speak of Gaia, and take recreational enemas, still, I applaud their enthusiasm for balloons. They're big, pretty, quiet, and they fly. How cool is that?



So it's a wonder the global scolds, who think nothing about berating a stranger in a parking lot over their use of an SUV, give a pass to their brethren in balloons. I mean look at this, making CO2 and heat on purpose:



I suspect some of the global scolds are even in the baskets. I wouldn't blame them if they were. Really, have fun. Just don't yell down from your pretty balloons for me to change my ways.

Monkeys use baby talk with their infants

So then, what are they saying?

Janeane Garofalo on Bonanza

Rumors Abound

Ignore the rumors, Castro is just as (un)alive today as he was yesterday:

U.S. Senior officials said that while there are reports on setbacks in Fidel Castro's health, there are no indications that his death is imminent.

Nothing unusual has been reported from Havana. However, Miami is ablaze with rumors, NBC News reported.

More Not There Than We Thought

Whole lot of hoopla about nothing:

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

So how do they know it's there? Or not there? Or, does not knowing that anything is there equate to knowing that nothing isn't? Because, not to brag, I never even suspected anything was there, so that sorta puts me on the cutting edge of isn't-there science. And don't try claiming that you also didn't know there was anything not there, unless you spent the many long hours that I didn't, not peering through a homemade telescope, not searching for something you would never not find.

The Crazy Boss

Off the rails:

Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chávez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008. He announced the change on his Sunday television program, accompanied by his highest-ranking science adviser, Héctor Navarro, the minister of science and technology. “This is about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight,” Mr. Navarro said...

Why half an hour? Why not double the "metabolic" effects and lessen the confusion when dealing with countries that chose not to fiddle with time? Want "metabolic" effects? Tell everyone to get up a half hour earlier.

Or, has el Jefe Loco figured out a way to stave off global warming? Even if only for a half hour? (¡si! And if this works, we start changing the years too!)

Summertime

Summertime - a time for boating, fishing, and scaring little children.

Iraq War Veteran Andrew Robinson

Janeane Garofalo on Buffy

Server Error

How odd, I seem to be able to post, but the site hasn't been available for the last hour or so. Apologies to everyone, blame google.
Well, I should get to work anyway. I was going to comment on the latest report that bin Laden is alive - horse hockey. He plays ping-pong in Hell with Fidel Castro. That is my opinion and I'll keep it until the next authenticated recording comes out. At which time I might admit error, but will immediately revert to believing him dead again.

Do As I Say,

Not as I do.
It is just sweet when they get caught:

LIHUE, Hawaii --
Bette Midler cut down more than 230 trees around one of her properties on the island of Kauai without a permit, and the state has recommended she be fined.

The staff of the Board of Land and Natural Resources recommended $6,500 in fines for having the trees felled and for building a graded road without permits required for the land zoned for conservation use.

The singer and actress will pay the fines and will follow a replanting program, her attorney Max W. J. Graham said.

She said that she cut them down because they were nonnative species... Well, and plus, they were in the middle of the road she wanted to build.

The reason it's so easy for the rich to demand change is because they expect their money to insulate them from any personal sacrifice. Sure, she needs a road, so she builds a road. And she has lawyers to negotiate the fines. She has PR people to plant stories about how it was always her intention to replant every tree that was cut down. Fact is, she'll still fly private jets, she'll still own more homes than she can live in, and know what? Nothing is wrong with that. What's wrong is to live like that, to belch carbon with every step, and then to demand that the average middle class joe change his way of life to accommodate her silly belief in an urban legend.

Janeane Garofalo on 24

several requests for this

Religion of ?

From Christian Today:

Lawyers in Pakistan are investigating a report that up to 30 men tortured and gang-raped a young Christian man for refusing to convert to Islam.

The victim is seriously injured and unable to move, Release International’s partner in Pakistan has reported. However, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) the police are keeping him locked up and have denied him medical treatment.

But bad people doing bad things isn't the half of it. Bad people doing bad things with impunity is much worse. It's the Ballad of Hattie Carol that Bob Dylan's heirs won't sing about:

The police are also refusing to register the rape following a counter-claim made by his principal attacker – “a man of influence”, Release International has told Christian Today.

Let's not upset Islam by pointing out that something is wrong here.

h/t: ¡no pasaran!

Janeane Who?

At first I was befuddled:

The political left and the political right are going to meet on Fox's "24" this coming season.

Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, an outspoken liberal, is set to co-star on the conservative-leaning real-time drama, whose co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow jokingly describes himself as a "right-wing nut job."

But unless I miss my guess, Ms G will be cross paths with "freedom fighters"... Either that or she becomes one of them and gets a Jack Bauer back-rub, you know, with a cinder block. Woo-hoo! Maybe he should hire Al Franken too.

Nah, really, I don't imagine we'd get much pleasure from seeing the liberally impaired undergo fictional hardship. They're people too. Sorta. I'll just hope seeing Janeane's mug doesn't distract from the walloping, gassing, exploding, and shooting. Hey, lucky for Joel that Janeane was able to take time off from her busy schedule at Air America. Remember Air America? Yeah, me either.

stick figure revolt

I've fiddled with animation, and it always feels like I'm fighting the video. This guy does great work. And the stick figure does OK too.

Just Awoke

Well, not just, but I got home late last night from going to see Linkin Park. Actually it was the Projekt Revolution Tour, which was an all day misspelled project to blow out eardrums and damage neurons. I took the kid and a friend. Oddly, they're still able to function and hear the world this morning. I'm hearing this high pitched ring and I can't get the spoonful of cereal to my mouth without half the rice krispys ending up in my eyes and nose. The concert? I think it was good. I'm writing this down because there's a pretty good chance that I won't even remember having gone to it once these neural events have played out in my still numb head.

Who Didn't See This Coming?

Green Car-Jack

More Jack Bauer

The New, Greener 24

I'm really looking forward to the new season of 24. It's going to add a new level: looking for green faux pas and then e-mailing the producers, outraged, about their wanton promotion of Gaia raping. "You know Jack could have smoked the doorman with one clip. The CO2 from the second and third clips means I've got to plant another tree in the back yard. And all it did was make a mess of the elevator."

Har

Suddenly the newsroom grew very quiet...

Cattle Carnage

h/t to the probably omniscient James Taranto:

28 cows die after prison dairy escape
DVI herd felled in ACE train, big rig collisions
TRACY - Officials at Tracy's Deuel Vocational Institution are trying to figure out how a herd of 59 cows escaped from the prison's dairy early Monday, causing 28 of the animals to be killed when they wandered into the paths of passing vehicles.

An Altamont Commuter Express train took out some of the cows, while a big-rig truck hit and killed others.

Can you imagine the carnage?

But What I can't understand is how they got the number up to 28. Later in the article they explain that the train took out "4 or 5", but that still leaves 23 or 24 cows. So how do you hit that many cows? Wouldn't traffic pretty much stop after the first half dozen were spread out across the highway? Do Californians all drive like Homer Simpson, honking their horn, then driving a serpentine through the abattoir at full speed?

These are the kind of events that make having a good imagination a curse.

Ouchie, It Hurts

"This bullet went right through my head. Twice."

Big Time Threat to Aluminum Siding

I see the ammo lady has been getting a fair amount of coverage. Michelle Malkin has called for photoshopping to begin.... so. Well, here's one. (click photo to embiggen)

Oh, and on the situation with Yahoo changing the URL's so that you can't find the picture: it looks like they're doing that with all their slide show pictures these days. I copied the URL of some other random Iraq Slide Show images this morning and they were all changed by this afternoon. Shame, I like to credit the picture whenever I use someone else's image.

OK, and another:



OK, and here's something interesting. A woman who doesn't look unlike our bullet holder was pushing the same story two days earlier. Only that time she didn't display unfired rounds.


Could it be orchestrated maybe?
text from AP picture:

Umm Abdul Zahra holds spent ammunition she found near her home after an overnight raid by U.S. troops in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007. Police and residents said U.S and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters raided the east Baghdad neighborhood on early Sunday, killing two people and wounding 4 others. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report. (AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

***Update: And LGF has a report from July 10th. Could be the same lady, her show-and-tell is different.

Before His Time

So actress Cate Blanchett thinks she can save the planet by not washing her hair....


I'll note that when it comes to saving the planet through avoidance of hygienic practices, Nick Nolte has been way out in front of his Hollywood colleagues. "That's right I didn't wash my hair this week, hell, if you ever catch me flushing a toilet, it'll be by accident - falling down in the bathroom, or something like that."

AFP Reporters Need Firearms Training

An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.

OK...... So coalition forces are throwing bullets at innocents now?

I'm sure that having a raid in your neighborhood is no picnic, don't get me wrong. But the cartridges that this woman is holding haven't been fired. You would expect a reporter in a war zone to know that the bullet is that copper colored bit on the end that goes flying off with much enthusiasm when the cartridge is fired.

And if this photo is intended to show the hardship innocents face at the hands of the coalition forces, I'd note that the purpose of the raids is to kill and drive off the real threat to the Iraqi people: terrorists, like those who just killed 200 Iraqis with 4 truck/car bombs.

Doll Demands

Giggle Warming

The Star.com has the story:

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial....

Trivial? 0.15 C over six years adds up to 2.5 degrees over the next century. That's quite a boost this error was giving the Warmists. I'm sure the true believers are scrambling now to find bad news to counter this. Why isn't this bigger news?

Mattel Recalls

Toy-making giant Mattel Inc. issued a recall Tuesday for the popular Pooper Scooper Barbie over concerns that the tiny magnet in Barbie's scooper was a danger to children. Shown above is the Muppet Bunsen, and a monkey from the CDC confiscating one of the dangerous scoopers from a cheerful Scooper Barbie while her less cheerful dog looks on.

Asked why she didn't pick up on the danger, a Doctor Barbie said, "Math is hard. I'm going to the beach."

Warnings

Planning a Trip to America?

h/t the Corner:


Some essential phrases besides 'where is the bathroom?' and 'would you take our picture?'

'Spare me my life' will come in handy.

Pirate Monkey

Babu secretly hoped he could ride the floating head
all the way to the sea; where he would become a pirate.

When the Lions Come

Another one I'm not sure where it came from.



h/t:who knows?

Democratic Campaign Heats Up

It's "say hello to my little fren" time

Peeps

"News" the Reuters Way

h/t LGF, Reuters has been caught:

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

Well at least they didn't stand a homeless Lebanese crone on the sea floor, or photoshop smoke into the scene. Should have known though; these guys don't look the least bit Russian:

Retribution on the Beach

The tide has turned in the Giant Duck wars.

Ninjas!

And speaking of ninjas, I found this in an old folder. No idea where it came from.....



h/t: whoever

No Real Than You Are?

"Oh, and look he's got a friend...."

[cue 4/4 string ostinato in D-minor]