Tee

What the Obama fans wear, apparently.

It's that time again!

Poor Sad Chicken...

Yikes. Click on picture, and you can say "Yikes" too.

Dhimmitude of the Veggies

American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

- Insurgents battling al-Qaida outside Baghdad

Rome

... I finished watching Season 1 on DVD recently. Good stuff.

Rome: XIII

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That, and a recent viewing of 300, have set me onto an ancient history jag ... buying some books on the classical world, as well a audio books on Augustus and Alexander the Great.

While you're reading this, why not watch Caesar cross the Rubicon, fictionalized version.

LOLCat

Making Dracula Look Good

You see, Americans don’t watch news that much anymore, preferring Oprah, The View, Grey’s Anatomy, and other soap operas fictional or otherwise. So long after the shelf life of the facts has expired and the news is no longer new, the networks will try to keep their swollen ratings by making their “extended coverage” as engorged with mawkish sentimentality as possible before giving way entirely to recriminations, self-congratulation and navel-gazing about how they handled this latest challenge.

- Jonah Goldberg on the Emotional Vampirism of the press.

Alert emailer S.F. asks if NBC, when it broadcast baseball games, refused to show video of fans running onto the field. Most broadcasters don't, on the grounds that it would only encourage more attention-seeking disruptions. ... If that's NBC's practice, why is it OK in order to prevent the disruption of a baseball game but not to prevent mass murder?

- Mickey Kaus, on NBC

Can Afford the Time and Expense of a real Padded Cell?

Why not have the chair version instead?

Happy (Belated) Holiday!

Wait 'till Hallmark get's it's hands on this one... Happy Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day!

McCain revives a Classic song parody from the 70s

'Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran'

Anti-BBC blog

Britain and America

An Inconvenient Truth

Or Convenient Fiction?

A Political Verb

Powerline blog on swiftboating...

Surely the lad must be innocent.

There he was, minding his own business, armed to the teeth ... when he was unjustly carted away. People who pose with guns Just Because are never a problem... right?


Update: The guys at Reuters blew the joke. Their caption used to read that the nice gentleman with the picture of his lovely relative was at a "peace rally". Well, at least they made the caption more honest. "Little Green Footballs" might have the original if you really care...

How the left uses the media ...

... according to Tammy Bruce.

Sigh. That stupid "quiz" again....

I've always though the stupid grocery quiz for Presidential candiates was one of teh silliest hoops that any politician is forced to jump through. How many of these guys buy milk by the gallon? Their kids are generally all growed up at that point. Heck, I have a hard time getting through a quart of milk before exp'y date. More to the point, the President doesn't set the price of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.

I guess the theory is that they must "understand" what the "average person" goes through if they know how much bread is at the local WalMart. Well, it's a bit much to call it a theory. Excuse, maybe?

Maybe this was trivia day ... Imus and the Confederate flag were included among the burning issues.

In the Universe where Spock has a Beard...

Nancy Pelosi is the Alternate Universe President, according to the Saudis.

Pelosi’s delegation wants to emphasize the vital role that Syria plays in bringing peace to Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Your agonizer please, Mrs Pelosi.

Clinton Tried to Kill Santa!

Yes, that time again ...

Al-Sadr's Protest Numbers Disappoint

Thousands instead of millions. Not that that was reported in the media or anything...

Penn & Teller : "Walmart Hatred Is Bullsh*t"

Check out the video. Makes some good points but lots of Penn just sayin' Bad Words, 'cuz it's "edgy" or something. Still... some folks won't believe the obvious unless it's stated on TV by a celebrity.
The bit where they kept WalMart out of Penn's hometown ... and the guy that was responsible for keeping them out shows us around, point out all the Mom&Pop stores that have closed. But... I thought it was WalMart that closed stores. Huh

Intelligence Analyst Challenges Good Friday 'Spin'

(2007-04-06) — While Christians around the world gather for so-called “Good Friday” observances, an intelligence analyst studying primary source documents challenged the “irrational exuberance of the true believers,” and said his research to date indicates things did not go according to plan.

Good 'ol Scrappleface ...

On Scientific Funding

An "ex" scientist explains how funding and Global Warming relate ... :

This is how the funding process works:
1. You determine what the latest ‘hot’ topic is (global warming, ceramic superconductivity, stealth technology).
2. You write your proposal to fund the work you’ve been doing for years in your area but you slant it towards the hot topic.
3. You almost “prove” that the above hot topic is effected in a way that is positive toward your research.
4. You write a follow-on proposal where you state that the really big break-through will occur in the next funding cycle.
5. Oh, and you try to partner with entities that always get government funding.

It works like this: You study frogs in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Nobody wants to fund the study of frogs. Why would they? So in the early 80’s you write your proposal to study the effect of the hole in the ozone layer on the frogs. The mid 80’s your try to figure out how to write a proposal on frogs and missile defense but give up. In the 90’s you write proposals on how frog pee can help certain forms of cancer. You partner with NIH on this because they are getting lots of funding, being the ‘hot’ agency. You both know that the results are useless from the get go but you do it anyway. In the late 90’s you write proposals on how frogs from South Dakota can be used to detect nerve gas as part of the Global War on Terrorism. You routinely reject papers to the Journal of Herpetology that claim that five lined skinks can detect nerve gas by their tails falling off. In the 2000’s you are awarded grants to study the decline of frog populations in the Black Hills due to global warming, despite the fact the frogs were there through the last dozen ice ages and that they’ve survived eight periods since the last ice age where the temperature was much warmer than now. You know that the frog population is declining because the government is leasing the land to cattle ranchers and the cows are crapping in the water but you don’t really care because you’re now just a few years away from retirement and you don’t want to work at Burger King.

Found by way of Mark Shea's blog.

When a dilettante takes on Hizbullah...

Lebanon Daily Star on Pelosi's trip:

Pelosi embarked on a fool's errand to Damascus this week, and among the issues she said she would raise with Assad - when she wasn't on the Lady Hester Stanhope tour in the capital of imprisoned dissidents Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, and Anwar Bunni - is "the role of Syria in supporting Hamas and Hizbullah." What the speaker doesn't seem to have realized is that if Syria is made an obligatory passage in American efforts to address the Lebanese crisis, then Hizbullah will only gain. Once Assad is re-anointed gatekeeper in Lebanon, he will have no incentive to concede anything, least of all to dilettantes like Pelosi, on an organization that would be Syria's enforcer in Beirut if it could re-impose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor.

Inasmuch as it is possible to evoke sympathy in such cases, one can sympathize with Hizbullah. In 2000, the party lost much of its reason to exist as a military force when the Israelis withdrew from Southern Lebanon. The manufacturing of the Shebaa Farms pretext, thanks to the diligent efforts of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, bought Hizbullah an extension, a handy fig leaf allowing it to keep its weapons. Last summer, however, the party's initiation of a war devastating to Lebanon, followed by its efforts to lead a coup against the majority, demolished any lingering cross-sectarian support that Hizbullah had enjoyed.

Hizbullah's weapons are no longer regarded as weapons of resistance by most Lebanese, but as weapons of sectarian discord. ...

Once Lent is over ...... Meat Cake!

(Click on image... or look at the meat cake gallery)

Popemobile for sale (sort of)

... a car once owned my Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It's up to $220k now....

"Find out why you should shave everywhere"

No, they don;t mean "while traveling". Scroll down this page and watch the video. Creepy...

Unibrow Song

Afghanistan - Most Important?

Charles Krauthammer makes an obvious case refuting those who say that we should simply focus on Afghanistan, because it is more important :

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.

Syrians Pat Pelosi on Head

"Good Dog"

Sadly, she apparently misrepresented the Israeli government's position :

"(Our) meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from prime minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well," Pelosi, the third most senior official in Washington, told reporters after talks with Assad.


An Israeli government official said that was not the message Olmert had asked Pelosi earlier this week to convey to Assad, who seeks the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.


"The prime minister said Israel is interested in peace with Syria, but Syria would first have to abandon the path of terror and providing support for terrorist groups,"the official said, in reference to Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.


"Comments (Olmert) made to the speaker of the House did not represent any change in a policy Israel has expressed to all international figures dealing with the (Syrian) issue,"a statement from Olmert's office said.

.... so there should be no biscuit for her.

Graphic blatantly stolen from The Curt Jester.

Irrelevant Information Department ...

Some doofus Yalees set fire to someone else's flag. So Rueters feels the need to tell us about the '89 "Flag Burning" case :

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag burning was protected under constitutional free-speech guarantees, invalidating laws in 48 states and outraging veterans' groups and others who say that an important national symbol should be protected from defacement.

... which of course was about people burning their own flags, not ones owned by others.

Censorship Rears It's Head at eBay!

Well, apparently eBay uses WebSense to filter out badness (nudie pictures and such) ... and, apparently, WebSense has taken it upon itself to play the role of regulator of political thought, blocking access to one of my frequent reads, Little Green Footballs. I dropped a line to the "local" administrator to see what I can see. I'd heard about some corporations supressing political speech, but it really hits home when it manifests at the company you work for (in this case PayPal).

This might be interesting.

What's next .... the Dashboard Obama?

Creep faux religion.

"All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins," Cordero said. "In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped.

Siiiiigggggghhhhhh....

Bleh

In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

(Keith Richards: 'I Snorted My Father')

White Chicks and Gang Signs

Pretty every myspace page, for example.

Majuscule

... my vocabulary word of the day. Defn

Bobblehead Muhammed!

The "Dashboard Mohammed". Hmmm..... they even take PayPal. One fun thing about the site, is ratings of the original Danish cartoons, by offensiveness. Where would I put the silly thing, especially if I get my Papal bobbleheads, too?

This is your brain ....

... if you are TV News Analyst