WMD attack in Waldo FL.

It seems some people would rather have WMDs in their neighborhoods than porn.

Ten bucks their Republicans and/or churchy types.

Is that . . .

. . . a python in your car, or are you just glad to see me?

Liberal Rules Football.

I once, in a little college rantrag called the Bear Review, parodied baseball and liberalism by coming up with a set of rules for Liberal Rules Baseball.

Among other things, points would be redistributed after each inning.

Now, our friends in the Berkeley of the East have come up with Liberal Rules Football. And it's not a parody.

[I guess one should expect these things from the people who brought you Kelo and pro-stupidity police hiring practices.]

Liberal Rules Jumping Rope.

Lester Clancy "invents" and somehow manages to patent a cordless jumprope. To help the clumsy.

Ten bucks this guy's a Democrat.

Ow. My head hurts.

[Dear God, please feed all the stupid people of the world about a hundred pounds each of uncooked rice so they will explode. Amen.]

Reid, petard. Petard, Reid.

WaPo: Reid Accepted Free Boxing Tickets While a Related Bill Was Pending.






[Petard; wasn't he the captain of the Enterprises D and E?]

A study of avian naviculaphilia.

Swan meets boat.
Swan falls in love with boat.
Boat shows little or no interest in swan.

Anyone know if this is a boy boat or a girl boat? If it's a girl boat, then maybe I should follow this under the Straight Poultry Follies and comment that straight birds are perverts.

Happy Memorial Day, Minions.

Bath Priory, gravestones
Originally uploaded by Psycho Milt.

See ya Tuesday.

And they say Bush insulates himself from criticism?

ACLU moves to make itself a silent circle jerk atop an ivory tower inside a darkened echo chamber.

"Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting
the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote
in its proposals.

Remember when the ACLU stood for freedom of speech?

Mexico gets a veto over our national security?

JR "Lou" Dobbs yesterday brought us this news:

Just moments before the final Senate vote, the United States Senate adopted
a provision that requires consultation with the government of Mexico before the
United States government can build a security fence on our southern border.

An Oliver Stone moment.

Last night I'm watching a program on the Discovery Channel called "Conspiracy Files." I've seen other episodes of this program and it treats neither the fringe-Art-Bell-types nor the the-government-wouldn't-do-such-a-thing-types as above question. Neither side is presented as gospel.

This episode dealt with CIA mind-control programs, built around a skeleton of whether or not Sirhan Sirhan had been brainwashed and reprogrammed to kill RFK.

It looked at some of the proven CIA attempts at mind-control in the past, also. One of which was giving LSD to people without their knowledge or consent. There have been at least three such projects: Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, and Project MKULTRA (or MK-ULTRA.) At least one case led to the death (either by suicide or by being thrown out a window) of an unwitting CIA agent who apparently thought he was having a nervous breakdown.

That's all well and good, but sometimes more interesting things can be found in the background of what they're showing you onscreen. In the last ten minutes of the show, maybe even the last five, several documents concerning the government's coverup of the matter are shown briefly onscreen. Some are splayed across a surface, where you can see part of the pages beneath the top one.

On one of these "underneath" pages, I caught two names: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

I, of course, was eager to get online this morning and do a little research. An old Buzzflash entry has lots of good info on the matter.

As juicy as the Cheney-and-Rummy-covering-up-a-CIA-assassination angle is, I find myself more interested in how involved they were (are?) in the actual mind-control projects themselves, and there seems to be precious little information on that out there.

The show's verdict on Sirhan Sirhan? From what I could gather, their position is "Probably not, but maybe." They didn't seem particularly interested in finding out WHEN Sirhan underwent the supposed reprogramming, though. They spent a lot of time on exploring what they seem to think was the phrase that triggered him to act -- "Lots of cream; lots of sugar." My suggestion would be to one day slip the phrase casually, almost unnoticably, into a conversation and see what happens.

The episode airs again June 3rd and June 22nd.

Update: Sent a link to this post to the guys at The Smoking Gun. Received the following email from Bill Bastone there:

thanks for the link, we'll give it a read.

regards,

bill bastone
editor
tsg

A bonghit a day...

Study: Heavy Marihuana Use Doesn't Increase Lung Cancer Risk.

Note to Penn Jillette.

Re: Your support for the Libertarian cause.

This --

Meanwhile, after naming their first-born girl Moxie CrimeFighter last June, comedian Penn Jillette and wife came up with something a bit more mainstream for their new son--Zolten Penn, who was born Monday. "Zolten is a common Hungarian name, it's my wife's maiden name and most importantly, it's the name of Dracula's dog," said Jillette.

-- isn't helping.

Shenanigans such as this will lead the BOYN types to demand regulation of what you can name your children. And if I ever have children, I want the opportunity to name them "Vote Libertarian" and "Fuck."

Just in time for X-Men III . . .

. . . the Scientologists come up with their own School For Gifted Young'uns.

[H/T 2 brainhop.]

Yeah, but what about transgendered storks?

That feathered harbinger of pregnancy may be a friend of Dorothy's.

But at least he'll make a fabulous parent.

Straight People Follies.

Dateline Oklahoma: Man hiding under car licks woman's toes.

Straight people and/or Oklahomans are perverts.

[H/T 2 Buzzpage.]

Where does a pigeon get a sword?

WCBS TV: Man Slays Pigeon With Sword.

[H/T 2 Buzzpage.]

Is Chappaquiddick in Lithuania?

Breitbart [via Drudge] brings us this little tale of drunk driving times eighteen.

In this excerpt, I have helpfully provided American translations in red brackets for certain Lithuanian terms:

Lithuanian [Massachusetts] police were so astonished when they pulled over a truck driver [Senator] and his breathalyzer test registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their testing device must be broken. It wasn't.

Police said Tuesday [...] Vidmantas Sungaila [Ted and/or Patrick Kennedy] registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices when he was pulled over for driving his truck [limo] down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius on Saturday.

Lithuania's [Massachusetts'] legal limit is 0.4 grams per liter.

"This guy should have been lying dead, but he was still driving. It
must be an unofficial national record," Saulius Skvernelis, the director of the
national police traffic control service, told the AP.

"He was of high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned."

Medical experts say anything above 3.5 grams per liter of alcohol in the
blood is lethal for most people.

Better late than never.

army_style4
Originally uploaded by daniel kuhne.

Happy Armed Forces Day.

An Inconvenient Hypocrisy.

Reuters brings us this little tidbit about a closet environment-hater who used to be veep destroying the ozone layer and contributing to global warming [emphasis mine.]:

AL GORE THE ENVIRONMENTALIST?

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore appears to have let the glamour of
Cannes get the better of him. In town to promote documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", about global warming and risks to the environment, he and his companions took five cars to travel from the Carlton Hotel to the Palace where films are shown during the festival. Due to the traffic, the 500-metre trip would have been quicker to walk.

Update: BBC [via Drudge] gives us this priceless bit of verbal smegma from the ex-veep:

Mr Gore said global warming was a "challenge to our moral imagination to understand it and then to respond to it urgently".

Apparently, he lacks the moral imagination and the understanding to respond to it by walking himself or even carpooling. Too challenging, I guess.

Should've gone with 'Operation Fabulous.'

Dutch troops are either antigay or unicornphobic. I can't decide which.

Dutch troops in Afghanistan have renamed their peacekeeping operation, fearing that the original name of Unicorn has homosexual connotations, the Defence Ministry said.

"It would seem that in Anglo-Saxon culture the mythological figure of the unicorn is associated with homosexuality," ministry spokesman Otte Beeksma told AFP.

"In Kandahar our men are working alongside Canadian, British and Australian troops," Beeksma added. "They don't want this connotation and to avoid remarks they have changed the name of their mission."

Gawd knows we mustn't have the Canadians, Brits, and Aussies thinking we're poofters, must we? I mean, it's not like there are gay people in THOSE countries, right? And it's bad enough they know we're Dutch; it would be disAStrous if they thought our wooden shoes had high heels and were covered in ruby sequins.

And why is a unicorn any gayer than a Pegasus?

[H/T 2 brainhop.]

I wonder if they're childless.

Stephen King (in his later, crappy years) seems to be writing the screenplay for reality these days.

STORKSTALK.

Gerhard Schneider, 72, from Brandenburg an der Havel near Potsdam said for weeks a large stork has been following him and his wife when they leave the
house and tapping on their farmhouse window day and night if they stay in.

Of course, if I was scripting the universe, the stork would constantly be croaking, "I want my two dollars!"

But Reagan said it was a vegetable . . .

. . . and aren't kids allowed to bring their own vegetables for lunch?

AZ High School bans privately-owned ketchup.

That's right. They. Banned. Ketchup.

Big Brother is watching your condiment usage.

Am I gonna hafta revive Banwatch again?

[H/T 2 Buzzpage.]

Update: There seems to be some question as to whether it was the Reagan administration or the Carter administration that actually first classified ketchup as a vegetable. Everything I can find points to David Stockman in the Reagan Administration. This doesn't surprise me. Reagan did, after all, set aside a whole week for us to be aware of dairy goats.

The Tell-Tale Fingers.

CNN: Fingers + Length = Heart Trouble.

Was it CNN that decided finger-length ratios were an indicator of lesbianism?

Update: No, that was the BBC.

Does it follow that lesbians have heart trouble, or that people with heart trouble are prone to lesbianism?

All this discussion of lesbians and their fingers has me dangerously close to a NC-17 rating, so I'd better shut my pie-hole.

I am antisurprised.

The writer of that little (unsubstantiated) piece in the Glorified Coloring Book on the NSA that caused a major stirring in the hornet's nest? Democratic donor.

Looks like this has all the makings of Rathergate 2006.

One more for the animal-superiority crowd.

I've heard Meat Is Murder. I've heard Fur Is Murder.

Some people even make the Evel Knievel-sized leap to Milk Is Murder.

Hell, I've even heard the absurdity of Silk Is Murder.

Here's a late addition.

It seems Sunny D is Murder also.

Not like we're in a full-blown energy crisis or anything...

... No, wait, it IS like that. It is EXACTLY like that, BECAUSE IT IS THAT.

Idiotic fish-hugging House keeps the Offshore-Drilling Ban.

Note to the Republocrats: People are more important than fish.

[H/T 2 Drudge.]

I remind you . . .

. . . that wimmen are bad.

The 52-year-old Tioga-Nicetown man, who we are identifying only by his first name of Howard, arrived home late Wednesday, hours after his wife allegedly tore off two parts of his genitalia with her bare hands.

[H/T 2 Drudge.]

If the government did it . . .

. . . they'd call it 'eminent domain.'

Man arrested for stealing neighbor's front yard.

[H/T 2 The Buzz Page.]

Which one's the Badge F***er?

This one may or may not be eligible for inclusion in the Straight People Follies.

Cops + Sex Toy + Cruiser = Plotline of a bad gay porn movie.

Straight People Follies.

Arkansas Mayor Caught in Sex-For-Water Scandal.

If he bought them dinner first, wouldn't water come with the meal?

Straight people are perverts.

Do they kill the fish or just castrate it?

Do they kill the fish or just castrate it?
Originally uploaded by Arkanssouri.

Beats Jimmy Eat World all to hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Bears Eat Monkey.

And their debut album "In front of zoo visitors."

Taco? Or weiner? C'mon Anne Heche, pick one.

Career objectors take on the Pink Taco.

What should they change it to, the Tasty Weiner?

Attempted evolution.

Just a reminder for all you candidates for the Darwin Awards. And Callie.

Paint thinner is not a good medium in which to snuff out cigarettes.

Power shut off over one cent.

Flint, Michigan, power company wins pissing contest, goes on a power trip against woman who wasn't playing.

It was just a penny, but to Consumers Energy it was enough to cut off power in a local home. Jacqueline Williams, 41, of Flint had an electricity bill of
$1,662.08 and paid all of it, except for one cent. That wasn't enough for the
power company, which blacked her out for seven hours Wednesday.

This has nothing to do with the point of the story, but HITH* does someone have a $1662.08 power bill? Is it for several months? If so, how did she manage to not get her power shut off after not paying, like, a hundred bucks?

By comparison, the meter reader read my electric meter today. I checked it afterward. This month, through concerted energy conservation, my two-person household used 210 kwh, which should be about a $14.70 bill.




* HITH - acronym for "How in the Hell?"

Cosby delivers a verbal smackdown on Hillary.

Today's quote of the day comes from a video clip from yesterday's Glen Beck Show on CNN Headline News.

Bill Cosby: "You hear people talk about it takes a village. I want to warn you, there`s prostitutes in the village."

So much for communitarianism.

That Dooku that you do so well.

Finally updated the thing on my sidebar that is now outdated, the one that said I was a Jedi Master.

Answered the questions as honestly as I could.

Came up with Dooku.


how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

Lame name, but when I was reading the book Revenge of the Sith, I did kind of identify with him.

He views people as either assets or threats. I have similar classifications -- assets, liabilities and neutrals. We both view people as concepts.

At least it no longer identifies me as one of those evil Jedi.

I just wish I had a name that didn't sound like something one scrapes off the bottom of one's shoe.

Today's semi-open thread.

In Episode IV, A New Hope (that's the movie you uninitiated types would call Star Wars), who killed more people, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker?

Keep in mind that it was Tarkin, not Vader, that ordered the destruction of Alderaan.

And that it was Skywalker that blew up many (hundreds? thousands? hundreds of thousands?) of innocents in the Death Star, including fry cooks, file clerks, and all Imperial prisoners who didn't happen to have cinnamon buns stuck to the sides of their heads.

Someone remind my, why is Luke Skywalker considered one of the good guys?

The philosophy of Garfield.

Why I shouldn't have too much free time.

If it's fuzzy, click it to embiggenate it.

You can make your own Garfield comic strip here.

Still sick again.

Oh, look. Here comes the little man with his red-hot icepick.

D'ja ever notice how pretty the curls in an uncooked brick of ramen noodles are?

I think I'll dig out my old VHS copy of The Doors.

When the music's over, turn out the lights.

For the record, Ick.

It is a sad comment on the state of the world that I have to remind them of such things, but here goes.

Write this down, people -- Other people's hair is not jewelry.

Mancrush.

I heart Captain Jack.

Just thought you needed to know that.

For those of you who moth . . .

1799729-md
Originally uploaded by km_d7d.

Happy Mother's Day, May 14th!

Today's semi-open thread.

Han Solo and Lando Calrissian -- was there more to their relationship than friendship?

In other words, is Lando Han's ex?

Two for you dream-interpreter types.

For awhile now, I've had two recurring dreams. Sometimes they merge into one.

In the first, the people who now live in the house we lived in before we moved to Thayer (convoluted description, I know, but I don't know how to concisify it) are gone on a lengthy vacation and my mother and I are staying there in our old house without their knowledge. They have made little, if any, changes. Even our old furniture (most of which WE don't even own anymore) is still there, still in the same arrangement as the way we had it. They are about to return from vacation and we are scrambling to get our stuff and leave.

In the second, my dad, who died in January 1997, returns. We were mistaken; he didn't really die. A couple of times, he has been in a coma in a hospital all these years and has just woken up. Most of the time, however, he left us to go live with his (nonexistent in the real-world) girlfriend, without even bothering to let us know he is still alive. In one, he even identified her as "an English teacher that lives in Mammoth Spring." I don't even know the teachers in Thayer, let alone Mammoth Spring. He's always ready to get back with my mom permanently. And while we are glad to have him back (despite the whole girlfriend/abandonment thing), his return inevitably causes problems. Our lives are shaped differently now, and he doesn't fit into them. For instance, I NEVER would have cursed in front of him or my mom while he was alive, and now I'm constantly goddamming something or calling some idiot driver a fucking douchebag. And mom does too.

What do these mean?

I believe that recurring dreams are trying to tell the dreamer something, but I'll be damned if I can figure these two out.

I needed this phrase a year and a half ago . . .

. . . when I was talking about the Francisco D'Anconia Model.

I needed a more concise metaphor. Odious fellow Warren Jeffs has given me one that better describes the practice exploiting faulty programs the government wants you to use in order to point out the inherent instability in those programs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Bleeding The Beast."

Once you go griz . . .

Grizzly/Polar Bear hybrid discovered.

Is it a grizlar or a polly?

SOMEone's had a case of jungle fever . . .

The next disease du jour?

Is Morgellons Disease the new bird flu?

Danger, Mouse!

Episode I.



Episode II.

Get A Hummer Now, While You Still Can.

H1 gets the passenger pigeon treatment.

Like they couldn't hybridize the thing.

And like those who are paying $140,000 for a set of wheels are really concerned about three buck a gallon gas.

Callie, get a fish.

They make excellent patsies for those of the pyrophiliac orientation.

Things today off of which that piss me.

(Hey, no ending with a preposition, remember?)

1. CNN constantly referring to Warren Jeffs as a polygamist instead of a child rapist.
2. The Glen Beck Show on CNN Headline News. This is the best conservative CNN could come up with? You want to see a live-action performance of USA TODAY? Then tune in to the Glen Beck Show.
3. Companies that mail things to someone who lived at my address at least six years ago.
4. Big Brother spying on the calling habits of hundreds of millions of Americans without a shred of probable cause.
5. The watchful eyes, beneath which we are neither secure nor free.
6. The Tawana Bradleys of the world and the power-mad prosecutors who enable them.
7. Ravenous pre-handbags.
8. People who sue to get a 99-cent-store-quality tote bag.
9. The fat Dixie Chick.
10. Eateries lacking no-children sections.

I've never tried black-tar heroin.

Or any other heroin for that matter. I avoid needles at nearly all cost.

But from the various descriptions, and from the depictions in the movie Rush, I imagine this is what it feels like.

Trapped in amber and hopelessly confused. And every once in awhile, my train of thought just sort of evaporates.

It hit Tuesday afternoon but wasn't yet bad enough to keep me from attending the Thayer City Council meeting, hopped up on allergy pills and cough medicine.

It was really bad yesterday. Fever. Someone inside my head taking a hot poker to my left eye. Being on the brink of, but not quite reaching, vertigo and nausea. Thinking that one radio commercial about how the printer sometimes smears the printout is really, really funny.

SalooOOoopa, indeed.

Watched My Big Fat Independent Movie. It left me even more confused.

Fell into an uneasy sleep, often interrupted by my own coughing and struggling to breathe through the oil slick coating the inside of my lungs and airways.

Nightmares last night of thousands of maggots falling out of my nose. Random quotes from my past being announced on a loudspeaker in the hallway in my dream. "I remember my old Victrola." "Feel the silky touch of my gonads." "Extract it with us."

Woke up this morning and actually felt decent.

Until I sat up.

And the little man inside my head started taking a hot ice-pick to my left eye. I hate the little bastard. I bet he's a member of the Moral Majority. Douchebag.

More allergy medicine. Some of the good cough syrup, the awful-tasting orange kind with codeine. Sucrets. Jamming my nostrils full of Mentholatum. Menthol ciggies. Chicken bouillion. Listening to the death-rattle of mucus going on in my own lungs.

At some point seeing a crawl across the bottom of the screen announcing the death of George Lutz. Wondering if Jodie will be lonely now. Still being confused about whether Jodie is the ghost of a young girl or a demonic pig.

Dragging my contagious ass out of the house to give my minions a brief update about my unexplained absence. Wondering if it will end anytime soon.

Thinking about suggesting the TV in That Thing's cell should play one show and one show only on an infinite playback loop.

Boohbah.

Watching my train of thought depart again and wondering where it's going or if it will ever return. Coughing up what appear to be small yellow potstickers. I wonder when I ate potstickers. Have I EVER eaten potstickers?

The taste of liquid salt or blood or snot or some suspension liquid of the three filling my mouth whenever I breathe through my nose. The little man getting happy with his icepick again. The pressure inside my head expanding like Rosie O'Donnell's waistline at the all you can eat buffet.

Am I going to die?

Maybe it's a brain tumor.

Damn I hate that little man.

No posting on the morrow.

Family obs.

But weep not, my minions -- like Douglas MacArthur and Frosty the Snowman, I shall return.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

What color is the sky in a world where getting a spanking improves morale?

And what non-adult-oriented company wants to employ people whose morale is improved by GIVING a spanking?

Foggo expected to call it quits ...

. . . on his CIA career.

It is unclear at this time whether Foggo plans on teaming up with Ouchy.

Open thread Saturday.

Mingle, my minions...

Weekend Poetry Corner.

Go Balloons.
by Don Mischer, 2004.

Go balloons.
Go balloons.
Go balloons.
I don't see anything happening.
Go balloons.
Go balloons.
Go balloons.
Standby confetti.
Keep coming, balloons.
More balloons.
Bring it-
Balloons, balloons, balloons!
We want balloons, tons of them.
Bring them down.
Let them all come.
No confetti.
No confetti yet. No confetti.
All right, go balloons.
Go balloons.
We need more balloons.
All balloons!
All balloons!
Keep going!
Come on, guys, lets move it.
Jesus! We need more balloons.
I want all balloons to go, goddammit.
Go confetti.
Go confetti.
More confetti.
I want more balloons.
What's happening to the balloons?
We need more balloons.We need all of them coming down.
Go balloons- balloons?
What's happening balloons?
There's not enough coming down!
All balloons, what the hell?
There's nothing falling!
What the fuck are you guys doing up there?
We want more balloons coming down,
more balloons.
More balloons.
More balloons...

When facing charges, paint pot leaves on your house.

If you paint over them and agree not to paint any more, you won't get any jail time.

The distance between the Malus sylvestris fruit and the tall perennial woody plant from which it was liberated by gravity is insignificant.

Another day, another Kennedy substance-abuse problem.

Kennedy said in a statement he had taken a sleeping pill and another drug that can cause drowsiness, but had not been drinking alcohol before the accident. "Apparently, I was disoriented from the medication," Kennedy said. He scheduled a news conference for 3 p.m. EDT Friday in Washington.

The police report described Kennedy as "ability impaired," and listed alcohol influence as a contributing circumstance in the crash.

Louis P. Cannon, president of the Washington chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, who was not on the scene, said the congressman had appeared intoxicated when he crashed his car. The officers involved in the accident were instructed by an official "above the rank of patrolman" to take Kennedy home and no sobriety tests were conducted at the scene, Cannon said.

Now, suppose he's telling the truth and it was pills and not booze. Does that somehow make it not DUI? Hell no.

If you or I did it, we'd be sitting in the pokey right about now.

But just like Pops got away with killing Mary Jo, little Patty will get away with this.

India ain't the only place with a caste system, folks. Right here in America, we've got the people-with-connection caste and the rest of us. And if you don't think the connected caste gets better treatment from the government, you're just naiive.

[Update: This just popped up on CNN's site. No details yet.]

Now, let's see if the Left goes after him the way they did Rush.

[Update 2 via Drudge: Patty goes to Mayo.]

"I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the
police, or being cited for three driving infractions," Kennedy said.

As in blackout don't-remember or as in the Gipper's I-don't-recall don't-remember? The choice of the word "don't" over the word "can't" is telling.

And does anyone know if this is the same Lou Cannon who wrote the Reagan biographies?

Just in case you're a little late to the party . . .

... here's what you need to know about me to catch up with the rest of the class:

You scored as Libertarian. Libertarians believe that you have the right to live your life as you wish, without the government interfering, as long as you donâ??t violate the rights of others. This translates into strong protections for privacy and property rights, and a weak to non-existent social safety net. Libertarian 95% Pro Business Republican 80% Foreign Policy Hawk 80% New Democrat 40% Old School Democrat 20% Green 20% Socially Conservative Republican 0% What's Your Political Philosophy? created with QuizFarm.com

Bill Clinton: Milk and fruit juice are junk food.

Health Nazis score a victory, pull sodas . . . and fruit juice . . . and milk (MILK!) from school vending machines.

So, the propaganda the government school system fed me in elementary school about there being four food groups (meat, dairy, fruits & veggies, and grains) was a lie? Are there only two healthy food groups now, meat and grains?

And the food pyramid, without two of it's blocks, crumbles.

Hate to tell you this, Slick, but you didn't get that gut of yours by drinking milk and OJ.

The war on pleasure and choice continues...

My readers will remember . . .

. . . that with Obi-Wan's assertion that only the Sith believe in absolutes, I crossed over to the Dark Side.

Now apparently the Creator Himself has too.

George Lucas becomes a stormtrooper.

The Sith Code

Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
Through victory my chains are broken
The Force shall set me free

"Winning" is relative, I guess.

I certainly wouldn't consider spending the rest of my life at the mercy of people I hate to be winning. Knowing that every morsel of food I receive was given to me at the discretion of my enemies would seem like losing to me. Going to the bathroom only when given permission. Receiving and sending mail only because my captors have deemed that particular letter acceptable. Having absolutely no influence on the world outside your jail cell.

If that is winning, as That Thing claims, then That Thing has a very low bar of expectations.

Would I have preferred the death penalty? Sure.

That Thing himself believes that killing a person is a legitimate method of achieving your goals. We should have held him to his own standard.

But as long as some idiot judge doesn't set him free in the future, the simple objective truth is that he placed himself in a position where either outcome was a loss.

Life in prison with nothing to think about but one's own irrelevance ain't no picnic.

Should've bought them that pony they wanted when they were kids.

Candidate's two sons don't vote, cost him a win.

"Payback's a bitch, dad.

Now, about that Evel Knievel set I wanted . . ."

But will she pass the 'Don't Ask; Don't Tell' test?

'Draft Hillary' push will launch in Nashville.

I wonder if she'll be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Dean's high-tech lynching of uppity gays.

It seems Dean and the Democrats like gays only as long as they don't get too big for their britches.

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party's gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock's domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.

[snip]

"This is retaliation, plain and simple," said Yandura. "This shows what they think about domestic partners."


Yandura said Tuesday night that Dean was using Hitchcock as a "scapegoat" for problems of Dean's own making.


"All I did was ask questions about what the party and Dean are doing about its GLBT constituency, Yandura said. "I have yet to see any answers."

Is this how they ensure the US remains the most free country in the world?

By nipping emerging individual liberty in other countries in the bud?

No pun intended.

Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy here, said the officials in Washington had urged Mexico "to review the legislation and to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico and to prevent drug tourism."

It is unusual for American officials to try to influence internal Mexican legislation.

Is it?

When did it become America's job to police the world? Didn't Bush in his 2000 campaign explicitly say that it was NOT America's job to police the world?

So why did his World Police Party pressure Fox into a flipflop?

And if he says it is legitimate for the US to interfere in Mexico's internal policies, how does he then assert that it is illegitimate for Mexicans to interfere in ours?

Hermano Mayor is alive and well in Washington DC.

Straight People Follies, Part 2.

"A Chicago mayor" (odd choice of words there BTW) uses his official credit card to pick up the £750 tab at a strip club.

Perverts.

Today's semi-open thread.

Name five people you'd switch for.

Discuss among yourselves.

What, oh, you want mine?

1. Joan Jett
2. Pink
3. Moulin Rouge's Nicole Kidman.
4. She-Hulk, as drawn by John Byrne.
5. Jadzia Dax. Or Starbuck. Or both. At the same time.

Maybe after a few beers, that big, scary butch lesbian that asks Carlos Mencia "Who you callin' 'bro', bitch?"

You can thank the tagboard spammers . . .

. . . for the removal of my tagboard. Bastards.

But I guess it wasn't really needed, since you can comment on my posts.

To make it up to you, I will periodically have open and semi-open threads.

Question to Jeep.

Aren't "Liberty" and "Commander" mutually exclusive?

Straight People Follies.

See? See what the heterosexuals are like???

An executive at a heart disease charitable foundation who embezzled close
to a quarter of a million dollars over two years to pay a dominatrix to beat him was sentenced Tuesday to two to six years in prison.

It's not like he spelled potato with an 'e' . . .

. . . which, incidentally, was how George Washington spelled it.

So someone PLEASE tell me what the Left's objection to the word decider is.

It's a legitimate word. It's more concise and efficient than "decision-maker."

So why are they bitching about it? Is it that they don't like people to use words they can't understand?

Note that "Tampon Dispenser" does not come as standard equipment.

One more from our "Guys invent [or modify] cool things" department:

Dude attaches jet engine to VW Bug.

It's a perfectly street-legal VW, too, with current California registration and smog-approved gas-burning front engine made by Volkswagen. It's just this humongous big thing projecting 23 inches rearward from the hatchback that makes it different from any other bug. The "thing" is what Patrick describes as "essentially a baby Lear jet engine, a couple steps down from the engine on an F4 Phantom."

Energy crisis makes strange bedfellows.

Bought something from the Commies today.

Back in the pre-energy-crisis days, I used to leave the radio running all night. Now I can't fall asleep without one.

So, I had a little boombox on my bed. It didn't use much electricity, but it did use some. All that it used after I went to sleep was wasted.

I thought about installing a timer, but it would be a pain to reset it every night, and the timer itself uses electricity, so I don't know that I would be saving any.

Yesterday, I bought a crank radio on clearance at a local grocery store for $9.99.

It's packaging exaggerates a little bit the length of time that it will hold a charge. It says 30 seconds of cranking will get you 20 minutes of play. It's more like ten to fifteen, but that's okay. It stays on long enough for me to fall asleep.

It was made in China.

But then again, so are the batteries I use. So, in the long run, it will not benefit the Commies. And no American version was available.

Score one for energy independence. Take that, Osama bin Douchebag!

CHUPAKOBR.

It seems that, like many a budding young socialist, the Chupacabra occasionally makes a pilgrimage to Russia.

C for Cookie.

[H/T 2 HoT.]

I just want a record of this.

Bright and ugly this morning, I loaded up the lawn mower and weed eater to go to Koshkonong Cemetery to do a little work on my maternal grandparents', an uncle's and an aunt's graves. At that cemetery, they tend not no mow until right before a holiday.

Those of you who actually live here in Arkanssouri know this is a perfect recipe for breeding ticks and chiggers.

So I took matters into my own hands and loaded the equipment into my little titty-pink Escort wagon.

I had to break down the handle on the mower to fit it in, but this was accomplished by removing two wingnuts and taking the top half of the handle off.

It fit in, but I couldn't accelerate very fast without it banging into the rear window.

So I drove cautiously (remember that; there'll be a test later.)

I got there, reassembled the mower and did my tasks. Planted a few portulacas on the three graves, broke the mower down and reloaded it and the weed eater.

Headed home. Again cautiously. Accelerated slowly and never topped 60 MPH (which was the speed limit.) In fact, I doubt if I topped 55 MPH.

Got back to Thayer. Right before turning off the highway was a little portable electronic sign.

It said "Your Speed -- 67 MPH" then blinked off as I passed it.

It lied. It was off by at least seven to twelve miles per hour! I wonder if radar guns are off by that much. I will probably get a ticket in the mail for this.

Big Brother is not only watching me; he's trying to frame me.

I'd like to see Big Brother drive my little titty-pink wagon 67 MPH from Kosh to Thayer with a loose lawn mower in the back without breaking out the rear window. I doubt it can be done.