Saturday, January 19, 2008

But there is no threat.....

The Belmont Club: Faceless on Facebook:
"But the reality is that the Internet plus the radical Islamic diaspora now means that there is no neat distinction between the battlefield and 'home'. Fighting al-Qaeda has become like staying at the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave -- the conflict -- that is. The Telegraph article continues:"
The threat facing troops in Britain became apparent earlier this year when the security services uncovered an alleged plot to kidnap a British Muslim soldier recently returned from service abroad and to behead him on the internet.

Still #1...Go Blue!

AnnArbor, Mich:
The top-ranked University of Michigan ice hockey team rebounded from a two-goal deficit to pull out a 3-2 victory over No. 8 Notre Dame Friday (Jan. 18) at Yost Ice Arena. In front of 6,984 fans -- the second-largest crowd since Yost's renovation in 1996-97 -- Louie Caporusso (Woodbridge, Ontario) sealed the U-M win with just 20.3 seconds remaining in the game.
This is just a great team to watch. They are fast, skilled and very snarly - I wish the Rangers showed this kind of passion. With only 2 seniors on the squad, nobody, even the coach, thought they would be this good. In 2 weeks they go up against #2 Miami, Ohio - my alma mater - for a home and home weekend. It should be a doozie.

This doesn't foster confidence...

PC World - CIA Says Hackers Have Cut Power Grid
Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week.

Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong.

Like everything else he ever did...


Arafat's Faked Blood Donation: What's notable is the willing acquiescence of the press.

Crushing dissent....

Belarus editor jailed for Islam cartoon
A Belarus court sentenced a newspaper editor Friday to three years in prison for reprinting a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked worldwide riots when it was initially published in a Danish newspaper.
Instapundit: When American celebrities complain about crushing of dissent in America, remind them that this is what it really looks like. And if you don't want your religion dissed, you might as well start blowing people up. Obviously, it works. Nice incentive structure, there.

Ass Backwards - as usual

The Americans With Disabilities Act was passed to give disabled people better opportunities in the labor market, in transportation, healthcare, and other arenas. But the economists Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist found that the A.D.A. actually worsened the job opportunities for disabled workers. Their seminal paper is called “Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans With Disabilities Act.”
The Times Magazine explores how maybe the laws we pass to try and help, don't REALLY work the way we thought. What a surprise!!!!!
So does this mean that every law designed to help endangered animals, poor people and the disabled is bound to fail? Of course not. But with a government that is regularly begged for relief — these days, from mortgage woes, health-care costs and tax burdens — and with every presidential hopeful making daily promises to address these woes, it might be worth encouraging the winning candidate to think twice (or even 8 or 10 times) before rushing off to do good. Because if there is any law more powerful than the ones constructed in a place like Washington, it is the law of unintended consequences.
Read the whole article...very interesting.

Steve Austin comes home....

Researchers Develop Bionic Contact Lens

Scientists have taken the first step toward creating digital contact lenses that can zoom in on distant objects and display useful facts.

For the first time, engineers have installed an electronic circuit and lights on a regular contact lens.

Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories

An Oil Quandary:
The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.
Read the whole story. This has only gotten worse with the use of ethanol, too.

Jerk update....

Michelle Malkin: Guilty troop-hating lawyer Jay Grodner to serve probation, donate to Semper Fi Fund:
"Long story short, he has to pay $600 to a Semper Fi Fund (Marine [Corps] fund for the wounded) and he has to report for Social Services probation once per month for a year. Judge told him if he screws up and misses any he will be arrested and will serve 364 days in jail! He told Grodner that the reason the courtroom was so full was because Sgt. McNulty belongs to The Band of Brothers and this is what he can expect when he mistreats a Marine (not his exact words but the same meaning)…"

Uncomfortable? I think so...

Official Taliban Websites Hosted in US:
"Several official websites belonging to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the group better known as theTaliban, are back up once again and operating on US soil. The websites are named the 'Voice of Jihad'.

Again the Taliban webmaster, Adil Watanmal (aka Murchal), has opted to use a Yahoo! Geocities (California) and Freewebtown (Georgia) accounts. All those millions from heroin sales and you can't afford to pay for a website Adil?"

The fault, dear Brutus...

Victor Davis Hanson thinks that maybe, just maybe, California is looking at its budget problems from the wrong angle
But lost in the furor is any self-reflection, such as why would UC Davis recently pay John Edwards, multimillionaire trial lawyer, $50,000 plus to give a brief lecture on poverty? Such questions are never answered, much less raised, since the problem is always framed as a matter of a shortage of income, never a surfeit of unnecessary expenditure.

At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world's richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation's largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes.

Bloomberg and the Nanny State

This isn't a very good idea, is it?

This week, the mayor proposed that everyone arrested for any crime in New York City — before the case has been judged — should be required to provide a sample of DNA. The mayor wants a change in state law, which now requires DNA testing only after a conviction.

“ We’re going to have DNA testing for someone picked up for a busted taillight and computer error about tickets?” asked Mr. Blum, who had been a reporter for The New York Times in the 1980s and who wrote about his experience last April in the paper.

Who Needs Two?

Internet Puts a Sugarcoat on Scalping:
"But wait — isn’t this what we used to call, you know, scalping? And isn’t it supposed to be disreputable, unseemly and maybe even illegal? As recently as 2002, Greg Aiello, the longtime public relations guy for the National Football League, said of the growing Internet resale market: “We view it as unethical and in some cases against the law. It suggests a desire to profit personally and perhaps illegally on the coattails of either the N.F.L. or the team.”
If we could just ignore that pesky "supply and demand" thing, life could be SO sweet!

Friday, January 18, 2008

The Advice Goddess.....

Amy Alkon
She's making a snow angel, retards. For people who are supposedly about seeing women "as people first," these feminists sure are all about pussy!

The Suicide of Reason in Canada


Pajamas Media discusses the Ezra Levant Case:
Ezra Levant was one of the few publishers in Canada to reprint the notorious “Mohammed cartoons” in 2006. Two years later, he’s been hauled before a “human rights officer” to explain why offending the delicate sensibilities of sharia-minded imams is legal, legitimate and necessary. Heather Cook reports on Levant’s video-captured testimony.

Read it all and watch the video testimony. Once again, free speech is being hijacked by a wingnut who is "offended" by something someone said. Once again, government pukes think it's their job to keep citizens from being nasty to each other; and once again, Muslims think that they are exempt from ridicule because they don't want to be. This a long running story that deserves following even though it's technically not the US; but you can bet your bottom dollar that it's going to happen at one of our own ridiculously PC universities (if it hasn't already).

Sounds like she was the Good Humor man...

THE NEW REPUBLIC :
Hollywood super-agent Ari Gold Emanuel has a few questions about Hillary Clinton's "35 years of experience making change"

Lileks is chilly....

Coldest Day in History Ever Period End of Story

The National Weather Service is telling everyone to wear their hats and gloves. What are they, our MOM? I hate wearing hats in the winter; they produce fly-away hair that makes you look like you just experienced frottage with Reddy Kilowatt. At least adults have better glove options than kids; the latter are forced to wear thick nylon things that convert your clever nimble hands into cold insensate slabs that won’t even soak up nostril juice. Adults get supple leather gloves, but we know that any glove useful for driving will be useless in the elements. If you get stuck in the hinterlands with only driving gloves, might as well saw of your fingers with the Swiss Army Knife and throw them as far as possible to draw the wolves away.

Just in case you’re curious just how much the planet hates us today: it’s around 40 below with the wind chill in the north, and it’ll be the same statewide tonight. Of course we can take it; we have 75-year-old guys spending half an hour in the lake and surviving just fine. This does not mean that buzz.mn endorses crashing through the ice today. Thirty below is one thing. Forty below is another.

Why college kids never get sick....

Yet Another Reason We Should Be Able to Drink at Work
A recent article reports that German researchers just announced that drinking beer promotes good health. How could this lovely dream be possible?

What's good for the noose....


Golfweek Fires Editor Over Noose Cover
Golfweek magazine, which published a cover with a noose set against a purplish sky to illustrate its coverage of a controversial comment about Tiger Woods, announced Friday that it had fired Dave Seanor, the editor who approved the cover.
I can't say I'm sorry about this (except people loosing their livelihoods is never a good thing); and you can bet your booties that Golfweek's intention was to get Tilghmen fired anyways. What I cannot understand for the life of me, though, is why something like this has to drag out when all parties concerned were satisfied that it had been resolved. It's not like Tilghman or anyone connected with the Golf Channel are Klan members; or that Tiger wanted his pound of flesh from the incident. Al Sharpton wanted her fired - who cares?

What's New In Diversity?

John Leo at Minding the Campus:
"Yale's burgeoning diversity program has another announcement: it wants to 'incorporate the role of ethnic counselor into that of freshman counselor, who will become responsible for providing enhanced community support for cultural affairs on campus,' according to the Yale Daily News."
Read the whole thing (it's short), and wonder what in the world is going on in these schools....

"Cause & Effect" - just won't go away...

Treat Breast Cancer? Not in My Backyard:
"Nuclear plants do more than provide energy and jobs, writes Linda Halderman. Their radioactive products are the linchpin in various medical treatments and techniques — not that it’s any concern to anti-nuclear activists."

The Perils of Identity Politics

Christopher Hitchens in todays WSJ:

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like "a plantation," adding in a significant tone of voice that "you know what I mean . . ."

She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently).

Please read the whole thing for the sense he makes.....

Mommy will make it all better.....

Michelle Malkin has another approach:
You can’t pick up a newspaper in any part of the country without reading yet another sob story about a “poor” homeowner suffering through the subprime crisis. Well-off suburbs are clamoring for help –and wealthy homeowners are now being cast in news articles as “victims,” too.

The world should get this guy.....

BLACKFIVE: Anti-Military Lawyer Damages Marine's Car on Eve of Deployment

Marine Sgt Mike McNulty is on activation orders to Iraq (second tour). On December 1st, 2007, Mike went to visit a friend in Chicago before deploying to say goodbye. In order to get to his friend's residence, and keep in mind that Chicago is a myriad of diagonal and one-way streets, the front entrance (right way) to the one-way street was blocked. Mike, being a Marine, overcame and adapted by driving around the block to the other end of the street and backing up all the way to his friend's place.

While saying goodbye, at about 11am, he noticed a man leaning up against his car. Mike left his friend's apartment and caught the man keying his car on multiple sides.

Read the whole thing and wonder how a creep like this lawyer can try and get away with it.....and then feel at least a bit better knowing the fact that the blogosphere (NOT the local media) is responsible for helping out.

Tough to watch - but you should...

Patterico has a few issues with Hillary:
"I wish I could have gone to watch her speech. I would love to have seen whether she used her accent that she uses to talk to black folks"
Who doesn't? Watch the videos as they make his point for him....

Megan McArdle

Department of Awful(ish) statistics:
"The best explanation may be AIDS; unprotected sex is riskier, so people are having much less of it. The fall roughly matches up with the widespread change towards perceiving AIDS as a heterosexual problem. But that's an offhand guess. We really don't know why the abortion rate has fallen, though I'm sure we're all glad it has."
Yes we are, though I'm willing to bet there are some out there who think this is a bad thing. Interesting reading.

Left, Right, or Center - Still just a politician...

Hillary Clinton’s Democracy Problem:
The junior senator from New York has resorted to Tammany Hall-style electoral manipulation in Nevada, argues Daniel Koffler. For someone claiming to be pro-labor, Hillary Clinton attempted to deny casino workers easy access to the caucus on Saturday — and all because their biggest union has endorsed Barack Obama.
Gee! Can you imagine that?
Follow-up from Matthew Yglesias:
UNITE-HERE, the union representing the casino workers Hillary Clinton's campaign tried to stop from voting, issues a vicious Spanish-language attack, arguing that "Hillary Clinton no respeta nuestra gente" and urging people to vote for Barack Obama. According to CBS, "the Clinton campaign called on the Obama campaign to condemn the ad" but it's very hard to see why they would do that. The ad's a bit over-the-top in its language, but the substance of the charge, that Clinton allies tried to make it more difficult for members of the union to vote, is perfectly accurate.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Oy Vey!

Democrat attacks Treasury Secretary…except he’s the Fed chairman
Ladies and gentlemen, could there be a better example of exactly why we do not want these people running our lives?

Moving to the end of Windoze....

Leopard satisfaction driving "explosive" Mac sales:
"High levels of customer satisfaction with Apple's new Leopard operating system are spurring 'explosive sales' of the company's Mac computer line, a new consumer spending survey has revealed."
Take a look at what Apple is up to lately - take a look at what Google is developing - and then take a look at your Microsoft platform. Back in the day, Microsoft took on venerable IBM and kicked its ass because the suits just couldn't see what was coming. While nobody at Microsoft wears a suit nowadays, it seems to me that they had better take a long look over their shoulder because everything I see says that they are getting their clock cleaned by competitors that have better, more reliable, and more interesting products.

Now, having some $25+ billion laying around the office for a rainy day ain't a bad position to be in; but I can tell you that as a dedicated heat-seeking consumer, I have not considered a single Microsoft product for purchase in quite some time - and I do not intend to. My next computer will definitely be a Mac of some variety; and after being exposed to Vista and MS Office 2007 for the past year, I would rather eat nails than stay on this boat......

Honoring the Brave and the Rare

Peter Applebome in today's Times:
"Glenn J. Winuk was last seen on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, donning emergency equipment and running toward the World Trade Center. His body was not found until March 2002, near those of other rescue workers in what was once the lobby of the south tower.

Recovery workers found in his wallet a card identifying him as a member of the Jericho Volunteer Fire Department in the Long Island town where he grew up. He was wearing surgical gloves, either wearing or holding a stethoscope and was found beside an E.M.T. bag.

Why it took five years for the federal government to conclude that he was, in fact, a first responder who died in the line of duty is one of those mysteries of the bureaucratic world that defy simple explanation. Cold hearts? Legalism taken to the extreme? Worries about precedent?"
Read the whole thing...it's worth it.

An eye opener....

US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs

Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13,22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

I couldn't get the map copied properly here, so use the link to check it out.....very interesting stuff.

He's still at it....

Kucinich calls in the Department of Homeland Security

I concur...from Michelle Malkin

The statistical proof of liberal intolerance
Spend anytime in the blogosphere and it’s clear that the two sides of the political galaxy are not created equal. One side burns effigies of American soldiers and craps on the American flag. The other does not. One side wraps itself in assassination chic. The other does not. One side indulges in vicious Sambo photoshops, rank religious bigotry, death wishes, gloating over the illnesses of public figures, and fill-in-the-blank derangement syndrome. The other does not.

I don't think it's an overstatement. My supposedly liberal friends are the first to make fun of midwesterners, southerners, christians, republicans and anybody else that doesn't agree with them.

You can't make this stuff up...

Islamic Festival Starts with Mass Murder at Mosque:
"The festival of Ashura is coming this weekend, during which devout Shiites beat and cut themselves with chains and knives in public rituals that leave the streets running with blood, and the Religion of Peace™ has kicked off the festivities with a mass murder at a mosque in Pakistan."

All of a sudden?

"THE WASHINGTON POST ENDORSES unilateral military action."

Best Political Commercial I ever saw....

Now, I'm no fan of Al Franken's politics; but you can't fault his media skills.



Wouldn't it be nice if ALL of the others running for office could be so straightforward and undramatic in their ad campaigns?

Roger Simon on the writers' strike....

Will New Media Destroy Hollywood?:
"New media is poised to destroy the entertainment industry, as we know it.

People as diverse as television writer Rob Long and Internet guru Marc Andreesen are talking about the end of Hollywood – and they have a point. Several, in fact."
Nothing would me me happier than to see the media moguls get what's coming to them. Of all the really big businesses in this world, nobody has perfected the art of punishing their customers as thoroughly as these folks have; and we all deserve much better. Read the whole thing and the links; and you will see how the writers' strike is just another indicator of how the dominoes are falling....Certainly the music business and the newspapers are bleeding to death from the same problems.

I don't buy it - yet...

Manning Appears to Be Evolving Into the Special One
"And the Giants are left to wonder whether Manning has turned some invisible corner and sent a rather disappointing career in a new direction, or whether such a corner even exists."
Eli is going to have to do a lot more than he's done in order to convince me he's as good as his brother. And, judging by the fact that his own coaches wouldn't let him throw the ball on the Giants' last 2 possessions of the Dallas game, I'm not the only one of this opinion. When he's done playing this weekend in the lousy Green Bay weather, I think we will all have a much better idea of who he really is.

Somebody shoot me....

Draft Lou Dobbs effort begun:
"A group dedicated to fighting illegal immigration today launched an Internet effort to cajole one of the most vocal and well-known advocates of that cause -- CNN's Lou Dobbs -- into the presidential race as an independent."

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

This cannot be good...

Ex-Congressman, U.N. Delegate Indicted as Part of Terrorist Fundraising Ring

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Uh Oh...The A-Bomb!!!!

Adam Blinick at TNR:
"For all the empty 'unity' rhetoric that inevitably is present during an election cycle, nuclear energy--if looked at with sober eyes--provides a real opportunity for the left and right to get together and tackle three of today's greatest challenges: national security, energy independence, and climate change."
Like I said, the religiously fanatic environmentalists are going to have to get over themselves and their 30 year way old arguments. And the rest of us are going to have to elect people a lot smarter than John Edwards.....

Dang.....

ACLU: Sex in restroom stalls is private:
"ST. PAUL, Minn. - In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy."

That's Chilly.....

Steven E. Landsburg's Op-Ed in today's Times takes a slightly different approach than that of the Presidential candidates regarding job losses from free trade:
"All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?

Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?"
It seems rather heartless; but he's not wrong in the fact that it's really impossible to mitigate all the negative effects of free trade. Would you vote for a candidate who had chutzpah to actually say it? Read the whole thing.....and wonder.

Elections always bring out the fools....

Matthew Yglesias:
"The entire Vietnam Veterans Against McCain site seems so preposterous that I almost hope it's a deliberate effort to generate a sympathy vote for McCain. I suspect, though, that it's meant in earnest. What's more, it's so preposterous that it doesn't even rise to the level of smear. If you were trying to think of damaging rumors to make up about McCain, you'd surely come up with something more plausible than this. Instead, the sad reality seems to be that some folks are unhinged enough to actually believe this kind of thing."

More on the oil sheiks....


Investor's Business Daily doesn't think that the President should be quite that nice to our Arab "friends":
Instead of begging oil sheiks to open the spigots, as the president shamefully did Tuesday in Riyadh, he should be pressuring Congress to open up Alaskan and Gulf Coast refuges to drilling.

This, along with yesterday's post , makes a great deal of sense. Of course, you've got to be willing to let go of some of the religious fanaticism of the environmental movement in order to deal with all of this......

Go watch it if you dare....

The Tom Cruise Indoctrination Video Scientologists Don't Want You To See
nuff said...

Looking Dinner in the Eye

Cool:
"LAST Friday, in front of 4 million television viewers and a studio audience, the chef Jamie Oliver killed a chicken. Having recently obtained a United Kingdom slaughterman’s license, Mr. Oliver staged a “gala dinner,” in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken.

“A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn’t expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub,” he said Monday in an interview."
Now I am certainly not a big PETA fan - I am the grandson of a classic Jewish furrier, a dyed-in-the-wool omnivore, and refuse to own a car without leather seats. But I do think that this new trend of being more aware of where your food actually comes from is, on balance, a good thing. The whole "garbage in, garbage out" thing is true for more than just our computers...
Recommended reading - The River Cottage Meat Book.

Bucatini all’amatriciana, an all-time favorite

I first learned of this dish watching Mario Batali make it on The Food Network. He described it as "The essence of pure porkness"; and it was the first thing I ordered when I went to Babbo. Now I'm a fan, and have gone to the trouble of making it myself (finding the guanciale is the hard part, but a trip to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx is the cure); and I order it whenever I see it on a menu.

If you are a fan of real Italian food then you have to be a bit partial to swine and it's derivatives. Highly recommended....

How quickly can I get one?

A tenfold improvement in battery life?
"Stanford University researchers have made a discovery that could signal the arrival of laptop batteries that last more than a day on a single charge."
While not very sexy, this type of research is a very big deal, and could have a huge ripple effect.

Krazy Kucinich Update

NBC Wins Battle Over Debate:
"The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that MSNBC is not required to include candidate Dennis Kucinich in its scheduled Democratic presidential debate."
Now we're just waiting for his next temper tantrum. How dare anyone not want to listen?

In Memory of an Old Friend...20 Years Gone


Dave Stein: June 23, 1948 - January 16, 1988

Now who's bringing race into the mix?

Outside The Beltway:
"Hillary Clinton ran away with the Michigan primary last night but the exit polls showed that she may be in trouble with black voters, CNN’s Alan Isenberg reports."

Point of honor?

The Belmont Club::
"When Robin Page, a farmer, conservationist, columnist for The Daily Telegraph, and the chairman of the Countryside Restoration Trust' spoke at a pro-hunting rally in 2002, he opened his speech with this sentence. 'If you are a black, vegetarian, Muslim, asylum-seeking, one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.' Page was arrested a month later for 'hate crime'. No surprises there. Mr. Page was subsequently exonerated, but in the process of preparing his defense he discovered that 'his name was put on a 'Homo-phobic Incidents Register''. One of my steady interests is examining the phenomenon of the online reputation. I set out to discover what this 'Homo-phobic Incidents Register' was."
Read the whole thing. Seems more like a "point of horror" to me; but that's what happens when you use the very flimsy "Hate Crime" theory that equates being offended with being harmed.

Everyone should stop watching "American Idol"!

Althouse: I think I'm going to have to stop watching "American Idol.":
"Must I once again live through the early auditions, where one mouth after another opens and something either reasonably good or horribly bad comes out?

What difference does it make? It will either be good or bad. If it's bad, you're to laugh."
This is a great idea, and restores my faith in Ms. Althouse....

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

I shouldn't wish this on anyone....

Brother, can you spare a dime

Mike Nifong is going to need an awful lot of dimes. The Smoking Gun has a facsimile of Nifong's claim in bankruptcy court. "Disgraced and disbarred, Mike Nifong is now bankrupt. The former North Carolina prosecutor, whose career imploded with his botched handling of the Duke University rape case, today filed for bankruptcy, listing liabilities in excess of $180 million. A summary schedule from Nifong's Chapter 7 petition can be found below. Almost all of that sum represents legal claims filed against the former Durham County district attorney by members of Duke's 2006 lacrosse team, including the three players who were accused of raping a stripper at a team party. Included among Nifong's assets are a 2003 Honda Accord, about $9000 in personal property, and his $235,000 home. He lists nearly $5000 monthly in pension or retirement income and describes himself, charitably, as retired."

Nifong's situation is so bad he's actually been excluded from inclusion in a poll for the "Worst Prosecutor of the Year". Scared Monkeys chronicles his fall. "First he lost his credibility, then he lost his job, then he was sued, then he was disbarred, then he was sentenced to jail and now he has filed bankruptcy."

Now, nobody should have to fall this far; but if you followed the Duke rape case at all, sympathy for the erstwhile prosecutor is pretty hard to come by.

Be careful what you wish for...

Trans Fats beware:
"Republican Doug Bailey and Democrat Jerry Rafshoon held a briefing at the National Press Club this morning to formally announce their split from the bipartisan Unity08 organization they founded and the formation of yet another vehicle focused on trying to get Mayor Bloomberg to run for president."

Good point...

I don't usually agree with Matt Yglesias, but today he makes good points regarding the US relationships with the fine folks who control most of the world's oil supplies:
"But it doesn't require our policies to be especially friendly to the regimes at hand, and it certainly doesn't require the unseemly degree of friendliness that you often see. At gatherings of the great and the good, one often sees some Arab princeling or queen treated as the equivalent to an entrepreneur or a democratically elected politician, and there's just no reason to do that."

Read the whole thing...

Rosie O'Donnell should live there....

Cartoon editor on trial in Belarus:
"On Friday the trial against Belarussian editor Aleksandr Sdvizhkov opened in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Sdvizhkov, former deputy editor of the now closed independent weekly Zgoda, is charged with ”incitement to religious hatred” after having published the Danish Mohammed cartoons back in February 2006. If convicted Sdvizhkov can be sentenced from three to ten years in prison."

Damned if you do, and ...


The Times thinks that we're scaring ourselves to death:
“It’s amazing how enduring these feelings of fear are, but look at what’s been going on,” said Alison Holman, a professor of nursing science at the University of California, Irvine, the lead author of the study. “I’d be surprised if those terrorist alerts didn’t contribute in some way to the ongoing worry about terrorism in our sample.”

Another of the authors, Roxane Cohen Silver, also at U.C. Irvine, is a psychologist who is on an advisory council to the Homeland Security Department.

“I’ve regularly pointed out to the department that there are psychological consequences to the raising of the alert,” Dr. Silver said. “Now we’re demonstrating that it may have physical consequences.”
But WHOM do you think would be the first to jump all over Homeland Security if there was an attack with no threat level? Let's see.........

This is where "facts" come from

Megan McArdle - Department of awful statistics:
"This time the LA Times gets into the mix, claiming that 60 million Americans live on less than $7 a day. Like many awful statistics, this was generated by a sort of Rube Goldberg machine; the LA Times got the figure from a guy with a website, who got it from the World Socialist Workers Website"
Don't forget to base all your opinions on what you read in the papers....Oh, and TV, too!

But There is NO Threat...

The Belmont Club:
"Al-Qaeda is mining Facebook to unearth personal details of coalition military personnel. 'The MI5 analysts have seen that many thousands of servicemen and women had posted personal details on those websites and had included news of their careers, pictures of themselves in uniforms and details of past postings. “Those details in the hands of al-Qaida operatives offer invaluable information,” Evans warns.'"

And read the Comments....

You Can Always Trust the Paper of Record

Michelle Malkin has some reporting of her own on Times reporter, Linda Greenhouse:
In 1989, a year in which she wrote two dozen stories about abortion, Greenhouse marched in an abortion-rights rally in Washington. She wasn’t covering it. She was a participant–despite the paper’s ethics policy banning political activism by its journalists. In June 2006, she delivered a left-wing diatribe at Harvard ripping the Bush administration and conservatives, lamenting that “our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let’s not forget the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism.”

And now? Now, NRO’s Ed Whelan has uncovered Greenhouse’s unethical failure to disclose that her lawyer husband, Eugene Fidell, has been filing amicus briefs for Gitmo detainees. In other words, he has been actively participating in the same cases that Greenhouse was reporting on–and neither she nor the paper informed readers.

Read the whole thing...

For Congress, It’s Steroid To Heaven


So I'm in the gym a little while ago; and I turn on ESPN for a little mindless entertainment while I try desperately to get my heart rate above the DOA level. What I get is these two jokers blathering away at our expense to a bunch of self-important, useless legislators.

You would think they had a few more important things on their minds, eh? Extreme Mortman gives 'em the needle:

"So what’s Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives up to today?Would you believe, holding a hearing on baseball and steroids? Why yes, yes they are."

Miguel Tejada probably agrees

Hillary Argues She, Not the Surge, is Responsible for Success in Iraq

The Real Revo:
"Now listen to Hillary’s argument. She is claiming that al Qaeda has been defeated and violence reduced because she and the other Democrats “threatened” to hand the insurgents a withdrawal package that included defeat of the United States and an al Qeada victory in Iraq.

Amazing….

I don’t know which is more disgusting, the arrogance or the ignorance of this woman."

"Remember Me" - Just Watch....


Thanks for sending it, Audrey....

Sounds Like Union Work....

GOVERNMENTAL ARROGANCE
It is not incumbent upon you to prove a document is public. It is incumbent upon a government employee to prove it is not.
Thanks to Instapundit for the link......

The 2007 Fiskie and Fallaci Winners!

And the winner of the Fiskie, the idiotarian of the year par excellence, the most outstandingly hypocritical empty-skulled yapper in the universe according to LGF readers: MSNBC spokeshole Keith “The Mouth” Olbermann.
While I refuse to watch any of the news channels, I have had to put up with Olbermann on NBC's Sunday night football broadcasts. It is very hard to do....I don't think that there is anyone else in the medium so in love with the sound of his own voice, or with such a high opinion of his own clever little jokes and quips. What a putz!! It really seems that poor Bob Costas wants to run and hide whenever his co-host begins flapping his lips aimlessly.

More over at Hot Air and Olbermann Watch

Rangers go from First to Worst....

Malkin and Conklin Too Much for the Rangers :
“We gave them too much space tonight,” Rangers forward Jaromir Jagr said. “We’ve got to play them differently. They’re too young, too quick."

Apparently, everyone is too much for the struggling Rangers of late, and it shows in the standings. This is about as uninspired as I have seen them all season; and with one of the most competitive divisions in the league, their current out of playoff contention position will get solidified if this keeps up much longer. Maybe not having Sean Avery accounts for the complete lack of spark; but that is certainly no excuse for a well-assembled team of highly paid professionals. Much more of this, and you can bet that the coach is going to take the rap...

Monday, January 14, 2008

Judge Grants Kucinich Entry to NV Debate


Since nobody has been interested in hearing what the krank Kucinich has to say, he figured that he would test his theory that the government can force everyone to pay attention to him.
Seems that he was right.

Tuesday follow-up: NBC Fights to Keep Kucinich Out of Debate

NYTimes Take on the latest Clinton-Obama tussle

What’s most confounding about this latest turn into ugliness, though, is the Clintons’ remarkable capacity to cast themselves as the victims in every fight. And so here is Hillary Rodham Clinton accusing Barack Obama of somehow injecting race into the campaign, because she found herself in a world of trouble for her own comments about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson. Now, I really do think she was intending only to make a sensible point about the value of experience in the White House, but look, the Clintons embody the generation that invented identity politics and political correctness. If Mrs. Clinton couldn’t guess at how that comment was going to land in the black community, then she must have been suffering amnesia.
I wrote last week about how Mr. Obama was facing a perilous moment in his campaign. It seems to me that the same is true of the Clintons, and they may need to step back and briefly reflect. Both Clintons now find themselves in an unfamiliar reality, the kind of all-out war for the nomination that Bill Clinton twice managed to avoid. They will get all kinds of advice from people whose career opportunities are at stake and who will do or say anything to win. They are surrounded by overzealous politicians and interest groups willing do whatever it takes to shut down Barack Obama and deliver their states to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It must be a kind of nightmare for both Clintons to be running, at this moment, against a talented black man, to be caught in an existential choice between losing their mythical status in the black community or possibly losing to a candidate they feel certain does not deserve to win. But only they can afford to be concerned right now with their own historical legacy, about seeing all that they have accomplished on behalf of their party and its commitment to fairness and equality blown away in the space of a few months. No one else is going to protect all that for them. No one around them is going to take the long view, because that’s not the way supporters think.
No one expects Mrs. Clinton to stand down and let Mr. Obama make his case unchallenged. She could, however, send a clear message to the cogs in the machinery she’s built that there is a line she will not cross. She could tell her Nevada allies that the job of the Democratic Party she grew up in is to make it easier for people to caucus, not harder. She could tell Robert Johnson that he needs to apologize, the same way she forced Bill Shaheen, her New Hampshire co-chairman, to resign last month. She can make it plain to all those people trying to get jobs in the next Clinton Administration that there is way to win—a rough and combative way, even—that nonetheless won’t destroy all the good that the Clintons, at least for a lot of Democrats, have come to represent.

I didn't know it was still going on....

Diana's mother called her a whore:
"Speaking to a packed court, Burrell said he was convinced Britain's Royal family did not plot to kill her, an accusation leveled at the House of Windsor by Dodi's father, Harrods department store owner Mohamed al-Fayed."

Never would have thunk it...

Giants 21, Cowboys 17
Look, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Jets fan and an old AFL guy. The Gints were never really my cup of tea; but in a pinch (like now when there's nobody else to root for) I can certainly gather the energy to pull for the locals - especially against the Cowboys. Watching "America's Team" get clocked is almost as much fun as watching a Philadelphia team lose - ANY Philadelphia team - Flyers, Phillies, Eagles, etc. So I'm a Philly bigot. Shoot me.....

Good luck on Sunday, Giants! Try not to freeze to death.

The Lawyers are Hovering...

Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?:
How long do you think it will take for the class action?
"For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream."

iPhone Car Control WebApp - MY iTablet

Sorry, but by itself this is enough reason to get an iPhone!
Dephi has been designing a concept application for real time control over a car. Using an iPhone and a GM Acadia, Delphi was able to demonstrate their concept by starting the car, rolling down the windows, and displaying real-time RPM data via the iPhone. This application is used with nothing more than a WiFi connection and Safari. Delphi is currently working on bluetooth capability without adding any more bulk to the device.

Armed Citizens: Calling 911 Doesn't Always Work

From the folks who thought 9/11 was a good thing....

Whacked out pseudo-academic Ward Churchill meets convicted terrorist sympathizer Lynne Stewart meets ... Professor Irwin Corey? It's almost sad (if it weren't so damn awful). Anyone else notice the resemblance of Ms. Stewart to Michael Moore....?

Would Tony Soprano go digital?

Businessmen Refuse to Pay for Protection:
"The Mafia has a history of bouncing back from defeat, but this time it is up against something entirely new: a Web site where businessmen are finding safety in numbers to say no to the mob.

At the same time, businessmen ranging from neighborhood shopkeepers to industrialists are being emboldened by arrests of fugitive bosses, and the discovery in raids of meticulous Mafia bookkeeping on who paid the 'pizzo' and how much."

Johnny Podres Dies at 75


Farewell to a Childhood Hero

It remains one of the fondest memories I have of my father when the Dodgers finally won their first World Series in 1955. We watched that 7th game on the Magnavox TV we had in our den; and, as old Brooklyn people, this was a HUGE deal. I saw Podres interviewed recently in one of the profiles that was done about those last few Dodger teams that played in Brooklyn; and he was one tough old ball player.

Perhaps the old Steve Martin Excuse Would be Better...

Rather than merely trying the "I forgot...." routine, superstar Wesley Snipes has decided that he doesn't owe any income taxes on the (put your pinky to the corner of your mouth now) $38 million he earned in the last few years. Both Pajamas Media and New York Times have interesting articles.

Ann Althouse has Been at it for 4 Years now...

I like her reasoning
"I didn't know, but I loved the writing and found it truly intrinsically rewarding from that first post. Just the idea that people — anywhere — could read it was thrilling. To be here, now, 4 years later, still writing — with readers — is an immense joy."

Sunday, January 13, 2008

I'm Glad I'm Not Alone

Megan McArdle on Paul Krugman:
"Paul Krugman is voting for doom. It's worth keeping in mind, however, that Paul Krugman has predicted eight of the last none recessions under the Bush administration."

It's What They Prefer to Believe...

The Media Does It Again
"THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS RETURNING TROOPS ARE MURDERERS, but Marc Danziger checks the math."

Ann Althouse adds some sense to an incredible argument

This Supreme Court is quite clearly the enemy of progressivism.... What is to be done?

Apparently Reed Hundt seems to think that SCOTUS is now the enemy of all that is right and good in the world, and that something has to be done about it. Seems to me, once again, that when the children don't get their way, throwing a tantrum is their preferred way of dealing with the issue.

But There is NO Threat!!

Britain's Huge Problem:
"As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source. Lord Carlile, the Government’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms."
Read the link.....
Breitbart.tv » ‘No Pants’ Subway Prank Fills Subways in Ten Cities With Semi-Clad Riders
Megan McArdle - My name is Hillary Clinton, and I'm verklempt:
"Cry once, you're human. Cry all the time, and it's a schtick. A schtick, moreover, that suggests you're a cynical, manipulative woman who uses tears to get what you want."
iPhone is the Next Sex Toy
Well, then, I'm getting one...