An annotated guide to the medals of General Petraeus

In the post below, I referred to the fauxtrage (that's fake outrage) the conservatives are displaying over the fact that an insolent, snot-nosed kid was mercifully tasered at a campus event with John Kerry. However, there is even more fauxtrage in the air these days over the advertisement that Moveon.org took out in the NY Times recently, in which General David Petraeus was called "General Betray-us." OMG! Some hippies called a general a mean name, which they got by making a clever pun of his last name! This is simply unheard of!

Now, who is General David Petraeus, you may ask? Well, here's how he was described by Republican minority whip Roy Blunt:

a four-star general, a Princeton Ph.D., a recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and the chief author of the Army’s definitive counterinsurgency manual

Man, that's impressive. I mean, the guy literally wrote the book on how to conduct an effective counterinsurgency. Apparently, however, the man who is able to look death in the eye, who is renowned for his mile-long jogs in the very heart of the insurgency, wilts like a delicate flower when a liberal advocacy group says something mean about him. I mean, heck, this guy can drive an unarmored Humvee through RPG Alley in Baghdad without so much as breaking a sweat, but when the NY Times runs an ad in which someone calls him "Betray-us," well, all bets are off.

With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to present an image of David Petraeus with an annotated guide to a few of his recent medals. After all, when a guy appears before congress wearing what appears to be four square feet of assorted medals and honors, it's hard to keep track of what valorous deed is matched to which piece of hardware. Here, then, is a photo, along with an explanation for some of his most recent medals.

"Bro" shouting student justifiably tasered at Kerry event

The righties are breathless with fauxtrage (that would be fake outrage) today at news that a student who was asking too many questions was tasered at a campus forum with John Kerry at the University of Florida. Here's how the AP described it:

A University of Florida student was Tasered and arrested after trying angrily and repeatedly to ask U.S. Senator John Kerry about the 2004 election and other subjects during a campus forum.

...

Videos of Monday's incident posted on several Web sites show officers pulling Andrew Meyer, 21, away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.

It's hard to say whether the kid was one of those "heh, I love the Swift Boat Vets, and I'm going to sabotage the nascent political career of John Kerry. OMG! Heh indeedy" types, or if he was a conspiracy-touting indymedia type.

However, in a true example of a news organization burying the lede, we read this later in the piece:

As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's "very important question," Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, "Don't Tase me, bro," just before he is shocked by the Taser.

Did you get that? The officers, who most likely were going to lead the guy out of the room peacefully, were forced to send 10,000 righteous volts of electricity surging through his body after he dropped the "Bro" bomb on them. Apparently the student went on to ask them if they had seen the "sick Lacoste polos at Nordstrom," and mentioned his deep and abiding love for Jack Johnson's early work. Suspecting they had mere seconds before the guy popped his collar and tried to slip some GHB in their beer, the campus security officers made a wise decision to deploy the taser.

The US military: proudly outsourcing corpse management services since 2007*

This notice pretty much says it all

NEW! 67 Temp Positions: Personal Effects Specialist (FT Shifts to Aug. 17)

Job Description
Participates as temporary full-time member (Personal Effects Specialist, or Photographer, or Administrative Speciaialist) on a Serco, Inc. team of 96 contract employees working on-site in a fast-paced operational/warehouse environment for the US Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at the Joint Personal Effects Depot (JPED). Receives, inventories, sorts, cleans, photographs, packages, and ships to family members (next of kin) all personal effects belonging to military service members and others, including defense contractors, who are killed or severely injured worldwide, especially incident to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeah, seriously, why keep that kind of thing under the protective arm of the US military when it could easily be outsourced to some campaign contributor?

(* I'm not actually sure when this contract started. Could have been earlier than 2007.)

Korea, Iraq, what's the difference?

Word on the street is that our Prez'nit is going to make some sort of comparison between Iraq and the US experience in Korea (which as well all know has brought nothing but peace, forgiveness, and understanding to the Korean peninsula) in his televised speech to the nation this evening.

President Bush is looking at the decades-long U.S. troop presence in South Korea as a model for a future U.S. role in Iraq, senior administration officials said Thursday....

Amid Democratic criticism and Republican concerns that the so-called troop surge has failed to produce national reconciliation at the top levels in Baghdad, the official said the president is expected to argue that grass-roots efforts by Iraqis are "laying the groundwork for national reconciliation" but there is a "long haul and tough work ahead."

Well, which is it? In case master-of-geography Bush hasn't noticed, US troop presence in South Korea hasn't really helped with the whole reconciliation thing. In fact, if you happen to read any well known books about the Kim (Il Sung and Jong Il) regimes in North Korea, you know that the presence of US troops in South Korea has been the one sticking point in talks between the two nations. For years, the North has stipulated that they will only make various concessions (give up their nukes, etc.) if US troops are withdrawn. So I'm not exactly sure this is the model that the President wants to follow.

Not only that, but, hey, this is, like, what, more than 50 years since the "end" of the Korean War! Our troops are still there, yo. And, of course, the "reality on the ground" as they like to say, is completely different in Iraq than in Korea. You don't have two neat countries who hate each other on different sides of a DMZ--you have three various groups (who hate eachother) sprinkled in enclaves throughout the country, each with different levels of penetration in the country's various security services. Really not even close to the same thing. Several years ago, I think we were following the Germany-post-WWII model. Then several months ago Bush told us that Iraq=Vietnam (after saying for years that Iraq was NOTHING like Vietnam). Now it's Korea. Wake me up in several months when headlines blare "Bush says Iraq similar to Grenada, Panama."

OMG pls pray 4 m3, Br1tn3y i5 teh f4t!11!1!1!11!1eleven1!!

Today the indispensable sources over at the NY Post's PAGE 6 gossip section reveal the reason that Britney Spears appeared at the MTV video award show looking like a 3rd-rate stripper on a 1st-rate bender: she was drunk/hungover, bored, and lazy! Score! (And who said she learned nothing from K-Fed.) Unsurprising as that news is, the most hilarious part of the article was the paper's report of how Britney's antics sent her backup dancers into a text-messaging frenzy:

MTV execs weren't the only ones worried about Spears' impending debacle. Another spy said, "The dancers were texting pals, asking them to pray for them. They were worried."

Sadly, the potency of Las Vegas' famous frozen margaritas dwarfed the Awesome Power of Our Heavenly Creator, at least for the evening. It must be sad to be a backup dancer, forced to watch the so-called star traipsing her way across the stage as sundry celebrities look on with a mixture of shock and dismay, and be confronted with the stark realization that the Lord has forsaken you at such a visible moment. Oh, the fickle finger of fate! Today, noble background dancer, the bell tolls for thee.

Matt Drudge finds his stupidest story yet...BREAKING!1!!11!11

OMG! Noted egg connoisseur/enthusiast Matt Drudge has, thanks to Sean "Slanthead" Hannity, come up with might be his most completely absurd "expose" yet. Are you ready for the surprise that will overwhelm your senses, flooding your capacity for reason and leaving you helpless before his powerful conservative message? Ok, here goes: Al Gore used a private jet! OMG!!! Yes, that's right. I guess the scandal is that "An Inconvenient Truth" and the global warming cannon generally hold that private jets are bad insofar as they fill the upper reaches of the atmosphere with noxious pollutants, despite only ferrying a few rich people around. Seems like a fair point, and it would be better if Gore could use coach or even first class. But, to act as though this is a Huge! Scandal! is taking it a bit too far... though of course this IS Matt Drudge.

Hannity's website, of course, takes it to an even sillier extreme, claiming that "it's the tape that will change the global warming debate." Really? I guess the fact that Al Gore got on a private jet somehow... means that global warming isn't happening? Not quite sure I get the logic there, but, then again, I don't work for FOX. I get the sense that upon the first airing of this video (on FOX, natch), Greenland's melting glaciers will suddenly surge down the hills, blanketing the slopes under hundreds of feet of ice. Snow will return to Kilamanjaro! The average global temperature will fall by 5 degrees! The information is Just. That. Shocking.

Even better is Hannity's insistence (as I was unlucky enough to hear on his radio show today) that people like Gore need to "lead by example." If Gore wants people to, say, take fewer flights, he needs to get out there and do it himself. Ok, that's fair enough. Yet I wonder what Hannity would say if someone applied the same logic to his support for the Iraq War? The US military is clearly struggling to find qualified recruits, even going so far as to raise the age limit for new recruits, and to drop the educational requirements. Shouldn't Hannity be "leading by example" here? He's a huge supporter of the Iraq War--why not get out in front of this, Sean, and sign up?

Let's be honest: Fred Thompson really looks quite unhealthy and infirm

I'm just going to come right out and say what I know everyone is thinking, but which I believe very few people will say: Fred Thompson looks like he's lived every day over the past four months about ten times each. Like, dude looks OLD. Not "Ronald Reagan, at age 75, was a youthful and vigorous looking man, given his age" old, but "Woah, that guy looks really unhealthy, and, quite frankly, hideously ugly" old. The truth is that Fred has never looked like George Clooney's double, but I don't recall him looking like the double of that freakish wraith from "Tales from the Crypt" before either. Check it out below: I've got one photo of him taken from a TV appearance in March 2007, and one taken from his webcast (whatever, grampa!) yesterday.

Holiday Travel: The good, and the (really) bad

Best part about a trip to D.C. this weekend: Frontier Airlines, which rocked my world. Brand new planes, actually friendly crew, DirecTV (albeit for $5) in the TV mounted to the back of every seat, and fairly comfy accommodations. I can't say enough for Frontier--they did a great job, and this is spoken by someone who HATES to fly. The downside is that you have to fly through Denver for every flight, but if you are making a cross country trip, you should check them out.

The worst part wasn't a "I got in a traffic jam and arrived late for my flight" kind of worst, but rather a "I saw something that spoke volumes to me about the almost literal fall and decline of the United States, so long as we continue to allow moronic cretins the opportunity to inflict their astounding bad taste and dreadful stupidity on the rest of us" kind of worst. It was a t-shirt worn by a woman in the Denver airport, who, I might add, was in the process of screaming at her five kids as they stood in line at McDonald's. And that shirt said "Jesus God 'Er Done." Exactly. I stood their, mouth open, staring at this shirt--it was that horrifying. Not even the lovely Filet-O-Fish sandwich in my hand was enough to calm my nerves. (Although the gin and tonic I inhaled on the next leg of my flight did actually help.)

Question: why is it that the people who feel the need to broadcast their religious affiliation are always the last people who ought to be doing so? There are plenty of peaceful, compassionate religious types out there, so why do I never round the corner at the airport and bump into some kindly Quaker wearing a "I believe in peace and sustainable living" shirt? (The answer to that question, incidentally, is not "because that's a lame shirt and nobody would buy it.") No, it's always some jackass idiot wearing a barely-thought-out rip-off of a slogan from some hick comedian. Do other cultures have this? Are there people in the, say, Islamic world who would contemplate wearing some absurd mis-quotation of the Koran--or, to remain consistent, some Islamic version of a rip-off of the trademark line from some bad comedian in, like, Yemen?-- to make a hilarious point about the strength of their own faith? I doubt it. So we do we? Worst. Superpower. Ever.

Welcome to our young century: Karl Rove edition

Remember the classic "In the Year 2000" skits that Conan O'Brien used to do in the late 1990s? The premise was that, even though the year 2000 was right around the corner, he and his supporting cast would predict the creation of fantastic inventions. Well, today's National Review brings us something that is pretty much the opposite: an opinion piece by Karl Rove in which he makes a claim that, though the century is but 7 years old, he can identify the key threat over the next 93 years.

I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.

President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

That test, presumably, is "teh terror." But, of course, how do we know what the key test will be in 2040? What about those radioactive spiders in Indiana? What about the toxic gas released by Jupiter's seventeenth moon? Hey, who can possibly know what we'll be grappling with in 2040. If you had asked people in 1965 what we'd be wrestling with in 2005, how many of them would have said small groups of radicalized Muslims? How many would have said global warming? How many would have correctly identified the absurd relationship between Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo? Exactly--very few indeed! Yet Rove feels, and certainly most conservatives would back him up, that he can forecast the general status of our national zeitgeist for the next 93 years. What a joke.

A humble plea regarding portion size nutritional info

As a lifelong diabetic (Type 1, haters!), I find myself increasingly frustrated with the nutritional information listed on the back of every food item I purchase. To sum up: the labels are laughable when it comes to describing how much of their contents constitutes a single serving, and I can't help but think that this contributes, in some small part, to the obesity problem in our country.

As with all blog posts since time began, my post will not rely on any scientific data, but rather on a series of personal experiences. Got that? Ok. Here's my first example: I went to the friendly food purchasing area at my place of employment and found a bag of pretzels. Yum, pretzels. Who doesn't like pretzels? Moreover, these were Snyder's Jalapeño pretzel pieces, which are, quite frankly, freakishly awesome. So, as I always do, I checked out the nutrional information on the back to ensure that my soon-to-be-ingested foodstuffs would not send me into a death-spiral of ketoacidosis induced kidney failure. And, to my delight, each serving had but 20 carbohydrates, and 150 calories. Yay! Do-able. But then, d'oh, I notice that the rather small bag has FOUR servings. What? Seriously?

Delicious...but deadly

Example two, my new favorite food from Trader Joe's the turkey sausage stromboli. A delightful mixture of spiced sausage, tomato sauce, and assorted flavorings inside a calzone-like dough. Truly delicious. Each serving has something like 250 calories and 35 carbs. Ok, great, quite reasonable. But, again, d'oh!--each single stromboli (about 5" long) is two servings.

This is the problem: nobody on earth is going to do anything but eat an entire stromboli, and nobody is going to buy a single bag of pretzel pieces and not eat the whole thing. I like the nutritional information requirements, but people need to be more realistic about what actually constitutes a serving. I can't help but think that people are faked out to some degree by the low calorie/carb numbers, and don't really get around to noticing how many servings they are ingesting. I suspect that folks would be less likely to eat the entire bag if they knew that the whole thing contained 600 calories and nearly 80 carbs.

God bless the Midwest for giving us hilarious stories about legless simultaneous drunk driving

I spent my halcyon college days in a bucolic community in rural Minnesota, where the smell of the nearby Malt-O-Meal plant was tempered, however slightly, by the gentle aroma of the nearby turkey farm wafting across the prairie. I learned many things during that period of my life, chief among them this: you cannot beat small towns in the Midwest when it comes to bizarre crimes. Impossible. And, if I needed any evidence to back up my claim, today's news gives us this, straight from the town of Marshfield, Wisconsin:

Two drunk men arrested for driving same vehicle

ABBOTSFORD -- Two Dorchester men were arrested for operating the same vehicle while intoxicated in the Abbotsford area.

Harvey J. Miller, 43, who has no legs, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck from the driver's seat while Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, operated the brake and gas pedals, according to the Colby/Abbotsford Police report.

They were headed northbound on Hiline Avenue in Abbotsford when police pulled them over at 2:40 a.m. Aug. 18.

Miller admitted he was too drunk to drive but argued he wasn't operating the vehicle because he couldn't push the pedals.

Now that is a brilliant legal defense right there. Someone keep an eye on young Mr. Miller--he may go places.

Hands down saddest song of all time. Enjoy!

When I was a young lad in college, I took a class on Irish Literature, taught by a splendid chap who wore tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, had a classically messy office piled with books and papers and nary a computer, and who would play the class traditional Irish songs before embarking on a lecture. One day he pulled out a song that he told us would reduce every one of us to tears. Feh! Fat chance, old man! Well, he was right. The song was "Kilkelly, Ireland," a song written from a collection of letters from a family in Ireland to their son who had emigrated to America. The letters cover roughly 30 years or so, and reveal the turmoil and difficulty of life back in the mid/late 1800s. A gorgeous song, but, man, really sad. Anyway, because I'm not in the mood to write anything more about idiot Larry Craig, here's the Clancey Brothers singing "Kilkelly, Ireland."



NOTE: the idiots at YouTube (er...sadly, the same idiots who run this blog...ooops) have taken the video away. Boo. So here's an audio-only version, not sung by the Clancey Brothers.

www.craigslust.org

The hot news today is that Idaho Senator Larry Craig was apparently arrested way back in June for possibly propositioning an airport cop in a restroom in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Yow. Roll Call has the full story, but what I find most amusing is the excuse given by the senator's spokesperson, which is sure to be a classic:

A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.

Awesome. A "he said/he said misunderstanding." Just what every ultra-conservative elected official from Idaho wants from his name. Also, even better is Craig's excuse for why his foot just happened to brush up against the foot of the plainclothes officer as they were sitting in adjoining stalls:

Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states.

"Wide stance"... I love it. You can't make that up.

My dinner with Alberto...

Welcome, children, to the magical land of Forced Smiles and Absurdly Green Napkins. 'Tis an enchanted realm.

Breaking! Celebs say stupid stuff that makes no sense!

I've come back to earth after my brief foray into high-powered editorializing re. Barack "Barry Hussein" Obama and the general stupidity of the mainstream media. Now I am pleased to return to insignifcant posts regarding stupid things said by people like Lindsay Lohan and David Beckham. First, Lindsay:

The actress has been reading Category 7 by Bill Evans. "She thinks the people you meet in weather are very inspiring," says a friend.

The "people you meet in weather"? What the hell does THAT mean? Weather people on TV? People whose van blows past yours as a tornado overtakes you on some godforsaken freeway in Oklahoma? What the hell, Lindsay.

Second, David Beckham.

The England captain and Real Madrid midfielder was forced to call on his wife Victoria, a former member of the Spice Girls pop group, to help their son Brooklyn with a school assignment because the footballer found the sums too difficult.

“Their homework is so hard these days,” Beckham, 30, said in an interview with the Mail on Sunday. “It’s totally done differently to what I was teached when I was at school, and you know I was like ‘Oh my God, I can’t do this’.”

"Teached." Awesome.

Latest annoyances

For no reason, I'm going to list two things that really, really annoy me and which I have experienced lately, thus increasing the annoyance factor.

1. Vending machines that don't show that they are out of something until you've put in the money and hit the button. What the hell. If you are out of Diet Coke, then have the stupid "sold out" light go on, don't wait until I put in the two quarters, hit the "Diet Coke" button and THEN tell me you're out of it! Gah!

2. This is a habitual annoyance of mine, but people who veer waaaaaaay to the left when turning right, or vice versa. Why do you do this, people? This isn't the 1950s! I see people in Minis, Scions, etc., all really small cars with power steering, executing this move, and it drives me into unspeakable fits of rage. People who drive Suburbans and Excursions, and etc., do this as well, though that doesn't surprise me because those are stupid cars, and thus I expect stupid things from their owners.

TIME article on Obama underscores general suckitude of mainstream media

TIME magazine this week runs an article on Barack Obama's comments that, hey, perhaps our long-standing policy towards Cuba--known in the national security biz as the "la la la, I can't heeeeear you!" policy--might, you know, be pretty stupid. Given the fact that this policy started with Kennedy and has continued for the next 47 years without doing a single thing to the Castro regime, it's certainly reasonable to ask this question.

My problem with TIME, however, is that their lead article on the subject is titled, "Will Obama's Stance on Cuba Hurt?" This illustrates perfectly the problem with the major media: they insist on interjecting themselves, through their political "analysis," into every story. They can't simply do a story on Obama saying that our policy on Cuba is completely idiotic and needs to change, no, they have to preempt the actual facts of the case with a long political analysis piece on how this will hurt his standing in the 2008 elections, particularly in Florida, home to many of the completely crazy and insane anti-Castro types.

Hillary Clinton, predictably, lashed out at Obama. Hillary, though the front-runner, is hardly behaving as such, and instead apparently believes that the best political strategy these days is to criticize everything Obama does, accusing him of naiivetee. For example, when he made the completely non-controversial comment that we would attack bin Laden inside Pakistan if we had intelligence that he was there and Pakistan refused to help, Clinton tried to gin up some controversy by claiming that his comments were the result of inexperience. (Of course, nobody asked her the logical question: "so are you saying you would NOT attack Pakistan in those circumstances?")

TIME's approach to this article, which in many ways sets the tone of political coverage these days, has two problems: first, by asking the question "will these be a problem," you increase the odds that it will actually BECOME a problem. Second, by emphasizing the horse-race nature of politics, you ignore the actual issue itself, and allow people to think that the winning candidate obviously had the winning policy. Should Clinton win, you can now expect that US policy on Cuba will remain unchanged for the next five years.

Worst Clip Art EVER

Thanks, KATU News. Mere words cannot describe the odd mixture of horror, fear, humor, and, ultimately, mind-numbing eyeball bleaching dismay I felt upon seeing the clip art for the following story.



So many questions. Where is she looking? Why is one of her arms brown? Why is he able to fit one hand around her torso? I guess they say you haven't lived until you've seen the "O-face" of an 85 year old cartoon character. I guess they're right.

From Portland: Junior Hannity & Junior Colmes avoid sex harassment charges

The big news in Portland, OR this week (and for the preceeding several weeks) is the story of two 13 year old boys who apparently got a little overenthusiastic at school and started patting the boobs and butts of their female classmates. INAPPROPRIATE! But the D.A. went a little nutso (or so the local media would have you believe) and filed all kinds of crazy charges at the kids, the consequence of which would have meant a lifetime of sexual offender registrations for the two. Well, it turns out that the judge hearing the case thought the whole thing was pretty silly, and tossed the charges. That's the news. But what I find fascinating about the story is that if you held an open casting call throughout the nation for young versions of FOXNew's "Hannity & Colmes" (the former a loudmouth, ignorant, stereotypically sanctimonious buffoon of a talk-show host, the latter an ineffective foil), you could not do better than these two. Observe:

The senior, FOX-endorsed versions:


And their junior, non-sex-harassing versions

Whitest White Man in the History of Whiteness

The White House announced yesterday the news that First Daughter Jenna Bush will marry former Karl Rove protege Henry Hager. And, to commemorate the occasion, they released a photograph of the happy couple.



Now, look, I'm no student of American photography, but to my untrained eye that is indeed the whitest picture in the recorded history of "whiteness." From the plastered hair to the fake smile to the traditional blue suit with gold tie look (the very look I was, admittedly, planning to wear to a friend's wedding in a few weeks, and which I am now urgently reconsidering), young Mr. Hager has got it all.

For all your stupid rich person dessert needs

The most recent issue of Forbes magazines introduces us peons to the high-end desserts our more moneyed bretheren inhale like hipsters drink PBR. Tops on the list is "The Fortress Aquamarine" (already I hate it) at The Fortress, in Sri Lanka. It costs a mere $14,500, and includes "an 80-carat aquamarine gem that rests on a sliver of chocolate shaped to resemble the traditional stilt fisherman that’s part of the resort’s logo." Tellingly, the magazine doesn't mention the actual food portion of the desert, but I guess that's beside the point. Here's a photo of the dish in question:



Dropping down quite a bit to second place, we find the "Brownie Extraordinaire with Saint Louis" at the Desert Experience in New Jersey (really, how gauche), which comes with "a Saint Louis crystal atomizer, a $750 keepsake filled with a shot of rare 1996 Quinta do Noval Nacional port wine to be sprayed into the mouth between each bite of hazelnut-coated brownie."

So there you have it. You either lay out 15 large for a huge stone on a plate in Sri Lanka, or you lay out one grand for a bottle of something to spray into your mouth while you plow through a brownie in Jersey. Tough call.

Redcoat generals deride colonial guerilla-style musket attacks as thoroughly uncivilised

Remember that lesson we were taught in elementary school--the reason the British lost the Revolutionary War was because they were used to the more civilized style of European warfare, whilst our American forefathers took advantage of every nook and cranny of the countryside and kept them off balance with cunning guerilla-style attacks? Yeah, I remember that stuff as well. Which is why it is so very odd--and unsettling--to read American commanders in Iraq saying the following:

Officials attribute the increasingly sophisticated attacks [note: talking here about house bombs, which is where troops are lured to a house, only to have it explode] to desperation on the insurgents' part after troops became too successful at finding roadside bombs and other explosives.

"It's a clear sign that they could not get to us by other means, and that's a good sign," said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a spokesman for the American operation in northern Iraq, describing the pattern of house bombs in that area. "Obviously we're countering the improvised explosive devices, and force on force, they know that they can't fight us."

Once again we bear witness to the Bush Administration's penchant for insisting that the latest example of very bad news is in fact GOOD NEWS (!!!), as it demonstrates some feature of the enemy's psyche we had not previously considered. For example, the truck bombs of earlier this week, which killed some 300 people, are now considered by the Bush Administration's sycophants to be a sign of the enemy's profound weakness. Yeah, go figure.

The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.

Got that? If the number of killings drops, it means we're winning. But if it goes up, it mean...we're winning. Neat logic, that.

Can we make a new rule about Bush taking vacations?

Bush takes a vacation in August, 2001, and we all know what happened after that. Bush takes a vacation in August, 2005, and Hurricane Katrina happened. Bush takes a vacation in August this year, and the market is falling off the table. Would it be within the constitutional powers of Congress to pass a bill prohibiting the President from taking a vacation in August?

Tough times for corporate apologists

Last Friday, one of the corporate stooges who hangs around on talking-head shows like "Hardball" had the following to say about all the recent problems with products from China.

I think people should be careful what they wish for on China -- you know, if China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them, or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up. And that means prices at Walmart, here in the United States, are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now.They're keeping prices low, and they're keeping prices for mortgages low too.

Sure, hey, yeah! That cute toy your 10 month old is currently chewing on may have been steeped in toxic paint in some warehouse in BFE, China, but at least you save an extra $2! Score! Unfortunately, reality has an uncomfortable way of intruding upon the fantasies spewed forth by such commentators.

Toymaker Mattel is voluntarily recalling 9 million of its toys in the United States including popular characters such as Batman, Barbie, Polly Pockets and a toy from Pixar's "Cars" movie because of hazards to children, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Tuesday.
...
Some of the recalled toys have magnets that can become dislodged and swallowed, and at least one has hazardous levels of lead in its paint.
...
A Chinese quality inspection agency also announced a temporary export ban on Hansheng Wood Products Factory and said police were investigating the use of "fake plastic pigment." Such pigments are a type of industrial latex used to make surfaces smoother and shinier.

Hansheng made wooden railroad toys that a New York company, RC2 Corp., sold under the Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line. RC2 had to recall 1.5 million of the toys earlier this year because of lead paint.

That's not to say that everything coming out of China is toxic and should be thrown away, but when you outsource most aspects of your production to overseas corporations, you put yourself at the tender mercy of whatever regulations that country chooses to impose...or to ignore.

USA! USA! We're number...uh, 42.

Hard to imagine that a country where you can buy the 2,900 calorie per order "Aussie Cheese Fries" from Outback Steakhouse (that's actually how many calories they have, I'm not making that up) would have a problem maintaining its once enviable life expectancy, but, 'tis true!

The United States has fallen behind many industrialised nations in life expectancy rankings, although Americans are living longer than ever, a media report said.

Fortyone countries have gone past the US, which include not only Japan and many in Europe but also Jordan, Guam and the Cayman islands, the report said. ...

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. The life expectancy now ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Centre for Health Statistics.

But for those of you who want to fit this into your nefarious liberal utopia of socialized medicine, think again!

But "it's not as simple as saying [the U.S. doesn't] have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal.

That's right, libs! There's tons of other reasons! Like, uh, we're all fatasses!

Besides, US has one of the highest obesity rates in the world with nearly one-third of adults of 20 years and above obese and about two thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Oh, yeah, and there's also that pesky institutionalized racism thing!

Racial disparities are also seen as a factor as Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco, it has been pointed out.

Ha ha, Syria! Deal with that!

All in all, a truly shameful statistic, one that puts the lie to the constant rah rah, we're #1 talk.

Laughable Angelina Jolie quotes of the week

Today offers up not one but two delightfully hilarious statements courtesy everyone's favorite crazed, psychotic man-stealing, brother-kissing sexpot humanitarian, Angelina Jolie. Both of them depend upon her completely misunderstanding the reason that she is famous. In the first, she assumes it is beause the public is eager to know her stances on the most important issues of the day; in the second, it is because she assumes that guys like her not because she is slightly crazy and somewhat freaky, but because she is a truly lovely person.

1. "There are many false stories that circulate about me, but the one I feel I need to address, because it is about such an important topic, is that I have not decided to endorse John Edwards, or any other presidential candidate."

2. “I’ve never hidden my bisexuality. But since I’ve been with Brad, there’s no longer a place for that or S&M in my life.”

Online economies eerily similar to real-life economies

Slate.com has an interesting piece today about cheating in video games. Their point is that it used to be all fun and innocent, but is now corrupt. I can see what they mean--in college, some friends and I spent hours upon hours playing the now-legendary Street Fighter II game on the Nintendo 64 (64 bit, woah!!!!), and that game became a lot more interesting once we learned how to program various "cheat" codes that allowed us to play the same characters against eachother, etc. (Of course, I still won all the games, and anyone who tells you otherwise has an agenda.) However, Slate contrasts this old-skool style of cheating with cheating in today's multi-player online games like World of Warcraft. Discussing a current scandal engulfing that universe, they write

Compare Contra with World of Warcraft, the 9-million member online game, where a hue and cry has ensued over the practice of gold farming, in which players, many of them Chinese, earn virtual gold through drudging labor (by killing the same monster over and over again, for example). The farmers then sell their gold to lazy players, many of them American, who use it to acquire coveted weapons and armor they don't have the time or dedication to earn the hard way.

Frightening how much that mirrors the real-world, eh? No word on whether the characters run by Americans throw down their weapons and become wealthy capitalists who claim that their five sons are best serving the World of Warcraft by riding around on the back of an orc, working to get their dad elected president.

My readers from around the nation are hereby invited to envy me

5 day forecast for Portland, OR:

Mitt Romney's kids, doing their part to keep America strong

Willard Mitt Romney, former pro-gay governor of Taxachutsetts and parent of five strapping young men who in another era would all be enlisted, fighting the war their father supports, has been asked some uncomfortable questions about why his kids are, in fact, stateside, sitting on their butts in front of computer screens. Rather than duck the question, Mitt meets it head on, answering:

"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

That, friends, is all kinds of awesome. Perhaps not as awesome as former senator Rick Santorum saying that people could serve their country by putting a Santorum bumper sticker on their car, but, still, pretty freaking amazing.

CNN captures the essence of mining tragedy

Utah: worse fines for unsafe driving than for owning an unsafe coal mine

The big story in the national news right now deals with the horrific collapse of a coal mine in central Utah. A group of six miners is trapped nearly half a mile below the surface, three miles into the mine, following a cave in. Apparently this particular mining company practices something called "retreat mining" wherein the ceiling of the area being mined is held up with coal columns, and then when the area is completely mined the company pulls out the pillars and collects the remaining coal before the ceiling collapses. Ok, that sounds insane. But, if we read into the story, we see the following:

The mine -- owned by Genwal Resources Inc. -- reported a cave-in to the Emery County Sheriff's Department about an hour after the seismograph reading was noted.

Inspectors have cited Genwal for 30 violations in 2007, MSHA records show. Recommended fines in the 10 cases where penalties have been leveled so far range from $60 to $524.

Get that? A mining company, which is responsible for the lives of its employees, has been hit with 30 different violations so far this year, and has had a maximum fine of $524. In many instances, the fine was lower than that. In the majority of cases (20 of the 30 total), in fact, no fine at all was levied.

However, this sort of coddling of industry is no surprise to anyone who has followed the Bush Administration's absurd policies over the past six years. By way of comparison, a first offense DUI in Utah has a minimum fine of $700. In Utah, if you are caught driving for the second time without proof of insurance, you have a mandatory minimum fine of $1,000. In Utah, the bail for joyriding is $1,850 plus a mandatory court appearance. The list goes on and on: Driving 20mph over the speed limit in a school zone ($708.50), acting as a car dealer without a license ($1,850), speed contest or exhibition of speed ($550). The point, ultimately, is that the state of Utah imposes harsher fines on people engaged in a variety of motor vehicle code violations than the federal government imposes on unsafe coal mines in the state of Utah. Completely, ridiculously, absurd.

Hellacious X-Games wipeout

I'm sure most of you have seen the following video by now, but I'll put it up anyway. Some friends and I were eating ribs at a restaurant here in Portland this past Thursday, pausing between bites to glance up at the TV, which was showing the X-Games on ESPN. All of a sudden, we witnessed one of the most insane wipeouts any of us had ever seen--Jake Brown, a skateboarder from Australia, lost control of his board after launching up the top of a ramp. It was really crazy, and looked BAD. One of our group--a skateboarder, as it happens--said "man, I hope he lives so that I can see that replay." That's how bad it looked. Without further ado, here's the video:

It is NOT a miracle!

One of my biggest pet peeves about disasters is how someone will take the opportunity after the fact to say that some aspect of it was "a miracle." For example: there will be an earthquake somewhere, 25,000 people will die, and five days later the rescue workers will pull some 3 year old out of the rubble, alive. Immediately someone will say "It's a miracle!" The same is true of the Minnesota bridge collapse story. Observe:

"We were surprised that we didn't have more people seriously injured and killed," Minneapolis Fire Chief Jim Clack told The Associated Press. "I think it was something of a miracle."

No, it was NOT a miracle! There was nothing miraculous about it! It was a complete tragedy, and over a dozen people have probably lost their lives. I think there should be a new rule: whenever ANYONE dies in an accident/disaster/etc., the world loses the right to use the phrase "miracle" in conjunction with that event. If a plane crashes and four of the 300 people live, their survival is NOT a miracle! It is good luck! Gah!

Look at it this way: how horrible would it be to lose a loved one in some accident or disaster, and then hear people saying that someone else suriving the same event was "a miracle." What does that say about the loss of your loved one? That God couldn't be bothered? I understand the point people are trying to make, I just think this is one of those situations where we should be a little less quick with the phrases we use.

Oregon government warns: do that again, and we'll warn you again!

Today must be good government posting day on Pregnant Cornbread. Fresh off my post about Jim Kunstler's latest screed against the oil-driven western way of life, I encountered a truly tragic story on one of my local (Portland, OR) news affiliates:

A 27-year-old man whose van struck and killed a pedestrian in downtown Salem has never had a driver's license, but does have an extensive record of traffic violations, state officials said. Since 1999, the state Department of Transportation has put 16 suspension orders against the record of Sean Hagen of Woodburn, a spokesman said.

Imagine that: this guy has had his license (which never even existed) suspended 16 times, yet, miraculously, he was still on the streets! Incredible! Gee, you think they would have figured out after the, oh, third or fourth time, that he clearly does not care much for the petty little rules of our state government. But, no, they apparently believed that he'd eventually stop if he was warned enough.

What a total and complete failure of government. From the bridge in Minnesota, which is government failure writ large (though not quite as large as the government failure that was Katrina), to this incident, which is government failture at the micro level, there is no shortage of examples of our civic institutions utterly failing to protect people, whether the threat is cracked and decaying bridges, massive hurricanes, or idiots driving around with suspended licenses. What an utter shame and waste.

The most consistently depressing blog

Whenever I'm feeling just too damn happy, I cruise over to Clusterfuck Nation, James Howard Kunstler's blog. He's the author of The Long Emergency, an uber-terrifying look at how western dependence on oil will be our collective undoing. To a certain degree he's a proto-Hobbesian, in the sense that he's constantly forecasting a breakdown of society so profound that the only rational response would seem to be a return to the primeval state of nature, wherein life as we knew it was nasty, brutish, and short. (Just like Paul Wolfowitz! Zing!) Today's post is no exception. It's almost hilarious to witness the way that Jim can churn out mindbogglingly depressing and scary prose week after week. What must it be like to live with the guy? Observe:

The launching of this new oil export crisis is coinciding with the crisis in confidence in the financial sector. In fact, the oil export crisis is the un-recognized reality test that is challenging the habitual falsification of reality in finance. This oil export crisis will also have a palpable effect on the reality of everyday life in America. It will bring our system of extreme car dependency closer to failure every day, with each upward one-penny click. Whether the public ever comes to recognize what this means, it will still affect millions of individual decisions. Among these decisions will be a refusal to consider buying a new house 27 miles outside Minneapolis (or Dallas, or Atlanta....). At the same time this is occurring, and the anchovy barrels stashed around Wall Street start exploding from the gases of putrefaction within, there will be no more mortgages available for new houses anyway. And so the only real activity still driving the US economy -- the building of ever more suburban sprawl -- will come closer to a complete shut-down. I don't think the financial markets will survive that.

Yay! Tra la la la! In a certain sense I feel that he's probably right, but in another sense--that part of me that doesn't want to camp out under my dining room table with a tube of cheeze-whiz and a shotgun for five years--I hope he's wrong. Or, if not wrong, I hope he's at least misguided about the opportunity we have to reverse this trend.

Yet more Angelina Jolie absurdity

Longtime readers of this blog know that I think Angelina Jolie is one of the most ridiculously selfish and narcissistic people who has ever lived on the face of the earth. There's no news there. But today we get a report that she and Brad are feuding. Over what, you may ask? Whether to adopt a ninth tenth eleventh child? No! Whether to throw the trappings of Hollywood overboard and become architects? No! Yeah, it's actually over which presidential candidate to support!

An insider close to the Pitt family said, “They got into a huge fight about politics (Brad supports Barack Obama, while Angie’s a John Edwards fan.) Brad ended up calling her immature. He says the next thing he knew, Angie was cursing at him and throwing a glass of wine in his face.” Brad, understandably, was speechless. “He was left standing there with wine dripping down his face onto his clothes, before storming off to wash up and change. He says he was absolutely disgusted by Angelina’s behavior.”

Pretty awesome, if you ask me. Although I'm with Brad when it comes to my choice of candidates. Really, though, Barack and Edwards seem pretty similar, it's not like one of them is supporting Fred Thompson and the other one is supporting Kucinich. Just goes to show the ludicrous lengths to which Angie will go when confronted with someone who--gasp!--disagrees with her. "Your fairly populist yet widely appealing Democratic candidate is different from my fairly populist yet widely appealing Democratic candidate! You bastard! Take [reaches for wine glass] that!"

Boise State fans make me laugh

Sometimes when I'm in the need of inspiration, I wander over to YouTube and watch highlights from last season's Fiesta Bowl, featuring Oklahoma vs. Boise State. In case you haven't seen it, it was probably the greatest college football game in history, featuring high-scoring offenses (final score was 43-42), overtime, multiple lead changes, and a series of trick plays that never fails to amaze. However, what made me laugh today was a comment made by one of the viewers of this clip.



I have no love in my heart for Oklahoma (seeing as how it features the two dumbest people in the US Senate, Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe), so I have to tip my hat to this random YouTube commenter.

Arlen Specter has a future in the movies!

I was thinking about Arlen Specter after that last post, and it hit me. If this whole Senator thing doesn't work out, he's definitely got a future on the silver screen, perhaps for the next two Harry Potter movies.

Once again, Specter plays the dupe

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is going off on his high horse about how shocked, just shocked!, he is about the continued idiocy/incompetence/lying/bassackwardness of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. After Gonzales perjured himself in recent testimony before the Senate, Specter has demanded that the White House explain the "inconsistencies" (read: lies) in his testimony. The Hill reports today:

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

Ooooh, a letter! This is sure to resolve the situation to everyone's satisfaction. Let me hazard a guess--informed by, oh, everything that has happened in the process thus far--about what will happen:

1) Fred Fielding will write an incredibly annoying letter saying that Gonzales did nothing wrong;
2) He will not answer the question at all;
3) He will simply say that Gonzales' testimony was "consistent with previous testiomy";
4) Leahy and Schumer will freak the hell out;
5) Specter will do jack squat.

That's pretty much the way these things go. The White House does something stupid, the Democrats freak out, Specter goes on TV and makes scary pronouncements about how support for the White House is eroding, the press dutifully reports it, the White House makes an arrogant and misleading statement, and Specter backs down. That's what will happen again. Hope I'm wrong. But I doubt I am.

Simpsonized

Thanks to my friend towwas's blog, I learned about this nifty website that will let you turn yourself into a character from the Simpsons. So, without further ado, here is your humble blogger:



Try it for yourself

Grampa Romney tries to learn us here kids about the interwebs

Given the relative success that the Democratic candidates enjoyed at the "YouTube debate," you'd think it would be logical for the mass of Republican candidates to accept similar terms for their YouTube debate, right? Riiiiiiight. Turns out, most of them are afraid to attend, worried, it would appear, that (a) they'll get asked tough questions that differ from the softballs their supporters normally lob their way, or (b) the public will see that conservative voters, i.e., the people asking the questions during the debate, are total freaks. Either of those is possible. So the basic reason for them not wanting to do the debate is sheer cowardice. However, they have to come up with satisfactory reasons for declining the invitations, and given the general idiocy on the Republican side of things this year, we can count on some hilarious explanations. First out of the blocks, Willard Mitt Romney:

Democratic consultants are rubbing their hands together at being able to portray their general election rivals as being — as one put it to me — "afraid of snowmen" or simply ignorant of techonologies that many Americans use on a daily basis. Indeed, Governor Romney today, in the context of evincing concern over Internet predators, supported that suspicion: "YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000," he said, mistaking the debate co-sponsor for the social network MySpace, which has recently done a purge of sex offenders from its rolls.

Hey, all those internets are the same, right? The kids today love the MySpace and the Facebook and the YouTube! I'm hip, kids! This is a tough call: on one hand, I think Romney is a scary, pandering, lunatic. On the other hand, his lunacy will provide nonstop hilarity for the next year. So I'm not sure where I stand on his candidacy.

Today's lesson in anthropology

The mating ritual of the human Scientologist is a wonder to behold. The male approaches the willing female in a submissive posture, quite unlike his counterpart in most species. Dropping his jacket low around his waist, he grabs her around her waist as she dances what anthropologists refer to as the "funky chicken." Below you will see an example of this behavior in the wild.

IKEA: proud producers of shelves, beds, couches, herring, wall units...

The big news here in Portland (OR) is the opening of a massive IKEA store down by the airport. The expected community pandamonium is expected to be so hectic that travel agencies are warning customers to plan for an additional 30 minutes on their drive to the airport. Yow. That's a lot of Sensbøldd wall units, man! So, like any good consumer, I thought I'd check out the IKEA website to look for some shelves that I need to install in my home office. And, what do I find on their frontpage but the following horrific piece of debris:

Um, yes, average American consumer? WHY THE HELL are you buying HERRING from IKEA? It is a freaking furniture place! You wouldn't buy cocktail weenies from Crate and Barrell, would you? (Yikes, maybe you would.) Unreal. And who would ever expect that a modular furniture place would have to recall the glass jars of herring sold in their stores??? Crazy times.

Greatest moment in baseball history

Ok, Japanese baseball history. Whatever. This is a totally sweet pitch. The one thing I can't figure out is why the stands are empty. Nevertheless, a great pitch. However, clearly not a strike, I think the ump was just overwhelmed by the general craziness of it all.

Ay, que lastima, Brangelina!

Reports a reputable foreign news source, "Deciden Jolie y Pitt separarse "un tiempo" por crisis en su relación."

My version of the story, based on what I know about Angie and Brad, and summoning the product of my years of high-school Spanish classes, is this: ella quisiera adoptar 546 ninos, y Sr. Pitt solamente quisiera hacer el sexo.

Basically, I think it says that Brad likes to get away from the hassle of family life by driving off on his motorcycle, that Angie doesn't like Brad's family still staying in touch with Jen, and that Pablo esta bien, pero Luisa tiene catarro. Or something.

Hilarious juxtaposition of the day, Fred Thompson edition

Oh, New York Magazine. I don't read you, but I admire your website editor's wacky sense of humor.

Lou Dobbs asks the questions other reporters refuse to ask. Because they are smart.

Here's the latest poll question from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the man who never misses an opportunity to hate on the Mexicans. Truly, he is asking questions that you simply do not see elsewhere in the main-stream media.



And, I would argue, there is a reason for this. Because typically the main-stream media does not ask the type of questions that stoned 21 year olds ask each other at 2am as they sit in the hallway outside their dorm rooms listening to Widespread.

Laughably inaccurate headline of the day

Today's award for the headline that is so obviously wrong that anyone viewing is likely to fall on the floor amidst great peals of laughter is the following, courtesty the Associated Press:

Las Vegas mayor: Gambling allegations won't hurt city's quest for a team

Uh, really? You mean that the allegations that an NBA referee bet on basketball games, and that he fixed the outcomes so that his friends would win bets, won't affect the odds that the NBA will locate a new team inside the capital of organized gambling in the United States? Now, I know that Oscar Goodman (mayor of Las Vegas) has to say this, because it's not like the guy can come out and say "oh, yeah, we're sunk, I mean, that's it. Might as well get Celine back for another two years of shows." Nevertheless, anyone with any amount of brain tissue still functioning knows that they'll never get a team. Never.

Dog food/human food, who can tell?

Every once in a while, some story will come along that kind of lifts the veil that typically shrouds the food industry. Remember that pet-food scare a few months ago, when it became obvious after reading the stories that most pet foods in the country use the exact same products? This past week saw a new scandal, as cans of "Hot Dog Chili Sauce" (note: wtf is that?) were recalled due to fears that they might harbor botulin. But beyond this, I could not help notice the following passage:

The recall by Castleberry's originally affected only 10 products, but the expanded move involves more than 80 types of stew, chili, hash and other products.

Four canned Natural Balance brand pet food products, which Castleberry's co-packs for Natural Balance, are also being recalled.

Got that? Yeah, they make human food and dog food on the exact same line. Given the automation that exists in this industry, is it totally unreasonable to imagine some poor sap in the midwest opening up what he expects to be a can of corned beef hash and instead finding a can of dog food, that syrupy gravy oozing over the plate? It's not hard to imagine that at all, and, even more frightening, it's also quite easy to imagine said poor sap going ahead and eating the dog food. Really, hypothetical person... how could you?

So now that makes sense

I happened to read a short piece on ABC's "The Blotter" page about a deal that may or may not be in the works to free some Americans who are in custody in Iran. At the tail end of the report, which was filled with the usual amount of conflicting information from various State Department functionaries, I read this

The officials say a fifth American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, is not part of the deal. Levinson disappeared in Iran in March. U.S. officials believe he is in a Tehran prison although Iran has never acknowledged he is in custody.

This story has always interested me. The guy disappeared, I think while on a "fishing trip" (fishing? in Iran?), and his family has no idea where he is. Then it emerged that he was a "private consultant" (translation: CIA employee), and a bunch of people suddenly thought he had been arrested and imprisoned by the Iranians. Ok. However, reading that last line about a prison in Tehran, I suddenly remembered a story I had read earlier this week

Military officials said 25 heavily armed parachutists who landed in a cornfield on the grounds of a Colorado prison last week were on a training mission but landed about 3 miles off target.

"Those were Special Operations Command forces conducting routine training," Army Col. Hans Bush, a spokesman for the command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., said Monday. He declined to identify the units that landed at Fremont Correctional Facility but said the target was Fremont County Airport.

The special operations troops, which could include Navy Seals or Green Berets, began dropping from the sky at about 4:50 a.m. Thursday. Guards on duty, who are trained to watch the skies following a helicopter escape in 1989 from a prison near Ordway, Colo., held their fire after noticing the parachutists were soldiers.
...
Guards who stopped the men and asked for identification were presented with documents that identified them only as Defense Department employees, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.
...
"We don't know who they were and I'm not sure we'll ever know who they were," she said. "Everyone acted appropriately."
...
The Fremont Correctional Facility is a mixed custody facility that houses inmates classified from minimum to administrative segregation. It houses 1,471 inmates and employs about 450 people.

Interesting, no? An American, probably a CIA agent, is in an Iranian jail, and we're having random groups of Special Forces guys dropping from skys and landing in prisons here in the states on a "training mission"? Hmmm...

George Lopez stars in "Fredo's Revenge: the Alberto Gonzales Story"

This mortgage advertisement Just. Got. Serious.

Today on the way home for lunch (ever notice how many of my blog posts begin with precisely that phrase?) I heard a radio ad for one of my favorite companies*, Lennox Financial Services, whose owner has the most hilarious line ever (about his mortgages): "It's the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth." Ok, well put, very understated. But in today's ad he was talking about how he likes to avoid predatory lending practices. He said (paraphrasing): "I believe what goes around comes around. If you hurt a kid [note: wait, what?], you'll get yours, in this life or the next one. Someone's going to work on you with a blowtorch and a drill." Stop. WTF? The guy starts the ad talking about closing costs, and ends by talking like an especially pissed off version of Charles Bronson. Crazy. But, kind of awesome. I'm torn on this one.


*"Favorite" in this context means my favorite to make fun of.

Ah, the entertainment provided by email spam

I get dozens of email spams per day, most of them never seeing the light of daylight thanks to a pretty sweet spam filter. However, one message slipped through, and I thought the contents were too awesome to pass up. It's as if someone set up a program to just automatically take words from the English language and fit them into something somewhat coherent. It makes sense, but not really.

From: [sender]
Subject: If she had partaken of myflesh.
Date: July 29, 2007 9:01:18 AM PDT
To: Me

The vulnerable programs include Microsoft Office 2000 Office XP Money 2002 Money 2003 Project.
Could have been another reason that few people felt the effects of the attack.
As the imminent US/UK action on Iraq gains momentum we are expecting.
According to mi2g this is the largest number of attacks to take place in a single day.

Wha? Isn't the whole point of spam to get someone to buy your stupid weight-loss/wang-lengthening powder? What's the point of writing some incomprehensible babble? (And, no, it didn't have a malicious trojan or whatever attached.)

Most hilarious political ad of all time

Former Governor of Taxachusetts, Willard Mitt Romney, has released what is probably the most hilarious--and in that sense the worst--political ad of all time. First of all, it features imagery most commonly associated with feminine hygine products. This ad does not make me want to vote for Mitt as much as it does want to rid myself of that " not fresh" feeling. Second, his voiceover is done in a compelling Shatner-esque delivery--"Shortly after THECOLUMbine SHOOTings, PeggyNoonandescribed CULture as the OCEan..." and so forth. Totally, absolutely, absurd. Here, watch it for yourself:

Garfield reminds us all of the grim march of time...

File this under "huh?"



Slighty scary, no? I would imagine that absolutely NO grandparents clipped this particular strip out and mailed it to their grandchildren, lest they be accused by their children of trying to depress the grandchild into an early grave.

How you start feeling old

Really, there's nothing that makes you feel older than when you see the photo of someone who you remember looking really young looking really old. And this is one of those photos.


Source

Ok, what the hell is actually IN Spam??

Yesterday, my office-mates had a summer party, and my team was dominatingly victorious in the inter-office softball game. As our reward for our athletic triumph, we were each gifted a can of Spam Lite. That's right. Not just Spam, Spam Lite. Delish! And, as you will note from the photo, Crazy Tasty!

After I got over the thrill of victory, I took a minute to read the list of ingredients on the Spam. The first: Pork with Ham. Wait, isn't ham a kind of pork? What the hell, Hormel. Second ingredient: "Mechanically separated chicken." Huh? If this doesn't evoke the very worst parts of The Jungle, I don't know what does. I get this image in my mind of some gigantic metal whirring device into which all manner of chicken bones are fed, and out emerges this gray lifeless product that is then sent on to the giant Spam processing center. Seriously, ugh.

CNN: reliably, stupidly, pro-oil

Today CNN published an interview it conducted with "gas price survey maven" Trilby Lundberg. How refreshing it would be to subject some of Ms. Lundberg's absurd statements to the same sort of treatment recently given to Michael Moore's documentary on the US health care industry. But, no, of course Ms. Lundberg is a big booster of the oil industry, so her statements are allowed to just sit there. Observe:

Q: Where will we be in five or 10 years in terms of gas prices?

A: I think the chief determinants will be these three things: whether or not there is a disruption in world oil supply, intransigence in petroleum politics among some of the producers, and U.S. interference with its free gasoline market. The various energy bill proposals that are on [the] table in Washington, D.C., can have a deleterious affect on price or on gasoline demand or both. Forcing subsidized non-petroleum fuels on consumers can greatly add to cost.

Got that? It's the energy bills that are raising your gasoline prices!

Q: As far as conservation, what are the trends you are seeing?

A: I'm hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. And to suppose that it is good to do that, and pretend that we have consensus and put our heads together to deprive ourselves of this great product that makes the country go around, commercially and individually, I think is flawed. I'm hoping consumers and voters will see through that and be able to ignore some of the most extreme suggestions....And the No. 1 item among those affecting current oil politics in Washington is the boogeyman, also known as global warming.

I don't accept it as established fact, nor do I accept that it would be caused by petroleum consumption, nor do I accept that the human species should not affect its environment. So even if it were someday to be shown to have some small effect on the environment, I see no crime. In fact, taking into account the many, many millions of people around the world that envy our way of life, it would seem more humanitarian to wish them the kind of plentiful petroleum products and vehicles ... that we enjoy ... to lift themselves out of [a] backward, poor way of life.

Yay oil! Global warming is a big hoax! Environmentalists are bad and want you to live in a cave and use a freaking tin can to talk to your neighbors...who are probably dead anyway! Gah!

Sheesh, that they allow this to just sit there, unquestioned--not even so much as a "um, but don't virtually all scientific studies show that global warming is real and actually pretty bad?"--is the very height of journalistic irresponsibility. That they would do it so soon after subjecting Michael Moore to some pretty shoddy "fact checking" is simply absurdly hypocritical.

Oregon Ducks: Most Powerful Team in NCAA History

The Oregon Ducks are the most powerful team in the history of college football. How do I know? They just managed to GO BACK IN TIME and win the 2005 Holiday Bowl. Holy crap! How often does that happen?

Oklahoma must erase its wins from the 2005 season and will lose two scholarships for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, the NCAA said Wednesday.

The Sooners went 8-4 and beat Oregon in the Holiday Bowl to end the 2005 season.

Make sense? The Ducks technically "lost" to the Sooners, but due to the fact that the Sooners were illegally playing with several players who had gotten fake jobs at car dealerships, the football gods have ruled that the Ducks in fact won that game. If I had bet money on the game, and still had my betting slip, could I go back to the casino and claim my winnings? It's a valid question.

There is no institutionalized racism in America

Got that? There is no racism in America. Unless, of course, you are the assistant attorney general in New Jersey. But that's the only time. From the "letters to the editor" section of today's NY Times:

An Objection to Hip-Hop Coverage

Q. Why does The Times devote as much space as it does to covering rap and hip-hop? Indeed, one might ask why it gives any coverage at all, but I won’t go that far. It would seem that the audience for this type of ephemera is not generally likely to be reading The Times, though I have been wrong before.

More to the point: while rock criticism may have seemed like a silly venture when it started, considering the thinness of the material, it would seem like deconstructing Beethoven and Rilke when compared to analyzing the trite, repetitious, crude, and juvenile stuff that is the mass of hip-hop.

— Peter G. O’Malley, assistant U.S. attorney, District of New Jersey

At least he comes up with a fairly polite way to say "blacks don't read." Unbelievable. Perhaps with all the hubbub going on about the US Attorney firings, Mr. O'Malley concluded that know was the appropriate time to issue his brilliant missive.

I do not think that thing means what you think it means

The AP reports today that the recent US "surge" in Iraq is so very successful in limiting the ability of Al Qaeda to strike back at us that they may end up having to...strike back at us.

The U.S. military expects al Qaeda in Iraq to strike back with "spectacular attacks" after major U.S.-led offensives that have disrupted its activities, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Um, wha? Huh? Explain to me how this is possible?

Things Which Are Not Cool, and, In Fact, Make You Look Like a Jackass Loser

Being the kind of fashion-forward person that I am, I thought I would do my substantial readership a service and list several things that are decidedly uncool--in fact, they are so profoundly uncool that you risk being forever lumped with the type of people who consider Olive Garden to be the height of Italian cooking if you affiliate yourself with them. Without further ado:

1. What Would ________ Do? First, there was the What Would Jesus Do? bracelets, rings, books, stickers, etc. Stupid, and annoying. But in recent years, there has been an absurd overuse of the phrase, often attached to the celeb du jour. But, seriously, this is no longer clever, ironic, funny, interesting, or even noteworthy. So take that "What Would the Unabomber Do?" mug off your desk right now, please.

2. Livestrong bracelets: Officially no longer cool. Officially the kind of thing your dad would wear. Imitation bracelets are also not cool. The whole trend needs to go away.

3. "Got _______?" The "got milk?" campaign was fresh and interesting for a month...at the most. But that was about, what, 10 years ago? Seriously, people, adding your product/college/etc. name to the word "Got" and then making it into a question is the very opposite of fresh. Nothing tells me I'm in the presence of a person or institution with no imagination than finding out they've used the phrase "Got ______?" recently. Remember that Calvin Klein "CK" campaign of about 10 years ago, where all of a sudden every t-shirt had "CK" on it, and then every company/city tried to do the same thing with their name? That got old, fast, and that's where the Got _____? thing is right now.

Overcome by pride, or, Upon Raccoon Crap

Mere words cannot express the overwhelming pride and sense of accomplishment I feel when I pause for a moment and reflect upon the fact that THIS VERY BLOG is the second link on a Google search for "raccoon crap." Here's a link to the original post that started all the madness.

Also, while we're on the subject, the people who arrive at this blog after doing google searches for "pregnant strippers"? You scare me.

Three quick questions about Iraq

A prize to the first person who can answer these questions:

1. Who are we fighting in Iraq? (And I mean who specifically--no points for "terrorists" or "evildoers," or whatever.)

2. Why are we fighting them? (That means, what strategic goals are we hoping to accomplish--no points for tautological answers like "because they are fighting us.")

3. How hard would it have been to answer that kind of question in 1944?

GOP anti-war caucus touts own ineffectiveness

Here's what I don't understand about the recent wave of anti-war statements coming from various GOP Senators. In recent weeks/months, we've seen Gordon Smith (OR), George Voinovich (OH), Richard Lugar (IN), and Pete Domenici (NM) come out against the war--or, at least, against the war as it is being waged. It's not difficult to see that in many cases, the people on this list are releasing these statements to defeat credible challenges in upcoming elections.

Clearly, the attempt is to tell voters back home: "Hey, look, I may have voted for the war at one point, but I've clearly seen the light, and am now urging the President to reconsider his policy." That sounds fine, but the proof is in the pudding: since these guys have released their statements, has anything actually changed? Have any troops left Iraq? Have we reduced our numbers? Have we stopped spending money at such an insane rate? The answer, plainly, is no. So in my mind, what these guys are doing is touting their own spectacular ineffectiveness to the folks back home. They are in the President's party, and in some instances (Domenici, Lugar) are senior, well-respected members of their party. These are the people who should be able to bend the President's ear and get him to deviate from what they believe to be a foolish strategy. But they haven't been able to do it. They talk, but nothing changes. I'm really not sure that this "The President doesn't listen to a thing I say!" strategy is the wisest one to pursue in the months before an important election.

Come to Glasgow, and we'll set about ye!

Check out this sweet, sweet video of John Smeaton, the now-legendary Scottish baggage handler who singlehandedly defeated last week's terrorists while on a smoking break. To tell the truth, as soon as this incident happened I knew that the silver lining of having a terror attack in Glasgow is that it would yield plenty of awesome Scottish one-liners. And "this is Glasgow, and we'll set about ye!" may be my new favorite.

Local news station asks the hard questions

There's all kinds of news in the world this morning: the continuing fallout from the "pardon" (not yet in word, but soon) of Scooter Libby, a scorching heatwave in the western US, news on the recent bombing attempts in Britain, the war in Iraq, and so forth. So what does KATU News, one of my local news stations here in Portland choose as the subject for its incisive, laser-beam-like gaze? The purported phallocentrism of local traffic impediments. Truly a subject worthy of the local news, about which Garrison Keillor once remarked, "you could learn more about the world drinking gin straight from the bottle."

My neighbor gets his swear on...

The other night my wife and I were sitting on the couch in our front room, watching episodes of "Undeclared" (Judd Apatow's criminally underappreciated--and hence cancelled--sitcom of a few years back), when a horrific automobile crashing sound came from the corner up the street. Indeed, two cars had collided, and the impact was rather severe. As I ran towards the scene of the crash, one of my neighbors (a 45 year old skateboarding guitar player), who lives on the corner where the crash occurred, ran out, saying, "Did someone run a stop sign here tonight? Goddam motherfu----- piece of sh-- ass----!" As profanity goes, it was quite a performance. He then said "She ran the stop sign, so fu-- her!!" several times in the next ten minutes. Each time, he said it loud enough for the driver in question to hear.

For some reason, it's one of my favorite things in the world when people introduce profanity into casual conversation, especially if I don't know them that well. I don't know why that is, but it makes me feel special that they assume I have no problem with gratuitous swearing. Which I don't.

Greatest Obituary Ever, or, Why I Do Not Understand the Europeans

I take great delight in reading the obituaries of wealthy Europeans. They are filled with all manner of innuendo and intrigue, and offer glimpses into a decadent class of people that we can only dream of emulating here in the States. Today's Telegraph does not disappoint, offering up the obituary of one Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen. The entire piece is classic, but here's an especially noteworthy passage

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

Really, you have to admire anyone who casually uses the phrase "jeunesse dorée of the age" in conversation.

David's translation service

Here is where I will perform a valuable service for the press, giving them the uncoded meaning of one of George Bush's recent statements.

Check it: when George Bush says "I haven't ruled out a pardon of Scooter Libby," that means: "I will pardon Scooter Libby."

You're welcome.

Bush vs. LBJ

"I find him serene," Kissinger said. "I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."

Evidently so.

Worst. Terrorists. Ever.

Look, I don't mean to detract from the danger posed by the London/Glasgow bombers, but can we please take a moment, catch our breath, and examine just what these guys have managed to do? They (going on the assumption that the London "bombers" and the guys who crashed the car into the Glasgow airport are the same people) managed to poorly wire explosive devices in two Mercedes sedans, and destroyed one Jeep Cherokee. The only person injured was one of the bombers. Moreover, the explosive devices were fairly meager in nature. One need only look at what exactly happened to the Glasgow bomb in order to see that the reaction to the London bombs has indeed been hyperbolic. Though gasoline works well as a flammable liquid, it does not work so well as an explosive agent. I mean, it "explodes," but rather weakly, and certainly with not enough force to propel thousands of nails through the air.

That's not to say that the bombers posed no threat, and there is certainly something worrisome to the reports that the bombers are well educated members of the middle class, but their efforts at this point are more likely to inspire ridicule than copycat attacks.