Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

"The term "brainstorming" has become the latest target of political correctness, according to a charity.

Trainee teachers are being told to avoid the word for fear of offending pupils with epilepsy. Instead they are being advised to use "word storm" or "thought shower"."  [Full Idiocy]

John McWethy:"As the U.S. begins to really squeeze Baghdad, U.S. intelligence sources are saying that some of Saddam Hussein's toughest security forces are now apparently digging in, apparently willing to defend their city block by block. This could be, Peter, a long war."
Peter Jennings: "As many people had anticipated."
-- ABC's World News Tonight, April 4.

There's a story behind this picture.  I'da done the same thing.  Whoops.

"In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means." - New York Times

    Here's the deal.  Since there's no way Virginia law enforcement can enforce its law out of state, and since 99.9% of all spam is  genearted elsewhere (most from Red China IMO), guess what happens next?  That's right.  A Federal Spam Act.  And once the Feds get their toe inside the WEB's door, you know what will happen next, don't you?  Correct.  That's a smart girl, or boy, as the case may be.

John Ray - one of the smartest guys in the Universe, and currently operating out of Australia, makes the following request:

 
If you have any Chinese contacts, I would be obliged if you would let them know.  And if you are one of the lucky ones who have a site that is visible in China, a post on the subject would be most appreciated.

Cheers
John Ray

MY “CHINA” BLOG

    The Chinese seem to have become really serious about internet censorship in recent months.  They re-blocked Blogspot some time ago and lots of other sites are blocked too -- including at least some Lycos and some Yahoo.  I have therefore decided to do my tiny bit towards keeping communications open by putting a mirror of my blog up on a site that China does NOT block.  I keep all my blog entries as a file so once I have written my blog entries for the day, it takes me only a couple of minutes extra  to put them up on a
second site.  So in future my blog will also be accessible at the following address:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jonjayray/tripod.html

    The site concerned is hosted by my local ISP so it may stay too insignificant to be blocked by China.  With ISP hosting, the site is also advertising-free, which is a bit of a bonus.  I will also be putting up my “China” postings several hours before I put them on
Blogspot.  Because Blogspot is so trouble-prone, I do not post there until just after midnight, California time, in the hope that the load and the errors will be minimal then.  I would be much obliged if anyone with contacts in China would let them know of the new site.
 I even have some archives there so people can catch up with what was posted in the last 6 weeks or so.

    The full address given above for my “China” blog is rather long and ponderous so might give problems for readers in China who obviously cannot use a hyperlink.  So for their convenience  I have set up a shortcut address for it as well:

• Bill Frist gets another chance from me.
• My pal from the other Down Under will amuse you with this
• The lovely Mrs. duToit is very, very smart.  See this, on the Texas case.

February 27, 2001

Clearing Up Florida

First the Palm Beach Post and now jointly the Miami Herald and USA Today have gone over the dimples and hanging chads on ballots in Miami-Dade County and concluded that under any imaginable counting scheme Al Gore wouldn't have won enough votes there to carry Florida. So no matter how you total the votes in all four of the disputed counties that Mr. Gore sued to have recounted, George W. Bush emerges the winner.

Someone really needs to report the full story of the Democratic Party's early-on strategy to subvert any potential pro-Bush outcome in the Florida voting. It started even before the polls closed. According to the Palm Beach Post, the DNC hired a Texas telemarketing company, TeleQuest, to call voters on Election Day to stir up fears about their punch card ballots. The calls urged a vote for Mr. Gore, but added, "If you have already voted and think you may have punched the wrong hole for the incorrect candidate, you should return to the polls and request that the election officials write down your name so that this problem can be fixed."
And before dawn the day after the election, a chartered plane full of Gore lawyers left Nashville for Florida. Suddenly Mr. Gore was demanding a hand recount only in the four overwhelmingly Democratic counties where the process would be controlled by Democratic canvassing officials.

When those counts began to go the wrong way, Mr. Gore and his aides made a command decision to smear Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. The Washington Post reported that "on the morning of Nov. 13, Al Gore's media men decided they had to take Katherine Harris down." Within hours, Ms. Harris was attacked as a "crony of Jeb Bush" and a "Soviet commissar." At this juncture, some in the media simply lost it and fed the frenzy.

In the end, Democrats got full hand recounts in three of the four counties where they demanded them. Volusia, Broward and Palm Beach counties used liberal counting standards and came up with an unofficial total of 741 extra Gore votes. Dade County halted its recount just before it reached GOP precincts. Now the Palm Beach Post's survey has found that George W. Bush would have picked up an extra six votes in a Miami-Dade recount, and the Miami Herald consortium has concluded that Mr. Gore would at most have netted an extra 49 votes if every obvious dimple was counted.
The vote-counting shenanigans in Florida fully justified the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overrule the rogue rulings of Florida's runaway high court. But ever since, it has served the McAuliffe Democrats' purpose to keep alive the neurosis that Mr. Bush's election was tainted.

Now that the myth that thousands of legitimate Gore votes were left uncounted is being exploded, we hope the Party will focus its attention on a more pressing problem: how to prevent the capsized Clinton oil tanker from fouling Democrats everywhere.

A good start, in light of the results now coming in from the Florida voting reviews, would be to get out from under the myth-making that is being fomented by the tanker's self-described "best friend," Terry McAuliffe. Democrats are going to need more than Florida to win elections after all this.

[As we now know, donks ignored this advice and were crushed in the 2002 elections as a result.  Thank goodness they are stoooopid.]

"Jason Priestley of "Beverly Hills 90210" television fame, agreed with Grammer [that Michael Moore's film was 'one-sided'] and lamented the excessive coverage of anti-war celebrities by the "liberal media."

The Weekly Standard discovers that our new Nation was plagued by bad Apples and other Clymers.  So how did we survive to become a great nation?  They were strung up nice as you please.  [Great Parody]

    "California has informed publishers not to include references in their textbooks to "unhealthy" foods such as: french fries, coffee, bacon, butter, ketchup and mayonnaise among others."  In addition, according to a FNC report, mention of our nation's  Founding Fathers has been proscribed because "they were sexist."  Mount Rushmore may not be depicted in text books because  it offends some American Indians.

    I just watched some California ditzy chick on FOX opine that these rules are just wonderful.  That cuts it.  Except for the smartblonde, it seems everybody in California has forfeited their citizenship.  I have therefore alerted the C&S Air Force to make preperations.  Sister Chica, leave for Nevada NOW!  Sheesh. Oh, JHC! It's worse than I thought.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has indicated to several longtime supporters in San Francisco that she would be open to filling the California governorship if the recall of current Gov. Gray Davis goes forward.

Feinstein was thought to be a possible early retirement candidate from the Senate just a few months ago. Her desire to go back to California may increase or decrease depending on the outcome of several stringent anti-gun ownership bills she intends to put forward in the next three weeks.

In 1990 she lost to Republican Pete Wilson in the California governor's race. - Prowler

Jay Nordlinger attempts to muzzle a rabid Maureen Dowd, and in the process illuminates the rat hole.

 
"Back in the early '80s, liberals learned the word "Hezbollah." They then started referring to Republican conservatives as "Hezbollah." Sam Donaldson, on the Brinkley show, rejoiced in speaking of the "Hezbollah wing of the Republican party."

"Then, in 2001, liberals learned the world "Taliban." They immediately started referring to the "Republican Talibans," or the "Taliban Republicans," or the "Talibanic wing of the Republican party." (Funny, but it was the "Taliban Republicans" — George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld — who destroyed the real Taliban. But put that aside.)

"Now liberals have learned the word "fedayeen." And here's Maureen Dowd in her column: "[cont]

The backlash from Tim Robbins’s anti-war comments got so bad that the star had to hire extra help to deal with it reports MSNBC.

News Max reports that New York's Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chuck Schumer are engaged in "fall [sic] blown civil war."  At the heart of it is a new book by Steven Brill ("After") about the aftermath of 9-11 in NYC.  Brill claims that despite her claims to the contrary, Hilly was absent on all fronts after the attack.  Here's the story, but I did see Brill on Bill O'Reilly's show, and the interview showed why, despite his unctuous self promotion, Mr. O'Reilly is a keeper.  Brill had spent time on O'Reilly's radio program earlier that day, and had explained in detail how HRC is the self serving lying bitch we all know and love.  On television, however, Brill was being mealy mouthed and equivocating.  "You're acting like you're scared," charged Bill.  That gave Brill some balls, and he carried on in a somewhat manly fashion.  Anyway, this is like the time Al Gore called Michael Dukakis a pussy for letting murderers like Willie Horton out on parole in Massachusetts.  That carried long term, and quite lovely, consequences for the donks - er Demobrats.  Maybe this will too. Yum yum.

You've thought this yourself, but could never quite put it into words. 

I'm certain this is not a new idea.  That said, maybe it is.  Why build fighter/attack aircraft that requires a crew?  I suspect that the technology is available right now to fly, say a F17, from the comfort of the officers club.  Or your home.  Satellite navigation/real time imaging ... think of the cost savings.  Strip the pilot's safety and other "human" considerations - like ejection seats, oxygen, etc. - from the modern aircraft equation, and that $300 million dollar airplane drops down to 200 grand, or so.  G-Forces?  Fuhgeddaboudit.  With a remote pilot we can build fighter planes that will turn on a dime at Mach II.  Expensive pilot training?  Sheesh.  I'll do it for free; so will you.  Just think, we could bomb France and mow the lawn in an hour.  Don't tell China about this.

A couple is lying in bed. The man says, "I am going to make you the happiest woman in the world" the woman says, "I'll miss you."

"It's just too hot to wear clothes today," Jack says as he stepped of the shower, "honey, what do you think the neighbors would think if I mowed the lawn like this?" "Probably that I married you for your money," she replied.

He said, "Since I first laid eyes on you I wanted to make love to you really, really bad." She said,"Well you succeeded."

He said - Shall we try swapping positions tonight? She said - That's a good idea...you stand by the ironing board while I sit on the sofa and fart.

One day my housework-challenged husband decided to wash his sweatshirt.
Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to me, "What setting do I use on the washing machine?" "It depends," I replied. "What does it say on your shirt?" He yelled back, "University of Oklahoma."

A man and his wife, now in their 60's, were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. On their special day a good fairy came to them and said that because they had been such a devoted couple she would grant each of them a very special wish. The wife wished for a trip around the world with her husband. Whoosh! Immediately she had airline/cruise tickets in her hands. The man wished for a female companion 30 years younger.......Whoosh....immediately he turned ninety!!!

"And how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?" -Homer Jay Simpson

The controversy last week over Senator Rick Santorum's remarks about the slippery slope of the Supreme Court finding a right to any kind of consensual sex based on a "right to privacy" in the penumbra of the Constitution, has had one benefit: A well-known liberal commentator has conceded his naivete about which rights are in the Constitution. Friday night on HBO, Bill Maher admitted:

"This has been a learning experience for me. I also thought that privacy was something we were granted in the Constitution."

     Al Franken became a bit unhinged at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  According to Fox and Friends this morning, he charged over to the FOX table and yelled at Alan Colmes (the liberal end of "Hannity & Colmes") for allowing Sean Hannity to best him too often. I guess, like me, Franken watches television and yells at people not as smart as he is.   Fox & Friends did not understandably  report this exchange with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz:

Franken: “Clinton’s military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?”

Wolfowitz: “Fuck you.”

    All this demonstrates just how polarized Hollywood has become in the last decade.  In 1989 the Oscar committee invoked its rules and disqualified Moore's "Roger & Me" because it was similarly photo shopped.  Today, all that matters to the leftists who control the entertainment industry is delivering suitable propaganda.
 

"For those who care intelligently about the security of the country, it's just not safe yet to vote Democratic." - Ed Koch, April 8, 2003

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MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe the North Koreans will actually agree to completely disarm their entire nuclear program, give up the two bombs they already have, stop the production of the six more they want by June, and allow that agreement to be completely verified?
GOV. RICHARDSON: I think the prospects are decent for that.

MR. RUSSERT: Governor, here’s the problem. In 1993, President Clinton was on this program, MEET THE PRESS, and I asked him about North Korea. Let’s watch and listen:

(Videotape, November 7, 1993):
MR. RUSSERT: Will you allow North Korea to build a nuclear bomb?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb. We have to be very firm about it.
(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: We were not very firm, were we?
GOV. RICHARDSON: No, but what we did, Tim, is we set up a 1994 agreement that for over close to eight years the North Koreans—they did not build any new fuel rods.

MR. RUSSERT: But here’s the problem: How do you trust them? In 1993, the president of the United States comes on MEET THE PRESS and says, “We have to be firm about it. We cannot let them have the nuclear bomb.” They probably already had one or two when he made that statement. Then we enter into a ’94 agreement, which you mentioned, which the North Koreans violated, and went ahead and continued to develop their nuclear program. They could sign any document. They could say, “Sure, bring in the inspectors.” We could play cat-and-mouse games. How can you possibly trust the North Koreans?
GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, you know, I’m not going to speak for the North Koreans, but they did claim when President Bush came in that the 1994 agreement was violated by us.

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a stiff fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. [Found on Ernie's site, with generous linkage].

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My friend told me you can't get pregnant if you have sex in a hot tub. Is that true? —Diane Macdonald, Sioux City, Iowa

Secretary Rumsfeld: There is an awful lot of misinformation out there. Diane, the reality is ....

... that you can get pregnant if you have sex in a hot tub. Are hot tubs fun? Yes. Do hot tubs make you want to have sex? You bet. But anybody who believes that you can't get pregnant is simply uninformed, misinformed, or poorly informed, and does not belong in a hot tub.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My husband and I have an active love life, and I'm generally satisfied, but sometimes I'd like him to go "down there." —Kate Waterman, Enid, Oklahoma

Secretary Rumsfeld: Down where? I'm here to answer legitimate questions about sex in a frank and candid way, but I'm not doing this just to waste my time. Do you mean your belly button? Your knees? Your toes? Boca Raton? Argentina?

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife and I are happily married, but the spark seems to have gone out of our sex life. How can we spice it up? —Harry Blumenthal, Bakersfield, California

Secretary Rumsfeld: There's no great mystery here, Harry. It can't be that hard to understand. You get in there, you do your job, you develop an exit strategy, and you get the heck out of there. That's the way sex works. Why does everything have to be so difficult?

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife wants me to talk dirty when we make love, but I've never been able to do it. Any advice? —Joel Brennan, Syracuse, New York

Secretary Rumsfeld: Listen, anybody that can talk clean can talk dirty. Dirty talk is just like normal talk, except dirty. Your wife wants dirty talk, so give her dirty talk. Something like, "Those breasts are first-rate," or "I am going to give you a darned good orgasm," or, if she likes the rough stuff, "I'll tell you this, I am about to give you the business and I don't want to hear any guff about it."

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: I keep reading about something called the G-spot, but I can't seem to find it. Can you tell me where it is? —Elizabeth Kaplan, Tacoma, Washington

Secretary Rumsfeld: I could tell you. But I'm not inclined to.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: I'm thinking about trying a threesome, but I don't know how to approach my girlfriend about it. Have you ever tried a threesome? —Dave Barcott, Boulder, Colorado

Secretary Rumsfeld: Nice try, Dave. I can see what you're trying to do, but you're going to have to do better than that. Donald Rumsfeld is not going to be tricked into revealing something stupid about Donald Rumsfeld and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld by such a question. If I answer, then someone will say, "Oh, goodness, the Rumsfelds are into threesomes," and then it gets repeated and picked up, and then suddenly everybody's talking about Donald Rumsfeld and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld and threesomes, and that's not what this is about. That said, bring it up in a very loving way and let her choose the third party. Also, alcohol never hurts.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: If you have sex in a hot tub, can you get pregnant? —Molly Chaplan, Toledo, Ohio

Secretary Rumsfeld: Good gosh. Okay, yes, yes, you can get pregnant from having sex in a hot tub. In fact, you can't not get pregnant from having sex in a hot tub, nor can you get pregnant without having sex in a hot tub. I hope I've answered your question, Molly.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My husband has a problem with premature ejaculation. Is there something I could do to make him last longer? —Ellen Shapiro, Knoxville, Tennessee

Secretary Rumsfeld: I'm just going to say this once. There is no such thing as premature ejaculation. There is ejaculation, and there is non-ejaculation. If your husband is ejaculating, then count your blessings. Congratulations, you just had sex. That's what men do—they ejaculate. All this business about, "Oh, henny penny, my husband is a premature ejaculator!" is just a lot of twaddle and claptrap. You say it enough and pretty soon, believe me, he won't be ejaculating at all.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My boyfriend sometimes likes to put on makeup and dress in women's underpants when we make love. Should I be worried? —Amanda Stein, St. Albans, Vermont

Secretary Rumsfeld: I am not an expert in this area, but I will refer this question to General Tommy Franks and have him get back to you.

A distraught patient says to her psychiatrist, "Doctor, I keep seeing into the future!" The psychiatrist asks, "When did this start happening?" The woman replies, "Next Thursday."

---

Q: How do you fix a woman's watch?
A: You don't. There is a clock on the oven.

---

A Civil War soldier awakens in a field hospital. He looks at the doctor and says, "Something is wrong, Doc. I can¹t feel my leg!" "I know," the doctor replies. "We had to amputate your arms."

---

Q: Why did they raise the minimum drinking age in Tennessee to 32?
A: They wanted to keep alcohol out of the high schools.

---

After a long night of making love this guy rolls over and was looking around when he noticed a framed picture of another man on the nightstand by the bed. Naturally, the guy began to worry. "Is this your husband?" he inquired nervously. "No, silly", she replied, snuggling up to him. "Your boyfriend then?" he asked. "No, not at all," she said, nibbling away at his ear. "Well, who is he then?" demanded the bewildered guy. Calmly, the girl replied, "That was me before the surgery."

    The Charlotte Observer prints this article about that plague, the envirowacko.  This is what?  Maybe the 600,000th article that documents the sheer stupidity, duplicity, and mendacity of these popinjays?

"The supposed threat now is dirty air, the extinction of plants and animals and, to put it bluntly, President Bush, who is vilified for opposing ratification of the Kyoto global warming treaty, among other supposed sins."

"THE taxpayer-funded folks at Lincoln Center have a thing for aging actresses who undermine the morale of American soldiers during wartime. Liberation-loathing Susan Sarandon will be getting the equivalent of a lifetime-achievement award when she's feted at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 2003 gala tribute May 5. The last woman to be so honored was Jane Fonda in 2001, who earned the handle "Hanoi Jane" for broadcasting anti-American propaganda to our troops during the Vietnam War." NY POST

    Jim Lewis, who covers the arts for Slate, weighs in on the Diane Sawyer's Dixie Chicks interview.  Displaying the keen insight into the American ethos that the entertainment industry is so famous for, he writes:

"In case you've been out working in the garden this past month, the occasion for the show was a relatively innocuous remark the Chicks' lead singer, Natalie Maines, made at a concert in London just before the war. "Just so you know," she said from the stage, "we're embarrassed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

 

    Chris Wattie of Canada's National Post has this tempting article published today.

"In a report entitled "SARS Attacks!," the U.S. television news parody show The Daily Show took a few jabs at Toronto on The Comedy Network this week. Host Jon Stewart interviewed "Senior Viral Analyst" Dr. Stephen Colbert, asking him: "Are the people there going to panic?"

"Hard to tell, Jon," the masked actor replied. "Torontonians are an incredibly reserved people living in a crushingly dull place. Panic? I'm not sure they're awake!"

       Here's something you may find useful.  We have DirectTV, and like to rent movies "on line" since there's nothing to return (we are tardy returners, and end up paying double most times).  A problem is, how the hell are we supposed to know what these things are about?  For instance, right now there are about 25 choices, and we've only seen, or heard, of about five.  DirectTV's preview channels are pitiful.  They show two trailers, then spend 5 minutes hawking wrestlemaina and other crap. And trailers are self serving anyway.  I just spent an hour or so on Rotten Tomatoes, previewing every movie available.  I culled the list down to 9 that we hadn't seen, and that had a rating of 60% or better (meaning 60% of all reviews were favorable).  Now, Mother Superior can make her choice, having the benefit of opinions other than mine, and I am off the hook if she chooses badly.  Pass the Manhattans.  

Copenhagen, Denmark - The owner of a Danish pizzeria who refused to serve German and French tourists was charged with discrimination on Wednesday.

Aage Bjerre, who owns a pizzeria on Denmark's Fanoe island, was investigated by police after he began refusing to serve tourists from Germany and France in February because of their countries' lack of support for the US-led war in Iraq.

He called them "anti-American". [Story]

Copenhagen, Denmark - The eier av en Danish pizzeria som nektet tjene German og French turister ladet med ungezwungenheit på Wednesday.

Aage Bjerre, som eier en pizzeria på Denmarks Fanoe øy, undersøkte av politi etter som han begynte nekte tjene turister fra Germany og France i February på grunn av deres lands mangel av støtte for US led krigen i Iraq.

Han kalt dem "antiamerikaner". [historie]

 Allow me to recommend this wonderful deal from the old Cracker (no, not that kind of "cracker;" this kind.)

    It's absolutely astounding, with all that has happened since Jan 1, 2001, that our economy is showing any growth.  As much as anything else, it's attributable to Bush instilling a sense of integrity and competence back into government.  Only the hard core filth that constitutes the far political left can fail to appreciate what we would be experiencing at the hands of Clinton III.  Drinks around.

"When I was a grade school boy in Mississippi, I knew obscene doggerel about Abraham Lincoln, left over from my parents and grandparents. Yankees were despised. When one of them was so unfortunate as to move to Greenville, Mississippi, he was despised. All that stopped. All that's over now, and the great compromise obtains. I wish my black friends could do the same thing." - Shelby Foote, on Booknotes

   I understand that Matt Drudge is only tweaking the outrageously hypocritical Donks with his incessant hype over War of Rebellion era monuments, halls, etc., but stop it already!  The recent rabble rousing over Georgia's flag is just the latest result of this war on our nation's heritage.  I'll bet not a single one of the self righteous nattering nabobs, who make an issue over any of this, could pass a seventh grade history test.  What this is really all about, boys and girls, is a Democrat party so bankrupt of ideas, not to mention a sense of morality and fair play, that it seeks advantage through racial gamesmanship.  Another problem:  it's impossible to discuss the matter sensibly with people, who have managed to rise to positions of influence, without having a semblance of book learning.  Pricks.

TWIS survived plenty of clumsy sexual entendre in seventh grade. There was a certain amount of bra-strap snapping, being asked if we wanted to join the "Pen 15" club (this, of course, involved having "Pen 15" written on your hand, which, done properly, looks surprisingly like "PENIS") and hearing the occasional, "you're really flat!" from across the cafeteria. Of course we were flat. We were twelve.

Someone should have pointed that out to Jonathan Shank and Karim Wallace, who, by the way, we'd be perfectly happy to see rounded up and shipped off to sensitivity training, even today. (As far as we're concerned, the statute of limitations on this stuff never expires.) That said, Magoffin Middle School in El Paso may have gone bit overboard when officials suspended twelve-year-old Sal Santana for sticking his tongue out at the young lady he was attempting to woo. Both students and parents are surprised by the ruling, but school officials maintains that the girl was upset and scared by Santana's actions. We maintain that the girl doesn't know what "upset and scared" means if she's never been tricked into spelling "I cup" — which sounds conspicuously like "I see you pee" — in front of everyone at the lunch table. — Carrie Hill Wilner

     While I'm extremely grateful for (and more than a little surprised by) Tony Blair's recent stalwart and principled behavior, news that he has been meeting secretly with the Great Filth is very unsettling.  I don't know all the angles yet, but I am sure of this.  Anyone who trucks with Bill Clinton is somehow morally, and legally, compromised. There have been no exceptions to date. 

Viking Pundit may have a good case to make (his links are haywire, so I refer to his plea for a computer upgrade), but sheesh!  What about my rig?  A Timex-Sinclair?  With cassette tape?  Monochrome display?  People are always stopping me in the liquor store and saying, "Rodge, you really need to get out of the 1970's.  If you had a HP 854n (for only $1399), you could really be boss blogger.  Here, let me write you a check."

I'm no beggar, so I refuse.  No, I'll just slog along.  Unless.  Unless everyone who logs onto this site donates a miserable $2 to my Amazon begging cup.  Two filthy bucks.  If everyone did that, then I would be earning that HP 854n, and my site content would just blow you away.  But I guess Viking Pundit needs an upgrade for his state-of-the-art Compaq even more.  Thanks a lot, you pricks.

Andrea Harris found these idiots, but I beat her score.

Actor/comedian Jackie Mason endears himself to Hollywood with this scathing article, that begins:

"If you were to say that President Bush will be recorded in history as one of America's greatest Presidents, three out of four people would either laugh, smirk, or break out in a sweat."

"Ironically, we all know that it probably takes less intelligence to succeed as an actor than at any other profession. Nevertheless, actors have decided to become the chief critics and judges of the Bush presidency. "

"The Today Show just finished airing excerpts from an interview Tom Brokaw recently conducted with President Bush. The full interview will be shown tonight.

"Afterwards, Katie Couric interviewed Brokaw, and posed the following question: 'has President Bush changed since the time he took office?'

"Brokaw answered: 'Yes, he has changed a lot. He was very conversant on a wide range of domestic and international issues, telling, for example, an interesting anecdote about a Japanese minister. He is also very confident in what he says and does. But he remains George Bush, an endearing person. For example, he said that some people thought [Baghdad Bob] was a US plant, because he was so useful to us.'" - Free Republic post by governsleastgovernsbest
 

Shock and Awe: That appears to be Radar magazine's take on the men and women who went to Baghdad to serve as human shields, judging from an on-the-ground, firsthand account by a reporter who left Iraq just before the war began. "Activism of any kind feels so goofy, anachronistic, and put on these days," writes Paul Belden, "that I had to keep reminding myself that for most of my fellow shields this was not just an adventure or a lark (or an assignment) -- it was a passion, a calling. They were just people who were trying to do the right thing under dire circumstances. But I still thought they were fools." Wall Street Journal

 "In December, Sen. Patty Murray, then the leader of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, compared Osama bin Laden favorably to the United States, saying he allegedly built hospitals and day care centers in the Third World, and 'We have not done that.' The national media, print and television, almost completely ignored it. In 2001, Sen. Robert Byrd, the former Democratic majority leader, said, 'There are white niggers, I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time' on 'Fox News Sunday,' and nobody held a will-he-survive vigil over that,"
     "But now, the media are breathing hot and heavy with reports that Sen. Rick Santorum should have to sacrifice his leadership post for being critical of homosexual behavior. "- L Brent Bozell

VOILA!  Almost a piece of cake.  On the sorry side, the setup software kept displaying a hardware error.  On the good side, I called Verizon Help, was connected immediately - without being put on hold, and after 5 minutes I was all set up and  connected.  Yum Yum.  I'm off to the porn sites  blog browsing.  I bought Cracker man's suggested VPN Router, but haven't connected that yet.  Holy sh*t. I just uploaded this pic faster than I could keep track.  I'm in love.  Thanks Greep - if you're there.

1. Operating at blinding speed
2. Begging for assistance
3. a year older
4. Loading my .45

Noemie Emery writes in the Weekly Standard that, "as the statue of Saddam Hussein was being hauled down in Baghdad, another statue--of Walter Cronkite, famed CBS newsman--hacked at with hammers by various bloggers, also came crashing down."

Let's hope.  If Cronkite wasn't actually on the payroll of the Communist International during the 60's and 70's, they certainly got a bargain. Cronk has become less nuanced in his leftward tilt with age.

"Cronkite had done his best to turn the American public against the war in Iraq, but no one paid any attention."

"At the same time, word came in from numerous generals embedded in networks that the New York Times, like the city of Baghdad, might also "fall from within"--in this case, meaning that it would continue to sell and publish, but few would believe a word in it. These experts explained that while the Times had been softened up by years of sniping by Andrew Sullivan and other bloggers, the main blows were inflicted by "friendly fire"--large bombs set off within its own fortifications, by R.W. Apple and by Maureen Dowd. "

     I certainly have nothing against acting Iraq Governor Jay Garner, but experience teaches me to go with my instincts.  In this instance, I want somebody who understands the people involved, and has demonstrated a willingness to take appropriate action.  Therefore, C&S will be installing its own governor in Iraq.  This deal should take about ... maybe two days.  God speed General duToit.

"In [Shippensburg's] Code of Conduct's Community Regulations section, a "secondary right" to express personal beliefs is subordinated to a "primary right" to be "free from harassment, intimidation ... and emotional abuse."

"WHO Warns Against Travel to Toronto, Beijing, Shanxi."

The Dixie Chicks - Emily Robison, left, Natalie Maines, center, and Martie Maguire, are featured on the cover of the May 2, 2003, issue of Entertainment Weekly. They can't buy me off with a little skin.  I want a donkey show from those skanks.

A New York Times report said that one of President Bush's advisers said Kerry looks French, and that he has a haughty air about him. In a press conference today, Kerry retorted, that "the White House has started the politics of personal destruction against me."

Here's an enterprising chap who stole another idea from me that I almost had.

    When I dropped out of grammar school to follow the church carnival, my mother admonished me to "at least hang around smart people."  Which is why I like Dr. Weevil's blog.  Recently, he introduced me to a wonderful short story by Henry James.  I tried to read it last night, but my Ritalin prescription hasn't arrived from Dr. Fields, so I had to wait until I could buy a carryover dose from the Olscewski kid at the bus stop this morning.  Anyway, I especially recommend it to those of you who are reading this on government computers - I know you're bored to tears.

    Chicago Tribune television critic Steve Johnson likes CNN's "NewsNight," and says "a rational world would not have ranked Fox News' Shepard Smith as one of America's most trusted anchors."  And why does Johnson think NewsNight, anchored by Aaron Brown,  is the superior poduct?  It's "the closest thing the medium has come to duplicating the balance of presentation and amplification of news offered in National Public Radio's news shows ... "

Oh. Who can argue with that logic?

   Michael Moore is claiming that liberal news outlets like ABC and CNN doctored the sound levels of the chorus of boos that rang out during his Oscar diatribe against President Bush. He claims that a careful analysis shows many of these news outlets (which actually give him aid and comfort) redubbed his acceptance speech so that the boos would be seem louder, reports Prowley.

" ... An ABC New producer says Moore is more full of it than usual. 'Given his track record, he probably doctored the tapes himself to get more attention. He knows he's unpopular and revels in it.'"

 
Failed politicians  - like Hans Blix, Jimmy Carter, Gary Sick and Bill Clinton - tend to spend the rest of their lives attacking the nation that rejected them.  In most cases this means trucking with her enemies.  They are dangerous people.

The Wall Street Journal

With Saddam Hussein's regime now ousted, it is instructive to look back on the writing that ensued in the early (and sometimes not so early) days of the war. Though only a small selection, the snippets below illustrate the extent to which the war was misjudged, or, in some cases, spun, by analysts and reporters alike:

"At 100 hours, Iraq war is no re-run of Gulf triumph" -- headline, Reuters, March 24

"It is hard not to draw comparisons with events surrounding North Vietnam's Tet offensive in 1968. The U.S. inflicted heavy casualties on its enemies and was seen as the victor on the battlefield, but such was the psychological impact of the attack that America lost the struggle for domestic and international public opinion and ultimately withdrew." -- Victor Mallet, Financial Times, March 28

"In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall. It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taleban drove out of town. In the desert, armies fight armies. In cities, armies fight cities. The Iraqis were not stupid. They listened to Western strategists musing about how a desert battle would be a pushover. Things would get 'difficult' only if Saddam played the cad and drew the Americans into Baghdad. Why should he do otherwise?" -- Simon Jenkins, (London) Times, March 28

"With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein. Already, the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. 'Shock and awe' neither shocked nor awed." -- R.W. Apple, New York Times, March 29

"Cheney: Tells 'Meet the Press' just before war, 'We will be greeted as liberators.' An arrogant blunder for the ages." -- "Conventional Wisdom," Newsweek, April 7 (published March 30)

"According to a dozen or so military men I spoke to, Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. He put Army and Marine units in the field with few reserves and an insufficient number of tanks and other armored vehicles. (The military men say that the vehicles that they do have have been pushed too far and are malfunctioning.) Supply lines -- inevitably, they say -- have become overextended and vulnerable to attack, creating shortages of fuel, water, and ammunition. Pentagon officers spoke contemptuously of the Administration's optimistic press briefings. 'It's a stalemate now,' the former intelligence official told me." -- Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 7 issue (published March 31)

"So what should we make of the widening divide between the confident predictions of the Bush administration civilians who set Iraq 'liberation' policy and the reality of the Iraq War, as experienced by generals, not to mention grunts, on the ground?

"Something went wrong here. On March 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared of the soon-to-be-invaded Iraqis, 'Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberators.' And he and others have consistently low-balled the number of troops needed, too; early projections numbered as few as 40,000. Yet once the shooting started, and the Iraqis started resisting, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of V Corps, said, in a candid moment -- unlikely to be repeated -- 'The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against.'

"What does one call this kind of divide? The once-and-future term is 'credibility gap.'" -- James P. Pinkerton, Newsday, April 1

"Iraq is winning battles in the propaganda war with a modest media strategy. . . . From a crude Baghdad set, Iraqi ministers each day knock down Western media reports and list their latest claims of conquest, sometimes wielding chrome-plated Kalashnikovs. Unlike America and its allies, theirs is a simple message delivered directly: 'We will defeat the infidel invaders.'" -- Reuters, April 1

"As the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their 'resistance' hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So, the Pentagon's failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation, to say nothing of the war itself. The Bush administration's prewar expectation of broad Iraqi support for the invasion may turn out to be a self-defeating prophecy." -- Robert Wright, Slate.com, April 1

"Yet if this isn't Vietnam, neither is it the Afghanistan campaign, where we were hailed as liberators. I was in Afghanistan during that war, and the difference is manifest. Afghans were giddy and jubilant, while Iraqis now are typically sullen and distrustful -- and thirsty. And that's our biggest long-term problem. For all the talk about our forces being short of armored divisions, or our supply lines being stretched so taut that marines were down to one meal a day, those are tactical issues that will be forgotten six months from now. The fundamental and strategic challenge is that so far many ordinary Iraqis regard us, as best I can tell, as conquerors rather than liberators." -- Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, April 4

"As for the Iraqi people, it just isn't clear that they're particularly happy about all this." -- Joe Klein, Time, April 14 issue (published April 6)

"Even here in the anti-Saddam Shia heartland of southern Iraq, no one is giving U.S. troops a standing ovation. Applause? When I asked Lt. Col. Richard Murphy, part of the U.S. relief operation, how Iraqis were greeting his men, he answered bluntly and honestly: 'I have not detected any overt hostility.' Overt hostility? We've gone from expecting applause to being relieved that there is no overt hostility. And we've been here only 20 days." -- Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 9

"A couple of weeks into the war, it's now apparent just how ideologically blinkered the administration's view of Iraq actually was, and how that view has already imperiled our troops, the Iraqi people and any larger strategic objectives the war was supposed to serve. In its overreliance on a small number of neo-friendly Iraqi expatriates to gauge the mood of the Iraqi people, in its belief that our forces would be greeted as liberators, the administration has made almost the identical error that the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations made at the Bay of Pigs. In each instance, ideology and hope were substituted for factual assessment; in each instance, the people have not risen to join U.S.- backed forces (in Cuba) or U.S. forces (in Iraq) to overthrow their tyrant. In Iraq the administration has underestimated the size and intensity of the forces committed to fighting for Saddam Hussein -- forgetting everything we have learned about the infrastructure of a modern totalitarian state." -- Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, May issue (published April 11)

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 URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105105769787266100,00.html

Major events in the United States often influence fashion. (Thanks to Merrily)

A team of French archaeologists has unearthed the tomb of a priest of the Sixth Dynasty pharaoh, Pepi I.  A sculpture of the priest, with his wife and daughter, portray a sophisticated level of living.

I gotta tell you, if I'm the GI who liberated this gold plated German MP5 in Iraq, I'd find some way to get it home.  Yum yum.

"When liberal author/professor Michael Eric Dyson complained on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night about how President Bush went to war in a crusade of Christianity over Islam as evidenced by how Bush "bows his head to God and prays to God," actor/comedian Dennis Miller fired back with an anti-Clinton quip:
"At least he's not bowing his head to watch an intern blow him!" - MEDIA RESEARCH

Personality hostess Monica Lewinsky, and guest Michael Moore, did poorly in the debut of FOX's MR. PERSONALITY last night, ranking only fifth in the ratings.  During the show Lewinsky and her guest compete to see how many masked mystery guests they can successfully fellate.  Ms. Lewinsky completed her allotment of 20 men in just 18 minutes, leaving her with nothing to do during the show's closing minutes.  Moore "finished" just 14 and later complained, "most of my guys were over 50 for crisakes."

Bill Clinton enjoys an early round of golf at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta. Photo by Mike Blakeschultz/Reuters

In Chicago, film maker - and famous race-baiter - Spike Lee inducts the Rev. Jesse Jackson into his new organization, the Knights of the Kl-Klux-Klones (AFP/Cristina Quiclerschultz)

A Chinese laborer works on a scaffolding in front of a portrait of ex-U.S. President Bill Clinton, founder of the People's Republic of China's Space and Nuclear Weapons program, in Beijing April 18, 2003.  REUTERS/Guang

San Diego Spirit defender Kim Pickup inadvertently demonstrates how women's lack of upper body strength affect their ability to play men's sports. [April 19, 2003. AP Photo/John-Marshall Mantel]

    Scott will claim that he accidentally killed Laci when he suddenly turned with the Christmas tree on his shoulder, striking her head (or something similar).  She fell, hitting her head on the coffee table, and died instantly.  Scott blacked out with grief.  When he came to, Laci had lifelessly given birth to their son, who had also expired.  In a panic ... blah blah blah.

    Remember, this is California, where any act of contrition will mitigate any crime. Scott will be tearful.  Women on the jury will dig in their heels and Scott will be found guilty of second degree murder of Laci - maybe only manslaughter; the charge against Scott for killing an unviable life form is dropped.  He'll be paroled in twelve years.

 

   The usual problem about meaning being "lost in the translation" seems to have occurred in reverse, when, according to a news report, an unfortunate meaning was *found* in the translation of a product name.

As reported in the NY Post, April 18, 2003, page 25:

    Home-furnishing giant Ikea has apologized for accidentally naming a child's bunk bed after an obscene German expression.

    The $175 bed is called the "Gutvik" -- which means "good   f***" in German. The company insists it was named after a tiny town in Sweden.

Thanks to Damian Housman

    Discover Channel has inaugurated the Discovery New York Times channel.  Yes, it's history as seen by the New York Times.  Right now they're covering the Kent State "massacre."  Here's a news flash, just so you fresher citizens know that "outraged horror"  was not the universal response to "Kent State."  When it happened, the almost universal sentiment in my world was, "too bad, but they got what was coming to them."  Nobody wanted a bunch of kids killed, but the country was just fed up with the antics of dirty, dope smoking "hippies."  Two years earlier we rooted loudly for the Chicago police to use flame throwers on the same element when  they attempted to shut down the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

     Here's a good test for you to see how you might have reacted to "Kent State."  Pretend they were Rachel Corrie.  If you're not happy she's dead, but agog that she was so stupid as to provoke her own death, then chances are you would have been swilling beer with me and my friends 30 years ago. Just like 70+% of the nation.

    We all have a mental image of various bloggers - those who don't post a picture of themseleves anyway.  I've had a muddled image of Bitter Bitch until just now.  She is Tina Fey.

I spoke recently to a gentleman, now getting on in years, who spent a career in the slum schools of a big American city. He was bright, tough, and realistic, one of the very few gringos hereabout who speaks good Spanish. Though white, he had also grown up in a housing project and so knew well the culture of the bottom of society.

Most of what he said of his experience tracked with the descriptions of slum schools that are found everywhere-dropout rates in excess of fifty percent, unconcerned parents, the usual. We need not recapitulate them here.

He made the interesting point that most education has no purpose other than to prepare the student for further education. Algebra in high school, for example, readies the student for the study of chemistry in college, but is otherwise useless, as one never uses algebra in daily life. Other examples may easily be imagined. Roman history has no relevance to anything that a black teenager in downtown Chicago may do in life; it does however prepare one for the study of further Roman history and of Shakespeare, which also have nothing to do with the teenager's future life.

He thought that instead of academic subjects, students should be taught to read, do arithmetic, balance checkbooks, be good parents, take out a mortgage, care for their health, and suchlike practical matters.

He had a point. The majority of students don't need to know history, mathematics, physics, or literature, do not want to know them, and in fact do not know them. Few are interested. Most children of the urban slums, if one can believe the studies, will pass their entire lives without reading a book. Why try to teach them what, for them, are hideously boring subjects they won't learn, and in any event will never think of again?

Why indeed? Much of the public, probably a majority, lacks either the capacity or the interest required for an academic education. Nor do they need the knowledge conveyed by a liberal studies. They do not need to know how to write clearly, since they never will. Virtually everything they learn after graduation will come either through television or conversation. An eighth-grade vocabulary suffices. They don't need to know the multiplication tables since, on rare occasions when they need to know the product of two numbers, a calculator will serve.

In fact they do not know these things. It is well documented that the schools teach little. Poll after study after test shows that astonishing majorities of Americans cannot find England on an outline map, place the Civil War in the correct century, name the major countries involved in WWI, or recognize the Bill of Rights. Poor teaching and dumbing-down account for some of this dark night of the mind. A lot, I think, springs from trying to teach people what they don't want to know.

Why waste their time and the public monies?

All of this strikes me as reasonable. Yet I find myself becoming annoyed when I think about it. I come from the minority culture that does not regard education as preparation for watching television and punching a time-clock. I saw algebra as worth learning because, yes, it was necessary for chemistry and calculus later-but also because it was just plain interesting, and further because it is an important element in the intellectual development of mankind. I'm glad I studied it. Later in life, when for mysterious reasons I became interested in differential geometry and classical mechanics, a fluency in algebra and calculus allowed me to read them.

For some, reasons exist for learning things beyond tying one's shoes and reading traffic signs. People who do not know history live in temporal isolation; those who do not read literature, in a small mental world.

The gentleman from the big city saw no purpose in diagramming sentences. For his students, no. But for others, there is a purpose: Those who do not understand the mechanics of their language cannot appreciate such writers as Spenser and Milton and T.S. Eliot, as Twain and Mencken and Milne. Writing is an art as well as a means of communication. Art means imagination within rules. You have to know the rules.

Nor are the grammatically inept at all likely to be able to learn to read or speak another language. The reason is less that they have no idea what an indirect object or past subjunctive is than that they are incapable of seeing the language apart from its content.

It is true, as the gentleman suggested, that most people have no interest in languages or literature. But I do. So do countless others from cultivated families. How do we reconcile the existence of the two cultures? Of people who want from the schools things almost diametrically opposed?

The beginning of wisdom would be to recognize that there are two cultures, and to let each study what it chooses. No?

I should not be allowed to impose algebra on people who will never do more than count on their fingers; they should not be allowed to enstupidate the schools to which I send my daughters. (Yes, they may be intelligent. But they are an enstupidating influence to the extent that they are uninterested.) As far as I am concerned, the lower classes (which is largely what we're talking about) can study anything they want, or nothing at all. I don't care. It's their choice. But leave my schools, my language, and my civilization alone.

I'm not being heartless. Should the intellectually uninspired ask my advice, I would happily give it. If they wanted to study Sophocles or digital design, or bird-watching or golf-ball repair, I'd be delighted to supply the teachers. Anyone from any class with the ability and desire should be encouraged to learn. But if people choose not to, I don't care.

Why require anything of them beyond basic literacy and let them out after the eighth grade? They aren't going to learn anything else anyway. (Again, this is documented reality.

For those who want an academic education, I say establish separate schools, and make attendance at all schools voluntary after the eighth grade. Those who wanted to learn nothing more would simply drop out, to the great benefit of serious students. The force of parental suasion would keep those students in attendance who ought to be in attendance.

Finally, decouple jobs from degrees. Hiring should be dependent on the results of a test, given by the prospective employer, of preparation for the particular job. This would empty the universities of students with no academic drive--a splendid idea.

How's that for PC?

©Fred Reed 2003

    James Scott says he learned a lesson after quoting an Augusta protester who identified himself as Heywood Jablome: "Trust no one. My confidence in people is now tarnished, and that may be the thing that bothers me the most. People complain that reporters are jaded. Well, now you know one reason why." - -- Charleston Post and Courier

Had Mr. Scott read C&S, he'd have saved himself the embarrassment.

It's been awhile since I updated Something Funny, so there's a lot here ...

Something Funny

Trivia
The average housefly lives for one month.

Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina State anthem.

According to a recent survey, 46 percent of Americans say their car is the most important thing in their lives. Six percent say their children hold that distinction.

There is an Australian wasp with the scientific name Aha ha.

"Fine turkey" and "honeycomb" are terms used for different qualities and textures of sponges.

Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than the rest of the day.

On average, Italians get 42 vacation days every year.

The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was "smile."

The first car with air-conditioning was the Packard.

A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

A poem written to celebrate a wedding is called a "epithalamium."

There are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar.

The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.

Benjamin Franklin invented the rocking chair.

Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of the blue whale.

Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring. (It's actually white.)

"Breath," by Samuel Beckett, was first performed in April, 1970. The play lasts 30 seconds, has no actors, and no dialogue.

FROM DribbleGlass.com
 
 

Sunday School
A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds.

After explaining the commandment to "honor" thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?

Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered,"Thou shall not kill."
 

---

Weapons Found
News reports have filtered out early this morning that US forces have swooped on an Iraqi Primary School and detained teacher Mohammed Al-Hazar. Sources indicate that, when arrested, Al-Hazar was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square and a calculator.

US President George W Bush argued that this was clear and overwhelming evidence that Iraq did indeed possess weapons of math instruction.

---

Her readers wrote ....

Dear Abby,
A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?

Dear Abby,
What can I do about all the sex, nudity, language and violence on my VCR?

Dear Abby,
I have a man I can never trust. He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his.

Dear Abby,
I am a twenty three year old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It's getting expensive and I think my boy friend should share half the cost, but I don't know him well enough to discuss money with him.

Dear Abby,
I've suspected that my husband has been fooling around, and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again.

Dear Abby,
Our son writes that he is taking Judo. Why would a boy who was raised in a good Christian home turn against his own?

Dear Abby,
I joined the navy to see the world. I've seen it. Now, how do I get out?

Dear Abby,
My forty year old son has been paying a psychiatrist $50.00 an hour every week for two and a half years. He must be crazy.

Dear Abby,
I was married to Bill for three months and I didn't know he drank until one night he came home sober.

Dear Abby,
My mother is mean and short tempered. I think she is going though mental pause.

Dear Abby,
You told some woman whose husband had lost all interest in sex to send him to a doctor. Well! ! , my husband lost all interest in sex years ago and he is a doctor.
 
 

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Hangover

Marty wakes up at home with a huge hangover.

He forces himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins and a glass of water on the side table.

He sits down and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.

Marty looks around the room and sees that it is in a perfect order, spotless, clean.

So's the rest of the house.

He takes the aspirins and notices a note on the table "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping. Love you."

So he goes to the kitchen and sure enough there is a hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating.

Marty asks, "Son, what happened last night?"

His son says, "Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and delirious. Broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and gave yourself a black eye when you stumbled into the door."

Confused, Marty asks, "So, why is everything in order and so clean, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?"

His son replies, "Oh that! Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you said, "Lady, leave me alone, I'm married'!"
 

---

Funeral
A funeral service is being held for a woman who has just passed away.

At the end of the service, the pall bearers are carrying the casket out when they accidentally bump into a wall, jarring the casket.

They hear a faint moan! They open the casket and find that the woman is actually alive!

She lives for ten more years, and then dies.

Once again, a ceremony is held, and at the end of it, the pall bearers are again carrying out the casket.

As they carry the casket towards the door, the husband cries out: "Watch that wall!"
 

---

Cause Of Death
When the husband finally died his wife put the usual death notice in the paper, but added that he died of gonorrhea.

No sooner were the papers delivered when a good friend of the family phoned and complained bitterly, "You know very well that he died of diarrhea, not gonorrhea.

Replied the widow, "I nursed him night and day so of course I know he died of diarrhea, but I thought it would be better for posterity to remember him as a great lover rather than the big shit he always was."
 

---

Hack Golfer
A hack golfer spends a day at a plush country club, playing golf and enjoying the luxury of a complimentary caddy.

Being a hack golfer, he plays poorly all day. Round about the 18th hole, he spots a lake off to the left of the fairway. He looks at the caddy and says, "I've played so poorly all day, I think I'm going to go drown myself in that lake."

The caddy looks back at him and says: "I don't think you could keep your head down that long."
 

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Trivia
The mouse is the most common mammal in the United States.

Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds and the crossroads.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the metal detector in 1881.

According to medical experts, babies dream in the womb.

Walt Disney World generates about 56 tons of trash every day.

Ninety-five percent of the U.S. currency notes produced each year are used to replace bills already in circulation.

Men are four times more likely to sleep in the nude than women.

All of the following have been sold in vending machines: emu jerky, poached eggs, holy water, beetles and live shrimp.

Thirty-eight of American companies say they monitor their employee's e-mail.

According to surveys, 17 percent of Americans sing in the shower.

One out of five men in America propose marriage on their knee.

Parsley is the most widely used herb in the world.

The odds of being killed by falling out of bed are one in two million.

Canola oil is actually called rapeseed oil, but the name was changed for marketing reasons.

Rapper Ice Cube's real name is O'Shea Jackson.

The term "hooch" for liquor comes from the Hoochinoo Indians, known for their ability to make liquor so strong it could knock someone out.

While nudity was considered commonplace to the ancient Greeks, a man was considered indecent if he had an exposed erection.
 

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This Explains Much of our Lives

I have recently been diagnosed with AAADD Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

This is how it goes...

I decide to do work on the car, I start to the garage and notice the mail on the table.
OK, I'm going to work on the car... BUT FIRST

I'm going to go through the mail. Lay car keys down on desk. After discarding the junk mail, I notice the trash can is full. OK, I'll just put the bills on my desk.... BUT FIRST

I'll take the trash out, but since I'm going to be near the mailbox, I'll address a few bills.
Yes Now where is the checkbook? Oops.. there's only one check left. Where did I put the extra checks? Oh, there is my empty plastic cup from last night on my desk. I'm going to look for those checks... BUT FIRST

I need to put the cup back in the kitchen. I head for the kitchen, look out the window, notice the flowers need a drink of water, I put the cup on the counter and there's my extra pair of glasses on the kitchen counter. What are they doing here? I'll just put them away... BUT FIRST

I need to water those plants.

I head for the door and... Aaaagh! someone left the TV remote in the wrong spot. Okay, I'll put the remote away and water the plants... BUT FIRST

I need to find those checks.

END OF DAY: Oil in car not changed, bills still unpaid, cup still in the sink, checkbook still has only one check left, lost my car keys,... And, when I try to figure out how come nothing got done today, I'm baffled because... I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY! I realize this condition is serious... I'd get help... BUT FIRST...

I think I'll check my e-mail.

---

PEACH BRANDY
A minister of a city church enjoyed a few drinks, but his passion was for peach brandy. One of his congregants would make him a bottle each Christmas. One year, when the minister went to visit his friend, hoping for his usual Christmas present, he was not disappointed, but his friend told him that he had to thank him for the peach brandy
from the pulpit the next Sunday.

In his haste to get the bottle, the minister hurriedly agreed and left. So the next Sunday the minister suddenly remembered that he had to make a public announcement that he was being supplied alcohol from a member of the church. That morning, his friend sat in the church with a grin on his face, waiting to see the minister's embarrassment.

The minister climbed into the pulpit and said, "Before we begin, I have an announcement. I would very much like to thank my friend, Joe, for his kind gift of peaches... and for the spirit in which they were given!"

---

Fertilizer

A farmer was driving along the road with a load of fertilizer. A little boy, playing in front of his house, saw him and called, "What've you got in your truck?"

"Fertilizer," the farmer replied.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked the little boy.

"Put it on strawberries," answered the farmer.

"You ought to live here," the little boy advised him. "We put sugar and cream on ours."

---

Things You Don't Want To Hear During Surgery:
 

"Better save that. We'll need it for the autopsy."
"Someone call the janitor - we're going to need a mop."
"Accept this sacrifice, O Great Lord of Darkness"
"Bo! Bo! Come back with that! Bad Dog!"
"Wait a minute, if this is his spleen, then what's that?"
"Hand me that...uh...that uh.....thingie."
"Oh no! I just lost my Rolex."
"Oops! Hey, has anyone ever survived 500ml of this stuff before?"
 "Shoot, there go the lights again...."
"Ya know, there's big money in kidneys. Hell, the guy's got two of them."
 "What do you mean you want a divorce?"

---

This guy goes to confession on Sunday and he says -

"Forgive me Father for I have sinned."

"How have you sinned my son?"

"I was out playing golf and I used the *f* word."

"Tell me about it my son."

"Well I teed up and hit the ball into the rough with a huge slice."

"And then you used the *f* word! For shame!"

'No Father.  I managed a saving shot from the rough and the ball nipped past
the flag and into the sand trap behind the green."

"So, you landed in the sand and then you used the *f* word! Why that is
totally unexcusable!"

"No Father.  I hit a beautiful sand shot and landed 6 inches from the hole."

"What the ....! Don't tell me you missed the fucking 6 inch put!"

---

The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each
to buy a copy of the group picture. "Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are
all grown up and say, 'There's Jennifer; she's a lawyer,' or 'That's Michael, he's a doctor.'"

A small voice from the back of the room rang out, "And there's the teacher; she's still old, nasty, and wrinkled"

---

From Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle:

   A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40, and a photo of his car. Instead of payment,
he sent the police department a photograph of $40. Several days later, he received a letter from the police department that contained another picture -- of handcuffs.

---

A biology graduate student went to Borneo to take some samples for his thesis work.  He flew there, found a guide with a canoe to take him up the river to the remote site he where he would make his collections.  About noon on the second day of travel up the river they began to hear drums.  Being a city boy by nature, the biologist was disturbed by this.  He asked the guide, "What are those drums?"  The guide turned to him and said "Drums OK, but VERY BAD when they stop."

Well the biologist settled down a little at this, and things went reasonably well for about two weeks.  Then, just as they were packing up the camp to leave, the drums suddenly stopped!  This hit the biologist like a ton of bricks (to coin a phrase), and he yelled at the guide,

                "The Drums have stopped, What happens now?"

The guide crouched down, covered his head with his hands and said:

                                "Bass Solo"

---

A tourist in a strange town notices that her watch is broken. She starts looking for a repair shop.  After a long and frustrating search she finds herself in an area where many shop signs are in Hebrew. Finally, she notices that one of the stores has all kinds of clocks and watches ticking merrily in the window.  She walks into the shop and puts her watch on the counter in front of the proprietor.

Tourist: "Would you please repair this watch."

Proprietor: "Madam, I cannot repair your watch."

T: "But why not?  It is an ordinary model."

P: "Madam, I do not repair watches. I am a moel, I perform circumcisions."

T (irritated): "Then why on earth do you have all these clocks in your window?"

P: "Well, and what should I have in my window?"

---

100 reasons why it's great to be a guy:

1) Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
2) Movie nudity is virtually always female.
3) You know stuff about tanks.
4) A five day vacation requires only one suitcase.
5) Monday Night Football.
6) You don't have to monitor your friends sex lives.
7) Your bathroom lines are 80% shorter.
8) You can open all your own jars.
9) Old friends don't give you crap if you've lost or
gained weight.
10) Dry cleaners and haircutter's don't rob you blind.
11) When clicking through the channel, you don't have to
stall on every shot of someone crying.
12) Your ass is never a factor in a job interview.
13) All your orgasms are real.
14) A beer gut does not make you invisible to the opposite sex.
15) Guys in hockey masks don't attack you-except during
hockey games.
16) You don't have to lug a bag of useful stuff around
everywhere you go.
17) You understand why Stripes is funny.
18) You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
19) Your last name stays put.
20) You can leave a hotel bed unmade.
21) When your work is criticized, you don't have to panic
that everyone secretly hates you.
22) You can kill your own food.
23) The garage is all yours.
24) You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
25) You see the humor in Terms of Endearment.
26) Nobody secretly wonders if you swallow.
27) You never have to clean the toilet.
28) You can be showered and ready in 10 minutes.
29) Sex means never worrying about your reputation.
30) Wedding plans take care of themselves.
31) If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or
she can still be you friend.
32) Your underwear is $10 for a three pack.
33) The National College Cheerleading Championship
34) None of your co-workers have the power to make you cry.
35) You don't have to shave below your neck.
36) You don't have to curl up next to a hairy ass every night.
37) If you're 34 and single nobody notices.
38) You can write your name in the snow.
39) You can get into a nontrivial pissing contest.
40) Everything on your face stays its original color.
41) Chocolate is just another snack.
42) You can be president.
43) You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger seat.
44) Flowers fix everything.
45) You never have to worry about other people's feelings.
46) You get to think about sex 90% of your waking hours.
47) You can wear a white shirt to a water park.
48) Three pair of shoes are more than enough.
49) You can eat a banana in a hardware store.
50) You can say anything and not worry about what people think.
51) Foreplay is optional.
52) Michael Bolton doesn't live in your universe.
53) Nobody stops telling a good dirty joke when you walk
into the room.
54) You can whip your shirt off on a hot day
55) You don't have to clean your apartment if the meter
reader is coming by.
56) You never feel compelled to stop a pal from getting laid.
57) Car mechanics tell you the truth.
58) You don't give a rat's ass if someone notices your new haircut.
59) You can watch a game in silence with your buddy for
hours without even thinking (He must be mad at me)
60) The world is your urinal.
61) You never misconstrue innocuous statements to mean
your lover is about to leave you.
62) You get to jump up and slap stuff.
63) Hot wax never comes near your pubic area.
64) One mood, all the time.
65) You can admire Clint Eastwood without starving
yourself to look like him.
66) You never have to drive to another gas station because
this one's just too skeevy.
67) You know at least 20 ways to open a beer bottle.
68) You can sit with your knees apart no matter what you
are wearing.
69) Same work....more pay.
70) Gray hair and wrinkles add character.
71) You don't have to leave the room to make an emergency
crotch adjustment.
72) Wedding Dress $2000; Tux rental $100.
73) You don't care if someone is talking about you behind
your back.
74) With 400 million sperm per shot, you could double the
earth's population in 15 tries, at least in theory.
75) You don't mooch off others' desserts.
76) If you retain water, it's in a canteen.
77) The remote is yours and yours alone.
78) People never glance at your chest when you're talking
to them.
79) ESPN's sports center.
80) You can drop by to see a friend without bringing a
little gift.
81) Bachelor parties whomp ass over bridal showers.
82) You have a normal and healthy relationship with your mother.
83) You can buy condoms without the shopkeeper imagining
you naked.
84) You needn't pretend you're "freshening up" to go to
the bathroom.
85) If you don't call your buddy when you say you will, he
won't tell your friends you've changed.
86) Someday you'll be a dirty old man.
87) You can rationalize any behavior with the handy phrase
"F*#k it!"
88) If an other guy shows up at the party in the same
outfit, you might become lifelong buddies.
89) Princess Di's death was almost just another obituary.
90) The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected.
91) You never have to miss a sexual opportunity because
you're not in the mood.
92) You think the idea of punting a small dog is funny.
93) If something mechanical didn't work, you can bash it
with a hammer and throw it across the room.
94) New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
95) Porn movies are designed with your mind in mind.
96) You don't have to remember everyone's birthdays and
anniversaries.
97) Not liking a person does not eliminate having great
sex with them.
98) Your pals can be trusted never to trap you with:
"So... notice anything different?"
99) Baywatch
100) There is always a game on somewhere.

---

 

10 Things Men Won't Say To Other Men

1. Wow, those jeans look painted on.

2. Man, I'd love to sleep with your wife just once.

3. Do you work out? Because you have great glutes.

4. Dude, I'm going to be late for work let me hop in the shower with you.

5. I am so horny, could you call your sister for me?

6. Hey John, that new haircut really brings out your features.

7. I hate sports.

8. I don't feel like going home; all my wife wants to do is have sex all day long.

9. Ewww beer, no way it tastes disgusting!

10. Joe, you're my buddy and I'm going away for a week. I was wondering if you could stay at my house and keep my girlfriend company while I'm away.
 
 

---

Things that are difficult to say when you're drunk:

Indubitably
Innovative
Preliminary
Proliferation
Cinnamon

Things that are VERY difficult to say when you're drunk:

Specificity
British
Constitution
Passive-aggressive disorder
Loquacious Transubstantiate
 

Things that are downright IMPOSSIBLE to say when you're drunk:

Thanks, but I don't want to have sex.
Nope, no more booze for me.
Sorry, but you're not really my type.
Good evening officer, isn't it lovely out tonight?
Oh, I just couldn't. No one wants to hear me sing.
 

---

Three Beers
An Irishman walks into a bar and orders three glasses of Guiness, drinking them one at a time. Noticing this odd ritual, the bartender explains that the beer goes flat when poured and informs the man his beer would be much fresher if he ordered one glass at a time.

The Irishman explains he began this custom with his two brothers, who have moved to America and Australia, respectively. This is their way of remembering all the time they spent drinking together.

The man becomes a regular at the pub, well-known for always ordering three beers at once. One day he walks in and orders only two beers. Assuming the worst, a hush falls among other patrons.

When the Irishman returns to the bar to order his second round, the bartender quietly offers his condolences. The man looks confused for a moment, and then explains, "No, everyone's fine. I gave up beer for lent."

---

25 signs of growing up

1. Your house plants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.

2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.

5. You hear your favorite song on an elevator.

6. You watch the Weather Channel.

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of hook up and break up.

8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.

9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."

10. You're the one calling the police because those damn kids next door won't turn down the stereo.

11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.

12. You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.

13. Your car insurance goes down and your payments go up.

14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonalds leftovers.

15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.

16. You no longer take naps from noon to 6 PM.

17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.

18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset, rather than settle, your stomach.

19. You go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.

20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good stuff."

21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.

22. "I just can't drink the way I used to," replaces, "I'm never going to drink that much again."

23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.

24. You no longer drink at home to save money before going to a bar.

25. You read this entire list looking desperately for one sign that doesn't apply to you.
 

---

Sex Trivia
Female baboons have been known to engage in a primitive form of prostitution by stealing food during sex.

Fewer than 30 percent of parents in the U.S. discuss sex with their children.

The typical penguin has just one orgasm a year.

The average sperm donor makes $4,000 to $5,000 a year.

The sperm count of the average American male is down 30 percent from 30 years ago.

It's illegal to have sex with a corpse anywhere in the United States.

Semen contains small amounts of more than 30 elements, including fructose, ascorbic acid, cholesterol, creatine, citric acid, lactic acid, nitrogen, vitamin B12, and various salts and enzymes.

Homosexuality remained on the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental illnesses until 1973.

In an average man's semen, about 10 percent are abnormal.

A recent survey of prostitutes revealed that the most frequent sex act performed is fellatio.

Minks have sex sessions that last, on average, eight hours.

According to a national study of female sexuality, candles are the artificial device used most frequently by women during masturbation.

Sex education was first introduced in English schools in 1889.

In ancient Greece and Rome, dildos were made out of animal horns, gold, silver, ivory and glass.

The French kiss was first known as "maraichinage," a term to describe the prolonged, deep, tongue kiss practiced by the Maraichins, inhabitants of Brittany, France.

In London, it's illegal to have sex on a parked motorcycle.

FROM DribbleGlass.com
 
 

---

Rejected Dr. Seuss Books:

1. One Bitch, Two Bitch, Dead Bitch, You Bitch.
2. Herbert the Pervert Likes Sherbet
3. Fox in Detox
4. Who Shat in the Hat?
5. Horton Hires a Ho
6. The Cat in the Blender
7. My Pocket Rocket Needs a Socket
8. Bi-Curious George

Little Golden Books That Never Made It:

1. You Are Different And That's Bad.
2. The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables.
3. Dad's New Wife Robert.
4. Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
5. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
6. All Cats Go To Hell
7. The Little Sissy Who Snitched
8. Some Kittens Can Fly
9. That's It, I'm Putting You Up For Adoption
10. The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
11. Strangers Have The Best Candy
12. You Were an Accident
13. Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
14. Pop! Goes the Hamster...And Other Microwave Games
15. The Man In The Moon Is Actually Satan
16. Your Nightmares Are Real
17. Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
18. Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
19. Why Can't Mr. Fork and Mrs. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
 

---

Bad Lesbian Jokes

What do you call a cupboard full of lesbians?
A licker cabinet.

What do you call an Eskimo lesbian?
A Klondyke.

What do you call 100 lesbians with guns?
Militia Etheridge.

Why can't lesbians diet and wear make-up at the same time?
Because they can't eat Jenny Craig with Mary Kay on their face.

What do you call 2 lesbians in a canoe?
Fur Traders.

What is a lesbian dinosaur called?
A Lickalotapuss.

What do you call a lesbian with long fingers?
Well Hung.

Did you hear that Ellen Degeneres drowned?
She was found face down in Ricki Lake.

How can you tell a tough lesbian bar?
Even the pool table doesn't have balls

---

The boss comes in and sees his new secretary writing out notes.

"Miss Jones" he says, "come into my office and I will show you how to use my
dictaphone."

"No thanks," says she "I'm used to dialing with my fingers!

---

Playing Trivial Pursuit with a Blonde

A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night.
It was her turn, she rolled the dice and she
landed on "Science & Nature". Her question was,
"If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your
name, can you hear it?"

She thought for a time and then asked, "Is
it on or off?"

---

              What is the Sunday missal?
A weapon of mass instruction.
 

---

Oklahoma Joke

A fellow went to the doctor who told him that
he had a bad illness and only a year to live.
So he decided to talk to his pastor. After the
man explained his situation, he asked his Pastor
if there was anything he could do.

"What you should do is go out and buy a late
'70 or early '80 model Dodge Pickup," said the
Pastor. "Then go get married to the ugliest woman
you can find, and buy yourselves an old trailer
house in the panhandle of Oklahoma."

The fellow asked, "Will this help me live longer?"

"No," said the pastor, "but it will make what
time you do have seem like forever."

---

A customer was continually bothering the waiter in a
restaurant; first, he'd asked that the air conditioning
be turned up because he was too hot, then he asked it
be turned down cause he was too cold, and so on for
about half an hour. Surprisingly, the waiter was very
patient, he walked back and forth and never once got
angry.
So finally, a second customer asked him why he didn't
throw out the pest.
"Oh I don't care." said the waiter with a smile. "We
don't even have an air conditioner."

---

The Frog

This really really old guy is walking on the beach one day.

He hears a little teenie tiny voice calling out "Hey Mister ... pssst ... come here."

He looks around and sees a little tiny frog under a palm tree. He picks it up and it says
"Hey Mister ... if you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful young woman and your wishes will
be my commands forever."

He takes the frog, puts it in his pocket, and starts to walk back toward home.

The frog says "Hey, what are ya doing? Don't ya want to kiss me?"

The old man says, "No ... to tell you the truth, at my age, a talking frog is worth a whole lot more to me."
 

---

Mental Institution
There is a mental institution and a nurse walks into a room and sees a patient acting out like he's driving a car. The nurse asks him, "Charlie what are you doing?"

Charlie replied, "Driving to Chicago!"

The nurse wishes him a good trip and leaves the room.

The next day the nurse enters Charlie's room just as he stops driving his imaginary car and ask, "Well Charlie, how you doing?"

Charlie says, "I just got into Chicago"

"Great," replied the nurse.

The nurse leaves Charlie's room and goes across the hall into Bob's room and finds Bob sitting on his bed masturbating vigorously!

With surprise she asks, "Bob what are you doing!"

Bob says.. "I'm screwing Charlie's wife while he's in Chicago!"
 

---

Lounge Lizzards
A rather confident man walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman.

He gives her a quick glance, then casually looks at his watch for a moment.

The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"

"No", he replies, "I just bought this state-of-the-art watch. and I was just testing it."

The intrigued woman says, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?"

"It uses alpha waves to telepathically talk to me," he explains.

"What's it telling you now?"

"Well, it says you're not wearing any panties..."

The woman giggles and replies, "Well it must be broken then because I am wearing panties!"

The man explains, "Damn thing must be an hour fast."
Ways to reject pick-up lines

---

 

1.) Man: "Haven't we met before?" Woman: "Yes, I'm the receptionist at the V.D. Clinic."

2.) In the department of "nice turn downs" there's this one: I'll have to think about that, thinking makes me tired, when I'm tired I want to sleep, not make love, so let's not, okay?

3.) Man: "So, wanna go back to my place?" Woman: "Well, I don't know. Will two people fit under a rock?"

4.) Man: "I'd really like to get into your pants." Woman: "No thanks. There's already one asshole in there."

5.) The most memorable rebuttal to a turn down (used by the guy who used to live across the hall from me in residence) when he asked a girl to dance and she refused: Man: "Want to Dance?" Woman: "No, thank you." Man: "Don't thank me, thank God somebody asked you."

6.) Man: "I'd like to call you. What's your number?" Woman: "It's in the phone book." Man: "But I don't know your name." Woman: "That's in the phone book too."

7.) Man: "So what do you do for a living?" Woman: "Female impersonator."

8.) Man: "You know, I'd really love to travel to exotic places with you." Woman: (tries to ignore him) Man: "You know what? I also love sex. What do you say to that?" Woman: "Hmmm...you really love sex and travel?" Man: (nods his head smiling) Woman: "Then go take a fuckin' hike!!!"

9.) I like the line I once heard in a movie. This guy was trying to pick up this girl, and she said to him, "Can you pound a railroad spike through a 2x4 with your hard-on?" To which he merely shudders a negative. She says, "Well, a girl's gotta have her standards."

10.) Man: "Voulez-vous vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" (Would you like to go to bed with me tonight?) Woman: "Je voudrais bien, mais je n'ai rien a porter." (I would love to, but I have nothing to wear.)

11.) Q: What sign were you born under? A: No Parking.

12.) A guy comes up to a girl and tells her some pick-up line. She grabs his crotch, looks down at it, looks back at him, and says, "Sorry, I don't see any potential here" and nonchalantly walks off.

13.) And here's one including the correct snappy return Man: "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" Woman: "Unfertilized, screw off!"

14.) After hearing a pick-up line: Woman: "I like your approach, now let's see your departure."

15.) A girlfriend of mine once had a graying man in his 60's approach her in a club while she was in college with the line, "Where have you been all my life?" She took one glance at him and said, "For the first half of it, I probably wasn't born yet."

16.) A friend of mine came up with a very quick response over vacation. We were walking down the street and I glanced at a girl who had just walked by. She turned around and said to me, "What are you looking at?" My friend, walking next to me came to the rescue, "He thought you were good looking, but he was mistaken."

17.) While at college, a few friends were discussing how their "passes" had been rejected by the intended female receiver. One of the ladies explained how she handled it once...

When the guy, obviously getting irritated, blurted out something like, "Hey, come on, we're both here at this bar for the same reason!" She responded, "Yea! Let's pick up some chicks!" He immediately blanched, and decided that maybe he would look someplace else

18.) The attractive young woman was sitting at the bar, alone, when the lounge lizard made his move. "I'm here," he breathed huskily, "to fulfill your every sexual fantasy." The woman turned and looked at him. Her lips parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She leaned toward him with her hands on her thighs, and her eyes opened to the size of dinner plates. She paused just a second and the delivered the crusher line, "You've got a large donkey or Doberman?" The guy turned as green as his golf slacks and slipped away without a word.

19.) "Sorry, I don't date outside my species."

20.) Man: "Hey, baby, if you come home with me, I can show you a really good time." Woman: "You know what your problem is? Your mouth is writing checks that your body can't cash."
 
 

---

Trivia
About 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets every year.

A winged penis was the city symbol of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

During his lifetime, Shakespeare's last name was spelled 83 different ways.

Eighty-three percent of people hit by lightning are men.

Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don't.

The original idea for steak knives derived from shark teeth.

President Lyndon Johnson had an aunt named Frank.

The number of possible ways of playing just the first four moves on each side in a chess game is 318,979,564,000.

The act of snapping one's fingers has a name. It is called a "fillip."

Twenty-five percent of Americans don't know what their astrological sign is.

The average iceberg weighs 20 million tons.

The average bra size today is 36C. Ten years ago it was 34B.

The mouth produces a quart of saliva a day.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

All the planets in our solar system could be placed inside the planet Jupiter.

Famed playwright Anton Chekhov was also a medical doctor.

More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.

FROM DribbleGlass.com

---

Previous Something Funnies

Old Blog
March 2, 2003
March 13, 2003

A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew.

She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work.

As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was?

The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."

The teacher paused! and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."

Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."

    Let's suppose that the United States, faced with restructuring 1945 Japan into a democracy, had these problems to contend with.

• 100,000 Japanese communists, trained by Stalin, are infiltrated back into the country with the aim of destabilizing  the effort.
• The American press, fearful that we are losing the respect of Stalin, De Gaulle and Samuel Goldwyn, denounce General McArther's occupation.
• The New York Times and Chicago Tribune editorialize that Truman is not an elected president, and is acting illegally.
• Bing Crosby and Errol Flynn tell gossip columnist Walter Winchell that we are no better than Hitler, and hope the  Japanese murder every member of the American occupation forces.
• American school children are taught that we only went to war with Germany and Japan in order to corner the beer and saki markets.
• Key Republican members of congress take to the airways, calling for Truman's impeachment, and encouraging street riots and demonstrations.

Japan Friday issue warnings to US
"Leave now! We want Samurai solution" warn Jap leaders

Tojo's fall may mean little for gays in Iraq
Scant lobbying for gay rights in post-war Japan by U.S. activists

Destruction of Tokyo museum inexcusable say critics
  3 resign from US art panel to protest

I posted this 911 emergency call once before, but it's a blast.  Definitely not for the office.

Limbo misspoke twice today -

• He claimed that legislation removing deductions for credit card interest came during the reign of Bush the First.  Not so, that was the handiwork of Sen. Bill Bradley in 1987.
• He claimed that televising baseball home games is a recent thing. Not so. Chicago Cubs fans, beginning in the early 50's, were treated to daily televised Cubbies home games.  The sponsor was Hamm's beer.  After every inning the announcer, Jack Brickhouse, did the live beer commercial, ending with him draining a glass of the sponsor's suds.  After the 4th inning, or so, Brickhouse was drunk on his ass.  Much fun.

     "I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong," Mr. Kamiya wrote last week. "Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings."
     More casualties would have been a preferred alternative to the "larger moral negative" of a victory that boosted President Bush's chances for re-election, he said.
     "Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least-bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people," he wrote. "But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative — four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?
     "Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world." Greg Pierce

---

"My Uncle, who has lived in Paris for the last 40 years, reported in to my mom last week ... [HERE]

"AMHERST, MA—Researchers at the University of Massachusetts released a surprising new study Monday indicating that, contrary to long-held beliefs about its destructive effects, collegiate binge drinking is a fucking blast."

Anything titled Clinton and the Weasels deserves your attention.

 
"The assumption is that Chirac and Schroeder and Putin are going to have to deal with Bush on other issues over the next year, and that there will be times to put Bush in a bad light," says the Democratic staffer. "It's in everyone's interest to see Bush taken down a notch, all the better if it's on an international stage. It helps us and it helps Chirac and his crowd."

A Decollete Subject: Forget plunging necklines. According to the Baltimore Sun, the new focus has shifted to the southern bosom -- i.e., to the revealing glimpses coming from below made possible by bare midriffs, scarf tops or tiny, cut-off T-shirts. But going for the "under-cleavage" is not without its hazards, according to Woody Thompson, co-creator of VH1's "Pop Up Video." "With cleavage," he told the Sun, "you fear bending down at the buffet and showing too much. But with the bottom-cleave, do you have to worry about leaning back? Can you catch the bouquet at a wedding?"  - WALL STREET JOURNAL

     Abu Dhabi television has released film of Adolf Hitler walking outside Munich.  Taken just yesterday, the film proves that claims of the dictator's death were falsified!  Television news is agog.

    The WSJ opines that, despite wage concessions by American Airlines, US Airways and United, et al, the industry is DOA.  Why?  Because deals with the various unions, to stave off bankruptcy, were bought with the promise of automatic return to the "up escalator."

"The root problem here is the monopoly on bargaining power held by the airline unions. Under the rules of the 1926 Railway Labor Act, unions lack incentive to bargain in good faith; they know they can ride out any contract and then blackmail management by threatening a strike that airlines can never afford to take. (They'd be out of business in a few days.) Thus the up escalator in good times, which has made labor costs about 40% of the total for the larger airlines."

Rita Meter Maid, Esquire, examines chicken theft and its consequences.  Lawyers will want to bone-up on Skinner v. Oklahoma.

If any of you question my belief that we are a nation at war with itself, read this.  Then come back and renew acquaintances with Tom Jefferson.     

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.  The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.  If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty... And what country can preserve its liberties if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.  The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.  What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure."

My nominee for Best Military Analyst is retired Army Colonel David Hunt.  Last night he told O'Reilly that the announcement is forthcoming that Saddam, and 14 of his inner circle, are confirmed killed in that restaurant attack.  The folks at South Park agreed.  We have the bodies but are doing the DNA tests to make absolutely sure.

Snopes.com
AMAZING as well as AWESOME Take a look at this picture. It's awesome!!! This picture was taken in Yuma, AZ on 9-11-2002. The flag was located at Fry's Shopping Center on the corner of 24th and 4th Avenue. Seller's cranes were holding it up and people were stopping all day taking pictures. The photographer didn't even realize at the time this was taken, what would show up in the picture. Goes to show: Persons may try to get God out of the government, but He will still shine through.

Just a thought, but how much of the looting of Iraqi government buildings do you suppose was organized by the Russians and French anxious to see certain documents disappear?

MEMO - Because of recent instances of harassment of uniformed personnel, the commanding general at Fort Sam Houston felt compelled to warn the men and women who serve under him to use caution when traveling, shopping and dining in San Antonio.  A drill sergeant and his wife were attacked on their way home. Two sailors, in uniform, were accosted by several males who said, 'You'd better not go to war."

    I see little difference between these leftist thugs and al-Quaeda terrorists.  If this happened in Iraq, the men being attacked would turn their attackers into a cloud of wet dust.  Why not in San Antonio?  Or Berkeley?  Or New York City?  I'll tell you why.  Our idiotic laws make it illegal to kill left-wing anarchist pukes in those cities, and elsewhere in the United States.  Didn't we learn anything in the Sixties?  Please join me in promoting the 2003 Clean Air Act for the Children Against Hate Crimes, that will make it legal to off thugs who attack anyone in the military in the course of protesting anything.  Or think Rachel Corrie was a victim.  Thank you.

    Remember this?  In response to criticism for describing Rachel Corrie's stupid act of sitting in front of a bulldozer to protect a gang of terrorists - and getting herself killed, as a "stupid" act, my alma mater's campus newspaper has been bitch slapped into PC submission.

"The new policy, formulated by Diamondback Editor in Chief Jay Parsons and other staff members in reaction to the unprecedented global response to the cartoon, recommends against running material that is "needlessly vulgar" or unoriginal." DIAMONDBACK

"Rodge, we know that you think all elected Democrats are unprincipled liars, but isn't there some Republican scum?"

As an aside, anther question I often get is, "Rodge, is there another State, besides Connecticut, with a higher percentage of clack-dished dewberries in Congress?"

Yes, Vermont, with a 100% rating.

 "Kerry, clearly improvising, revealed what we thought we were starting to notice about the Kerry strategy — run left in the primaries, but leave enough wiggle room to re-center in the general."

We don't have bin-Laden's body.  We don't have Saddam's carcass.  But, we may have Tom Daschle's ass!

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, would lose to a prominent state Republican, according to a poll conducted for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
     Former Rep. John Thune was picked by 46 percent of South Dakota voters over Mr. Daschle's 44 percent, according to the survey conducted last month by McLaughlin & Associates.
     Mr. Thune served three terms as South Dakota's lone House member before stepping down in 2002 to challenge Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson and losing by just 524 votes. - The whole delicious cake

 
It's hardly a secret that, when it comes to politics, New Yorkers - of the Manhattan tribe especially - are something less than astute thinkers.  They went 79-15 for Al Gore and call Hillary Clinton "Senator."  I think it was the  famed American humorist Will Rogers who said, "New Yorkers are a bunch of stupid assholes."  Maybe it was someone else.  Anyway, in this article, Paul Beston ponders why "George W. Bush will win Baghdad's heart before he ever wins New York's."

"Gray" Cloud Overhead
A new Field Research poll out today shows California's Democratic Gov. Gray Davis has not only his worst job approval rating since taking office, but the worst job approval rating of any governor nationwide in the 55-year history of Field Polls. The poll shows 24 percent of Californians approve of Davis' performance, 65 percent do not. Britsky Hume

Nice catch by The Smoking Gun

 "Oh, Sarah can't come down right now," Rose replied, "she doesn't feel very  well."

 "Really, what's the matter with her?" Rose looked very serious and said, "she'll be okay, she's just got her pyramid."

Is anybody else depressed that Al Sharpton is being treated like a legitimate candidate for the Presidency of the United States?  Forget the fact that he's a liar and a crook [see Tawana Brawley], that goes with being a donk.  He's an ill-spoken, ignorant buffoon. Sheesh.

   It appears that all discrepancies over what occurred to Jessica Lynch and her buddies have been squared away.  Ellen DeGeneres is fired, and Britney Spears hired to play Jessica in

The true story of how a West Virginia girl overcame growing up under the Clinton regime to become America's fightingist, feistiest GI in Iraq!

"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board.
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."

"So, while the people of Iraq were struggling to eke out a living, Iraq's leaders were living like kings."

It could be up 1000 and I'd still want to slit my throat every time I look at my numbers.  More than 5, indeed.

  MEMO TO NANCY PELOSI:

  A Failed Plan?

  1.   We took Iraq in less time than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

  2.  It took less time to find evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

  3.  It took Teddy Kennedy longer to call the police after his Oldsmobile sunk at Chappaquiddick than it took the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard.

  4.   We took Iraq in less time than it took to count the votes in Florida in the year 2000!
 
  Nancy, you and other Democratic leaders sure have a strange concept of failure.

Intuit Software for taking the Parsons Personal Tax Edge software I used for several years, and transforming it into that piece of crap TURBO TAX (which I just used for the last time).  The dickwads at Intuit were so fearful that someone would give their copy to the neighbor, they added ten layers of registration/security - that didn't work, forcing me to spend a half hour on the phone.  Note to Intuit: - fire all your programmers, then commit suicide.

The filthy rotten bastards in Congress, and the State of Maryland, who stole 40% of my son's income.  That's right.  As a single, renting, taxpayer with a decent, but not extraordinary income, he had damn near half of his income taken.  He's pissed. "That's what happens when Democrats are elected, Hucker," I explained.  "But the Republicans control Congress," he retorted.  "Yes, but filthy bastard Democrats are slashing your tax cut," says I.  "Bastards," says he.  Good.

Hewlett Packard for supplying a faulty XP patch for its 712C Deskjet printer, making it necessary for me to rush out and buy a new one before I could print the miserable returns.  Bastards.

Before Syria and Korea, President Bush needs to destroy this terrorist organization.  I'm not kidding.  Did I say that Senate Democrats are filthy bastards?  I did?  Okay.  How about Jeffordsian Republicans like Olympia Snowe and George V. Sonobitch?  I did?  Good.  Bombs away.

  "The invasion is a lie."

"As our leader Saddam Hussein said, God is grilling their stomachs in hell. I think we will finish them soon."

"The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad."

Reporters' Regret?
There may be even more comments on Iraq some journalists may wish they could take back. NBC's voluble Chris Mathews, for example, said before the war that it would "join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe." As National Review notes, NBC analyst Gen. Barry McCaffrey said that in a battle for Baghdad "we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties." The New York Times' Nicholas Kristoff wrote, "Iraqis hate the U.S. government even more than they hate Saddam."  And Richard Cohen of the Washington Post derided the insistence by U.S. officials that their war plan was "brilliant and on schedule." Wrote Cohen, "As anyone can see, and as some field commanders keep saying, it is neither." - Brit Humski
 

"Since Iraq is the size of California," asks reader B.A. Rucker, "do you think regime change in California could be done in under four weeks?" - John McCaslin

Headline on an Associated Press item Friday by Jeff Donn:

"Antiwar Groups Worry About Losing Momentum After War."

Jessica Lynch, the US soldier seized from an Iraqi hospital in a dramatic rescue by special operations forces, fought off Iraqi troops before her capture, shooting several until her ammunition ran out, the Washington Post reported today.

    Shall I be gauche and broach the subject of Jessica Lynch's account of events surrounding her capture, as opposed to that featured by the Baron this morning?  Yes.  But with this caveat.  I have not been paying my usual close attention to events lately, and may in fact have things screwed up.  I will say that her account rang false when I heard it (Iraqi soldiers allowing her to live after that level of resistence?), but I was too much the gentleman to say so.  At any rate, will this impact the Jessica Lynch Story?  Will she have to settle for being portrayed by Ellen DeGeneres instead of Britney Spears now?  Yikes. What would Audie Murphy say?

"After the eucharistic service, in front of the Kelly family, including Kelly's young boys, Dowd spoke about Kelly's social antics as a younger writer. "She seemed not to care a bit that young children were in the room," says one of those who attended the service. "It was embarrassing. Someone needs to put one of those censor chips in her brain."

"The ABA -- also known as the lawyers guild -- is unhappy that a growing number of real estate agents, income-tax preparers, paralegals, credit counselors, self-help books, Internet sites and charity groups provide legal services at far lower prices. So rather than compete, the guild wanted states to adopt its "model" rule and outlaw the competition, reports the Wall $treet Journal.

"The trade association spent its midyear meeting debating a new rule that would prohibit anyone but its own illustrious lawyer class from giving legal advice or working on legal documents. The ABA said this was necessary to shield consumers from fraud and to give nonlawyers the security of knowing what services are legal for them to perform. "

That's not our view. That's the finding of the National Labor Relations Board. In upholding an earlier ruling by an administrative law judge, the Board found that when workers in the Dallas branch of the left-leaning Acorn expressed interest in unionizing, management responded by giving them the old heave-ho. What makes this even more hypocritical is that Kimberly Olsen, the head of Acorn's Dallas operation, was at the time leading the charge for a Dallas "living wage" ordinance. The union in question, by the way, was the famed Wobblies: the International Workers of the World.

The ruling doesn't appear to have attracted any media attention, but it is available in the "Decisions" section on the NLRB Web site (www.nlrb.gov¹) -- and well worth the read. The union, Ms. Olsen told an employee, was "trying to destroy" Acorn, and she said she didn't see why she should have to take orders from employees. Spoken like a true robber baron.

The employees in question were paid $18,000 a year for a 54-hour week. And just what were these latter-day Oliver Twists demanding? Well, one request was that Ms. Olsen and the powers-that-be see their way to granting them one weekend off a month.

Sally Field won an Oscar for her role as Norma Rae, the textile worker who holds up a sign reading "UNION" over the factory floor after getting the sack. Looks as though there are some Acorn workers who know exactly how she felt.

April 14, 2003

Uncle Chuck sent me this .... I was watching 60 minutes and the story was about "Trying to find Saddam's Money" : $20 Billion dollars (hidden money) and where it all comes from. This article is some of what was described on 60 minutes.

Ever heard of Lagardere SCA? No? Well, maybe because it's a French company. OK .. have you ever heard of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.? Probably not, but Hachette Filipacchi publishes some magazines you may have heard of. Those magazines would be Elle, Car &Driver, Women's Day and others. Now it's getting familiar, isn't it? OK, so we have Car &Driver which is published by Hachette Filipacchi which is owned by Lagardere SCA which is a French Corporation. So .. are we finished here? No, not quite. It seems that a man who has been the news quite a bit of late owns around two percent of Lagardere SCA. About $90 million dollars worth. His name? Saddam Hussein. (Saddam also owns Montana Publishing Company located in France which publishes 5% of our nations top magazines) France has every right to disagree with America. But France has moved from simple dissent to active hostility toward America. French President Chirac warned East European nations that if they side with America, France will oppose their membership in the European Union. This week, William Safire reported in the New York Times that France has been secretly helping to arm Iraq -- and has been helping Iraq build long range missiles. These same missiles may soon be used against American soldiers. Just as France is exercising its right to disagree, Americans can exercise their right to boycott -- and avoid helping companies and countries that do not stand with America.   French Products and Companies to Boycott: (Print this list so you will remember)   Air France. Air Liquide. Airbus. Alcatel. Allegra (allergy medication). Aqualung (including: Spirotechnique, Technisub, US Divers, and SeaQuest). AXA Advisors. Bank of the West (owned by BNP Paribas). Beneteau (boats). BF Goodrich (owned by Michelin). BIC (razors, pens and lighters). Biotherm (cosmetics). Black Bush. Bollinger (champagne). Car &Driver Magazine. Cartier. Chanel. Chivas Regal(scotch). Christian Dior. Club Med (vacations). Culligan (owned by Vivendi). Dannon (yogurt and dairy foods). DKNY. Dom Perignon. Durand Crystal. Elle Magazine. Essilor Optical Products. Evian. Fina gas stations and Fina Oil (billions invested in Iraqi oil fields -- guess why they don't want us in there). First Hawaiian Bank. George Magazine. Givenchy. Glenlivet (scotch). Hennessy. Houghton Mifflin (books). Jacobs Creek (owned by Pernod Ricard since 1989). Jameson (whiskey). Jerry Springer (talk show) Krups (coffee and cappuccino makers). Lancome. Le Creuset (cookware). L'Oreal (health and beauty products). Louis Vuitton. Marie Claire. Martel Cognac. Maybelline. Méphisto (shoes and clothes). Michelin (tires and auto parts). Mikasa (crystal and glass). Moet (champagne). Motel 6. Motown Records. MP3.com. Mumms (champagne). Nissan (cars; majority owned by Renault). Nivea. Normany Butter. Parents Magazine. Peugeot (automobiles). Pierre Cardin. Playstation Magazine. ProScan (owned by Thomson Electronics, France). Publicis Group (including Saatchi &Saatchi Advertising). RCA (televisions and electronics; owned by Thomson Electronics). Red Magazine. Red Roof Inns (owned by Accor group in France). Renault (automobiles). Road &Track Magazine. Roquefort cheese (all Roquefort cheese is made in France). Rowenta (toasters, irons, coffee makers, etc.). Royal Canadian. Salomon (skis). Sierra Software and Computer Games. Smart &Final. Sofitel (hotels, owned by Accor). Sparkletts (water, owned by Danone). Spencer Gifts. Sundance Channel. Taylor Made (golf). Technicolor. T-Fal (kitchenware). Total gas stations. UbiSoft (computer games). Uniroyal. Universal Studios (music, movies and amusement parks (owned by Vivendi-Universal). USFilter. Veritas Group. Veuve Clicquot Champagne. Vittel. Vivendi. Wild Turkey (bourbon). Woman's Day Magazine. Yoplait (The French company Sodiaal owns a 50 percent stake). Yves Saint Laurent. Zodiac Inflatable Boats.

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Waiting for Janeane

“I will go to the White House on my knees on cut glass and say, 'hey, you were right, I shouldn’t have doubted you.'” That was Janeane Garofalo on Fox's Bill O'Reilly show, promising what she will do if she is proven wrong and Iraqis welcome U.S. troops who find stores of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  The chance that there are no WMD in Iraq?  ZERO.  Go Janeane.  [Story]

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April 12, 2003

April 11, 2003

Mowin

The lovely and gracious Merrily is over her NCAA/Oklahoma State pout and back to work. She forwards this tale.       "One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in my lawn chair, drinking  beer and watching my wife mow the lawn. The neighbor lady from across the street was so outraged at this that she came over and shouted at  me, "You should be hung."      "I took a drink from my can of Budweiser, wiped the cold foam from my lips, lifted my darkened Ray-Ban Sunglasses and stared directly at this nosy bitch and then calmly replied, "I am, that's why SHE cuts the grass." And I thought my wife mowed the lawn because I was lazy.

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Exclusive Coverage

Two weeks before the Iraq war began, and wishing to rely on my own sources, I gave Cuzzin Ricky my credit card and told him to hightail it to Baghdad.  So far, all I've received for my largesse is a stack of bills from a whorehouse in Marrakesh .  Until today.  I just received this dispatch from the front. "This is a picture of one of our Hogs that just refused to go down. This hog was shot at numerous times. I saw this plane coming in a few hours ago, and we were overjoyed to watch it come home and land. The last picture is one of the pilot (the female). Amazing things are happening here each and every day!" Lt Herriott

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Rooney Tunes

"I have not been a supporter of his. I did not vote for him. And I was very critical of what he did here," Rooney told radio host Don Imus Thursday morning. "And I must say that, fortunately he's president and I'm not," the former Stars and Stripes correspondent confessed. "It appears as though he did the right thing and I didn't think he was doing the right thing. - CBS' Andy Rooney on President George W. Bush

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It's Clear & Present

I don't like this Limbo rant one bit.  If you're not listening, Rush has spent his show today on a NY TIMES article, by CNN's Eason Jordan, in which he admits to knowledge about the political reality in Iraq over the past twelve years.  We're talking torture, murder, etc., on a scale that boggled Jordan's mind to a degree that he failed to tell anyone about it.  Okay, Jordan should have, at the least, kept CNN's on-air talent from being such a Saddam cheerleader.  What a surprise.  CNN is doing the same thing in Cuba.  They did the same thing during the Clinton administration.  CNN is not a news organization, it is a leftist activist enabler.  Raise your hands if this is news to you.  ... I thought so.  But we do not, or should not, invade countries because they have nasty leadership.  And that's not why we're there now.     We invaded Iraq because ... you know this, so scream it out with me, it presented a clear and present danger to the United States of America (and the rest of the world, for that matter).  With this rant - and I know he knows better - Limbaugh seems to give his imprimatur to Clintonian style nation building.  Tsk Tsk.

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Whiners are losers

The Los Angeles Times' Howard Rosenberg says Fox News Channel field reporters "play it mostly down the middle," but the network's New York anchor-interviewers "are notorious for injecting their own views, nearly always conservative and supportive of the Bush administration. What's more, at times they press field reporters to agree. Add to that an overwhelming dominance of right-of-center pundits and guests, and the result is pretty much a wall of conservative opinion."      I reckon Rosenberg prefers Peter Jennings (& ilk) who just can't bring himself to describe American forces as "liberators" of Iraq without couching it as what "many" say or adding what "others" think. [See MRC]     Josh Getlin, also of the LAT, has a somewhat more benign take on the FNC covereage. In a tense New York control room and on hushed studio sets, they watched live, unedited TV footage with astonishment as a statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled and stomped by a cheering crowd in Baghdad. Then the unapologetically patriotic, wisecracking heart of the top-rated cable news channel in the United States stirred to life: "I wonder what the French ambassador to the U.N. is thinking now?" chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume mused on the air.      Anchors made no bones about their patriotic fervor and some ridiculed war critics. says Getlin, and all this has given FOX NEWS its highest ratings in its six year history.  Imagine that. My kids, who are mostly apolitical (at best) have been watching FNC for the first time, and the winner, with them at least, is Ollie North who they just love.  Life is good.

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Item

Godless Bless America: In a field sermon in Bataan in 1942, U.S. Military Chaplain William Cummings uttered the now famous line "There are no atheists in foxholes." But when NBC's Tom Brokaw repeated the remark in a March broadcast about the pending war with Iraq, official atheistdom was quick to complain. And just so you don't think they're kidding, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers is keeping an online list of actual atheists who are or have been in foxholes, which can be accessed at www.maaf.info.

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Sunday's Pudding

"He pointedly referred to international agreements abandoned by the Bush administration, including the Kyoto accord on climate change, the international criminal court and the comprehensive test ban treaty."   A treaty President Clinton himself refused to ask the Senate to ratify.          People are always stopping me in the liquor store and asking, "Rodge, why don't you leave the Clintons alone?  I know you really don't think they're two pieces of half-faced fustilarian ratsbane!"     Yes I do too.  Wednesday night on South Park, the message was the Founding Fathers would be tolerant of all sides in the current political debate, and that's just a plain miss by the usually on target creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  The Founding Fathers, had they foreseen the Clintons, and today's donks, would have drafted clear instructions to have them sliced, diced and rendered into Sunday's pudding.  Here is a recent sample of His Filthy Impeachness' latest outrage.  In a speech last week at the University of Florida, (and don't those kids deserve a whipping?) on one of the worst fighting days in Iraq, Clinton decided to polish his unredeemable legacy by attacking GWB.

Bill Clinton's attacks on his successor reached a new low last week when he told a University of Florida audience that President Bush was planning to invade North Korea.  Though Clinton's address was widely covered in the mainstream press, only the university's campus publication* "The Oracle" noted that he "criticized the Bush administration for looking for multinational support in a possible North Korean invasion."  Clinton's comment may also inflame North Korea's already unstable leader Kim Jong-il, who has become delusional about the prospects of just such a U.S. attack - and who has lately begun threatening to respond preemptively with a  nuclear attack on the continental United States.    * The Oracle is the Univ. of South Florida's campus paper.    Here's the full NewsMax account, although they seem to be confused about their campus newspapers. Clinton Slams Bush, Claims U.S. Preparing to Attack N. Korea Ex-President Bill Clinton's attacks on his successor reached a new low last week when he told a University of Florida audience that President Bush was planning to invade North Korea. Though Clinton's address was widely covered in the mainstream press, only the university's campus publication "The Oracle" noted that he "criticized the Bush administration for looking for multinational support in a possible North Korean invasion." The prediction by the former U.S. president, however erroneous, that the current commander in chief is preparing for a military strike against North Korea is likely to further exacerbate tensions between Pyongyang and Washington, D.C. Clinton's comment may also inflame North Korea's already unstable leader Kim Jong-il, who has become delusional about the prospects of just such a U.S. attack - and who has lately begun threatening to respond preemptively with a nuclear attack on the continental United States. Though coverage of Clinton's speech last Thursday focused on the few words he offered in support of the Iraq war effort, local reporters saw the address very differently. "Clinton's central message was a clear rebuke to Bush administration policies that many believe value unilateral force over multilateral diplomacy and engagement," reported the Gainesville Sun's Carrie Miller. In other quotes picked up by the Sun, Clinton painted Bush as a shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy. "The Bush administration," the ex-president said, "believes they should maximize power at home and abroad and force the changes they want and that multilaterally is often a fool's errand." Clinton suggested that Bush's approach to foreign policy boiled down to "We've got the power, we've got the juice, and we should do the job." And he made no secret of his own disagreement. "I am more in the other camp," the ex-president told the University of Florida crowd. "I think we ought to bend over backward to build a world where we are sharing responsibility, sharing benefits and sharing values."

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April 10, 2003

OH DEER!

COMMENTARY       Oh Deer!     A fragment from a Senate Armed Services hearing. The Pentagon has asked Congress to pass small changes to those environmental laws that hinder military training. Environmentalists are objecting. * * *

John McCain: I am concerned about our ability to train our men and women to engage in combat. And also as a former member of the military, I know the importance of being able to train with the use of live ordnance. And I note with some interest, Ms. Clark, your rest of the story stuff here. Somebody's got to get these reconciled. We've got to get some objective person in here, or entity, because they differ wildly. But one that I don't think there's a lot of difference of concerns the Barry Goldwater Range. The DOD assertion is that [in] calendar year 2000, almost 40% of the live fire missions at the [range] were canceled, and the rest of the story is that we have 99 Sonoran pronghorns in the U.S. You can't run a military efficiently, Ms. Clark, by canceling 40% of the training that's being conducted. You cannot do that. Now, we're faced here with a choice between the pronghorn -- Sonoron pronghorn, and conducting a realistic training for our men and women who as we speak are in harm's way. Is that our choice here? Jamie Rappaport Clark [A senior vice president at the National Wildlife Federation and former head of the Fish & Wildlife Service in the Clinton administration]: No, Sen. McCain... Sen. McCain: What are our choices? Ms. Clark: It is not and it should not. But again, the facts of this case need to be evaluated. I'm painfully aware of the role that [the range] plays in sustainability of the Sonoran pronghorn antelope population, but again... Sen. McCain: Are you aware of the importance of the Barry Goldwater Ranges in maintaining the readiness of our military? Ms. Clark: Yes, sir, I am, but again, the proposal by [Defense] doesn't address the conflict of Barry Goldwater at all, because there is no critical habitat designated for the Sonoran pronghorn. And the Defense proposal is talking about exempting critical habitat. I believe there is a lot of work that needs to be done and conflicts to be worked out... Sen. McCain: Do you think there's a lot of work to be done so that 40% of the training missions don't have to be canceled as we speak? Ms. Clark: Yes, I do. Sen. McCain: Then what is your answer to getting this issue resolved, Ms. Clark? Ms. Clark: Well, we need to set aside what the discussion is today, because today's proposal doesn't accomplish anything to help the [range] achieve military readiness. I do believe it's going to require that the military at Barry Goldwater and the [Arizona] Fish and Wildlife Services have been working together on a very significantly comprehensive Sonoran conservation strategy to try to take pressure off the [range] and to radiate out the species conservation needs and the conservation strategy for that part of Arizona beyond the military borders. And I believe support of that initiative, with high-level expectations of forward movement, would be very well warranted. Sen. McCain: When would we expect this agreement to be reached, Ms. Clark? Ms. Clark: I think that's something you'll have to address to the military and the secretary of the interior, Senator. I would gladly work to see that move forward. Mr. McCain: Since the year 2000, they haven't been able to reach any high-level agreement, and 40% of our training missions are being canceled. That's not acceptable. Ms. Clark: I agree. Sen. McCain: Well, then I hope that you would withdraw objections, which are then lodged by your organization, which then would prevent these training missions from being conducted. Are you ready to do that? Ms. Clark: I am ready on behalf of my organization to work on a common sense solution that ensures that the Sonoran pronghorn don't go extinct while trying to radiate pressure away from the military installation, Senator. Sen. McCain: So we've pretty well established your priorities, Ms. Clark. http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB1049934414523000,00.html Updated April 10, 2003

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Loggerheaded fat-kidneyed joithead donk scum of the week

Bob Somerby is a rarity.  He's a comedian with a leftist world view who is either A) dumb as a sack of hammers, or B) knows he's a liar, but just doesn't care.  We can't find many like him in the entertainment industry, can we?  He was also Al Gore's roommate in college, and would probably deny that he used to watch through a keyhole while the future vice president showered.      These days Bob [can we call him Bob?]  is best known for operating a web site that donk riffraff like James Carville think is a real hoot.  Here and Here, for instance, Somerby took the opportunity to trash the memory of Michael Kelly, who was killed in Iraq last week.  Perhaps because he still fondly remembers the days when Al used to ride him to Chocolate City, Somerby is bitter that Kelly regularly detailed the criminal activities of the Clinton administration, paying special attention to his pal Al.      For being even more of a despicable lout than we expect, even from Democrats, Bob Somerby is our loggerheaded fat-kidneyed joithead donk scum of the week.  Enjoy, Bob.

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April 09, 2003

April 08, 2003

Really Filthy People

I'm watching former Clinton enabler Dee Dee "Knee Pads" Myers defend John Kerry on O'Reilly's show.  "Nobody can attack Kerry's patriotism ... " says Kneepad.  Yeh yeh yeh.      This is becoming a throw-away line, but Kerry's the Vietnam war hero who threw his medals away and joined the KGB sponsored anti-Vietnam War movement.      As a Senator, Kerry was cited by the Wall Street Journal for simultaneously sending English language constituent letters, espousing one position, and Spanish language letters with the opposite.  In short, John Kerry is a piece of unprincipled donk shit.  No principles at all.  You have my permission to punch him, puke or spit on him, or shove a potato up his tailpipe. Even Howard Dean (Is that his name? The Vermont guy?) is a better American.

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If you're not moving ahead, you're falling behind

What the deuce?  Way back on March 10th I was rated number 237 on the Blogosphere Ecosystem chart.  A month later, I'm stil rated 237?  JHC! - Even the filthy bastards at Democrat Underground get a higher rating.  At least I deserve being a Slimy Mollusc, don't you agree?  Hold on.  It's worse than I thought.  A bunch of those links are from my old blogger blog.  Evidently some of you are still going back for Miss Kitty.

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KETCHUP BOY - FOR THE RECORD

"I remember being one of those guys [combat trooper] and reading news reports from home. If America is at war, I won't speak a word without measuring how it'll sound to the guys doing the fighting when they're listening to their radios in the desert... . It's what you owe the troops."  Ketchup Boy Kerry, March 11, Boston Globe. "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." - Ketchup Boy Kerry at town hall meeting in New Hampshire, April 2.

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April 07, 2003

Ball Busters, Inc.

BITTER and her band of BITCH GIRLS have moved to a MT site (http://www.thebitchgirls.us/)  and what a joy it is.  Why?  Black type on a white background.  Tres' mucho bueno!

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Stuff that works

Some of you may remember that I am/was on the verge of leaving my dial-up internet provider in favor of DSL.  Then I found a little service called PROXYCONN DSL accelerator.  It advertises "near broadband speeds at a fraction of the broadband price!"  There's a one week free trial before having to pay $8.99/month, so with nothing to lose I downloaded it (You do have to give your credit card info to start the trial).      It took about 10 minutes of using it to decide I had hit the mother lode!  A little control panel icon displays "effective speed," which varies from 66kbs to 200+.  I have no reason to dispute it.  A few of my favorite blogs that were the slowest loading (one regularly takes upwards of 2 minutes), loaded almost immediately.  In addition, PROXYCONN suppresses popup and banner ads.  I have soiled my britches with delight.  BTW, there is an option to pay semi-annually for $39.95 ($6.67/month) and I'll take it.  Yum Yum.

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The WINNER IS ...

I haven't watched every news source televising Iraqi war coverage, but of those I have Linda Vester of FOX NEWS is the winner in the following news anchor categories: Most compelling delivery Best interview questions Sexier by the minute There can be no serious dissent on the matter.

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IRAQ-O-METER

Cuzzin Ricky alerts us to IRAQOMETER.  Clues to the motivation of those running the site may be gleaned from the sources they rely on for data collection - CNN, washingtonpost.com, iraqbodycount.net, Reuters, abcnews.com, globalsecurity.org, lib.utexas.edu,  MSNBC.   Nevertheless, the numbers presented appear to be accurate, as far as they go.  I can suggest a few additional stats to be tracked.  I'll bet you can too.

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Inspector Clouraines, et al

Since I've been distracted lately, did I miss the great mea culpa from the New York Times, CBS, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Scott Ritter, and all the other battle plan naysayers?  I thought not.

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April 06, 2003

House Guests

I've been busy entertaining house guests since Thursday, as evidenced by the lower than normal quality of postings.  Lots of booze though.  I think we're having a good time.

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More Filthy French

"Vive Chirac. Stop the Jews."

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April 05, 2003

Johnson to Burk: 'EAT ME'

REVIEW & OUTLOOK          Wearing o' the Green When the leader of an American institution looks out his window and sees Martha Burk of the National Council of Women's Organizations, the New York Times and the Rev. Jesse Jackson all blowing their horns, like Jericho the walls soon come tumbling down. At least in most cases. But William "Hootie" Johnson doesn't play to script... .

... And so here we are, only days before the Masters tournament, and the Augusta National Golf Club has stuck to Mr. Johnson's vow not to see the club become another "trophy in their display case." By that he means that if The National decides to open its membership to women, it will be on its time and terms, not the feminists'. And he's even pre-emptively raised his critics one by eliminating all corporate sponsorship this year -- in one stroke rescuing sponsors from Ms. Burk's pickets and the Masters' TV audience from commercials. True, Mr. Johnson did just rescind his edict banning oldsters from the tournament (apart from pleasing Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, it sure doesn't hurt Hootie to have them out there by his side this year). But this is a club with a strong sense of tradition and decorum, reflected in more than its well-tended magnolias and its beloved pimento-cheese sandwiches. Two TV commentators have been bounced in the past: one for referring to the "gallery" as a "mob scene" and another for suggesting that "bikini wax" must have been used to make the greens so fast. Overly fastidious? Perhaps. But even those who could not tell a three wood from a pitching wedge understand that golfers are distinguished from other professional sportsmen by the rarity with which they appear on the evening news at the center of some shooting "incident," drug bust, parole violation or domestic-violence dispute. For golf is that rarity in modern life, an arena where manners are thought a window into character. When Bill Clinton perjured himself, the Senate winked; but his reputation has been eternally sullied by news accounts of his padding his score with mulligans. In a similar vein, Gerald Ford's penchant for slicing the ball into the heads of spectators cemented his reputation as a klutz. And when Ian Woosnam showed understandable fury in the middle of the British Open after his bag was found to have one club over the limit, other pros gently let it be known that it was Mr. Woosnam and not his caddy who bore the ultimate responsibility. Golf does not demand that its players be above normal human likes, dislikes and frustrations. It does, however, insist that things be done and expressed through the ever thinning veneer of public civility. Surely that's not too much to ask of an enterprise built around whacking a little white ball into a hole in the ground. As the Masters contestants prepare to do just that, no doubt Ms. Burk will exercise her constitutional right to make an annoyance of herself, while The National exercises its constitutional right to keep the No Gurlz rule for its well-appointed treehouse. And in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that really matters is this: whether Tiger Woods will walk away from it with his third green jacket in a row. Tony & Tacky Polly Folly: Each year the Collegiate Network issues its annual Polly Awards for the most outrageous examples of political correctness on campus (www.isi.org/cn/). Columbia University's Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, tied for first-place honors this year, for a speech that included the following on suicide bombing: "Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed on the body when no other means will get through. It is both execution and mourning, for both self and other. For you die with me for the same cause, no matter which side you are on. Because no matter who you are, there are no designated killees in suicide bombing. No matter what side you are on, because I cannot talk to you, you won't respond to me, with the implication that there is no dishonor in such shared and innocent death." Flower Power: Just how low can people sink? That's the question a British court put this week to Andrew Clewes and Deborah Febery, the pair accused of stealing flowers left by well-wishers outside the Staffordshire home of a British war widow. Cpl. Stephen Allbutt, a father of two and member of the Queen's Royal Lancers who also saw action in Desert Storm, was killed outside Basra when his tank was hit by friendly fire. "I hadn't even had a chance to read the cards that were on the flowers that were taken," the BBC quoted Mrs. Allbutt as saying.

Original WSJ Article appeared at http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB104942144893117500,00.html?mod=taste%5Fprimary%5Fhs

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Then, how about 673?

SEOUL - The Defense Ministry said yesterday that it will increase the number of troops to be sent to the U.S.-led war on Iraq as the original number 666 began sparking unrest over its "unholy" biblical connotations with the Devil. The ministry said it decided to make an additional dispatch of seven soldiers who will dig wells, a necessity in the desert-like terrain of the Gulf region. - KOREA HERALD

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A CRY FOR TORT REFORM

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Saddam's last gasp:'LET'S ROLL'

During this morning's CENTCOM press briefing, this (paraphrased) question: Male Reporter: (Heavily sarcastic, apparently American, voice ) "General since it now appears that your war is won, but without finding a single weapon of mass destruction, will you be making history by, for the first time, winning a war before finding its cause?"     Had it not been for his "I just want to slap his face" attitude, it's a question all of us might have asked.  I am 99.9999 % certain that plenty of WMD will be found, but just suppose there are none?  Will we employ a "drop WMD."  While it's a fact that enough illegal rockets have already been found to have triggered a U.N. response, for violations of the 1991 mandate  (had the U.N. been a legitimate operation), the political predicate for chem, bio, or nukes was laid down by Bush, and will have to be met.

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April 04, 2003

Duty and sacrifice
     The family of Washington public relations executive Craig Shirley is keeping close tabs on developments in the war with Iraq, given that his nephew — Marine Lance Cpl. Edward Nathan Shirley — is riding high with the 2nd Tank Battalion, D Company.
     The 22-year-old Marine is the son of Mr. Shirley's late brother, ...

When a journalism professor complained to Fox News that anchorman Neil Cavuto "had abandoned objectivity for overt nationalism on the air," Mr. Cavuto responded in short order.
     "Obnoxious, pontificating jerk, self-absorbed, condescending imbecile, Ivy League intellectual Lilliputian," he called the unidentified academic, according to the Baltimore Sun yesterday.
     "There is nothing wrong with taking sides here, professor," Mr. Cavuto said. "You see no difference between a government that oppresses people, and one that does not, but I do."
     He continued, "So am I slanted and biased? You ... bet I am, professor. I'm more in favor of a system that lets me say what I'm saying here rather than one which would be killing me for doing the same thing over there. You say I wear my biases on my sleeve? Better that than pretend you have none." [FULL RANT]

    Maryland used to call itself "AMERICA IN MINIATURE, before changing to the "FREE STATE" (as in 'free lunch') on state licence plates.  I'm suggesting they go back to a somewhat altered version of the original. "AMERICAN DNC IN MINIATURE."

    Since Bob Ehrlich defeated that Kennedy girl, and became our first Republican governor since before the cows came home, the Maryland legislature (firmly held by FFMDCS) have dealt freely from Tom Daschle's trick deck.  They've refused to allow votes on Ehrlich "cabinet" nominations ("disturbingly out of the mainstream"), and yesterday killed Ehrlich's flagship campaign initiative that would allow gambling - at  state race tracks (I'm not making that up).  Maryland's FFMDCS are hoping the lack of slots revenue will make it impossible for Ehrlich not to raise taxes, in order to cover a huge deficit left by that other famous FFMDCS, ex-Governor Parris Glendening.  So what does this teach us?  It teaches us that you can't trust a FFMDCS any further than you can throw him into a lake of turtle feces.

"... she's moderate, and has strong Hispanic roots in the state."

• Marin is challenged by a conservative for the nomination
• Marin is trounced in the primary by the conservative
• The White House & RNC only tepidly support the conservative
• Barbara Boxer, knee-jerk leftist and one of the three dumbest women in Congress, is easily reelected.

    FOX NEWS anchor Shep Smith is interviewing various embedded reporters with our troops in Iraq.  One set up his piece with the news that tobacco is in short supply, especially the chew kind that is mandated at night, lest the glow of a cigarette give their position away.  "Here's a chewer right here, Shep.

"Do you have any chew left?
"One can."
"So, if people want to know what they can send you guys, would that be on the top of your list?"
"No."
"No?  What would top your wish list then?"
"Baby wipes .... and home made chocolate brownies fudge."

"His trademark is the use of liberal-sounding rhetoric -- on health care, education, jobs, tax fairness, the environment -- while his policies do the opposite. To watch his recent address on Medicare and Medicaid (which he wants to gut), you would think you were listening to Ted Kennedy.

"Presumably, Bush resorts to liberal rhetoric because these are the policies the country wants. Don't the voters care when he does the opposite?"

"Bush's march to war has also been marked by one misrepresentation after another. Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, recently exposed as a forgery the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The war is not the cakewalk Bush forecast ... "

An unbending rule of Washington life is that the one thing critics can never forgive you for is being right. This is worth keeping in mind amid the obloquy now being heaped on Donald Rumsfeld.

Judging by all of the blind-quote vituperation the Secretary of Defense is receiving, a casual reader might be surprised to learn that we haven't yet lost the Iraq war. U.S. troops are within 50 miles of Baghdad, probing Republican Guard lines that are being shredded from the air. The surrounded enemy has suicide bombers, guerrilla harassment and Peter Arnett left as an offensive strategy. We can hit the enemy, he can't much hit us.

Yet Mr. Rumsfeld is being assailed for having given the "bum advice" to President Bush that has brought our troops this far this fast. The main substantive accusation seems to be that Mr. Rumsfeld forced the military chiefs to come up with a war plan that did more than repeat the 500,000-man deployment and strategy of the Gulf War. This has offended some of the armchair generals who are claiming through the fog of television that we should have had more troops on the ground.

These are of course the same generals fond of saying that no battle plan ever survives its first meeting with the enemy. Perhaps they've forgotten how complicated it is to move an artillery battery in battle or to fly an Apache helicopter at night, let alone move a division 300 miles in four days. Confusion and mistakes are the norm in war, the issue is how well they are handled. For example, there now seem to be fewer Fedayeen harassing U.S. supply lines than there were last week. Why? We've killed many of them.

Yes, it would have been better had the Turks agreed to allow the armored 4th Infantry to march from the north, as the original war plan envisioned. But the Turkey failure was diplomatic, not military. Last time we looked, the State Department was in charge of diplomacy.

The Rumsfeld war plan also had to be designed with a far smaller military than we had in 1991. To refresh some memories, defense spending fell in absolute terms in seven of eight years of the Clinton Presidency. At the time this was called the "peace dividend," believe it or not. Colin Powell was able to deploy the Ronald Reagan war machine in 1991; Mr. Rumsfeld inherited the rump Clinton model, about 40% smaller in troops, older planes and ships.

Mr. Rumsfeld is a payback target now precisely because he bucked the military status quo. He has fought for more (and smarter) defense spending against a Congress that would rather build more highways and subsidize more corn fields. He has challenged the Army brass to do as well as the Marines in introducing technology and mobility into their strategic doctrine. Note that most of the critical TV generals are retired Army, not Air Force.

As for the war on terror, the Defense Secretary is among those who believe the best homeland security is to pursue terrorists in their havens. This is what the Iraq expedition is all about. The opponents of the Rumsfeld strategy have been horrified to discover that Mr. Bush agrees with this; or even worse, that Mr. Bush is driving the strategy that Mr. Rumsfeld is implementing. Thus the piling on Mr. Rumsfeld now in the hope of dividing the President from his Defense chief. Yesterday's Washington Post article quoting highly critical "former senior Republican government officials and party leaders," though none by name, was especially cowardly.

With American troops poised near Baghdad, there are difficult war calls to come. One is how long to soften up the Republican Guard from the air before going for the kill on the ground. That is a decision best made by military commanders in theater, in consultation with the Pentagon, not by the White House and certainly not by TV commentators.

It might be possible to repeat the Gulf War luxury of weeks of preparatory bombing. But this war is not taking place in a vacuum, and there is a problem with the stability of our Arab allies. The faster the war is over the better for Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Iraqi people. Defense secretaries are paid to consider those political factors when they work with commanders on such military decisions as when to take Baghdad.

All in all the Rumsfeld war plan seems to be succeeding very well. Angered by Saddam's criminal tactics, and determined now that American lives are at stake, public support is firming behind it. The one fatal attraction would be to fall now for a "diplomatic pause" or cease fire. As we heard Mr. Rumsfeld say on Sunday, that isn't part of his plan.

SCOTT RITTER AWARD As for McCaffrey, he must be honing himself for a run at some office as a donk. In today's NYT he trashed Rummy (as he did on the NBC news show I watched), at the same tiime his article praising him ran in the WSJ. Here's a sample:

The initial success of the CENTCOM attack has been impressive. Gen. Tommy Franks's superb air-land-sea forces have achieved total air dominance, sunk the remainder of the Iraqi navy, and achieved a blitzkrieg success in plunging an Army-Marine three-division task force 300 miles into Iraq up to the gates of Baghdad. Special-operations forces by the thousands infiltrated throughout Iraq, seized the western deserts preventing a potential attack on the Israelis, stabilized the Kurdish front with the support of airborne troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and conducted direct action and strategic reconnaissance missions throughout the theater of operations.

There have been setbacks. No plan survives contact with the enemy without significant disruptions caused by enemy action, weather, terrain or miscalculation. But while early criticisms of the Pentagon have been overheated, the American public needs to start looking at Iraq as a war -- like all wars -- that we must fight hard to win.

WASHINGTON, DC—Frustrated with the United Nations' "consistent, blatant regard for the will of its 188 member nations," the U.S. announced Monday the formation of its own international governing body, the U.S.U.N. [Guess who]

"Yesterday, an American warplane attacked two buses on the highway between Baghdad and Ahman," Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf told reporters.

"Those people on those two buses are human shields coming to participate in defending civilian installations like water sanitation stations, electricity generation stations, and so on."  [Full]

"He is a threat. He's a murderer and a thug. There's no doubt we can do this. We're stronger; he's weaker. You're looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I'd be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished."

"[The politicians] support the war resolution, while decrying Bush's tactics and diplomacy, and sanctimoniously curry favor by supporting the troops with resolutions. ... This trilogy of shame — craven, hypocritical and dumb in equal measures — is the hallmark of the Barbara Boxer-Tom Daschle wing of the Democratic Party. They bear such rage toward President Bush that they will fiddle and debate, a la the United Nations, while the world chokes on nerve gas and hypocrisy."

"In order to vote, you basically had to bow before the cross," said Mr. Meltzer, who voted in a Methodist church hall last year. "I was sick for a week."

"I was afraid that a major display of American flags would represent a signal if done by the college to those people who are opposing the war that we're coming down against them." - [details]

"Certainly, a bombardment of this magnitude, involving both precision-guided munitions and iron bombs, must be having a significant impact.

"To put it differently, if this is not having a significant impact, then everything the United States has believed about war for the last decade has become inoperative. This is the best shot the United States has in its inventory; it is its roundhouse punch. We now are seeing the air campaign in its quintessential form. If this does not take down Baghdad's command and control systems, they are no longer susceptible to air attack. If the Al Medina survives the kind of pounding it is taking and will take in the coming days, then they have solved the problem of surviving massive bombardment."

"Is wartime changing our landscape? Sunday's New York Times "Sunday Styles" section ran this front page piece: "Surprise, Mom: I'm Against Abortion." The subhead: "Parents expecting young people to take the liberal view, as in the past, learn otherwise." The straightforward report doesn't even sound alarmed. A Berkeley expert is quoted: "Abortion rights isn't a rights issue -- it's become for increasing numbers of young people a moral, ethical issue."

The main finding: "teenagers and college-age Americans are more conservative about abortion rights than their counterparts of a generation ago." The term "pro-life" appears in abundance. Young opponents even use liberalism against itself: the piece quotes A Boston College student who calls herself a "survivor of abortion" because she was adopted. On top of everything else, yesterday's Times ran not a single angry letter to the editor about this stunning departure from orthodoxy. In peacetime, reader mood surely would have been more vigilant." - [Wlady Pleszczynski, Life Can Be a Dream (posted 4/1/03 1:10 a.m.)]