Dubya Congratulates the Champs

Irish Joke

Two Irish hunters went on holiday to Canada and got a pilot to fly them to the wilderness to hunt moose. They managed to bag 6. As they were loading the plane to return, the pilot said the plane could take only 4 moose.

The two lads objected strongly.

"Last year we shot six. The pilot let us take them all and he had the same plane as yours."

Reluctantly, the pilot gave in and all six were loaded. However, even on full power, the little plane couldn't handle the load and went down.

Somehow, surrounded by the moose bodies, Paddy, Mick & the pilot survived the crash. After climbing out of the wreckage, Paddy asked Mick, "Any idea where we are?"

Mick looked around. "I think we're pretty close to where we crashed last year."

Racism At Planned Parenthood

Don't look now Planned Parenthood, but your eugenicist past is still showing:

Idaho donor: The abortion—I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?
PP Rep: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.
Idaho donor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.
PP Rep: Yes, absolutely.
Idaho donor: And we don’t, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.
PP Rep: Understandable, understandable.
Idaho donor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college
PP Rep: Alright. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited, and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

Hat Tip: Brothers Judd

Three Schools of Philosophy

An excellent post by Richard Vigilante on the Buckley legacy over at The Corner:

Jacques Maritain famously said that there were never more than three schools of philosophy:

The idealists who believe that getting the truth was easy. These are the conventional liberals, whom Bill gently mocked.

The nominalists, the Sophists, who deny truth altogether; these are the hard Left,
the true enemy he rallied us against.

And finally the realists, who accept that the truth is out there but is fiercely difficult to lock down.

Soccer Player Dresses As Hitler

How do things like this happen? Did a conversation like this occur?

Hans: Hey Andre are you going to the Grand Final ceremony?

Andre: Yeah, I think so.

Hans: Is it a formal thing?

Andre: I don't know, I'll probably dress up like Hitler.

Hans: What?

Andre: I'll probably dress up like Hitler, I have a Hitler outfit I've been meaning to wear out.

Hans: Is it a costume party?

Andre: Not that I know of, I just wanna dress like Hitler.

Hans: Do you think that's a good idea?

Andre: Why not, it's a great outfit, it fit's real well and besides Hitler was like sixty years ago.

Hans: Would you mind if I wore my Heydrich ensemble?

William F. Buckley Jr. Has Died

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that my favorite and perhaps only William F. Buckley Jr. quote is when he said "Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. " While the quote itself has little or nothing to do with the great man's life long vocation of promoting conservatism, it contains something rarer than brilliant political acumen for which he is so fondly remembered. There, in brief, is truth and beauty and the appreciation of both. There are those who will tell you that we live in dour times, that there has been nothing to be proud of, that we are surrounded by ugliness. William F. Buckley Jr. knew better. We live in the best possible time and in the best possible place, if we have the wisdom, courage and strength to make it so. It begins with knowing that despite whatever else may plague you, there are beautiful things readily available to assuage and lift you.

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Whoops :

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or
down.

Obama: Clueless on Iraq

Barack Obama has brilliantly managed to say next to nothing on his way to defeating the not so inevitable Hillary Clinton on his way to clinching the Democratic nomination. He should stick to that, because he's clearly out of his mind when he says:

• That Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we invaded.
• We need to bolster NATO in Afghanistan with additional American troops - Why don't we DEMAND that our useless NATO allies actually fight? Obama thinks their resistance is because we "blundered" in Iraq? Did they say that Senator or did you? Couldn't it be that they're just a bunch of poltroons?
• If Al Qaeda builds a base in Iraq??? Where has this man been the last four years?

Hillary couldn't attack Obama from the right, McCain is under no such limitation. I wonder how Obama will fare when hope and change, change and hope no longer cut it?

It's also ironic that a man who platform is entirely focused on the future, or so he says, can't get his agile Harvard mind around the fact that the war in Iraq is reality. Whether or not we should be there in the first place could not matter less, we're there now. What would he do as president to ensure the best possible outcome for the US and our interests?

Do You Think I Need To Get Out?

Obama In A Turban

That's it, now I won't vote for him. The once inevitable Clinton candidacy has really screwed the pooch if this is the sort of crap they think will work. Either that or people are much more stupid than I imagine.

Run Ralph, Run!

Ralph Nader is running for president, bwahahahahaha?

A Shit Sandwich

A woman kills herself after aborting her twins. Who is responsible for this feast of despair and death? There's no shortage of likely candidates. A better question might be, why wasn't there one person who could of done something, could of said something, could of offered some encouragement or some bit of hope to forestall this orgy of despair? Are you that person?

The Best Argument For Drinking

From Modern Drunkard Magazine:

What the Drys don’t seem able to grasp is that a drinker can walk into a bar, and a handful of transactions later, attain the same level of euphoria that the teetotaler would have to strangle a half dozen or so kittens to achieve.

O.C.M.S. - Wagon Wheel

Voice, bass, fiddle, guitar, banjo and guitjo, yeah I'd call that a string band.

John Kerry's Helicopter Incident

A helicopter carrying three us senators, Democrats John Kerry and Joe Biden and Republican (In Name Only) Chuck Hagel made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan this morning because of a snowstorm.

No one was hurt, but somehow John Kerry and only John Kerry was awarded yet another Purple Heart, three Air Medals and a South West Asia campaign ribbon.

When asked for comment, Joe Biden in a completely original, extemporaneous remark said that "We had nothing to fear, but fear itself." Chuck Hagel agreed wholeheartedly at first, then upon of further reflection with his pollster decided to disagree in a principled stand.

More Stupidity

Speaking of Antics

Read about the whole story, spring training is here "with its pregame ballyhoo, antics, rhubarbs, scheming, luck; its look as if little or nothing is going on."

Oh Boy

Believe it or not my kids think this is clever, but it's very possible that they're just humoring me.

Sam Adams Is Sharing Hops

This sounds like a very decent thing to do.

I Got The Fever

That's right, it's a 19 inch German Brown caught on a size 12 Hares Ear Sulphur "Usual" at a secret location last May. He was the only trout I kept last year and he was delicious.
I need to go fishing.
The other night I spent six hours inventorying my rods, reels and spools. I even created a color coded Excel spreadsheet. The next night I replaced all my backings, as if I'll ever see one, and cleaned all my lines.

Secret Prejudice, Overt Stupidity

And it's not just race. A large and growing number of psychologists now argue that a welter of prejudices are simmering just below the surface of society: prejudices against many ethnic groups, against women, gays, the elderly, and outsiders like the homeless and drug addicts. The big question is whether these unconscious animosities are potent enough to actually shape our actions, to make us do things we ourselves find shameful. A new study suggests that, unhappily, the answer is yes.

Would you hire a drug addict? Let a homeless person to baby sit your kids? No? Then you sir/madam are worse than Hitler. I joke of course. Disliking someone because of their parents place of birth or the color of their skin without any knowledge of their character is prejudice. Disliking or avoiding somebody who continually does something untoward is not, it's common sense. I think Martin Luther King may have described making this distinction as "...not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Continued drug abuse and homelessness are character issues. Being born Hungarian is not. You would think that Wray Herbert, the author of the tripe above, would know the difference.

Some Little Known Facts About Abraham Lincoln

Today is Abraham Lincoln's 199th birthday. Here are some interesting, to me anyway, facts about Lincoln from the Constitution Center:

At 6 foot, 4 inches, Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president.
Lincoln was the first president to be born outside of the original thirteen colonies.
Lincoln was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration. John Wilkes Booth (his assassin) can be seen standing close to Lincoln in the picture.
There are no direct descendants of Abraham Lincoln even though he had 4 sons.
During the Civil War, telegraph wires were strung to follow the action on the battlefield. But there was no telegraph office in the White House, so Lincoln went across the street to the War Department to get the news.
The contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night of the assassination weren’t revealed until February 12, 1976. They contained two pairs of spectacles, a chamois lens cleaner, an ivory and silver pocketknife, a large white Irish linen handkerchief, slightly used, with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch fob without a watch, a new silk-lined, leather wallet containing a pencil, a Confederate five-dollar bill, and news clippings of unrest in the Confederate Army, emancipation in Missouri, the Union party platform of 1864, and an article on the presidency by John Bright.
Lincoln was the only president to receive a patent, for a device for lifting boats over shoals.
Lincoln’s son, Robert, who was in Washington when his father was killed, was also on the scene when President Garfield was shot in 1881, and when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Lincoln and his wife held séances in the White House. They had a great interest in psychic phenomena.
Lincoln was the first president to wear a beard.
Lincoln had the largest shoe-size documented. He wore a size 14!

No Shit Neil

Music can't change the world. Well Neil, if you hadn't been smoking the chronic for the last 40 years you may have realized this a little sooner.

Bizarre Dreams

A 2005 study carried out by the British Cheese Board discovered that when it came to dream types, Stilton cheese seemed to cause odd dreams, with 75% of men and 85% of women experiencing bizarre and vivid dreams after eating a 20g piece of the cheese 30 minutes before going to sleep.

Since this was in Britain I don't imagine these people brushed their teeth prior to going to bed. Perhaps the bizarre dreams were caused by moldy cheese breath.

dada's Dim Live in 2003

Off of their excellent 1992 album Puzzle, one of the very few pop albums that will sound decent on a good audio system.

The Declining Terrorist Threat July 10, 2001

A New York Times nitwit and erstwhile prognosticator screws the pooch. Read the whole thing and wonder how someone could have so many reasons to be so wrong, then wonder no more as you read the author's byline: Larry C. Johnson is a former State Department counterterrorism specialist. Sleep tight.
Hat Tip Insty

Tornadoes

Tornadoes scare the hell out of me. I'd have a phobia for them except there's no such thing as an unreasonable fear of something that is so destructive. Oddly enough I find them beautiful as well, not so beautiful that I'd chase them around Oklahoma and Kansas though.

We had one killer tornado here in Connecticut when I was a kid. We lived high in the hills of Glastonbury and you could see the storm that spawned the tornado half way across the state in Windsor Locks on the Massachusetts border. I knew something was unusual that day because the sky was green, pistachio ice cream green. It was eerie. I haven't seen anything like that before or since. With our undulating topography in the North East it's rare to see storms from very far off. Not so in the plains, where you can see the tops of storms hundreds of miles away.

I Voted Today

All the GOP candidates where on the ballot, even those who have withdrawn already. The pleasant octogenarian who was wo-manning the GOP side of the polls said that voter turnout in West Hartford had been light, but of course the poll worker on the GOP side in West Hartford would say that wouldn't she?

For the record I voted for non-committed because I don't particularly like any of the GOP candidates still running. This November the GOP candidate, whoever that is, will have to have been caught sacrificing Chocolate Labrador puppies to Baal to prevent me from voting for them. I hope whoever gets the GOP nod can unite the party and present a coherent and powerful campaign against what seems to be two potential Democratic lightweights.

Super Tuesday

A lachrymose Hillary Clinton was in town today for a timely weeping before super Tuesday. Let's see, wasn't it just 28 days ago that the normally austere wife of a former president last wept on cue?
Whom do I vote for tomorrow, as if it matters? I can't vote for McCain and think Romney is a bit of a pussy. I'd sooner become a Baptist myself before voting for Huckabee and Ron Paul is a GOP version of Dennis Kucinich. Does Connecticut allow write ins? Is it crazy to throw a vote away for Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan or Tom Regan for that matter?
I hope something changes between now and November to change the candidates, their positions and/or how I feel about them. Maybe a triumphant HRC moderating leftward will enrage the GOP base and energize the moderates to oppose her. Maybe John McCain will get knocked of his horse on the road to Damascus and after a period of blindness, become born again hard. Maybe the monkeys flying out my butt will bring me back a pizza.
Since I live in Connecticut, it probably won't matter who I vote for in November, if I vote at all, because Connecticut's 7 electoral votes are all going to go the Democratic candidate anyway.

Berkeley Waffles

A week after blasting the Marines as "unwelcome intruders" in Berkeley, two city council members want the city to back off the declaration that ignited the wrath of the nation's right wing and inspired a Republican senator to try to sever Berkeley's federal funding.

Cowards.

Separated at Birth: Audrey Hepburn, Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman

Sox Sign Sean Casey

This seems like a no brainer, an A1 guy and decent player who still has some baseball left in him on the cheap, relatively speaking. If half of what I read about the guy is true, it's a good thing the Sox signed him before his canonization. He'll do fine in Boston both on the field and off. The suits in the Red Sox organization seem to have figured out something the Yankees haven't, namely that character and team chemistry matter. Almost all the Yankee players are outstanding, many are arguably the best at what they do. As a team they seem to be somewhat less than the sum of their parts.

MIT Morosoph Brings Fake Bomb To Logan Airport

Is this what passes for clever at MIT?