John Kerry

Just in time for Veterans Day Democratic Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts John F. Kerry has found a new way to break faith with American servicemen:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you dont, you get stuck in Iraq.

This man is despicable. He takes two positions on every issue, has delusions of grandeur and is an insufferable prick. That's just my opinion, one guy typing out loud. He owes an apology to every American Serviceman everywhere. You see John, not all of us are born with silver spoons stuck in our pie holes. Some of us had to pay for college ourselves. Some of us love our country and want to serve it, not be served by it. Some of us despite serving as enlisted men, looking at clouds or translating Korean or jumping out of airplanes and shooting at people are pretty fucking smart. Smart enough to know an asshole when we see one.

Martin Luther

Today, Halloween, in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door at Wittenberg Castle church. I invite Zaphod and Cultman to comment and defer to their insight and expertise.

Three Quotes, Two Thoughts on Beethoven

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
Tom Stoppard

U2 and Green Day

Cool song

And here's the whole set.

Global Warming, Chicken Little

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that global warming will ultimately result in "green taxes". Just in case you forgot how liberals view taxes as the solution to everything. Before we all get our shorts in knot, let's get some facts straight.

• The climate has warmed almost a full degree in the last one hundred years.
• NO ONE knows for CERTAIN why this is so.
• In 1883 when Krakatoa erupted it snowed in July in New England.
• Volcanoes have been unusually quiet in the last 100 years.
• Our planet is supposed to be 5 billion years old, don't you think jumping to conclusions based on 100 years of data, some of which is suspect, is a little rash?

The Krakatoa eruption in 1883 caused upwards of 25 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris to be blown into the atmosphere. To put that into perspective, that's like twelve 1968 Chrysler Imperials running non stop for 6 hours. This was not the first time this volcano cooled the earth, there were events in 416 a.d. and 535 a.d. which caused global cooling and famine.
My point in bringing up Krakatoa is that long before we have to worry about our atmosphere heating up dramatically, I would wager that we will have to endure a few non-summers due to volcanic activity. When I was in high school, all the science magazines were blathering about the coming Ice Age, since we are long, long over due for one. How do you think we would do if the grain fields in Canada were once again under miles of ice and if July snow storms in New York City never melted? Call me an optimist but I prefer what we have right now.

Fall Back

I love October, it's my favorite month of the year, but I dread the coming darkness of the New England winter. When I was in high school, I got on the bus in the dark and came home in the dark, even then I found it depressing. I remember one year when I was a kid when we didn't "fall back" at all. Even though my bus trip to school was nearly an hour it was still pitch black when I got to school. Kids were getting clipped left and right walking to school so they came up with these "hot spots", little reflective dots you were supposed to place on your coat and book bags.
Over at Dr. Helen's blog she has an interesting post on S.A.D., seasonal affective disorder, be sure to read the comments. I think the best treatment would be a to spend February fly fishing for Bonefish somewhere tropical.

Crikey!

The U.S. has banned the importation of Vegimite:

The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals. Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.

Great. Now what am I supposed to eat while listening to Men At Work?

David Eckstein

How can you not like the guy? He does more, with arguably less, than any other player in either league. There is something about watching somebody overcome whatever limitations they might have by sheer hustle that I find inspiring. Watch him next time, he plays the game like a Jack Russel Terrier chasing the last rat on earth.

The Fox Kerkuffle

A few partially hatched thoughts on Michael J. Fox and the Missouri senate race.

• Fox is Canadian, why doesn't he stump for someone in his own government or are they too busy up there finding ways to be unoffensive?
• Canada has socialized medicine, didn't Hillary try to make our health care system like theirs? Apparently Fox, being a Canadian, thinks his chances are better down here. What does that tell you about socialized medicine?
• The science behind stem cell research is not nearly as promising as it's proponents would have you believe. If was such a sure thing, government funding would not be necessary.
• Some have accused Fox of being off his meds for dramatic effect in the commercial. Others have countered with great alacrity that Jim Caviezel who did a commercial giving the opposing view is not really Jesus. Ignore this claptrap and focus on the issue.
• People are afflicted with diseases that stem cells may one day relieve. Pluripotent stem cells come from embryos that are just a few days old.
• Sentient, voting humans may one day be treated with genetic material of insentiant humans that can't speak or vote.
• If you have pluripotent stem cells in the lab, you took a human life to get them. Ask me when I have Parkinson's Disease, God forbid, and I'll tell you that's a fair trade. If only we could get the consent of the donor.
• Last and most importantly, Missouri Amendment 2 was written in such away that it sounds like it forbids exactly what it allows. Why is that?

Soul Searching

Hugh Hewitt interviews Andrew Sullivan about Sullivan’s new book, The Conservative Soul. Here's the transcript.

Sullivan doesn't acquit himself well but Hewitt's claim to be an "Evangelical Roman Catholic Presbyterian" didn't help him. I may understand what Hewitt is saying but it left him in a bad position to challenge Sullivan on his theology.

Father George Rutler In First Things

Gazing upon the ruins of Timgad in North Africa, a city founded as Thamugas by the emperor Trajan in 100 a.d., and destroyed by the Vandals after it had lost its cultural balance, Hilaire Belloc wrote: “We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”

Read the whole thing and think about how the counter culture has "improved" the lives of millions of Americans.

Jeter On A-Rod

Don't get me wrong, I still hate the Yankees but I think it's funny when people try to get Derek Jeter to say something crappy about a team mate. He's far too classy a guy for that nonsense.

Jeter said. "If I would ever have any conversations with anyone, I'd keep it between me and who I'm speaking with."

Happy Saint Crispian's Day

And Crispin, Crispian shall ne'er go by from this day until the ending of the world but we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, Be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves acursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks, that fought with us upon St. Crispin's day!

Who Do They Keep In Prison?

A convicted sex offender, who served time in a federal prison after he was caught soliciting sex from boys over the Internet, was arrested Tuesday after he was caught looking at child pornography on a computer at the main branch of the Hartford Public Library, officials said.

So they put this guy in the federal pen, yet inexplicably he still wants to have sex with children? SO - they let him out and now he's caught at a library doing "inappropriate" activity. What did they think this guy would do? Go away and sin no more? I'm sorry to seem like a hard ass, but if your particular bent is illegal, i.e. sex with children, nothing is going to change that. Nothing. As a society do we we concern ourselves with Mr. Murtagh and his rights or the rights of the innumerable innocent children he would victimize if given the chance? As Helen Lovejoy would say "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

The Tooth Fairy Cometh

Just this summer I threw out the bottle of children's Tylenol we bought for when he was teething. Does anyone know how much the Tooth Fairy leaves nowadays?

Debate Interrupted

The debate between Alan Schlesinger, Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman was interrupted ostensibly by supporters of Ned Lamont and a Lyndon Larouche nut job. Why is it that people who purport to be democratic can't allow others to present their views? This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. In other instances the subject of debate and the participants have been different but the political stripe of the hecklers the same, what gives?

Look No Further

If you want an example of how our criminal justice system is broken look no further:

EAST HARTFORD -- A man convicted of killing his girlfriend in 1975 and murdering an accomplice in a Hartford bank robbery in 1981 was arrested over the weekend after threatening to kill his wife, police said. Henry Robinson, 64, of 211 Long Hill St., was on parole Saturday night when he got into an argument with his wife at their home, police said.

If you read the whole story it gets worse, apparently this career felon and murderer shot at a policeman as well, which forces me to ask the obvious questions; Who let this animal out of his cage and are they still employed?

I Hoped For More

When I read this headline "Hoffman fury at Hollywood 'euthanasia' ", I was encouraged to hear that someone as prominent as Dustin Hoffman would talk about this somewhat controversial issue.

THE double Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman has made an angry attack on the "euthanasia” of the film industry, which he complains tries to “bury” any film that is not an instant cash cow.

Boy do I feel silly. What have we become when as a culture we speak of films in terms of "euthanasia" and routinely ignore the lives of the unborn, the infirm or the inconvenient? Those in favor of legalized euthanasia speak of those poor souls with no hope of recovery and racked with pain who may, in truth, wish to die sooner rather than later. What they will never mention, either made mute by their genuine advocacy for the afflicted or sheer mendacity is that once the euthanasia genie is out of the bottle, many who would rather live will die a sanitized death of expedience.

The Stench of Desperation

I think the Lamont campaign is grasping at straws here:

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Ned Lamont's campaign filed a complaint with the Federal election Commission today, accusing Sen. Joe Lieberman of failing to account for $387,000 in petty cash his campaign spent days before the Democratic primary.

The Importance of Dental Hygiene

Before After