*sigh*

Virginia Tech massacre report critical of university's response to rampage that killed 33

Good grief. A "rampage" didn't kill anyone. One nutjob murdered 32 people before putting himself out of everyone else's misery.

And for fuck's sake, the shooter was not a victim!


Hard not to notice that the "what should have been done" report doesn't include "allowing staff and students with valid state conceal-carry weapon permits to bring their weapons onto campus so when someone starts shooting they can shoot back."

Silver lining

The good news is ISU basketball starts in 69 days.

Oh. FRED!

is announcing his candidacy the day of Saints@Colts.

Yes, that's how I measure time.

Heh. Heh heh.

I haven't been reading the Des Moines Register sports page as religiously as I should be, but it comes as no surprise that the top two articles today are:

ISU QB Bret Meyer "steadying influence."
Hawkeye player gets new lawyer.

If anyone needs me, I'll be on the couch listening to the ISU game. They have a new coach, a former defensive coordinator, which I hope doesn't impact Bret Meyer's chance at an NFL career (7,979 yards so far...) next year.

Since 1998, the Cyclones are 27-9 when playing in August and September.

It all turns to shit when the BigXII play starts; I'll be waiting for basketball in about four weeks.

Sad.

Unattended toddler drowns in tub, teenage brother may or may not be charged.

I'm pretty sure you can't charge someone with felony stupidity, or there would hardly be anyone left on the streets.

I suppose they could make him take a child-care class, but if he didn't just learn the important concepts of the "water safety" chapter, he's not going to.

Lotta poor people in Milwaukee

Unshocking. I drive through it every day.

But if this article is supposed to make me feel bad and want to volunteer to hand over more of my paycheck to the state of Wisconsin--quotes about $4 cups of coffee and Ozaukee County--for redistribution, it failed. For starters, I can't afford to own a house ANYWHERE in WI, and I live and work in neighborhoods where no one in their right mind would open a coffee shop (the Subway a block from work went out of business in less than a year). I need my paycheck so I can get the hell out of renting shitty apartments.

Then, the main anecdote is a 41-year-old grandmother of five. Nothing wrong with a 41-yo grandmother in theory; it's better for a woman to have a baby when she's twenty than to wait until her mid-thirties. But all five grandchildren live with her. The article doesn't mention the whereabouts of the parents, but by my math, that's somewhere between two and ten adults who aren't acting like adults.

If this woman's kids hadn't chosen to dump their offspring on her, her "poverty trap" springs wide open. If the parents were raising their own damn kids, she has time to get into some additional education or take a longer bus ride to a better paying job. Even if they live with her to save money, they could still contribute a paycheck to the household income, or leave her with time to improve her own situation...(Can baby daddies be forced to give child support to their child's maternal grandmother if she's raising the baby?)

But nowhere in this article does anyone mention that people having babies they don't bother to care for could be a factor in a city's poverty rate.

I feel really bad for this woman; I had to live with my sister for a couple of months when I couldn't find a job that paid more than $6/hr and I felt like shit every second until I found a job and moved to Milwaukee. But a string of bad choices I made led up to that period of my life, and a whole string of bad choices this woman and her children made have led to this period in her life. I expect to pay for my own bad choices (I think I've finally retired all the debt accrued during my last bout of unemployment, but my credit score is hosed), but I draw the line at subsidizing the bad choices of others.

Profiling?

Mark Steyn makes an interesting point, as usual:

If Senator Craig had gone into the stall, rolled out his prayer mat, yelled "Allahu Akbar!" and been observed attempting to weaponize the ballcock, the undercover cop would have shrugged, "Do I really want to get stuck with another four-week stint in Sensitivity Training hell?" and gone about his business.

The construction is kind of awkward for a band, but "Weaponize the Ballcock" would be a great name for an album.

But I'm really surprised you can get arrested for "soliciting" gay sex--not offering to pay someone for it, just making gestures "understood" to be solicitations--in MINNEAPOLIS. I use the phrase "gay mecca of the Midwest" because it's faintly ironic (in the city of Mecca, gay people are beaten by the religious police), and because the more common "San Fran on the Mississippi" tars them with an anti-American brush I don't quite feel they deserve (some neighborhoods in St. Paul, OTOH...). Seriously, every gay Iowan I've known, except one who went to Colorado, has relocated to Minneapolis because there is a large gay community and the straights are more or less "enlightened." Their Pride festival is two weeks. The last time I was in downtown Minneapolis, a week before the Pride Festival, it was festooned with rainbow flags, and a gay club had two-story banners of shirtless men out front. Does this sound like a town that reviles gay people and/or homosexual acts?

Just seems like there would have been a test case built around someone arrested in a Mpls restroom at least ten years ago. Or maybe there was, and the straights aren't as "enlightened" as I've been led to believe.

(I'm also reminded of all the "George Bush's fascist Christian thug Gestapo is going to round up all the gays!" rhetoric I heard around Mpls and Iowa City around the 2004 election. Not sure why I'm not hearing that again this week, unless three years with no evidence sent it down the memory hole. Arresting a Republican as a cover is the sort of diabolical "Rovian" touch conspiracy theorists eat for breakfast.)

Weaponize the ballcock!

Total eclipse of the moon

Total Lunar Eclipse starts at 3:51 a.m. CDT.

Moonset in MKE is 6:16 a.m., so we'll miss the ending.

Two great tastes that taste great together...

I was trying to ignore current events over the weekend, because I'm getting concerned about my growing level of cynicism, but somehow this filtered through and made me smile.

Colts D looked good last night, or the Lions are worse than usual, I'm not sure which.

Go west, young people.

In the early 20th century, low-income Americans migrated from areas of the country with high unemployment to areas with lots of jobs. See also Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland...

In the early 21st century, the government will pay you to stay poor and unemployed in Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland while jobs go unfilled west of the Mississippi.

But--waah!--the culture out west is DIFFERENT, and Americans have ROOTS in the inner cities, and we can't expect people to have some initiative and make their own decision to improve their lives (because we're liberals and we know what's best for them)!

*blink* Don't the "international workers" and "outsourced Texans" taking these jobs face the same issues?

Dunno; it just seems so obvious to me. Maybe that's because I've moved to new places--including a crappy little town I did NOT want to live in--four times to take a job so I could keep litter in the catbox. If I couldn't find an entry-level job around here--especially if I had a kid in MPS!--I'd be saving up for a bus ticket (heck, bus fare to where the jobs are would be an excellent use of "welfare-to-work" monies). But I'm weird. And I'm not trying to buy votes by handing out cash and importing new voters.

Something a little lighter

NFL Reports Strong Sales Of Michael Vick's 2008 Jersey

I wondered how long that would take...

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran the obligatory "Waaah! Suffering children!" editorial today, about the deportation of the illegal immigrant "activist" from Chicago leaving her 8-year-old son behind.

The only person responsible for that child's suffering is his mother. She chose to enter the country illegally and give birth here, knowing full well (because she'd been deported once already) what the risks were. She further chose to commit Social Security fraud in Chicago.

You want to feel sad about the fate of some children?

Xavier Brown
Unnamed girls, age 7 and 1.5
Zina Linnick, Adre’Anna Jackson, and two other unnamed girls
Alex Tsuji
Dani Countryman
another unnamed 15-yo girl...

And those college students in Newark, and the high school student from Port Washington, and babies that didn't get to be born, and hundreds of kids growing up without a parent who was killed by someone in the county illegally...it goes on and on and on. Most of the articles time out after 30 days.

I don't have any sad left for a woman who CHOSE to fuck up her kid's life.

Interesting.

A friend of mine insists there is no vote fraud anywhere, even as I send her article after article about Milwaukee, because no one would EVER abuse the sacred right. Everyone takes their responsibility to cast one-and-only-one well-informed, carefully-considered vote as seriously as she does.

I admire her faith, but no one over the age of 10 should be that naive. Look, ma, double voting!

I've been in a "fugue state" in Stallis once or twice. But every time I've driven by a polling station on an election day, I've been reminded to go vote at the precinct listed on my registration, instead of pulling in and giving a false address. I'm weird like that.


Anyway, I'm glad to see someone is not only cross-checking new registrations with existing ones, but reporting discrepancies. If only there was some way to cross-check lists from other counties and states; I'm still annoyed that al-Gore won Iowa in 2000 by a margin of approximately the number of U of Iowa students who admitted to the student paper that they voted once on campus and once at their parents' address.

OK, I lied...

More about Michael Vick. ESPN columnist Jemele Hill has written a very good column that will probably make her very unpopular.

But Vick let you down. He betrayed you. He heightened the stereotypes of black men instead of eroding them. Racists certainly will feast on Vick, but he was the one who made himself an entrée.

But this is what's going to get her the most criticism, I think:

...let's attack this poisonous idea in the black community that equates only negatives with success. Surely, one reason Vick kept his circle of friends is because successful black people are pressured into keeping their toxic buddies around for the sake of "keeping it real" -- even though they've spent most of their lives trying to escape the street lifestyle in which many of those friends remain.

Ow.

There's a very long, very good piece by Myron Magnet in City Journal, too, that was not written about Vick but about the culture that glorifies him.

Web nonsense

My employer has started using Websense to keep us from reading about sports at the office. I have no objection to that, but I can't figure out how it decides what to block while I'm reading at lunch.

For example, I can't access James Lileks' home page, but I can access the Supreme Leader of Iran's daily fatwa.

Supreme Leader's advice of the day: "Listening to Children’s Songs"

• Question: What is your opinion about listening to children’s songs? Are the children allowed to sing for their homeland, parents, etc. while using singing equipments?
• Answer: Listening to ghinā’ is impermissible no matter whether it is sung by children. Also, the parents should not provide their children with musical instruments to be used in songs even though children are not bound to religious duties.

I gotta remember this one the next time someone bleats on about how Islam and Christianity are both equally evil and/or neutral (which view depends on how much they hate Christianity...). One forbids music--no singing and no instruments. Especially no secular music! The other has a rich tradition of using music in worship (J.S. Bach) and no implicit regulations against other music.

All the other major world religions have musical traditions. All the tribal/animistic societies have songs and instruments. Even Stalin didn't forbid nursery rhymes.

I'm newly impressed by just how STUPID you have to be to believe in cultural relativism, much less believe that a culture where music is forbidden is better than the culture that gave us Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads (not Randi Rhodes, ugh) and Lawrence Welk and....

"Activist"??

Activist arrested in L.A.

Don't see anything in the definition of "activist" that includes fraud or fugitives.

After entering the country illegally twice, she became an activist shortly after she was arrested in 2002 during a federal sweep at O'Hare International Airport, where Arellano cleaned airplanes. She was later convicted of using a fake Social Security card.

Oh, you become an activist after you're arrested. Gotcha.

I'll have to do more research after work, but I don't think any of the "activism" has been directed at checking the identity and residency status of airport workers.

I have friends who should read this but they won't

Following a link from NRO, Bruce Bawer in the City Journal...

...if you want to ensure peace, worry less about freedom. Appease tyranny, accept it, embrace it—and there’ll be no more war.

I'm not awake enough for additional biting commentary. But I'm tired of people who don't understand that giving bullies what they want when they beat you only gets you more beatings (I learned that when I was SEVEN, for Pete's sake), and I'm more tired of people who expect me to trade my essential liberties for a little warm fuzzy feeling.

I could write this post every day.

I swear I read this same article, with different dead children, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The man accused of running a stop sign and causing a crash this week that killed a 17-year-old Port Washington boy is an illegal immigrant who was convicted in Wisconsin in December of first-offense drunken driving, authorities confirmed Friday.

DECEMBER! Why the !*&$(#! is this is piece of crap still in Wisconsin?!?

The article is headlined "Identity of fugitive confirmed", but I'm inclined to doubt that:

An arrest warrant has been issued for Carbajal-Lile, 27. The Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department says he may be en route to Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol has been alerted regarding his status as a fugitive. Carbajal-Lile's last known address is in Fredonia.

He uses a number of aliases, including: Eddie Carbajal; Eddie Lile; Eddie Carbajal-Farvies; Negro Carbajal; Negro Carbajal-Lile; and Negro Lile.

Why does an "honest, hard-working immigrant" need seven names? Committing the fraud Americans won't commit?

We've already got more than enough Americans committing murder, thanks.

If nautical nonsense be something ye wish

A giant SpongeBob SquarePants promotional balloon stolen from atop a Sheboygan Burger King in November 2004 will be returned to the restaurant today, Sheboygan police said.

Living in Wisconsin is pretty much living in News of the Weird.

We're overdue for a story about sex with ruminants.

"Stop snitchin'" is the fault of...whom?

Another quilter I used to admire until they came down with industrial-grade BDS.

We wonder why the whole teenaged society has adopted the “don’t snitch” policy that was mentioned on 60 Minutes last night. In my opinion, CBS got one thing wrong. This distrust of authority has been fostered by our society. It is not just a phenomenon of the poor or the immigrant societies. The biggest contributor to this fear was summed up in a bumper sticker I saw weeks ago. It addresses the political tripe of “family values.”

Family Values Is Having Your Brother Steal the Election for You.

*blink*

People "of color" are refusing to cooperate in investigations into crime plaguing their neighbors and themselves--even the senseless accidental slaughter of children--because they're following the example of George Bush winning the 2000 election?

I'm not sure what's funnier: the idea that Bush is some sort of criminal mastermind or the idea that the entire street-wise hip-hop culture is aping a fictionalized "disregard for the law" attributed to a Yalie from a patrician white family.

No, I lied, that second idea is the funnier. I get a mental image of Flip Wilson saying, "W made me do it!"

Anyway, please, tell me about how refusing to tell the police who shot the four-year-old when they meant to shoot you is a "family value" our society should be encouraging. I tend to think obstructing justice is a crime.

Heh. Heh heh.

I got my dead tree copy of National Review in the mail today.

I'm starting to grow weary of Mark Steyn continually slamming childless women of my age. It's not all some feminist plot; I was just plain old too ugly to get knocked up. Even fifty years ago, people would have understood that as a sad quirk of fate, not some misguided selfish choice.


Anyway, onto lighter fare, this item from "The Week" cracked me up:

After saying he would meet with enemies of our country, however irrational, Barack Obama headed straight to the Daily Kos convention.

That had to be Goldberg.

I'm an oppressed minority!

Redheads are persecuted by The (Blond and Brunette) Man.

I want federal sunblock subsidies, lowered college admission standards, and special consideration for government contracts.

I was bullied for years; I thought therapy would fix it, but it turns out the pain can only be assauged by cash and concessions.

Crime in Milwaukee

Marquette Warrior...

In Milwaukee, where violent crime is concerned, three fourths of the victims of black criminals are themselves black.

That means 25% aren't. Don't tell my mother; she'll expect me to move back to BFI.

Looking at the percentages another way, 97% of the black victims of violent crime were victimized by a black.

I think my jaw dropped. I hear the "white people beating/killing/robbing blacks" stuff so much...it's like the smog over the city. You just don't think about clear skies after awhile.

*gigglesnort*

On the stump in Iowa, the Breck Girl blames the heat on global warming.

I'm pretty sure it's hot in Iowa this week because it's freaking AUGUST. Data from the closest ISU (of SCIENCE and Technology...you remember science...) to my hometown. Pretty much verifies everything I remember (the summer of 1983 was pretty hot; the winter of 2000-2001 was the BEST EVER) and lookie there...the average max temps for Iowa in August vary about 15 degrees over 50 years but aren't trending hotter.


OK, no more numbers--Prince Fielder just knocked out his 37th HR and I want a beer.

Look ma! I'm subversive!

Greg Gutfield, of course.

Why do nearly all Hollywood actors and actresses act like sheep? I pin it on the thirst for fame, which is based on an insatiable need for approval. It's what draws people to Hollywood. And it's this same craving that drives people to become liberals. When one becomes a liberal, he or she advocates tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, is doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. Also, like puppies, many liberals go number one on the floor when they're nervous. In short, liberalism is based on one desire: to look cool in order to get approval. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler than saying something like, "please lower my taxes," which personally gets me hot, but did nothing for my E-harmony Profile.

This is why the only true form of rebellion left on this planet is rejecting the trademark forms of romantic rebellion like anarchy, activism, nipple rings or tribal tattoos. The anti-rebel is far more subversive because every day he or she says things that aren't sanctioned and certainly aren't considered cool among the media elite. This is why Dick Cheney is closer to the Hell's Angels than Hunter S. Thompson ever could be.

Gonna remember this the next time someone gives me shit for not having any illegitimate children.

Meeting on the Mall

Pro-troop, pro-mission, anti-moonbat rally in DC next month.

I really wish I could go. It has to be an incredible rush to gather with thousands of like-minded Americans and actually make a difference. But I can't take days off to travel.

I totally expect there will be socialist/moonbat/anti-America rallies around Milwaukee and Madison that weekend. *srednop*

Quilted BDS

Recently, I bought a full-color catalog of a prestigious international quilt show; I get the catalog every year so I can see what's popular in the quilt world and beat myself up for not finishing anything to submit *wry grin*. It was disappointing on a couple of levels--it's the same people making the same quilts since 1999--but one quilt in particular was very disturbing.

The artist is a woman I took a week-long class from just before the 2004 election. She used to make brightly colored, heavily hand-embroidered and beaded quilts with a lot of written text incorporated into the designs. The writing sometimes had hippy-dippy (her word) political thoughts, but the quilts were mostly about nature, teaching, her family, her friends, her cats, etc. I loved the embellishment and the whimsy, which is why I took her class, and she was a great teacher--very encouraging, very inspiring.

Which is why it was so disturbing to see her entry into this year's show. She's stopped embroidering and beading, she's stopped using bright colors, she's stopped painting nature--the quilt was just a bunch of anti-Bush screeds written on fabric and held together with minimal machine quilting. Typical Bush Derangement Syndrome falsehoods, like "Bush destroyed the economy!" (totally untrue) and "our children are dying to make Bush richer!" ('children' being our volunteer military, I assume) and "the Bush regime is trying to make us all afraid that people are trying to kill us, but that's just another of his lies" (yeah. right.)

I checked her website; she gave up her signature techniques because they were time-intensive and she can make more anti-Bush quilts faster if she just writes on fabric.

I...I'm just sad. Here's a lovely person and an awesome artist totally destroying herself and her work with her BDS. It might be time to get BDS recognized by the APA as a legitimate mental disorder.

There were half a dozen other anti-Bush, anti-military, anti-America quilts, including one that used the names of fallen soldiers. I wonder if the maker got permission from their families to exploit their memories? I know there are groups of Gold Star families who have sued anti-war groups for using the names of their soldiers for propaganda...

I'm half-kicking around the idea of making an anti-anti-Bush quilt (I'm not feeling pro-Bush after the immigration bill, just anti-BDS) using her techniques, but I've got my hands full right now trying to finish a Super Bowl quilt I have to mail to a different international show in four weeks. And, honestly, I don't want to be black-listed by the quilt-art establishment. None of my quilts are political, but that won't matter once I'm outed as a conservative.

Dear Santa

I've been very good this year.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

I've decided I like football better than baseball, because football only hurts once a week.

That said, I don't grok FOX's decision to show the preseason contest between Indy and Dallas for three hours tonight. It's the second week of August. Everyone playing in the second half is going to get cut.

Heh. Heh heh.

I shouldn't blog when I'm in a bad mood, but I got home from a really long horrible day at work followed by a really long horrible drive to Brookfield to pick up my sewing machine from its yearly tune-up, followed by some really horrible pizza, and this bit is in my e-mail:

Somali muslims blame the collapse on Bush and liken America to a crumbling, Third World country

No one forced you to come here (hell, we didn't even ask you to come here). If you don't like it here, GO BACK.

I'm sure the bridges in Somalia are brand-new titanium alloys or something...



(Incidentally, everytime I drive through Brookfield, Pewaukee, etc, and see all the conspicuous consumption, I start to understand why people cream their jeans when Hillary Clinton stands up and vows to "take things away from you." If I'm driving an antique used Buick with no AC and living in a shitty apartment on the northside, no one should be allowed to have a nice house in a gated neighborhood!!

Then I realize how completely fucking STUPID that is. Especially since she only wants to tax income, not assets, so the people with the McMansions will be fine and I'll never get to drive a car with AC.)

Insert tired Clash joke here

Iran Arrests 230 Youths Attending 'Satanic' Rock Concert

A witness said Sunday that police raided the concert as it was ending late Wednesday near the town of Karaj, some 30 miles west of the capital.

"Police detained the young people who had gathered to enjoy music in a private orchard," said the witness, who requested anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

The arrests come during a recent crack down on "immoral behavior" in Iran, where holding mixed parties or concerts without permission has been forbidden since the 1979 Revolution that brought hardline Shiite Muslim clerics to power.

Boys and girls mingled and danced together during the concert, and some of the women were not wearing the modest clothing and Islamic headscarf required by law, media reports said.

Dear annoying sheeple cow-orker: Today is not a good day to tell me how the fascist Bushitler regime has stolen all of our civil liberties and turned America into a totalitarian state. But please, do your schtick about how Khatami and Achmadinejad turn into Madison and Jefferson after tea with Barry Obamarama--I could use a good laugh today.

I'd be amused if this caught on...

Eric Metaxas:

As the years passed, asterisks came to be inextricably linked with the name and feats of the man. Schoolchildren everywhere took to calling the tiny star-like symbol a “barrybond,” accenting the first syllable, and it caught on. And, though the reason is less clear, ampersands, tildes, and umlauts came to be called the Alou Brothers.

Michael Vick's publicist has to be damned grateful to Baroid for getting her client off the front of the sports page.

All I'm going to say about Michael Vick

Sounds like people think it's OK for black people to be assholes in the 21st century because a bunch of white people were assholes in the 20th.

Race is irrelevant in the NFL; if Tom Brady was being investigated by the feds for, oh, say, something he and Ms. Bundchen were smuggling in from South America, Goodell would suspend him.

And no one has mentioned Marcus Vick. Not sure what the Vick family structure is, but if they were white farm kids, one brother abusing animals and one brother assaulting people, I'd say the adults responsible for their upbringing didn't teach them right from wrong. 9 times out of 10 I'd be right.

Reagan...

"Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp. Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last." ---Ronald Reagan



It may be tactless to point out to people that they're asking for the same government who couldn't keep a functional I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River to take control of their health care, but it's true.

Slavery and misogyny are alive and well in the Sharia state of Saudi Arabia.

No point in asking where the feminists or the people still railing about U.S. slavery seven generations after it ended are on this--they only care about getting cash for themselves and destroying white men. Brown men (and women, I'm sure the majority of beatings of household help are done by the wives) can do whatever evil they please.

At 17, Rizana Nafeek was sent to Saudi Arabia after the tsunami to work as a maid and make money for her family in Sri Lanka. But after only a few weeks and no child care training, her employers put her in charge of their 4-month-old baby. The baby died, and Nafeek was charged with murder, tried without an attorney and sentenced to death.

About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, according to the country's labor statistics. Eighty percent of the women working abroad are employed as unskilled domestic workers, primarily in Saudi Arabia.

Varia says domestic workers are vulnerable to mistreatment. When Human Rights Watch sent a team of investigators to Saudi Arabia last year, Varia says the group found egregious abuse.

"The most commonly reported abuse is unpaid wages," she says. "It's routine for employers to take the passports of workers, and in order for the worker to leave the country, they have to get their employer to sign an exit visa."

Varia says that because domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are not protected by labor laws, they don't have access to training, paid leave, reasonable hours or even one day off.

"They're not seen as real human beings," she says.

"It is socially accepted to lock your domestic worker inside the house. There are employers who forbid their workers to make phone calls home or write letters or talk to neighbors," says Varia, who interviewed domestic workers' employers in Saudi Arabia.

But I am the evil, close-minded bigot for thinking that this is a bad thing. It's a beautiful, peaceful culture, no worse than any other--nay, much better than the horrible, terrible, intolerant, fascist state Chimpy McHaliburton has wrought! None of this would have ever happened if it wasn't for the illegal war in Iraq!

*blink*
Sorry. Got a little carried away there. Made an extra pot of coffee this morning...

I think this pretty much proves that "environmentalism" is really about destroying Western Civilization:

The Western World's dependence on flush toilets could be its environmental downfall.

Toilets that use less water, such as the "squat toilet" in which one squats over a hole in the ground, are prevalent in parts of Asia, Europe and Africa.

!#$^%* My grandparents didn't scrimp and struggle to educate my parents, who didn't scrimp and struggle to educate ME, just so that I could go back to shitting outside in a hole in the ground like an animal (the resident animal reminds me that even HE doesn't shit outside). Yes, that was good enough for my ancestors, but that was because indoor plumbing was too freaking expensive for small farmers to install out in the middle of nowhere. Not a problem in the 21st century. You can even find flush toilets in the forest!

Not to mention raw sewage floating through the streets was the biggest threat to public health for most of Western Civilization's history. Of course, lately, "public health" means bitching about McDonald's and making women feel like shit when their baby doesn't latch on to the nipple and they have to feed him with a bottle; they're not concerned with anything mundane like stopping thousands of deaths from preventable diseases.

This just begs for a caption

She's speaking to the anti-American kooks at DailyKos this weekend. I don't know what she's speaking about, and I'm pretty sure I don't WANT to.

I'm mostly really curious that she's wearing a polyester matelasse suite in August. I'd be sweating like Michael Moore walking three blocks to Krispy Kreme.

Cut that meat!

Colts have been in training camp all week, and the most exciting bit for me so far was learning that Peyton and Ashley Manning have each donated $2300 to Fred Thompson's primary campaign. I wasn't real excited about Manning (read: I hated his evil orange guts) in 1998, but he grew on me over the years. Now I'm curious about his politics, although I'm sure he's smart enough to keep them to himself until the multimillion-dollar endorsement deals fade away.

I love the Kos kids. They make me feel like Mother Teresa. There's so much ZOMG! TRAGEDY! in the news every day, the capacity I had for going into deep mourning over people I've never met has dissipated. Sometimes I feel bad that I don't feel bad.

OTOH, I'm still capable of thinking, "Wow, this is going to be really hard on the survivors and the families of the deceased" while mocking the "Bush stole the bridge money for the illegal war" crowd for being a) jerks and b) stupid. I'm sure they wouldn't give up a penny of the billions wasted on failed socialist programs for better roads and bridges--cars are evil destroyers of planet Earth created by capitalist pigs who eat the babies of the poor. Obama!

Anyway, given that there are billions of bridge crossings in this country every day and the last U.S. bridge collapse of this magnitude was in 2002 (I'm not counting the recent collapse in San Fran, because it was caused by an accident) I'm not ready to condemn the current bridge inspection and repair system just yet. Every system can be improved, but this one's working at an incredibly low failure rate.


Everytime I say something like that, I get called a bitch.