Books and planes

I joined Goodreads today. This could be time-consuming, or it could go the way of mycolts.net, I don't know.

I'm going to Vermont this weekend (nonstop, all hail Midwest) for the first time--I expect it will be culturally similar to Wisconsin, with taller rocks--and I could use some suggestions for something to read on the plane. I've already read An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England. Plenty of good tips in that one.

I have no idea about a hostess gift, either. I'm out of Iowa chops, and WI is problematic: can't get beer on the plane, no point in taking cheese. I'm down to honey (in 3 oz or smaller containers, I haven't forgotten what happened when I tried to fly with Play-Doh) or...uh....sausage?

I don't have cable TV...

Kathy Shaidle:

The so-called poor have cars and cable tv and free medical. They live in America in the 21st century, where school is free and libraries are free and a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack. If they're "poor" it's because they were too lazy and stupid to a) finish high school and/or b) keep their pants on. Jesus had something to say about folks who didn't properly manage their money or other people's, and who squandered free gifts and good will. He told the adulteress to sin no more, not to find herself another baby daddy.

I was going to post my own thoughts, but they're not original and I have to go to work.

It's worth noting that all the girls in my HS class who had babies the summer after graduation are doing much better than I am--husbands who make enough money that they can stay home with their younger children, new houses, newer cars than I drive--and that's not counting the social capital automatically granted to mothers, even in stupid situations. Especially in stupid situations.

Is it 1787 already?

Barbara Boxers has proposed that immigration enforcement be suspended so "undocumented residents" (that would be non-citizens who aren't supposed to be here) can be counted for the purpose of doling out Congressional representation. And federal slush money, I'm sure.

I'd like to be the first to propose another 3/5 compromise. Illegal aliens can be counted as 3/5 a person in exchange for building the damn fence and stepping up other enforcement efforts. I think that's fair--the DNC gets 60% of the number of people the Census Bureau can find and ICE can't. Of course, that would only work if ICE was trying to find/process people....sigh.

Given all the pathetic, quasi-legal bribery the City of Ames did in 2000 to try to convince kids in dorms and graduating seniors to fill out census forms to be counted as permanent residents (that roommate who dropped out and went home, they count, too!) to qualify for more federal dollars, I don't feel a whole lot of love for the accuracy of people self-reporting to the Census Bureau (1 out of every 500 teenagers is a widow? in 2000??), much less the reports filed by people out looking for people to report on (see also ACORN).

Plus, it'll be fun to watch all the talking heads and lockstep lemmings pretend they've heard of the original 3/5 compromise.

...and they'll go for it on 4th and 3

If you're a Minnesota football fan looking for an inspiring team to follow this season, you don't need to lower your standards and root for the cheating, slacker-enabling Patriots.
...
How can you not like this team? The coach and quarterback are among the classiest and most accomplished figures in the game, and have we mentioned they don't cheat?

Not often I enjoy something in the Red Star Tribune not written by Lileks.

Oh, this is great.

Police urged not to check legal status

A policy Milwaukee police officials adopted recently prohibits officers from asking immigration questions or alerting federal authorities to suspected illegal immigrants, with some exceptions.
...
Milwaukee officers can question a person's immigration status or alert federal authorities only in cases of violent crimes, suspected terrorism, street gang crimes or other limited cases.

I agree that the city police have better things to do than to do ICE's work for them. But why wait until someone gets killed before turning over a name? They've been making a big deal all summer about making thousands of "citizen contacts", I'm sure they've turned up a few people who aren't supposed to be living here, why sit on this information? Given that thousands of people are killed every year by unlicensed illegal-alien drivers, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to pass on the alleged addresses of people without a valid license to ICE to ignore them as they see fit.

As illegal immigration has grown into a national issue the past couple of years, stepped-up enforcement efforts have produced deportation stories that rankled immigrant rights groups.

In 2004, a Waukesha County mother of two was sent back to India after she got a flat tire and police officers discovered that she had entered the United States illegally 12 years earlier.

Very sad for her, but the police officers did not put a gun to her head in 1996 and force her onto a plane without the proper approval.

(The J-S article used the phrase "illegal immigrant"? Someone's gonna get fired.)

They're starting to frighten me.

No Harrison, no Addai, no Sanders, no problem.

I'm disappointed Marvin's consecutive-games-with-receptions streak ended, but he's got two weeks to heal before Jacksonville, which is a) important and b) on MNF.

I've been indefinitely banned from watching football with the Real Men of Genius because the Colts have won more games than all of their teams put together--Jets (1), Dolphins (0), Rams(0), Broncos(2), and Bears(1). Heh. I didn't tell them I'm out of town the next three weekends anyway.

The stat I find interesting: the Colts are 4-0 against teams with starters who have Colts Super Bowl rings.

Blah blah SCHIP blah blah

Mark Steyn: if this is the face of the "needy" in America, then no-one is not needy.

My dad paid for health insurance for a family of six when he was self-employed for 15 years. But we had one TV, 1.5 bathrooms, and two pairs of jeans apiece. *srednop*

Basketball practice starts this week...

I'm getting a kick out of all the people complaining about how the Wisconsin football team suh-diddly-ucks this year. Top 25, lost one conference game...y'all wouldn't know suck if it walked up wearing blaze orange and popped a cap in Bucky's ass (now there's a mixed metaphor).

Here's some 99.44% pure, home-grown, corn-fed suck, for comparison.

It doesn't really bother me; I feel bad for Bret Meyer because he's a better QB than the record indicates, and I thought Chizik was too negative about the players at the halftime interview (at the post-game interview he blames the coaching, someone must have called him on it), but anyone who watched ISU football before the 2000 season just nods and hopes Kansas has a bad day so we at least get one conference win. When I say we suck, I'm about as emotional as I am when I say the sun came up this morning.

Gutfield:

The whole idea that you have to try something before making a judgment is moral laziness. This refusal to say something is wrong because you're trying to keep an open mind prevents you from seeing what's wrong with the world - or more important other cultures. Female Circumcision strikes me as wrong - but I don't need my clitoris removed to find out.... I find the whole idea of prison rape to be reprehensible. But I've never experienced that either.

He's right for the most part; I know a lot of women who went directly from their parents' house to marriage (via an all-women dorm) and I'm not allowed to point out their lack of experience with the old-maid-with-cat lifestyle when they sneer at it...and I'm not allowed to question their smugness about marriage, either.

I've also noticed people aren't even allowed to judge some stuff they may have tried and later realized was wrong, with the following exceptions: smoking, eating meat, being 'overweight' (see Mike Huckabee's plan to force us all to live his new lifestyle), driving a car (see al-Gore).

*srednop* Too much thinking for Saturday.

Department of Redundancy Department.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Governor Jim Doyle has declared Sunday as Favre Record Day in Wisconsin.

C'mon, that's EVERY Sunday in Wisconsin.

I actually think that game will be more interesting than the Colts game the local FOX affiliate refuses to show me, but I might be harboring some residual Super Bowl shadenfreude.

Heh. Heh heh.

Is it wrong of me to want one of these?

Today someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I want to get through Thanksgiving before I start thinking about Christmas, is what I want...

No crying in baseball

But this is really cool.

Besides their surprising 14-1 finish to the season, the Colorado Rockies are giving baseball fans another reason to cheer for them this postseason.

The widow of Rockies minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh, who died after getting hit by a line drive this season, will be granted a full share of the team's playoff winnings after a team vote.

Plus, they're two up on the Phillies, which pleases me in a "my brother-in-law who hates the Colts will be pissed" way.

Zombie strikes again!

The Zombster has a zillion disclaimers: The pictures from the Folsom Street Fair can be considered hard-core pornography (and Zombietime is experiencing heavy traffic; expect long load times). I admire Zombie's willingness to wade into the frays and the thoroughness of Zombie's reports (I think I know what pronoun Zombie takes, but I don't want to accidentally 'out' Zombie's identity). I would have gotten myself kicked out for hurting people's feelings with my cackling Hillaryesque laughter.

Really. The religious sex toys were disgusting (no Mohammed-shaped sex toys, I wonder why...), but mostly they all look kinda pathetic. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!!! I'm so EDGY!!! LOOK AT ME!!!

(...says a chick with a blog. Ow.)

Dunno; if they were trying to shock right-wing cranks in flyover country, they failed. The "fetish lifestyle" is so mainstream anymore...CSI (I only watch the original) regularly has plots featuring extreme BDSM, furries, bloodsports, transvestites, perverting religious symbols, Elvisexuals, did I mention extreme BDSM? These poor deluded fools think they're being counter-cultural, and they're network TV.


Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, two gay guys have been sentenced to 7000 lashes for activities not conducted in public.

Wisconsin News of the Weird

STONE LAKE, Wis. — A man who went to a northwoods bank's drive-up window demanding money fled on his camouflage-colored all-terrain vehicle after the teller held up candy suckers and said that's all she had, authorities said.

*srednop*

This seems fairly normal to me--both the bank robber on the ATV and the teller apologizing for not having any money.

RESOLUTION

Thank you, "Jackson Bauer", whoever you are.

NOW THEREFORE, be it resolved by the Senate of the United States and its individual members that they

(1) Shall refrain from suggesting, without warrant, that our troops are murderers, liars, torturers, idiots, losers, and traitors

(2) Shall refrain, whenever possible, from making public statements about the troops, their mission or our country that are indistinguishable from statements made by Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or others who have vowed to destroy the United States of America

(3) Shall refrain from introducing legislation that would impede or impair the ability of our troops to defeat our enemies or that exceeds the powers granted to Congress under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution

Worth reading the whole thing, of course.

Scheiße!

Since I got home from work, I've had four otherwise rational people rant at me about how Bush hates children. They want free healthcare for their kid (because they deserve it, simply by virtue of spawning in the first place) and that mean child-hating bastard vetoed the bill that would give it to them.

They had no idea that the bill had provisions providing free insurance to non-poor non-children, much less that those provisions were added by Dems, and if they would have left well enough alone and just increased the money for poor children by 300% W would have signed the damn thing the way he signs all the big-government big-money bills, but even once I point this out, they don't care! They truly believe George W. Bush wants their child to DIE so he can continue spending billions to kill Iraqi children, too.

My personality disorder is acting up; I told them to move to Canada and let me know how long the wait is to see the allergist.


(My "Beginning German for Adults" class started tonight, so I now know more words than 'Scheiße' and 'Bier', but I'm all self-conscious about how I'm pronouncing all the vowel sounds.)

Clean your lint trap.

The worst part about living in an apartment is sharing laundry machines with people who are either ignorant of how to launder textiles appropriately or just don't care. If I had a dollar for everytime I opened a washing machine and found a bathroom rug, six bras, four pairs of jeans, AND a king-size sheet set, none of which should be washed together in the first place much less overloaded by that...

Anyway, when you take your clothes out of the dryer, clean the freaking lint trap.

Residents of a 10-unit apartment building evacuated safely when a small dryer fire filled the structure with smoke early today on Milwaukee's northwest side.

Milwaukee police said no one was hurt and the fire did only an estimated $100 in damage. The emergency call came in about 3 a.m. from 7105 N. Teutonia Ave., police said.

The suspected cause was a build up of lint inside the dryer, police said.

There were a couple of dryer fires around the city about this time last year that caused serious damage. I'm not just an old crank--I'm an old crank who doesn't want to get woken up and forced outside at 3 a.m.

Damn, I'm good.

Friday Michelle Malkin had a piece on underage kids being allowed into a sex fetish festival in San Francisco, and I commented "I'll bet money someone takes in a kid in a stroller."

Damn, I'm good.

I'll let everyone else handle the outrage about dressing babies up like a sex slave. Here's the comment that rankled in the original linked article:

Fathers Gary Beuschel and John Kruse watched over them closely. They were proud to show the twins off.

“They will see more than the kids with moms and dads in Iowa,” said Beuschel, who wanted to expose his children to San Francisco's diverse community.

1. "Exposing" your 2-year-old children to sexual fetishes is not a good thing no matter where you live. That really should go without saying.
2. They always go for the cheap slam of the Midwest, like your longitude is a marker of your worth as a person. Unoriginal.
   
3. On top of being a shitty parent and a drone, he's also ignorant. I've seen people exposing their small children to BDSM-type fetish stuff in Iowa City, which is, surprise, in Iowa.
   

5-10 years ago I used to attend a yearly gathering in Iowa City of people from an online community. Some of them would wear their BDSM gear to the park, and most of them would bring their children. I didn't actually see anyone masturbating, but people dropping their pants to show off new piercing was pretty common, as was leading people around on leashes and floggings. One guy made a hobby of getting a picture of every participant wearing handcuffs (there are probably still some of me, wearing handcuffs and looking annoyed; fortunately most of them are 404). One year there was a donkey. I've suppressed the rest of that story.

Not only did no one stop to think, "Maybe I should leave the kid with Grandma for the afternoon," no one stopped to think, "Maybe all these other parents using the park don't want to see the man in the fishnets lick my naked boobies." Well, I did, but I didn't have any influence over this group.

I don't even want to know what went on at some of the private after-hours parties.

So that's why I KNEW people were going to be bringing their kids to this thing in San Francisco. I understand these people. They've all got huge empty places inside and they do stupid shit to get attention to try to fill it.

Oh, and my sisters tell me that children over 2 years should not still be drinking out of a bottle.

Time to fill in the river...

Another drunk "college kid" died in the Mississippi River while drinking in LaCrosse over the weekend.

The incident marked the second straight year that a drowning occurred during the city's initial Oktoberfest weekend. Exactly one year ago Sunday, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Luke Homan disappeared after a night of drinking. His body was found two days later in the Mississippi River.

Homan, 21, became the eighth college-age man since 1997 to turn up dead in a river after going missing from a tavern. The deaths led to persistent rumors of a serial killer roaming the area, but police and the FBI continue to insist there is no evidence to suggest the deaths were anything but accidents.

Last year when this happened, there were several "town meetings" to discuss the "epidemic" and how to stop it. Telling kids to stop binge drinking by the river wasn't on the table--townspeople wanted increased nighttime patrols in the area, free cab rides, big fences, etc. Great ideas, except it looks like they didn't work. I suggested filling in the river--yeah, it might slow down some barge traffic, but aren't the lives of these "good young men" worth economically crippling neighboring states? The only way to keep drunk "kids" out of the river is to remove the river.

Blaming Oktoberfest seems disingenuous; it's not like there's no binge drinking the other 51 weekends a year.

Anyway, I feel really bad for their mothers. While the sad fact that sperm has never hit my eggs makes me unable to comment on anyone else's children (or so I'm told, daily), I can imagine that it must hurt like hell when someone knocks on the door to tell you that the baby you carried for 9 months has killed himself by his own stupidity.

Harkin off his meds again...

Still pleased to be one of 6 Iowans who didn't vote for the man in 2002. Maybe I'm naive, but basic integrity is more important than committee seniority.

Maybe Congressional committees should be randomly assigned every two years, so senators are more equal. Some people might become proficient in one area after forty years of writing the legislations, but most of them don't seem to be doing any better now than they did in the 60s. Pathetically few Congress members had a real job (and most of them were lawyers) before their first elected position back home, so most of them can't claim a science, technology, education, business, medicine, etc background that would make them more suited for one committee than another. A couple of exceptions--Tom Coburn was a practicing obstetrician until the Senate made him quit seeing patients on breaks--but not enough exceptions to make the current practice the best practice.

What do I know? I just work.

Football Odds and Ends

• Spent all day obsessing over not obsessing over ISU @ Nebraska, but it wasn't so bad. They racked up 415 yards and only lost by 2.5 TDs. Stop laughing; it's usually more like 6 TDs when they're in Lincoln.
• Also pleased the BigXII North aren't the pushovers the media painted them as at the beginning of the year; two big wins over teams from the South. Go State!
• Bret Favre needs to get a TD today so I can stop hearing about it. I don't remember Peyton Manning getting this much coverage when he broke a Marino TD record in 2004. But I was living in Kurt Warner's hometown that year; there wasn't much coverage of any QB not named Kurt. And Peyton had the bad fortune of making the TD on the day Reggie White died, and even that headline got deprecated for reports on the tsunami.
  
• I've always liked Kelly Holcomb. Nice to see him starting again.
  

Whitefish Dunes SP

My brother stood me up this weekend to go to a gay rodeo in Sioux City (don't ask, I don't know either), so I took a day trip up to Door County. Overall, I wasn't as impressed by "ZOMG! DOOR COUNTY!" as the propaganda said I should be; Sturgeon Bay seemed like a more expensive, more annoying Michigan City (note to self, schedule trip to Indiana). More rocks. More boutique crap. Less normal working people. A little too smug for my liking. Maybe if I'd had time to go further north...

OTOH, it was very beautiful. It's a good thing I don't have money, because I'd probably have given in to the impulse to buy a llama farm in Manitowoc County or a B&B in Algoma just to be out in the rocks and trees every day.

More photos here.

So much for baseball.

I knew it was going to be bad when I walked in and they handed me a white towel to throw in.

The game itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the people I was attending with don't actually like baseball, they just go to drink heavily and act like assholes (I almost said "act like infants" but the actual infants in our section were very well-behaved). They spent the last two innings smacking each other with beer-soaked towels and screaming obscenities at each other. It's weird; they're fine at bars and parties, and the tailgate was great, but once they get inside the ballpark they turn into complete wastes of carbon.

Also could have done without the row of high school girls behind us who made noises like gilts getting their first visit with a boar when JJ Hardy was up and spent the rest of the time giving each other graphic descriptions of everything they've done with their boyfriends, other boys, and occasionally other girls. Alone and in groups. Holy crap, high school girls do things I had never heard of until sometime after I graduated from kollij. They also left behind several dozen airplane bottles of flavored vodkas when they decamped just before the towel-smacking.

I feel really old.


On the plus side, Bratwurst finally won, and I brought home $55 from the sausage race pool. I don't normally profane the sacred sausage ritual by betting on it, but I let them talk me into it for the last game. Heh!

Bob isn't even his real name.

Best itty-bitty safety in the league.

I'm always weirded out when I realize I'm taller than some professional football players.

Can't live with 'em, can't eat 'em.

I wasn't going to be one of THOSE people, but this is too good to keep to myself. Meet my faithless animal companion, FUZZ. Apparently the asiago-basil foccacia I was going to have for dinner was not to his liking.

I saw this headline

2 Patriot Act provisions ruled unlawful

And I thought "YES! I can buy Sudafed without having to wait for the pharmacist to be in, showing ID, and having my purchase tracked by the stupid government like I'm sort of criminal!"

But no, it's just about a judge in Portland deciding agents of the U.S. shouldn't be listening in on terrorists overseas.


*mutter* 80% of the meth in the U.S. comes from Mexico, and people (in Iowa, at least) with meth labs have their friends steal pseudoephedrine from storerooms or order it from distributors using falsified credentials, so CLEARLY the bipartisan solution to "looking tough on meth" was to tack a bill punishing Heather and her sinuses onto a defense bill. I mean, really. It's so obvious, I can't believe people can still find meth to buy.

I could use a new ride...

Now I'm more upset than usual about being too ugly to get married. I want a house and an SUV, not to mention all that tax-free life-insurance money...

OK, that was sarcasm, but this isn't: The thing that's pissing me off about this murderer's enablers and fans--the Oprah-fication of America--is that they end up tarring all women with the same brush. Women are psychologically fragile! Women are emotional and wholly incapable of logical thought and rational actions! Women can't be held responsible for their actions--they have UTERUSES (uteri?) and that makes them incapable of self-control. Etc. Speak only for yourselves, brain-dead bimbos--some of us are better than that.

And it's WOMEN perpetrating this bullshit--the exact same bullshit beliefs that were used for centuries to keep women from voting, owning property, working outside the home (except for spinsters who were allowed to teach and poor women who had no choices but domestic work, factory work, or prostitution), having their own checking accounts, etc. All those things were debunked in the early 20th century, ladies--do you MIND?

I'm pretty sure sometime before I was born there was a feminism that said women were individuals, just like men, and should be allowed to own stuff and use their talents as they see fit, just like men, but didn't consider men an enemy to be fought and killed (probably 19th century feminism), and didn't consider the uterus to be a source of excuses for personal failings. At some point, I absorbed this attitude from my aunt, my dad, and their family (my mother's still upset I didn't major in elementary ed...just living in a dorm full of el ed majors dropped my IQ 15 points...).

Let's go back to THAT.

I will now annoy Milwaukee natives

by saying that a bronze statue of The Fonz downtown would rock!

I like the di Suervo, too.




What are ya gonna do, send me back to Iowa? :P

Blah

In the multi-cultural sensitive tolerant political correct doublespeak world, there are three classes of people you can still laugh at with impunity:

a) fat people
b) conservatives
c) women with some non-traditional success who aren't lesbian separatists.

(I've got nothing against the lesbian separatists--if that's the life you want then Godspeed--I'm just tired of people assuming that's the life I want.)

I've never complained about any man's paycheck. It's always been the opposite: they find out what I do for a living, and they can't get away fast enough. Maybe if I had looked more like Cameron Diaz than Bea Arthur when I was in college, someone might have wanted to be with me without fretting about earning potential, but the sad truth is that most men with the same level of education and professional experience as I have can afford (and seem to prefer) to date attractive young women, so I have to work with what is available to me.

And what is available falls into two categories. One group rates "providing for wife and family" very highly and considers it a masculine trait; the other group just wants someone to be their mommy and give them an allowance while they sit around on the Internet or watching TV all day. Sadly for me, I find the latter group unattractive, so I'm stuck with the first group, which finds me unattractive because I can afford my own groceries and install my own electronics.

So I don't get to have the life I want. It's my fault; I never should have gone to college.

But I'm getting really, really tired of providing the rest of society with someone to laugh at and look down on and feel smug about.

Trust but verify

Michelle Malkin has a Photo of the Day featuring a woman in a nun's habit being searched by a TSA agent wearing a hijab.

It's a revolting image (causing revulsion, not staging an uprising), but I need to know more about the participants.

a) There have been "peace activists" (yes, those are sneer quotes) who have falsely claimed to be priests and nuns to get extra media attention to their demonstrations. Some of them really did belong to a cult group, but not an order recognized by Rome; some had left the Church in the 60s. At this angle and distance, it's hard to know if this is a woman who has taken vows or a Code Pinko in her costume from The Sound of Music. I assume an actual nun would understand our need to double-check, since she took up the habit to set her apart from the rest of the world.

b) Need to know more about the "passer-by" who took the photo, as well as the person who posted it to the Internet (they appear to not be the same person). I don't put it past any multi-culti sensitive "tolerant!!" moron to stage and/or distribute the photo with the intention of bashing "reich-wingers and Rethuglicans" for our reaction to it.

c) The lighting is really shitty. I couldn't tell it was a hijab; I thought it was a Black woman with straightened hair. It does kind of look like she's wearing a skirt instead of standard-issue pants, though. Which brings me to

d) Thank God I never have to go to Detroit for anything ever. Because I absolutely refuse to be searched by anyone who is not wearing the standard uniform, especially if they're wearing some sort of hood.

It's a joke, people!!

When I say it doesn't matter if you lose every game of the season as long as you beat Iowa, I don't really mean it. *sniff*

Fortunately, my little brother is coming to town next week so I will miss the radio broadcast of the Nebraska game.

Speaking of Ahmadinejad...

I'm vaguely pleased to see there are some students at Columbia who aren't sheeple. I don't think you'd see a group like that at any Big Ten university.

I knew there was a reason I liked Fred.

Here's two.

First, at the NRA convention:

"It's never seemed to me to be coincidental that the places that have the highest crime rates tend to be the places that have the most restrictions on gun ownership in America."

You know, I never felt like I needed a gun for self-defense until I moved to Milwaukee, where of course I can't legally carry one. I got panhandled on the way in to work today, which rolls off fairly easily, but then on the way out of work there was another fight in the liquor store parking lot, and I really don't want to get carjacked for someone's get-away.

Next, Ahmadinejad (I think that's spelled right; I'm really not joking when I say I used all my name brainspace on "Vinatieri"):

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should not be allowed into the country, much less at the World Trade Center site, when he travels to New York next week to address the United Nations.

"I know there would be ramifications in the United Nations" if the U.S. refused to let Mr. Ahmadinejad into the country, Mr. Thompson said during a brief news conference at Dallas Love Field. "I would deny this character a visa. What's he going to do, visit there to get pointers for his own activities? I wouldn't let him in the country."

I wouldn't either, U.N. or no U.N. Actually, I think it's well past time to move the U.N. headquarters to a country that all the delegates don't hate. How about Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or Cuba? Everyone loves Mugabe and executing non-Muslims who get lost near Mecca!

(My apologies to whoever had the "U.S. out of U.N." sign up along U.S. 65 near Bondurant, oh, 2000-2001ish...at the time, I didn't understand why you felt so strongly about it that you put up a sign on your backyard fence, but now I do.)

It's always our fault, especially when it's not.

Canada is suffering from an invasion of poor Mexicans who call themselves "economic refugees" so they can collect various forms of welfare.

Canada blames...the U.S.

the suspected source of the problem -- a recently begun crackdown on illegal immigrants in economically struggling regions of the U.S. South.

Maybe if Canada doesn't want so many foreign freeloaders, they should stop giving away so much free stuff to foreign freeloaders. Or they could call up Felipe Calderon and tell him if wants to claim Mexico doesn't stop at the borders, he can come on up to Windsor and take care of his own damn people, since he can't be bothered to do it south of the Rio Grande.

Either way, the problem is NOT the U.S. half-assedly regulating its borders.

Attention cat people

I heartily recommend Two Lumps.

Today's comic is extra-great.

Signs of the Apocolypse

I got a Canadian nickel today, and it's worth 5 cents.

The Detroit Lions are undefeated after playing more than one game, the Brewers are in a pennant race, and the Canadian dollar is worth a dollar. Who are those four guys on horseback out in the parking lot?

I shouldn't even be joking about this with all the Iranian arms and soldiers turning up in Iraq lately and Ahmadinejad on his way to New York. Sigh.

A little football...

I know that between Texas and Tennessee I should really hate Vince Young, but I'm starting to respect the lad. About that Donovan McNabb race thing...

"Black or white quarterbacks, we all go through something because that's the life of a quarterback," Vince Young said Wednesday after Titans practice. "You've got to be able to handle all the pressure. You've got to be able to handle the losses. You've got to be able to handle the media. If you can't handle it, you've got to get off that position and go play something else."

Young is the third black quarterback to start for the Titans franchise. The team won a bidding war to sign Warren Moon to a contract in 1984, drafted Steve McNair with the third pick overall in 1995 and selected Young in the same place in 2006.

Young said he respects every quarterback in the NFL and that everyone is entitled to his opinion.

"That's not my fight to fight. Right now over here the Tennessee Titans, we're trying to go to the playoffs. I can't worry about all the other stuff going on," Young said.

It might help that Young plays for a team that hasn't lost a Super Bowl with him at the helm in a city that isn't known for the hostility of its fans, but I'm pretty sure all those people wearing Brian Westbrook jerseys aren't booing McNabb because he's black.

Hey, American feminists?

Where the fuck are you??

Female circumcision focus of ferocious debate in Egypt

Girls are dying, men refuse to "give up control over women," and you morons are still bitching about George Bush.

I hate writing about my art

It always makes me feel like a fraud. I don't do "profound statements about society/gender/politics/blah blah blah." But I can't write the truth--"I just kinda threw some fabric together because I liked the colors"--because that's not serious.

I don't want to write a dissertation in Gender Studies, Revisionist History, or Malignant Narcissism; I just want to put my name up next to the quilt. But I have to write a statement. And it has to be serious. And in the 21st century, all serious art is moonbat identity politics.

Drives me nuts.

You don't say....

Interesting stuff about Fred Thompson and polls from Jim Geraghty. My favorite part:

Rasmussen also noted, “We just did a poll last night that showed 58 percent of voters saying everything that has been going on with the campaign so far has been generally annoying and a waste of time.”

Can I get a "No shit, Sherlock?"

Shadenfreude and Sharia

Don't have a lot to say lately. I've been sleeping twelve hours a day trying to shake a cold. Bleah.

I love the smell of Kirk Ferentz whining in the morning.

And Dr. Sanity names something I noticed several years ago..."Leftist Sharia."

...the left's "new civil rights" philosophy. They have the right to ridicule, trash and denigrate any black person who dares to stray from the approved party line.
...the "new gay rights" agenda of the left, where it's OK to be gay as long as you follow their rules, believe as they believe, and behave as they dictate you should.

Very apt. Of course, under REAL Sharia law, gays get executed. Very open-minded and tolerant.

Interesting poll at DSM Register...

What is the biggest sports moment in Iowa this year?

* Dallas Clark and Bob Sanders winning the Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts
* Drake women's basketball is upset MVC tourney winner, reaching the NCAA Tournament
* Zach Johnson, ex-Drake golfer from Cedar Rapids, win the Masters
* West Des Moines teenager Shawn Johnson wins all-around World Championship gold medal

I guess Sage Rosenfels' three TDs for Houston when Carr got knocked out was technically last year.

The first one isn't much of an "Iowa sports moment"...Sanders is from some suburb of Chicago and both he and Clark dropped out of UIowa after two years.

The second one is kind of sad, because ISU and Iowa teams make the Sweet Sixteen so often no one's impressed by UNI or Drake losing in the first round.

Winning the Masters? Who cares?

Shawn Johnson, OTOH, impresses me. "Women's" (they aren't) gymnastics creeps me out--I was taller than most of them when I was eight--but I'm sure she's spent more of her life in the gym becoming excellent than I've spent writing or making art or anything interesting, and I'm three times her age. Plus, it's unusual for someone from Podunk (despite what West Des Moines believes, it's still the middle of nowhere important) to have their talent identified at an early age, much less have it nutured.

I spent most of my school days being an unpaid teaching assistant (I wish I'd known about child labor laws...) instead of being challenged. I think I'm kind of bitter.

Iowa, the CYCLONE State

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!










Unbelievable.

Milwaukee News of the Weird

Yes!

Milwaukee Man Sues Makers of Brut After Cologne Ignites on Camping Trip

According to court filings, Lewitzke was burned while camping with family members on Memorial Day in 2004 in Wisconsin Dells, a popular resort area outside of Madison.

He washed and shaved in a bathhouse on the camp grounds and applied Brut lotion to his face, neck and chest with his hands. He also used the aerosol deodorant. He then went to a fire pit to cook breakfast.

His face, neck and chest ignited while he was starting the cooking fire, his lawsuit says.

Lewitzke's attorney, Michael Hanrahan, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his client suffered burns on 30 percent of his body and underwent three skin grafts.

He claims in court documents that the Burt products and their packaging were the direct cause of Lewitzke's injuries and were defective because they were "unreasonably dangerous." The suit also says the products' labeling was unsafe because it should have warned about the danger of fires, and the manufacturers should have tried to minimize that risk.

Brut's manufacturers and companies selling the products should be held liable for Lewitzke's injuries, medical expenses, and the pain and disability he has suffered, the lawsuit argues.

I can't decide which part of this article is funniest:

1. Someone over the age of 13 wearing Brut! Seriously, any adult man who wants to smell like a jr. high boys' locker room might be a danger to society)
2. Someone blaming WalMart for not telling them alcohol is flammable. Back to the jr high boys...doesn't everyone try to set aerosols and other shit on fire at that age, or was it just me?
3. The word "bathhouse."
4. My friend Chele nominated "a lawyer actually took this case", but that's not funny, that's just sad.
   

The man wasn't just standing around with marshmallows when he was burned; he was starting a fire. Any halfway clever lawyer should hit that during discovery--procedure, source of ignition, accelerants--and it's QED.



Unrelated "I love this city" moment today--was walking out of work on N. Teutonia this afternoon with a friend and we saw a bowling ball lying in that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. There's no lanes anywhere near work; every day we see broken glass, bits of crushed cars, snarled strands of hair extensions, beer cans, the occasional children's toy no one cares enough to go back to look for, etc, etc, but this is the first bowling ball. Only in Milwaukee.

Football economics

Last year, every NFL stadium sold out for the first ten weeks. I blamed the "Bush economy"--tax cuts left too many people with extra disposable income to spend on football tickets, unlike earlier in the decade when people didn't have funds to spare on their local crappy team (used to be able to see the Colts for free after purchasing four weeks' of groceries from Marsh... *sob*).

This year, Jacksonville (spittle be upon them) couldn't sell out the second week.

I don't THINK that's a sign of an economic downturn. Jax relies heavily on fans of opposing teams to get the sell-out (I'm sure that's how Arizona pulled it off last year), and Atlanta fans aren't dedicated enough to drive four hours to watch Joey Harrington.

But I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before.

Tuesday.

National Day of Sanctimonious Self-Congratulation

A friend of mine is off work tomorrow, September 11, for the "National Day of Caring."

To mark the anniversary of a catastrophic mass murder of Americans by Islamic radicals hell-bent on destroying our entire civilization, lefties are going to ignore the horrific mass murder and the Islamic radicals and make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about how AWESOME!!1! they are by painting the houses of old people, reading to children, mopping the floor at the food bank--you know, the kind of stuff every decent able American should be doing more than once a year whether anyone declared war on us or not.

I've nothing against businesses giving paid time off for charitable work; I think that's a pretty good idea...year-round.

But putting your head in the sand while you pat yourself on the back because you CARE!!1! more than us horrible conservative monsters (i.e., those who would prefer to remember why we're at war with whom and keep our civilization around for a few more years) is really fucking stupid.

(Conservatives will probably be picking up trash at our national monuments this weekend, anyway, after the big lefty-anarcho-commie-defeatist rallies scheduled for D.C. and beyond. For some reason, those who CARE!!1! can't be bothered to pick up after themselves if no one's watching to tell them how sensitive and caring they are.)

Love those Hawkeyes.

They're such good people.

I had a lot of beer spilled on me the year I had season tix to ISU, but tailgaters used the dumpsters and the port-a-johns.

Well. This ruins my weekend.

Bad beer in Brew City

Oh boy.

In Iowa news...

61 days until basketball.

Help! I'm assimilating!

I bought a Packers hat.

Yes, it would be better to just give the whole $15 to one of the troop charities, but I feel like I need a symbol to wear this week. Subtle, so I don't get assaulted by local anti-war protesters, but football fans will know what the black hat is.


Also bought a cheesehead hat for an eight-year-old I know; his parents and older brothers are all Vikings fans but he loves Brett Favre. I'm feeling feisty this weekend.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

I've already informed the guys I'm watching the game with tonight that I'll probably cry when the Super Bowl XLI banner is raised.

"You saw just how energetic and exciting that is," Colts coach Tony Dungy said, mindful of the task that follows such big celebrations. "It gave us the feeling in New England that we wanted to do that. I think it brings a sense of pride in everything, but I believe our guys will understand that's last year."

Coach Dungy is a better man than I am. I'd totally forgotten the 2004 banner ceremony, but I'm sure I bitched about it all summer.

I do remember going for a walk along the Cedar River instead of watching the Super Bowl. Twice.

Fred Thompson. Because Guliani is too hard to spell.


(Works for me. All my spare neurons got used up on Vinetari Vinaterry Vinotieri Adam.)

Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent!

This is my favorite part:

Caponi [chief executive of St. Vincent Health] said the Mannings made a monetary donation to the children’s hospital, but that the couple asked that the amount remain undisclosed.

Google reports no children's hospitals named for Tom Brady (hat tip Chele), but I'm pretty sure he'd want everyone to know the size of his endowment.

*cough*

Great idea, Silky!

I keep thinking of more and more reasons why John Edwards' plan for mandatory doctor visits--when nothing is wrong--is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, but I think I only need one succinct point...

Out-patients in Britain wait between 4 and 13 weeks to see a "consultant." In-patients wait longer; almost 25% wait more than 26 weeks. And these are people with an actual problem they would like fixed, if the government will allow it! After the initial appointment, expect to wait a year for knee or shoulder surgery, 15-18 months for a new hearing aid, EIGHT MONTHS FOR CHEMOTHERAPY, twelve months for a referral to a urologist, three weeks to have a complex fracture surgically set...ok, I have to stop with the Google now.

I think I've made my point.

Now, imagine how long your wait for that first appointment is going to be when you have to wait in line behind the hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy people in your area...

*shudder*

I'm sure there's a big tax increase to build new mega-clinics and hire foreign nationals to staff them (which just introduces new problems), and I'm also sure it won't be enough.


OK, two points. The "mandatory mental illness screening"--aren't totalitarians (Hitler, Stalin, etc) famous for having dissidents declared insane and incarcerated somewhere? Well, the ones they don't shoot...

Why, yes.

Um.

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying "Mexico does not end at its borders."

Uh, yeah, it does. Might want to Google "Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo."

Art and more government...

I like art. I spend my money on museums and books and reproductions instead of getting the AC in fixed in my car (which I really regretted yesterday, let me tell you).

But "art people" really put me off.

J-S has an article today about "the state of art and culture" in SE Wisconsin, where they interviewed a bunch of people who run art organizations in the area. I might be picking on it for some time, there's just so much here...

First up, people seem to think that regional events and the ballet are sparsely attended because we don't have enough public transportation. True, you can't get from the corner of Capitol and Teutonia to downtown Memominee Falls and back on a Friday night without a car. But that's not the reason people don't go. If I asked 150 people from Milwaukee why they didn't see the last community theater performance in *insert suburb*, not a single one would say, "because there wasn't a bus to take me there" (OK, we might get a smart-ass "urban justice studies" UW-M student in the survey...). A dozen might say they don't like any theater or don't like the particular musical. The rest all either didn't know about it, had some family or social event to attend, or would just rather spend their entertainment time and money plaing video games or watching a Hollywood DVD with 'attractive' professional actors (we'll file 'shit, girl, you think I got time for that shit?!' under "other obligations on their time"). In other words, the same answers that residents of that suburb will give you when you ask they didn't attend the performance.

But why admit your product doesn't have universal appeal when you get the government to build stuff with other people's money?

There's so much more, but I'm off to the ballpark.

I will say this about Wisconsin...

It's got some beautiful rocks.

The grey ones are approx. 1.5 billion years old.

*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.