So these six librarians go into a restaurant...

They're at a Library Convention and they're really going to party down--on the expense account, no less. Sheer debauchery.

First up are drinks. We have two people here who want actual liquor, two who want soda, and two who want drinks with umbrellas in them.

Ordering food takes forever; "The bean soup sounds good." "What are you having, Marianne?" (Every other librarian in New Jersey is called Marianne, Mary, Mary Ann, Mary Rose, Mary Lou, Mary Jane--you get the picture.)*

Soup or salad? Steak or fish? Should we stick to our diet (every other librarian in New Jersey is on a diet) or go hog wild?

A consensus having been reached, the wait staffer (we librarians don't use sexist language, but she is a woman) takes all orders and disappears to the kitchen.

The festive meal arrives and is consumed, accompanied by catching up, gossip, and gripes. Zero hour has now arrived.

The lone male librarian ventures timidly that it would be nice if we split the check six ways. The suggestion is met with scorn, and the check is scrutinized by one and all.
Lib I: "Marianne had the soup."
Marianne: "Yes, but I only had salad; you had steak--24.95!"
Lib I: "Okay. Sheila had the chicken florentine."
Sheila: "All I had to drink was a diet coke--Susan had two beers."
Lib I: "Who had the red snapper?"

And so it goes. Finally, detente is reached. It is now time to calculate the tip.
Male librarian: "Tip should be $60--five dollars each. That's three times the tax, which is 6 percent."
Librarian III, who has hitherto been silent: "Yes, but you're not supposed to count the drinks when you calculate the tip."
Male librarian: (silently) Oy vey! (Throws money on the table.)
Marianne: You gave me too much. Here--take back three dollars. Wait--does anyone have change for a twenty?
Male librarian: (Unprintable remark, silently.)

*Many librarians also answer to the name of Marie. Or Anne-Marie. Oh, forget it.

Republicans! Democrats! who cares?

The Republican Party was supposed to be conservative. I was misled. They will spend all of your money, including the loose change under the floormats in your car.

The Democrats will also take the cigarette lighter, CD player, and air freshener. Moreover, they are going to subsidize research on methods of converting the lint in your belly button to clean, renewable energy.

Katrina--what went right?

The answer: quite a lot.

Twenty-five thousand body bags were stockpiled; the latest computer model predicted 60,000 dead. Yet weeks after the storm, fewer than 1,000 bodies have been found in all of Louisiana. Which prompts the question: What went right?
The answer is: something massive. Largely ignored by the agenda-driven national media, one of the largest rescue operations in history saved more than 50,000 people by boat and helicopter. In this Dunkirk on the Mississippi, Coast Guard and other military units, volunteers, and state and local first responders delivered thousands from death by drowning, dehydration, heatstroke, fire, starvation, and disease. The three goats of Katrina — FEMA’s Michael Brown, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and Mayor Nagin — had little if any role; in fact, because local communication was wiped out by the storm, they may not even have known about the scale and success of the rescue operation. []

[Coast Guard Officer] Huberty deeply resents TV’s characterization of the black residents of New Orleans. “As many bad stories as you hear about looting, there were plenty of people sacrificing for others, regardless of their demographic. I can’t tell you how many times a man would stay behind an extra day or two on the roof and let his wife and kids go first. It broke my heart. We’d go to an apartment building and you’d see that someone was in charge, organizing the survivors. We’d tell him, ‘We can only take five,’ and they’d sort out the worst cases. It happened many times that the guy in charge was the last to leave.”

LOCAL HEROES
At the state level, the Louisiana National Guard’s 1-244th Aviation Battalion and 812th Med-Evac unit moved helicopters — ten Black Hawks and six Hueys — into New Orleans behind the storm. “It was like a scene from a Stephen King movie,” says Capt. Shawn Vaughn, who piloted a Black Hawk. “We just got back from Iraq and saw nothing like this kind of devastation there.”
[]
The Black Hawk operation was a textbook example of quick-and-dirty improvisation: Lacking rescue hoists, crews adopted the nervy tactic of landing directly on rooftops to take on passengers, while applying power to keep the helicopters light so they wouldn’t collapse the storm-weakened buildings. Some stripped out their seating to increase capacity to 30 passengers standing, or to carry stretchers for the elderly and disabled.

Healthy evacuees were pulled from rooftops and transferred to nearby collection points. When they couldn’t maneuver in for a pickup, National Guardsmen called in the Coast Guard and smaller Hueys with rescue hoists. Individual Black Hawks pulled out as many as 250 people per day when the pressure was on. Vaughn estimates the unit saved up to 4,000 in the first week ....
Also on Monday, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries had 250 agents and their boats in the water, along with volunteers from inside the agency, according to Lt. Col. Keith LaCaze. His operation claimed 20,000 rescues by September 8 — at which point it suspended calls for more volunteers and boats. LaCaze says many of these rescues were of people facing imminent death. “There were a lot of people we rescued on the first night — in houses and in attics where the water was almost over their head. There were still many people the next day in danger of drowning and dehydration.”

It has been reported that two shifts of New Orleans firemen were not on duty, and that up to half of the police department went AWOL. Wrong on both counts: Efforts by these local rescuers were robust. According to Firehouse magazine, firemen had prepared for the emergency, with ample boats and supplies in place. Local first responders were fielding 100 to 200 boats in the first 24 hours, according to officials quoted in the New Orleans Times-Picayune....
SUCCESS STORY
The above account covers the most important responders, but it is by no means exhaustive. The Air Force reported 1,300 rescues and some 14,000 “transported” by September 4. By the end of Tuesday, August 30, the Navy ship Bataan — later slammed for inaction by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — had five choppers flying rescue missions and had pulled out several hundred people. One Bataan airman, in an e-mail that was reprinted in his local newspaper, casually described how his helicopter had lifted 19 victims from the roof of a burning building. Other units on Day One came from as far away as Wisconsin, which sent two Black Hawks and three Hueys from the 832nd Medical Company and from the 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation unit. Three Hueys from the Georgia National Guard’s 148th Air Ambulance arrived Monday and flew nonstop from sunup to sundown. State Police and sheriffs’ departments operated rescue boats. Civilian search-and-rescue teams from out of state, and as far away as Canada, responded on their own. FEMA also operated search-and-rescue teams. A volunteer squad from Exxon Mobil pulled out 1,500 survivors all by itself. One pilot said he sighted a Chinook helicopter from the Republic of Singapore Air Force; improbably, such a craft was temporarily based in Texas, and, like exotic fauna washed in by a storm, may have become part of the aerial ecosystem.

By Wednesday, August 31, as the media screamed for troops to deal with the over-hyped breakdown.
[]

“As tragic as every death is, there were less than 1,000 in Louisiana,” Congressman Peter King, a New York Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, told me after a trip to New Orleans. “Every study beforehand said a hurricane of this kind would kill at least 10,000. Obviously, there were a lot of rescuers; obviously, first responders and the Coast Guard did many, many more rescues than has been reported.” The death toll in New Orleans will rise, but it will never come close to the ghoulish early estimates. That doesn’t absolve authorities from responsibility for some of the deaths; King says that his committee will be looking at the city and state role in failed evacuations and the breakdown of supply to survivors.

But the narrative of Katrina needs wholesale revision, and mainstream news organizations are starting to work on it. There were not 200 murders at the Superdome; there appear to have been exactly zero. Local authorities did not lose control there or at the Convention Center. The more than 30,000 residents at emergency shelters during the first week of Katrina were tired, hungry, miserable, and without proper sanitary facilities — but were in no danger of dying. As for the rest of the city, help was rarely late, delayed, or inadequate. That’s the true story — and there are tens of thousands of rescued people who will testify to it.

U S Postal Service issues stamp in honor of Hiram Bingham

He was truly a hero.

Washington, DC - The United States Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring an American diplomat who helped Jews escape the Holocaust.
The stamp will honor Hiram Bingham IV, who provided fake visas to journalist and scholar Varian Fry, who helped Jews pass into safety. Bingham also hid Jews in his home after he was posted in southern France in 1940.

After German and French officials complained his activities, Bingham was transferred to Argentina. In 1946, he resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service in protest over the U.S. refusal to investigate how war criminals were being given safe haven in the South American country.

Bingham is the only U.S. diplomat “that we know of who risked his career, indeed sacrificed his career, in order to save Jews from the Holocaust,” Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, said.

Only one diplomat cared enough about the Jews to risk his career--that is so sad!

Analyzing Al Gore

This blog is called Al Gore is a fraud, and it certainly proves his point:

Al Gore has stated the he "has presented his global warming powerpoint presentation over 1000 times, all over the world". Hmmm, interesting. I wonder how Gore got to these cities throughout the world? Did he ride a horse? Did he walk? Did he ride a bike? No---He flew in a private jumbo jet, and when he arrives with his entourage they all jump from their jet into large, you guessed it, SUV's. In fact, recently it was noted that Gore and his group jumped in their fleet of over-sized SUV's to go to one of these tree-hugger rallies when they only had to travel 500 yards! How much fuel do you think a jumbo jet uses criss crossing continents--more than your Tahoe or Explorer perhaps? Well, for example, a Boeing 767 requires 11,526 gallons of fuel. For longer trips, or for trips on which Al decides to increase his traveling tree-hugger entourage, an A380 may be used. The Airbus A380 is a newer generation that is actually capable of much longer range and greater fuel efficiency. Oh, but there is one slight drawback, this flying behemoth requires a staggering 81,890 gallons of fuel to top off the tanks! This is how big Al rolls around the world spreading his "love the Earth" message. It is so ridiculous it could only happen in America. Al Gore will burn more fuel in a day than the average person will burn in 10 years......
Yet Gore wants us to drive hybrids or walk. Typical Gore. An elitist senator's son who thinks the rules only apply to the commoners, not those in positions of power, like himself.

The fact is Gore clings to this issue because it is the only thing that keeps him in the news. I think losing to Bush did real damage to Gore, at a very personal level. I do not think he has recovered. Gore was, is, and always will be second rate. That has got to be tough to live with. The fact that he was VP for eight years is almost poetic. A thematic reminder that he can be good, but never great. The bridesmaid, but never the bride. So close, alas, yet so far. Gore uses the environmental propaganda to find a voice, any voice. Even if the voice that he finds doesn't speak the truth.

Moonbats under a full moon

at the British House of Commons, no less.

A tall young man, with a la-de-da accent... said how North Korea had avoided invasion by developing nuclear weapons and Iran too should do the same. Just to clear any confusion, I asked him "Sorry are you in favour of North Korea?" and bloody hell, he said he supported the North Korean government wholeheartedly!

I thought to myself here is someone who calls his organisation "Liberation" and wants to "liberate" the world to become like North Korea!

He stood by the door trying to flog his Liberation publication after the meeting was over. As I went past him, I asked him laughingly "How is the Great Leader Kim-il-Sung, and our dear leader, Kim-il-Jung?". His comrade ...replied "Have you ever been there?", to which I replied "Have you ever been to Iran?"

Solving Russia's population problems

I heard on the radio (on NPR so it must be true) that Russia is losing population at the rate of 700,000 a year. People are dying young, especially males, and nobody is having babies.

On the other hand, we have maybe 12 million illegals and are planning to admit 300,000 more every year.

Do you see what I am getting at? Suggestion for Vicente Fox: start teaching Russian in your school system, if you have a school system. Also, institute cheap direct flights to Moscow. I'm sure the Russian people could use fruit pickers, gardeners, fish processors, and nannies. Well, maybe not nannies, considering the birth rate.

It's easy to solve the big problems if you are creative.

Anyway, it beats a guest worker program and amnesty.

This employee wins the award for the worst,

at least in attendance.

Wait, there's more. And still more.

News flash: Aruban male not arrested...

and he feels left out.

Explaining women

airforceguy wants to know what's up with women. Some of his concerns:

1) Why do women go to the bathroom together? What the hell goes on in there that requires 5 other women?

We're talking about you! In private! In a place where you are not allowed!

Do women fart? According to my wife, every bad smell in the house or outside comes from my backside. Even if it’s clearly a skunk or rotten lettuce, it must be from me. It’s not....

If we do fart, which I by no means admit, we do it in a ladylike way. And it smells like perfume.

7) Do the giggles women produce have an actual linguistic meaning, or are they something to do with pressure relief?

Definitely pressure relief. We cope with guys every day. Take men away--no giggles. Have you ever heard a nun giggle?

How many shoes is enough? I have a lot of shoes for a guy -- boots for BDU’s, boots for DCU’s, low quarters, dress shoes, hiking boots, and running shoes. My mother had 1,000,000 pairs of shoes. I’m not exaggerating. My daughters are on their way there. They have 100,000 pairs each.

All the shoes in the world are not enough.

I've given this a lot of thought: why are men so different from women? A woman's ideal man is Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Tall. Dark. Handsome. Smoldering with concealed passion. Chivalrous. Noble. Devoted to her, and her alone.
He never farts, talks about farting, or scratches his balls, or insists on watching the game when her mother is visiting. He doesn't sit around with his friends, downing too many beers and talking about chicks or cars. It goes without saying that he never throws his socks on the floor. If she wants to go to the movies, he is eager to take her, even to see a chick flick.

The ideal woman for a man: 20 years old. Cute butt. Big tits. She might have the brain of Einstein, but never says anything except how wonderful he is. And she always cooks his favorite food. And cleans up afterward. And is willing to have sex anywhere, at any time.

Julianne Moore designs a corset

VVery nice, if you're not allergic to feathers.  

Piss in all the wrong places

Johnny V complains about the piss distribution around (not in) urinals:

...I now piss in the stall where it's dry and I don't stick to the floor....[A]t least I no longer feel compelled to burn my shoes.

Goddammit people. AIM for chrissakes. It's not that difficult. And if you're too fat to get close enough, dangle your dongle in a coffee cup and then dump it or something.

In the ladies' room, even using the stall won't save you. In the last ten years, I have noticed a new phenomenon: urine on the toilet seat. How it gets there, I know not.

My established MO for using the facilities: I furtively go from stall to stall, doing the following:

1. Check if toilet has been flushed;
2. Check if someone has dribbled urine on the seat;
3. Check whether there is toilet paper. (Or be prepared with Kleenex in purse.)

Life used to be so much simpler.

Che Guevara, saint of the hip, cool and groovy

Wretchard analyzes the myth of this Communist thug:

Che Guevara is a testament to the power of a media symbol. As a purely military force he was negligible. As an organizing force and agitator of Bolivians he was an abject failure. But as an international Marxist symbol and poster-boy Che was eminently successful. Millions of people have worn his likeness on a T-shirt believing that he was a brilliant revolutionary and guerilla when in fact he was neither. But that would be missing the point. Guevara was the prototypical example of the triumph of image over reality. What did it matter if he wrote nothing of lasting ideological value? What did it matter if he was a comparative military failure? He was a surpassing public relations success and that made up for everything else. The power of Che lay not in his M2 carbine, which was shot out of his hands by the Bolivian Rangers. It lay in his beard, beret and his photogenic camera angles. Long before the word "spin" came into common usage Guevara was all spin -- a spin which will outlast the memory of those who defeated and slew him.

Though he died nearly forty years ago Che, from a media perspective, is thoroughly modern. He is so modern it would be possible to argue that both Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi are simple extensions of his great archetype. Zarqawi, for example, is by almost any measure a complete military failure unless one counts massacring women and children as some kind of martial accomplishment. Zarqawi is even incapable of clearing a stoppage from a light machinegun he fires on video. But no matter, because it is the video not the machinegun which is the real weapon. It is the T-shirt graphic not the man depicted on the T-shirt which is important. News no longer describes war; it is war which inscribes news.

Trying to get this through the head of a true believer is like denying the existence of Jesus, Santa Claus, Mother Teresa, and the Easter bunny. The left have too much invested in Che.

The ultimate in voice mail

Dennis Dale gives his take on the White House voice mail. Best bits:

If you are an alien being from another planet and would like to replace a current U.S. citizen, press three.

beep


Welcome to the citizen replacement process. We currently have an unlimited number of slots open for carbon based life forms that wish to immigrate to the United States. If you'd like to learn more about how pod metamorphosis replacement works, press one. If you are a family member seeking to join a recent alien immigrant, press two. If you would like to recieve a brochure of available body types, press three. To inquire about regional availability, press four.

Stolen from dustbury.

There's one thing in Hillary's favor...

Susan Sarandon doesn't like her.

One view of islamism--

A comment --you could call it a rant--on muttawa's blog:

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to find HIGHLY OFFENDED morphing it's way into the joos vs pals vs all arabs vs west vs huntingdon cage match....

1) Any valid idea of PEACE PROCESS has been haram bologna since the Abu Musa riots of 1919
2) Arabs have rejected any Israel since 1936 (Peel Commission)
3) Around that time they took what the quran said, added a pinch of Okrana, a teaspoon of KKK, and 4 tons of Julius Streicher and concocted the post modern version of anti semitism, apparently completing god's plan to keep them so involved with demonizing others to keep from being responsible for themselves that nothing would ever occur from within. Thus these people infected themselves with the cancer of racism to cure the sore throat of new neighbors
4) God then sent massive oil development to tease these people into thinking this GOOD LUCK could be confused with professional accomplishment and excellence (however, BIG SHOCK - arabs who were motivated to come to the west and adopt certain modes of living suddenly found themselves not only escaping the madness, but also HIGH ACHIEVERS!)
5) Hamas and the rest of the salafi jihadi morons (Qutb, etc) are nothing new for the 'peace process', but will remove all doubt about how palestinian societies currently regard 'peace'- the vast majority want Israel gone, and prefer this occurs with rivers of blood. You don't need rivers of blood to collect the garbage ina timely fashion and build schools, and Fascists weren't the irreplaceable ingredients for the trains runnning on time. Get it?
No one can now have any doubt that RIGHT NOW the palestinians have just exactly the govt they want and the one they deserve

Epimonidas, why don't you tell us how you really feel? Don't hold back.

Muslim offense level explained

A handy guide to Muslim attitudes from low

Meaning - We are slightly miffed, although we are not sure why. We think we are not as popular as we would like to be.
Non-Muslim response - Tread very carefully and do not offend us
Consequence of non-compliance - We will get very cross and stamp our feet.

To severe:

Meaning - We have had enough of your rudeness and ridicule and have gone completely ballistic
Non-Muslim response - We demand that the Pope and President Bush go down on their knees and apologize personally for every rude thing that everyone has ever said about us over the last 1400 years, and promise that it won't happen again
Consequence of non-compliance - We will cease the export of oil, therefore depriving the numerous Saudi Royal Family of all income, we will cease the import of all cars, tanks, airplanes (military and civil), computers, building technology, infrastructure and general professional expertise, and we will stop visiting Western fleshpots like the South of France, the USA, London..... Honest. We will. We really mean it this time. Just you wait. We really will. You better believe it. We're not kidding. We're telling you. Honest. Don't make us do it.....

Read the whole thing. It would be funny if it weren't quite, quite true. From Muttawa.

Refrigerator blues

Is it a bad idea to have/use a refrigerator at work? We report, you decide:

In several of my last places of employment, the most passive-aggressive behavior I ever witnessed took place not in the boardroom, but in the kitchenette....
Passively, aggressively, covertly, Co-Worker A (We'll call her Anne) began to exact her revenge upon Co-Worker B (We'll call her Anne, too, because that was her name) by taking, once per week, on nonspecific days, Anne's Diet Pop from the communal kitchen refrigerator.

[]
Anne responded to that first theft with as much restraint as I've ever seen, "WHO'S THA SKANK THAT TOOK MY DIET COKE?" she asked during the benefits meeting.

One person snickered, but Anne couldn't locate the source among the 150 staff members present.

Anne then responded by labeling her diet pops with little stickers that at first said, "Anne's," then slightly bigger labels marked "ANNE'S," and then finally duct tape with the letters scraped out by an exacto knife, "I"LL MURDER YOUR FETUS, BITCH."

But the thefts continued to the point where Anne was practically a roving office, never at her desk for more than a minute at a time, always walking past the kitchen to check on her diet pop.

It really didn't matter. Anne always had one diet pop stolen until she had become fairly worthless as an employee, and not much better as a human being.

[]
The funniest incident was when someone complained via the company intranet about how filthy the refrigerator was and how people needed to remove their foodstuffs, particularly those packages of Wrapples and Waffelos, since both products stopped being made in the late 1970s.

Bessie Coleman, aviation pioneer

In honor of Black History Month, I am re-posting my short bio of Bessie Coleman:


Every Memorial Day, black men and women aviators fly in formation over the grave of Bessie Coleman, dropping bouquests of flowers on the grave of the first black woman ever to earn a pilot's license.
Coleman was born in 1892, the twelfth of thirteen children. The family earned their living picking cotton. It was an impoverished existence, and as her siblings reached adulthood two of them left for Chicago, where opportunities were better.
Bessie Coleman followed when she grew up. She trained as a manicurist and got a job at the White Sox Barber Shop, situated on the Stroll,an 8-block section of State Street where black-owned businesses flourished. It was there that she encountered Robert S. Abbott, the editor of the Chicago Defender, a prominent newspaper read widely in the black community.
She developed a desire to become a pilot, inspired by stories of the derring-do of the World War I flying aces. This was an unthinkable ambition for a black woman at the time. Yet Abbott saw something of the potential in Bessie, and offered her financial help to attend a French flying school. He guessed that she would make great copy, and he was right. On her return from France with her pilot's license, she was greeted by representatives of both the black and white press.

Beautiful and flamboyant, she became an overnight sensation. Barnstorming and stunt flying were all the rage at the time, and no one's exploits were more daring than Coleman's. She became a hero to the black community, who dubbed her "Queen Bess." Her ambition was to start a flight school for black people, to encourage them to follow careers in the promising new field of aviation.

Her career was fraught with peril: many of the barnstorming stunts were daring and dangerous. Coleman also suffered from a lack of sufficient funds and therfore often relied on decrepit and unsafe planes. In California, on February 4, 1922, a plane she was piloting stalled at 300 feet, smashing into the ground. She suffered multiple injuries which landed her in the hospital for three months.

Undaunted, she relocated to Texas and resumed her barnstorming career. She had previously performed in the North, to appreciative white audiences. She now visited venues mainly in the South, where African Americans were her most enthusiastic fans. They opened their homes and hearts to her. Coleman's beauty, skill and daring inspired her African American fans.
According to her niece, "The airplanes she was flying, they were just old things....They weeren't worth a darn." The lack of adequate funds did not stop her, however, from planning a flight in Jacksonville, FL. in a ramshackle plane.

Coleman waas planning a parachute stunt, so she went up to scout the territory with her mechanic, William Wills, at the controls. Wills lost control of the plane, and Coleman, with neither seat belt nor parachute, was hurled to her death. She was 34 years old.
Her influence, however, lived on. Within a few years William Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, both to honor her and to inspire other African Americans to follow her example. Her dream lived on, and still lives on to this day.

Rent a German

I can add nothing to this.

Nature, red in tooth and claw

And bug-infested too, according to askmom:

The current shrieking and sniveling, most of it by people who can afford mega-vehicles, vacation houses and exotic travel, is unseemly. Not to mention just plain dumb and out-of-touch. Voters are about to send a message to their governments and it won't be a demand for more protected acreage and wildlife at any price.

No, we love our private transportation, our suburbs, our freedom to move about when, where and how we please. God help anyone who tries to restrict those freedoms or increase the price of that freedom unreasonably. Here's a memo for the Sierra Club et al: in a contest between being able to drive to the kid's little league game, the grocery store and the library, and some allegedly endangered marsh leech, the leech is going to lose....
Billions of people all over the planet would love to come here and pay one-fifth of their average hourly wage for a gallon of gas. Where they are now, gas is about a week's pay per gallon. Not that there is much gas, or work, available. Or that it matters anyway, since there are few motorized vehicles....

One thing these non-Americans have in plenitude is protected nature. Bugs in their food, parasites in their water, scavengers stealing their crops, predators eating their chickens, maggots in their latrines, flies swarming over their sleeping babies. Dirt, glorious untrammeled wildlife and no ugly industry in sight. You'd think Hollywood's finest and the entire Democratic Congressional delegation (and staff) would be clamoring to live there.

That instead they remain here paying three dollars a gallon for gas may be the only evidence that liberals are not terminally brain-dead. Could there be hope? Stay tuned for this fall's elections!

Fidel Castro--bloated capitalist pig

Well, he's got the grinding the faces of the poor part right.

President tramples on civil liberties

Oops! wrong President.

Complete insanity in the land of wooden shoes

and wooden heads:

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk’s ruled that Hirsi Ali was never a legal citizen of the Netherlands in the first place and revoked her citizenship.

Naughty librarians are at it again

From libraryosis.

About President Bush's speech last night...

two diametrically opposed ideas entered my mind:
1. Some of the jobs "Americans won't take" are physician and chemist, due to the lousiness of our educational system, which turns out ignorant and complacent people who have majored in righteous indignation. When they start college, they are educationally deficient, and when they finally graduate 5, 6 or 10 years later they are experts in marching, catcalling, and making ridiculous puppets, but have an unquenchable belief in their own superiority. Then they go to law school and become ambulance chasers and sue the pants off the rest of us. Or they become teachers and transmit their ignorance to the next generation of Americans. Unfortunately for our future as a nation, a majority of the students studying for advanced degrees in the sciences in this country are foreigners.

2. "Guest workers" who do jobs "Americans won't do" sounds uncomfortably like "hewers of wood and drawers of water," in the words of Jonathan Swift. In other words, a permanent underclass. This is the way the Germans, for example, treated the Turks who they imported to do their dirty work for them. They couldn't be citizens either, for a long time. In the case of Germany, this engendered bitter feelings. In France, too, Muslims are kept isolated and denied meaningful work. Do we want to breed this kind of resentment? Can't we learn anything from the French experience?

Admittedly, we can't expel 12 million people. But perhaps we could kick out those who are convicted for crimes? Let them serve their sentences, and then back to Mexico. Perhaps it would be better to forget about the law-abiding many who have already sneaked into the country, and fix our sights on keeping out future "undocumented"--a word which sounds more like someone who left the car registration papers at home than someone who has no business being here. Employers should pay market wages for workers, and not hire anyone who is illegal, under penalty of law.

Let's enforce the laws we already have. Flouting the law leads to contempt of the law.

News flash: water cost more than gas

From multiple mentality:

A gallon of gas is $2.82 down the street. A bottle of water at my local movie theater is $3.50 — a half-liter bottle. If a gallon is approximately four liters (3.78, according to Google), then water is $14/gallon at the movies....

People still pay $1 for a half-liter bottle of water at soda machines. They still pick up the 79-cent half-liter at Publix or Kroger. And they’d rather spend $3.50 for a half-liter of soda than $4.50 for a massive cup of Coke or Pepsi — which usually holds about 3/4 liters, and free refills usually are a part of largest-size options.

This innocent bit of whimsical humor elicited the following comment, which managed to be both snarky and ignorant--a twofer:

Buying gasoline is OPTIONAL. Driving huge gas guzzling vehicles is NOT REQUIRED to get back and forth to work and make a living. People have the option to RIDE A BIKE to work. Furthermore, oil is NOT USED to heat homes. Coal and natural gas ARE. Maybe you should learn to check up on your facts before you write OBNOXIOUS POSTINGS.

Have you ever noticed that people who PUT EVERYTHING IN CAPS generally are both SNARKY AND IGNORANT?

The style-conscious approach to conservation

The smug sanctimonious of this would be hard to beat.

"I realized if I sold my S.U.V. it would just be bought by someone else who would almost certainly drive it a lot more than I would," said Ms. Hess, who drives less than 25 miles a day. "There still isn't one less S.U.V. on the planet," she said, with a hint of frustration.

Perhaps she could take a hatchet to her SUV or fill it with dirt and grow (organic) vegetables in it. Yeah, that'sll work.

Yes, there is intelligent life on this planet

because Greenpeace Australia is cutting back:

CONSERVATION giant Greenpeace Australia Pacific has posted its third operating loss in as many years and culled staff numbers.
Greenpeace chief executive Steve Shallhorn admitted yesterday the organisation had been forced to make 12 full-time staff members out of 80 redundant this year in a belt-tightening exercise aimed at balancing the budget.

The organisation's financial report for 2005 shows it raised more than $17 million last year from supporters, almost $4million more than in 2004, but recorded a net loss of $907,000.

In 2004, Greenpeace Australia was $1.2 million in the red.

Me and mom

I miss her every day.
 

Happy Mother's Day! 

A brief rundown on Australia

Harvey at bad example lists everything you really need to know.

The moonbat lament

Sung to the tune of Oh Susannah:

At last! The Bush fascists have gone too far! Life as we know it will never be the same! They are trampling on our civil liberties! Oy vey (Jewish moonbats only, or at least not Muslims)! A Police State is at hand! To the barricades--or at least, start talking about moving to Canada!

Seismic! Shocking! Startling! A bombshell!! That’s how the ABC, CBS and NBC morning shows described a front-page story in today’s (Thursday’s) USA Today that breathlessly touted how “NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls.” Like the TV coverage, USA Today’s story insinuated that the existence of the database was a major violation of Americans’ privacy rights and evidence that the President was lying last December when he described the NSA’s eavesdropping on suspected terrorist communications as limited and targeted.

Today’s article does not allege that any calls are listened in on. Indeed, as USA Today describes it, the program seems like a thoroughly innocuous database of the same information that appears on your phone bill, but with your name, address and other personal information removed. Given that another government agency — the IRS — maintains information on American citizens’ employment, banking, investments, mortgages, charitable contributions and even any declared medical expenses, this hardly seems like a major assault on personal liberty.

And for all of the hype, there may not even be much “news” here. Last December 24, a few days after they spilled the beans about the NSA terrorist surveillance program, New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen disclosed how U.S. phone companies were helping the NSA by giving them “access to streams of domestic and international communications.”

If the government is interested in my phone calls, I'd like to help them out. After all, they sent me a nice income tax refund. Therefore, I am recording a typical day's worth of calls.

Outgoing:

To lawyer, concerning some $1500 that is owing to me; to hairdresser, disclosing the fact that my roots are showing; to daughter, discussing a cute pair of shoes I saw and wondering if I should buy them, even though I have enough shoes; to father, inquiring how he feels (he has been having back trouble); to Comcast, chewing them out concerning another one of the inscrutable bills I received from them.

Incoming:

From daughter, wondering whether I had seen the LAT article about her; from friend, who says my e-mails are too short; from foot doctor, reminding me of pending appointment.

I hope the person who has to listen to this stuff isn't too bored.

Dining in style in underpants

We went to a concert at the Kimmel Center last Saturday, and dined at their restaurant, Cadence. At each end of the room there was an identical collection of paintings--maybe 12 or 16 in all, each of which looked like a different pair of ladies' underpants.A sample:



Some were thongs, some were brightly colored, others were modest old lady underpants. But unless someone can prove the contrary, they all looked like underpants to me. My companion thought so too.

The food wasn't that good, but the art work was fascinating. But why two, one set at either end?

The concert, by the way, was excellent. 

The Kennedys and motor vehicles--what's that all about?

Dave Nalle is worried.

A lot of people have been hard on Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. because of the conflict between his strident environmentalism and his hypocritical use of a chauffered Ford Expedition, but I say give the man a break. He's getting driven around in a gas-guzzler for the sake of humanity. We can't enjoy clean air if we get run over while standing on a street corner breathing it.

The tragic history of the Kennedys and vehicles is documented as far back as World War II, though I suspect they were crashing oxcarts in Ireland in the early 1800s.

Friday prayers--what's that all about?

Friday sermons in Islam (aka the Religion of Peace) are a little different from the Judeo-Christian kind that take place on Saturday (the Judeos) or Sunday (the Christians).

When I attend the Judeo services (not as often as I should), the rabbis wax long about loving your fellow man, making nice, and supporting worthy causes, while the congregants quietly catch up on their sleep.

The Christians (Protestant league) have to squirm in their seats while the minister talks about loving your fellow man, forgiving your enemies, and being an all-around good person.

The Catholic division reads from a playbook, so the priest doesn't have much to say off the cuff. When he does let loose with a sermon, he always talks about loving your fellow man, etc., while the parishioners steal glances at their watches and wonder if they will get home in time to watch the game. And this bunch has some kind of peaceloving hugfest which concludes the festivities.

I've never attended Friday prayers at a mosque, but you don't have to. You can read about their sermons in the newspapers. They call Jews pigs and dogs, Christians are crusaders--and they don't mean it as a compliment--and atheists--oy vey! All three of the aforementioned groups--have I forgotten anyone? are rotten infidels and should be killed by Muslims ASAP.

Those Imams really know how to work a crowd. No nodding heads in their congregations! Their listeners take their words to heart and go out to do their level best to wipe out the rest of us. None of that love-thy-neighbor guff from them!

The Harvard-Yale rivalry escalates:

How will it ever end?

Maybe you don't want to know.

Let's hope they all kill each other

like the gingham dog and the calico cat.

I saw United 93

last weekend. And I want to add my voice to the accolades given this film.

First, let me tell you what it doesn't have. There are no previews. The film starts with an annoucement to turn off cell phones--unfortunately necessary, but not out of place here. It doesn't have a loud, dramatic music--cymbals clashing, drums beating. No big-name Movie Stars, looking glamorous or acting heroically. No clutching of brows, scenery chewing, or overacting by the cast playing the ground personnel.

To those who hesitate to see the film--you won't go through anything worse than you did on September 11, 2001.

It's better for us to relive those moments this way than to have to suffer through a real attack again. Just remember, we are at war! Let's wipe the bastards out!

Librarians heart Osama, hate bush

Yes, it's true. Those sweet librarians, who will find you any information you want, lend you a pencil, paper clip or stapler, even a piece of paper--even whiteout, for God's sake!--disapprove of the criminal Bush.

The heretical librarian provides evidence:

[

I]n the wake of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, librarianship as a profession no longer simply leans to the left; it has become openly politicized. By 2004, to work in a major American public or academic library was to find yourself in a left-wing echo chamber.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the situation is the way in which the supposedly nonpolitical American Library Association has become a platform for left-wing partisanship. The ALA's Council, its elected governing body, is dominated by left-wing activists who recently passed a resolution calling for the United States to leave Iraq.

It is, of course, the right of the vast majority of my colleagues to hold positions I disagree with. But it's a very different matter when the major professional association in librarianship takes openly political stands on issues that have no direct bearing on the field.

Proponents of the resolution on Iraq argue that abandoning the country to Al Qaeda would allow us to spend lots more money on libraries here at home. I believe that allowing radical Islam to run rampant in the Middle East would be utterly disastrous for libraries and intellectual freedom, both here and abroad. It is for individuals to choose between those positions; a professional organization like the ALA has no business adopting such a blatantly partisan resolution.
[]


The ALA's annual conferences have become akin to MoveOn.org meetings, where Bush bashing and liberal groupthink are the order of the day.

I dropped out of ALA when they first started Israel-bashing, back in the '90s. Then my employer thought it worth my while to rejoin, for professional reasons, and paid for my membership. But the group has gotten worse and worse, like a boat whose anchor is lost which continually drifts farther and farther from shore. In this case the drift has been leftward and away from reality.

Why I object to these policies:
1) They don't represent me politically;
2) These political activities have nothing to do with libraries, librarians, or library users;
3) While the ALA wastes their time (and our dues) advocating these issues, other, legitimate issues are not addressed. To name one: salaries.

Learning Hebrew--not

I want to take Hebrew lessons--is that so difficult? In a word, yes.

I have been to two synagogues in this neck of the woods. The first one had Hebrew lessons, but stopped. I went to the second one. I was asked if I wanted an adult bat mitzvah--if I did, Hebrew lessons were included. I have no desire for an adult bat mitzvah, sorry. I don't see the point. I already know I'm Jewish. So does everyone else.

In New Jersey, something called the National Jewish Outreach Program (run by Chabad) gave Hebrew lessons for free. Our teacher, Jerry, was a wonderful man, but some people in the class asked too many questions of the How many beans make five variety, and Jerry made the mistake of answering them. We didn't even finish learning the alphabet, and lo, the class was over. It was a good class, with a good textbook.

As a child I learned Hebrew--not well enough. I believe I have what is technically known as a goyishe kop. I learned Yiddish because my grandmother spoke Yiddish to me. I wouldn't mind attending a Yiddish discussion group, or a French discussion group, but I really want to learn more Hebrew.

I can't do it myself. I need a class to keep me up to snuff.

Living in West Nowhere

From the Telegraph.

Howard Dean feels comfortable about American Jews

But some of us don't return the favor.

Disillusionment

John finds out that what he always believed is not true:

Related to that, as an adult I’ve been finding that some of the cherished myths of my childhood were rather malevolent fictions. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite finish his broadcast with “That’s the way it was…”, but my studies of the Vietnam war, starting with “On Strategy” when I was in middle school, have shown me that he should have been saying “That’s the way I wish it was…”. Not that I totally fault him for that – as Solzhenitsyn put it, every human being has the right to a point of view. What I do fault Cronkite for is the deliberate suppression of alternate points of view while wearing the innocent “who farted?” expression of a con artist when the chickens came home to roost at CBS.

I hope that someday the truth about Vietnam will be believed. It's already known, but the alternative view has taken hold and is now akin to scripture. Like the belief that John Brown was a hero, when the truth is that he killed innocent men who didn't even own slaves.

Nine reasons for a woman to decline being a Muslim

9. It's hot in the summer under all those clothes;
8. Poor vision under burkas makes you bump into pedestrians;
7. You can't go anywhere unless your husband/brother/father/son wants to go with you
(How do Muslim women do any shopping?)
6. Sitting around the ladies' quarters with the girls gets old after a while;
5. Guys get to dance, women don't;
4. Guys get kalashnikovs, women get pregnant;
3. Your husband's other wives are b***h*;
2. A woman who is raped gets executed, while the guy gets to brag about what a good lay she is;
1. To be decided later.

How to get more oil

The Charlotte capitalist knows how to solve the oil crisis, so read his advice before you sacrifice that chicken in order to read its entrails:
H

uman life requires commanding, that is, re-shaping nature to our needs. Doing so requires energy. It takes energy to cut down trees and to produce bricks for houses for humans. It takes energy to cut crops and to package them and to ship them for human consumption. It takes energy to re-shape minerals found in the ground into the components for factories and cars which increase the productivity of human beings.

The thing is all that human focus is the problem that really gets to the environmentalists. They believe the planet would be in great shape -- without you, me and our families and friends. They know that oil is the best, most productive energy source for the lovers of life. And that is why they want you to conserve. Because when you conserve, you sacrifice something in your life. Your life as a human being. Sorry, I don't care to be a sacrificial victim to a volcano, a tree, a fish, a bug, or a plot of dirt.

I've often wondered what was so bad about going to war for oil. What is so bad about needing oil? Other countries can need oil, can buy oil, can use oil, but when we use it we are supposed to feel bad.

Tom Casey Jr gets on my nerves

I thought he might, just might be an honest politician, who puts principle ahead of expediency. His old man, you might remember, was an outspoken opponent of abortion, and Junior is similarly considered "pro-life."

Was I ever wrong! I heard this oily politician interviewed on NPR, and he did everything short of promising to get an abortion himself to get the pro-choicers behind him.

Wait, there's worse. He referred to "President Bush and his rich friends." As opposed to President Clinton and the paupers he hung out with, I guess. Or the welfare recipients who frequented President Kennedy's table.

This isn't political discourse. It's appealing to people's baser instincts, such as envy.

You people from PA, don't vote for him. And stay away from the Skoogle.

Extortion racket in New Jersey

I mean traffic court.

I had a ticket for speeding so was forced to attend traffic court in Bergen County, New Jersey. What a fraud!

Those who wanted to "discuss" their case with a prosecutor had to wait in line, standing, around the perimeter of the room. This took a long time, because there were about 40 of us miscreants. It was hot and my feet hurt.

Here is the discussion I had with the representative of truth, justice, and the American way, aka the prosecutor:

Prosecutor: You have a ticket for speeding. That's 4 points. Do you want 4 points, 2 points, or no points?

Me: No points.

Prosecutor: It'll cost you $433.

Me: Okay.

Traffic court is a nice little money maker. Everyone pleads guilty to a lesser charge, everyone has 2 minutes with the judge, and everyone pays: whatever the fine is, maybe $50, plus court costs, maybe $100, and a surcharge of $250 (this goes to the State of New Jersey). The judge pounds his gavel, the next person is summoned. I estimated that the judge pounded his gavel at least 25 times each hour. You do the math.

I guess this is how Corzine is going to balance the budget.

But the day was not all negative. Someone else pumped gas for me. That felt good!

A fine, upstanding Christian woman

Don't believe me? Check out the
cross.

Scroll down.

My grandfather had to learn English

 

This is a certificate my grandfather earned from the public schools of Columbus, Ohio.
I'm not entirely in sympathy with those who march under a Mexican flag and want to take the country "back."

If the current Mexican government owned Texas, Texas would be sending illegals to Oklahoma. Or New Mexico. 

Outrageous!

A New York Times writer is a moral idiot:

... I can imagine a film other than "Munich" or "United 93," a greater film, a film about different kinds of courage. In this film, the courage of the passengers would be shown and honored, but there would be an equal effort to show the courage of the terrorists (without calling them simply "evil" or "insane"). You can feel already, I know, that that film is less likely. It has a kind of moral ambivalence not settled by giving 5 percent of the proceeds to families of the lost.

The courage of the terrorists! What courage? Attacking and murdering an unsuspecting, unarmed flight attendant does not display courage. Trading on the belief of passengers they would not be hurt if they cooperated?

And then there's this:

[O]n 9/11, we faced the first need to ask ourselves how other people — evil, alien, insane — could be so brave. The history of terrorism — and it includes the independence of this country — is that in the end you have to understand the grievance of the aggrieved, whether you agree with it or not. That film has still to come.

We know their grievance: They want us all dead. Alternatively, we could all become Muslims and don burkas. Wouldn't that be fun?

The moral obtuseness of some people defies belief.

Kvetcher nation

Whatever happened to the old pioneer spirit? Or for that matter, Yankee ingenuity?

I'll tell you what, they've been replaced by kvetching. Kvetching combines the most obnoxious features of whining and complaining: you whine vociferously and never shut up. Example:

W-a-a-ah, I want $1 gas! I'm entitled to it! I deserve it! This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me! My life has become unbearable, now that it costs $60 to fill my SUV. Who's to blame? Someone must be! Evil oil companies. I can't take it any more! Life in this country is no longer possible. Blame Bush! Blame anybody! Boohoohoo!

The whole country is kvetching about oil prices--the news media, Congress, even the President.

When not obsessed with gas prices, we kvetch continually about the war in Iraq:

People are getting killed over there! Over 2,000! No-one should ever be killed! War is bad! Iraq is not becoming a democracy fast enough to suit me! Boohoohoo! I want these Iraqis to settle down immediately or I'll cry! Blame Bush! Bush lied!

The back-up kvetch, when things are (otherwise) going well:

Global warming, oy! Life as we know it is going to stop next Tuesday! I demand an end to global warming, everyone but me should stop using oil! Boohoohoo!

Another group whine

We know who you are, gougers!

Iran's president quakes in his boots

UN threatens dire consequences:

Confronted by the UN’s might, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is holding his nerve somehow:

Iran has ignored a UN Security Council call to suspend all nuclear fuel enrichment, a report by the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has concluded.

Mohamed ElBaradei’s report said that Tehran had done little to answer questions over its nuclear intentions.

The UN wants the research halted amid Western fears - denied by Iran - that Tehran might develop nuclear weapons.

US Ambassador John Bolton said he would now push for Iran to face mandatory UN demands to stop its nuclear work.

There exists the faint possibility that Iran may not comply with any UN demands. What then, UN? Will a scowling be launched? Going to back up your demands with some smashmouth finger-waving? Could it be time for Kofi’s expression of deep concern, outlawed under the Geneva Convention because of the paralysing giggling fits it induces?

John Kerry looks like Ichabod Crane

  
Only not as good-looking.

Men can't find anything, even if it is where they put it

Johnny V can't find his keys.

Despite his excuses, that's because: 1)they're not where he put them; 2) they're not where they belong.

I have at least 1,000,000 things in this house, and I can find 999,999 of them, and I don't need the other one anyway, and anyway it will turn up, maybe.

The scenario in the Charm household is a little different. It goes like this:

Mr C: What did you do with my keys?
Me: (pretend I didn't hear him).

Mr C: You must have put them somewhere.
Me: Where were you when you had them last?
Mr C: (accusingly) right here!
I find keys, exactly where he put them, cleverly hidden by today's paper, which he put on top of them.

Alternative scenario:
Me: Maybe they're in the bedroom?
Mr C: I wasn't in the bedroom!
I find keys in bedroom, on top of his bureau.
Mr C: Oh.

PS: I never clean his office. You should see it.

My mother, the lawyer

 

My family don't want me to use any of their (current) pictures on my blog, so I am scanning in old family pictures. This one is my mother. If she were alive she would probably tear itup--she never liked pictures of herself. 

human rights for prisoners, not for soldiers

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and came upon this gem.

[A] report by several human-rights groups says that, so far, only low-ranking soldiers have borne the brunt of the scandal, and that abuse in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, is still widespread.

If you listen to the podcast, the "human rights groups" are angry that more soldiers, particularly high-ranking ones, have not been punished and are not rotting in jail. It never seems to occur to these dummies that military personnel have the right to due process. They even have the right to be acquitted or have a light sentence imposed. The HRG will not be satisfied until these soldiers are punished.

Too bad for these soldiers that they are not criminals who murdered people while holding up a convenience store, like Tookie Williams. The human rights groups would be agitating for their release.

I'm not condoning abuse of prisoners, but making someone wear a woman's underwear on his head is not the moral equivalent of cold-blooded murder. It's just that these ghetto types are oh so much more authentic than a guy in uniform.

Note to Bush: possible new energy source?

We have estuaries-- the Hudson River up to about Poughkeepsie. How about it?

Lions and tigers and bears (and Democrats)--oh my!

More culture of corruption.

This is what the library wage slaves are doing all day

Definitely NSFW.

A guide to building and staffing secret prisons

It can be done, according to bamapachyderm.

I always thought the secret prison thing was on a par with the Tawana Brawley non-incident--something that strains credulity to the breaking point. But, as President Bush ought to know, you can't prove a negative. No-one can conclusively say that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Maybe we're just not looking in the right places?

No-one can prove that these secret prisons don't exist, either. The EU denies it? Well of course they would. That just proves it must be true! I think the secret prison thing is going to enter folklore. Oliver Stone will make a movie about it.

Wow! this disproves the maxim that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

Philadelphians talk funny

I listen to NPR in my car. I know it raises my blood pressure and makes every hair on my head stand up in rage. However.

We in northern Delaware are too small and primitive to have our own public radio station. The whole state only has one Congressman, for God's sake. Of course, Senator Biden talks enough for an entire delegation from a medium-sized state, so that kind of makes up for it. Sort of. You could say.

Now you ask: what does this have to do with Philadelphians, who reside in a whole nother state for God's sake? Why dump on them?

Okay. As I say, we don't have our own NPR, so we make do with Philadelphia's. We don't even get our own weather, we have to borrow it from Philadelphia. We're just a miserable hinterland, unworthy of having our own rush hour traffic reports. We have to make do with those across the state lines. The traffic report even mentions New Jersey, from time to time, but never a word about Delaware.

Actually, I find this quite soothing, tooling around Delaware at 4 o'clock and hearing about tractor trailers overturning on I-95 south while I whiz through back roads. There's just one thing that puzzles me about the Philly traffic reports.

What in God's name is the Skoogle? Could this possibly be how you pronounce Schuylkill? And if so, Why?

As I say, Philadelphians talk funny.

Now don't get me wrong. You guys have the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Betsy's Ross' house, etc. You're world class. But Skoogle? It sounds like some kind of Jewish food, a kugel with chocolate chips in it maybe.

Can air travel be made any more uncomfortable?

The answer is a tentative yes.

Cattle class could take on an entirely new meaning in air travel if Airbus goes through with its latest wheeze.

According to a report in the International Herald Tribune, the European plane maker is floating the idea of standing-room only at the back. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard and held in place with a harness.

I can recall a day when air travel had a certain aura of glamour--you wore lipstick on the plane-- but that era is long gone. Even before all the sham "security" came along, the airlines had managed to create the ambiance of a Greyhound bus station.

Now they are trying for a new level: they want to replicate the New York City subway during rush hour. Before the trains were all air-conditioned.

I'm going to quit flying if they hire panhandlers to circulate among the passengers, selling free "newspapers."

Thanks to Tinkerty tonk.

Getting priorities straight

according to palmetto pundit:

I suppose one is entitled to worry about penguins suddenly being forced to wear sunscreen on their long march across the desert that just yesterday was Antarctica, but I have better things to do with my time and much more urgent problems to worry about. My gut tells me that a mad man with a nuke or a terrorist with a death wish and a dirty bomb is a much more urgent threat than a melting iceberg. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

I discover the formula for world peace

and scaling down my wardrobe.

I got rid of the dress-up-for-work-and-boring-meetings garb before I left New Jersey, sensing correctly that I was not going to be going to work or to boring meetings any more. But I still have too much stuff. I have two closets full.

So here's what I do. Every day I put on a different outfit. If I really love it, I put it back in my closet. If I don't, it goes into the box for Good Will. I've gotten rid of a surprising amount of stuff this way.

You mention world peace? Well, I haven't got time to deal with that today. Later.

New Jersey--biohazards R us

from New Jersey guy.

Jewish life=bashing Republicans

Henry Waxman speaks about "vibrant Jewish life," and he's not talking about potato kugel.

My date with a headhunter

Say uncle takes on headhunters:

[R]ecruiters and headhunters are almost completely useless human beings. Of the several interviews I’ve been on, only one was arranged by a headhunter. And these recruiting firms make shit up. They post jobs they don’t have in an effort to get you to send them your résumé. I’ve even confirmed this with a headhunter friend of mine. I have basically written off one local firm because they have nothing but made up jobs. Seriously. I contact a local firm and tell them I saw a particular ad they had in the paper and express my interest. Should be no problem setting me up since they have my info. But they don’t have a job. I ask about the ad and they tell me it’s already been filled. Really? You filled it in 20 fucking minutes? I should have figured that out since they probably wouldn’t run ads if they already have candidates who were qualified.

My experience with headhunters confirms this. I was contacted by a consultant who specializes in libraries (bad sign)about a plum director's job. I knew the job existed, and I knew why the job was vacant--because the Board of Trustees contained certifiable lunatics. When a library board hires a consultant, they are looking for the Magic Candidate, who doesn't exist. Still, I was flattered.

At the consultant's request I sent in a resume. I started to get phone calls from the consultant, calls that went from pertinent to impertinent. Then I was imperiously summoned for an interview--by the consultant. After the interview, more questions, long fishing expeditions. She practically asked me if I had an innie or an outie. It became quite clear that the consultant did not know what she was doing and was trying to earn her fee by grilling me, and possibly other candidates as well.
I told her that it was time to meet with the Board. They knew all about me, but I didn't know what the board was seeking to accomplish. Now it was time for some information from them. That was the last I heard from her.

They spent a lot of money on this consultant, but never hired anyone. They ended up asking the previous director to come back from retirement, which she did. Now I believe the job is vacant once again.

Carnival of Insanity is up!

It just gets better and better.

How to destroy the earth

Caution: it won't be easy.

My favorite Chinese restaurant

Mr C and I have a favorite Chinese restaurant. It's a great place for lunch, especially if lunch is your biggest meal of the day.

The staff is always friendly and smiling. They know our names. They bring over our favorite drinks before we can order them. We trade chitchat. They comp us dessert once in a while. And some of the food is excellent.

Notice I said some? I like to try new things, and sometimes I don't like them much. The ginger chicken, for instance, was too bland. But at this point, I feel as I would at a friend's house, so I have to clean my plate even if I don't like it, so they won't get their feelings hurt.

Good grief, what a wimp!

Me at 13

  

A dangerous life

John Bridges, who has died aged 87, survived a suicidal march through two minefields in Tunisia to pursue a long post-war career as a BBC radio producer.

As a sergeant with the 6th Battalion, Grenadier Guards, he took over the intelligence role during the advance on a horseshoe feature in the Mareth Line during the night of March 16-17 1943.

To their surprise the Grenadiers found themselves not only under enemy fire but entering two minefields which were so heavily sown that they had to switch from single file to proceeding separately, in order to avoid being blown up together.

Bridges trod on one mine, which exploded at head height, and regained consciousness moments later to find his boot smouldering and his head aching. After wondering whether to retire from the action, he continued onwards, deciding that if he headed away from the gunfire he would risk stepping on more mines....

....

As a child he escaped unhurt when run over by a coal lorry....


He became a drummer, which led to his appearing on stage at the Old Vic to beat the drum for Ophelia's funeral cortege in the 1935 production of Hamlet; he once inadvertently brought the show to a brief halt when a cross he was holding wobbled over Laurence Olivier's head....

After fighting in the rearguard of the retreat on Dunkirk, he narrowly escaped with his life when a rowing boat he had commandeered was sucked into the propellers of a ship.

He managed to scramble free and, wearing little more than a tin hat, climbed aboard another ship which was subsequently hit by a mine....


Later in the war the Bridges boot attracted attention when he trod on Winston Churchill's foot at a briefing; the prime minister remarked that he "thought it was a bloody horse".

After being concussed by the explosion at Mareth, Bridges was sent to hospital at Tripoli, where doctors were unable to explain why he had gone blind. But he eventually recovered his sight, and joined the Psychological Warfare Branch, producing propaganda to be dropped on German troops in Italy.

After that, he was sent to the Peloponnese with the task of identifying the factions likely to emerge among the Greeks when the Germans left.

He completed the war as a WO1 in Palestine, where his front teeth were knocked out when he intervened in a fight.

After 87 years of that kind of thing, he died of natural causes.

I bought a scanner

to scan in my old negatives and slides.

I can't get it to scan negatives very well, but this is an old picture of my grandson.

Are the Iranians kidding?

Silent running has an analogy which might aid the strategic thinkers in the US:

A bull goes mad and starts rampaging about and is clearly going to kill people, you don’t shoot it because…. well fuck I don’t know but thats the argument.

Now if I just put some sticks and leaves over this massive bear trap “someone” might just walk right into it.

Talk about your subtle traps.

This would be a joke except that our most esteemed thinkers seem to think: 1) The Iranian president is just kidding; 2) maybe he's lying; 3) saner heads (!!!) might prevail; 4) he doesn't really have the power; 5) the tooth fairy will intervene.

Of these options, #5 seems the most realistic.

Boobies

I couldn't resist.

Straight talk

If only Bush could talk like this:

THE reaction of the UN to the nuclear crisis in Iran will be a test for the international body, Prime Minister John Howard says.
Mr Howard said those critical of the US, UK and Australian governments for invading Iraq would see for themselves how effective the UN was when it decided what action to take against Iran.

Howard calls them as he sees them, like Rudy Giuliani.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a president who wasn't mealymouthed?
Ht to tim Blair.

Carnival of Comedy is up

Rich white Harvard boys in trouble

Harvard's athletes are not to be outdone by these pathetic crackers at Duke.

V

owing not to be outdone by a “small Southern town prosecutor”, the DA’s office in Boston, Massachusetts has accused the Harvard 8 Man Crew Team of taunting, torturing and impaling a bus load of Mexican, illegal alien, lesbian, prostitutes who were in town to assist in an anti-war, anti-fur, vegan, Earth First, gay pride, ACLU, anti-Bush, peaceful demonstration to point out the horrors of global warming.

The all-white crew team is reported to consist solely of children who’s father’s are either; tobacco lobbyists, “Big Oil/Coal” executives, Halliburton board members, Fox News anchors or grossly overpaid CEOs. All of their mothers have been described as botox-filled, spa queens.

At a press conference today, assistant DA, Dan Conley was quoted as saying, “Our privileged white boys are far more privileged, far more white and committed far worse hate crimes than those pseudo-uppercrust, prepster wanna-be, rednecks in the Carolinas.”

Take that, Duke!

Harry Reid serves pork dinner

For a country that cannot maintain reliable and profitable passenger rail service between New York and Washington D.C. (or Boston and New York or New York and Chicago or . . . ), spending at least $12 billion on a 269-mile high-speed train from Anaheim, California to Las Vegas, Nevada seems downright ridiculous. But that's exactly what Senator Harry Reid of Nevada has already spent $54 million on. Such insane and wasteful spending must be stopped if this country has any hopes of attaining fiscal discipline.

Senator Reid is not the only railroad porker in the Senate.

This is pork at its worst. A true waste of money, and a lot of it.

How humiliating!

Isn't anyone going to ask me any questions?
After great hesitation, I volunteered to be interviewed by Basil's blog. I figured no-one would have any curiosity about me, and I was right.
You guys are supposed to ask questions. You don't. I fell like a girl whose prom date has stood her up.
Come on--questions!

Another crime perpetrated by the killer Bush

He's responsible for everything.

MSM favorite stories

Bigtool gives his take on the media:

By far the biggest concentration of group think is the mass media. Basically they decide what the public should be discussing. U.S. Troops build a bridge, save a woman in Iraq from rape, repair a school, foil a plot to blow up a mosque - these are things you will never hear about. The media has no interest in you knowing these things. 12 children in Cleveland have been burned to death by arson in Cleveland since Natalie Holloway got wasted, decided to not stay with her friends and got killed. There have been more Natalie Holloway storys than Abu Grahab - but no national coverage to find the KILLER of 12 children in Cleveland.

The media tells us what to think and what to fear.
Mad Cow -.... Beef is deadly - take that you fat American bastards! They were falling all over themselves to report this....
West Nile - Death could be swooping out of the sky to kill your elderly parents - your infant children!! I think maybe 5 people have died from this ever. More people die every year tipping Coke machines over on themselves trying to get their Mr. Pibb out.
Lyme Disease - see above.
Bird Flu - God dammit they want it SOOOOOO bad. [media] - "Please God let there be a pandemic. Please please please! I want to 'risk my life' to cover the story. We can cover the 'Bush is directing the vaccine away from minorities angle.' Oh, please please please - I swear God we will report every chicken that is infected - we will have our intern lick an infected seagulls ass if we can get this to jump en masse to humans. Please this will be a great story!"

Fixing sex dolls

A very special specialist.

Warning: NSFW!

Courtesy of utterly boring.

Another poem

The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake

One of the 72 virgins waiting to welcome you to paradise

 

Maybe those suicide bombers should rethink their actions. 

Finally, a use for Hillarycare

She blocks drafts.

Hell gains a resident

William Sloane Coffin is dead.

I once attended a Christmas carol concert at Riverside Church. Coffin spoke eloquently about the cause of the poor, displaced Palestinians.

He reeked of sanctimonious arrogance disguised as humility. Like Jimmy Carter,he was a disgrace to the Christian faith.

If there is a hell, I strongly hope he is there, as it is his true spiritual home.

People don't dress up for church any more

The idea of dressing up for church seems lost. Not entirely – some of the moms wore their pre-Easter best, and one a few rows in front was not only 25 or so and attired in comely pastels, but had her hair done in a Marlo Thomas flip. I hadn’t seen that in a while. Behind her was a young mom whose shirt had no intention of getting within six inches of her belt. All around, young men slouching in slouchwear, slouchily, with sneakers and T-shirts. It’s Casual Good Friday! The entire Itchy Church Pants Imperative seems gone. Let him who is without decent shoes cast the first stone-washed jeans, or whatever. If I live long enough I’ll probably see the Supreme Court pose for a group photo wearing Hawaiian shirts and Speedos.

And there were women without hosiery! Okay, I’ll shut up now.

No, really: if you can’t be bothered to wear a collar to church or jury duty, then you have a different conception of “Grown Up” than I do. You might possibly resent the term in the first place. Tonight at the park I saw a little boy, couldn’t have been more than two, toddling around wearing a clip-on tie. Looked right for an Easter evening. He'll probably refuse to wear it in 10, 12 years, regard it as some phoney yoke imposed by the Council for Arbitrary Gender Signifiers of 1066 AD.

I can't believe how far we've strayed from dressing up, for church, for jury duty, or for work. I was looking through old photos of Passover Seders past, and pleasantly surprised to see how elegant everyone looked with nice clothes, makeup and jewelry, and my grandson quite natty in a suit! And that was a ceremony held at home.

Holier than thou politician convicted

No wonder he was lenient on crime.

When Gov. George Ryan commuted all the death sentences for those on Illinois's Death Row, some wondered if it was desperate bid of a corrupt politician to grab a little glory. Based on this New York Times story, they were right to wonder.

Audiobooks and other miscellany

The library girl speaks up in favor of audiobooks:

Audiobooks are the best kept secret in the reading world. Once thought to be an invention for the visually impaired or long-distance driver, they are any and every reader’s best friend. I’ve worked in libraries for years, and I always disregarded them until last summer. Now, I’m a junkie. Trust me, once you listen to one, you’re guaranteed to be hooked and your reading habits will change forever.

...

The main reason I love them is that people can squeeze more books into their lives during times that they would not otherwise be able to read. In my case, because I need to have several going on at once, I tend to take whatever I find even remotely interesting on the shelf. That has led me to many titles I might have missed under normal circumstances.

There is also the health benefit, which stems in large part from the reduction in stress, particularly if you spend time in traffic. Every formerly aggravated driver I know now looks forward to getting in their car because they have a good audiobook waiting.

My husband used to listen to audiobooks when he had a long commute to work. As with librarygirl, he would listen to books he wouldn't necessarily read in book form, and enjoy them. As I worked in the library, he had an endless source of supply. He maintained that they kept him from going crazy. The jury is still out on that one.

Speaking of Mr Charm, I have been going through old photos, looking for pictures of him and finding very few. Many of my pictures of him show only a foot, or a hand holding a cup, or his back. When I do find a picture of him, he doesn't like it. Perhaps he is in the witness protection program?

Saints and sinners

You need a scorecard to identify the good and bad in this world.

So I am providing a list of people and insitutions it is okay to dump on, because they are reprehensible and obviously guilty of anything you can come up with:
George W Bush;
Donald Rumsfield;
Halliburton;
Enron;
Big Pharma;
insurance companies;
Oral Roberts University;
Pat Robertson;
Jesus;
God.

Here is a companion list of those who de facto saints, whatever their actions:
Castro;
Che Guevara;
all other Latin American corrupt but leftist political leaders;
Walter Cronkite;
Jimmy Carter;
Lenin;
Mohammed;
Barbra Streisand;
Al Gore.

These lists are not comprehensive, but they will give you a good start in understanding the news of the day.

Do illegals have more rights than other people?

I have some sympathy for the illegal immigrants (AKA undocumented) but I don't care to watch them demonstrate in Spanish with Mexican flags yet. Even less do I like the idea of giving them back part of the country. Fellows, we fought a Civil War to prevent that very thing from happening!
All this clamoring for rights they don't have makes me think of a burglar who not only breaks into your house, but makes you serve him milk and cookies.
Demediacrat is getting tired of illegal immigants' "rights:"

For some reason, the U.S. is not allowed to cover it's own *ss in the world. If we do, or suggest that we want to we get a whole bunch of guff from everyone. What gives. There are not many, I would think, that are against immigration or immigrants; the media and proponents of legalizing the illegal paint it that way, but that doesn't make it so.

What is wrong with our wanting to respect the laws of our nation? What is wrong with the U.S. observing its right to sovereignty? Many of us look in awe (I don't mean admirable awe either) at europe and its nanny state policies; and seems that since the U.S. can afford it (as of right now maybe), the world expects us to follow suit (and we sure do our fair share of trying)....When we have the borders under some semblance of control, we can discuss it and should discuss it, but until then - KEEP OUT!

Revolting generals

Former spook believes the dissenting generals have hidden agendas:

Do a little digging, and you'll find most have some sort of personal beef with both Secretary Rumsfeld and/or the Bush Administration. In the regard, criticism of the war effort (and its leadership) provides an opportunity to settle old scores, with the assistance of a willing press.

So they undermine the war effort and give aid and comfort to our enemies--so what? What does the welfare of the country matter when it's so much fun to work off a grudge?

Link courtesy of gates of vienna.

New crisis in Africa

Sudan has more bloodshed than they can consume locally, so decides to export same to Chad. Timeline:

Dec 19, 2005 - Chad's army says its forces killed about 300 rebels after they launched a failed offensive the day before on the border town of Adre.

-- Dec 27 - President Deby lobbies the African Union to condemn neighbour Sudan for what he says is Khartoum's support for rebels seeking to overthrow him.

-- Dec 30 - Chad rebel groups opposed to Deby say they have formed a military alliance, the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), to try to overthrow him.

Jan 8, 2006 - Chad demands Sudan disarm Chadian rebels in Darfur as a condition for peace talks to end a growing dispute with Khartoum over rebel and militia raids in the border area.

-- Feb 8 - Leaders of Chad and Sudan agree to put an end to a crisis between the two, which have accused each other of backing insurgents to topple them. The Tripoli Agreement between Deby and Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan is reached at the end of mini-summit hosted in Tripoli by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

-- March 15 - Chad says it has foiled a coup attempt by a group of soldiers who planned to shoot down Deby's plane.

-- March 21 - Government troops in Chad launch a military offensive against rebels in the east as Deby seeks to reassert his control over the country.

-- April 13 - Government forces fight off rebels in the capital N'Djamena and the situation in the city is under control. The fighting killed about 100 people and wounded 200.

-- April 14 - Deby breaks diplomatic relations with Sudan which he accuses of backing armed groups which have carried out attacks across Chad, including the raid on the capital.

Thank you, God, for not letting me get born in Africa.

Outstanding social work

The Trouser Quandary award.

Should we all be driving smaller cars?

Fileitunder thinks we should:

Because Americans love large SUVs, trucks and cars with high horsepower. And all of those things aren't fuel efficient. So rather than look at ourselves, realize that we're the problem and start burning less fuel on our end, we applaud our representative bloviators for really stickin' it to those evil oil CEOs.

So in summary, tired of high gas prices? You can drive a smaller, more efficient car and/or invest in oil and gas companies to recoup some of the expenses of driving.

I used to drive a small car. I laughed when I passed a gas station (well, it was more like a quiet chuckle). Then my small car, going about 5 mph, was hit by a mid-size Lexus. Score: Lexus 1, Miriam 0.

They practically had to vacuum my car off the road, it was in so many pieces.

I escaped without a scratch, but with a new attitude towards small cars.

Ask me questions

Basil has me on the list of interviewees, so ask me anything, except my weight.

Trying to post a new comment

I was trying to post a witty and informative comment on someone's website, and this was what I got in response:
ftdrm

I copied same and clicked log-on and publish and got: qetygn, which I believe is an insult in Vietnamese.

One more time. Result: mmnhyt

My comment is lost to history.

I "heart" quotation "marks"

but they can be overdone.

Mr. Peterson has been teaching at Albany High School since 1974; his blog deserves a look, not because he has any brilliant insight about what's going on in the troubled schools, but because you MUST see his unbridled use of unnecessary and inappropriate quotation marks....
Whenever Peterson wants to "emphasize" a word or make a "point" he "hauls out" the quotation marks. His writing makes me "wonder" how he ever "got out" of college, much less been "allowed" to teach ---and "Mr. Pete" complains that "kids" can't "write?" What he "needs" is an "editor." Maybe someone from the "English department" needs to run down there and smack his hand every time it "strays" near the quote key. I'm not "Joe Grammar," but I know something that's "messed up" when I see it.

I feel some "sympathy" for "Albany eye." Mr Peterson does "appear" to use quotes "rather often" if not "promiscuously." This is indeed a bad "habit." In order to put a "stop" to this, Peterson has to learn "self-control." That will be "hard."