From the Huffington Post:

Closer inspection of a photo of Sarah Palin, during a speech in which she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, reveals several notes written on her left hand. The words “Energy,” “Tax” and “Lift American Spirits” are clearly visible. There’s also what appears to read as “Budget cuts” with the word Budget crossed out.

To see Ms. Palin sneaking an actual peek, start paying attention about 45 seconds into the clip:

Emanuel Rahm’s “retard” has become an increasingly complicated political bankshot: from the White House to Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, back to Palin and now to Connecticut’s Senate race:

One of the two candidates, Linda McMahon, was the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment — and it turns out that there was a mentally handicapped WWE wrestling character who was savagely beaten in a steel cage and worse. And in light of the flap over Rahm, I’m told that McMahon’s opponent, Rob Simmons, is going to demand that she account for it…

“Eugene” is the stage name of a mentally handicapped wrestling character who performed on WWE’s “Raw” brand. When he was introduced in 2004, according to press reports at the time, viewers complained to WWE, forcing them to issue a statement saying they intended him to be portrayed as a “hero” who would inspire “other people with disabilities to strive to achieve their dreams.”

But there’s footage all over the internet of Eugene getting savagely stomped and beaten, and even demeaned, and one storyline even ended up with him getting savaged in a steel cage. And the Simmons campaign is going to demand that McMahon account for this.

Markos Moulitsas, as you probably know, has commissioned a poll of the views held by self-identified Republicans on a number of issues. The results are here. In a way they are unsurprising — 60% think Obama is a socialist, 21% think ACORN stole the election, while 55% aren’t quite sure. These things can be put down to a stew of misinformation, ignorance and racism.

But what can explain the 31% who believe contraceptives should be outlawed? They may not know what ACORN does or what socialism is, but they’re pretty clear about condoms and the pill. Is this a partisan or a religious issue that I’m unaware of? Are they afraid that dusky immigrants are going to outbreed them? What?

You want weird, I’ll show you weird. I had the same feeling on reading this that I did on reading that first inconspicuous story about a burglary in the Watergate apartment complex.

Not that this leads to the White House, but that all sorts of unwholesome things are moving unseen beneath the surface. For instance, who is this “acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan?” As opposed to U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan. And what the hell was this clown O’Keefe expecting to film? And why? Stay tuned.

This just in:

O’Keefe had become a conservative media star since the ACORN sting. I just talked to Lisa De Pasquale, director of CPAC, who said that O’Keefe, along with co-stinger Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart, is (or was) under consideration for the annual conservative conference’s coveted Reagan Award.

We have a new entry in the highly competitive race for the most grudging non-apology of 2010. Shown below is Rudolph Andreas “André” Bauer with an adorable Scientologist friend.

[South Carolina’s] Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Monday he regretted comments comparing people who take public assistance to stray animals, but the incident continued to draw fire.

In a phone interview, Bauer said he regretted the remarks “because now it’s being used as an analogy, not a metaphor.

“Do I regret it? Sure I do. I wouldn’t have to be taking this heat otherwise.”

Teresa at Making Light says:

I think about this every time I see a news story about the DHS/NTSA developing elaborate systems that test travelers for trace amounts of chemicals used in explosives.

How do you beat that? By seeding the travel environment with the target chemicals. For instance, you could sprinkle them into the upholstery and/or carpeting of buses, trains, and airport taxis. Travelers who came into contact with them would pick up trace amounts, which would set off the airport chemical detectors. A system that’s swamped with false positives is as blind as one that can’t detect what it’s looking for, and it’s a hell of a lot more nervous.

The beauty part about doing this is that it’s so easy. You don’t have to build a working bomb, learn to fly a plane, target a specific flight, buy a plane ticket, or pass through airport security. All you have to do is sit back and keep pressing the DHS/NTSA’s panic buttons.

Chemicals aren’t terrorism. Terrorism isn’t air travel. Terror is an effect. I don’t know anyone who was made more fearful by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab setting fire to his crotch. I know a lot of people who are afraid to travel because they’ve heard reports of abusive behavior by security personnel at borders and airports.

Next: figuring out how to put miniature cap pistols into coin-operated toy vending machines at highway rest areas near border checkpoints.

This is from a speech by another of South Carolina’s many statesmen, Republican Lieutenant Governor Rudolph Andreas “André” Bauer. For the full flavor, listen to it all. Bauer is shown below with another college varsity cheerleader, George W. Bush:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer told a Greenville-area crowd. “You know why? Because they breed.

“You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

From Alaska we hear that:

Two Anchorage men who told investigators they were horsing around with a “redneck flamethrower” set a 5-year-old boy’s head on fire and have been charged with felony assault and reckless endangerment…

“It was described to the troopers as an accident,” troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. “I mean a child, two guys, can of Quick Start, Bic lighter: How could this not go wrong?”

According to a troopers’ affidavit filed in court, Miller told investigators he’s been trying to toughen the boy up and the best way to do it is to “scare the s--t out of them when they don’t see it coming.”

Breaking news from the party of family values:

Blake Hall, a leading figure in Idaho and national politics for 25 years, was fired Monday as a deputy prosecuting attorney in eastern Idaho and has resigned from the Republican National Committee…

Idaho Falls police reported that witnesses said Hall disposed of used condoms on the lawn of the woman’s house. Nineteen condoms were turned over to police, collected on 10 different dates, according to a police report. Both Hall and his lawyer acknowledged the condoms belonged to him, according to a police report.

Seems odd that they would “acknowledge” whose condoms those were. Gosh, anybody could have thrown those condoms onto the lawn, couldn’t they? Or at least before DNA testing they could have.

After hitting the Medicare Part D doughnut hole, this old rooster became so confused he wound up at a demonstration in support of Colonel Sanders:

All right, watch this. Even if you’ve never exposed yourself to Glenn Beck’s show, it’s funny. If you have, you’ll recognize Jon Stewart’s performance as a masterpiece:

The picture below does not show an undertaker or a plastic surgeon or a cosmetician at work. It shows a Thai baker at work. For more pictures, click “Read on,” below. But you ain’t seen nothing yet. The full video experience is here. For these gifts we are indebted to my diseased nephew from Brooklyn. Thanks, Jason, and a very merry All Hallows Day to you and yours.

From the Associated Press:

BRUSSELS — Police said a one-legged suspect was caught after only one shoe went missing in a store in Belgium. An amputee was an immediate suspect when a store attendant found one shoe missing from a shop in the western Belgian town of Maldegem. Police spokesman Rik Decraemer said Monday authorities were alerted and quickly found the man who fit the description by shopkeepers. The shoe was also recovered…

If nothing had been missing, would they have looked for a double amputee?

Assuming you need a scapegoat to make you feel better, the Republican Party has a rep for you. Eric Hoffer is rolling over in his grave I’m sure. Since we don’t watch television anymore, I wasn’t aware that this parody is based on an Apple app commercial until I read about it, but all you television watchers already know that I suppose. Thanks to the author of this video who has a great new blog, Waking Up Now that will undoubtedly be worth keeping an eye on and also has a detailed explanation of how and why he created the video with intricate explanations for each rep. Watch the video first, then read the explanations. That’s the creator of the video’s advice.

Posted by Buck Batard at 07:55 AM

This is the greatest political TV ad ever made (h/t Jay Bookman), and I’m pretty confident we shall not see its like again. John Oxendine is the Georgia insurance commissioner, hoping to be the next governor. The rat is onetime governor Roy Barnes, for whom see this.

From the Kansas City Star:

Jayme Wear married a charming man last year and they lived a good life at their Overland Park apartment. Until she discovered him with another woman — in another apartment at the same complex. The two women discovered they were both married to him…

Wear said of the other wife , “she wasn’t as upset as I would have been if I’d have been her.”

The other wife [of 20 years] said something like, “It’s always something with him,” Wear said.

I don’t want to take all the credit — his reaching Social Security age this year may have had something to do with it — but my previous posting on the Loofah King couldn’t have hurt.

In any event, the old horndog has seen the light and is shocked, shocked at what strikes him as lewdness these days:

Rio Americano High School is receiving national attention — but not the kind schools brag about.

Fox News television host Bill O'Reilly's show recently blasted Rio’s song team for provocative dance moves during a performance at a back-to-school rally…

Here’s a happy ending for you:

Don’t remember Andrea Mackris? That means you haven’t clicked recently on our blogroll link to “Bill O’Reilly’s Pathetic Sex Life.” For a Cliff Notes version, here’s an excerpt from The Smoking Gun’s anniversary hommage to the popular perv.

But we’d wager that the volcanic O’Reilly, 60, is still incensed about writing that hefty check. For her part, Mackris, 38, has stayed mum, presumably pursuant to some kind of confidentiality agreement. She has relocated from Manhattan to Missouri, where she was recently named to St. Louis Magazine’s best dressed list.

Below we see the famed Republican moralist, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, as he explores the subtleties of President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. A written excerpt, followed by the Full Monty on tape:

If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions…

Next thing you know, it’ll be perfectly legal to mate with anything at all, even Republican Congressmen from Texas.

Things are getting too weird, even for me. From the Associated Press:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Levi Johnston is going for the ultimate exposure — his bare body.

Posing nude for Playgirl is next for the 19-year-old father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild. Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler, said Wednesday that a formal agreement has not been reached with the online magazine but adds it’s a “foregone conclusion” it will happen.

We live in world full of wonders:

A month ago in Saudi Arabia, a terrorist named Abdullah Hassan Tali' al-Asiri reportedly walked past palace checkpoints with a small bomb inserted in a body cavity. Judging by the al-Qaida video featuring him proudly holding a device before committing the deed, it was about 3 inches long.

He wanted to blow up a Saudi prince but succeeded only in blowing off his own bottom half and destroying the floor, killing himself in the process.

A friend of mine was in Kampala, Uganda last month and I asked him to bring me back a week’s worth of Red Pepper, my favorite newspaper in the world.

The paper is not to be confused with the U.K.’s Red Pepper, a self-described “magazine of political rebellion and dissent” influenced by “socialism, feminism and environmental politics.” While that Red Pepper boasts this week an interview with Pauline Kimani, “one of Kenya’s few openly lesbian women,” the Kampala one in 2006 announced a campaign in its pages “to rid our motherland of the deadly vice (lesbianism),” with pictures of hot chicks making out. This earned Red Pepper the consternation of Human Rights Watch, among others.

Three years ago I visited Kampala but spent the whole time sick with malaria, lying on my big fluffy bed in a Lake Victoria resort convalescing with Red Pepper, which started as a weekly but then, due to high demand, became a daily.

Everywhere you go in the city, people are reading it. A quarter to a third of the rag is basically porn, with advice columns on how to have sex with a fat woman, or to lengthen the “twin towers” (ubiquitous Uganda slang for vaginal lips, and apparently longer is better) and the most offensively sexualized descriptions of women — even teenage girls, who, featured in the paper for being part of a school musical group or some other chaste accomplishment, are described as “waterlogged” or “causing boxers to bulge.”

The rest comprises stories on car theft rings, lynchings of goat thieves, and what I imagine to be quite credible reports of graft, political corruption, shifting military alliances. Red Pepper does the best investigative journalism in Uganda, while the regular Kampala paper publishes feel-good pap about potholes getting filled. Pepper takes none of its news, save for foreign sports, from wire services, probably because reporters come cheap in Kampala, and you could hire about 30 for the price of a Reuters account.

This paper, unlike its first-world counterparts, seems to grow every year — the copies I just received were a good bit thicker than before. Pepper has added two special sections, including, “Virgins,” a weekly survey of hot chicks, and tons more sports.

It has outlived a number of its competitors, such as Black Mamba, an almost-identical tabloid. Pepper’s newest competitor, The Onion, steals its name and even its masthead design from the American humor magazine. It spares the easily bored all the political intrigue and focuses exclusively on twin towers, corpses, and the like. Pepper will outlive it, because The Onion is too coarse and tacky even for Kampala.

It used to be that alerts flashed when you visited the Red Pepper website, warning of all kinds of potential disasters to your computer, but this is no longer the case. If you do go, a brief glossary:

There are no good roads and power is only on half the time, but that’s freedom. The teabaggers fear the re-emergence of the Soviet Union, or so they say, while failing to realize that the logical extension of their demands is, in fact, Uganda.

At least this scenario produces cheap health care. My entire course of malaria treatment in Kampala — testing, doctor consultation, medicine, follow-up, more medicine — cost me $15, without insurance. I just walked in off the trash-strewn, pothole filled, burning street.

(Ed. note: Below the fold, unsuitable for office viewing, is a sample from The Onion. I know you won’t want to see it.)

Surely you didn’t expect me to keep this one all to myself:

…Greene, who lives outside Shelton, suffers from epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterized by unprovoked and reoccurring seizures. He said the snake, its reddish-brown body draped around him like a necktie when he’s out in public, senses when a seizure is imminent and gives him a light squeeze. The warning gives him enough time to take medication to head off the attack, alert someone it’s coming or move to an area where the thrashing is not disruptive.

Greene blacks out during these episodes, but his wife, Karen, said the snake’s warning has headed off about a half-dozen seizures in Redrock’s five months with Greene. This month, Greene has had four seizures at night – she refuses to let the boa constrictor share their bed – but none during the day…

Greene said he removes the snake when given a warning and hands him to his wife or another companion. Redrock has never exhibited aggressive behavior toward him or other residents, he said.

“It takes a special kind of snake to be a service animal,” he said.

From the Kansas City Star:

How many times a day does an inmate flush?

According to industry experts, as many as 30. Far more often than typical people, but the average person probably doesn’t use his or her toilet for an ashtray, to dispose of contraband or to cool drinks…

Industry experts and prison officials say retrofitting prisons with Murphy’s new high-efficiency toilet could mean huge savings in monthly water bills — bills generally paid by taxpayers. Beyond that, the invention could play a key role in the push for American prisons to go green.

And at a time when it’s said that America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore, here’s a small firm in a tough economy that seemingly has made a better mousetrap and is getting ready to expand and hire more workers…

Murphy then put on a demonstration. “You’re going to see something you’ve never seen before,” he said. He put 35 golf balls into the bowl and pushed the flush button. The balls danced about before shooting down the drain.

HONG KONG, China (CNN) — Former U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be in Hong Kong this week to address about 1,000 investors from around the globe in what is billed as her first speech outside North America…

“What we look to do is invite our keynote speakers who we feel are opinion makers, who are newsworthy and who we feel our clients — a very broad international client base — would be interested in hearing from,” Wheeler said Monday, noting that CLSA is a politically neutral, independent brokerage…

Past keynote speakers include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, rocker and activist Bob Geldof, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, Wheeler added.

I run the following first as an admirable piece of snark, but also read Colin McEnroe’s whole posting here, for news on why Japan is buying up American political blogs — and for more on the wonderful candidacy of wrestling queen Linda McMahon for Chris Dodd’s senate seat.

While were on the subject of Chris Dodd, I wholeheartedly support his reelection, not in spite of the fact that he accepted a handcrafted mortage on his home from subprime grifter Anthony Mozilo but because he did.

Dodd’s indiscreet mortgage was pretty tame stuff as Congressional behavior goes, but nevertheless he is now obliged to be a bulldog on reform of the financial sector. And that particular strain of bulldog is pretty scarce on Capitol Hill.

Okay, back to the snark:

Alan Schlesinger was the Republican nominee for Senate in Connecticut, and it’s generally accepted that he would have found that experience a lot more enjoyable if the Republican Party had actually decided to support him. Instead, Joe Lieberman ran on the slogan, “There is no principle of the Democratic Party that I am not prepared to swap for a reasonably good chocolate chip cookie,” and Republicans took that as a sign they should probably vote for him.

H/T to Marginal Revolution, without whom we would never have known this:

Yes, for $40 the llamas at Sherwood Forest Country Club will carry your bags, accompany you on a nine-hole run, and maybe even channel their peaceful temperament into quiet but unwavering moral support…

For the past few months, he and English have trained the llamas to become caddy extraordinaires through a series of acclimation exercises, first allowing them to get used to golf swings, and then to become harnessed with saddles that carry two clubs. “They go at the speed of a golf cart,” says Lautenschlager, a professional golfer, who feels no hindrance from having a llama caddy vs. a human one. Even better, llamas are what he calls natural “communal pottyers,” meaning they don’t go to the bathroom on the green anytime they feel like it but will rather line up rear to rear and go together in one spot. “It’s the funniest thing,” Lautenschlager says.

We here in Connecticut are sick and tired of all the attention South Carolina has been getting for being ridiculous. So here’s what we’re doing about it:

WASHINGTON – Pro wrestling executive Linda McMahon has never been shy about wading into the ring — and now she’s plotting a smackdown of Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd.

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. said Wednesday McMahon has resigned as the company's chief executive to seek the Republican nomination for Dodd's Connecticut seat, providing a show-business twist to one of the nation's marquee Senate races…

McMahon, who typically worked behind the scenes at World Wrestling Entertainment, has said she’s appeared in portions of the shows at least several dozen times during her more than 25-year-career. One video on the Internet shows her in the ring, appearing to kick a man in the groin.

From the Washington Post’s account of the warm homecoming extended by Youngstown, Ohio, to its former congressman and convict, James Traficant:

At Sunday’s party his fans said he remembered their names, returned their calls and was far from “elite.” Several recounted how he talked about his “gastric emissions” on the House floor.

In a memorable Capitol Hill moment, he called a friend, Sandra Ferrante, as a witness during a committee hearing on Standards and Official Conduct. At the time Congress was considering expelling him. The conversation went like this:

Traficant: Were you and I sex partners?

Ferrante: No.

Traficant: Why not?

…but he got over it. From a New York Times piece on the man who wants to bring President Obama to his Waterloo by denying health care to uninsured Americans:

Rather, South Carolina voters seem more interested in whether [Senator Jim] DeMint might run for president.

“I wouldn’t get out of my driveway without my wife shooting me in the back,” he said in Greenville. “You’ve got to find somebody who’s smart enough to be a great president but dumb enough to want to be president. Right now, I think I’m still too smart to be president.”

I say it without the slightest shame: I can’t get enough of the Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping story. As usual in these sorts of things, the Daily Mail of London has the best coverage: aerial photographs, police reconstructions of how the 11-year-old victim would look like in her twenties, interviews with the kidnapper’s father and brother. Go here and read every word. You know you want to.

The jailhouse interview with Phillip Garrido struck me as particularly bizarre. I kept flashing on George W. Bush, not over the sex stuff (Bush gives no impression at all of sexuality), but because of the use both men make of religion as an enabling tool that allows them to go ahead and do absolutely any sick thing they damn well feel like. And history will show the world that they and God were right all along.

You’ve been listening to the Good Lord channeling Bush for eight years. Here’s Garrido for a change. A distinction, as the lawyers say, without a difference:

“Wait until you hear the story of what took place at this house … You're going to be completely impressed.”

“In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story. My life has been straightened out.”

“The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world.”

From BBC News:

Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor has denied eating human flesh or ordering militias to eat their enemies.

Speaking at his war crimes trial in The Hague, Mr Taylor was quoted as saying accusations of cannibalism levelled against him were “total nonsense.”

Some of Mr Taylor’s former fighters have previously told the court that he had ordered them to eat their enemies…

Speaking as one who was paying taxes back then, I would gladly have kicked in to give Todd Tiahrt’s mom the chance to deny us his great mind:

From McClatchy Newspapers:

…Speaking on the House floor, Representative Todd Tiahrt wondered: What if President Obama’s mom had had the chance for a taxpayer-funded abortion?

“If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it?” he asked.

Tiahrt reasoned, “If you think of it in human terms, there is a financial incentive that will be put in place, paid for by tax dollars, that will encourage women who are single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion. If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in a similar circumstance.”

Tiahrt, who is running in the Republican Senate primary in Kansas next year, mentioned Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, too, asking “is it possible that we would be denied his great mind?”

Sure, okay, the gorillas had hair on their chests and Tarzan didn’t. And Batman was apparently as hairless as Robin. And Superman looked body-waxed.

But seriously, men, if I may call you that, how pathetic is this?

Little research has been done on male body depilation. But a 2005 study published in the journal Sex Roles found that 63.6 percent of 118 men at the University of South Florida said they trimmed or removed body hair below the neck to be hygienic and attractive. And in a yet-to-be-published survey of 364 male students at the same university, more than 80 percent said they engaged in body depilation, said Michael Boroughs, the lead author of both studies and a graduate student in psychology>…

In May, Gillette started a series of how-to and why-do-it videos online suggesting that men go further with body shaving. The rationale varied by part. Chest? “A sweater should be bought not grown.” Armpits? “An empty stable smells better than a full one.” And their coup de grâce is the groin: “Trees look taller when there’s no underbrush.”

From the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

If you’re looking for a silver lining to the home-foreclosure story — and who isn’t? — the good news is that 8-foot-long Nile monitor lizards are taking over our abandoned properties. What, if anything, real estate agents will be able to make of this news is another matter…

Religious notes from the New York Times:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Some of those seated in the pews of New Bethel Church here Saturday night, their firearms tucked to their sides, saw themselves as modern-day pioneers…

Likewise, Tommy Hillerich, 68, a retired truck driver, and Maya, 58, his wife, a former auto upholstery worker, did not bring their firearms inside but firmly believe in their right to do so.

“I don’t see a thing wrong with having a loaded gun in there,” Mr. Hillerich said. “If the pastor’s in there and he’s got a concealed weapon and somebody comes in and starts shooting people, he can take him out. That’s his right.”

It has recently come to my attention that the entire population of the world except for China is being poisoned by chemtrails. These are the apparently innocent contrails from commercial and military jets — secretly modified by the Power Structure to suppress evolution so that the New World Order (NWO) can be imposed on mankind.

Why and how? This is complicated stuff, so pay attention:

The NWO will fail if citizens become genetically empowered to wake up and fight with superhuman powers against tyranny. This is already occurring, and chemtrails are ultimately ineffectual at preventing the inevitable.

Few know the chemtrail program’s true purpose, and most of those implementing it have been told lies. They believe the “mass vaccination” scenario, that what they are doing is beneficial to citizens. Unfortunately this illusion, like all others created by the power structure, shall fall away in due time.

The point (more fully explained here) is that we are evolving into organisms with 12 helixes in our DNA rather than the standard two. Dr. Berrenda Fox is currently working with children who only have three helixes, but are already telepathic and can fill glasses of water just by looking at them. Plainly if this kind of thing continues, mankind will become too intelligent to fall for the Power Structure’s tricks.

But it will not continue, because many ordinary people such as yourself have already armed themselves with orgone generators capable of neutralizing the evolution-halting power of those chemtrails that fill our skies.

These generators may be had at the website linked above for $95 plus shipping and handling for the natural finish model and only fifteen dollars more for a copper patina finish.

If I were you I’d go for the copper patina option despite its higher price. Why? Here’s why:

While many people are fascinated by the natural look of orgone generators, other people might prefer a more finished, art-like appearance with less need to answers questions like: “What’s it’s for?”

The Weathered Copper Patina finish gives these orgone generators the look of an esoteric art object either dug up from a ancient Minoan archeological site or something Mr. Spock brought aboard The Enterprise. Either way, it looks nice sitting on a shelf, on top of the TV, or on a desk — without raising suspicions about its true function.

Here is Princess Sparkle Pony, trying and failing to give money to two giant American corporations:

First I went to ATT’s web site to order the service. Now, here’s another bit of PSP trivia: I don’t have a credit card; haven’t since college! I do have a debit card, of course, but I simply don’t use credit. So at the ATT site, they did a “credit check” and found me wanting, and decided that the iPhone wasn’t for me. So I “spoke” to an online rep, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I want to get an iPhone, but failed your credit check.
Rep: Sorry, then you are ineligible for the service.
Me: Really? Just like that? But I was going to pay with a debit card.
Rep: Sorry, if you fail the credit check, you’re ineligible.
Me: Seriously? What if I pre-pay for the whole two-year plan?
Rep: We don’t offer that.

Basically: no iPhone for me!

This morning, I decided to actually call ATT on the phone and find out if this was really true. And, of course, it isn’t. The person on the phone said I could, indeed, get iPhone service, but I’d have to go to an ATT store and would probably have to tender a $750 deposit (!!) as a punishment for being sensible with my money and not buying things I can’t afford.

Go on, read the rest of the story. You know you want to.

A man walks into a bar. He’s carrying a carpet under his arm. He wraps himself in the carpet, lies on the floor, covers his face and waits for people to step on him. A sign taped to the bar reads: “Step on carpet.”

People step on the carpet — dozens, in fact. The more people who step on the carpet, particularly if they are women in heels, the happier the man is. Some are timid, others are audacious. Some dance on the man. Some step on him while ordering their drinks, completely unaware that a live body is underfoot…

The circumstances of David Carradine’s death in a Bangkok hotel closet seemed more unusual than they were. I learned about the prevalence of autoerotic asphyxia while doing research for my second Tom Bethany mystery, Strangle Hold.

Steve Russell, a judge and a professor of criminal justice, tells you all you probably need to know about the phenomenon at The Rag Blog. Or you could do what I did, and dig up a copy of Autoerotic Fatalities, by Hazelwood, Dietz and Burgess.

Or, best of all, buy a copy of Strangle Hold and educate yourself the painless way. From the reviews:

Through his Tom Bethany character, a private investigator with no clear clientele, but an intense focus on righting wrongs, Doolittle lets readers know immediately — NO, NOW! — what’s wrong with bureaucrats, lots of businessmen, some cops, lawyers and many others whose very existence makes others suffer. And, oh, yeah. Lots of Republicans.

And…

Great Characters, I laughed out loud at “The Hocker.” One of the best. Do read as soon as possible. Like all his books catches you on page one, and then the squeeze is on. Thankfully back in print.

Talk about your great bumper stickers, huh? Here’s one Pennsylvania Democrat’s welcome to her party’s newest senator:

Pam Janvey, a Democratic committeewoman from Bucks County, found Specter’s presence at the gathering more than a little odd. “Am I in a dream?” she asked.

Janvey said that Specter hit all the right notes in his speech on Saturday and that although she had worked to defeat Specter in the past and never voted for him, she would back him this time around.

“Even when I have worked against Arlen over the years,” Janvey said, “I never felt the kind of fear that I did when I worked against Santorum…”

Here’s Rush Limbaugh again, still scribbling away on the walls of America’s toilets:

They don’t like Gitmo, we have to shut it down. They don’t like what we’ve done, fine, Obama will run around and apologize. I’m telling you, folks, it is not the United States of America that serves as Barack Obama’s role model. It’s other socialist nations that have failed and the concept of socialism that is his role model. I’ll tell you what, stupid little community organizer, organize this.

From today’s New York Times. Below is Noemi Letizia, recently 18, with a portrait of her great and good friend, Silvio.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of girls younger than 18 who were allegedly invited to a villa by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Mr. Berlusconi is alleged to have invited about 40 women to the villa, but only some of them were allegedly younger than 18 at the time, not all of them.

Here and there small groups of misinformed and manipulated citizens are gathering today throughout this great land for the purpose of dropping tea bags into liquids. They have been told by Fox News and a billionaires’ lobbyist named Dick Armey that this orgy of tea bagging will put an end to taxation with representation. Or something.

Most of the foot soldiers in this army of Dick’s seem not to know that tea bagging has a very specific meaning in the adult entertainment world, a meaning which has nothing to do with relieving the anguish of the very richest Americans at the prospect of being taxed once more at the same rate that existed the last time the nation’s budget was balanced.

Nor are most of these poor saps likely to be aware that their movement has its very own song, like The Internationale, or Boola Boola. The tea baggers’ fight song is called “I Love It When They Bounce,” and Karen Marie has been kind enough to call it to our attention. Here it is, performed by Supafloss:

In case you’ve always wanted a look inside Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s head, and who hasn’t, take a look at this. Truly scary stuff. Brief sample:

“I’m sure there are other things that have happened,” he said, wrapping up his answer. “So I would have to say just off the top of my head the Fourteenth Amendment. And I bet you someone’s going to hear that and say, well, no, it’s the dormant commerce clause or something.”

As to Thomas’s strange obsession with dishwashers, I won’t have anything useful to say until I have a chance to consult with my son Matt. He is a psychiatrist.

Meanwhile, for more on the man George Herbert Walker Bush considered to be the best-qualified candidate for the Supreme Court in America, see The Pubic Hair Test.

Not enough attention has been paid to Sarah Palin’s choice for attorney general of Alaska, a lacuna which I intend forthwith to fill. First of all his name is Wayne Anthony Ross, giving him the initials W.A.R. It is not clear whether his father, a Milwaukee insurance man, saw the significance of this. But the day must have come when the boy realized that his initials spelled “War.” The epiphany changed him forever, sort of.

Not enough to actually make him want to go to “War” himself, although one was handy when he graduated from Marquette University in 1965, and remained within easy reach when he graduated from its law school in 1968.

Instead he moved to Alaska, where he adopted bolo ties, high-heeled boots and a cowboy hat and became a civilian trial lawyer. But the dream never died. He went to gun shows. He shot animals, no doubt wishing they could shoot back. He became a director of the National Rifle Association.

And he pulled an 11-and-a-half year hitch in the Alaska State Defense Force (a 240-man “government-approved state militia”), rising to become its inspector general with the rank of colonel. He also became vice president of the 49th Territorial Guards Regiment, Inc., which guards territory.

Twice knighted (by Poland and the Vatican), Sir Wayne holds the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.

As if that weren’t enough the colonel has also received awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Daughters of the American Revolution (for patriotism), as well as being a recipient of the NRA’s Award of Merit for the Promotion of Gun Collecting.

But want to know the best thing of all? Another dreamer of martial dreams was appointed president in 2000, and Colonel Ross finally got his chance to go to war.

He scored this really keen red Hummer to tool around Anchorage in, with these totally awesome license plates that say “WAR.” Eat your heart out, kids.

Oh, yeah. He stands right with God, too:

‘‘I feel I have a good relationship with the good Lord but if I could overturn Roe vs. Wade, I figure I got my ticket.”

From the Associated Press:

According to the police report, 52-year-old Patricia Perea of Canyon Gate, Texas, told police she was sitting next to the singer of the hit song “Suavemente.” She said that about 15 minutes after the plane left Houston, Crespo covered himself with a blanket and began to masturbate, then exposed himself.

Suavemente, I was pleased to discover from my Spanish dictionary, means exactly what you’d think.

This video clip dates from the early dawn of human history, even before General Electric forced its new spokesman, Ronald Reagan, to submit to a brain transplant. (h/t to Ketchup is a Vegetable.)

My old paper the Washington Post, since fully evolved into Fox lite, today ran this wonderfully wacky paragraph about the election of leftist populist Mauricio Funes as President of El Salvador:

If Mr. Funes as well as the election’s losers now respect the rule of law, the result could be the consolidation of the political system the United States was aiming for when it intervened in El Salvador’s civil war during the 1980s. At the time, the goal of a successful Salvadoran democracy was dismissed as a mission impossible, just as some now say democracy is unattainable in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the right-wing ARENA party, whose leaders were linked to death squads in the 1980s, proved during the last few years that it could embrace democratic practices. Its presidential candidate, Rodrigo Ávila, acknowledged his defeat on election night.

For those very few of you who don’t follow the news from Central America that closely, I provide this link to BoRev, who does. His Onion-worthy headline: Reagan's Dream of A Leftist El Salvador Finally Realized. The post also has great art work, which I would steal if I knew how to do it.

Peggy Noonan totally nails it:

The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the ’00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn’t notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Stearns, and Merrill, and Citi.

Don da Man thought we should all know about this. His question, and it is a good one: Where did the $4,300 wind up?

A Russian man died after guzzling a bottle of Viagra to keep him going for a 12-hour orgy with two female pals.

The women had bet mechanic Sergey Tuganov $4,300 that he wouldn’t be able to follow through with the half-day sex marathon.

But minutes after winning the bet, the 28-year-old died of a heart attack, Moscow police said.

“We called emergency services but it was too late, there was nothing they could do,” said one of the female participants who identified herself only as Alina.

You didn’t expect me to keep this one all to myself, did you?

SYDNEY – An Australian traveler was caught with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip to the Middle East, customs officials said Tuesday. The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage, said Richard Janeczko, national investigations manager for the Customs Service

They found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and held to each of the man's legs with a pair of tights, according to a statement released by the agency. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant…

Steve Benen says:

Once in a while, a politician drops the pretense and lets his true colors come through. In this brief interview, Dick Armey, perhaps best known for calling his then-colleague Barney Frank "Barney Fag," showed just what he's made of, before a national television audience.

Here’s the silver-tongued former House Majority Leader on Hardball, debating Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of Salon.com:

Enough already with the Obama stuff . Mike thinks it’s time we paid a little attention to Chirac’s poodle:

This is by Ross Mackenzie, retired editor of the editorial page at the Richmond Times Dispatch. I know you will feel, as I did after reading it through, deeply ashamed:

The left and the media and the ever-expanding blogosphere, and of course the Democrats, never permitted George Bush to recover from the circumstances of his 2000 election.

They deemed him unacceptable, accidental, illegitimate, likely a conniver in the national outcome — and so took to lobbing their hateful commentaries one after another without end.

On issue after issue they rejected his appeals for bipartisanship, especially in his second term. In his 2004 victory speech, Bush said: “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. ... We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.”

Yet from Social Security and judges to the surge and terror and continuation of the tax cuts, malign leftists dug in and sought to foil him on every front — to deny him any victory, any success, anywhere.

“Malign” is too harsh? Consider: Television, blogospheric, and newspaper commentaries slammed President Bush 24/7. Nicholson Baker wrote Checkpoint, whose protagonists weigh whether to assassinate him. Twelve thousand San Franciscans signed a petition to rename an Oceanside sewage plant for him—

Hollywood went apoplectic, with Oliver Stone — director of the detestable October-released flick “W” — declaring: “We are a poorer and less secure nation for having elected (Bush) as our president. ... America finds itself fighting unnecessary and costly wars and engaging in dangerous and counterproductive efforts to fight extremism. Even more significant and troubling, I believe, is his legacy of immorality.”

Despite this vicious stream, George Bush persevered and prevailed. The events of 9/11 changed him. Mistakes abounded, but no subsequent domestic jihadist strike ensued. As he noted at the Army War College last month, this staggering security success was “not a matter of luck.” Against islamo-fascism pre-emption (described by the all-knowing as naive, idealistic and wrong) was — as it remains — the right policy for spreading liberty and democracy, particularly in a Middle East that boasts so little of either.

The enterprise in Iraq, following the surge, now approaches victory — the great Osama bin Laden himself having declared Iraq “the central front” in his war against the United States.

Barack Obama repeatedly pronounced Iraq a distraction and - from beginning to end — a mistake. Yet a resolute Bush was true to his values, to his nation, and to mankind’s ultimate cause. Last month he told The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel that liberty can be extended beyond Iraq as long as America continues to believe “in the universality of freedom.”

His early tax cuts helped the country out of the recession Bill Clinton left him. The budget exploded, as did deficits — largely a result of expanded defense spending for the war on terror. (Said Bush in the Strassel interview: “I refused to compromise on the military” — for which thank heaven, given that the first obligation of every administration is the people’s protection.)

Bush was correct about Social Security, despite a spineless, risk-averse Congress unwilling to get its game together. While vastly more nominations would have been better, he managed against obstructionist Senate Democrats to gain approval of 61 federal appellate judges (compare Clinton’s 65), now constituting majorities on 10 of the 13 appellate courts. And he gave us the estimable Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Yes, spending blew out of control — albeit with congressional concurrence.

Problems plagued the war’s conduct in Iraq. Post-Katrina New Orleans was mishandled. Still, Bush can boast hefty tax cuts, major assistance for HIV-infected areas of Africa, significant gains in health care and in education accountability, a multi-ethnic Cabinet (including the first two black secretaries of state), and massive improvements from surveillance to strategic policy.

We invest our presidents with greatly too many expectations. It happened with George Bush and his predecessors, as it is happening with Barack Obama — the latest secular savior. Few mortals can deliver on more than a small percentage of their promises and hopes.

Yet Bush carried two added burdens: (1) difficulty in articulating his goals and (2) relentless hammering by leftists hostile to his values and his success. Then, perceiving him harmful to the Republican brand, many conservatives abandoned him as well. Still and all, his favorable ratings never descended to the ratings for Congress — particularly the Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

George Bush a perfect president? Hardly. The worst president of the past half-century, as too many with ideological axes to grind would have us believe? Compare, oh, Carter and Clinton. A more prudent categorization: The most consequential president since Reagan.

To those cognoscenti who argue such an appraisal is preposterous, remind them of this: The most recent conventional wisdom — the consensus of the best minds and analysts — was (remember?) that because the fundamentals were so sound the stock market could not crash, the economy could not possibly collapse.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson — a man of laconic, perceptive humor — noted that “those who travel the high road of humility in Washington are not bothered by heavy traffic.”

George Bush concludes his presidency with abundant accomplishments, not least a safer nation — and still, despite a tsunami of hateful coverage, commendably humble. When the tumult and the shouting die, an appreciative people would escort him down to robust and lingering applause.

From Al Kamen’s column in the Washington Post:

Former FEMA administrator Michael D. Brown was among 11,000 Boulder, Colo., folks evacuated yesterday amid raging wildfires that have scorched at least 1,000 acres. Brown, dubbed “Brownie” by President Bush during the Katrina Hurricane fiasco, moved back to the Boulder area, where he runs a disaster consulting business.

From a Washington Post interview with White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten:

Bolten said another of his goals when he took over was to try to get the country to see the likable boss he and other aides saw in private, convinced that would boost Bush’s popularity. “I failed miserably,” he conceded. “Maybe in the beginning of the sixth year of a presidency, that’s a quixotic task… But everybody who has actual personal exposure to the president, almost everybody, appreciates what a good leader he is, how smart he is and, especially, how humane he is.”

There’s no fuel like a lipofuel…

“…The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use,” he says. “Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth…”

My psychiatrist son, Matt, emails this:

I have been dealing with the fallout from the election nearly every day as my more vulnerable and psychotic patients were genuinely frightened by the advertising portraying Obama as a dangerous man, and they have trouble understanding the difference between “Obama” and “Osama,” and now they are fearful and even more frightened that the world does not see the threat that so obviously looms.

This last fear is unwarranted, however. Much of the unmedicated world is also quivering before the peril that looms:

From North Carolina:

“People are very, very worried,” said Dean White, general manager of the firearms academy, gun shop and indoor shooting range. “We’re seeing a lot of people who have never even considered purchasing a handgun before coming in and saying that they want to buy one just because they think something’s going to happen and they may not be able to get it in the future.”

From Arizona:

But Barack Obama is good for business. Last Wednesday, the day after Mr. Obama beat Arizona’s own Mr. McCain to become the president-elect, Mr. Chee sold $30,000 worth of guns — mostly the semi-automatics the National Rifle Association claims Mr. Obama’s administration will restrict.

“The election came, and now it’s just a madhouse in here,” said Mr. Chee, 31.

From Pennsylvania:

Soon after Barack Obama won the presidential election, Dennis Dupler bought an assault rifle that he had wanted to protect his home, fearful that a Democratic White House and Congress will impose gun-control laws or taxes on firearms…

“I have a feeling there’s some bad stuff down the road,” said Dupler, of Elizabethtown, holding his rifle purchase Thursday at a gun shop near his home.

From Oregon:

During the week of the election, Flying Cloud sold over 20 AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. It typically sells four or five in a given month’s time … In the past couple of weeks, Smith said the low-end price for a AR-15 at his store has jumped from $900 to $1,050.

From Illinois:

“The best defense against the Obama Gun Grabbing Machine is a solid show of force by law-abiding gun owners,” said Pearson. “The most forceful display of support for gun rights is for citizens to enthusiastically exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. By keeping the gun shop cash registers ringing and the FBI background check computers humming, citizens will send a very clear message that they do not take challenges to their rights lightly.”

And more from Pennsylvania:

Same thing in Brodheadsville, where American Sport Shooting owner Richard Flynn has seen an 80 percent increase of gun sales starting a week before the election. “People are stockpiling ammunition too,” Flynn said…

“The other thing that has people concerned is talk of a civilian security force equally funded as the military. Run by [Obama], I guess. We see that as the Gestapo,” Flynn said.

“The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. It is about being able to protect ourselves against a government gone bad, which is what we have now,” Flynn said. “When a president wants to set up his own national army, that alarms people…”

“Let’s look to Hurricane Katrina. Government agents were going door to door, beating on doors, asking if they had guns, and taking them away,” said National Rifle Association spokesperson Ashley Varner. “It has happened in recent history. Let’s not say it could never happen.”

From Doonesbury’s daily feature, “Say What?” —

“For eight U.S. presidential elections during the period 1960-2004, the rapid blinker during debates received fewer overall votes than his opponent. In seven of these eight elections, the rapid blinker also lost the electoral vote and was defeated at the polls.”

— Journal of Psychology observation, cited on net in reference to McCain blinking 3,000 times during the third debate

From the Caucus blog at the New York Times:

Some of the fashion experts consulted Wednesday, for instance, about the $150,000 in purchases that appeared on Federal Election Commission records were puzzled by where all of that money had gone, given what they had seen of Ms. Palin’s wardrobe.

Consider also the $4,902.45 charge at Atelier New York, a high-end men’s store, presumably for Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, the famous First Dude.

Karlo Steel, an owner there, said he had gone through the store’s receipts for September, twice, and found no sales that matched that amount, nor any combination of sales that added up to the total.…

The store carries expensive cut-up T-shirts and tricky suits from avant-garde designers, like Raf Simons, Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demeulemeester, none of whom typically create beltway-appropriate attire…

Self-loathing and hypocrisy transcend national borders. Larry Craig has nothing on Austrian “rightwing populist” Jörg Haider:

Petzner said: “We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Jörg and I were connected by something really special. He was the man of my life.”

The news stunned Austria, which has been coming to terms with the death of the anti-immigrant politician. Haider, who voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly. But after the car crash it was revealed that he had been driving at twice the speed limit, his blood alcohol level had been four times the legal limit, and he had spent his final hours in a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital of the southern state where he was governor.

Ever feel like bending over and clearing out the system with a good, old-fashioned puke? Rich Lowry at the National Review has got just the thing for you. And while you’re blowing chunks, consider this: Have the words “very wise” and “TV executive” ever appeared in sequence before?

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.

I challenge our readers to chew their cuds on this bit of chicken feed :

An Ohio farmer would like to invite you to get lost inside the head of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

A 16-acre corn maze near the town of Whitehouse has been carved in Palin's likeness, complete with her familiar updo hairstyle and eyeglasses.

Farmer Duke Wheeler says that Palin created a lot of excitement in the campaign and that he was hoping to generate some for this year’s maze.

Wheeler says it took an artist from Idaho at least eight hours to mow down stalks for the maze.

Here, in all its magnificent entirety, is a late-breaking story out of Florida, from the Associated Press:

Police in Port St. Lucie are on the lookout for a cross-dressing man who snatched a 74-year-old woman’s purse. As if that weren’t odd enough, they’re depending on a strange clue. The suspect left behind a condom filled with water he had been using as a fake breast.

The woman said she believed the thief followed her while shopping. A witness told investigators he was wearing a short denim skirt and black tube top, and fled in a silver car with two other male crossdressers.

Police are processing the condom for fingerprint and DNA evidence.

Remember Bernann McKinney? The one who manacled the Mormon and cloned the pit bulls? Sure you do. Well, she’s back. This is the story that just keeps on giving:

Joyce Bernann McKinney was charged in Carter County with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and failure to appear in court, said attorney David Crockett, who represented her in the Tennessee case. Authorities there said she instructed a 15-year-old boy to break into a house, and Crockett said she needed the money to buy a false leg for a beloved horse.

Close readers of this text will recall last week’s posting on Bernann McKinney, the “sex crazed loon and former beauty queen who’s been on the lam for the 30 years since she was accused of kidnapping Mormon missionary, tying him up with fur-lined handcuffs and repeatedly ‘raping’ him until he agreed to marry her.

According to the New York Post, she later explained that “the sex part was consensual and the bondage necessary for him to overcome his Mormon guilt. ‘Kirk had to be tied up to have an orgasm,’ she testified.”

These further details reach us from my twisted nephew Jason, to whom, as always, I extend my deepest gratitude.

In my rugby days, I played second row. This meant that in the scrums my ears were ground from both sides by the hips of teammates wearing canvas shorts. To avoid cauliflower ears, most of us wore protective gear that looked something like ear muffs.

Which is to say that we were marginally more intelligent than these total morons:

Unfazed by the prospect of living life as a walking what’s-grosser-than-gross joke, a nationwide corps of professional fighters, amateur enthusiasts and teenagers have taken to leaving their ears untreated or self-treated, wearing their shriveled, hardened waxen auricles as badges of honor.

“It’s definitely part of the culture,” said Dr. John H. Park, a physical therapist in Rockville, Md., who specializes in treating M.M.A. participants. “They say, ‘Chicks dig that stuff because they know you’re a fighter.’”

…As a signature injury, cauliflower ear stands alone in one illuminating respect. Although most athletes tend to err on the side of overtreatment, or at least treatment, fighters develop cauliflower ear by avoiding medical care.

…but Morris supposes erroneously. This is from an ad in the Human Events newsletter (subscribers only) for a new book called Fleeced:

Americans feel fleeced at every turn, and it’s no wonder. As more and more critical problems develop that need national attention, the White House and Congress are effectively AWOL. And who’s calling the shots instead? Big government, big business, big labor, and big lobbyists — all with self-serving agendas that do nothing to help the ever-increasing number of American people who are losing their homes, paying exorbitant credit card interest rates, and finding their jobs increasingly outsourced to foreign countries.

Make your blood boil? Make you want to toss out the greedy bloodsucking neocon DLC warmongers who have spent the last eight years flushing our economy, our constitution and our nation’s most sacred values right down the toilet?

Wait a minute, though. Here’s the full title of this outraged screed:

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the New Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Fleecing Us…and What to Do About It

And here are the authors: Eileen McGann and her husband, Dick Morris. Yes, that Dick Morris. (The picture below shows two entirely different people. I include it only as an example of very poor taste.)

From The News & Observer:

DURHAM — Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has sued Duke University, saying the school breached a $200,000 contract with him by kicking him off the golf team…

As an aspiring pro golfer in high school, Giuliani was promised life-time access to Duke’s state-of-the-art training facilities if he came to Duke and paid $200,000 in tuition and fees, the suit claims…

On Feb. 4, during a golf-team football game, “Andrew played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play.”

On Feb. 10, while Giuliani was eating an apple, a teammate twice hit the golfer’s hand and knocked the fruit to the ground. After that same teammate “slammed a door hitting Andrew’s face,” Giuliani “tossed the apple at a teammate, glancing off the side of his face.”

…who knew the wingnuts had their own ball club? Well, they do. It’s called the Wichita Wingnuts and below the manager shows why. If he loses his job over this, they can always use a good man at Fox News or the Vice President’s office.

(Editor’s note: Peter Cook is the former Mr. Christie Brinkley)

ASSOCIATED PRESS: …Cook also admitted spending thousands of dollars a month on interactive Internet pornography, but insisted that he stopped the habit after his breakup with Brinkley…

(Editor’s query: Where does the poor guy go for kicks now? Animal Planet?)

On those rare occasions when Bush is moved to do the right thing, he gets knee-capped by his best friends. If it weren’t so horrible it would be amusing. Consider this unusually ripe specimen:

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s efforts to broaden a widely respected, bipartisan program to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa have faced roadblocks by seven Republican senators.

Bush had hoped that Congress would pass legislation to spend $50 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis primarily in Africa in time for the Group of Eight summit in Japan next month. However, the seven socially conservative senators, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., refuse to support the legislation unless spending focuses more heavily on treatment than on prevention.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the seven senators — Coburn, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana — criticized the bills’ increased spending over the next five years from $15 billion to $50 billion, the expansion of AIDS funding to countries such as China and India and the inclusion of funding for agricultural-assistance and poverty-alleviation programs.

“The bills’ support would allow morally questionable activities, including advocating with host governments to change gender norms and policies and promoting activities that could include needle distribution to drug users,” the senators wrote.

Vitter, Vitter. Haven’t I heard that name somewhere? Isn’t he some kind of an expert on morally questionable activities? Oh, yes, now it all comes back:

After Vitter’s telephone number was discovered this summer among the records of the so-called “D.C. Madam,” the rumors about his sexual proclivities really started flying. Wonkette and a variety of liberal blogs ran with rumors that he had a diaper fetish and liked to make in his nappy during sexual acts. No one seems to be sure where that rumor originated, so we did our best to get to the bottom of it.

Wendy Cortez (Ellis), a New Orleans-based reformed hooker, said during a press conference yesterday that Vitter stopped seeing her after he learned her real first name was the same as his wife’s. Cortez tells Radar that Vitter never wore any diapers during their sexual transgressions, which she says occurred two to three times a week over a four-month period in 1999.

“That story referred to another client of [mine] and was later misconstrued by reporters and bloggers,” Cortez explained. She also added that Vitter was always “very clean” during intercourse.

A statue of John Wayne? C’mon, you’ve gotta like the guy at least a little:

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AP) — A convicted felon who became a motivational speaker — and used his life experiences to warn teens about the dangers of drugs and crime — is accused of going on a bender, threatening to kill his girlfriend and her son, and smashing a former prison buddy in the face with a statue of John Wayne.

Another masterful performance by the Little Prince from an interview with Politico.com. For one thing, he looks forward to the day when he can sent emails again. The way things are now everything has to be deleted each time Congress sends over another subpoena.

And for another thing, you will be touched in the appropriate place to learn that Bush gave up golf as an expression of solidarity with the Gold Star mothers whose sons he has killed. Sorry the following post is so long, but there are lots of presidential shallows to be plumbed here.

Q: Mr. President, thank you very much for having us into the Roosevelt Room for the first online interview. In the spirit of the Internet, I wonder if we could ask a question from one of our users, Steve Bailey, of New York, who says: With oil at $126 a barrel, pushing up the price of everything — even food — what can your administration do to help people right now?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate Steven’s concerns. With the price of gasoline going up, it’s like a tax. I wish I could give Steven a quick answer. In other words, it took us a while to get to where we are — very dependent on oil, and in a world in which demand is greater than oil. So my answer to Steven is that the best thing we can do is to increase supply, and to drill for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways at home, and build more refineries. Steven probably doesn’t know this, but we haven’t built a new refinery since 1976, and if we’re truly interested in relieving the pressure on our consumers, then we ought to have a very active domestic policy now…

Q: Mr. President, the one thing we don’t see in here is a computer, and we know that you went cold turkey off email for security reasons. What are you looking forward to when you finally get your computer back?

THE PRESIDENT: Emailing to my buddies. I can remember as governor I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off emails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals. One of the things that I will have ended my public service time with is a group of friends, a lot of friends. And I want to stay in touch with them and there’s no better way to communicate with them than through email…

Q: Mr. President, acknowledging those constraints, you’re an oil man — some people say that climate change, global warming could have been your Nixon-to-China. Do you wish you’d done more?

THE PRESIDENT: I did what I think is necessary to actually work, Michael. I mean, I could have signed a — I could have supported a lousy treaty and everybody would have went, “Oh, man, what a wonderful sounding fellow he is.” But it just wouldn’t have worked. I don’t think you want your President trying to be the cool guy and not end up with policies that actually make a difference…

The biggest issue we face is — it’s bigger than Iraq — it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives. Iraq just happens to be a part of this global war. Iraq is the place where al Qaeda and other extremists have made their stand — and they will be defeated. They’ll be defeated through military action, but they’ll also be defeated as this young democracy takes hold. They can’t stand to live in a free society, that’s why they try to fight free societies…

I feel like — I felt like there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, “mislead” is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don’t think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.

Q: And so you feel that you didn’t have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction — as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes. But intelligence communities all across the world felt the same thing. This was kind of a common assessment.

So “mislead” means, do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don’t. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.

Q: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal…

Q: Now, Mr. President, President Carter recently told Charlie Rose the next President could change America’s image in 10 minutes. Here’s what he said: “I think the next President could change the image of this country around the world in 10 minutes by making an inaugural speech that would start off and say, ‘As long as I’m President we will never torture another prisoner, as long as I’m President we will never attack or invade another country unless our own security is directly threatened.’”

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, well, what he ought to be saying is, is that America doesn’t torture. If the implication there is that we do now, then he’s wrong. And you bet we’re going to protect ourselves by the use of military force. What he really is implying is — or some imply — you can be popular; if you want to be popular in the Middle East just go blame Israel for every problem. That will make you popular. Or if you want to be popular in Europe, say you’re going to join the International Criminal Court.

Popularity is fleeting, Michael. Principles are forever.

Let’s say you’re in favor of letting the states legalize abortion and and drugs and same sex marriage if they want to. And you favor an immediate start to our withdrawal from Iraq. And you think the telecom companies should be punished for warrantless wiretapping. And you hate the Patriot Act for its gutting of civil rights. And no matter what the Creep from Crawford thinks, you think habeas corpus belongs in the Constitution after all.

Folks, have I got a candidate for you! He’s an Iowan born and bred. He went to high school in Iran. He’s a former CIA spook and federal prosecutor. Plus he’s a proud member of both the NRA and the ACLU.

Ladies and Germs, let’s hear it for the only candidate who’s really got your back — Big. Bob. BARR!

This from the BBC:

Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats.

Microbiologist Dr Peter Wilson said a keyboard was often “a reflection of what is in your nose and in your gut”.

During tests in January this year, a microbiologist deemed one of the office’s keyboards to be so dirty he ordered it to be removed, quarantined and cleaned.

It had 150 times the recommended limit for bacteria — five times as filthy as a lavatory seat tested at the same time, the research found.

All right, let’s see you resist clicking on these two links, both of which are perfectly legitimate:

Number one: Thirty-five-year-old man holds breath underwater for 17 minutes, four seconds.

Number two: Sixty-nine-year-old man grows new finger, as shown on video.

Too bad for the wingnut bloggers who jumped on the story like a chicken on a Junebug, but it was a hoax. Yale student Aliza Shvarts has not in fact “repeatedly impregnated herself and induced abortions that she videotaped for use in a senior art project.”

Still you’ve got to give Ms. Shvarts major weirdness points, even if she’s a Goody Two-Shoes compared to this Princeton scholar:

A science student of Mr. Silver’s once proposed impregnating herself with chimpanzee sperm. Mr. Silver convinced her it was a “horrible thing for her to do,” but his fictionalized account of the event became a book and a play.

…BADATTITUDES.COM, barely used but beautifully maintained by previous owner, a little old blogger from Connecticut. This just in:

A US man has sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6 million after maintaining the site for just $20 a year since 1994.

Chris Clark, 43, accepted the offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction…"It will make a significant difference in my life, for sure," he said.

Meet Melvin:

Melvin "Man-o-war" Costa has a classic Nazi eagle and swastika insignia tattooed across his chest and a prison gang spider web inked on his right elbow.

Costa, 26, also is a convicted felon, self-avowed white nationalist and currently the 10th-ranked light heavyweight fighter in King of the Cage, one of the most popular semi-professional "mixed martial arts" (MMA) combat leagues in America.

Judging by online forum discussions, Costa's growing legions of white supremacist fans seemed far less concerned with his swastika or spider web tattoos than a third tattoo, circling his navel, that boasts, "I have a small penis." The common theory is that, as one fan said, "He might be going for a bit of sarcasm, depending on the actual size of his penis, given the false stereotype about us."

I knew you’d want to know. Full details.

MUNICH, Germany — A woman was stopped at Munich airport after baggage control handlers found the skeleton of her brother sealed in a plastic bag in her luggage, police said Wednesday.

President Bush at a press appearance in Crawford with Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for bringing us to the great weather.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, back to Texas, man. I cut his teeth in Texas. (Uneasy Laughter.)

(Actually the transcript doesn’t say “uneasy.” I just figured the laughter had to be uneasy, because otherwise it would have to be servile, and these guys and gals of the press are watchdogs, not cringing curs.)

Come on, people. How am I not going to post this?

Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage.

Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime.

As of this writing, the video below had been viewed 593,359 times on YouTube. Of these viewers 3,939 were moved to leave comments. Here is one of them. I hope it clears everything up for you:

bist du auf drogen??XD..lol...das video hat keinen sinn-.-..die guckt doch nur in die cam....is das bescheuert X))

If even one of you out there missed the absolute greatest newspaper story in years, I’d feel terrible if I didn’t put it up for you. The excerpt below is from the second-day story in today’s New York Times. But start with the first-day story.

Detective Rapp looked out the window and saw the unwieldy trio. Something about the way they struggled to balance the man in the chair caught his eye.

“At this point, when they approached closer, I saw the body and I said, ‘Well, this is a dead guy,’ ” Detective Rapp said on Wednesday in a phone briefing…

…and to all a good night!

Here we learn that crickets in Utah are already living the Republican dream:

But in the deserts of Utah, Dr. Couzin and his colleagues discovered that giant swarms may actually be made up of a lot of selfish individuals.

Mormon crickets will sometimes gather by the millions and crawl in bands stretching more than five miles long. Dr. Couzin and his colleagues ran experiments to find out what caused them to form bands. They found that the forces behind cricket swarms are very different from the ones that bring locusts together. When Mormon crickets cannot find enough salt and protein, they become cannibals.

“Each cricket itself is a perfectly balanced source of nutrition,” Dr. Couzin said. “So the crickets, every 17 seconds or so, try to attack other individuals. If you don’t move, you’re likely to be eaten.”

Send this article to all your mush-brained friends who believe that crafty Arabs were able to pre-install explosives in a building that had already been bombed once by terrorists, and then detonate the charges right after a bunch of other crafty Arabs flew planes into the World Trade Center.

Then ask your mush-brained friends what the planes were for.

Well, maybe just a little, considering that the Loizeaux clan still had to finish threading several hundred eight-inch sticks of dynamite with yellow ignition rope and race through the stripped-down carcass of the New Frontier Hotel-Casino stuffing the explosives into the correct pillars …

You will be interested to know that a Texas man named Wes Pemberton has a five-inch hair growing from his leg. It is believed to be the world’s longest leg hair, the previous record holder being only 4.88 inches. Want the full details? Knock yourself out, dude.

You probably thought things couldn’t get any weirder. Well, you were wrong.

A U.S. man who stored his amputated leg in a barbecue smoker that was later auctioned off is locked in a custody dispute with the man who bought it …

This might sound weird, but suppose your current state of mind condensed, à la Iain Banks’s Culture, to a desktop manager like Windows (gag), or MacIntosh, or KDE (the only one I could comfortably fit into).

New situation? Encapsulate the existing one, push it onto a stack, deal with the new one, pop the previous one off the stack, go back to dealing with that.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

What's left? Who is it that pops?

If only the poor guys just took their time, read more, looked at the world a little more closely. Then they might… Well, no actually. It turns out that’s not the problem. The base is hardcore because it’s hardwired:

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show “there are two cognitive styles — a liberal style and a conservative style,” said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research…

Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said.

If you’ve got college age kids, you need to warn them about something. Just watch the video below and you’ll know what I’m talking about. And don't forget the words of Kurt Vonnegut, who famously said, “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” I won’t spread terror any further by reminding you who’s still running the country right now. Thanks to Max for making this video possible.

I have seen many weird things in my day. I watched Richard Nixon give his Checkers speech live and then again, 40 years later, in the Nixon Library. I have stood in the Reverend Bob Schuller’s magnificent Crystal Cathedral, in silent awe at the stupidity of my species. I have watched Jimmy Carter and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia pretending nonchalance on the speaker’s platform while the rest of us gagged on tear gas from an anti-Shah demonstration on the Ellipse. I covered American Nazi Party protesters at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I even watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a drive-in theater.

And now, courtesy of Waiting for Dorothy, I have watched the video below and you can, too. Hang in there till the very end.

What did we learn from Newsweek this week, gang? We learned that those lovable cut-ups, Condi and Dickie, just have a high old time whenever they can manage to get together for a good banter.

Wouldn’t you just love to be a fly on that wall! Unfortunately, though, considerations of national security and executive privilege make it necessary for us to deny your request. Try renting an old Tracy and Hepburn flick instead.

RICE: But I want to say something about the vice president. You know, if he doesn’t agree, the vice president talks about it, just as if [Defense Secretary] Bob Gates doesn’t agree, or I don’t agree, we sit down and talk about it. And then if necessary we talk about it with the president and he decides … The vice president has never been somebody who tries to do that on the sidelines, behind the scenes. He really doesn’t.

Q: Not even when Don Rumsfeld was around?

RICE: [Laughs] You asked about when I have been secretary of State. As secretary of State I can tell you we have the most open relationship. In fact we have a kind of friendly banter about it, in which I’ll tease him [Cheney] about the image that he doesn’t like diplomacy.

Just in case you missed this:

“I was so upset,” said Zahi Hawass, the chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. “How the hair of the mummy — of the greatest king of Egypt — can be sold on the Internet!”

Just wanted to share this with you:

In comments published yesterday in the British music magazine NME, Mr. Richards, 63, said: “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow…”

I know this stuff is getting beyond cliché and into the realm of statistically significant psychosociological data, but still… Who can resist just one more helping of hot, throbbing hypocrisy? Not me, certainly.

So here’s a link to a gay website named TowleRoad, where the curious will find a photograph of Ann Coulter posing cheerfully at the recent CPAC conference during which she gave everyone a good giggle by gay-bashing the amazingly straight John Edwards.

Her far-from-straight companion in the picture is gay ex-hooker and porn star and Marine corporal Matt Sanchez, now a student at Columbia (below) who has been making the rounds of wingnut pundit shows with complaints that antiwar students are picking on him.

But read all about it at TowleRoad, where the even more curious will find links to many other photographs and film clips as well. These range from the former marine’s recent appearance on The O’Reilly Show to appearances on many other earlier shows of equivalent intellectual depth.

Back in the fifties the fathers of today’s tinfoil hat brigade were convinced that fluoridated water was a commie plot aimed at driving good Americans like themselves insane so that they could be locked up forever by commie shrinks, the whole Freud thing being a commie plot which you could tell it was by the way all the commies in Russia locked up dissidents in their commie nuthouses.

One evening back then a reporter colleague, Sam Eastman of the old Washington Evening Star, arrived late to cover a political rally in the Virginia suburbs. Since the most nutzoid of the candidates had finished speaking, Sam passed a note up to to the platform asking for the gist of his remarks.

The candidate passed back this answer: “I spoke in opposition to mental health.”

I was reminded of this by the obituary in today’s New York Times of Dr. David B. Ast, who died earlier this month at the age of 104. He was a leader in the fight to fluoridate America’s water, which did in fact wind up driving millions of Americans insane. What else could account for Bush’s reelection?

I think we’d all like to know a little more about Prince Frederic von Anhalt, wouldn’t we, fellows? So here goes, from the New York Times and the Times website. The first picture below is of an earlier Prince Frederic von Anhalt. I include it to show the remarkable extent to which selective breeding has improved the royal lineage. The second shows the present prince, receiving Botox injections. (My translation; the original is “…lässt sich die Falten unterspritzen.”)

Prince Frederick von Anhalt, 59, who is married to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, 90, told The Associated Press that he and Ms. [Anna Nicole] Smith had had an affair since the mid-1990s …

He told The A.P. that he met Ms. Smith when she approached him and Ms. Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York. He said this was during Ms. Smith’s 14-month marriage to the Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, who died in 1995 at 90

Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as ‘‘Moulin Rouge’’ and ‘‘Queen of Outer Space,’’ has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.

Von Anhalt, who is Gabor’s eighth husband, said he and Smith met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York …

He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.

But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.

Failure to communicate can be an art. Examples cast a tiny light on our countrymen, and their refusal to think. This one I found top notch:

“BMW — Where no ideas are harmed in the making of our cars.”

Imagine, if you will, an ad writer laboring to come up with a slogan and then, in a burst of understanding, writing the above. Think about the grown ups sitting around an oval table taking it all Oh so seriously.

From Raw Story, reporting second hand from Roll Call:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that with better intelligence the South would have won the Civil War, today’s Roll Call is reporting.

Conflicting reports have emerged about what was said, one from a source to Roll Call’s “Heard on the Hill” column, the other from a spokesperson for Chambliss.

According to Roll Call’s source, Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

Some people can post whatever they want, whenever they want:

“My wife is 6-foot-3 and weighs 300 pounds,” said Ozmun, who became chief [of police] in January 2005. “If there is somebody that thinks they can control her, have at it. I have tried for 11 years and haven’t been able to.”

I admit I can find humor where none is intended and where no one else can, but this report is funny. If you disagree, you can just ignore me. I’m fine in my own little world.

Check this out.

Is this not the stuff of which great comedy is made? Ya, I think so.

Three police officers were accidentally shot Sunday as one or more officers took aim at a pit bull attacking a member of their crew, police said. All were in stable condition.

The three officers suffered minor graze wounds and a fourth was bitten, said police Officer Doris Garcia.

The men had been responding to a dispute between a landlord and tenant in a Bronx building when the animal ran from another floor and attacked one of the officers, police said. The dog was killed by the gunfire.

Update: When originally posted there was a bad link to the story and now I can't find it. So sorry. That is the whole report anyway.

Update: It seems when you're guest blogging you tend to make all the stupid little mistakes you normally do on your own site, but you don't catch them. Argh!

Hey, cut me some slack. I'm new at Movable type.

Well, I can report on at least two advantages to being in a small town in Appalachia.

In San Francisco, it took me four months to get a copy of Kevin Phillips’s American Theocracy from the library. They had nine copies, and when my name finally bubbled to the top, there were 150 holds behind me. Here, I went to the library yesterday. They had one copy, and it was on the shelf.

The local newspaper, which recently ran with the death of a local dog as the front-page story, has above the fold today two pictures and a story about a 96-year-old man who “modestly admits, he only bowls for the fun.” I’m not sure what the alternative was. Below the fold is a report on a stolen video camera, which contained a tape of a wedding. The couple, still on a cruise in the Bahamas, are as yet unaware of the disaster. The report presents the hope that a reader might happen across some information that would lead law enforcement to the evil-doer, or if all else fails, perhaps “the power of conscience might prompt the return of the tape.”

Just for context, the Washington Post today is spending time on the war in the Middle East, Bush’s speech to the NAACP, and his veto of the stem-cell bill.

The lead editorial in the local paper concerns the disaster in Lebanon and Gaza. It makes at least three claims of fact that appear to me to be incorrect, so I wrote a letter to the editor and emailed it around noon. By 2PM the paper had called me to verify that I was the author, said the letter was a bit too long, and suggested a cut to bring it down to size, to which I agreed. I expect they’ll publish it tomorrow or the next day.

From the Senate Majority Project:

During today’s same-sex marriage amendment debate, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) used a prop of a blown-up photo of his family (some 20 people or so). Gesturing towards the photo, he said:

(MR. INHOFE) As you see here, and I think this is maybe the most important prop we’ll have during the entire debate, my wife and I have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of a homosexual relationship.

From (Jerry Doolittle):

My wife and I have been married 50 years. We have 15 kids and grandkids. I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve had quite a few partial assholes, but never a complete one like Imhofe.

Oh, and another thing. Inhofe’s official homepage, as of this morning, reports that “Inhofe has been married to his wife, Kay, for 46 years and has four grown children and twelve grandchildren.” Apparently the senator didn’t bother to take his shoes off before doing the addition.

Italian movie star Alida Valli died Saturday at the age of 84, occasioning one of those sentences that should have been at least a chapter:

Rather than comply with the dictates of the fascist government, Ms. Valli retreated into hiding and in 1944 married Oscar de Mejo, a Surrealist painter and composer, whose most successful song was "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

The South is such an interesting place. I offer up this “crime report” from a paper in the rural South. May your life be so uncomplicated.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did.