Hopeless Situation

I think the superdelegate vote is now the only way left for me to win my NCAA basketball pool.

Everybody Hates Bush

Watch Dubya throw out the first pitch at Opening Day in Washington.


Not a real good idea for Mr. 28%

Conservative Thinking

Post War Nutcase in a Pro-War Age

Disconnect

Two stories, two worlds, two realities. One of them is unreal, the other surreal:

McClatchy News...

Bush: Iraq is returning to normal

WASHINGTON — President Bush, saying that "normalcy is returning back to Iraq," argued Thursday that last year's U.S. troop "surge" has improved Iraq's security to the point where political and economic progress are blossoming as well.



Bush coupled his description of the situation in Iraq, meant to lay the groundwork for next month's report to Congress by U.S. military and diplomatic chiefs, with a forceful slap at war critics.



"Some ... seem unwilling to acknowledge that progress is taking place," Bush said in a speech at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. He accused war opponents of constantly shifting their critique, adding: "No matter what shortcomings these critics diagnose, their prescription is always the same — retreat."

BBC News...

Basra Paralyzed as Fighting Continues

BASRA-- Militiamen - in particular those of the Mehdi Army, loyal to the cleric Moqtada Sadr - show no signs of giving up and fighting continues.



Mehdi militiamen are holding key points around Basra, say local sources, and are harassing Iraqi troops from alleyways and back streets, where armoured vehicles find it hard to manoeuvre.



Basra appears to be paralysed. Local residents say supplies of food and fuel are running low.



A phone call came to the BBC bureau from Timimiyah district - an area of Basra still held by the Mehdi Army.



Water supplies have been cut off because of the fighting, and people have not been able to go out to buy food.



The caller said his father had had a heart attack and had no medication, and that the Iraqi army had raided the local market and taken all the food.

I suppose, depending on how you look at it, Bush is right. Iraq has returned to normal.

Why Do You Think They Call It Ultimate, Anyway?

I'll be off to Santa Cruz tonight for a weekend of fun and games. Oh, I'll also be working on my corkscrew landing.

Keeping America Safe, One Citizen at a Time

And later we learn that the White House is so concerned about keeping every American safe in their beds that they have agencies like the Secret Service only tackle the most important assignments.

As federal officials scrambled to avert the much-feared "second wave" of attacks, reporters likewise scrambled to follow any hint of the next possible attack and to put it on the front page—from scuba divers off the coast of Southern California to hazmat trucks in the Midwest and tourist helicopters in New York City.
One example of the shift: On Sept. 12, 2001, another major newspaper was set to run a story on the extraordinary diplomatic maneuverings the U.S. Secret Service had arranged with their Mexican counterparts to allow Jenna Bush, then 19, to make a barhopping trip south of the border. (She had just been charged with underage drinking in Texas.)

I can only thank God no one was following me around while I did my carousing down in Mexico. And let the record show, it was Reek what ended up in the Mexican jail, not me. We got him sprung pretty quick though, and without any help from the Secret Service.

On Ending the War

Why didn't we think of this?:

Iraq's government has extended by 10 days a deadline for Shia militiamen fighting troops in the southern city of Basra to hand over their weapons.



More than 130 people have been killed and 350 injured since a clampdown on militias began in Basra on Tuesday.



US-led forces joined the battle for the first time overnight, bombing Shia positions, the UK military said.



Iraq's parliament is set for emergency talks on the crisis, which has also brought a three-day curfew in Baghdad.



A statement from Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's office read: "All those who have heavy and intermediate weapons are to deliver them to security sites and they will be rewarded financially. This will start from March 28 to April 8."

Tough Start to the Day

On the way to work this morning I had to run through a hail of sniper fire. They canceled the welcoming ceremony at the office because it was too dangerous, and I wasn't able to meet with the little girl and her mother who made me a small gift while they were being held captive in a Bosnian prison camp.

I remember it all like it was yesterday.

Misogyny Meets Its Match....at the Haberdashery

Deep thoughts in the elite media: How will Hillary Clinton be able to answer the Red Phone if she's still in the bathroom using the blowdryer?

The conversation was about how tiring it must be to run for president, and someone -- a woman -- said that, on top of everything else, Hillary Clinton has to spend an hour and a half getting ready for each day's campaigning. She didn't mean studying her notes and making sure she knows the name of the mayor of McKeesport. She meant doing her hair, putting on her makeup, deciding what to wear or at least thinking about it even if she has someone else to decide for her. And so on. Other women ridiculed the notion of an hour and a half, but the bottom offer was 40 minutes. And that's just in the morning. Shorter versions of the morning ritual go on throughout the day.



And how long does it take Barack Obama or even John McCain with his war injuries to shower, shave and put on one of a dozen identical dark blue suits, a white shirt and a red tie? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Let's not be completely naïve and let's posit that these men also take a dab of make-up here and there. So let's say 20 minutes.

The ridiculousness never stops.

Department of Tragic Irony Department

If this story weren't so tragic I might find it easier to see the irony.

An Interior Ministry official says the civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security operation has been kidnapped and three bodyguards killed.



Tahseen Sheikhly is a Sunni who often appeared with U.S. military and embassy officials at news conferences to tout the successes of the crackdown that began in Baghdad and surrounding areas more than a year ago.



The official says gunmen stormed Sheikhly's house Thursday in a Mahdi Army stronghold in southeastern Baghdad and torched it.

John Dubya McCain could not be reached for comment.

Republican Family Values

Shay Joshua Garnett is a Republican running for governor in the great state of Montana. This would represent something of a career change for Garnett, since he spent much of the 1990s stalking two women and evading arrest in Indiana.

Garnett, who grew up in Billings, studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University from 1992 until 1995 but did not graduate, according to school records. He says he completed a degree in 2001 at Montana State University, Billings.



In 1997, Garnett was charged in Tippecanoe County, Ind., with six misdemeanors stemming from incidents involving two female students at Purdue University. One of the women said Garnett had been sending her letters since the two met in a church group as freshmen. One was 120 pages long and contained physical threats and sexual references, according to police statements obtained by The Associated Press.

[...]

Garnett said Tuesday that the women took his letters the wrong way.



"She took it another way, and thought I was the most psychotic criminal out there," he said.

You'd think the Montana Republican Party would have been able to sniff this little skeleton out of Garnett's closet, since the first hit on a quick Google search coughs up the headline Wanted Criminals and shows the arrest warrant issued by the Purdue University Police.



Republican family values, they're not just for your sanctimonious preacher any more.

John Dubya McCain, Foreign Policy Pollyana

“We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground," the Arizona senator insisted a day after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers and rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone there, and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide.

Oh really? You don't say? No kidding? Is that right? You're shitting me!


We are ruled by stupid people. John Dubya McCain is one of them.

So It Goes.....

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines..."

"Like a Morass that Begins as a Quagmire"

Okay, film buffs, Joe Queenan has some fun speculating on what movie is the worst movie of all time.

There is one other requirement for a movie to be considered one of the worst ever: it must keep getting worse. By this, I mean that it not only must keep getting worse while you are watching it, but it must, upon subsequent viewings, seem even worse than the last time you saw it. That is what distinguishes Ishthar from Gigli and Showgirls from Swept Away. Widely viewed as one of the worst movies ever when it was released in 1987, Ishtar actually has several comic moments. Gigli doesn't. Similarly, Showgirls has a certain campy allure that grows a bit each time I see it. Madonna's Swept Away doesn't; it seems more amateurish on each viewing, like a morass that starts out as a quagmire, then morphs into a cesspool and finally turns into a slime pit on the road to its ultimate destination in the bowels of Hell.

Read the whole thing, it's fecking brilliant...

I Hope He Packed an Extra Toothbrush

SLO man gets 927 years in prison for burglaries

A serial burglar received what could be the longest sentence ever handed down in San Luis Obispo County when a judge ordered him Tuesday to serve nearly 1,000 years in prison.


Superior Court Judge Ginger Garrett sentenced 43-year-old Bart Loshel Downey of San Luis Obispo to 927 years to life in prison for 36 felony counts related to a 16-month burglary spree that hit more than 30 homes, primarily in San Luis Obispo.

927-to-life. That's rough.

Bush's War -- Part Two

If Monday's installment of "Bush's War" detailed the pure evil of Cheney and Rumsfeld's rush to war, last night's episode laid out the particulars of a "post-war" occupation that is still best described by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, who has labeled the whole fiasco the "Mess'opotamia."



The Bush team put in place after "Mission Accomplished" was inept, incompetent, unprepared, and indecisive. "Presidential envoy" Jerry Bremer made one fatefully tragic move after another. He had few advisors fluent in Arabic, he failed to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting, he fired all the civil servants and he disbanded the Iraqi army (leaving hundreds of thousands of men unemployed, angry and armed to the teeth). They formed the base of the insurgency that continues to this day.




One former administration official, who ultimately resigned in protest at the limitless ineptitude, described the Bush administration's post-war plan (which counted on the undying gratitude of the Iraqi people to carry the day) as "The 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' School of Regime Change."



And so it goes.

They Live Among Us

I had a really dispiriting session at my "Appraisers Forum" bulletin board today. These people are my professional colleagues [allegedly] but today a bunch of them got to posting about Barack Obama and his whacked out preacher Jeremiah Wright. Now, granted, that dude has said some purty crazy things, but the "sheets came off" in the Forum today (if you know what I mean). Bear in mind that some of these people hail from the deep, DEEP South. Here's a sampling:

"G*% D*%#@ all of them! If they don't like America - then GET OUT. I will be happy to buy Wright a one way ticket back to Africa if he will agree to stay out of my country. Let him go to his 'mother land' and starve to death. They won't pay him to preach over there."



"Yep, he hit my last nerve with all this crap. How dare the low bred scum [Obama] stand up and justify someone who spreads hatred. I hope he chokes on his next pork rind."



"Wonder where the wonderful Oprah is now? Where are her 'words of wisdom' for the ignorant masses? Without those rich white dollars she would still be doing the morning news in her discount shoes."



"I suppose they would rather be back in Africa dying of AIDS or starving to death in a kleptocracy. I would be thankful if my great grandmother/father had been a slave!"



"Is that his white grandmother Barrack is bitch slapping after a crack induced daze where he thinks he's Rick James? His granmother doesn't look black to me. Oh well, he seems to like his preacha mo betta."



"Put Obama or his preacher in Africa, and leave'em to their own devices. They won't starve. They're the slowest pieces of meat available. Something will have a nice, tender meal."



"I am tired of people always being 'victims'. How many centuries does it take?? Where is the incentive to get an education and better themselves? As long as welfare is available to able bodied individuals who pump out babies without fathers - the cycle will continue. 70% of the black babies born in this country today are born to single, unwed mothers. 70% !!! The number is staggering. Where are the family values?"

Call me an innocent, lily-white, bleeding-heart liberal, but I just don't know where this level of hatred comes from. These people are professionals, most of them college educated. When confronted, they denied there was anything racist in the thread anad launched a full-scale flame war on me.

HomeDepot Still Takes Cash

I just got back from a visit to my local HomeDepot. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so all I ended up buying was one little roll of double-sided mounting tape. When I got ready to pay, I handed the girl at the register a $5 bill.

"Haven't seen one of these in a while," she said with a smile.

Erm...Has HomeDepot switched over to the Euro or something?

America's Salad Days

I was at the supermarket last night and it occured to me that there was a time in America when being a supermarket checker was a pretty decent paying job. A steady gig working the register at Von's and you could provide for the family and buy a new car every 5 years and still put a little cash away in the kids' college fund. Same was true for bank tellers and police officers, auto mechanics and school teachers.

There was a time in America when employment in any one of a whole host of "everyday jobs" would put you solidly in the middle class. There was a time when you could buy a house on a fireman's salary. There was a time when the guy who owned the house next door, the one with the ski boat in the driveway, earned his money down at the assembly plant.
I'm afraid those days are long gone.
Adding: I'm not saying the people described above are no longer a part of the middle class. What I think has happened is that the realities of the American economy have shifted to such a degree that the middle class can no longer realistically expect to achieve the kind of financial security it once did.

Bush's War -- PBS

In case you missed part one of Bush's War on PBS last night, let me sum it up for you: An intellectually incurious and willfully ignorant president allowed himself to be manipulated by a loathsome, arrogant, irrational, wreckless and dangerous rogues gallery of power-mad psychopaths bent on using the September 11 attacks as an excuse to launch a war against a country that had less than zero involvement in those attacks.



The best line of the night came from Richard Armitage, who said Donald Rumsfeld was such a constant asshole -- to everyone -- that when he, Rumsfeld, would walk into the Oval Office for a staff meeting he would make a point of putting down every other person in the room.

Armitage described the Rumsfeld ritual as "pissing on the furniture."

Bottom Line in November '08

With 4,000 troops now dead in Bush's War, it's worth reminding ourselves that how many more American men and women are going to die in Iraq depends entirely on whether a Democrat or a Republican gets elected in November.

Creationism Is Child Abuse by a Different Name

Q: How do we know that God made birds to be birds?

A: It's in the Bible.

Even T-Rex did not eat meat.
"His teeth are designed to tear and shred vegetables."

The Idiots Have Taken Over

This just in:

(AP) An Idaho Senate candidate has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and will appear on the ballot that way this year, state election officials say.



As Marvin Pro-Life Richardson, the organic strawberry farmer from Letha, 30 miles northwest of Boise, was denied the use of his middle name when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 because the state's policy bars the use of slogans on the ballot.



Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state's office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

America is a very strange place with very weird people.

Must See TV

PBS documents the whole sorry, sordid tale. In two parts.

Confessions of a DFH

DFH = Dirty Fucking Hippy - as Atrios likes to say. One of the ways anti-war voices were marginalized was to tar them as idealist peacenik hippies who just didn't understand the Big Serious World the way the pro-war people did.




Sucks being RIGHT all the time:

Arriving at a Place We Never Wished to Be

The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq has reached 4,000.

President Bush remains "envious."

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines..."

ADDING: Here's a mosaic of the 4,000 soldiers sacrificed in the name of Bush's War.



[Click on image for full-size.]

Happy Easter!!

Proud to be a DFH

"It's absurd but nonetheless completely normal that 5 years later, anti-war voices are almost completely missing from our mainstream public discourse and all of the idiots who cheered this thing on are given platform after platform to describe their intellectual journey or whatever. I don't really understand the degree of narcissism that many of them exhibit, unable to recognize that what the world really needs is for them to shut the fuck up and turn their microphones over to people who didn't cheer on this horrible disaster."

--Atrios

Anza-Borrego, CA

He's Yella

If DICK Cheney is the personification of evil (see post below), then George W. Bush is clearly the personification of teh stoopid.




During a videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel yesterday, President Bush praised the troops fighting in Afghanistan, claiming he was “a little envious” of their “romantic” fight:

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”



“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” Bush said.

Good Lord, January 21st, 2009 cannot come soon enough.

Obama's Remarkable Address

I can't believe there's any debate at all about the merits of Obama's soul-baring speech from the other night. We live in strange times, where ridiculous people are given an undeserved platform to distort a man's honesty and openness. Truly, the ignorant and the ignominious have taken over the discourse in America. It's embarrassing.



Mark my words, people will be studying Obama's remarkable address 40, 60, 100 years from now. It was a landmark in US politics, right up there with "I Have a Dream," "The Four Freedoms" and "Ich Bin Ein Berliner."



The fact that there are people willing to criticize, to marginalize -- in some cases even trivialize -- what the man said actually serves only to bolster his point.



I urge you to read the speech again here. Remarkable, indeed.

Failure Suits Him

My man Robert Scheer lowers the boom on Alfred E. Dubya Neuman:

That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling.


Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote.

Putting the DICK in Cheney

Here's a nice little exchange from Dick Cheney's interview with ABC...

Q Let me go back to the Americans. Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.


THE VICE PRESIDENT: So?

I tried to post more, but I puked on my keyboard. There is a nice recap of the whole travesty over at the Daily Kos.



UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.

I'm here because...

of Ashley.

"A More Perfect Union"

Some are calling this the best speech on race since the days of MLK.

Oliver on Obama

Oliver Willis reacts to the Obama speech with a sports analogy we can all understand:


"One of my personal maxims has been that politicians will disappoint you. The ones you like will have personal failings, while the ones you detest will fail time and time again. With Senator Obama, for the first time in my life, I have watched a political leader who I don’t worry if he’ll be up to the task.



It’s like you had Michael Jordan in his prime or Joe Montana with 2 minutes to go. It’s that feeling where you say to yourself: Ok, breathe, he’s got it.



Chill, Barack’s got it."

Obama on Race

Barack Obama is in Philadelphia, PA....

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

[...]

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.



There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.



And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.



She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.



She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.



Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.



Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."



"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.



But it is where we start.

[emphasis above added.]


"I am here because of Ashley." Home run.

Via Atrios: "Weep for the Big Guys"

"Would it be possible to occasionally write one of these weepies when, say, an auto plant shuts down?"

“My life has been flushed down the drain,” said one person. There was talk Monday that with their life savings nearly depleted, some executives had moved quickly, putting their weekend homes on the market.

Pity.

Sound and Fury

The thing about Barack Obama's pastor, of course, is that it's not really about religion at all. It's about racism. It's about scaring small-minded ignorant white people into voting for a) Hillary Clinton or (worst-case scenario) b) John W. McCain.

A Show of Hands, Please.

How many of you have had it up to here with the lies of Condoleeza Rice?

Hard-Core Sitting

Saw this story about Aaron Fotheringham on ESPN. The kid pulls a backflip in a skatepark. Oh, did I mention he's in a wheelchair?

Journalism Sucks

I wonder how many of the folks on this beat ever gave one or two shakes about Saddam's alleged WMD?

UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears during her recent hospitalization in its psychiatric unit, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.



In addition, six physicians face discipline for peeking at her computerized records, the person said.

Ghouls.

Americans are Idiots

UPDATE-- What the hell were we thinking?

In a Hole? Stop Digging.

You know, the more I see of Geraldine Ferraro, the more I've come to understand that the Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro ticket may have been the worst ever put together in the history of American politics.


It's worth remembering that, although Mondale had earned his stripes over many years in the Senate, Ferraro was a two-term congresswoman (that's 4 years, folks) when Fritz tabbed her for the Veep spot. Experience much? It's almost like the only reason she got the nod was because she's a woman.... Hmmmm... Is it just me or have we been hearing someone saying something just like that recently?


Where has Geraldine Ferraro been in the 24 years since her landslide shellacking? Under a rock somewhere for all I know (or care), but it's taken her less that two weeks to drive the Clinton campaign off a cliff as far as black voters are concerned. I don't see Hillary winning a whole lot of them back any time soon.




Geraldine...

Fill 'er Up!

Nope, that's not some gas pump in London or Brussels or Rome. It's in Gorda, a map dot on the Central Coast of California, about 35 or 40 miles south of Big Sur. Gorda's one of those places where if you need gas you'd better get it, 'cause there ain't nuthin' else -- as far as you know -- for quite a while.

Things aren't looking so hot anywhere in my zip code either.

Big Ups to the Posse

Baughb, Ghost, Bodie, Reek, Clifford, Biggest, Floyd.




Who are dudes that can hang out, Alex?

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

I woke up again this morning with the terrible feeling that the Democrats are going to blow it in November. And when if they do, as Atrios sez, the losing candidate is going to be the most reviled figure in the "Democrat" party for years to come.

Tomorrow Looms and Someday Never Comes

I notice that the counter I posted over there on the left hand margin ticked up by three today.




Someday never comes.

Spitzer's Kristen

Ever wonder what a $5500-an-hour call girl looks like? Here's the woman who "took down" the governor of New York...



Ahem. Nice tattoo, by the way.




At $5500/hr this alleged sophistcated hottie better speak fluent Latin, be able to name the starting lineup of the 1972 Oakland A's and change the oil in my truck in under 30 minutes -- in addition to her other talents....



Otherwise she's just like all the rest...

Cant' Really Put My Finger On It....

...but something tells me we're still not making much progress in Iraq.

BAGHDAD — U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq, officials here said today.


The FBI is investigating the grisly development, and the families of the five kidnapped contractors have been notified, American officials said on condition of anonymity because only Washington officials are permitted to publicly discuss the matter.


Authorities have confirmed that the fingers belonged to hostages Jonathan Cote, of Gainesville, Fla., Joshua Munz, of Redding, Calif., Paul Reuben, of Buffalo, Minn., Bert Nussbaumer of Vienna, Austria, and Ronald J. Withrow, of Lubbock, Texas.

Mayberry, RFD

Did I mention I live on the edge of civilization?

Sunday, February 24, 2008


Reported by: Stacy Daniel


LOS OSOS -- Fierce winds and heavy rains knocked down trees and left thousands of Central Coast residents without power this weekend.


Here's the latest:


Right now PG&E says power has been restored to all but one customer. Crews are working overtime to make that right.

All but one customer?!?! WTF?

Turn That Frown Upside Down

Eliot Spitzer really ought to be ashamed of himself.
$5000 per hookup? ...dude.

Small Consolation Prize

Forty years from now, when I am old and gray, I'll be able to look back on my life and say I lived during the worst presidency in U.S. history.
Richard M. Nixon comes in a distant second.

Post-Apocalyptic Survivalist Yahoos

Here's a good piece on Second Amendment fanatics, better known as "gun nuts," or "post apocalyptic survivalist yahoos." Truly, they are worthy of our contempt and ridicule:

DMOP likes to keep herself in a “self-defense mindset.” Why? Are there scary monsters lurking behind the bushes of her house? Have the terrorists already succeeded in taking out New York, Washington, Chicago and every other major American city and are now moving in on suburban Tennessee? Is American civilization teetering on the brink of total collapse and about to be overrun by marauding biker gangs a la The Postman?



And what does she do to keep herself in a self-defense mindset? Does she take kick-boxing lessons? Does she shoot targets on the firing range? Do she and the Ole Perfesser take bows and arrows with them on a canoing trip into the wilds of the Deep South? No, no and no. She instead goes down to her basement and reads a book. A BOOK. This has to be the least self-defense-y thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. What is she going to do when those Mexican-Arab biker gangs storm into her condo and demand that she hand over her entire stash of ice creams? Will she be like, “Hey, buttholes, you don’t know who you’re messin’ with! I JUST READ A FUCKING BOOK!!! OOGAH-BOOGAH-BOOGAH!!!!!”

Read the whole thing here.

Enjoying a Life of Crime

Every once in a while the local paper comes through with a funny. Here's the mug shot of some fool who was caught burglarizing cars a few blocks from my house:



Say CHEESE, dumbass!!

Jump!

John "W." McCain, Republican Nominee

Or shall we say John "Dubya" McCain?

"Captive to his own partisan support for a disastrous war; too timid to stake out an agenda for change; passively permitting an unpopular president to embrace him as heir; squandering what little was left of his good repute in shabby political maneuvering... McCain is busy tying a dead weight around his shoulders that he imagines is the mantle of the presidency."

--smintheus @ Daily Kos