'Human error' led to addresses being placed in wrong field when sending survey to victims over standard of service

The New York Times did what I was not allowed to do - tell you there has been a second diagnosis of Infectious Salmon Anemia virus in wild BC salmon, this time in the Fraser River itself, the biggest wild salmon river in the world. The fish the New York Times is talking about is one that a small group of us picked up, sampled and sent to the world reference lab for the ISA virus. It was a beautiful coho salmon, in first blush of spawning colours. The salmon had navigated the river as a tiny fry, entered the sea as a fat and sassy little smolt eating everything insight. It traveled north and west in search of the saltiness of the ocean and in doing so passed millions of European salmon in pens. Whether it got infected then or on the way home carrying the richness of a life at sea, her body shut down infected with a virus her ancestors had never had a chance to prepare her for. We found her drifting down stream passing Harrison Mills. We scooped her up took a sliver of her heart and gills and sent them to one of the world authorities on ISA virus.

We did this because we want to know how widespread the European ISA virus is, in BC waters and I don't see anyone else out there trying to map the damage. The lab never reported back to me, muzzled I suspect, but the truth got out. We now have two diagnoses, 600 km apart, in two different species, of two different generations.

I don't know how no one could see this coming. We are the buffalo racing for the cliff, even as we watch videos of buffalo falling off cliffs. EVERY COUNTRY WITH SALMON FARMS has taken this path. I am so exhausted with trying to explain this to Ministers, bureaucrats, streamkeepers, environmentalists, fishermen. People just don't want to believe it. It is easier to write me off than deal with this.

Look, it is simple. Salmon farms break the natural laws and viruses, bacteria and parasites are the beneficiaries of this behaviour. If you move diseases across the world and brew them among local pathogens, in an environment where predators are not allowed to remove the sick - you get pestilence. There is no other outcome. ...



Thanks much, Glenn321

... "I'm a vampire and I've been alive for over 500 years," he told the Galveston Police Department after being arrested.

The 19-year-old Lyle Monroe Bensley broke into the apartment of a woman he did not know wearing only boxer shorts and made his way to her bedroom. He reportedly made growling and hissing noises while biting and striking the woman in her bed.

He tried to drag the woman out of her apartment, but she escaped and contacted the police.

The tattoo-covered Bensley was arrested by police shortly after the incident. Police found him making shrieking and growling sounds in the apartment's parking lot.

"He was begging us to restrain him because he didn't want to kill us," Galveston Officer Daniel Erickson said. "He said he needed to feed." ...


What a fucking asshole.

I blame 'twilight.'


Blame dear MSiegel too: he sent me this.

somehow, the Obama brain trust, a term herein used advisedly, always seems caught off guard by the ferocity, velocity and fury of the response to him. They were surprised at the verbal and physical violence of the healthcare debate, surprised at the hardiness of the birther nonsense, surprised by the stiff defense of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Now, they are surprised the GOP would rather see the U.S. economy go off a cliff than surrender the aforementioned tax cuts for rich folks. So the debt ceiling gets raised in exchange for cuts to services for the poor, who shortsightedly failed to hire lobbyists.

It is time Obama quit being surprised by the predictable, time he understood this is not politics as usual, not Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill snarling at one another by day and having drinks by night, like that old cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote punch a time clock to signal the beginning and end of their hostilities. It is not Bill Clinton living in a state of permanent investigation, nor even George W. Bush being called incompetent all day every day.

No, this is a new thing, repulsion at a visceral, indeed, mitochondrial, level. Obama’s denigrators are appalled by the newness of him, the liberality of him, the exoticness of him and, yes, and the blackness of him.

“Your boy?” Really?

Sure. Why not. Didn’t Rep. Lynn Westmoreland call him “uppity?” Didn’t the ex-mayor of Los Alamitos, Calif., send out an email showing the White House with a watermelon patch? ...

... But damn it feels good to watch Murdoch get his comeuppance. I didn’t think he would live long enough. And it’s great to see both Murdoch and British politicians realise that no-one is too powerful to face justice. Can Joseph Ratzinger be next, please?

Every day adds more lulz. But the highlight for me was when the Murdoch-tainted Sky News tried to cover the hacking of Murdoch’s Sun website by the gentlemen from Lulz Security.
The sky is failing!

Clueless Sky Papers Pundit 1: Europe’s imploding and he’s still banging on about this.

Clueless Sky News Anchor: I hate to continue about hacking though, but the latest victim to be hacked apparently is the Sun newspaper. Its website has been targeted by Anonymous, which you might remember had links with WikiLeaks, umm…
The Sky is failing

Clueless Sky News Anchor: That was before and…

Clueless Sky News Anchor: That’s what happens when you log in to it now. The Luiz Boat, it says. So you… I don’t know if it’s still like that.

Clueless Sky Papers Pundit 1: Who’s the Louise Boat?

Clueless Sky News Anchor: That’s what it’s like now if you click on now. It’s been tampered with.

Clueless Sky Papers Pundit 2: Some ‘hacking thing‘…

Clueless Sky Papers Pundit 1: Who is Louise Boat?

Clueless Sky News Anchor: I don’t know who Luiz Boat is, but the group is called Anonymous and they hacked into various credit card companies.

Clueless Sky Papers Pundit 2: I mean it’s wrong. You shouldn’t go wrecking websites like that. It’s not funny; it’s not clever. He says! Wait till I’m done tomorrow for saying that. You know, and I hope the Sun get control of it back and get their own stuff up.

With Sky News’s fingers so resolutely far from the pulse of the news, what the hell are we watching? This is at best televised reading aloud, and at worst an ignorance competition. It’s an amazing day when one can say that Fox News understands teh Internets better than someone!...



Ta much, dear BrightKnight

... Balls responded to figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that the economy had grown by just 0.7% over the 12 months to June by accusing the chancellor of being "in total denial" over the state of the economy and called on Osborne to reverse his decision to raise VAT to 20% at the start of the year.

"People up and down the country will hear that, look at their own lives, their bills, local shops and think he doesn't understand what's going on" Balls said.

"These figures show that last year's recovery has been recklessly choked off by George Osborne's VAT rise and spending review.

"The economy has effectively flatlined for nine months and this is very bad news for jobs, living standards, business investment and for getting the deficit down.

"Just 0.2% growth over the nine months since this government's spending review and VAT rise compares to 2.1% in the previous nine months when the economic recovery was taking hold.

"Every other major economy in the world has faced challenges like high world oil prices but their economies have continued to recover while Britain has barely grown at all over the last nine months."

The Treasury and Downing Street denied reports there were tensions over economic strategy after the ONS said that the UK had so far recouped only 2.5 percentage points of the 6.4% drop in gross domestic product suffered during the UK's worst post-war slump.

David Cameron said: "Unlike previous governments, there is one team at the heart of this government: that is the chancellor and the prime minister working together." ...




...and we can plainly see what your two brilliant minds have achieved.

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

... What is relatively new, however, is the level of logical dysfunction and hyperbole within the American right, trapped in a fetid media ecosystem where all the Kool-Aid has been spiked. In short, what you need to say and do to be credible within the Republican party essentially deprives you of credibility outside it. The Republicans seem to realise this, but like an obese glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, they just can't seem to help themselves. ...

Quite a head of hair, police mugshot shows
By Lester Haines
10th March 2011

The police photo of a Connecticut stabbing suspect has shown why it is a really bad idea to flee the scene of an afro braiding before your hair has been fully been brought under control.

The snap of 21-year-old David Davis has joined that of David Jonathan Winkelman in the internet hall of mugshot fame following the traditional rapid dissemination across cyberspace of the astounding haircut. ...

What was the most amazing thing about last weekend's 24 Hour Panel People (highlights of which will be shown all week on BBC3 in the run-up to Friday's Comic Relief)? Was it David Walliams's incredible achievement of performing live in panel shows for a solid 24 hours – a feat of comic endurance not equalled since someone at the BBFC had to classify the DVD release of the complete Chucklevision? Or the generosity with which a host of Britain's best-loved comedians and Nicholas Parsons gave their time to make the event such a success? Or the speed with which the people at Dave subsequently put together a business plan for a 24-hour live rolling panel-show channel entirely fronted by Chinese children?

Well, I was there and I can tell you it was none of those things. The most amazing aspect of it, as a contributor, was the number of people bustling around with clipboards and headsets. Wherever I stood, unless actually on camera, dozens of them would immediately try to push past, politely but hurriedly, as if I'd obstinately positioned myself on the route of an air traffic controllers' fun run. "What can they possibly all be doing?" I thought irritably, forgetting temporarily that I lack the knowledge or power to self-televise.

It's an easy attitude to fall into, assuming that everyone else is perversely inconveniencing you, rather than having jobs or problems of their own – sitting in heavy traffic thinking: "Where are all these people going? Do they really need to? I'm late! They're getting in the way." In the case of this particular TV studio, I was the one who was getting in the way, and also having the gall to question the necessity and urgency of what I was getting in the way of: "Where are they going with the clipboards? Who are they talking to on the headsets? None of this makes any sense! All this process requires is people like me going in front of cameras and talking some shit."

That's precisely what David Cameron thinks about government. He simply can't understand what all the guys in headsets – the civil service – are up to. And he says it's not just him they're annoying – they're pushing past or obstructing the whole private sector. In an extraordinary speech to the Conservatives' spring conference last weekend, he called them the "enemies of enterprise". To him, they're the Klingons.

He said he was "taking on… the bureaucrats in government departments who concoct those ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible for small firms". On the face of it, this is simple crowd-pleasing stuff. It's easy to slag off the faceless bureaucrats, who supposedly waste our time and money with all their stupid rules. It's convenient to forget that bureaucrats, or civil servants as they're called when they're not being victimised, don't actually make rules, they just enforce them. Maybe, sometimes, they enforce them officiously. Maybe, sometimes, the processes they "concoct" for enforcing them are unnecessarily time-consuming. Maybe fewer of them could enforce the rules just as effectively. But they don't make the rules, Parliament does.

In seeking to blame the civil service for the rules as well as their enforcement, I think this speech is more sinister than Cameron's usual second-rate demagogy and I'm surprised it didn't attract greater attention. To me, these remarks are just as damaging as the prime minister's disparagement of multiculturalism, which rightly drew criticism, and a truer reflection of his political standpoint. Here he's breaking new ground for his evidence-averse Thatcherite ideological crusade. ...

A UK startup company offering details of farmers' markets has complained of being "crippled" after it was mistakenly labelled adult viewing on O2's mobile network.

Lovefre.sh, a location-based service for finding fresh food, discovered that it had been rated at "only suitable for over 18s" by a third-party company which provides content filtering for O2, and that users of its iPhone app – which has seen nearly 18,000 downloads from Apple's App Store since its launch – would only see a blank page.

Although O2 is the only network that has blocked Lovefresh, "the problem is that most iPhones in the UK are on O2," said Mark Spofforth, the company's co-founder and chief executive. "I'm despondent about it. It's just crippling."

A spokesperson for O2 said that it had been notified of the error and had moved to whitelist Lovefresh – but that the effect would not work through its network until early on Saturday morning.

But O2 has been criticised by its customers after it implemented the "age verification" system without warning on Thursday. Any of its 20m users who try to access a page that has been rated as 18+ will have to go through a verification page which demands a payment from a credit card.

The company insists that it has taken the step as a child protection measure. Previously it only implemented the block if the buyer or controller of a phone requested it, such as a parent buying for a child.

But the flip from the longstanding "opt-in" system to an "opt-out" system, where people have to make a payment on a credit card as an age verification measure – on the basis that credit cards are only available and accessible to over-18s – has annoyed users.

Users in its forums have worried that they are being scammed, and complained that O2 is "censoring" them. ...

see more funny videos

Pope's visit cost taxpayer £7m

£1.67m went on open-air mass in Birmingham, £18,735 on dinner with foreign secretary and £34,440 on the Popemobile




My Inner Mongolian thinks it should be taken out of his nasty, nazi hide.

A Republican congressman has resigned after apparently sending a picture of himself stripped to the waist, to a woman who had advertised for a man on the internet.

Chris Lee's resignation came after the Gawker gossip website posted the image, and reported exchanges between the married New York congressman and the woman.

According to Gawker, the 34-year-old woman posted an ad last month in the women seeking men section of the Craigslist website looking for men who did not "look like toads" and were emotionally and financially secure.

He is alleged to have replied: "Hope I'm not a toad. i'm a very fit fun classy guy. Live in Cap Hill area. 6ft 190lbs blond/blue. 39. Lobbyist. I promise not to disappoint." ...

see more funny videos

[brilliant snooty English butler]Excuse me, Sir? A Mr Darwin has telephoned several times.[/brilliant snooty English butler]

Some passengers fail to understand why they are prevented from opening the window, while others would like the engines to be "turned down" to reduce the noise.

The foolish and sometimes bizarre questions asked of flight attendants were disclosed after 3,000 Virgin Atlantic cabin crew members listed the most unusual customer requests they had experienced.

Among the most common queries was "Please can you open the window?", from uncomfortable passengers who had failed to appreciate the benefits of a pressurised cabin at 35,000 feet.

Other unique questions fielded by Virgin staff included "Could you turn the engines down because they are too noisy?" and "Please can the Captain stop the turbulence?"

The survey of 3,000 cabin crew also laid bare the level of comfort and service some customers expect, with several asking flight attendants "Can you show me to the showers?" ...

Nearly two weeks after the lethal rampages in Tucson, it's clear that there's collateral damage way beyond the dead and wounded hosed down by Loughner's Glock in that Safeway parking lot.

Sarah Palin has taken a major hit. A Gallup poll run at the end of last week gives her a 53 per cent unfavourable rating, the lowest level she's sunk to in public esteem since she was first lofted to national prominence as John McCain's vice presidential pick in 2008.

Only 38 per cent now have a favourable view of the former Alaska governor.

Palin has only herself to blame. She could have countered accusations that her bulls-eye campaign map targeted Democrats, including Gabrielle Giffords, with measured expressions of sympathy for the dead and wounded, and a more in-sorrow-than-in-anger reproof for the over-hasty accusers.

Instead of which she came out with eight minutes of self-defensive whining on Facebook, and caused great annoyance to Jewish groups by filching the "blood libel" charge on which they have had copyright since the Middle Ages. Since then, she's done nothing to improve her performance, complaining that Obama had given a campaign speech at the memorial in Tucson. ...

Darwinists Discover New Way to Destroy Their Property

THREE PEOPLE IN BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON, ARE IN SERIOUS condition following a fire triggered inside the van they were riding in Wednesday afternoon. The conversion van had apparently run out of gas before the two men and a woman could make it to a gas station, so one of them walked to the nearest station to buy some and carry back. He did not have a regular gasoline can, so he took a bucket and poured 2 gallons of gasoline in it and returned to the van.

Finding that they were unable to pour the gas out of the bucket into the filler pipe, they removed the interior engine cover in the front of the van and began using a water bottle to pour gasoline directly into the carburetor while they were driving. You know what happened next. ...


[brilliant snooty English butler]One of the maids has informed me that a Mr Darwin has repeatedly rang for you, Sirs, Madam.[/brilliant snooty English butler]


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Because the world’s most powerful military is being destroyed by a combination of a) goat herders in Afghanistan and b) some weird guy with a website, the Pentagon has just banned any kind of little gizmo that can save information off a computer. (It is apparently impossible to ban goat herders … yet.) As of immediately, any military person (or military contractor, maybe?) cannot use removable/portable disk thingies such as thumb drives or external DVD/CD writable drives when using the secret computers that have all the potential WikiLeaks stuff on them. Hooray, there will be no more leaks of information! ...

A senior government official in Yemen warned US diplomats that poor security at the country's main store of radioactive products could allow dangerous material to fall into the hands of terrorists, according to a leaked US embassy cable.

The official told the Americans that the lone guard standing watch at Yemen's national atomic energy commission (NAEC) facility had been removed from his post and that its only closed circuit TV security camera had broken down six months previously and was never fixed.

"Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen's nuclear material," the official warned, in a cable dated 9 January this year sent from the Sana'a embassy to the CIA, the FBI and the department of homeland security as well as the US secretary of state in Washington and others.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, has emerged as al-Qaida's most active base, after Iraq and Afghanistan. It is home to Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), the group behind a series of attacks on western targets...

Hunters angry at ‘amateur’ Palin’s caribou shoot

Sarah Palin’s clumsy rifle handling and failure to shoot straight on TV mocked by ‘true hunters’
By Sophie Taylor
LAST UPDATED 11:53 AM, DECEMBER 7, 2010

Sarah Palin shot a caribou in the latest episode of her TV series - a move doubtless calculated to wind up as many limp-wristed liberal urbanites as possible. But she probably didn't expect the extraordinary criticism she has attracted from the hunting fraternity, many of whom think Palin has exposed herself as at best an amateur - and at worst a danger to other hunters.

A New York blogger showed the video, in which Palin misses a caribou four times before her father hands her another rifle and she finally hits the target, to some hunter friends - and they were distinctly unimpressed.

Among the hunters' criticisms are:

• Palin's father chooses a "varmint rifle" for the expedition, even though they are going caribou hunting. Why did Palin not question this choice?

• Palin fails to 'sight-in' her rifle before setting off on their hunting trip - a basic error which might help explain her four misses

• Palin doesn't carry her own rifle or load her own rounds - a point picked up by a commenter on her Facebook page, who feels this shows she isn't a "true hunter".

• Palin is clumsy with her rifle and doesn't look like she regularly handles one. A Facebook commenter points this out, mocking her for asking her dad, "does the rifle kick?"

"What kind of a question is that?" says the commenter. "Doesn't matter if it kicks or not you shoot it the same. That was a girly question, momma griz."

• When Palin is handed the second weapon, with which she finally bags her caribou, she immediately puts her finger on the trigger. As all hunters know, this is dangerous: one should only finger the trigger when one is ready to shoot. ...

... The police reform and social responsibility bill, published last week, contains an amendment to the constitution of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that would remove the requirement on the home secretary to appoint at least six scientists to the committee.

A further amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 would allow the home secretary to place temporary controls on substances for a year by statutory instrument.

The proposals will be of concern to the many doctors and scientists who have criticised the government's treatment of scientific evidence in the wake of the sacking, last year, of ACMD chairman David Nutt. The then home secretary, Alan Johnson, removed Nutt from the post after the scientist criticised politicians for distorting research evidence and claiming alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than some illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

At present, the ACMD is required to have a membership that includes representatives of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry, and chemistry. It is also meant to include people with expertise on the social problems connected with the misuse of drugs.

"The government is ill-advised to hack away at science advisory structures," said Evan Harris, former Lib Dem MP and campaigner for evidence-based policy. "The solution to the poor relationship scientists and Home Office ministers have had is for both to follow their codes of practice, not for ministers to seek to abolish science advisers."

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: "It's incredible that the government are trying to take us back to the time of 'Minister knows best'. Scrapping the need for expertise on the drugs advice is not only bad science, but it's also terrible politics." ...

A Liberal Democrat MP who hired an alleged Russian spy as his research assistant has tabled a series of parliamentary questions about Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent and the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston since the election.

Mike Hancock yesterday insisted there was nothing unusual about asking for the locations of berths for submarines as he launched a staunch defence of Katia Zatuliveter, who was arrested on Thursday and is facing deportation over allegations that she spied for Russia.

The MP declared yesterday that his 25-year-old assistant had "nothing to hide" as he challenged the security services to produce evidence against Zatuliveter, originally from Dagestan who was forced to flee her home as a child in the mid-1990s during the Chechnyan conflict.

Zatuliveter is appealing against a deportation order that was issued after Theresa May, the home secretary, was briefed by MI5 about alleged connections to the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service.

The assistant, who first came to Britain three years ago to study for a masters degree at Bradford University, was initially questioned after being stopped at Gatwick airport in August as she returned to the UK from a holiday in Croatia. She was released and initially retained her House of Commons pass, issued after police and MI5 security checks, which gave her free access to the Palace of Westminster. ...

The party of the rich, by the rich, for the rich

Never have Republican values been so brazenly apparent than in holding the unemployed to ransom for the Bush tax cuts
Paul Harris
Thursday 2 December 2010

Rarely has the true face of the modern Republican party in America been exposed so obviously.

Just a day after President Barack Obama met with Republican leaders and came out talking of a new era of co-operation, Republican senators united around Mitch McConnell to sign a letter declaring they would pass no legislation without movement on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

That legislation they are willing to scupper includes extending unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans, still suffering the terrible hangover of the Great Recession. The tax cuts the Republicans are really fired up over will benefit only the top 2% of Americans.

To put it even more simply: Republican leaders are happy to go virtually on strike in order to win a tax cut worth billions of dollars for America's most wealthy people (which includes themselves and many of their top campaign donors). At the same time, they are willing to deny help to America's most vulnerable; standing by as once middle-class people lose their homes as their benefits disappear.

The hypocrisy is staggering and almost beyond belief. One of the arguments the Republicans continually use to justify cutting jobless benefits is that America cannot afford such largesse because it would inflate the deficit. Too bad, they say, but these are tough times and you just have to grit your teeth and take the pain to get the nation's fiscal house in order.

Yet, that very same deficit would also be massively boosted by saving Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy from expiry. That, however, does not seem to bother them. It's unfair, they howl, to raise anyone's taxes at such a time – failing to point out that "raising taxes" is very different from letting tax cuts expire on time (as they were designed to do, not by Obama, but by President George W Bush).

It is a staggering confidence trick that the Republicans are seeking to pull off. Except that most such con jobs at least vaguely try and disguise themselves. This one is being carried out in plain sight.

The Republicans are fond of using tough language about Obama. They call him an extremist and a socialist and a revolutionary. Well, perhaps some of that tone should be used back at them. This Republican strategy is not about politics. It is about class war: waged by the rich against the poor. ...

... On Tuesday afternoon, a set of emails surfaced on the Philadelphia news site Phawker. Phawker said that the emails showed the "100% for real" correspondence between Olbermann and Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky over the weekend. In the emails, "Olbermann" talks about his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, in hyperbolic, insulting terms.

In one email, "Olbermann" says that Griffin is "not my boss (thank god), nor is he intellectually qualified to be...I'll be anchoring on election night 2012, long after Phil Griffin has moved on to a job for which he's actually qualified, perhaps on QVC."

In another, "Olbermann" writes that "I could have Phil Griffin fired tomorrow if I felt like it, trust me. And if he keeps yapping about me in public, I may. For the moment, however, keeping Phil around is like having a drunk chimp in the office -- more amusing than threatening."

The incendiary emails seemed too good to be true -- and they were. They were sent from keith@keitholbermann.com. That's an address that is not owned by Olbermann, but by Carlson. In July, Carlson announced that he had purchased the domain name KeithOlbermann.com, and told Politico that people could email him at Keith@KeithOlbermann.com -- the same address that the emails to Bykofsky came from.

On Tuesday night, Yahoo's Michael Calderone reached Carlson by phone. Carlson confirmed that he had, in fact, sent the emails posing as Olbermann.

"Could you resist?" Carlson said. "It was just too funny. The flesh is weak."




Yeah, and so's your tiny little brain, f---I mean tucker.

A Republican congressman who says climate change is nothing to worry about because God promised Noah that he would never again flood the earth has provoked outrage among environmentalists by bidding to become chairman of a Congressional committee responsible for air quality and environmental health.

Following last week's midterm elections, when the Republicans retook the House of Representatives, the chairmanships of various committees are up for grabs. Illinois Republican Representative John Shimkus is hoping to snatch the chair of the powerful House Energy Committee.

One of the reasons why environmentalists are appalled is the video above, which shows Shimkus telling fellow members of Congress last year why he disagrees with 'cap and trade' - the term used to describe the concept of offering economic incentives to industry in return for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.

He begins: "I wanna start with Genesis 8 verse 21 and 22: 'Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.' ...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

One promised to restore honour, the other is campaigning to restore sanity. Neither is likely to have much luck.

This weekend, Jon Stewart – the liberal presenter of the Daily Show, the satirical TV programme which is viewed by many Americans as giving a more honest take on the news than they see in their newspaper – is hoping that hordes of people representing a silent majority will descend on Washington for his "rally to restore sanity" to America's politics, days before deeply polarised midterm elections marked by the rise of the Tea Party.

Alongside Stewart will be his former Daily Show colleague, Stephen Colbert, whose own nightly show parodies the fear-mongering of Fox News and its presenters who perpetuate the myth that much of America is still frontier country whose people only need a gun and Barack Obama's socialist government off their backs. Colbert will be holding a parallel "rally to restore fear".

But he was beaten to the punch on that in August by the Fox News presenter and Tea Party darling Glenn Beck, whose own "rally to restore honour" at the Lincoln Memorial drew a huge crowd and prompted Stewart's foray into popular mobilisation. Beck, who has made a name for himself with ever more elaborate conspiracy theories about the Democrats and President Obama sketched out nightly on a blackboard to Fox News audiences, is now the brightest star in a powerful universe of ultra-conservative TV and radio presenters who wield considerable influence over American politics.

Facing them down are Stewart, Colbert and a handful of liberal media presenters, such as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.

Stewart bills Saturday's rally as a non-partisan call to purge America's politics of the extremist rhetoric that is dividing the country. In promoting it the Daily Show presenter has invoked the classic line from the film Network – "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" – to appeal for reason in the face of conservatives who portray Obama as a communist, a Nazi, a Muslim or a foreigner. "We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler moustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles," he said on the rally's website.

Stewart's challenge is not to persuade Americans that the extremists are a minority but to get the less agitated to vote. ...

The US constitution has its quirks but it is crystal clear on one issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," begins the first amendment, adopted in 1791. But more than 200 years later, its meaning appears to be lost on Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party favourite running for a US Senate seat.

At a debate today for the Delaware Senate seat once occupied by Vice President Joe Biden, O'Donnell appeared to be nonplussed by the wording of the first amendment, repeatedly returning to the subject and sounding incredulous after her Democratic opponent Chris Coons attempted to explain it to her.

When Coons told her the text of the constitution prohibited government from establishing any religion, O'Donnell replied in apparent bewilderment: "You're telling me that's in the first amendment?"

Minutes earlier, the audience at Widener Law School in Delaware had laughed in derision when O'Donnell asked: "Where in the constitution is the separation of church and state?"

Not only is the first amendment perhaps the most famous part of the constitution but the "establishment clause", as it is known, is the subject of legal precedent stretching back into the 19th century. No less an authority than Thomas Jefferson, one of the constitution's authors, declared the clause's aim to build "a wall of separation between church and state".

While O'Donnell's campaign was quick to attempt damage limitation, saying that the words "separation of church and state" appear nowhere in the constitution, the gaffe does O'Donnell no favours as her campaign unravels and she trails far behind Coons in latest opinon polls.

O'Donnell's slip is also the latest in a string of blunders by Tea Party candidates around the US, highlighting the danger of pushing untested candidates under the glare of the national media.

On Sunday, security guards for Republican senate candidate Joe Miller forcibly handcuffed a local journalist after a public event in Alaska, while Nevada Republican Sharron Angle recently told a room full of Hispanic students that "some of you look a little more Asian to me".



Ta much, dear Glenn321

BBC staff told how to spot complaints
Staff collecting the BBC licence fee have been issued with an "idiot's guide" advising them that customers who use the words ''shambles'' or ''useless'' are likely to be making a complaint.
10 Oct 2010

Other indications that a viewer may be unhappy include use of capital letters or the phrases, ''When will you people listen?'', ''Who do you think you are?'' and ''Sort yourselves out!''

The document also reveals quirks in the rules about who needs a licence - the Queen, prisoners and diplomats do not, but all other Royals and prison officers who live in the grounds of a jail do.

The 964-page official handbook, which was released following a Freedom of Information request, sets out in detail how the fee should be administered.

A large section is dedicated to dealing with complaints, including prepared answers to regular objections about the BBC's ''offensive'' programmes and the aggressive tone of licence fee warning letters that could ''shock'' elderly people.

Staff are advised to look out for particular ''keywords'' suggesting a customer is protesting about some aspect of the £145.50-a-year fee.

These include: ''compensation'', ''complaint'', ''disgraceful'', ''disgusted'', ''incompetent'', ''appalling'', ''furious'', ''intimidation'', ''mistakes'', ''harassment'', ''rude'', ''threatening'', ''outrageous'', ''upsetting'', ''unacceptable'' and swear words.

The guide also lists warning phrases, such as ''I am extremely angry'', ''I demand an apology'', ''lack of courtesy'', ''your failure'' and ''I will sue''.

The document adds: ''Remember underlining of key words and phrases or the use of bold or capital letters designed to make certain parts of a letter stand out is also an indication of a complaint.'' ...

Glenn Beck under fire from Dana Milbank for gold-digging

Fox News's Tea Party pundit-in-chief criticised for using his position in the public eye to promote Goldline

Ed Pilkington in New York
Tuesday 5 October 2010

Glenn Beck, Fox News's Tea Party pundit-in-chief, has made his name by pouring vitriol on progressives and liberals who he accuses of trying to destroy America. Now he's being subjected to a taste of his own medicine.

Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, publishes today a 261-page invective against Beck which is just as caustic and sharply-worded as his subject's televised monologues, with the important distinction that Milbank's account is factually accurate.

Chapter 7 of Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, looks at how Beck, who likes to present himself to his viewers as a regular schmo, has amassed an empire with an annual turnover of $32 million.

One route to his largesse, Milbank tells us, is his relentless plugging of gold which he tells his listeners and viewers is a sure-fire way for them to protect their savings amid economic collapse. "Conveniently, enough," he writes, "a top sponsor of Beck's radio, TV, and internet ventures is Goldine, a big gold dealer."

Goldline is featured in adverts sprinkled all over his website, GlennBeck.com. Goldline's president, Mark Albarian, has appeared on Beck's show many times, in which they regularly talk up its price.

"So, Mark, I saw a story last night that said we're ... we're running out of gold," Milbank quotes Beck as saying in one interview. "Is that even possible?"

"I think it is," Albarian replied. "Now, we won't actually run out of gold, but you'll see much higher prices in my opinion."

Beck makes regular mentions of Goldline on his radio show – paid plugs, says Milbank. And in a paid video made before he joined Fox, he invoked the Founding Fathers to make the case for gold. "If you're like our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then just know that what's on the horizon is just temporary and this too shall pass. Here's the deal: Call Goldline."

Now it's true that Jefferson et al had nothing at all against making an honest penny, the pursuit of happiness being one of their objectives. But having their names attached to Goldline? Is nothing off limits in Beckland?

Never known for his sensivity – and already in trouble for telling a gag about Hitler – the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was today condemned for more 'deplorable' jokes.

The Italian prime minister was filmed cracking jokes to members of the public which depicted Jews as money-grabbers, mocked the appearance of a female opposition MP and used the Italian language's most offensive religious oath.

The jokes were described as "deplorable" by the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which said they offended "the sentiments of believers and the memory of the six million victims of the Shoah".

Days after Berlusconi told a youth rally an apparent joke about Adolf Hitler, he emerged from his Rome residence on 29 September to regale supporters with a joke about a Jew who charges fellow Jews money to hide in his basement from the Nazis, without telling them the war is over.

As the video of the encounter was posted on the internet, a second candid video, dating from earlier this year, also appeared.

In it, Berlusconi, filmed during a visit to L'Aquila, tells a joke poking fun at the physical appearance of Rosy Bindi, an grey haired, bespectacled opposition politician.

The punchline featured the oath 'Porco Dio', which roughly translates as 'Pig God'. It is considered one of the most blasphemous phrases in Italian, to the extent that a contestant on Italy's celebrity Big Brother was ejected for saying it in 2006.

Criticism from the Vatican's newspaper was matched by Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops' conference, which denounced Berlusconi's "insupportable blasphemy and Jewish stereotyping".

Denis Verdini, a Berlusconi MP defended the prime minister, claiming: "Swear words and oaths sometimes slip out."

In a statement, Berlusconi claimed that jokes made in private were "neither an offence nor a sin, but merely a laugh".

"The bad taste and the responsibility are on the part of whoever publicises them," he added.

The day after Berlusconi cracked his Jewish joke, a senator in his Freedom People party was also accused of anti-semitism. ...




WTF? Has some sort of public anti-semitic-statement-making holiday just occurred?

... During the event he made several references to the controversy around Sanchez.

According to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, Stewart, in talking about donating to autism education, said: “If you went on radio and said the Jews control the media…you may want to hold on to your money.”

It was a reference to Sanchez, who had made this comment on Pete Dominick’s Sirius radio show: “I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart. And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish are an oppressed minority? Yeah.” During the interview, Sanchez also called Stewart a “bigot,” and then later took the word back.

Stewart made this joke about Sanchez and Jews: “All he has to do is apologize to us, and we’ll hire him back.” ...

Rick Sanchez fired by CNN after comments about Jews and Jon Stewart
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez leaves the network after sneering comments about Jon Stewart and Jews running US television
by Richard Adams
Friday 1 October 2010
guardian.co.uk

In a terse statement, the US cable network CNN announced that daytime anchor Rick Sanchez was no longer employed, only a day after Sanchez made a string of controversial remarks, accusing Daily Show host Jon Stewart of being a "bigot" and made sneering comments about American Jews as "an oppressed minority".

The brief statement from CNN this evening reads in full:

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

On Thursday, Sanchez gave an interview on XM Radio in which he called Stewart – who has frequently poked fun at Sanchez on the Daily Show – a bigot before correcting himself and describing Stewart as "prejudiced" after being challenged by the interviewer, Pete Dominick.

But what set off a storm of controversy on blogs, after a transcript of Sanchez's interview was circulated, was his remarks about Jews. Here's a partial transcript of the exchange that followed:

Rick Sanchez: I don't think it's a conscious thing. I just think it's important that people who are not minorities understand that those of us who are – and very few of us will say the things that I just said – are actually more complex than they think we are.

Pete Dominick: [Jon] Stewart's a minority as much as you are. He's Jewish.

Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people. Please. What are you, kidding?

Dominick: You're telling me that....

Sanchez: I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they – the people in this country who are Jewish – are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Several US Jewish groups called on Sanchez to retract his remarks but the anchor made no public comment. He did not appear to anchor his daily Rick's List segment on CNN on Friday afternoon, before the network's statement was released. ...



Don't let the door slam you on your annoying, bigoted, pompous, egotistical, ignorant ass, ricky. KTHXBAI

JEWS DID RICK SANCHEZ
CNN Fires Rick Sanchez, But Not For Obvious Reason of Being Dumb
by Ken Layne
11:37 pm October 1, 2010

CNN, the once-influential news channel that for the past several years employed a mouth-breathing fool as its main daytime news reader, has finally fired this mouth-breathing fool. Was Rick Sanchez let go because he in an insult to the intelligence of anyone smart enough to operate a teevee remote? No, he was fired for saying idiotic things on a satellite radio channel. The Jews won this round, Sanchez! Guess you’ll have to go back to Cuba. Wait, what?

Sanchez was only known as “Rick’s List” to sad people in rest homes forced to watch CNN two days a week (it’s Fox News and History Channel the rest of the time). But inside his pea-sized brain, being a highly paid news reader on a major news channel five days a week was a form of racial insult, in that Jews (CNN) hate Latinos (dumb-looking white clods who claim to be “Cuban-American”). Also, lousy Jon Stewart thinks he’s so smart, well he’s just a Jew who is prejudiced (like all Jews) against Mexicans such as Rick’s List, the end.

Who knew that inside the mashed-potato brains of Rick Sanchez there was all this simmering, misplaced racial fury? If we were forced to guess, we would’ve said the main thoughts inside Rick’s brain were “time to poop!” and “don’t need to poop yet.”

Comments:
Umbrageofsnow
October 2, 2010 at 1:17 am

Is Rick Sanchez one of them immigrants they talk about "stealing our jobs" on Fox News? Because clearly he was taking up an anchor position your standard Fox anchor could have held, IQ-wise. This new open slot is just the place for another token conservative. Maybe one of the Friends from Fox and Friends?

They'll hopefully learn the lesson not to bite the hand of the NEW WORLD ORDER ELITE RACIST STEALTH-JEW OVERLORDS who pay their salary.


JoshuaNorton
October 2, 2010 at 1:19 am

Shalom, mofo.


straighteight
October 2, 2010 at 1:24 am

It's unnerving to think that the only thing holding Rick Sanchez from total television domination was Jewish control of all media. We need to reinforce the wall of Jews between ambitious morons and the public airways. ...

May all the God/desses bless Jon Stewart.

...Clementi killed himself, jumping off the George Washington Bridge three days after the incident. Meanwhile, on CNN, Rick Sanchez couldn’t be persuaded that this disgusting affair reeeeeally qualified as “bullying.”

While we can respect Sanchez taking some unpopular stances on this story (he makes some good points about the slippery slope of trying to charge Ravi and Wei with Clementi’s death instead of merely invasion of privacy) his opinions on “bullying” are just weird. He doesn’t just believe that this isn’t bullying, he appears to not believe bullying is a real thing to begin with.

“‘Bullying?’ How is this bullying? You know, this whole term, it’s a psycho-babble, media term that we’ve made up. A person is mean to another person. How is this bullying?”

A term made up by the media? Maybe “cyber-bullying,” but Merriam-Webster has the first known use of the word “bully” as happening in 1693. Arguing that “bullying” is a made up term is kind of like arguing that the word “green” is a made up term.

Sanchez frequently is criticized by people as being a bit of a “meathead.” This is unfair. Still though, if he wants to escape that impression, he probably shouldn’t go on TV and claim that bullying doesn’t exist while doing a report on a dead teenager. ...

... "They want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort," O'Keefe fumed. But looking at O'Keefe's latest bizarre, sexist and misogynistic stunt, it is hard to see how anyone could portray him in any other way.

Lusby, Maryland (CNN) -- A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating "palace of pleasure" and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O'Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show.

The plan apparently was thwarted after Boudreau was warned minutes before it was supposed to happen.

"I never intended to become part of the story," Boudreau said. "But things suddenly took a very strange turn."

O'Keefe is best known for making a series of undercover videos inside ACORN offices around the country in 2009. The 40-year-old liberal group was crippled by scandal after O'Keefe and fellow activist Hannah Giles allegedly solicited advice from ACORN workers on setting up a brothel and evading taxes.

The videos led to some of the employees being fired and contributed to the disbanding of ACORN, which advocated for low- and middle-income and worked to register voters.

But prosecutors in New York and California eventually found no evidence of wrongdoing by the group, and the California probe found the videos had been heavily and selectively edited.

O'Keefe's next big splash ended with his arrest after he taped associates entering Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans posing as telephone repairmen. He ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering a federal office under false pretenses and is now on probation. ...

Arseholes.

Clerics in the South Pacific have fingered the key cause of climate change - homosexuals.

The revelation came at a conference at the University of the South Pacific considering the implications of Climate Change and Creativity.

Academics were apparently thrown off their consideration of "Arts in the Age of Global Warming" and "Ecology in Poetry / Poetry in Ecology" by reports of Church Ministers who maintained that climate change in Samoa are clearly attributable to to homosexuals.

The revelation prompted one attendee USP student, Shaiza Janif, to opine: "We need to educate our ministers and not turn this into an agenda."

Details of exactly how the ministers think homosexuals are pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby trapping heat around the planet, driving up the average temperature and causing massive economic and environmental dislocation are scant. ...



A little insecure, guys?

HIC!

City puts cost of Quran-burning security at $200,000, sends bill to church
September 17, 2010 7:16 PM

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Authorities say security for last weekend's canceled Quran burning at a central Florida church cost around $200,000. City officials say they expect the church to pay.

Police Maj. Rick Hanna said more than 200 officers were on duty last weekend patrolling the church, the University of Florida football game and "soft targets" like the mall. Another 160 sheriff's deputies were also working because of the planned protest at Dove World Outreach Center. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

The Oregon Tea Party suffered the wrath of Anonymous after it was discovered using the group's famous "We Are Legion" slogan in official materials and merchandise. ...



Bravissimo!

Ta much, dear MSiegel

'Get Money' haircut identifies Seattle suspect
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Seattle (AP) --

A woman who was robbed of $310 while sitting at a Seattle traffic light gave police a detailed description of the man who stuck a gun in her open window.

He had "GET MONEY" shaved into the hair on one side of his head. He also had "GET" tattooed on his right hand and "MONEY" on his left hand.

The Seattle pi.com reports a detective searched records using the tattoo information and identified a suspect who was later pulled over by a patrol officer in the Lake City neighborhood.

His "GET MONEY" haircut and tattoos matched, and 18-year-old Larry Shawn Taylor was identified by the victim in the Aug. 23 robbery.

Now, he's held in the King County Jail for investigation of robbery.




Ta much, dear MSiegel

Algerian web pirates 2,000 miles astray in siege of Belvoir Castle
One of Britain’s best-known castles fell victim to a band of hapless Middle-Eastern “cyber-pirates” last week after they mistook it for a Crusader fortress of the same name more than 2,000 miles away.
By Heidi Blake
01 Sep 2010

Belvoir Castle, the family seat of the 11th Duke of Rutland, was mistakenly targeted by a subversive group of Algerian hackers who confused its website with that of Belvoir Fortress in Israel.

The hackers hijacked the castle’s homepage and replaced images of the stately home nestled in rolling Leicestershire countryside with a black page displaying the Algerian flag and a tirade against the Jewish state in Arabic.

Belvoir Fortress became a stronghold of the Christian military order of the Knights Hospitaller in 1168, when it was erected to fend off Muslim forces attacking the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the east.

It returned to Muslim control in the 13th Century, but was abandoned after a bloody assault by Israeli forces on the surrounding village of Kawkab al-Hawa in 1948.

By contrast, Belvoir Castle was a Royalist stronghold in the English Civil War and now holds an annual teddy bears’ picnic in its 15,000-acre gardens.

An Algerian subversive group called the Dz-SeC claimed responsibility for the cyber attack, which occurred on Friday afternoon, writing in Arabic on the castle’s website: "The cause of this hack is Israel's presence.”

The message added: "Internet law does not protect the ignorant. Thank you to all the pirates of Algeria." ...






The UK Belvoir is pronounced 'beaver' which is also -inducing.

[brilliant snooty English butler]Sir, a Mr Darwin is now on the telephone for you, Sir.[/brilliant snooty English butler]


Ta much, dear Glenn321

Robber nabbed after mocking police in email
Wed Aug 18, 2010

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German bank robber led his pursuers straight to him after taunting police in an email over their efforts to catch him.

Authorities in the southern city of Wuerzburg said on Wednesday the 19-year-old sent emails to police and two newspapers to point out factual errors in the report of his bank raid in the town of Roettingen a week ago.

According to daily Bild, he mocked the police for getting his age, height and accent wrong then pointed out he escaped in a car, not on foot.

"His game of cat and mouse went all wrong," a Wuerzburg police spokesman said.

Police traced his email and arrested him in a gambling hall in Hamburg just a few hours later. ...



[brilliant snooty English butler]Sir? A Mr Darwin is ringing to enquire whether he may contact Sir whilst Sir is in gaol, Sir.[/brilliant snooty English butler]

Ta much, dear BrightKnight

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman...I think.....

[brilliant snooty English butler]Pardon me, sirs, but a Mr Darwin is calling and would like a word. Shall I ask him to ring back once the bandages have been removed from your visages? Very good, sirs.
Thank you, sirs.[/brilliant snooty English butler]

Ta much, dear Anneliese

McInnis' articles for foundation lift ideas, words from 20-year-old essay
By Karen E. Crummy
The Denver Post
Posted: 07/13/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 07/13/2010 02:57:26 PM MDT

Although GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis presented his "Musings on Water" for publication as original works, portions are identical and nearly identical to an essay on water written 20 years earlier by now-Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory J. Hobbs.

A Clemson University expert who reviewed McInnis' work next to Hobbs' essay called it a clear case of plagiarism of both words and ideas.

McInnis' water articles were a required part of his two-year fellowship at the Hasan Family Foundation in 2005 and 2006. The former congressman, who left office in 2004, was paid $300,000 to do speaking engagements and "research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet."

Totaling 150 pages over 23 installments, the articles discussing state water policy are devoid of footnotes, endnotes or other forms of attribution.

In at least four of those articles, McInnis' work mirrors Hobbs' 1984 essay published by the Colorado Water Congress, "Green Mountain Reservoir: Lock or Key?"

In one of his installments of the musings, titled "Pumpbacks and Roundtables," McInnis uses four full pages that are nearly reprinted verbatim from Hobbs' earlier work. ...

McInnis's Colo. gubernatorial bid derailed by plagiarism charges
By Aaron Blake
July 14, 2010; 3:06 PM ET

Former Rep. Scott McInnis's (R-Colo.) gubernatorial campaign is in a fight for its life as charges of plagiarism have led to questions of whether McInnis can stay in the race.

Republicans in Colorado say he's a dead man walking, and they are exploring the ins and outs of how to get another nominee.

The Denver Post this week uncovered two examples of alleged plagiarism by McInnis -- one in papers McInnis wrote for a fellowship a few years ago and another in a Washington Post column and speech he delivered in 1994.

Sources in Colorado Republican circles say it's likely a matter of when, not if, McInnis will exit the race.

"Almost without exception, they think he is done," said one senior Colorado Republican who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

"He may be the last one to know it, but he's dead in the water," said another. "It's likely he will resist heavily, but at some point he's got to realize this is a fact of life." ...

McInnis should throw in the towel
After revelations of plagiarism and other cases of questionable judgment, it's clear the GOP candidate is not fit to be governor.
By The Denver Post
Posted: 07/14/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Revelations of extensive plagiarism in work that gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis claimed as his own call into question his fitness for public office.

The lifted work, examined in The Denver Post, constitutes inexcusable intellectual thievery. It is so damaging that we believe McInnis ought to drop out of the race.

Colorado's next governor should be a person of integrity, a trusted hand to lead the state through difficult times.

The Post revealed in Tuesday's paper that McInnis was paid to write essays on water in 2005 and 2006 yet turned in writings that had been plagiarized. Now we learn he did the same thing in a 1994 op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News.

We were astonished Tuesday to hear McInnis, in an interview with 9News, call the revelations over his water essays a "non-issue." Later, he did tell us he had made a mistake and that he should have checked the material. Yes, he should have.

The Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 over two years to give talks on water issues and write original, monthly articles on the topic. The plagiarism detailed by Post reporter Karen E. Crummy is extensive.

McInnis says he hired a consultant to serve as an expert for the writings. Yet the foundation hired McInnis as the expert, and McInnis' work never mentioned the help of anyone else. It was presented as his own.

The written work he submitted to the foundation included numerous instances of passages that were copied, with few changes, from scholarly work originated by Gregory J. Hobbs, who is now a Colorado Supreme Court justice.

The former congressman was paid handsomely for work that he said was "original and not reprinted from any other source." It was McInnis' obligation to ensure that was true.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've had questions about McInnis' judgment. ...

Researcher: CO gov. campaign trying to pass blame
By STEVEN K. PAULSON
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 15, 2010; 12:40 AM

DENVER -- A researcher who Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis blamed for plagiarism allegations says he won't sign a letter from the campaign owning up to what happened because he claims McInnis is lying.

Researcher Rolly Fischer told KMGH-TV in an interview Wednesday that McInnis' campaign sent him a letter to sign in which Fischer would say the alleged plagiarism was "solely my own." A McInnis spokesman didn't immediately return a call for comment. ...

Privacy? Ummmm...

6. teabagger

A misinformed, right-wing corporate media consumer who often fails to understand that BOTH major parties represent a corrupt plutocracy that steals from the middle class by taxing labor and profiting from corporate tax subsidies.

A teabagger also often fails to acknowledge that George W. Bush and his neo-conservative minions perpetrated one of the boldest and most egregious executive power grabs in the history of the United States. Furthermore, teabaggers mistakenly continue to blame a newly elected President Obama for all that ails the United States of America, based on a grossly flawed perception of reality (including latent racial prejudice) and despite the fact the U.S. economy collapsed on the previous administration's watch.

Teabaggers are also known to base their misguided, right-wing-media-inspired beliefs about President Obama on stupid conspiracy theories about totalitarian takeovers, FEMA camps, etc., despite the fact these very same theories have been circulating around on the Internet for years, and were originally ascribed to neo-conservative cabalists at a time when Barack Obama had not even entered national politics. Teabaggers also are known to be particularly paranoid, xenophobic and intolerant, especially with regard to immigrants and anyone who isn't white.

Additionally, teabaggers generally echo stupid myths about entitlement spending (it actually only accounts for about 1% of federal budget spending), have no idea that most poor people in America are not lazy, actually do work and don't want to be on welfare, and have no idea what socialism actually means or that socialist reform in this country is actually what allowed a middle class to flourish and ultimately make the U.S. one of the most prosperous nations in human history.

Furthermore, teabaggers incorrectly equate socialism with Stalinism, think a system that rewards greed (capitalism) is the divine preference (despite Gospel evidence to the contrary), and are shameless champions of a misguided belief in American exceptionalism. Teabaggers also fail to recognize the inherently unpatriotic nature of their failed every-man-for-himself ideology that ultimately vilifies anyone who supports public policy aimed at reaching out to fellow Americans in need. They celebrate an exploitative corporatocracy (holy creator of jobs, blah blah blah) while denigrating the little guy for being "weak."

Interestingly, teabaggers uphold an immoral, morbidly obese, twice divorced, draft-dodging, college dropout and known drug addict as their de facto leader, and are even known to advocate burning books. Of course, teabaggers fail to recognize the blatant hypocrisy within the GOP and tend to oversimplify all political debate and social issues, much like their pseudo-intellectual, fat-ass leader.

Finally, incredibly, teabaggers fail to recognize the hysterical double entendre associated with their proudly adopted teabag moniker.

Every village has its idiots, of course, but it's sad when citizens of any nation allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy en masse by a state-run propaganda machine masquerading as a legitimate, fair, balanced and independent news organization. Teabaggers are right to believe the future of the U.S.A. is in jeopardy, but sadly they have not yet correctly identified the real enemy. Perhaps when teabaggers finally grow up and mature into thinking adults, they will see the right-leaning power establishment for the oppressive and cunning beast that it is.

Teabagger: We don't care that George Bush tripled the deficit and lied us into a war. The new administration only cut taxes for 90% of the population... fascists. Let's go throw some Lipton tea bags into a fountain!

tags: brainwashed misfit idiot fool foxlover
by deepshot Apr 20, 2009


Ta much, dear MSiegel

see more Political Pictures

Grow a Brian, Morans!

Ta much, dear Anneliese

... She was born on February 2, three weeks after the failed revolution of 1905. Her parents were Jewish. They lived in St. Petersburg, a city long governed by hatred of the Jews. By 1914 its register of anti-Semitic restrictions ran to nearly 1,000 pages, including one statute limiting Jews to no more than 2 percent of the population. They named her Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.

When she was 4 or 5 she asked her mother if she could have a blouse like the one her cousins wore. Her mother said no. She asked for a cup of tea like the one being served to the grown-ups. Again her mother said no. She wondered why she couldn't have what she wanted.* Someday, she vowed, she would. In later life, Rand would make much of this experience. Heller does too: "The elaborate and controversial philosophical system she went on to create in her forties and fifties was, at its heart, an answer to this question and a memorialization of this project."

The story, as told, is pure Rand. There's the focus on a single incident as portent or precipitant of dramatic fate. There's the elevation of childhood commonplace to grand philosophy. What child, after all, hasn't bridled at being denied what she wants? Though Rand seems to have taken youthful selfishness to its outermost limits—as a child she disliked Robin Hood; as a teenager she watched her family nearly starve while she treated herself to the theater—her solipsism was neither so rare nor so precious as to warrant more than the usual amount of adolescent self-absorption. There is, finally, the inadvertent revelation that one's worldview constitutes little more than a case of arrested development. "It is not that chewing gum undermines metaphysics," Max Horkheimer once wrote about mass culture, "but that it is metaphysics—this is what must be made clear." Rand made it very, very clear.

But the anecdote suggests something additionally distinctive about Rand. Not her opinions or tastes, which were middlebrow and conventional. Rand claimed Victor Hugo as her primary inspiration in matters of fiction; Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac was another touchstone. She deemed Rachmaninoff superior to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. She was offended by a reviewer's admittedly foolish comparison of The Fountainhead to The Magic Mountain. Mann, Rand thought, was the inferior author, as was Solzhenitsyn. ...

...what truly distinguished Rand was her ability to translate her sense of self into reality, to will her imagined identity into material fact. Not by being great but by persuading others, even shrewd biographers, that she was great. Heller, for example, repeatedly praises Rand's "original, razor sharp mind" and "lightning-quick logic," making one wonder if she's read any of Rand's work. She claims that Rand was able "to write more persuasively from a male point of view than any female writer since George Eliot." Does Heller really believe that Roark or Galt is more credible or persuasive than Lawrence Selden or Newland Archer? Or little James Ramsay, who seems to have acquired more psychic depth in his six years than any of Rand's protagonists, male or female, demonstrate throughout their entire lives? ...

...Rather than remake the world in the image of paradise, she looked for paradise in an image of the world. Political transformation wasn't necessary. Transubstantiation was enough. Say a few words, wave your hands and the ideal is real, the metaphor material. An idealist of the most primitive sort, Rand took a century of socialist dichotomies and flattened them. Small wonder so many have accused her of intolerance: when heaven and earth are pressed so closely together, where is there room for dissent?

Far from needing explanation, Rand's success explains itself. Rand worked in that quintessential American proving ground—alongside the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Glenn Beck—where garbage achieves gravitas and bullshit gets blessed. There she learned that dreams don't come true. They are true. Turn your metaphysics into chewing gum, and your chewing gum is metaphysics. A is A.





*No wonder it was such a damn selfish, illogical c***.

... From: HSBC BANK [benno209@gmail.com]

Dear valued customer Incidentally,there is an emergency shortlited varified problem in your account which there is a need to restore Pls send us all the enqiures of your bank account so that the varified problem will be entirely and stupidiously retrieve. Thanks for banking with us

And that represents the entire content of the email. No graphics, no links, nothing, save some exceptional English and a truly stupidious gmail addy. Make no mistake, this classic has been shortlited for bone-idle scam email of the year.

As the federal and congressional probes continue into the causes of the Gulf oil rig explosion, new information is coming to light about the failure of a key device, the blowout preventer, to shut off the gushing well, which could have prevented the growing catastrophe.

And new questions are being raised about the testing of the preventers. At today's hearing before a House subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., revealed that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system and had failed a negative pressure test just hours before the April 20 explosion. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the preventer worked.

In addition, an oil industry whistleblower told Huffington Post that BP had been aware for years that tests of blowout prevention devices were being falsified in Alaska. The devices are different from the ones involved in the Deepwater Horizon explosion but are also intended to prevent dangerous blowouts at drilling operations.

Mike Mason, who worked on oil rigs in Alaska for 18 years, says that he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on many wells owned by BP.

As he describes it, the test involves a chart that shows whether the device will hold a certain amount of pressure for five minutes on each valve. (The test involves increasing the pressure from 250 pounds per square-inch (psi) to 5,000 psi.) "Sometimes, they would put their finger on the chart and slide it ahead -- so that it only recorded the pressure for 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes," he tells HuffPost.

Mason claims that a BP representative was usually present while subcontractors performed the tests. ...



Ta much, dear Zaxy

The Detroit City Council assailed Mayor Dave Bing's proposed budget Wednesday as being rife with charter violations, such as billing city departments for the cost of his administration appointees.

Administration officials acknowledged making some errors, and promised to have changes sent back to the council by Friday. But they insisted the city must fundamentally change the way it operates to climb out of its financial hole.

Discussions between Bing's staff and council members got contentious at times during a hearing Wednesday.

Councilman Andre Spivey called it a "slap in the face" to Detroiters that the mayor's appointees' salaries are in the top of their compensation range. He said the administration was charging costs for five appointees to the city departments they oversee, supplementing their salaries with grants and enterprise funds.

"Think about the folks at the bottom of the rung here," Spivey said.

City Budget Director Pam Scales said only a portion of grant funding allocated for administrative costs was used to supplement appointee salaries.

The city charter requires that salaries for mayoral appointees be included in the mayor's office budget. ...

... So, let's get this straight: Palin is more than happy to utilise the contents of stolen emails to score political points when it suits her own cause – in this case, attacking the "radical environmental movement" – but finds it "repugnant" when her own privacy is invaded "for political gain"? Why was she not calling in her article for whoever stole (hacked, leaked, whatever) the UEA emails to face a "just" punishment instead of jumping up and down with glee at their politically convenient content?

Hypocrisy? You betcha.

Muslim driver fined for wearing veil
Woman, 31, accuses French police of attacking her freedom after she was fined for wearing a niqab while driving in Nantes
Lizzy Davies
Friday 23 April 2010

A Muslim woman has accused French police of attacking her freedom after she was fined for wearing a niqab while driving in the city of Nantes.

The 31-year-old, who says she has worn the full veil for nine years and never been told not to wear it behind the wheel, was flagged down by two police officers and told that her niqab – which did not cover her eyes – was a safety risk.

"My eyes were not covered. I can see just like you and my field of vision was not obstructed," [Ed. Note: Yeah, suuurrrrre!] the woman, whose name has not been reported, said.

She was fined €22 by the officers, who argued she was infringing the highway code by "driving in unsuitable conditions". ...

Beneath the veneer of the Conservatives' people power

What these slick PR operators are really offering is deep cuts, lower taxes for the rich and sweeping Thatcherite privatisation

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Unemployment benefits and GOP principle
Michael Tomasky Monday 5 April 2010

... You may remember a few weeks ago that it was Republican Senator Jim Bunning who held up extension of these benefits because the Senate wasn't coming up to any way to pay for them and make the extension deficit neutral thereby. This time around it's Oklahoma's Tom Coburn:

"The legitimate debate is whether we borrow and steal from our kids or we get out of town and send the bill to our kids for something that we're going to consume today," Coburn said on the Senate floor.

The cost is $10 billion, so I can see that if you're concerned about the deficit it's a fair point. But here's the thing that gets me.

Somehow, Republicans don't manage to raise these objections about deficit neutrality when the question involves tax cuts heavily weighted toward the rich. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 increased the deficit. I don't remember many Republican protestations about that. As you can see from this roll-call vote from 2006, extending the tax cuts (well after their deficit-augmenting reality was known), all 51 (at the time) Republican senators voted for them, Coburn and Bunning among them.

Rich people are rich because they're good, so by definition the deficit isn't their fault. Working-class unemployed people, well, hard luck.

When rightwing hate goes mainstream
The Republican party is indulging extremists, hoping they'll put down their guns long enough to vote for them this November
Dan Kennedy
Wednesday 7 April 2010

... The first warning came a year ago, when the department of homeland security predicted a rise in rightwing extremism fuelled by economic calamity and the election of our first black president. News of the report, and especially about a warning contained therein that military veterans might be pulled into the movement, set off criticism among conservative bloggers. Yet it proved prescient.

The most recent and oddest manifestation was last week's arrest of nine people involved in what authorities have referred to as a "Christian militia" intent on sparking revolution. But there have been other examples, each treated by the media as isolated incidents. The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, whose killer was sentenced to life in prison last week. The pilot who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service facility in Austin, Texas, in February. Protesters whipped into a frenzy during the healthcare debate who yelled racist and homophobic slurs at members of Congress, who spat upon one and who phoned in threats of violence.

According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the number of rightwing extremist groups has risen exponentially during the past 18 months. And in an interview with National Public Radio's On the Media last week, he was unstinting in placing at least some of the blame for that with their enablers in the Republican party and in the media....

April 8, 2010
Totalitarian drab is à la mode as Kim Jong Il is hailed a fashion arbiter

Kim Jong Il’s trademark suit is in vogue across the world thanks to the North Korean leader’s greatness, according to the official government website.

Uriminzokkiri.com said: “The august image of the Great General, who is always wearing the modest suit while working, leaves a deep impression on people’s minds in the world. That is because his image as a great man is so outstanding.”

The article quoted an unidentified French fashion expert as saying that the North Korean leader’s style was followed internationally. “Kim Jong Il mode, which is spreading expeditiously worldwide, is unprecedented in history,” the stylist said. ...

New nuke policy and old political idiocy

Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton just announced the new US nuclear policy, which is a middle-of-the-road kind of thing in which we say we won't use nukes against non-nuke countries unless they're Iran.

On top of this of course, Obama is going to Prague Thursday to sign a new treaty with Medvedev to reduce nuclear stockpiles.

Needless to say, in Republicanland, all this means Obama is the Disarmer-in-Chief who wants the terrorists to win or whatever nonsense they're cooking up. Here, for example, is Rudy Giuliani:

President Obama's revamping of American nuclear policy is the mark of an "inept" leader intent on living a "left-wing dream," says Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, in an interview with National Review Online. "A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left, just like socialized health-care. This new policy, like Obama's government-run health program, is a big step in that direction."

"President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols," Giuliani says. "North Korea and Iran are not singing along with the president. Knowing that, it just doesn't make sense why we would reduce our nuclear arms when we face these threats."

Every hallmark of irresponsible right-wing posturing exists in those words, and it's this kind of thing that has driven the polarization in this country to such awful extremes.

If Giuliani -- who you'll notice tried to be president but is in fact not -- can guess the US nuclear stockpile within 1,000, I'd be surprised (it's about 5,700 in the active stockpile). He also probably conveniently forgets, if he ever knew, that just 18 or so years ago, we had about 24,000 active warheads. ...

Police accused of trespass after 'burgling' 50 homes... to show owners how insecure they are
By Luke Salkeld
30th March 2010

When it comes to fighting crime, a certain understanding of the criminal mind is essential.

But the police have been criticised for their attempts to prevent a spate of house thefts - by committing the burglaries themselves.

Officers have been entering private homes through open windows or unlocked doors, supposedly as a warning to residents about a lack of security. ...



Wow. Warrantless co pigs rooting round in peoples' homes, eh? Jolly good show, idiots.

Ta much, dear Edosan

The Republican chairman, Michael Steele, promised on taking office that he would bring the party to corners of America it had not reached before. It is a fair bet that most Republicans did not expect these corners to include the Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage and S&M club in Los Angeles.

It emerged today that the Republicans spent almost $2,000 last month on a visit to the club where topless women hang from nets on the ceiling and simulate sex in a glass case.

The lavish spending will anger grassroots Republicans who are bombarded almost every day with more requests for contributions to help the cash-strapped party. A Republican National Committee spokesman said that it was looking into the matter. It insisted Steele was not at the club, but did not identify who had spent the money.

Such extravagance, in a time of recession and by the party that bills itself as fiscally conservative and reflecting family and Christian values, will renew questions about Steele's leadership.

The spending is disclosed in a Republican filing, as required by US law, to the Federal Election Commission.

It says that $1,946.25 (£1,300) was spent on 4 February for meals at the Voyeur West Hollywood by the Republican National Committee. ...

Kindly note that Mr Muntz is laughing at the insurance company, and the idiot who crashed it.

The car itself having been crashed makes Nelson and I make small, hurt-animal noises.

Robbers 'called ahead to bank to get money to go'
Two would-be robbers called a bank ahead and demanded that the cash be ready for them when they arrived, Connecticut officials said, giving police ample time to get to the scene.
24 Mar 2010

The pair called the People's United Bank branch in Fairfield, Connecticut, threatening to create a "blood bath" if there was not a bag of money waiting for them when they arrived.

But they were intercepted by police, who were already waiting on the scene when the young men arrived.

Police arrested 27-year-old Albert Bailey and an unidentified 16-year-old boy on robbery charges on Tuesday afternoon.

Sgt James Perez said the two Bridgeport residents turned up at the bank about 10 minutes after making the call and were met by police in the bank's car park.

Sgt Perez told the Connecticut Post that, in his opinion, the suspects were "not too bright". ...



Epic Fail!

{This fancy font available here}

Disputed Bay of Bengal island disappears into sea
An island that has been at the centre of a dispute between India and Bangladesh for three decades has disappeared beneath rising seas
24 Mar 2010

New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said Sugata Hazra, a professor of oceanography at Jadavpur University, in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Mr Hazra.

Scientists at the School of Oceanographic Studies at the university have noted an alarming increase in the rate at which sea levels have risen over the past decade in the Bay of Bengal.

Until 2000, the sea levels rose about 0.12 inches a year, but over the last decade they have been rising about 0.2 inches annually, he said.

Another nearby island, Lohachara, was submerged in 1996, forcing its inhabitants to move to the mainland, while almost half the land of Ghoramara island was underwater, he said. At least 10 other islands in the area were at risk as well, Mr Hazra said. ...

... In the bullpen tonight Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He’d go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, “My name is Ted fucking Williams and I’m the greatest hitter in baseball.”

He’d swing and hit a line drive.

“Jesus H. Christ Himself couldn’t get me out.”

And he’d hit another.

Then he’d say, “Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his.”

Wham!

“He doesn’t really think he’s gonna get me out with that shit.”

Blam!

“I’m Ted fucking Williams.”

Sock!




Mr Bouton also points out that Mr Williams was fond of calling himself Mr Baseball, Teddy Baseball, and Teddy fucking Baseball of the MFL (Major Fucking League).

The US Senate was stuck behind a roadblock in the person of Jim Bunning, the Republican senator from Kentucky who who used Senate procedural rules to shut down its business.

Aside from being a politician of eccentric views, and not highly popular among Republicans, Bunning is best known as a skilled major league baseball pitcher of the 1950s and 1960s. He may not have been one of the great pitchers – measured by the standards of Warren Spahn or Bob Gibson, say – but he has the distinction of being one of the few players to ever pitch a perfect game in the majors. (A perfect game being one where no opposing batter reaches first base.)

There are more details of Bunning's baseball career here – including Bunning's appearance in the best book about baseball ever written, Ball Four, by Jim Bouton ...

The US Senate is known as the body where legislation goes to die, and a Republican senator from Kentucky has spent several days illustrating that point at the expense of nearly 500,000 out-of-work Americans.

Since last week Senator Jim Bunning [an ex-baseball player] has used his privilege under the chamber's parliamentary rules to hold up a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits, health insurance assistance, funding for road and infrastructure projects across the country, and other aid.

In exchange for lifting his objections he demands the senate come up with a way to pay for the $10bn extension package by reducing spending elsewhere, eliciting scoffs from Democrats who note that he voted for President Bush's $1.7tn tax cuts for the wealthy.

Nearly every major item on President Barack Obama's agenda, from health insurance reform to cap-and-trade climate regulation, has stalled in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. ...

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty joined the teleprompter wing of Republican Hypocrisy Caucus during his speech at CPAC on Friday when he used a teleprompter to promulgate the hoax that Pres. Obama uses teleprompters more than other politicians. Worse, however, Pawlenty’s attack against the president was quickly determined to be a lie:

“President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter,” Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he added. “That’s not a joke. That’s a real story.”

Actually, it’s not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.

In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.

In a different classroom, he used the teleprompter to give scripted remarks on education to television cameras.

At CPAC just one day earlier, Marco Rubio, Florida’s tea bagger candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, read what was supposed to be a joke about Obama and teleprompters from a teleprompter.

But neither of these new members of the GOP Hypocrisy Caucus can hold a candle to the chairwoman, Sarah Palin, whose promotion of the Obama teleprompter hoax at the tea bagger ball in Nashville earlier this month prompted us to catalog 20 separate incidents in which she used teleprompters during her campaign for vice president in 2008.

A man facing the first major criminal trial to take place without a jury in England in 400 years was being hunted by police today after he went on the run from court.

Peter Blake, who police warn is dangerous and has previously had access to firearms, was reported missing just after the lunch break at the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday. ...

A suspected armed robber who was on trial for a £1.75m heist in a historic criminal case without a jury has gone on the run.

Peter Blake, 57, apparently walked out of the high court in London in the midst of his trial yesterday.

Blake and three co-defendants were being tried without a jury after the prosecution and police alleged the jury in the previous Old Bailey trial had been harassed.

The escape of Blake is the latest in a series of setbacks in the investigation and prosecution of suspects for the 2004 heist at a warehouse near Heathrow. There have been three criminal trials and more than £20m has been spent, but no one has been convicted of the robbery.

During the third trial last year, the judge halted proceedings over claims from the prosecution that the jury had been interfered with. The court of appeal ruled that in the face of threats to a future potential jury the four men should be tried without a jury – the first such trial in England for 400 years. ...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

One in three members of the public matched a picture of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, with the name of Peter Griffin, the protagonist of the cartoon sitcom.

The survey of 1,498 people found more were able to identify a picture of Alex Reid, the new husband of Katie Price, than recognised Gordon Brown, the prime minister. ...

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Correction

A story on Page 1 of Tuesday’s Telegraph quoted a White House official explaining that a Q-and-A session with dozens of teenagers in Nashua High School North on Monday was “off the record.” However, the explanation about the talk being “off the record” was, it turns out, also “off the record” and should not have been quoted.



Ta much, dear Edosan, for that amusi bemusing bit of enlightenment.

Can you say, "Disbar"?

I knew you could.

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

... J-Press: They really did it.
J-Press: They called it the iPad.
J-Coen: I'd laugh if it weren't so gross.
J-Press: It's been so long in the making. Months. Years. Lifetimes. How could they make such a silly, foolish, human error?
J-Coen: Obviously they have no women involved in their decision-making process.
J-Coen:: Silly Apple — pads are for writing or menstruating. Not for finger-sliding.
J-Press: This is going to be so awkward.

J-Press: There's going to be a huge female backlash and they're going to have to backtrack and change it. Like Beaver, the official magazine of Canada.
J-Press: Or Beaver College. ...

... J-Press: You can go everywhere with it, but NOT IN THE POOL!
J-Coen: And then eventually people will start saying things like, "I can't believe you're still using the iPad."
J-Press: "Don't you know they have this new version that's so small and compact, you can insert it right up your vagina? It's called the iPon!"
J-Coen: Though young girls might want to wait a few years before trying that one.


Yup. They really thought that one through well, innit.

Ta much, dear Edosan

Ministry of Justice lists eco-activists alongside terrorists

• Campaigners lumped in with al-Qaida and far right
• Government criticised for tarring peaceful protesters
Matthew Taylor and Rob Evans
Tuesday 26 January 2010



Oh, jolly good show, UK. Bra-fricken-vo.

Adultery website boosted by Christian publicity campaign
What would Jesus do? Get on Facebook, definitely
By John Oates

A purportedly Christian man claims to be running a campaign against a website which offers dates for married people.

Jon Kurht claims to work for a Christian charity in London and has already had one complaint about a maritalaffair.co.uk billboard rejected by the Advertising Standards Authority. He has now started a Facebook to campaign against the site, which has the strap-line "Where the grass is always greener".

We don't buy this. He's clearly some kind of viral marketeer whose genius campaign has already got the unknown website mentioned in the Daily Telegraph, Sky News and surely the Daily Mail can't be far behind. ...

Richard Dawkins

Haiti and the hypocrisy of Christian theology

We know what caused the catastrophe in Haiti. It was the bumping and grinding of the Caribbean Plate rubbing up against the North American Plate: a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, un-premeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery.

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti's tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today's Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Reports of racial and religiously motivated crime rose following the election of British National party councillors in several far- right strongholds, police statistics have revealed.

Complaints of hate crime increased in wards in the West Midlands, London and Essex after the election of a BNP member, in spite of declines in reported hate crime in the wider police areas. In other wards race crime reportedly rose in the runup to BNP election victories, according to the figures, obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

The findings came as the party stepped up its campaign to win its first seats in the House of Commons with a "weekend of action" in Barking and Dagenham, where the culture and tourism minister, Margaret Hodge, faces a challenge for her Labour seat from BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Hodge said the new figures cast doubt on police assurances that there is no link between racially motivated crime and a BNP presence.

Yesterday, BNP member Terence Gavan was jailed for 11 years after police found nail bombs and 12 firearms at his home in the borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, where the BNP has councillors. The Old Bailey heard that Gavan harboured "a strong hostility" towards immigrants.

One of the biggest increases in hate crime came in Barking's Eastbury ward, where racially motivated violence, theft and criminal damage more than doubled in the year after Jeffrey Steed won a council seat for the BNP in May 2006. A year later, hate crime rose again and 45 racial incidents were reported in 12 months. ...

Sexist morons. It's not the one couple/one child policy at fault, it's the aborting and slaughtering of female babies!

Gentle Categorian, one never finds stories such as this which involve females.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

US airport closed after security scare caused by bottles of honey
A California airport was closed for several hours after a passenger carrying honey in plastic bottles triggered a security alert.
By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:03PM GMT 06 Jan 2010

Police were struggling on Wednesday to explain why two baggage screeners at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield had to be taken to hospital on Tuesday after opening the bottles and becoming nauseated from the fumes.

A police spokesman said the bottles, which were being carried by a gardener, had tested positive for explosives even though the contents was later confirmed to be just honey. The two screeners may have felt nauseous because they were "just nervous", he added.

Amid heightened airport security tension following the alleged attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound plane, Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport in Minnesota was also closed temporarily on Tuesday after a sniffer dog indicated a suspicious piece of luggage.

The bag turned out to be a marker that airport staff put on the luggage carousel to tell other staff that all items have been unloaded from a flight.

There was further embarrassment at Newark International Airport in New Jersey where it emerged that a security camera supposedly monitoring a corridor where a major security breach occurred on Sunday had been broken for six days.

The busy airport was evacuated for nearly seven hours after a passenger reported a man walk the wrong way through an exit corridor without being challenged.

The comedienne Joan Rivers has complained angrily about officious security after she was kept off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark on Sunday because a gate agent was suspicious about her passport containing both her married and professional names.



So appalling I had to post the whole dang thang.
Screw you, tsa.

The United States prevented Dutch authorities from installing full body scanners before the suspected Christmas Day bomb plotter passed through security at Amsterdam's airport, the Dutch government claimed today.

The Dutch claimed that they had been trying to install the machines for flights to the US since 2008 but had been blocked by US officials who wanted passengers to all destinations screened.

In light of the failed attack all passengers travelling from Holland to the US will now have to go through full body scanners the Dutch Interior Minister announced following discussions with the Americans. ...

Iraq demands Iran withdraw troops from oilfield
Fri Dec 18, 2009
By Suadad al-Salhy and Mohammed Abbas

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq on Friday demanded that Iran immediately withdraw its soldiers from a disputed oilfield on the two countries' border, but Tehran denied any incursion.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said 11 Iranian soldiers had taken control of the Fakka oilfield in a remote desert area of southeastern Iraq, in a "violation of Iraqi sovereignty."

"Iraq demands the immediate withdrawal from well No. 4 and the Fakka oilfield, which belongs to Iraq. Iraq is looking for a peaceful and diplomatic settlement to this issue," he said.

Dabbagh did not give a deadline for withdrawal and did not say what Iraq would do if Iran failed to comply. Officials have summoned Tehran's envoy in Iraq to discuss the matter, he said.

Iraqi officials said the Iranian soldiers crossed into Iraqi territory on Friday and raised the Iranian flag at Fakka, whose ownership is disputed by Iran.

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji said the incursion was the latest of several this week at the field, some 300 km (186 miles) southeast of Baghdad in Maysan province.

"At 3:30 this afternoon, 11 Iranian [soldiers] infiltrated the Iran-Iraq border and took control of the oil well. They raised the Iranian flag, and they are still there," he said.

Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency later quoted the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) as rejecting the report.

"The company denies Iranian soldiers taking control of any oil well inside Iraqi territory," Mehr quoted the NIOC as saying.

Khafaji said the well was in Iraqi territory.

"This well is located on Iraqi land, 300 metres (yards) inside Iraq. It is disputed between Iran and Iraq. There was an agreement between the two countries' oil ministers to fix this problem diplomatically," he said.

A senior engineer from Maysan Oil Company, which operates the field, said Iranian troops had taken temporary control of one of the field's seven wells, an inoperative well in a disputed border area, four or five times this year.

"Iranian forces come to this well periodically, and then at daybreak they withdraw. They are provoking us ... I don't know why this is a big deal this time," he said, on condition of anonymity. ...

I wish sarah's rededicate itself to God by taking a vow or silence, or meeting its maker - and not at the Faire.

Bumbling NJ firemen, cops blown up in 'huge fireball'
Gunpowder plot ruled out: bunker-buster blunder blamed

By Lewis Page

Posted in Bootnotes, 30th November 2009

Firemen and police officers in New Jersey blew themselves up last week in an "orange mushroom cloud of fire and debris" which created a "deafening boom felt miles away". The unfortunate public-safety operatives had been attempting to light a bonfire at a high-school rally.

According to the South Jersey Courier-Post, kids at Vineland High School had planned a "pep rally" at 6:30 pm local time last Wednesday. Weather conditions had been damp, and it seems that local firemen attending the rally "doused" the bonfire - constructed largely of wooden shipping pallets - with "diesel and another accelerant".

Within seconds of the fire being lit, there was apparently a devastating blast which "ejected a flaming pile of pallets into the sky" atop the above mentioned roiling fireball. Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt, though the Courier-Post reports that a firefighter was injured by flying debris and several police officers "sought medical treatment for ear ailments" following the blast.

No schoolkids were harmed, and the rally apparently went ahead without trouble at an alternative venue free of exploding bonfires. ...

Man threatened to kill shoppers in £3.5 million Dirty Harry blackmail plot
An unemployed man threatened to kill supermarket shoppers in a £3.5 million blackmail plot inspired by the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry, a court heard.

Nick Britten
25 Nov 2009

Mark Hazel, 39, even adopted the signature of the film’s villain, Scorpio, the sniper who warns police that he will kill his victims unless he is given a briefcase full of cash.

Unfortunately for Hazel, he was easier to catch that his movie namesake, having left his fingerprints on the blackmail letter, which was written in handwriting exactly matching his own. He also took the foolish decision to target his local store.

Having branded his attempts “amateurish”, a judge jailed him for 15 months.

Hazel, from Erdington, Birmingham, copied Scorpio’s modus operandi in threatening to kill random customers if the Co-op failed to meet his £3.5 million demands, although he was not specific about how he would carry out his crime.

In a letter to his local Co-op in Erdington, he wrote: “It will be my greatest pleasure to select at random three people in your store to kill and maim if my demands are not met. I will kill anyone in this store, whether it is staff or guards if my demands are not met." ...

Balloon boy parents to plead guilty 'to keep mother in US'
The parents of the "balloon boy" Falcon Heene will plead guilty on Friday as part of a deal to avoid the deportation of Mayumi Heene, the boy's mother, to Japan.
Published: 6:28PM GMT 12 Nov 2009

The couple, who reported that their six-year-old son had floated away aboard a helium balloon when in fact he was hiding in their home, will plead guilty to some charges and serve probation so that the family can stay together, a lawyer for the boy's father said on Thursday.

Richard Heene will plead guilty in the alleged Oct 15 hoax to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, his lawyer David Lane said. Mayumi Heene - a Japanese citizen who could have been deported if convicted of more serious charges - will plead guilty to false reporting to authorities, a misdemeanour, he said. ...

GOP Gone Wild: Unruly Republicans Silence Women Lawmakers With Screams, Shouts, And Delay Tactics

This morning, the House began consideration of the rule for debate of the House health care bill. As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, and shouted objections. “I object, I object, I object, I object, I object,” Price interjected as Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) tried to hold the floor.

In an effort to delay and derail the proceedings, the Republicans continually talked over the Democratic women for half an hour. They sought to prevent the debate by calling for unnecessary “parliamentary inquiries” and requests for “expanding the debate” by an hour.

After being repeatedly interrupted by Republican shouts, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) observed:

Do I not have the right to be able to continue my sentence without objections that are trying to censor my remarks here on the floor that I have a right to make as a member of this House?

...

The goddam rethuglicunts musta been wearing these their entire repulsive lives.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Edosan

The article fails to mention he'd blamed three Hispanic men for the attack.

Also, while it's mentioned that he's 27, it should also be said that his stunt wasn't even worthy of a 17-y-o.

More like a 7-y-o.

... The 'satanic abuse' hysteria was particularly appalling, but year after year in America prudery exacts a terrible toll – as witness the unfortunate female schoolteachers packed often to prison with hefty sentences for having affairs with boys in their mid to late teens.

Is America permanently lodged in the 17th century so far as moral policing is concerned? The answer is Not exactly, since gay marriage wasn’t a big item on the legislative agenda of the colonies at that time. But regulation of sexual behaviour is the preferred route to wider social control.

The control of sex and pornography is a major part of promulgating a puritanical political culture without ever imposing overt political censorship. Sexual repression, often through the allegation of 'deviant' fantasy crimes, is the designated stand-in for violations of the social order that are hard to crush in a courtroom. As Williamson is now ruefully aware, the state not only has a long arm, it has a long gaze.

Moral: the eyes of the law are on you at all times, even at 8.30 am in the supposed privacy of your own kitchen.



What did you expect from a cuntry founded by folks so uptight the Brits threw them out?

... Cllr Sonja Wilson added she thought the festival was against the teachings of the Bible.

She said: "We feel strongly about the potential dangers of letting youngsters become involved in it.

"We never encouraged our own children to join any Halloween activities because it's unhealthy.

"The Bible says not to believe in other idols and Halloween is all about promoting Satan.

"There is a risk that it could lead to other things like an interest in the occult and witchcraft – it's like encouraging young people to drink beer."

The pumpkin competition task fell to the deputy mayor, Councillor Clive Stringer, who said: "As far as I'm concerned it's just a bit of fun for the kids.

"I was brought up as a Christian but I don't see anything wrong with children dressing up as witches and wizards and making faces out of pumpkins."

Christian Broadcasting Network Warns Against 'Demonic' Halloween Candy
Huffington Post | Alex Leo & Katla McGlynn
First Posted: 10-29-09 02:34 PM | Updated: 10-30-09 07:37 AM

UPDATE: CBN has removed the blog. The original text is available here.
-----
Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network posted a blog by Kimberly Daniels recently that warns Christians to forgo celebrating Halloween because of its evilness. Daniels specifically calls out candy as a source of soul-molestation:

"During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches."

Obviously, we shouldn't be buying Halloween candy, but what about getting it by trick-or-treating?

"Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."

Darn.

We wholeheartedly agree with Daniels and have put together a handy guide of outrageously demonic candy to stay away from this (and every) season. ...



High-quality xian stupidity and paranoia and hilarious slideshow by the more enlightened courtesy of dear Zaxy

Ta much, dear Zaxy for hippin' me.

"Ideas are hard. Blocking them is easy."

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Balloon boy's father 'wanted TV fame before world ends in 2012'
Richard Heene, the man suspected of the alleged "balloon boy" hoax, was driven by a conviction that the world will come to a cataclysmic end in 2012, according to a friend.
By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
20 Oct 2009

Robert Thomas, who claims to have been a confidante and researcher for Mr Heene, has been interviewed by police.

Mr Thomas's lawyer, Linda Lee, claimed: "Heene believes the world is going to end in 2012. Because of that he wanted to make money quickly, become rich enough to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding."

It was the latest disclosure about Mr Heene's bizarre world view, which also allegedly includes a belief in aliens and UFOs.

The suggestion that the world will come to an end in 2012 is based on an interpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar.

It is also the subject of a soon to be released Hollywood blockbuster called "2012".

However, scientists and Mayans themselves have debunked the theory. ...



Great. Not only is it a prick and a liar, it's also a bleeding ignorant looney.

A hoaxer who's bought into a hoax = Priceless.

I'm sorry, but, uh, how in fuck will a bunker protect you from an exploding Sun?

Mayhap he's got one of those ahem Looney Tunes cartoon images stuck in his head: Bugs Bunny & co hanging onto what remains of the Moon after the vast explosion caused by Marvin the Martian.

Idiot.

Yes, but the biggest joke is the 'survey' was reported as news, not satire.

Well done, British "journalists."

... "More than 40 percent of women eventually diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease have basically been told by a doctor that they're just too concerned with their health or they're a hypochondriac," says Virginia Ladd, founder and executive director of the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association. ...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Two newlyweds are fighting for the dismissal of the justice of the peace who refused them a marriage license because they are of different races. ...



Um, what century is this again?

Women MPs fight back as Berlusconi lashes out
You are increasingly more beautiful than intelligent, PM tells furious Bindi
By Jack Bremer
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2009

Amid warnings that Italy is on the edge of a constitutional crisis after Silvio Berlusconi was stripped of his immunity from prosecution, the man himself has been flailing around like a bear with a thorn in its foot. Taking part by phone in a late-night television discussion, he struck out at President Giorgio Napolitano saying he should have used "his influence" to get a different ruling from the Constitutional Court.

When a studio guest, Rosy Bindi, a former family minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left government, expressed shock at this suggestion, Berlusconi replied: "I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than intelligent".

Even coming from Berlusconi, this was over the top and Bindi answered that she was "not a woman at your disposal", alluding to the call-girls and television showgirls at the centre of the long-running Berlusconi sex scandal.

Among the first to leap to Bindi's defence was another former minister under Prodi, the American-born Italian MP Giovanna Melandri. She said the remark summed up "the Berlusconi philosophy towards women". The diminutive prime minister, she went on, had shown himself to be "taller than he is well-mannered". ...



He has also shown himself to have more height than integrity - and wisdom.

Her collaborator isn’t just a creationist. There’s the white supremacy issue, too ...

... The Palin book, moreover, is clearly being styled as a work of polemic, appealing to the Christianist base, thereby fanning homophobia, and empowering those who would like nothing more than to push gay people back into the closet, out of marriage, out of the military, and out of the workplace. Burnham is now directly party to this effort.

It's not possible to accuse Jonathan Burnham of hypocrisy because that would imply he has any convictions or principles at all. Here, for example, is his quote about a 400-page book written in two months:

“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project…. It’s her words...”

Hey, if it makes a buck, and advances his career, Burnham will do it. As gay people prepare to march for their civil rights, Burnham, one of the more powerful gay men in New York, is preparing to capitalize on their avowed enemies. It's just money, after all. And buzz. Always buzz.

This asshole needs to lose its law license, its Merc, all of its books, and as Mom said, "And get his house burned down."

Ta much, dear Foxy

Times papers trains with climate change blunder

Don't read us, we're rubbish

By Andrew Orlowski
6th October 2009

The Times has liberally papered London underground carriages with a fascinating new ad campaign. One poster shows a ship navigating some treacherous icy waters, with the accompanying copy reading:

Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time.

Impressive - if only it were true. The Northeast Passage has been opened for commerce since 1934 - and never 'closed'.

Over the years hundreds of thousands of freighters have passed through, and after Russia put Soviet-era politics aside it was extended to foreign commerce in the 1990s. As we reported two weeks ago, it took bloggers a few seconds to find this out, and unearth a wealth of maritime history. But when German shipping company Beluga issued a press release claiming to be the first foreign pioneer, many newspapers and the broadcast media (the BBC) were in such a rush to report another example of Global Warming, they didn't bother to check the claim - and reported it verbatim.

Among the parrotters was Times hack Tony Halpin, here, who cleaned his Trumpet of Doom and proceeded to shoot himself in both feet with this blast: "It is both a symbol of global warming and a potentially lucrative new trade route between Europe and Asia."

According to the ad copy:

To help you navigate the changing world we have more dedicated science and environment correspondents than the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail or Independent.

Quality isn't quantity, evidently. But a fascinating question arises. Why spend so much money to tell commuters that you've cocked things up? It doesn't make sense. Perhaps there's a better explanation.

Perhaps what the Times has noticed is that there's a lucrative market for environmental scare stories. What the advertisements are doing is targeting this segment of the superstitious middle class, which wants to believe that Thermageddon is nigh, or that oil will run out next week, or that a tsunami of non-biodegradable plastic refuse will engulf the family Volvo on its morning school run - shortly before it's zapped by deadly WiFi radiation. ...



Um, check your sources, maybe?

... For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.

Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.

But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.

The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.

Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Well done, Waitrose, et al...but why hasn't sky network dumped faux news?

Honours for Hogwarts? Not in the Bush White House.

Sasha Obama may have been given a birthday tour of the Harry Potter set but the former occupant of the White House was not such a fan of the boy wizard.

In news that you really couldn't make up, it has emerged that J.K. Rowling's name came up in discussions regarding recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And she was rejected.

Not because of her nationality or Bush's aversion to Professor Snape's hair. But because various members of the White House staff were worried about associating with witchcraft. ...

[brilliant snooty English butler]Telephone for you, Sir. A Mister Darwin, Sir.[/brilliant snooty English butler]

OMFG

...and it's not a bloody bill, it's a peak.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

If Obama can't defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed

One year on, the world still looks to the US and holds its breath. The fate of a global climate treaty rests in American hands

What's the difference between religion and mental illness?

No, there's no punchline.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ohio armed robber asked victim for a date
'We are not exactly sure what he was thinking', admits cop
By Lester Haines
Posted in Bootnotes, 9th September 2009 14:04 GMT

An Ohio man who robbed a couple at gunpoint was arrested when he returned to ask his female victim for a date, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Stephfon Bennett, 20, together with two other men, relieved Daniel Martinez Batista and Diana Martinez of their wallets outside their Columbus apartment on Saturday night.

A neighbour threatened the trio of miscreants, who legged it. However, less than two hours later, Bennett returned to the address to ask Ms Martinez if she fancied hooking up. ...

What a maroon!

... "She says she goes hunting and lives off animal meat - I've never seen it," said Mr Johnston, 19. "I've never seen her touch a fishing pole.

"She had a gun in her bedroom and one day she asked me to show her how to shoot it. I asked her what kind of gun it was, and she said she didn't know, because it was in a box under her bed."

The former governor, who stepped down in early July, citing the "insane" amount of time she had been forced to spend addressing "frivolous" ethics complaints filed against her, also built her reputation on traditional Republican family values - but Mr Johnston has claimed that she is an absentee mother.

"The Palins didn't have dinner together and they didn't talk much as a family," he told Vanity Fair, adding that the mother of five never came home later than five and would often disappear for an hour-long bath.

"She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store.

If she wanted food, we'd get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell."

Despite describing herself as a "hockey mom with lipstick" - a line which delighted Republicans at her forceful national convention debut last year - Mrs Palin rarely attended her son Track's hockey games, claimed Mr Johnston.

The young man fell out with the family after the birth of his child with Bristol, the eldest daughter. He even claimed that Mrs Palin often spoke of adopting the baby and passing it off as her own. "I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn't want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid," he said. ...

New depths of absurdity, kids. Meddling morons.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

The Pope blames atheists for global warming. Pope Benedict is claiming atheists are responsible for the destruction of the environment. The Pope made the claims in a recent speech given at the Vatican. The claim is a puzzling attack on atheism that frankly makes little sense.

Excerpt from the Pope's speech:

“Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the ‘final authority,’ and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.”

The irony is that any historical evaluation places the blame for global warming and the degradation of the planet firmly in the lap of Christians and the Catholic church. The Holy Bible, a book atheists firmly reject for good reason, claims that God gave man dominion over the earth. Christians, including Catholics, took these words to heart. They used those words as carte blanche, a justification for all manners of planetary abuse.

Christianity, and Catholicism, are historically anti-environmental. In fact, if blame is to be placed for the current global environmental crisis, it is to be placed squarely upon the Judeo-Christian tradition. The fact that Christianity is anti-environmental is no secret. Indeed, many Christians have taken a perverse pride in claiming their dominion. For example, James Watt, who became U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, wrote an influential and damning article entitled "Ours Is the Earth". Watt, speaking for countless Christians, made it abundantly clear that for believers the earth is "merely a temporary way station on the road to eternal life...The earth was put here by the Lord for His people to subdue and to use for profitable purposes on their way to the hereafter."

For those of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the earth is, for all intents and purposes, disposable, nothing but a waiting room for eternity. As such the waiting room can be plundered in any fashion. After all, the earth is but a temporary and transient thing of no consequence when compared to the promise of eternity (pie in the sky, yum yum!). ...


Ta much for the afternoon's boggle o_0, dear Glenn321

Ta much, dear Shell42970

God Hates Elms T-Shirt
By Daniel Florien on August 21, 2009 in Atheism, Christianity, Humor, Superstition.

Yesterday, while ridiculing those who believe a supernatural being sent a tornado to Minneapolis because of TEH GAYS!!!, PZ Myers said:

"It seems, if you look at the conference schedule, that the liberal Lutherans were contemplating making some friendly statements about their gay congregants, so obviously this was an example of gentle smiting of sodomites.

Of course, also on the schedule were bible study and hymn singing — god hates “Onward Christian Soldiers”. And a middle school in North Branch — god hates education. It knocked down many trees — god hates elms."

God hates elms. What a great idea for a t-shirt, I thought. Some commenters on PZ’s site also thought so, so a friend and I whipped one up:


...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

...“It’s awful that people react to art in this manner,” said Amy Boswin, director of the Novato Ignacio Art Gallery near Petaluma. “If they opened a biology textbook, they’d see a lot more risqué stuff than that.” ...



Let us ahem pray those fuckwits never do open a biology book: they'd want them banned too, also.

OMFG
Ta much, dear Zaxy

NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Authorities temporarily closed one of the terminals at New York's busy LaGuardia airport on Saturday morning and took a man into custody after discovering what turned out to be a fake bomb in his bag.

Most of the airport's main terminal was closed at 5:30 a.m./0930 GMT and travelers were allowed to return about 3 1/2 hours later. Jack Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the terminal's Concourse C, where the man was taken into custody, would remain closed until a crime scene investigation had been completed.

Kelly described the suspect as emotionally disturbed and New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said the man was drunk.

"He was carrying a hoax device," Browne said. "The hoax device consisted of batteries and wires in a duffle bag." ...



Flash!

From the This Never Happens Department: Drunken Idiot Does Something Idiotic, Ruins Everyone Else's Day!

Film @ eleven

The race row that has inflamed the US took a bizarre twist last night when a Boston police officer was suspended for abusing Harvard scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates and calling him "a banana eating jungle monkey".

Hours before President Barack Obama was to sit down at the White House for a beer with Professor Gates and Sergeant James Crowley to calm tensions over the academic's arrest, it emerged that another police officer, Justin Barrett, was accused of sending an insulting email about Professor Gates to a local newspaper.

In a furious and at times ungrammatical rant at a reporter on the Boston Globe newspaper, the anonymous email, allegedly written by Officer Barrett said: "If I were the officer he (Professor Gates) verbally assaulted like a banana eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (capsicum spray)."

Later in the email, quoted in full on the website MyFoxBoston.com. the 36-year-old former English teacher suggested the headline for the newspaper's article on Professor Gates' arrest should read: "Conduct Unbecoming a Jungle Monkey - back to one's roots."

The Boston Police Department suspended Mr Barrett when the existence of the email became known. A spokesman for the police force said in a statement: "Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis placed Officer Justin Barrett, 36, on administrative leave pending the outcome of a termination hearing.

"Commissioner Davis was made aware of a correspondence with racist remarks and yesterday re[lie]ved the officer of his gun and badge." ...

Change that nickname from 'crazy cracker' to 'stupid cracker,' dood.

... In most countries, you have two major political parties or broad factions. They disagree on many things. But both begin by accepting certain suppositions. I would imagine that in Britain, for instance, both Labour and the Tories think healthcare for all or at least most people is a good idea. They have different notions about how to do it, but the goal is agreed upon. I gather also that the Tories accept the basic idea that global warming exists and that man's actions have contributed to it.

But American conservatism does not believe healthcare for all or most is a desired outcome at all. Conservatives believe people are responsible for their own healthcare, and that people who don't have it just aren't showing enough pluck and initiative. Last Thursday, one Republican congressman announced that the party wouldn't even offer its own version of healthcare legislation – and this man runs the party's so-called Solutions Group! And on climate change, of course, most deny its existence, and all deny that human activity has played any role in it whatsoever. ...



gop = grand obstructionist party

... There's no doubt that history education needs a boost in Texas.

According to test results, one-third of students think the Magna Carta was signed by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and 40% believe Lincoln's 1863 emancipation proclamation was made nearly 90 years earlier at the constitutional convention.

... No More “Birthers” on CNN: The head of the cable news network sent a memo to the staff of Lou Dobbs’ crazy nativist news hour politely informing them that the so-called “birther” story — Dobbs’ latest hobby horse, in which he muses extemporaneously about whether the president is a U.S.-citizen — is officially “dead — because anyone who is still not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.” This couldn’t have anything to do with the thorough pantsing Crossfire-killer Jon Stewart gave Dobbs the other night, could it? ...

Thanks again, Mr Stewart!

... So. Right. First off, a black man named Barack Hussein Obama becomes a Senator and delivers a rousing speech on national television. Certain people are going to assume he is a Muslim, and certain other people are going to try to convince everyone that he's a Muslim. Rumors and smears like this are hard to track back to individuals, as they form and are molded in lengthy chain email forwards and pseudonymous message board posts. But Andy Martin, a crazy and litigious antisemite, is credited with amping up the Muslim rumors mere weeks after the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His "press release" was picked up, of course, by Free Republic, a message board for the nuttiest of the right-wing nuts. Martin's "secret Muslim" theory led to the "Islamic madrassa" story.

In October of 2008, Martin filed another of his many, many lawsuits, this one against the state of Hawaii, demanding they "verify" Barack Obama's birth certificate. At this point, though, Martin was claiming that Obama's "real father" was a radical Hawaiian journalist, so it is not entirely clear if he is actually a birther, or just a fucked-up attention-seeker. ...

... Six months after pledging to get tough on anti-social gangs, the Tories have come up with their master plan - seize their mobile phones and bikes. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has said that taking away a hoodie's mobile for a month would not only "disrupt" gang activity in the area but serve as a stiff lesson to the culprit.

"This would go to the heart of what matters to a Nokia generation of young people," he declared. And if they don't learn their lesson, he wants to go a step further and confiscate their bicycles as well. "In areas where there is a genuine gang culture, such a step could also give police an additional tool to disrupt gang activity," said Grayling.

Labour MPs could hardly stifle their laughter at the proposals, pointing out that the plan has a fatal flaw at its heart.

"Where do the Tories think these hoodie gangs get their mobile phones and bicycles from in the first place? They are stolen!" one Labour backbencher told the Mole. "There's even a test for some gang members, to steal a phone.

"Far from making things better, this proposal could make it worse as anti-social youths have to steal more phones and bikes to replace the ones that have been confiscated. It's bonkers." ...

Stupid; don't wanna insult cows; etc

Stupid...well, I can't very well call her a cow - that's insulting a noble beast.

Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed
Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front's most inflammatory policies
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

One of the British National party's first MEPs' attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as "silly" teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front's most overtly racist policies.

In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front's general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the "extinction" of whites everywhere.

The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party's policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."

The manifesto claimed the UK had been "swamped" by "racially incompatible Afro-Asians" and that "Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly".

It continued: "The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the 'cultural enrichment' promised to us by the multiracialists." And it claimed: "We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde ... The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man."

Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a "greater cognitive ability" than non-whites. He attacked the influence of "people of Jewish ethnic origin" and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world. ...



The little green donuts are callin' ya, andy boy!

Not that I watch any real Yankistani tv shows either, let alone "reality" tv.

May 31, 2009
The teenage baby boom in Gloucester, Massachusetts
One Year On: A mysterious spate of teenage pregnancies has shaken up one isolated American town
Caroline Scott

The story really began at the monthly committee meeting at Gloucester High, a school in Massachusetts with 1,200 pupils. Around the table, along with the other business of the day — school food, parking, litter — someone raised the thorny issue of teenage pregnancy: “We really need to talk about the daycare centre. We’re licensed by the state to take seven children and we have 10 girls pregnant at the school right now...”

The reaction in the room was incendiary. The norm was maybe three or four unplanned pregnancies across the age groups per year. In March, 10 girls in the 10th grade were pregnant; by April, the figure had risen to 15. By June, as school broke for the summer, there were 18 pregnancies. The principal, Joseph Sullivan, announced that he believed there was “a clique who may have entered into a pact”. That extraordinary statement was picked up by Time magazine and the story went global. ...

... Principal Joseph Sullivan, always set against offering any kind of contraception in school, despite the school doctor reportedly having run more than 150 pregnancy tests last year, stepped down from his post to head a Roman Catholic elementary school in Wakefield, several miles away. And in October, under a new principal, Bill Goodwin, the school committee voted unanimously for condoms and birth-control pills to be distributed, with parents’ consent, to all students.

Atheism ‘is the greatest of all evils’, says outgoing Archbishop of Westminster
21 May 2009

TAKE a deep breathe … you are about to be annoyed. Very annoyed indeed. [Ed. Note: May I take a deep breath instead? I get even more annoyed when I take a deep breathe.]

In the same week in which the unremitting cruelty of Catholic institutions towards vulnerable youngsters in Ireland was exposed, the outgoing Archbishop of Westminster had the sheer gall to identify “lack of faith” as “the greatest of all evils.”

According to The Times, the rancid Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – who recently said that secularists and atheists were “not fully human” – blamed atheism for war and destruction, and suggested it was a greater evil even than sin itself. ...



Oh, so athiests started the crusades? I learned something new. I can go home.

Daaaang! You done got wrong!

£500,000 Government report: commuters want trains to run on time
A two-year-long, 178-page report that cost taxpayers £500,000 has arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that commuters want trains to run on time.
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 3:10PM BST 24 May 2009

... Tony Ambrose, of the passenger campaign group More Train Less Strain, said: "It beggars belief. It's bad enough having the highest fares and worst overcrowding in Europe without the added unpleasantness of finding out you have been filmed without your permission.

"The report is astonishing. It's a rehash, in consultant-speak, of what is blindingly obvious to every traveller."

The RSSB defended its study, however, insisting it was a "practical appraisal of real-life situations".

A spokesman added: "In total, about one hour of filming was undertaken, based on one person travelling for four to five days."

The report comes just a week after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was attacked for spending £300,000 on a three-year study that proved ducks liked rainy weather.

BNP London assembly member could be banned from Buckingham Palace party
Deputy chief executive of Greater London Authority tells Richard Barnbrook he will be barred from garden party unless he agrees to take guest other than BNP leader Nick Griffin
Hélène Mulholland and Rachel Williams
Friday 22 May 2009

A BNP assembly member who planned to take the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, to a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen was today told he would be barred from attending unless he agreed to take another guest.

In a letter to Richard Barnbrook, Jeff Jacobs, the deputy chief executive of the Greater London Authority, also warned him to "desist" from creating any further adverse publicity.

Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London assembly, yesterday said he had no intention of changing his choice of companion for the garden party, which takes place in June and is being held to recognise community service.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, intervened after learning of Barnbrook's intention to take the BNP leader with him.

Six London assembly members have been nominated to receive some of the 25 pairs of tickets offered to the GLA by Buckingham Palace.

Johnson accused Barnbrook of turning a "happy event" into a political stunt. The mayor wrote to the chairman of the London assembly, Darren Johnson, to see whether the invitation could be rescinded. ...

I’M NOT A RACIST, SAYS ‘W*GS OUT’ BNP BIGOT
22nd May 2009
By Tom Hutchison

A BNP candidate is facing suspension for setting up a vile Facebook page demanding all blacks “go home”.

But Eddy O’Sullivan, 49, who is standing in the Euro elections, has denied being racist.

He set his web status on the site to “W*gs go home, Gurkhas very welcome”.

Mr O’Sullivan thought he had set his Facebook profile to private. But he accidentally made it public, exposing his sick beliefs.

The Salford party organiser, a driving instructor, is now facing suspension after admitting the comments.

In one he said of black people: “They are nice people oh yeah but can they not be nice people in the f***ing Congo or… Bongoland or whatever?” ...



File under "More bnp Brilliance."

Ah, more bnp brilliance...........

... The Pope is isolated and fails to adequately consult his advisers, said a Vatican source with 20 years' knowledge of the Holy See.

Another Vatican insider described Pope Benedict's four-year-old papacy as "a disaster", recalling the pontiff's previous inflammatory remarks on Islam and homosexuality.

"He's out of touch with the real world," the Italian insider said. "On the condom issue, for example, there are priests and bishops in Africa who accept that condoms are a key part of the fight against Aids, and yet the pope adheres to this very conservative line that they encourage promiscuity. The Vatican is far removed from the reality on the ground." ...



Well, whaddya expect from an ignorant, kiddie-fiddling-encouraging, dress- and Prada shoe-wearing ex-nazi?

As frightening as it is disgusting. Exile the folks responsible for this to Chernobyl and see how they like it.

Why have humans consistently throughout history put idiots in charge of the most important things?

They've already begun widening it elsewhere, without first discussing it with homeowners in the area, and they have dug up many beautiful old trees and have destroyed many attrative plantings.
The roadwork is also snarling traffic there far worse than it had been when it was still narrow.

It's fiction, stupid!

Send them to Detroit - we know what to do with their like here.

Selling crrrrap with sex is bad enough - now they're selling crrrap with violence, and state the ads are aimed at teenagers.

Fuck off.

Getcher Karma, pal, and good luck with it.

They should be listening to the "farmers" and the WHO!

How popular is pork in such a virulently muslim country, anyway? The whole thing makes my brain hurt.

Old reagan-in-a-dress has always been an evil cow.

This cow's cluelessness well and truly has no bounds. It's fair astonishing.

Priests shoudn't be required to be celebate nor exclusively male - it's not natural. All priests should be well-adjusted folks who are happily married and don't abuse their/others' kids.
How on Earth can someone who does not live in the modren world give helpful advice or information to those who do?

Anyone who'd take seriously the spoutings of an old nazi in a dress, funny hat, and Prada shoes needs medication.

Steal This Phrase

Category:
Posted on: March 4, 2009 9:30 AM, by Ed Brayton

Someone who comments here under the name grasshopper has invented a brilliant phrase for the Rush Limbaughs of the world: ignorexia verbosa. Pass it on.

The rethuglicunts are so clueless and evil. Let's send them to Afghanistan, shall we?

Man 'finds US troop data' on MP3
Tuesday, 27 January 2009

A New Zealand man says he found confidential data about US military personnel on an MP3 player he bought from a thrift shop in Oklahoma.

Chris Ogle, 29, said: "The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be looking."

The files included names and telephone numbers of American soldiers, according to reports by TV New Zealand.

One expert says the files are unlikely to compromise security, as most of them are from 2005.

Some included a warning that the release of its contents is "prohibited by federal law".

Embarrassment

As well as personal details of US soldiers, such as social security numbers, the files also listed pregnant female troops and apparent mission briefings in Afghanistan. ...

January 25, 2009
Loss of British Council staff data disk stings David Miliband
David Leppard

THE foreign secretary, David Miliband, faced embarrassment last night after it emerged that a computer disk containing confidential bank details of up to 2,000 public servants working for the British Council has been lost.

The council — the Foreign Office’s cultural arm — admitted that the disk, which held the names, National Insurance numbers, salary and bank account details of staff on its UK payroll, went missing while in transit last month.

The incident is the latest in a string of losses which has led to criticism of the government’s handling of sensitive data.

In November a memory stick holding data said to give access to tax and benefit records was lost in a pub car park, forcing officials to suspend the government’s gateway website.

After that loss, Gordon Brown promised that Whitehall rules on data handling would be toughened yet again.

However, it emerged this weekend that a month later the British Council’s data disk had been lost by TNT, the courier firm, in transit to its offices.

A spokesman for the council said the information — which was compressed and therefore difficult to read — was part of a monthly report from its payroll data supplier.

Although the British Council is at arm’s length from the Foreign Office, Miliband is still responsible for its oversight.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman who uncovered the loss, said: “This is another instance in a long line of slapdash data protection by government departments.

“If Whitehall cannot look after its own data records . . . it should not be trusted with the personal information of every citizen as it wants with the identity card scheme.”


Amen. You took the words right out of my brain.

Oh, boy. More proof that the catholic church is completely fucked.

Well, what else could we expect from a pope what's an ex-nazi?

I couldn't even finish the damn book. It made me as nauseous as Nausea.

I'd hope lush windbag has heart failure, but it hasn't got a heart.

Just shut yr mouth, palin.

Bad things always happen when religious freaks meddle with politics.

Peru's top court says drunk workers can't be fired
Thu Jan 15, 2009

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision that was criticized by the government on Wednesday for setting a dangerous precedent. ...

Drunk worker reportedly starts fire in Moscow museum
Sun Jan 11, 2009

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A drunk electrician started a fire at a world-famous Moscow art museum after he fell asleep while smoking a cigarette, a police source told RIA news agency Sunday. ...

... Calls to the Army and the Pentagon about how many men and women in their 50s are being called back to duty were not returned Wednesday. ...

Dontcha just love it that the racists themselves invariably prove their theories faulty?

Dontcha just love it when people get all hotheaded and argumentative over mythology?

Craptastic.

Detroit council rejects shot at charter revision
BY NAOMI R. PATTON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
November 19, 2008

Despite evidence of a city charter full of vague language that also provides a lopsided balance of power tipping in the mayor's favor, the Detroit City Council rejected a resolution Tuesday that would have placed charter revision on the Feb. 24 special election ballot.

The resolution to revise the 1997 Detroit City Charter, offered by council members Kwame Kenyatta and Brenda Jones, was met with resistance from other council members who feared a revision would restructure the council from being elected at-large to being elected by districts.

The resolution failed 4-3. ...




Oh, man, I just can't wait for the next election. These idiots must go.

militia-gan, my militia-gan.

Idiots.

...I do not believe in teaching children self esteem or that they should feel good about themselves, because they should not..... ...We are born with a desire to sin. We are all born God hating and evil. ...




That says it all. Must really suck being its kid, and getting fed daily loads of this black magic bullshit.

Every day I am given further evidence that some of "us" are in fact a different species.

They should put him away before he hurts himself.

ms sutton-smith? A Mr Darwin on the telephone for you, madame.

NHS: Personal details of 18,000 staff 'lost in the post'
The personal details of nearly 18,000 NHS staff have gone missing in the post, it has emerged.
By Aislinn Simpson
15 Sep 2008

Four computer discs containing the details of 17,990 current and former staff were lost in July when they were sent between Whittington Hospital NHS Trust in north London and McKesson, a firm providing IT payroll services.

They contained the names, dates of birth, national insurance numbers, start dates and pay details of all staff of Whittington Hospital NHS Trust, Islington Primary Care Trust, Camden Primary Care Trust and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust.

They also contained the addresses of some staff, although Whittington trust insisted they did not contain anyone's personal bank account details.

The trust said the discs went missing when an envelope they were in was placed in a post tray marked "recorded delivery" on Tuesday 22 July. But there was no record of the discs being sent.

David Sloman, chief executive of the trust, said each one had a "separate alpha-numeric passwords on them which unless found by expert hackers are very difficult to break".

He apologised to all those affected by the blunder, saying it was the first time information had been sent through the post and that the member of staff thought to be responsible has been suspended.

"It is trust policy to send any such information by courier," he said.

"To our knowledge this is the one and only time that such information was directed through the post. ..."

Police lose memory stick with top secret 'terrorist' information
By Daily Mail Reporter
15th September 2008

A computer memory stick said to contain top-secret information on terror suspects has been lost by police, it has been reported.

The black 4GB stick went missing after being taken out of a police station by an officer on patrol in the West Midlands last Thursday.

Officers have raided at least one property in the hunt for the device.

Officials spent the weekend co-ordinating efforts to find it and it is understood that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has already been informed.

West Midlands Police said it could not comment on the contents of the device, but local media reports suggested it held 'top-secret information on terror suspects'.

A force spokeswoman said: 'We can confirm West Midlands Police is investigating the loss of a data memory stick.

'We are conducting searches in an attempt to recover the lost item. We will not comment in relation to the contents of that memory stick. ...'

Further proof that evil is stupid, girls and boys.

Love triangle behind Dutch hijack hoax
Fri Aug 29, 2008

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A telephone threat saying a Dutch holiday flight would be hijacked turned out to be a hoax call by a jealous lover, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Friday.

The plane operated by Dutch budget airline Transavia was due to leave Rotterdam for Bodrum in Turkey on Tuesday but was evacuated after emergency services received a phone call saying it would be hijacked.

The Dutch public prosecutor said on Friday there were no indications that the plane was at real risk, and it was now treating the case as a hoax. ...




The last five letters in 'jealousy' are 'lousy.'

WTF?! Wherever will shrub find soldiers for this? blackfrickenwater?

Moments like this make me treasure being a Yankistani.

Blind faith indeed.

Men linked to robberies took pictures of themselves
By AMBER HUNT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
July 16, 2008

If you rob a business and steal the clerks' cell phones, be sure to take photographs of you, your cohort and your gun with one of the phones' built-in cameras.

The police appreciate it.

Two men may be linked to as many as four armed robberies in Macomb County as a result of photos they took of themselves and a gun with the cell phone camera, Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said.

Timothy Burg, 20, of Clinton Township, and 18-year-old Duane Sain, of Redford, are each charged with one count of armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Both charges carry maximum penalties of life in prison. ...




Bubba, Killer, and Stony Mike'll sure be laughin' at those two for many years.

I'd far prefer a LeatherWIngs presidency to a mccain one any day of the century, Gentle Stumblers. We've had more than enough rich, elderly, drunken, fat, ignorant, stupid white men on our throne already: it's time for someone else's turn.

If we must have them, let's build all 45 nuke plants in WALNUTS!' backyard and then see how he likes them.

More secret files found on train
Sunday, 15 June 2008

More confidential government files were found on a commuter train earlier this week, it has been revealed.

The Independent on Sunday says it was handed the documents, which cover fighting global terrorist funding, drugs trafficking and money laundering.

The files were found on the same day as the BBC was handed top secret papers on al-Qaeda. A Treasury spokesman said the government was "extremely concerned".

The Tories are calling for controls to protect secret official information.

The documents, about a meeting of financial crime experts, apparently include briefing notes for a meeting of the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to be held in 11 Downing Street next week.

The papers were found on train bound for London Waterloo on 11 June, the same day that another batch of papers relating to intelligence assessments of Iraq and al-Qaeda were handed to the BBC after being left by a senior official on a train.

The Cabinet Office and the Metropolitan Police launched inquiries into the documents handed into the BBC - the latest in a series of blunders involving sensitive official information.

But Scotland Yard said it was not involved in investigating the latest case.

BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg said it was uncertain whether the latest documents were also top secret.

The documents seen by the BBC should not have left Whitehall but it is not yet clear if the new files were permitted to have been taken out, our correspondent added.

"Some of the information is already on the public domain, but another lapse is deeply embarrassing for the government," she said. ...




Kinell!

These are bound feet, not high heel-wearin' feet. GIYM

Police: Texas man trying to cash $360 billion check arrested
Friday, May 2, 2008


FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Charles Ray Fuller must have been planning one big record company.

The 21-year-old North Texas man was arrested last week for trying to cash a $360 billion check, saying he wanted to start a record business, authorities said. Tellers at the Fort Worth bank were immediately suspicious - perhaps the 10 zeros on a personal check tipped them off, according to investigators.

Fuller, of suburban Crowley, was arrested on a forgery charge, police said. He was released after posting $3,750 bail.

Fuller said his girlfriend's mother gave him the check to start a record business, but bank employees who contacted the account's owner said the woman told them she did not give him permission to take or cash the check, according to police. ...

our flourishing economy
Bush Fixes Economy Whines About Congress

Dorkus W. Dildo had a press conference today, in his garden. He is very rich and has an entire hospital to attend to him and bombs anything that makes him confused and no matter what crime he does, he never gets sent to prison, so he is exactly like ordinary poor Americans like you. Bush Junior has heard about how maybe the "economic" is a problem, so he told those losers who still have to act like he's important -- you know, the White House correspondents -- that he "figured out" what was wrong and guess what, it's Congress, which has Democrats.

"The average person wants to know whether or not we know that they're paying higher gasoline prices and they're worried about staying in their homes," Bush said. Yes, that's a bunch of jumbled nonsense with a slight relation to the subject, so Consumer Confidence immediately plunged to its lowest level in nearly six years and consumer sentiment plunged to its lowest level in 26 years and inflation rose again and home prices are falling faster than ever with "no sign of the bottom" and the number of Americans who can even dream of affording a little vacation in the next six months fell to a 30-year low.

Said Bush Junior: "I repeatedly submitted proposal to help address the problems. Time after time, Congress chose to block them."

Nobody has any idea what he's talking about, or even cares about how he thinks he "repeatedly submitted proposal."

Congress and the White House did agree to send everybody in America a little bit of money, and those checks will start arriving this week. Many people plan to "splurge" by spending their Economic Stimulus money on the heating bill, or a 50-lb. sack of rice, or half a tank of gas. ...




Astonishing that he can't even learn to speak Yankistani let alone English, but can make $$$ hand over fist while we change jobs and/or move so we can afford the gasoline we use.

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital
Tue Apr 22, 2008
By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said. ...




Now, what was I just typing about entering the modren world?
Men who believe in penis-theft by witchcraft probably also believe that screwing a virgin cures STDs, and that pulling out prevents pregnancy.

Bush seeks game show help on federal budget
Tue Apr 22, 2008

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, making a highly unusual appearance on U.S. television game show "Deal or No Deal," sought show host Howie Mandel's help to deal with the federal budget in upcoming talks with Congress.

"Howie, I don't know if you're free to come to Washington anytime soon but I have to reach an agreement with Congress on the federal budget. How'd you like to host a $3 trillion dollar 'Deal or No Deal,'" Bush joked. ...




This pillock's attempt at making light of the economy he destroyed is akin to a bomber pilot cracking jokes about the towns he's blown up.
Really funny, shrub.

Man shoots self in alleged road-rage confrontation in Ariz.
Monday, April 21, 2008

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) -- Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow motorist in Tempe, Ariz.

Tempe police spokesman Brandon Banks says David Lopez is expected to survive and could face charges including disorderly conduct, reckless display of a firearm and felony flight from police.

Banks says Monday that after Lopez shot himself he tried to evade police by driving away but crashed his car and was arrested as he fled on foot. ...




The other one's an idiot too: he tried to run away from the cops and was busted for drunken driving.
I'm glad we have such lax gun laws. I feel so safe.

I sure hope this witling lost its job. I'd've had his sack in a sack as well as sacking him.
Dear 52Joan sent me a blog post that brought me here.

What a great, stinking, fly-ridden pile of horse pucky. Goddamned mercenaries.

Plans for anti-terror unit found in garbage
Thu Mar 20, 2008

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will probe how blueprints for the new headquarters of an elite military counter-terrorism unit ended up in a pile of garbage, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said Thursday.

The Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, housed inside an armed forces base in Trenton, Ontario, is designed to cope with the aftermath of an attack using weapons of mass destruction.

The 26 blueprints were contained in one of seven defense ministry files that a passer-by found on top of garbage bags on an Ottawa street. The other six files are still missing. ...




Ah, stockwell day. His is a mighty intellect, teh equal of harper's and shrub's, poor lad.

May all those who "think" this way reach complete and total enlightenment, and on all levels. They're an embarassment to the species.

Pagan Arabia worshipped a fun-loving, cheerful, joyous Sun Goddess who was much beloved. She was anciently called Suwa, and later Shams.
Their sullen, straight-laced, uptight, jealous-as-hell-of-the-Sun-Goddess Moon God was nowhere near as popular among the people.

That sullen Moon God's name is Allah.

This explains much.

What excuse have the xian god-botherers got? They didn't elevate an unpleasant character - although His Dad sure reads like a thug gangster boss - so what's their problem?

I think along the same lines as Lorax. If some Jews, or Buddhists, or Wiccans, or Hairy Fishnuts showed up, these narrow-minded gits would jump right outta their skins.
It's precisely the way any cult of narrow-minded gits reacts.

mr phelps is in for a big shock: one beautiful day he's gonna find himself getting poked in the bum with a pitchfork instead of being measured for wings.

Huckabee's muzzle control problem
by Jim Tankersley
December 27, 2007

Republican Mike Huckabee took his presidential campaign for a quick pheasant-hunting expedition in Iowa on Wednesday, and at one point, a reporter asked why he hadn't invited sporting enthusiast Dick Cheney along. "Because I want to survive all the way through this," Huckabee replied, in a chuckling dig at the vice president's accidental shooting of a quail-hunting partner last year.

Any good sportsman, though, couldn't miss a distinctly Cheneyesque moment in the press accounts of the former Arkansas governor's morning hunt: At one point, Huckabee's party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group's heads.

This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form.

Your Swamp correspondent, the son of a longtime hunter education instructor, grew up plying the corn rows and stream banks of rural Oregon with a Labrador retriever and a Mossberg 20-gauge pump shotgun. On our hunts for pheasant, grouse and quail, merely swinging a gun barrel in the general direction of another person was grounds for day-long banishment to the truck (which smelled like wet dog).

Suffice to say, if any of our hunting mates had pulled a stunt like Huckabee's yesterday, we never would have invited them back. It's the sort of behavior that drives safety-conscious hunters up the wall, because it reinforces a reckless, gun-totin' stereotype.

My colleague James Oliphant reports that Huckabee's party was about 75 yards away from the press corps Wednesday when a pheasant jumped up and flew toward the reporters, drawing several shots. "That was too close," he reports a cameraman saying. ...

Man Chugs Vodka At Airport, Nearly Dies
Rules Prohibit Carrying Larger Quantities Of Liquid On Planes
December 12, 2007

BERLIN -- German police said a man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after he chugged two pints of vodka because airport security said he either had to throw it out or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked. ...




A telephone call for you, sir; from a Mr Darwin, sir.

U.S. paid $32M for Iraqi base that wasn't built
By Matt Kelley, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military paid a Florida company nearly $32 million to build barracks and offices for Iraqi army units even though nothing was ever built, Pentagon investigators reported.

The project had to be abandoned because the Iraqi Defense Ministry couldn't obtain rights to the land where the headquarters were to be built, according to a report released this month by the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General. Contracting records show the buildings would have housed one brigade and three battalions of the Iraqi military in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency and capital of Anbar province.

Still, the Air Force agency overseeing the project paid contractor Ellis Environmental Group $31.9 million of the $34.2 million obligated for the project, the report said. ...




Yankistanis' tax dollars at work, kids! Isn't it wonderful?

Remember kids: only the bad guys stab you if you don't "think" the way they do. You'll also notice all the folks who don't 'believe' in evolution are rather unevolved.

Shame on that judge! He shoulda thrown the book at him - Darwin's book.

... I would have fired the guy, too. Hahn studies a particular protein family in multiple species, not just zebrafish; he publishes papers with titles like "Unexpected diversity of aryl hydrocarbon receptors in non-mammalian vertebrates: insights from comparative genomics." He does modern developmental biology, which is so tightly wrapped up in evolutionary theory they're becoming indistinguishable. How do you go off to do a post-doc in a lab without first reading up on the work, getting excited about it all, and planning to invest yourself in it? Abraham had to have read and understood the prior work of the lab, or he shouldn't have taken the job on. Announcing that he didn't like evolution is comparable to showing up in a fish lab and announcing that he didn't like to get his hands wet. It's like taking a job as a stockbroker and denouncing capitalism and refusing to make a profit. It's like wanting to work as a carpenter but declaring a deep-seated fear of hammers and saws.

If he thinks he can get a half-mil for wrongful termination on this, I'm going to march down to the local fundie church and demand a job as youth pastor, which I will prosecute by explaining the absurdity of god-belief to the little kids in Sunday School, and then I'll sue when they fire me. This isn't simply firing someone for incidental, private beliefs -- it's firing him for practices that actually conflict with the stated purpose of the job.

Abraham is now working at Liberty University, where all creationist poseurs who claim to be scientists go to die. ...

Bush: Dial 1-800-OOPS for housing help
Thu Dec 6, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. homeowners who could face crippling mortgage payments will have a hard time getting help if they call a telephone number President George W. Bush recommended on Thursday -- he gave them the wrong number.

"I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE," Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.

Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE (4673). That gets you through to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit group which offers free housing counseling for homeowners. ...

... Calls to the wrong number Bush gave out were met with a busy signal. A search on the Internet showed it belongs to the Freedom Christian Academy which offers religious-based curriculum for home schooling and is located in Ponder, Texas northwest of Dallas. ...

Store Ad: Hams 'Delicious for Chanukah'
Thursday, December 6, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) -- This was REALLY not kosher. A grocery store in Manhattan made a food faux pas, advertising hams as "Delicious for Chanukah." ...

German hairdresser finds Bundesbank plans in bin
Thu Dec 6, 2007

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Berlin hairdresser discovered top-secret plans for a safety vault at the Bundesbank's Berlin branch in a bin, the German central bank said on Thursday.

Only four weeks ago, the bank's building in western Berlin was officially opened after renovation work which cost about €150 million (£108 million).

The hairdresser found detailed drawings of the safety arrangements at the bank, including the location of people detectors, stairwells, grilled gates and measurements with the depth of the vault's floor, reported top-selling newspaper Bild.

"I wanted to throw away my rubbish and I noticed the plastic bag with the building sketches," Bild quoted the 26-year-old male hairdresser as saying. The bin was in a backyard in central Berlin.

A Bundesbank spokeswoman confirmed the Bild report, adding the bank was looking into how the plans could have ended up in a bin. ...

Man Sentenced in Bizarre Diagnosing Scam
Wednesday, December 5, 2007

MONROE, La. (AP) -- A man was sentenced to more than four years in prison for bilking friends and family out of more than $800,000 by convincing them that his wife was a government agent who could arrange to have their medical problems diagnosed by satellite imaging.

Brent Eric Finley, 38, of Rayville, was sentenced in federal court in Monroe to serve 51 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. His wife, Stacey Finley, was sentenced in August to spend 63 months in prison and both are ordered to jointly pay restitution in the amount of $873,786.94. ...

... U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said in a news release following Monday's sentencing of Brent Finley that the couple convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims' bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

The Finleys convinced their victims that, if any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment, according to a bill of information filed when the Finleys were charged in May.

"These audacious criminals should remind all of us that scam artists will go to great lengths to take our life's savings," Washington said.




It should also remind all of us how stupid some people can be.

Till Chrysler's cows come home?
Cattle could corral interest in latest Ram
November 22, 2007
BY TIM HIGGINS
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Welcome to Mootown.

Chrysler LLC wants to herd cattle down Jefferson Avenue in January to help unveil the redesigned Dodge Ram at the North American International Auto Show, according to people familiar with the company's inside wrangling. ...




This is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard/herd.

Ga. Man Tries to Deposit Fake $1M Bill
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

AIKEN, S.C. -- A bank teller in Clearwater had a million reasons not to open an account for an Augusta, Ga., man Monday, authorities said. Alexander D. Smith, 31, was charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of forgery after he walked into the bank and tried to open an account by depositing a fake $1 million bill, said Aiken County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Michael Frank.


The employee refused to open the account and called police while the man started to curse at bank workers, Frank said. ...




I told you before that Yankistanis do this stupid shit once or twice a year.

PM to Britain: Your Data is in the Mail
By Neel Shah
11/21/07

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized today for a mail snafu that has put half the country's population at risk of identity theft. Last month, it seems, a private shipping company lost track of two discs containing the names, addresses, and national insurance numbers of 25 million Brits, including everyone under the age of 16. Kind of like how you lost track of your car keys this morning!...

Texas math books wrought with errors

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Reviewers have found 109,263 errors in sample copies of math textbooks to be used next fall in Texas.

One second-grade math book, for example, has 4 plus 7 equaling 10, the San Antonio Express-News reported Friday.

Many of the errors, spread out over 164 textbooks and online materials, are blamed on faulty translation from English to Spanish....




My Spanish studies were limited to two six-week afterschool courses when I was a little kid, but I'm pretty sure 4+7=11 no matter the language.

... Frank Kakopa has been paid 7,500 after the Immigration Service wrongly held him in prison for two days.

Mr Kakopa, originally from Zimbabwe, was on a short break with his wife and young children in 2005, when he was stopped at Belfast City Airport.

He had proof he lives in England but was still strip-searched and jailed.

His work manager had also confirmed both his legal residency and employment position.

Eileen Lavery from the Equality Commission said she had concerns over why Mr Kakopa was singled out and held in Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn, as he had "an enormous amount of documentation".

"Why pick on him? Other than I think because he is black," she said. ...




This man should have got a fuckload more than 7 and a half grand!

Stupid Old White Man Claims Blacks Are Stupid - film at eleven.

Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is 'a Nightmare'
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: October 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration's handling of the war "incompetent" and said the result was "a nightmare with no end in sight." ...

US man seeks change for $1m note
Tuesday, 9 October 2007

A man who handed over a counterfeit million-dollar bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket and asked for change has been arrested.

Police told the BBC the man became abusive when a manager at the Giant Eagle store confiscated the fake note.

He broke an electronic funds-transfer machine at the counter and reached for a scanner gun, said police.

There is no real US bill worth $1m (490,000). Since 1969, the $100 note has been the highest in circulation.




Believe it or else, this crrrap actually happens in Yankistan once in a while. The last time I'd read a story like this was either last year or two years ago, and the guy was trying to get a wallyworld cashier to give him change for a $1,000,000 bill.
Also, how can it be considered "counterfeit" if the real thing never existed anyway??

Security Bulletin Problem Creates Message Flood
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: October 4, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 -- It started off early Wednesday as an innocuous request from a North Carolina businessman to the Homeland Security Department. He was responding to a daily antiterrorism bulletin by asking that it be sent to another e-mail address.

But by afternoon, a programming flaw involving the "reply" function transformed that e-mail message into a flood of more than 2.2 million messages nationwide that clogged the e-mail accounts of government and private experts on domestic security, including the operators of an Illinois nuclear power station.

Along the way, dozens of the recipients including federal employees, security officers and local officials exchanged lighthearted remarks about random topics like astrological signs and wine preferences.

"It's good here in D.C.," Bill Miller wrote from the Office of Emergency Programs in the Treasury Department. "Just a bit muggy!"

Such accidental mass e-mail exchanges often occur in the corporate world. But because this occurred in a network of government and private officials dedicated to preventing and responding to terrorist attacks, it generated disbelief and even anger. ...

... The report is a summary, largely based on news reports, on domestic security, like a report Wednesday on an Ethiopian who told an AirTran employee at Logan International Airport in Boston that he had explosives and was a member of Al Qaeda.

Anytime anyone simply clicked on "reply" to the e-mail message that delivered the report, the new message was sent back to the department and then to all 7,500 list subscribers, resulting in the more than 2.2 million messages. ...




Dunno about you, but I feel really safe knowing these folks are in charge.
More:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9040878&pageNumber=1
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/6304

North Korea's Kim gets perfect gift: illegal films
Wed Oct 3, 2007

SEOUL (Reuters) - In communist North Korea, it is a crime to watch films from the South. But they make an ideal gift for its revered leader and film buff, Kim Jong-il.

A stack of DVD films were among the presents South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun handed Kim -- reputedly also a film director in his youth -- on Wednesday at the start of only the second summit between leaders of the divided Koreas.

Among the dozens of discs was one of South Korea's most popular TV dramas, "Jewel in the Palace", about a cook for the royal family in the days when Korea was unified and starring Lee Yong-ae, widely thought to be Kim's favourite actress.

Nervous of illustrating the stark difference between the impoverished hermit North and its very wealthy, democratic neighbour, analysts say Pyongyang prohibits the import of films from the South. ...




A slight misquotation of leona helmsley:
"Laws are for the little people."

"Cocaine's a helluva drug."

"Childrens do learn," Bush tells school kids
Wed Sep 26, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centrepiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76.

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said. ...




Damn. He can't even 'talk American,' let alone speak English.

Will this moron be charged with littering?

When words get in the way, Bush goes phonetic
Wed Sep 26, 2007
By Matt Spetalnick

NEW YORK (Reuters) - How do you keep a leader as verbally gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush from making even more slips of the tongue?

When Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the White House inadvertently showed exactly how -- with a phonetic pronunciation guide on the teleprompter to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

The White House was left scrambling to explain after a marked-up draft of Bush's speech popped up briefly on the U.N. Web site as he delivered his remarks, giving a rare glimpse of the special guidance he gets for major addresses.

It included phonetic spellings for French President Nicolas Sarkozy (sar-KO-zee), a friend, and Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee), a target of U.S. human rights criticism.

Pronunciations were also provided for Kyrgyzstan (KEYR-geez-stan), Mauritania (moor-EH-tain-ee-a) and the Zimbabwe capital Harare (hah-RAR-ray).

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the draft, labelled the 20th version and complete with typos and speechwriters' cellphone numbers, had been turned over in advance to help U.N. interpreters who must simultaneously translate leaders' speeches into several languages. ...




I am ahem Speechless.

Drunk man gets trapped in ex's chimney
September 19, 2007

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) -- Firefighters had to tear though a wall to rescue an intoxicated man who became stuck while trying to climb down a chimney into the residence of his former girlfriend.

Alejandro Valencio said he was drunk when he got into the chimney about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.

"Everyone do stupid things sometimes when they're drunk," he said. ...

... "I told them to leave him in the chimney and let him die," said Deweese, who received misdemeanor citations for disorderly conduct and interfering with a firefighter. ...

... "I've dated a lot of psychos in my life, but nobody like that," Deweese said. ...

A telephone call for you, Mr Wilkinson; a Mr Darwin calling.

What a dumb sonofabitch. How much you wanna bet he also doesn't wash his hands after he uses the bathroom?

Bank robber uses own check in robbery
September 11, 2007

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) -- A man robbing a bank demanded the money by writing a note on one of his own checks, authorities say. Not surprisingly, he was caught soon afterward. ...

Gonzales: 'There Is No Express Grant of Habeas Corpus In The Constitution'

Yesterday, during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed there is no express right to habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution. Gonzales was debating Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about whether the Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo detainees last year cited the constitutional right to habeas corpus. Gonzales claimed the Court did not cite such a right, then added, "There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution."

Specter pushed back. "Wait a minute. The constitution says you can't take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?" Specter told Gonzales, "You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General." ...




Don't let the door slam you on your arse on the way out, alfredo. We'll all miss you so much!

Report faults Virginia Tech response in shootings
Thu Aug 30, 2007
By Stuart Grudgings

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Virginia Tech University officials should have been quicker to notify students and faculty about two killings on campus hours before the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, according to a state report on Thursday.

Criticizing the university's response, the state panel convened by Gov. Tim Kaine said lives could have been saved if officials had issued an alert after student Seung-Hui Cho shot his first two victims in a dormitory on the morning of April 16. ...

Bush Wants $50 Billion More for Iraq War




Why? So he can ship it to Iraq wrapped in clingfilm, on a vast wooden pallet, for contractors to play football with before giving it to the "insurgents?"

14111 reasons to keep or make all forms of contraception legal and safe.

Rabbi: Non-Believing Soldiers Die
Aug 27, 2007
By ARON HELLER

JERUSALEM (AP) - An influential and outspoken Israeli rabbi has said Israeli soldiers died in battle because they were not ritually observant Jews, sparking outrage in Israel.

Ovadia Yosef, a highly respected religious scholar among Jews of Middle Eastern descent and the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas political movement, made the remarks on Saturday night during his weekly televised sermon.

"Is it any wonder if, heaven forbid, soldiers are killed in a war?" he said, "when they don't observe the Sabbath, they don't observe the Torah, they don't pray every day, they don't put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they're killed? It's no wonder."

His remarks were quickly denounced by bereaved parents of fallen Israeli soldiers, both observant and secular, and by lawmakers across the political spectrum.

"I think all the citizens of the country understand that these words are outrageous," said Zevulun Orlev, a lawmaker from an Orthodox Jewish hardline National Religious Party. "Any attempt to harm the bereaved families and the soldiers of Israel is unacceptable and unforgivable."

Ran Cohen, a lawmaker from the dovish Meretz party called Yosef's speech "foolish words" by a "primitive man." ...




There are black-magic practitioners in all religions, girls and boys. Evil, cruelty, lack of compassion, and stupidity are their most notable features.

... As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

[Bill] Nye [the Science Guy] was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus assuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.




Hey, waco! The 9th Century is calling - they have your missing 'h.'
Mr Wizard, get me the hell out of here!

Bush May Try to Cut Corporate Tax Rates
President Cites Need To Compete Globally
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2007

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

Advisers presented Bush with a series of ideas to restructure corporate taxes, possibly eliminating narrowly targeted breaks to pay for a broader, across-the-board rate cut. In an interview with a small group of journalists afterward, Bush said he was "inclined" to send a corporate tax package to Congress, although he expressed uncertainty about its political viability. ...




Thick as two short planks is our shrub. Cutting rich folks' taxes and/or raising them on poor folks is never, never, ever a good idea.

How very clever. Some git who's already suffering has managed to generate even more suffering for her/himself and others. May s/he reach complete and total enlightenment and on all levels.
May Oscar have great and fortunate rebirths.

Eat steel, sexist pig!

(08/01/07 -- RALEIGH) - Instead of being stabbed in the back by his best friend, a Tennessee man was shot in the back.

His best friend happens to be a dog.

Memphis police say Tuesday night, King George, a 150-pound Great Dane, accidentally knocked a .22 caliber pistol off an end table.

The gun went off and the bullet struck the 21-year-old owner in the back. ...

..."I knew he was smart, I didn't think he was that smart," the victim's fiancee, Miesha Lucas told reporters. "He was always protective. I didn't think he would be like that."

Police refused to name the victim as they do not plan to file charges in the shooting, which they've ruled as accidental.

Lucas told MyFOXMemphis.com that she fears what her fiance will do to the pet once he gets out of the hospital. ...




Remember, girls and boys: guns don't kill or hurt people. They're perfectly safe, even on an end table, with the safety off and loaded.