Happy Memorial Day

To all the men and women who have died defending our freedom: thank you.

note to self

and to anyone else who cares to take it. when trying to recover from sickness, staying up till 3am and drinking tequila is probably a bad idea.

they do exist!

i remember seeing a poster for these guys while i was in glasgow, and just ran into them on youtube: eric and the bunny boilers.



i'm not sure if the pole dancer is actually part of the band, or just an extra. never can tell with those... glasgowites? glasgowians? or whatever they call themselves.

vote no on amnesty

sign the petition here.

on which note, it looks like france is paying their immigrants to go back to their home countries. i would certainly be willing to give something like that a try, especially with our "neighbors" to the south. it would be a huge boost to mexico's economy (france is paying the equivelant of about $8,000 for a family of four to go home), which would remove some of the reason for sneaking across the border. we would, of course, have to drastically increase border security, and possibly collect some other information--fingerprints, maybe dna, etc.--to make sure that they didn't just sneak across and collect again with a different name/stolen social security number.

you mean we were supposed to keep the guns after we took them away?

who knew? apparently not some pakistani U.N. "peacekeepers," who decided that giving guns back to militias they had just disarmed was a good idea. in their defense, though, they weren't simply giving the weapons away; they were trading them for gold.

cool by association

although at the same time, i'm feeling bad i didn't pay more attention and know sooner. i was at whitworth's graduation this weekend, and ran into one of my buddies from my hall freshman year, mike allen. we talked for awhile, and then i probably became the 8 billionth person that day to ask, "so what now?" and his response blew me away: "well, i'm headed to kansas city. i got drafted by the chiefs." i've never been a huge fan of the chiefs, but i'll definitely be watching their games now.

mental torture?

A Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

however, here's a partial list of the things he considers to be "mental torture":

*taking away a picture of his daughter [mean, maybe, but torture? i think not]

*giving him new glasses with the wrong perscription [this one would qualify as mean if it were intentional, and rather stupid if it were unintentional (you'd think we'd be able to get that sort of thing right); again, i see no torture]

*shaving his beard off [if something as trivial as a beard is that important to you, it may be time to rethink your priorities; if allah is any kind of god worth the title, he'll love you anyways]

*forcibly feeding him when he went on a hunger strike [damn us for keeping him alive!]

*denying him the opportunity for recreation; and even worse, when we did let him recreate, there were "half-inflated balls in the recreation room that 'hardly bounce'" [so, you plan to blow stuff up, and we're supposed to give you recreation time? not on my watch. also, when i was in elementary school, students were occasionally kept in the classroom during recess as punishment for misbehaving. were they being "mentally tortured" as well?]

this, of course, was just too much for the poor man to take: "This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said." i bet we gave him medical treatment after that as well, horrible bastards that we are.

my favorite instances of "psychological abuse" are in the last paragraph:

*cheap, branded, unscented soap [cleanliness may be next to godliness, but does your soap really need to smell good to get the job done?]

*noisy fans [suck it up and deal with it buddy]

*the prison newsletter [is the writing actually that bad? also, nobody is forcing you to read it]

honestly, the article looks like it would fit better in a scrappleface post than on the bbc website. i had a hard time not bursting out laughing when i read it.

the importance of skin color

obama talks some sense on race. out of the whole article, though, this line jumped out at me: "In reality, colleges abandoned this concept long ago in favor of the "diversity" rationale under which Obama's kids would receive preferential treatment solely because of their skin color."

skin color is, unfortunately, still important in america. one of the RAs in my dorm freshman year was half-japanese, and spoke that language fluently, as did her younger sister. however, the other half happened to be black. her younger sister actually lost out on a job at a japanese restaurant because she didn't appear japanese, even though she was more than qualified for the position.

We Win, They Lose

I actually posted this awhile back, but had the script screwed up. So here it is again, still worth supporting... get signing.

First Name* Last Name* Email* Address City State select AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MNMS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY ZIP Yes, I'd like to receive updates about staying involved. I'm a blogger and I'd like to help. Blog URL:

To: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Democrat Leader

Congress has passed and President Bush has vetoed H.R. 1591, the Iraq Surrender Act of 2007.

This legislation, which you worked to pass, sets a timetable for surrender. It pulls the rug out from under our troops. That is shameful and wrong.

Your actions have already emboldened the enemy. Violent jihadists now know that the elected leadership of Congress would undermine the troops by holding their funding hostage to demands for surrender.

This Congress would bring us back to the dark days of the 1970s, when the world doubted our staying power. Except only much worse. Withdraw in April 2008, and on May 1, Iraq becomes an unchecked den of terrorism at the heart of the Middle East -- a new base for the same people that struck our homeland on September 11th.

I stand with our troops. I stand for victory. I support the President's veto and will urge my representatives to vote to sustain it.

There can be one and only one outcome in Iraq: We win, they lose.

they just want jobs and a better life, right?

wrong:

facts? we don't need no stinking facts!

at tufts college, such is the case.

more from card

this time, an article about mitt romney. like everything i've seen from card so far, it is well worth reading. card seems worried that anti-mormon bigotry will sink any chance romney had of winning the whitehouse, and that romney's running could actually hurt the mormon church. there are, of course, a lot of people out there who think mormons are a bit kooky; i'm one of them. but in my experience, mormons also tend to be excellent examples of "good people."

my complaint against romney is not his religious beliefs, but his continued support of "romneycare." that's one step too close to socialized healthcare--probably one of the worst ideas ever, even worse than american cheese--for my taste, so i'll have a very hard time voting for him in the primaries. giuliani lost my vote when he came out in favor of publicly funded abortions, and mccain was a no-go from the start, which pretty much knocks the "big three" in the GOP out of the race as far as i'm concerned. i like what i've heard from fred thompson so far, but i really don't know enough about him to decide to pull for him yet. and unless zell miller decides to run, and the dems actually nominate him, there's no way i'm voting democrat. there is, of course, over a year left before any of this really matters, so all of the candidates have plenty of time to either redeem themselves or dig deeper holes.

what about dads?

"Three-a-day of dairy, for healthy moms and healthy kids." what about dads? don't they need to be healthy too? i realize that the times, they are a changing, but in most families the dad is still the primary breadwinner. if dad isn't healthy, it makes it harder for him to earn said bread, which means mom and kid(s) will have problems affording their dairy products. so let's remember dads too, shall we?

liberal logic, or the lack thereof

from orson scott card:

Brod actually admits precisely what he's doing, when he says: "Fortunately, people finally seem to understand the fallacy of requiring proof."

Think about that. He calls it a fallacy to require proof.

read the whole article (on global warming)... i've always been a fan of card's novels, and he puts that same skill to use in his weekly column.

h/t pw

improbability

i never thought i'd say this, but the yankees got screwed. with two outs in the top of the eighth, willie bloomquist stole second. except for the part where he was out by about a foot. so either the umpire is a huge fan of bloomquist, or he had a really horrible angle on it. willie would go on to score on a single by kenji johjima, tying the game. the yankees were unable to score in the bottom of the eighth, and then with two outs in the top of the ninth, adrian beltre hit a solo shot to put the mariners up by one, and j.j. putz was able to shut down the yankees in the bottom of the ninth to give the mariners the win.

everything changed with "the stolen base that wasn't." if bloomquist was called out and nothing else changed, beltre wouldn't even have batted in the ninth, and the mariners would have lost. i'm glad when the mariners win (and when the yankees lose), but i much prefer it to be a legitimate victory.

Happy Birthday!

To my good friend Kate-Lynne.

huh. who knew?

guess which western country hates the french the most? that would be france.

h/t wizbang

We Win, They Lose

To: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Democrat Leader

Congress has passed and President Bush has vetoed H.R. 1591, the Iraq Surrender Act of 2007.

This legislation, which you worked to pass, sets a timetable for surrender. It pulls the rug out from under our troops. That is shameful and wrong.

Your actions have already emboldened the enemy. Violent jihadists now know that the elected leadership of Congress would undermine the troops by holding their funding hostage to demands for surrender.

This Congress would bring us back to the dark days of the 1970s, when the world doubted our staying power. Except only much worse. Withdraw in April 2008, and on May 1, Iraq becomes an unchecked den of terrorism at the heart of the Middle East -- a new base for the same people that struck our homeland on September 11th.

I stand with our troops. I stand for victory. I support the President's veto and will urge my representatives to vote to sustain it.

There can be one and only one outcome in Iraq: We win, they lose.

Sign here.

i bet the wife was a horde character

because let's face it... those horde folk? they're pricks.

... of the day

*unbiased statement [paraphrased] of the day: "you need 3 servings of dairy a day for strong bones, and lots of essential nutrients. this message brought to you by the diary farmers of washington."
*ummm... duh? statement of the day: "enraged wraith becomes enraged!"

i had a lot more of these when i originally planned the post, so i'll probably update it later as i remember them.

--update--

here's another one i remembered:

*statement (of the day) that most pissed me off: from a YWCA radio commercial: "imagine you're walking down the street, and you see a group of mexicans and another group of americans fighting, over something as simple as the color of their skin."
1) "another group of americans"? where was the first one? so far you've identified one group of mexicans, and one of americans.
2) odds are they're not fighting over skin color, but over the fact that the mexicans: a) are probably here illegally, and b) don't speak much english.