An unfortunate event

A follow up to my post "You give a man a fish," where I said instead of giving everybody $600, it would make more sense to use the money to create jobs repairing our crumbling infrastructure. At least 17,000 bridges in the U.S. are way overdue for their 2 year checkup.

What's it going to take - another major bridge collapse like the one in Minnesota?

More quickies:

Thank god I don't live in Mississippi. A TV station in Jackson is on a crusade to stop Adult Video and Books from selling sex toys. At least the police have their priorities in the right place. The Assistant Chief says, "Citizens would rather see us using our resources to get drugs and prostitutes off our streets and work to decrease violent crime."

The reporter's name is Kandiss. If that doesn't sound like a porn star name, I don't know what does. I think she needs to go home and play with that vibrator she bought and keep her nose out of other people's bedrooms.

Your house in is destroyed by a tornado. The cable company in Wisconsin bills you $2000 for their lost equipment.

Which helps you understand what happened today on Dr. Phil. One of the guests:

Mona, 75, made national news when she walked into the office of her local cable company with a hammer and smashed up their equipment! She says they were rude and gave her inadequate service, and she doesn't regret her actions.

The audience applauded when they heard her story.

Another reason I wish I lived in Scotland. In addition to men in kilts speaking with a sexy brogue, the people there are really nice. A gullible cab driver drove a man 150 miles from Newcastle to Banknock then ran off without paying. The people of Banknock felt sorry for the cabbie so they took up a collection to raise £215 to pay the fare.

And I want to ride the London Tube. A group of passengers got up and did the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" while the bemused commuters looked on. The video cracked me up.

Speaking of the British, if Monty Python created a website, it would look like this. Very entertaining.

My post title was the original caption for the picture of the penguins, which I found on fark.com.

What I've been saying all along

This is from Cindy Adams, a well-connected Republican and a gossip columnist for the NY Post:

One little PS to the South Carolina rout. Players in what's been playing down there say certain anti-Hillary shenanigans were funded by Republicans. Why? Because their strategy is to run against Barack. Why? Because Hillary is fully vetted. So? So everything everybody everywhere can throw at her has already been lobbed - and she's still standing. And? And they figure knocking Barack down is an easier shot.

Quote of the Day

From a reader on Rosie O'Donnell's blog:

So, the $150 Bil we DON’T have, we borrow from China, so that we can dole out $600 to Joe Redneck to buy crap from WalMart that was made in China. Whose country’s stimulus package is this? Jeez!

My girl

Maya Angelou thinks Obama doesn't have enough experience. She endorsed Hillary today:

“As a child, Hillary Clinton was taught that all God’s children are equal, so as a mother she understood that her child wasn’t safe unless all children were safe.

I know what kind of president Hillary Clinton will be because I know who she is. Hillary Clinton has always been a strong woman and a passionate protector of families. For 35 years, that’s exactly what she has been doing.

Each generation of African Americans stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Today, the challenges facing us threaten the dreams we have had for our children. We need a president with the experience and strength to meet those challenges.

I am inspired by Hillary Clinton’s commitment and courage — a daughter, a wife, a mother — my girl.”

Turn ons: sisterhood
Turn offs: government of the dicks, by the dicks, for the dicks

Heartbreaking

That's Britney sitting on the curb outside her house on Monday night. She got into a fight with her "handler" Osama Lutfi.

She looks like she's at the breaking point.

I heart Hillary

Caroline Kennedy and Ted Kennedy have endorsed Obama. It seems like the mainstream media is in his camp as well - I hear nothing but praise for him; nothing but criticism for Hillary. So I started feeling like it was inevitable. I admire him and think he'd be a better president than any of the Republicans running so I was ready to give up on Hillary.

Then I saw this amateur video that America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) and Amber Tamblyn (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) made with her. She comes across as so wise, so smart, so warm and genuine. The softer side of Hillary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8frN4Rou_s

I believe again. We need this woman in the White House.

Turn ons: Hillary's brains
Turn offs: Hillary's bashers

What's so bad about GWB anyway?

Rahm Emanuel sums it up in a piece called The Seven Year Slide:

• Bush inherited a $236 billion budget surplus; after 7 years of deficit spending, we now have $3.5 trillion in new debt
• middle class incomes increased more than $6,000 between 1993 and 2001; median household incomes have dropped over $1,000 since he took office
• health-care premiums have doubled
• before Bush, all active-duty Army divisions were rated at the highest readiness levels, capable of fighting a two-front war; after Bush, the military has the worst readiness crisis in a generation, with not a single active-duty or reserve brigade "fully combat ready."
• in 2001, 58% of respondents polled in 10 nations viewed the U.S. favorably; now only 39% do

Guess who just turned 83

Vintage Paul Newman. Time flies.

Is she preggers or just messing with us?

Not that I really need an excuse to post pictures of Brad - the first pic is Brangelina at this weekend's SAG awards. The second is from a couple of weeks ago at the Critic's Choice awards. Rumors have been flying around that she's pregnant. The boobaliciousness in these and other recent photos seems to support the rumors.

But Angelina has a history of teasing the press. Several months ago, Perez said she looked like Olive Oyl. The next day, she appeared in public wearing a red sweater and black skirt with her hair up in a bun, just like OO.

Whatever's going on, they both seem very pleased with themselves - and each other.

I don't want to be around when this relationship crashes and burns. Wouldn't be nice if just once somebody in Hollywood really lived happily ever after?

WTF is wrong with US?

A British woman brought her 15 and 13 year old daughters to New York for Christmas. When the mother developed pneumonia and had to be admitted to the hospital, she was told the girls couldn't stay there with her. A hospital social worker arranged for them to be taken to a children's shelter, where they were strip searched, separated from each other and questioned about whether they'd been abused and raped. They weren't allowed to visit their mother.

Bazooka Giuseppe

This From Maurizio Savini:

The sensual act of chewing, the voluptuous warmth of rebelling saliva, the artificial and secretly aseptic fragrance which spreads from the mouth as a promise and missed kiss. The synthetic fleshliness of the pink color, the obsessive square shape of the product unwrapped and ready to be shred to pieces by the power of the tongue, all compete in crashing on the senses.

That's one of his sculptures, made out of bubblegum. You can see more of his work at the link.

Why is the black guy allowed to talk about race ...

... and the white guy's not? For the last week or so, people have been accusing Hillary and especially Bill Clinton of creating racial tensions and being divisive for the Democratic party. They've both been conducting a negative campaign, but the criticisms they level against Obama have nothing to do with race.

They say he doesn't have enough experience; they say he talks a lot about lofty ideals but he never gets into substance; they say he claims to be different but he's just as much a politician as anyone else who's running. Those are all legitimate criticisms. Isn't it a candidate's job to point out potential flaws in her opponent?

The only thing I've heard either Clinton say that could possibly be interpreted as racist was when Bill pointed out that Jesse Jackson won the Democratic primaries in South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. Commentators said that it was an attempt to marginalize Obama as a black candidate. Everyone has been all over Bill for saying that and Hillary for not disagreeing.

Why then is this okay:

Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that his landslide win in South Carolina's presidential primary marks a turn in political history, showing that a black candidate can appeal to voters of all colors and in all regions ...

"We're going to write a new chapter in the South, we're going to write a new chapter in American history," he said ...

"I think that what we saw in this election was a shift in South Carolina," he said, with implications "all across the country. I think people want change. I think they want to get beyond some of the racial politics that, you know, has been so dominant in the past."

One of the things I've noticed is that when a black person gets treated rudely by a store clerk - or in Obama's case, when a black political candidate gets criticized by an opponent - many black people assume it's because he's black. They see it as a racist attack.

That's not something unique about black people. When I get treated rudely by a store clerk, I usually assume it's because I'm fat, that they don't like me because they don't like fat people.

But sometimes clerks are just rude - to everybody, not just black people, not just fat people. And sometimes political candidates criticize each other.

If Bill Clinton doesn't want this campaign to be about race, he should stop comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson. If Obama doesn't want this campaign to be about race, then he should quit pointing out how historical it is for a black man to win.

You can't celebrate your victory as a step forward for African Americans and at the same time complain if your opponents discuss race being a factor in the election.

The truth is that the biggest differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are race and gender. When it comes to their fundamental beliefs about the direction this country needs to take and the policies we need to get there, they really aren't that far apart.

Eye candy for the weekend

That's Carter Oosterhouse, formerly one of the carpenters on Trading Spaces.

A few years ago, the show fired host Paige Davis. After that, the ratings tanked. The network wised up to its mistakes - they even admit it in their commercials, where they say something like "Remember when Trading Spaces was fun?"

Paige is coming back, starting tonight. I'm planning to watch the show again for the first time in years.

Sadly, I don't think Carter will be there. He's got his own show now on HGTV called "Carter Can."

And yes, Carter can do anything he wants to me.

Right and wrong times to use a taser

The right time (maybe): A man in Canada locked himself in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus. When the driver forced the door open, the guy had blood running down his face from ripping the skin off his scalp. The police used a taser on him because he was violent and a danger to himself.

The wrong time: A guy in Pennsylvania was sleeping on the couch in his own home when the police, responding to a silent alarm, tased him. They tased him twice more after he showed them ID to prove he lived there. I'm sure there's more to the story but still - why so quick to taser?

Today's post brought to you by "Moundview"

Question of the day: How greedy does a gold-digger have to be to sleep with Rush Limbaugh? He's 57 and hideous. His new girlfriend (dating since last summer) is 31 and a pretty, blue-eyed blonde. Maybe he drugs her?

More quickies:

I believe I can fly. Five guys in Florida died when they were speeding in a car down a runway and flew off the end and hit a tree. The runway was at Jumbolair Aviation Estates, which is where John Travolta lives.

If you die in a plane crash, it's your fault. At least according to the lawyer for the co-pilot of a flight that crashed in Kentucky:

[He] asserted that the passengers killed in the Aug. 27, 2006, crash should have known that Blue Grass Airport was dangerous because of considerable media coverage of a massive runway construction project there. They should have known the air traffic control tower was understaffed, that airports in Louisville and Northern Kentucky are safer and that taking off in the dark is dangerous.

Amazingly, he's decided to withdraw that defense. Maybe it occurred to him that his client should have known all that stuff too and he was responsible for his passengers' saftey.

No groping zone. There was so much sexual harassment on their city buses that Mexico City is now offering women only buses. It bothers me because what starts out as a way of protecting people usually turns into a way of controlling them. Last year, I wrote about a section of Jerusalem where women are required to sit at the back of the bus because of the restrictions of an orthodox sect. When one woman refused, she was spat on.

Perfect profile. Esquire is featuring videos of the five worst online dating video profiles. My favorite is the guy whose myspace ID is "perfect profile." He says, "What I’m looking for is a girl who’s in her 20s, single white female, petite, with red hair, living in New York City. And uh, she should definitely have red hair ... I'm real specific about that because I used to date a girl with red hair who was really special to me."

Magnetic personality. A guy in Canada is selling mattress covers with magnets to old people for $1800-2800, promising it will cure everything from incontinence to strokes. He swears, "It's not snake oil and we are not fly-by-night."

When he ran the same scam in the U.S., he was selling them for $700. Apparently the Canadian economy is doing better than ours.

Note to burglars: Don't wear your monkey pajamas on the job. The victim's description of the guy's outfit led to his arrest.

Only in America: What do you do when a 5 year old throws a tantrum in kindergarten? Well, you call the cops, of course. They handcuffed him and hauled him off for a psych evaluation. At least they didn't taser him. I'm thinking the cops and teachers are the ones who need to be evaluated.

If you want to circumcize a 12 year old boy, you have to get his permission. At least according to the Oregon Supreme Court. Can you imagine a day in that kid's life at middle school? Ha ha - your mom and dad are fighting over your penis.

You might be a redneck if ... Since this happened in the U.K. I think the proper term is yob. It's not smart to try to smuggle heroin into the prison where your brother is serving time. But what does it say when you also try to smuggle flip flops, a jar of mayonnaise, and hot pepper sauce? I guess the guy was tired of the bland food. Or maybe he was craving hot butt sex.

Speaking of butt pirates: The prudes who run the FCC have just fined ABC $1.4 million for showing a woman's bare ass on "NYPD Blue" in 2003. The Feds' definition of indecent says the content "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities" in a "patently offensive way." ABC argues "the buttocks are not a sexual organ." The naughty boys at the FCC beg to disagree.

But we know who the real pervs are. The prudes who want to "sanitize" the air waves and the movies. A guy in Utah ran a business editing the naughty sex and language out of feature films, until recently when Hollywood studios threatened to sue him. This week he was arrested for paying a 14 year old girl $20 for a blow job.

Only twenty? Kids nowadays don't understand the value of a blow job.

Electrifying. A guy in Maryland accidentally electrocuted his wife when they were using electrical stimulation during sex play.

Vagina dentata. There's a new movie about a girl who has teeth in her vagina. From the review:

It isn't long before Dawn has to deal with the reality of her burgeoning sexuality, with the horror of that mythical killer smile between her legs ... All the castrated men are rapists or otherwise exploitative scum who deserve it, and the young woman begins to find empowerment in her gift.

By the way, the writer/director is a man. I guess Freud was right about castration anxiety.

Moundview. It's where you go to get bigger breasts. The article's about plastic surgeons.

The picture above is from Fark's Caturday thread. Always one of the highlights of my week. (The link is has tons of graphics. You'll have time to make a sandwich while it loads.)

Phags for Phelps

Gay rights activists have formed a new group to fight Fred Phelps who leads picketers at the funerals of dead soldiers. Phags for Phelps says:

Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church family just might be the most important GLBT activists since Stonewall. Why? Quite simply, because they give homophobes a bad name. Unlike stealth homophobes, the Phelps clan don't hide their repugnance under a bushel. Every time they appear on the nation's television screens, they show millions of Americans just how ugly unadulterated bigotry is.

Stealth homophobes across America have been able to hide for too long behind cuddly phrases like: "love the sinner, hate the sin," and "separate but equal," and "tolerance." GLBT Americans are tired of being "tolerated." We want to be respected and embraced as true equals, not "loved" as "sinners."

Yesterday, Phelps announced they would picket Heath Ledger's funeral. I'm not sure if they're really going all the way to Australia, which is where Ledger will be buried. An excerpt from the WBC press release:

God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates the sordid, tacky bucket of slime seasoned with vomit known as 'Brokeback Mountain' ...

Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there--beside which, nothing else about Heath Ledger is relevant or consequential.

Blame it on E.T.

Time for some quickies:

Good news for the Bickersons: Researchers in England say that people who fight with their spouses live longer. People who repress their anger die sooner.

Hungry? A newspaper in Michigan accidentally placed a classified ad in the wrong section. A woman was selling her horse and the paper listed it under "Good Things to Eat." She received about 20 calls from people looking to buy horse meat. She said, "It's been enough to turn your stomach."

Happy New Year. A 20 year old female corrections officer in Oklahoma gave a 37 year old inmate a blow job on New Years Eve. All recorded on surveillance cameras. She's been charged with sexual assault.

Sex sells: A church in Florida is creating a scandal with billboards that feature a man's and a woman's feet sticking out from under the sheets with a slogan that says "Pure Sex - God's Way." The New Life Fellowship pastor says:

"We're giving people the way God created sex for us, and what his intentions for sex are. It seems like the world has lost its value of sex nowadays. STDs are up, divorce is up and we just want to show them God has designed sex. He wants us to have great sex, but he wants us to have it in his parameters."

Homey don't play that: Area 51, the Air Force's top secret base in Nevada, long rumored to be home to an extraterrestrial space ship and maybe a few E.T.s, has been renamed Homey Airport. Previous names Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, and The Box.

And finally, blame it on E.T.: A guy in Iowa (yes, Iowa, I'm so proud!) says the holes in the ice on his pond may have been caused by extra-terrestrials. He says whatever it was fell out of the sky because there are no tracks leading to the holes. The previous resident had believed the property was being targeted by UFOs. He had even chipped an "escape pod" in the home's brick exterior in case the aliens came after him.

Turn Ons: E.T. (the movie) and little Drew Barrymore's memorable line, "Penis breath."
Turn Offs: Prison guards with penis breath

You give a man a fish

... and he'll eat for a day. You teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.

You spend $145 billion on an economic stimulus package that amounts to $300 per person (not including those who are retired or disabled or those who earned less than $3000 last year) and they'll be able to fill their gas tanks for a few weeks.

You force the oil companies to give back some of their profits, and the cost of gas, home heating, groceries and all other consumer goods goes way down. They'll be able to fill their gas tanks all year.

Or you could use $145 billion to start repairing interstate highways and bridges and you give a whole bunch of people good-paying jobs so they can buy their own damn fish.

Geniuses at work, I tell you.

Seriously, does anybody really think going another $145 billion into debt to solve the problem? The problem is the debt! The problem is that we've already spent more than $487 billion in Iraq and that big open gash is still bleeding.

Update: I just found out Bloomie's thinking the same way I do. NY Mayor Bloomberg, who may run for president as an independent, came out against the giveaway. He said:

"They spent most of this decade running up bills with reckless abandon and when the economy started heading for the ditch, the special interest giveaways got even bigger. They ate the seed corn without worrying about the next year's harvest. Well, the next year is here, and the seed corn is gone. All we've got is a barn full of IOU's ... What good is a rebate going to do for a family who's about to lose their home?"

Fox News reaches a lower low

28 year old actor Heath Ledger died of an apparent overdose on Tuesday. An hour later, Fox "news" "man" John Gibson went on his radio show and mocked Ledger and his death, calling Ledger a "weirdo" playing clips from Brokeback Mountain. He played Ledger's voice saying, "I wish I knew how to quit you," and then mocked, "Well, he found out how to quit you."

It got worse. You can find the full audio clip here.

One of the things the moron talked about was an interview in November where Ledger said he'd been thinking about death. Gibson kept asking "Why would a 28 year old be thinking about death?"

I don't know, John. Maybe he was depressed. Maybe he was a responsible father updating his will and his insurance coverage to protect his 2 year old daughter. Maybe he had a brain and actually thought about the future unlike a simplistic asshole like you.

The Britney Industrial Complex

Just read a very interesting piece from Richard Cohen. He was commenting on a story in Portfolio magazine about the $110-120 million that Britney Spears contributes to the U.S. economy annually. During 18 months from 2006 to 2007, she was on the cover of People, Us Weekly, In Touch, Life & Style, OK!, or Star 175 times, and she was the #1 search subject on Yahoo for 6 of the last 7 years. (Paris Hilton beat her in 2004, which proves the power of a homemade porn.)

Britney also contributes to the economy through the sale of paparazzi photos, CDs, perfumes, etc. Clubs in Las Vegas sell tables next to her for $50,000 and she gets paid $250,000 to $400,000 to appear at events. Cohen quoted Woody Allen: "90 percent of success in life is just showing up."

Well, yeah, I would show up if somebody paid me. One supermodel used to say that she wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. Me - I'm cheap. I would go anywhere for twenty bucks.

From Cohen's column:

Portfolio's Britney Industrial Complex illustrates the economy's need for celebrities. Vast amounts of money can be made by manufacturing ones who appeal particularly to the young.

Today, Page Six had this item on BS:

Lensman Alison Silva tells celebrity private eye Paul Barresi: "Britney is in on it. [She] calls the paparazzi before she goes out. We know 15 minutes before she leaves the house. It's all staged." Silva adds that when four photographers were arrested last week for chasing the increasingly demented pop tart, "one of [them who] works for my company told me that Britney sent him a text message and said she was sorry. She tried to talk the cops into not arresting them . . . Money, fame, the excitement. It's part of her life." Barresi told Page Six that after reviewing footage of Spears with Adnan Ghalib, "[he] appeared to purposely position Britney in full view of fellow paparazzi to help them get the shot . . . It appeared that Britney is in on the sham."

She makes it hard to feel sorry for her. Yesterday, I saw a video on TMZ where a homeless guy asked her for money and she said he's better off being homeless than being her.

My first thought was what a rich, self-entitled bitch. My second thought was yeah, she's probably right. Still, if I was out wandering the streets, I'd rather be driving a white Mercedes than a shopping cart.

It's a little scary to think about what she's going to do to top herself when the tabloids' interest starts dying down.

Hello, baby!

Who cares if the world is going to hell in a hand basket? We've got Brad Pitt looking hot in tight jeans. It's almost as good as Robert Redford with his shirt off.

In other news, yesterday Oliver Stone announced he's doing a bio pic about Dubya:

"How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" Stone pitches. "It's like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I'll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and detractors."

Josh Brolin (son of James who played Marcus Welby's young sidekick, a.k.a. Mr. Streisand) will play Bush. Page Six says it should've been Will Farrell.

I'm thinking, why not Brad? He plays a very convincing airhead.

Union loyalty

This is from pagesix.com, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so they have an agenda. But I've been thinking about the same thing myself:

THE striking members of the Writers Guild are disappointed they aren't getting more support from the supposedly pro-union Democratic presidential candidates.

The bitter scribes say front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are afraid of alienating their well-heeled supporters in Hollywood ...

"They can't stick their necks out for the writers in the middle of an election campaign because we are perceived to be in an elite class, not blue-collar workers," said Chris Jackson, whose writing credits include "Men in Black II," "Rush Hour" and its sequel, and "The Kings of Comedy."

Jackson claims he talked to a high-level adviser to the Clinton campaign who told him: "Bill Clinton was approached by someone close to the Guild to come in as the mediator to end this strike, but he was advised not to become part of the WGA strike, other than not crossing our picket line."

All of the Democratic presidential candidates have issued statements in support of the strikers, but only John Edwards has appeared in person to picket and speak with the writers, when he visited NBC Studios in Burbank on Nov. 16.

Jackson, who has worked as an advance man for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, told Page Six: "I was hurt by learning the truth. The DNC [Democratic National Committee] are in bed with big business. They are for change when it comes to using marketing slogans . . . but they only use Hollywood to milk money out of us."

Turn ons: Sally Rae
Turn offs: Hollywood money men (and they are almost all men) who feed us dreck like Saw II and Rambo (how many sequels is it now? 27?)

Oh, Bob

Suzanne Pleshette died last night of lung cancer. She was 70. I'll never forget her gravelly voice and the way she made me laugh on "The Bob Newhart Show."

My favorite memory of her was the final scene in "Newhart," where Bob and Emily woke up in their bed in Chicago and he realized that the entire "Newhart" series had been a dream.

Good night, Emily.

You have to click this link

Zug.com is running a photoshop contest for the funniest ad for a male enhancement product. Check out the entries from Fark.

<------ One of my favorites.

Read about the contest here.

Whole lotta crazy goin' on

I borrowed the headline from fark.com. Some quickies for you:

• Time to start locking their doors: A family in Oregon woke up to find a woman wearing only panties and a small shirt attacking grandma, who was sleeping on the couch:

"It's pretty strange first thing in the morning to find a woman on top of your mother-in-law," Towe said. ""She was screaming, 'We're going to Egypt, we're going to Egypt' ..."

During the scuffle that followed, Towe's husband hit the woman, who screamed, "Give me more daddy. I like it, I like it."

• A boy, a girl and a cult. A 33 year old woman has been attending school in Norway posing as a 13 year old boy named Adam. But that's not the weird part of the story. Before that, she had posed as a 12 year old girl named Anicka in the Czech Republic, where she pretended to be the stepdaughter of a woman who was arrested for tying up her 8 year old son and locking him in a closet. Adam/Anicka's real name is Barbora Sklrova and her father is the leader of a cult:

"Not even we have been able to figure out what is up and down in this case," said Norwegian police attorney Sven T. Roer.

• The Naked Rambler: A guy in Scotland spent 20 months in prison for walking around naked. When he was released, he took all his clothes off and was arrested again as soon as he stepped outside.

• Will the witch hunts be far behind? A 71 year old woman in Michigan, a former Sunday school teacher who had been a church member for 50 years, was banned from Allen Baptist Church by its pastor after she questioned his authority. When she tried to attend church anyway, she was arrested for trespassing. From the article:

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.

• She looked dirty and hungry all the time. That's why social workers began investigating the welfare of an 8 year old Colorado girl. They discovered that the girl's mother often made her spend the weekend with a 47 year old man who molested her and drank her urine. The mother said it was okay because she knows other people who drink urine.

Because I love you, Seattle

Matthew McConnaughey

Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConnaughy

However the hell you spell it - here's a nakie for my friend. Click on the picture for the full-size version.

The Hamburglar, he be chillin'

The headline on TMZ said, "Robert Redford Meets Mayor McCheese."

I never would have known it was him! I thought it was a woman. Awhile back, I posted about how he was featured on a blog called Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. I'm sure they'll give him another mention.

TMZ called him "the geriatric hottie." But he's botoxed (or collagened or whatever the hell they do now) the life right out of his face. My friends keep saying they don't think so, but I swear to god, my Bobby's been wearing a toupee.

And yes, I'd still do him.

She's 15

And they made her up and posed her like a porn star.

That's Miley Cyrus, star of The Disney Channel's tweener hit "Hannah Montana." She's currently doing a concert tour. Little girls are willing to lie and said their dads died in Iraq in order to get tickets to her show. Not only does she lip sync, she has a double who comes out and pretends to be her during her act.

Her father is singer Billy Ray Cyrus. I'd like to ask Mr. Achey-Breaky Heart this: Why are you whoring out your daughter?

In other celeb news: If you like to laugh at Tom Cruise, check out the dance remix of his notorious Scientology video.

Do you hear that?

It's crickets chirping in empty chat rooms. It's the AOL email guy saying, "Sorry, you've got no mail." It's the sound of silence as millions of keyboards stop clicking. That's what's going to happen when the Feds make it illegal to pretend to be somebody else on the internet.

Without my internet persona, I'd be nobody at all.

I mentioned Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell earlier this week (see "Man Boobs"). The Wall Street Journal had a nice piece about him, titled Dancing Spychief Wants to Tap into Cyberspace about his efforts to prevent a cyber attack from terrorists:

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse.

McConnell's anticipating a major battle with Congress to get his plan approved. He already got himself in trouble with the Bushies and tried to worm his way out of it:

“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!” McConnell says. “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.” Asked later about that comment, McConnell says he did not mean to suggest he personally condemned it. “You can do waterboarding lots of different ways,” he says. “I assume you can get to the point that a person is actually drowning.” Yet McConnell declined to be more specific, because “if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”

The last line of the WSJ article is a classic:

McConnell, a South Carolina native, also reveals that he fancies himself a fabulous dancer.

Now, for an interesting perspective on the wars in Viet Nam and Iraq, read Rosie O'Donnell's blog post titled "America."

Turn ons: fabulous dancers
Turn offs: Republican whores like McConnell

Chris Matthews is still an asshole

Update on Who needs Limbaugh: Gloria Steinem, Kim Gandy from NOW, and other feminist leaders wrote a letter to the president of NBC complaining that over the years, Chris Matthews comments "demonstrate a larger pattern of overt sexism when discussing women."

Matthews responded on last night's Hardball:

"Was it fair to imply that Hillary's whole career depended on being a victim of an unfaithful husband? No," Matthews said. "That's what it sounded like I was saying and it hurt people I'd like to think normally like what I say (and), in fact, like me."

No, Chris, you didn't "imply" and it didn't "sound like." Your exact words were:

"Let's not forget, and I'll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is that her husband messed around. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."

I'm thinking Matthews must have got his ass chewed pretty good because last night he also said:

"I will try to be clearer, smarter, more obviously in support of the right of women, of all people, to full equality of respect and ambition."

And no, Chris, I don't like you. Never did.

16 Kids Killed in Schools Every Year

That was the headline on Yahoo news. The article said the rate is lower than it's been in previous years and it shows that school massacres are rare. Still, the number shocked me. I wonder how many students get killed in other western countries.

But the truly shocking thing (not surprising - I was aware of this but it's still a shock to the senses) - the truly shocking thing was the last line of the article:

Most children are killed at home, at parties or on the streets.

In Honolulu, a man threw a 2 year old off an overpass and the boy was run over by cars on the highway below. The man was the boy's babysitter.

In Connecticut, a babysitter killed a 1 year old boy she was babysitting. It may have been an accident - she said they played a game where she was carrying him around the house in a sleeping bag and his head banged against a door frame.

Speaking of dead children, the 17 year old boy who was killed by a tiger at a San Francisco zoo and his two friends were drinking, smoking marijuana and taunting the animal right before the attack. Police believe that's one of the reasons the tiger escaped and went after them.

Speaking of dead almost children, Maria Lauterbach, a 20 year old Marine was 8 months pregnant when she was murdered. The suspect, another Marine, confessed to burning her body and burying her. He claims she committed suicide by slitting her throat but the autopsy showed she died from blunt force trauma to the head. He fled to Mexico, which probably will not extradict him unless the government promises not to seek the death penalty. Lauterbach had accused him of raping her but the Marine investigators doubted her story.

The day before her body was found, Maria's stepmother told the press she was a compulsive liar. Thanks, Mom.

A new study shows that human beings crave violence the same way we crave sex, food or drugs. One of the researchers said:

“This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role."

I don't like burkhas

However it's spelled. I think it's oppressive for women to be required to cover all their skin. Even when they do it by "free choice" - they wouldn't be doing it if their religion didn't teach them it was necessary. That being said ...

A Muslim high school girl in D.C. was disqualified from a track meet because she was wearing a special outfit under her school uniform that covered her head, arms, legs and torso. The officials said it broke the rules because it was a different color than her uniform.

The problem is, she had been competing in the same outfit for the last 3 years, including at the same annual event, without being disqualified. She's also been the fastest in the mile and 2-mile this year. She needed to run in the meet where she was disqualified in order to qualify for an upcoming collegiate invitational, where she would have had the opportunity to be seen by college recruiters. Now, she will miss the invitational too.

What the officials did stinks of bigotry to me.

Good god, never thought I'd say this

But I'd rather have Bush! This is what Huckabee told a crowd in Michigan on Monday:

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Please, oh pretty please, Hill and Barack, keep the party together so we can get rid of these holy asses.

Kitty cheer

I don't watch Mythbusters so the caption makes no sense to me. But this cat's expression totally cracked me up. I know exactly how he feels!

Glenn Beck's hemorrhoids & other disasters

Glenn Beck had hemorrhoid surgery a few weeks ago. He ended up spending extra time in the hospital, in excruciating pain. You can read about the poor pain in the ass's pain in the ass here.

Now, he's on a crusade to fix the American health care system:

At the hospital I was often treated more like a number than a patient. At times, staff members literally turned their back on my cries of pain and pleas for help. In one case a nurse even stood by tapping his fingers as if he was bored while my tiny wife struggled to lift me off a waiting room couch.

I've now seen our system at its very best and I've also experienced it at its very worst. But in each case, the difference had nothing to do with whether the hospital had the latest equipment or whether it looked like the Taj Mahal. It had to do with compassion. It had to do with respect. It had to do with treating people the way you'd want to be treated when going through something unfamiliar and frightening.

That's why I don't want to hear anymore about universal health care or HMOs or the evils of insurance companies until each and every hospital in this country can look me in the eye and tell me that they their staff is full of truly compassionate people who treat their visitors like patients, not products. Hire and train the right people, and then and only then come talk to me about everything else you need.

What Beck doesn't get is that it is all the other stuff - the HMOs, the insurance companies, the paperwork, the administrators trying to keep costs in line, the lawyers hovering to make sure they don't get sued - that have driven all of the "right people" out of health care. I have several good friends who are nurses - they are compassionate, they loved taking care of patients - but they quit their jobs as nurses because of all the headaches that came along with managed health care. Their bosses treated them like shit.

Another celebrity health care story concerns Dennis Quaid's newborn twins. Back in November, they were accidentally overdosed on heparin and nearly bled to death. He said that he called the hospital about 9 p.m. that night and they told him the twins were fine - but in fact, they were bleeding from the overdose and their lives were in jeopardy. No one notified the Quaids.

From the L.A. Times:

The first that Dennis Quaid learned of the medication error was at 6:30 a.m. the next day, he said, when he arrived at the Los Angeles hospital. Treatment decisions had been made without them, he said ...

At the door of the children's hospital room, he said, he was greeted not just by a pediatrician and a nurse but by a representative of the hospital's risk management department.

Bolded by me. The hospital didn't notify the Quaids of their babies' health status because the administrators had to cover their asses first. I'm sure they debriefed everyone, gave them orders not to talk, and get their marching orders from the lawyers.

Later in the same article:

[His wife] complained of intrusive hospital administrators. "They wouldn't let us be alone with our children, to the point where we were just like, 'Can you please just give us a moment?' " Kimberly Quaid said. "But regardless, they just kept coming in the room."

We have to take the profit motive out of the health care industry. Providers should be well paid for their work. Good health care providers should be rewarded and bad ones should be sanctioned. Doctors and nurses and hospitals should not have to worry about the bottom line - the patients' health should come first.

"Socialized medicine" isn't scary. Allowing the insurance companies to continue running the show is scary.

Do we need more proof that Bush is stupid?

From Fred Kaplan on Slate, regarding reports that Bush told the Israelis he doesn't believe the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran:

This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can't help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here's the president telling another world leader that he doesn't believe it because, well, he doesn't agree with it.

Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it's as good as gold; when it doesn't, it's "just guessing." This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let's say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?

Third, by telling Olmert that it's all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published.

Turn ons: lifelong Republicans who are voting Democratic this time
Turns offs: the boy who cried wolf

Man boobs & more

Did you know there's a town in Newfoundland called Dildo? Just an interesting little tidbit I picked up when I was surfing instead of working.

More quickies:

• The new season of American Idol starts tomorrow. For years, Ryan Seacrest has been teasing Simon about his man boobs. But there's a picture of Ryan on TMZ today that shows he's growing some man boobs of his own.

• Speaking of man boobs, Salon.com has an interesting op-ed piece called "The Dark Side of Mike Huckabee." A lot of it isn't surprising, like how he blocked a retarded teenager's attempt to get an abortion after she was raped by her stepfather (even a lot of fundies would make exceptions for cases like that). But I hadn't heard about all his alleged corruption.

• The headline on Fark sums up this story: If you're a 60-year-old man and your 27-year-old female coworker dresses you in her underwear and then ties you to a chair, you're about to be farked.

• A father in Arlington, TX, caught his 18 year old stepson in the act of anally raping his 8 year old daughter. He called the cops and the boy was arrested. When the mother bailed her son out against her husband's wishes, he took the kid to an abandoned building, beat him with a baseball bat, and raped him with a wrench. Cowboy justice? The stepfather has a prior criminal history of assault with bodily injury.

• A guy kicks in the door of your apartment in the middle of the night so you call 911. And? The 911 operator asks to speak to the guy. What I like about this story is that the intruder was wearing a costume covered by studded spikes, some as much as an inch long.

• Google this. If National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gets his way, the government will have access to every email and web search you've ever done without a warrant.

• Even the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff says it's time to close Guantanamo. Not because it's illegal or inhumane. No, he's worried because the bad publicity is hurting America's image.

Hell, Andre Agassi figured that out 20 years ago - image is everything.

Turn ons: Simon Cowell. I can't help myself.
Turn offs: Ryan Seacrest - whether he's metro or homo, there's nothing sexual about him

My Christmas tree is naked

I took all of the decorations off it a few days ago but it's still standing there in the corner, a silent testament to my laziness and utter failure as a human being.

Or something like that.

And anyway, why should I worry about something so mundane as doing laundry and cleaning my rathole when the polar ice caps are melting and the world is ...

spinning slowly down to die
I'd spend the end with you.

And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away

If you can name that tune, you didn't smoke enough pot in the 70s.

The softer side of Hillary

Gossip maven Perez Hilton has been an Obama supporter all along but he just posted this video from Hillary, reaching out to young voters. Loved it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqibBRlF3EE

Enough with the politics

Some quickies.

No fly zone: TSA detained and searched a 5 year old boy because his name was on the no fly list.

2spare.com has scans of the 10 Creepiest Old Ads. That's one of them on the left.

Valentine candy hearts are getting new messages this year, including "In A Fog," "Chill Out," and "Get My Drift." How romantic! In light of the WW II poster, I'm thinking they should make a heart that says, "I'm Clean."

A Polish guy went to a brothel to cheat on his wife and found out she was working there.

Cute but insightful

A guy in NH, Darren Garnick, had a plan to get his baby Dahlia photographed with every presidential candidate who has a prayer to win. He told a reporter that he and his wife timed her pregnancies to produce props for the NH primaries. (He was joking.)

He only missed one candidate - Fred Thompson, "who's barely shown his face around here."

The interesting thing is how the candidates' reaction to the baby really shows their personalities. Garnick describes Edwards as "glassy-eyed and vacant," and Obama has "an enthusiasm that seems genuine." When the baby cries in Giuliani's arms, "He's panicky." When she cries in McCain's arms, he's "unfazed" and jokes, "There goes another vote!"

You can see the pictures here.

And what of Obama?

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr (D-NJ) says, "A lot of people are being motivated by his inspirational talk. But he doesn't really talk about what he'll do."

Exactly. This is my number one problem with Obama. I have yet to hear him give specifics in any of his stump speeches or debate appearances. People leave the events feeling like they've seen the light and been embraced by the holy spirit but do they know what policies (if any) he plans to carry out his lofty ideals?

In a Washington Post op-ed piece, E.J. Dionne Jr pointed out that Hillary overwhelmingly won the NH votes from people who make less than $50,000 and those who told exit pollsters they voted based on which candidate cares the most on "people like me." Of Obama, he wrote:

... when Scott Spradling, a local political reporter, suggested that voters didn't find her likable, [Clinton] replied, "Well, that hurts my feelings." It looked like a genuine reaction from someone so often cast as a stick figure.

Obama then made trouble for himself by offering a comment many saw as snarky. "You're likable enough, Hillary," he said. Obama insisted later that he intended it as a "gesture of graciousness." Gestures of graciousness shouldn't have to be explained.

This is what Bob Novak writes:

That indeed was the reaction from the Obama camp. Obama himself was condescending about his powerful detractor: "I understand he's feeling a little frustrated right now." In fact, an attack by so powerful and popular a Democratic icon should have been taken seriously by the neophyte candidate.

I highlighted the adjectives they used to describe Obama because that's how he comes across to me. In the debates and in Hillary and Barack's comments about each other, I get the sense that she respects his intelligence and his candidacy but she disagrees with some of his views. She thinks she would make the better president but she recognizes that he is a worthy opponent.

From Obama, I get the sense he has no respect for Hillary. He sneers at her, he belittles what she says. In other words, he has the same view of her as many of the media pundits.

And you know what that does to people like me, people who make less than $50,000 a year and who vote based on (at least in part) who we think cares the most about us? It makes us think that if Obama doesn't respect someone like Hillary Clinton, how much is he going to respect someone like me?

Ooh, I'm like all petty and naive

Bob Novak writes: "... whereas Muskie's tears were involuntary, only the naive can believe Clinton was not artfully playing for sympathy from her sisters."

Okay, so now I'm not only petty (according to Timothy Noah), I'm also naive?

Novak assumes that: a) Hillary is a good enough actor to pull it off, b) she knew in advance that tears would draw sympathy (empathy?) from other women, c) the media would run the clip over and over again so everyone would see it, d) the media and fellow candidate Edwards would anger female voters with their negative commentary and, e) her "tears" are the reason she won.

That last one is a pretty big leap, don't you think? Especially when many of the pundits were saying they thought "crying" was the final nail in her campaign's coffin because it showed weakness.

Hillary is brilliant and calculating but she doesn't have a crystal ball.

If she does happen to be psychic - isn't that who we should have in the White House?

I'm still pissed off that Hillary's brief moment with a crack in her voice and eyes welling is being compared to Muskie's blubbering.

Who needs Limbaugh

... when we've got Chris Matthews. Last night he said, "I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again."

Today he said:

"The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."

Keep going, Chris. The more you guys pile on, the more it motivates women to get out and vote for her.

Mean mom

An actual ad from The Des Moines Register:

``OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.''

The car's already been sold but mom ran the ad for a second week because she liked the positive response she got.

What Gloria Steinem said

Slate's headline pissed me off: "Steinem Makes Excuses for Hillary." I agreed with some of what Timothy Noah wrote:

"Gender," writes Gloria Steinem on the op-ed page of the Jan. 8 New York Times, "is probably the most restricting force in American life." That is incorrect. Poverty is the most restricting force in American life.

What Noah misses is that women are more likely to live in poverty. He points out that only 14% of women live below the poverty level while 26% of African-Americans do. But most of those African-Americans are women and their children.

Gloria Steinem said:

Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

Noah calls that a "remarkably petty observation." I guess I'm petty then, because I've been thinking the same thing.

The point of Steinem's NY Times piece was that a woman with the same credentials as Barack Obama would not be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. Up until Hillary pulled off tonight's victory in New Hampshire, the pundits were writing off her chances of winning. Drudge went so far as to claim that she was making plans to drop out.

What I was feeling - and what I'm sure many career women were feeling - was here we go again. A woman was being passed over for a job in favor of a less-qualified man.

Obama keeps getting compared to JFK. Before Kennedy ran for president, he was a Navy commander in World War II, he served in the U.S. House for 6 years, and he was in the Senate for 8 years. By contrast, Obama was in the state senate 7 years and in the U.S. Senate for 4 years.

Bill Clinton got it right - Obama's where he was when he decided not to run in 1988. He needs more experience.

Yes, it's a big deal that an African-American, for the first time in history, has a realistic chance of becoming president. But it's an equally big deal that, for the first time in history, so does a woman.

One of the reasons Steinem is supporting HRC is "... to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama."

My dream ticket is Clinton-Obama. I'll volunteer right now to work on Obama's campaign in 2016.

One reason Hillary won

From a reader's comment on TPM:

I have always had somewhat lukewarm feelings about Hillary Clinton. It took me years to forgive her for her "baking cookies" comment. At the time I had just given birth to my first child and decided to leave my job as an attorney to stay home and take care of my baby. I have been on the fence throughout this campaign, liking John Edwards more than the others. The media coverage of Sen. Clinton has caused my blood to boil. I can not bear to witness blatant misogyny. Gloria Steinheim's article in the NYT this morning was so on the mark. If I lived in New Hampshire, I would have voted for Sen. Clinton today. I would not allow the talking heads to tell me who to vote for or declare this race over. And I certainly was not going to participate in the sexist bs that has been spewing out the mouths of the likes of Chris Matthews.

Right now, Chris Matthews is saying (or at least strongly implying) that people voted for Hillary because they didn't want to vote for a black man.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Give me a break! They voted for Hillary - they didn't vote against Obama.

I think Barack got some of the wind knocked out of his sails now. He needed that to happen. If he wins the nomination, I will vote for him whole-heartedly with no hesitation. But the guy was getting a messiah complex.

From Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post:

"There's a lot about the Obama movement I find offensive," says National Review Editor Rich Lowry, who predicted two months ago that his campaign was going "nowhere." "There's a messianism -- 'I embody change' -- that if a Christian conservative was saying those things, people would be scared."

Obama needed a dose of humility. Hopefully all the so-called experts in the media also got knocked down a peg or two. Their predictions couldn't have been more wrong.

I understand why Obama's candidacy means to African-Americans. Hillary Clinton's campaign means the same to me.

Turn ons: Hillary - her speech tonight brought me to tears
Turn offs: Chris Matthews

Call the SWAT team

Your 11 year old son falls and bumps his head. You were a medic in Viet Nam so you know how to assess injuries. In your experienced judgment, as a father who loves his son, you determine that you can treat his injuries at home.

But Social Services think he needs to see a doctor and they get a court order. Then they call the SWAT team to your house and forcibly remove your child. The doctors examine him and send him back home with a prescription to treat him with fluids, Tylenol and ice. Which is exactly what you were doing before they broke into your home.

Only in America.

Well, not exactly only in America. You have to understand that if this family didn't live in a trailer park, nobody would have questioned their ability to care for their own child.

Only in a trailer park in America.

One factor not mentioned in the article - did the family have adequate health insurance? I'm willing to bet the primary reason they didn't take the child to the hospital themselves was they couldn't afford it.

I say this because I grew up in a home where we didn't go to the doctor when we got sick or hurt, and on the few occasions when we got sick enough that we had to go, my mother fretted and complained about how they would pay for it.

My entire life I have been worrying about whether or not I and members of my family would be able to get adequate health care. It is a constant stressor for all of us.

Today, the Commonwealth Fund published a study that says the U.S. ranks lowest among 19 industrialized countries in preventable deaths:

Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen said the finding that other countries are reducing preventable deaths more rapidly with less money "indicates that policy, goals and efforts to improve health systems make a difference."

Quit buying the "socialized medicine" bullshit they try to scare you with. We need universal health care in the U.S. It's too expensive not to have it.

Would I hit it?

Perez posted this picture of Steve Martin and asked, "Would you hit it?"

Why yes, yes I would. I'd probably blow dry his chest hair first.

Drudge's wishful thinking

I'm laughing my ass off at this report. Drudge says that Hillary's thinking of dropping out of the presidential campaign:

"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."

Back-to-back-to-back defeats? When have the Clintons been defeated? Bill won the presidency twice - if he could run again, he'd win again. Hillary easily won both of her Senate campaigns. It's back-to-back-to-back-to-back victories for them.

They said her money's drying up. She raised $100 million in the last year, and I know she didn't spend it all in Iowa.

Hillary is not a quitter. I'm sure Drudge had a nice wank over this though.

Dear Qwest

Tonight I tried to pay my bill online and your new "security" system wouldn't allow me to access my account.

You require a security code which has to be sent to me through snail mail. Guess what? SNAIL MAIL IS NOT SECURE.

Do you have any idea how many times the mailman has put my mail in my neighbor's mail box? Or how many times my mailbox has been broken into? Do you know how many things have supposedly been sent to me that I never received?

Nevertheless, I requested my security code last month, received it, and tonight I entered it on your website. Then you asked me for a security question. The answer has to be 8 characters or longer. All my answers to standard security questions I could think of (favorite pet, high school mascot, etc.) are shorter than 8 characters.

When I got creative and made up my own question, you guys said it was "invalid."

Maybe that's because my question was "What the fuck is wrong with Qwest?"

And my answer was, "They suck!"

I wanted to send this letter directly to you, but apparently, the address for customer service is a state secret. It's not listed anywhere on your website or on my bill. Google couldn't find it either.

The cable company offers local phone service now. Who'da thunk anyone's customer service could suck more than theirs?

Buh-bye, Qwest!

McGovern says impeach

From George McGovern's editorial on for The Washington Post:

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising ...

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis ... and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

There's more. Click the link - it's worth the read.

It was her own damn fault?

More on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani president Musharraf to 60 Minutes:

For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers.

He did admit that she may have been shot. The interview will air Sunday night.

The worker bees rebel

Daily Kos comments on the evangelicals who gave Huckabee the win in Iowa:

One thing that's fascinating about the Huckabee victory in Iowa is that the movement that propelled him to victory -- his Evangelical base -- is truly a cousin to our very own people-powered movement.

Think about it -- these are people that have been taken for granted by the Republican establishment, exploited and overworked, only to receive crumbs and empty rhetoric in return. Sick of being marginalized except when needed (election time), they have taken matters into their own hands and -- without money or "professional" organization, propelled their candidate (one of their own) to victory ...

Trained as worker bees for the GOP machine, they are now throwing off those shackles and attempting a veritable coup.

Today's post brought to you by the word 'fukubukuro'

Random quickies:

1) Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was murdered. There's a lot of buzz about this on the internet - I first saw it on Rosie O'Donnell's blog - and people are speculating this is the real reason she was assassinated. So I looked up the tape on youtube.

She did say it, during a November interview with David Frost. It wasn't a big announcement, like she was revealing secret information. She was rattling off a list of known terrorists and things they've done and included "Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden" in the list. I think she simply misspoke. Omar Sheikh is the man who murdered Daniel Pearl.

No conspiracy here, folks. Move along now.

2) CNN is speculating that Hillary would nominate Bill for the Supreme Court if she's elected. I don't think so. He likes the spotlight too much to stay out of it the way justices traditionally do. If a Dem wins the White House, my hope is that they'll nominate someone young.

3) It's raining iguanas. After this week's cold snap in Florida, frozen iguanas began falling out of the trees. Once they warm up, they come back to life.

4) What do you call a burglar who gets caught because she left a trail of corn flakes from the hotel bar to her room? A cereal offender. That's not a riddle - it happened in Britain.

5) Tasers are the new Tupperware. A company is selling pink tasers at parties. One of their independent saleswomen (think Avon lady) says:

"You're kind of making a statement: I know I'm a woman. I know I'm the most sought after victim in regards to sexual assault, sexual abuse. So please stay away from me. If in the event you do come after me, I'm going to use my pink Taser to put you on the ground."

Fear mongering, anyone?

6) That's a tasering. A cop in Ohio was fired for tasering a pregnant woman. Not because she was pregnant. Not because it was an unnecessary and excessive use of force. Because he used the taser on her neck. Why'd she get tasered? According to the article:

The Tasering occurred Nov. 18 when Valreca Redden, 33, went to the police department and asked officers to take custody of her 1-year-old son, the report said.

However, Redden refused to answer questions about herself and the boy and tried to leave with the child, disobeying Wilmer's order not to leave, the report said.

7) Bad job. How would you like to be an Iraqi street cleaner? You'd get paid $6 a day to clean up the "fingertips and scraps of flesh" left behind after a suicide bombing. By the way, did you know that Fox News now refers to them as homicide bombs?

8) A pterodactyl made him do it. When a guy in Washington hit a light pole, he told the police a "pterodactyl" caused the accident.

9) And I thought my Christmas sucked. A guy in Des Moines spent Christmas Eve stuck upside down in a septic tank.

10) Fukubukaro. It sounds dirty but it's not. It's Japanese for "lucky bag" - their version of a grab bag.

If your dick stinks

No, this post really isn't about The Dick. We all know he stinks and so far, there's no cure for that.

Today, Synerfied Healthcare announced the release of their new product, NodorO™, a medicated cream to treat and prevent Male Genital Odors:

President/CEO and NodorO™ Creator, Dominic Adams suffered from MGO since he was a teenager, until he realized his discovery. Adams personally tested the product for several years, which inspired him to share his discovery with the world and created NodorO™. "I could not imagine my sexual life without NodorO™ anymore. I have no more fears of repulsing my partner due to bad genital odors. For anyone who has ever dealt with MGO, it is a miracle cream. I went from being embarrassed because of the smell, to being confident." says Adams without embarrassment or shame anymore.

For decades, women have been subjected to ads for Summer's Eve and FDS (feminine deodorant spray) that make us waste money on products we don't need. We put ourselves at risk for infections we wouldn't get if we weren't washing away the natural bacteria that keep us healthy. Worst of all, a lot of women are reluctant to let a man go down on them because they're afraid he won't like the smell. (Dear ladies and squeamish gentlemen, pussies are supposed to smell - heterosexual men and perhaps Lesbians are turned on by that scent.)

Equal rights for men, that's what I say. Let them worry about offending odors for awhile. They've already got manorexia, calf implants and hair weaves. Give them MGO anxiety too.

Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, a guy waved a gal away from his dick because he's afraid he might not "Smell FRESH, Smell CLEAN, Smell PERFECT!"

Turn ons: ismellperfect.com
Turn offs: Dick. No, not the little one in your pants, the big one in the picture.

Will they go after Obama now?

To follow up on my comments about Hillary getting beat up by the press (next post down). This is from Huffington Post:

Can anyone argue that Barack Obama was not a giant media winner this year? There was the rock-star meme, first of all. (Huckabee surge, Hillary cackle, Obama the rock star — these all took on a life of their own) ...

I am saying that framing Obama's support in terms of a wave of hope and optimism and Clinton's support as inevitability imposed by a suffocating dynasty might have been just a tad unbalanced. It's funny, even as I write this I feel the need to check and recheck to make sure I don't somehow say this wrong. Obama is that candidate — the one you are careful writing about. I don't think it's just me.

I don't think the race will be over after New Hampshire. I think (hope) that some of Obama's gloss will wear off now that he's officially the front runner. It's not that I don't want him to get the nomination - but he needs to be beat up a little bit, he needs all the skeletons to come out, he needs to be truly challenged and tested. Otherwise, I'm afraid of what's going to happen when the Republicans go after him.

A lot of people say the Republicans are attacking Hillary now because they don't want her to get the nomination, because they know they can't beat her.

But I'm starting to think they have some dirt on Obama that they're holding back. They want to get Hillary out of the way first so there won't be anybody for the Dems to fall back on, then they'll ambush Obama.

Hillary wants a three-way

Caucuses are fun. The one at my precinct was somewhat chaotic. Too many people crammed into too little space. I want the system to continue but I would like to see some reforms. The Republicans in Iowa do a straight up vote at their caucus and each candidate gets credit for however many votes they get. I think the Democrats need to do something similar.

As it was, Kucinich, Dodd, Richardson, Biden and Gore (hey, I know he wasn't running, but 2 people showed up in my precinct to caucus for him) all had people who wanted to vote for them but they didn't get any credit for that. Their supporters either switched to other candidates (most of them went for Obama but Hillary got some Kucinich and Biden lovers). Nobody showed up for Gravel.

Ron Paul's mission to recruit Democrats to switch parties backfired - one guy thought Paul was a Democrat and showed up at our caucus to vote for him. He was standing next to Hillary's group and I was hoping they would inadvertently count him as one of ours but they didn't.

According to kausfiles, Hillary is probably happy Edwards finished second and she came in a close third:

Had she finished second, Edwards might have fallen out of the race, leaving her to face Obama one-on-one, a confrontation she'd almost certainly lose right now. If she could subsidize Edwards' campaign at this point, she probably would.

I've been trying to find an article I read recently online. It was written by a reporter who was covering the Iowa campaign. He said that conventional wisdom among journalists is that one reason Hillary gets roughed up by the press is because her campaign staffers are arrogant and unfriendly to reporters.

My own and my friend's experience with one of her staffers makes me believe that. One of the stunts they pulled: They bought sandwiches and other snacks for us to serve at our precinct, as a way to persuade people to stand up for Hillary and to keep our people happy during the realignment before the final count. (As it was, a lot of people from all three viable groups wandered out for a smoke and a potty break and we had to round them up.)

The Hillary staffer told us not to tell our precinct chairman - who was supporting Obama - that we were bringing food. They didn't want Obama's people to run out and get their own. When we brought the food in, the chairman's people told us we weren't allowed to serve food until the caucus was over. We had to put it in the back in the kitchen.

And we knew that was going to happen - everything has to be cleared with the chairman and in the past, our precinct never allowed campaigns to serve food or drinks during the caucus. We told the staffers that when they tried to get us to bake cookies for the caucus. They went out and bought stuff because we said we wouldn't.

I don't know what happened to the food. We hope someone brought it out for the county Democrats' party that was held at the same site right after the caucus. By that time, we were so exhausted we didn't care.

It's only one example of the time, money and other resources that were wasted because Hillary's professional campaign staff from out of state wouldn't listen to the locals.

Another example: The campaign was notified there would be a planning meeting for our precinct a few days before the caucus. The campaign was supposed to notify my friend to attend. Instead, they sent one of their staffers. It left us in the dark about some things we should have known ahead of time. There were some subtle advantages given to Obama that we could have stopped if my friend had been at that meeting.

Our precinct chairman, co-chairman, and secretary were all caucusing for Obama. They were very slick about a few things they were doing and we didn't catch on until it was too late.

But I don't think their tricks really changed the outcome. The most experienced and connected politicos in our precinct were for Obama - and they beat us fair and square.

The aftermath

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That's what was running through my head when I went to bed earlier tonight. I couldn't turn it off. I finally thought up a scene and kept reworking the imaginary dialogue until I fell asleep. I was out for two hours but I'm wide awake now.

Nobody panic - I'm not going to kill myself. But those are the kind of repetitive thoughts I get. Almost every night when I go to bed. Sometimes during the day.

As long as I keep my mind occupied - whether it's blogging, surfing the net, watching TV, or playing spider solitaire - I can stop or at least slow down those thoughts.

There are a lot of things that can bring them on. One thing that is almost sure to do it is going out in public. It happened tonight after I spent 4+ hours helping set up and participating in the caucus. It happened after I spent Christmas with my family. It happened when I put in a short appearance a friend's party. It sometimes happens after I attend my writer's group - even though writers group is my favorite place to go, the one place where I feel most accepted.

I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm well-informed about interesting topics, but when I'm with a group of people - esp. strangers - I get brain freeze. I can't start a conversation with people or keep one going. It's like my tongue is paralyzed and I feel like a cow with one leg caught in a trap and a pack of wolves circling. I want to run but I can't.

A new symptom - or maybe an old one I forgot about since I've been avoiding public outings at all costs - is that I break out in a heavy sweat. My young niece noticed it at Christmas and taunted me about it. People tonight noticed but didn't say anything. I just saw them staring at my forehead.

At the caucus, they were looking for volunteers to serve on committees for the county convention. I wanted to do it. It's the kind of work I would be good at - absorbing information, coming up with new ideas or better ways to word things, debating platform issues, etc.

But I am socially crippled. Some days are worse than others. Some days, I'm so hobbled by anxiety that I can't leave my apartment to take the garbage out or go downstairs to check the mail. When I had a subscription to the local paper, sometimes they would pile up outside my door for a few days - I couldn't even open the door to retrieve them.

People who see me out and about have no idea what's going on inside my head. I think I come across as rude sometimes, or maybe shy or withdrawn. Other times, I probably look perfectly normal. If they only knew.