"Case of the Month"

America always goes bigger.

The ball's rolling on human rights stuff down in the US. Their payouts make Canada's human rights game look like the minor leagues:

Star-Tribune: Four years after Abercrombie & Fitch refused to let a teenager help her autistic sister try on clothes at its Mall of America store, state officials have fined the company $115,264 for discriminating against a disabled person. The hefty penalty from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights pleased the Maxson family of Apple Valley, which was forced to push hard for satisfaction after the retailing giant refused to apologize for the incident and even questioned whether the girl was disabled. The fine was levied in June but made public this month...

Note that the state also gets their pound of flesh:

In her ruling, Sheehy concluded that Abercrombie & Fitch violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act and ordered the company to pay the girl $25,000 and cover the family's attorney fees of $41,069. The company had to pay the state a $25,000 fine and cover other expenses totaling $24,194.

The human rights department is pretty proud of it, too. They list it on their website as the Case of the Month. You'll also be able to find it in their newsletter, The Rights Stuff. Catchy.

Jump Spin

Drudge points out a pretty good way of making sure that something turns out all right in the end. Here's CNN:

Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans — a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama's address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.

14 points in one night? That's a hell of jump. Must have been a killer speech. But wait. What's this fine print at the bottom of the page...

The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican.

Oh.

It's been a while since I had fun with pollsters, and so, some more Poll Vaulting:

Get The Net. A Sports Guy Thinks He's A Journalist Again.

You know how I like to make fun of sports "journalists" all the time? I rest my case.

I caught this via Hot Air. They call it the worst piece of sports writing in history. They're right.

The sports "journalist" is named Mark Whicker. He tells Jaycee Dugard what she's missed while being imprisoned in the backyard of a maniac for almost two decades. A taste:

It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

Uhhh. Okay. Got a bad feeling about this. He continues:

•Michael Jordan did indeed win the big one, and five others.

•Yeah, this golfer really is named Tiger Woods.

•Stock car drivers now marry international models and are invited to the White House.

•Domed stadiums, like the ones in Houston and Minneapolis, are considered obsolete, or at least unfit for baseball.

He goes on with his sports retrospective for a while and finishes with a flourish:

•And ballplayers, who always invent the slang no matter what ESPN would have you believe, came up with an expression for a home run that you might appreciate.

Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.

As I was reading this piece I was saying aloud, "What the hell is this?" I thought The Onion was putting me on.

Whicker issued this apology after readers flipped out:

For Tuesday's Register, I wrote a column that clearly offended and outraged large portions of our readership.

It was not my intention to do so. But it's obvious that I miscalculated the effect the column on Jaycee Dugard, and the events that she might have missed during her captivity, had on those who read, buy and advertise in our newspaper.

Would someone please remind the sports "journalists" that they aren't journalists?

Acting Means Doing

Receiving resumes and headshots from actors can be a grating, frustrating thing.

Why is it whenever producers send out a casting call and ask for an actor's reel, they're met with the usual junk: "Here's my resume and headshot. I don't have a reel...yet! But I'm training at such-and-such a school, and I'm taking improv classes, and I'm a really hard worker..."

Snore.

There's no excuse anymore for an actor to not be able to show a producer what they look and sound like.

Case in point. Here's Hugh Laurie in his hotel room. He was was already a well known British actor before he got the part on House. But he did a reading anyway. And because he was out of the country at the time, he did it via video. It helped seal the deal (rumour has it that Bryan Singer didn't even know Laurie was British after he watched this).

Actors: hire a video guy for a half-hour, or turn on your web cam, and act. Read a phone book or a soliloquy or whatever. It makes a difference.

Overexposed

BBC: US President Barack Obama is set to make one of the most critical speeches of his presidency, as he faces Congress over his plans for healthcare reform.

Yawn. Another month, another "critical" speech. You'd think the greatest speaker ever would have nailed it down by now. See you in October.

I had a juggler buddy who could juggle seven pins at the same time. It looked awesome. When I asked him why he didn't do it in his show more often, he replied, "It's a 'look-what-I-can-do' trick. After five seconds, nobody cares."

Tricks get old fast.

Intellectual Alert - Bob Herbert

People get paid for this kind of analysis. Unreal. No wonder the papers are tanking.

The ultimate intellectual alert, compliments of Bob Herbert at the New York Times (I know - using the Times is cheating because it's so easy to cherry pick, but cut me some slack):

Maybe the economic stress has been too much. Looking back at the past few months, it’s fair to wonder if the country isn’t going through a nervous breakdown...There is no end to the craziness. The entire Republican Party has decided that it is in favor of absolutely nothing. The president’s stimulus package? No way. Health care reform? Forget about it.

There is not a thing you can come up with that the G.O.P. is for. Sunshine in the morning? Harry Reid couldn’t persuade a single Senate Republican to vote yes.

Incredibly, the party’s poll numbers are going up.

We need therapy....The wackiness is increasing, not diminishing, and it has a great potential for destruction. There is a real need for people who know better to speak out in a concerted effort to curb the appeal of the apostles of the absurd.

A little alliteration from aggravated authors.

Don't agree with the president? You're not stupid. You're nuts.

A little further down the page, Herbert borrows a page from the nervous breakdown manual, forgets what he's saying, and ends up with Multiple Personality Disorder. For such a sane and intelligent man (you know, compared to half the country), he's pretty careless with the shoot-self-in-foot gun:

The Obama administration’s biggest domestic priority is health care reform. But the biggest issue confronting ordinary Americans right now — the biggest by far — is the devastatingly weak employment environment. Politicians talk about it, but aggressive job-creation efforts are not part of the policy mix.

Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, according to official statistics. The real numbers are far worse. The unemployment rate for black Americans is a back-breaking 15.1 percent.

Five million people have been unemployed for more than six months, and the consensus is that even when the recession ends, the employment landscape will remain dismal.

Well, then, maybe that's why the country is going bonkers. They can't believe the gobs of money being spent by an administration with no sense of proportion or direction while the economy circles the bowl.

Genius.

Whoa

NBC: A Pennsylvania history buff who recreates firearms from old wars accidentally fired a 2-pound cannonball through the wall of his neighbor's home in Uniontown, Pa.

William Maser, 54, fired a cannonball Wednesday evening outside his home in Georges Township that ricocheted and hit a house 400 yards away. The cannonball, about two inches in diameter, smashed through a window and a wall before landing in a closet. Authorities said nobody was hurt.

State police charged Maser with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

"Girls Like That Like To Have Fun."

Going away to college just ain't the same anymore.


Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

The Contradictions of a Bonehead

Michael Moore, vis-a-vis capitalism being evil and the only answer being democracy. Or democracy as he defines it:

"Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event," he told a news conference. "If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."

Got it. Participate, but only if you toe the party line. And if Mr. Obama's plans tank? Not his fault. Your fault. Your shame.

Being taught lessons on democracy by Michael Moore is like being taught skydiving by Wile E. Coyote.

The Bus Arrives - Van Jones

AP: President Barack Obama's adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs" with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

Van Jones has a cool name, but it didn't help. Signing a 9/11 "Truther" petition doesn't look so good on a resume.

If I was a politician or an advisor, I would dread weekends. People often get dumped on a Friday or, in this case, Saturday at midnight on Labor Day Weekend. Easier to dodge the op-eds that way. By Tuesday morning, it never happened.

Horror Throwback

I sat down and watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time since I was 12 years old. After watching the flick, I went on imdb.com to see what other people thought of it. I wasn't surprised: a 7 out of 10 rating, with a lot of people calling it a masterpiece.

It isn't. The first half is kind of scary, but the second half is pretty funny until it's simply irritating. The girl screams, and screams, and screams, and screams, and screams...it really goes on for that long, to the point where you're hoping Leatherface will just do her in already.

That said, I can see how it would have been pretty effective in the '70s, back before slasher flicks became the mainstay of the horror genre.

On another note, I took a sidle over to The Exorcist to see what people thought of it. The flick happens to be my favorite horror film of all time, and it looks like a lot of other people like it, too. But I was struck again by how genre fans see themselves as experts and mindreaders. Case in point: someone wrote an innocent comment on the imdb.com site, asking if Regan playing with the Ouija board caused her possession.

Well. How dare you? Here's the answer from one commentator (and only one; apparently it dignified no further response):

This has been very well-discussed around here. You might want to read thru some of the older posts - it's been thoroughly tossed around. Regan did not become possessed thru the Ouija board alone. Any number of factors led up to her possession - puberty, her father's absence, her isolation and loneliness - factors that made her vulnerable. But the possession itself is strictly the act of the demon. Regan is a totally innocent victim, and did not bring the possession on herself, even thru use of a Ouija board.

So there.

Stuff like this cracks me up. I suppose that somewhere, somehow, either Billy Friedkin or William Peter Blatty said that these were the reasons Regan got possessed. What I remember from Friedkin's commentary on the DVD is one long lecture about spirituality, the death of his and Blatty's mothers, and a comment now and then about how he liked to film people walking up flights of stairs. It's the most dreadfully boring and utterly irrelevant director's commentary ever.

Genre fans are great fans, but they're also the most stubborn and protective. Who else sits on a website and so thoroughly tosses an issue around that when someone wanders by and asks a question, they're instantly told to pipe down and search the archives? It's 2009. The movie was made in 1973. It still has an active chat room?

I remember Alfred Molina gave an interview shortly after Spider-Man 2 came out. He played Doctor Octopus in the movie and the interviewer asked him if fans were now approaching him on the street. Molina said something like, "Well, you meet a different kind of fan. I'll ask them if they liked the movie and they'll say, 'Nevermind that! Tell me if Doc Oc really believes...'"

If a genre fan believes something is the best movie ever, then you cannot question one frame of it. They know. You do not. And, if you do question it, be sure to search "Ouija board" to see how wrong you are before you dare question poor Regan's innocence.

For the record, I've always thought that the Ouija board brought on Regan's possession. If you look at the movie - and just the movie; no interviews, no books, no blogs, just the movie - Regan shows a Ouija board to her mom. The little puck thingy dances across the board, moved by an invisible force. Five minutes later, Regan's possession begins. So sure, maybe somewhere Friedkin floated a line that the Ouija board had nothing to do with Regan puking pea soup - a story I've never read or heard - but anyone watching the film for the first time would see the Ouija board as a very significant reason that she starts going off the rails, as opposed to, say, pubescence.

I write movie reviews for this blog, so I guess I can come off like a know-it-all, too. But reading comments on imdb.com that profess so much knowledge is a laugh. Sometime a movie is just a movie, and sometimes the scene you're watching really is the scene you're watching.

Steyn In Haiku (II)

The Canadian Human Rights Commission took it on the chin the other day, as Athanasios Hadjis - one of their tribunal members - handed down a half-hearted verdict on Marc Lemire. Hadjis then said the verdict was a no go because it violates the Canadian Charter's rules on freedom of expression.

Steyn Wars has been going on for a long time, but this looks like a fatal blow to the folks that want to shut you up whenever you have something to say that they don't want to hear. Maybe. Apparently there's an appeals process, but either way you slice it, when a guy jumps back from the party line and says that his own outfit is out to lunch, that's bad for business.

There can't be a better time for more Steyn In Haiku:

A tale of two Marks
One a K, the other C.
Dude, where's my bigot?

*****

Left wing censor crowd
Athanasios, why? No!
Back to mom's basement

*****

Jenny Lynch, QC
The queen of censorship, moi?
CV time arrives

*****

Levant: "Gimme more."
Lefty losers: "Bite my tits."
The rest is silence

*****

Shaidle, Steyn, Levant sell
There's cash in this Nazi game
Heil Amazon

*****

Stark Raving

Via Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. Here's Democratic Representative of California Pete Stark: "You get the f*ck out of here or I'll throw you out the window."

The clip's actually a year old, which goes to show that you can do and say pretty much anything and survive as a politician these days.

The bigger laugh for me comes when Stark constantly asks the interviewer if he has an economics degree, a master's degree, or has ever taken a class in economics.

Which would prove what? All the economic eggheads in America were running the show last year and the economy took a mammoth powder. Personally, I'd feel much better with a plumber running the economy. At least the guy would do some basic math and figure out that spending far more than he earns will put him under.

Maxim: when a man with basic common sense confronts a self-described intellectual, the intellectual will lose his temper first.

Maxim: when someone asks if you have a college degree, you have won the argument.

Want more fun from the "intellectual" Stark? No problem. Here it comes, from an incident in 2004:

In May 2004, Stark responded to a constituent Army National Guard member's letter critical of Stark's recent vote on the war in Iraq by immediately calling the service member's telephone and leaving a feisty response on voicemail which was later broadcast on San Francisco's talk radio station KSFO.[8] Stark's harsh voicemail was transcribed as follows:

“Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either. But probably somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter, and somebody wrote it for you. So I don't pay much attention to it. But I'll call you back later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great goddamn hero and why you think that this generals [sic] and the Defense Department, who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did, shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks.

For the record, the clown's been in office since 1973. Must be a pretty brilliant guy.

The money quote comes in the last five seconds:

Crisis Time Again

The "swine flu pandemic," a news story started by Matt Drudge five months ago, is getting some more play this month. It's been an on-again-off-again story of doom since April, when I watched as a newscaster broke in to tell me that someone had a cold and was being quarantined. Five months on, the word "quarantine" is gaining traction:

A "pandemic response bill" currently making its way through the Massachusetts state legislature would allow authorities to forcefully quarantine citizens in the event of a health emergency, compel health providers to vaccinate citizens, authorize forceful entry into private dwellings and destruction of citizen property and impose fines on citizens for noncompliance.

If citizens refuse to comply with isolation or quarantine orders in the event of a health emergency, they may be imprisoned for up to 30 days and fined $1,000 per day that the violation continues.

I guess I'll hedge my bets by saying that a flu pandemic is certainly possible, but what kind of flu pandemic? Let's say a relatively harmless three-days-in-bed flu makes the rounds. Will three days of such a flu whip up such a media frenzy that a bill like the one above could be seen as reasonable? And, if that were to happen, would anyone on Capitol Hill say, "Hey, I've got this thing called the constitution. It says something about not being deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law?"

Let's take another look at the US rule book, otherwise known as the constitution (something all of these legislators supposedly swear an oath to). I know, I know, these next three passages look really long and boring, but bear with:

Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment XIV: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Whenever I hear American politicians say that the state should do something to citizens for the citizen's own good, I often remember some these amendments in the rule book. They are not about what the state should do, but what the state must not do. The constitution isn't there to protect or increase the power of the state, it is there to keep that power in check.

Yet a few sneezes and coughs are enough to give the state of Massachusetts the idea that the constitution isn't worth the paper it is printed on. Searches without warrant. Destruction of private property. Imprisonment - excuse me, "quarantine" - without charge. Home invasion. Each individual case decided by...whom? Ah, but we can worry about that later. Let's just get it on the books: the power.

As for equal protection under the law, sell me another one. If a governor or his mistress gets a cold, do you really think they'll wind up in a cramped hospital ward beside Johnny Public?

As Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff, said about the economic meltdown last year: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

I got it, Rahm, I got it.

Putz

What's the deal with everyone calling NYT columnist David Brooks a "conservative?" I just read this article that shows Brooks to be a political sycophant of the highest order (as if we needed anymore proof), chock full of liberalism, and yet it begins and ends on the same note: David Brooks is a conservative, or a "center-right columnist." People have been saying it forever: he's a conservative.

For the past year people have been saying things like, "though a conservative, David Brooks agrees with Obama." For Brooks' part, he more than agrees with Obama, he thinks they're cut from the same cloth. Here's Brooks:

"And, then, the war in Iraq has caused me to rethink things in a much more modest [way], and that is Burkean, too.”

[Brooks] recognizes something similar in the current president. “Obama sees himself as a Burkean,” Brooks says. “He sees his view of the world as a view that understands complexity and the organic nature of change.”

Ah. So it's not so much conservative/liberal, as it is smart/doofus. Naturally Brooks is in the smart camp, the Burkean camp.

I'm from the Don Rickles camp: David Brooks is an arrogant snob who sold his soul to political masters a long time ago. He's a putz. Take this bit from Brooks: "My line is, the Clinton people would tell you you’re a complete and total asshole. The Obama people say, ‘We love you. You’re a great guy. It’s sad you’re a complete and total asshole.’ They’re always very mature about it.”

Wonderful. When's the last time you were pleased that people who loved you thought you were a pathetic jackass?

As a liberal or conservative, the guy's a joke.

The Other Side Of Everything

I caught this over at Hot Air. It's a pretty big Say What? moment:

I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

That's one of Ted Kennedy's old friends, an ex-editor of Newsweek and the NYT. Only in the surreal world of the political sycophant could you say that your hero sees the lighter side of things because he jokes about a woman that was left in his car to drown and die. "She died, huh? How ridiculous."

Audio:

"He Floated Over On His Carpet, Looked Me In The Eye, And Said No."

The Onion's on a roll. This piece endears their writers to me more than any other from the past year. The elephant in the room, the genie in a bottle, it's all in there. Gorgeous.

Here, they skewer the bogus sports "journalists" that have covered for baseball's juicers over the past decade. Replace the word "genie" with the word "steroids" and there's virtually no difference between the below "senior baseball analyst" and the hacks from ESPN, TSN, Yahoo Sports, Fox Sports...


Baseball Superstar Accused of Performance-Enhancing Genie Use

"Even If The Minotaur Did Act Inappropriately - And I'm Not Saying He Did..."

Yet another beauty from The Onion.


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Money-Money-Money...

Reuters: The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to roughly $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.

"The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the official, who is familiar with the plans.

Whoa. That's quite a hike. Two trillion bucks. $2000000000000.00. Or two million million. However you look at it, what did this new data do, fall out of the sky and land in the Oval Office with an announcement of, "Sorry! Forget to tell you?" 2009 is winding down and we're still finding out just how bad 2008 was. Interesting. Equally interesting that this kind of news always comes out at the end of the week.

It seems like only a month ago the administration used the "worse than we thought" excuse. But I'm wrong. It wasn't a month ago. It was three weeks ago.

In other news, the guy who made that Obama Joker poster got outed. Turns out he's just some guy in Chicago that kind of likes Obama, kind of doesn't.

As for me, I think I know what the Joker makeup on that poster symbolizes. Take it away, Joel...

Faintheart

To paraphrase: "They may take our lives, but we'll never take their freedom."

Disgraceful news from the land of kilts and bagpipes:

The Lockerbie bomber tonight landed in Libya to a hero's welcome as thousands greeted him at the airport waving flags and posters.

Hours after leaving jail, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi boarded a plane back to his homeland.

His release prompted a furious reaction from America with Barack Obama branding it a mistake.

As a guy over at Hot Air pointed out, the terrorist spent 11.57 days in jail for each one of his victims.

Apple Sauce and Cow Dung

A major league boneheaded remark from the premier of Ontario:

Toronto Sun: "I think that the Conservatives are bringing kind of a small view to what we're doing here," McGuinty said. "We are participating in a remarkable adventure largely without precedent in the annals of human history. We're inviting people to come here from the four corners of the world.

"It's only natural and predictable that in those circumstances from time to time there will be a little bit of friction ... we need a place in a civilized society to address those kinds of concerns," he said.

"Inviting people to come here from the four corners of the world." Yeah, that's never been done before. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Wawa, Ontario. Who knew?

His remarks are in defense of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, an organization whose goal is not about human rights but about telling you how you should live your life.

It should be scary when a politician defends a social program by declaring it's a great adventure that's never been done before. Picture the conversation:

"You sure about this?"
"No idea. But it's going to be great!"
"How do you know?"
"Don't. But it's great!"
"But..."
"Stop asking so many questions. You're ruining the adventure."
"Great."

Adventure and Government. Those words go together about as well as apple sauce and cow dung.

The Ontario human rights racket is run by Barbara Hall. Here she is in the same Sun piece:

The commission is also working on forcing transit systems in Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Hamilton to call out all stops for visually impaired passengers and is keeping a close eye on Oshawa and other municipalities who have tried to restrict the growth of student housing through zoning by-laws.

The public education role will also be beefed up, she said.

"In the past we had one staff person for the whole of Ontario that did public education," Hall said. "Now we will have more and we'll have the capacity to work with communities on the education that is the best for them."

Keeping a close eye on...beefed up...best for them...

Sounds pretty innocent to me. Oh, and by the way, when she says "now we have more" people to run education in Ontario, what she means is, we have a lot more of the taxpayers' money to spend on our social engineering projects. Man, that recession's been tough on everybody.

Once again, it needs to be said: not one person in the Ontario Human Rights Commission is an elected official. Their Ontario Human Rights Code is written by them and enforced by them. They are not trained educators, law enforcement officials, or even politicians. They're just people that have a permanent job of deciding that what you're doing just won't do.

Canada's a funny place. We rail against oppression everywhere, pay lip service to freedom, but when an unelected bureaucrat declares that she's keeping an eye on cities and plans to educate your children properly, it's a big yawn. If your neighbour told you that your kid isn't being educated properly and needs retooling, you'd freak. When a bureaucrat you've never met says the same thing, you shrug.

Funny. Delicious.

SBQD At Your Service

Remember that gaffe Obama made a while back about the Post Office vs. UPS and FedEx? It was a blooper that everyone promptly buried, especially the man himself.

Not Jesse Jackson, Jr, though. He thought it sounded great and now goes after it whole hog:



"Look at it this way, Larry. There's Federal Express, there's UPS, and there's DHL. The public option is a stamp. It's email. And because of the email system, and because of the post office, it keeps DHL from charging $100 for an overnight letter. Or UPS from charging $100 for an overnight letter, because of the public option. Some of us don't have a problem buying a stamp, rather than going that route."

These guys are either crazies or drunk.

1) UPS and FedEx can't compete with the post office in letter delivery by law, so the comparison is useless unless you're trying to make the exact opposite point that Jackson is. 2) Since when was the internet a "public option email system" in answer to the outrageous corporate monsters at DHL and UPS? 3) It's pretty frightening, but the poor guy seems to think - I'm taking him at his word; sue me - that if the post office folded tomorrow, FedEx, DHL, and UPS would all charge $100 for letter delivery.

Nevermind that anyone with enough cash for a fleet of Cessnas and a few bicycles would wipe out FedEx by doing it for a buck. And then DHL would charge 98 cents. And then UPS would charge 94 cents. And then Sean Berry's Quickie Delivery would charge 75 cents. We'd trade prices until one of us goofed, charged too little, couldn't get out from under, and went bust. The other guys would find the market value - ie, what people are willing to pay before telling you to stick it - and settle into making decent profits while offering the odd special and concentrating on customer service and faster delivery time to draw customers away from the competition. Until yet another guy came along with a more efficient way of doing it and charged less, forcing the competition to either meet that price or start calling themselves "high end" and chasing the mail snobs.

See, that's how the market (I know, I know - it's a scary place, don't get caught there after sundown) operates. Unless it's providing them with boffo campaign donations, clowns like Jesse Jackson Jr don't have a clue. Or they're lying. Take your pick on which is worse.

The only place geniuses like this will run health care is straight into the ground.

CSI Won't Be The Same

Once in a while I catch one of those Bill Curtis shows on TV. He's the guy that does American Justice and Cold Case Files. In virtually every one of the Cold Case stories, the crook is done in by his DNA: a cop will go through a 20-year-old file, find a stained pair of underwear, send them to the lab, and bingo, a match is discovered and the quiet weird guy at the end of the street is put away for life.

Whenever I see the show, I always think, "Man, if it wasn't for DNA they'd never get any of these guys." That's because the DNA is all the cops and prosucution have, and it's virtually all they need. There's a one in a zillion chance that the DNA belongs to somebody else, so if it's your spit on the beer bottle then you're done like dinner.

But what if that wasn't the case? What if you needed more than just DNA to pin somebody down?

From the NYT:

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.

The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.

Next question: who says it hasn't been done a hundred times already?

I Dub Thee, Therefore Thou Art

Vis-a-vis the Obama/Joker poster, an LA Weekly guy has this to say:

To be honest, though, I do believe the poster appeals to people who see in it a validation of their own racial prejudices, even if they can't acknowledge them. That my short post hit such a deep, raw nerve clearly shows that race was very much part of the illustration's attraction.

Got it. If one were to draw a Telly Tubby, and I were to call that person a child molestor, his angry reaction to my charge would prove beyond all doubt that he is a child molestor.

Reading minds is just so easy.

The National Felony League Makes It Official

Hang, shoot, electrocute and drown dogs, lie to your bosses, lie to the Feds, lie to everyone in sight, go to jail, come out during a recession and...welcome to your 2-year contract worth $5.2 million, baby.

The NFL has now confirmed its garage league status beyond all doubt.

Photo: AP

Nothing is Free

I saw this in a Newsweek piece, describing what a great life it is to grow up in France:

His [a French person's] education, from grade school through university, will be essentially free.

Er, define "essentially" and then define "free."

I love France. Loved it when I stayed there, loved it when I was just visiting. But "essentially free" is a lie. If education in France is truly free, then I have to assume that university professors do not get paid, buildings are erected by construction workers that never eat, and books are printed on thin air.

Maxim: whatever and wherever it is, somebody has to pay for it.

Quite an Opening Sentence

Why blogs can be tiresome:

It could be a rallying cry for the millions of Glenn Beck and Hannity viewers, FreeRepublic readers, and other subnormal so-called citizens who, by dint of their sponge-like soaking up of right-wing propaganda, their latent paranoia and racism, and their predisposal towards being easily led, have found themselves waving little placards and screaming at dozens of health care reform meetings across the country.

The Sell That Isn't Selling (Updated)

My lefty friends get upset when I poke fun at Obama, so in this instance I will say that feel sorry for him.

That isn't backhanded pity, either. This clip sums up what I was saying yesterday:



The man is not used to being told, "No." Now that there are people raising Cain over his health care plans, he has to go out and explain why it's a good thing for his countrymen. And he can't do it. I honestly think that he started this mess by merely thinking, "Everyone should have health care." It sounded like a neat idea, nothing to it. Now he seems shocked to discover that he simply can't sign on the line and make it so. (By the way, don't forget this key point: his party owns both houses of Congress and have enough votes to pass any bill he wants. Republicans and angry town hallers aren't holding back his health care plans; his own party is. That's a pretty big deal for a president who was the major league darling of his party only 6 months ago).

He's not confident anymore. He stammers. He hesitates. But more than that, he chooses extremely poor words: "I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean. If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

Good grief. You do not, as a rule, pick a failing government institution as an example of why a new government institution should be set up. He's treading water and sinking.

Using the Post Office is a lousy choice. 1) UPS and FedEx aren't allowed to compete with non-overnight delivery of letters. By government order, they have to stay in the parcel and overnight game. Which leads to the question: if FedEx and UPS compete with the Post Office - as Mr. Obama says private insurers will compete with government health care - and are already tops, then just imagine how much UPS and FedEx would kick the post office's butt if they played on an equal footing. 2) "I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time." Okay. Sounds like things are pretty good. Then why is government opening up its own health care shop?

He can't answer those points because he didn't think the example through. During the off-the-cuff moment, he hesitated and floundered until plucking "Post Office" from thin air. Then he booted it.

This is not the Barack Obama that was advertised last year. I'm still waiting for the great orator to arrive. It's a long wait.

Update: The hits keep coming. The dude can't be endearing himself to doctors with this stuff.

The Bus Arrives - Rios

I was listening to JP Ricciardi, general manager of the Blue Jays, a few days ago. He had just put Alex Rios on waivers and was telling a reporter, "It happens all the time. We're just testing the waters."

Sure. And have I got some stock to sell you.

Rios is gone because of his own underperformance, but more importantly the underperformance of the whole team. The Jays spent big bucks on Rios and Vernon Wells. Result? Another .500 season. Somebody had to be jettisoned in order to make some financial space for next year. Scott Rolen went last week, and then it was Rios' turn. Enter the White Sox, who scooped Rios up this evening.

The Genius Family

Reuters: A YouTube video showing a 7-year-old boy at the wheel of a sport utility vehicle -- with his family cheering him on -- has prompted an investigation by Quebec police and family services, police said on Tuesday.

The video, apparently shot by the boy's father from the SUV's passenger seat as the boy drives and his mom and siblings watch from the back seat, was brought to the attention of Quebec Provincial Police on Monday, Sergeant Chantal Mackels said.

"We now know who the person is," Mackels said, noting charges are still being worked out.

Finding the family wasn't much of a challenge, given the father's enthusiastic narration of the video, including their location in Quebec and the boy's first name.

Mister Regulator

I was telling someone the other day about this little girl who runs a lemonade stand just down the street. She's there every now and then. While she sells lemonade, another little girl, perhaps her sister, draws art on the sidewalk with sticks of chalk.

I've bought lemonade from her stand for two reasons. 1) Lemonade's pretty good. 2) You should always support a budding capitalist. My only complaint is that her serving cups are damn small and the last time I bought lemonade there, I felt jipped.

In any event, she seems to enjoy the venture, and so should we. It teaches her the value of a buck and how the world works. While everyone else is running around worrying about the economy and begging for government handouts, this little girl shrugs and starts earning some cash. Pretty cool. Right?

Out in California, another little girl is learning how the world works, too. Running a small business? Get ready for Mister Regulator:

Eight-year-old Daniela Earnest has made lemonade out of lemons in more ways than one this week.

Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday. But because Daniela didn't have a business license, the city of Tulare shut it down the same day.

A radio station caught wind of it and gave her some tickets to Disneyland. Under that PR pressure, it looks like the city is going to cave and let the little girl have her lemonade stand.

The reason I dislike Mister Regulator is because his mission in life is to make sure you don't make a buck. He makes his living by trying to stop you from doing same. In this case, Mister Regulator was "Richard Garcia, a Tulare code enforcement officer, [who] happened to be at the same intersection to remove illegal signs left behind by someone selling tetherball poles."

I get that. Signs hanging all over the place are ugly. But think about his job: constantly looking for ways to cheat someone out of making a living. It must be a glorious little place, the mind of Mister Regulator: "I am important. I am the boss. Scourge of lemonade stands and tetherball enthusiasts."

Imagine the officious moron you would have to be to see a little girl selling lemonade, then bust her for not having a business license. It's almost inconceivable that someone could be that stupid.

Almost, but not quite, because these clowns are everywhere.

Stoolies Wanted

Come on, this can't be for real:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Yup. That's the White House website asking for snitches. Next question: what exactly is the White House planning to do once a stoolie drops the dime on some blogger, emailer, or otherwise general pain in the ass?

When the Obama campaign trumpeted the word "audacity," they weren't kidding around. It's pretty audacious for the executive branch to openly declare that the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism aren't dark chapters in US history; they're something to emulate. They must be crazy to think they'll get away with it.

Then again...

Why So Serious?

I caught this bit via Drudge. Some guy in LA has been hanging this charicature of Obama about town.

Sound the alarm!

KTLA: Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson, "it is mean-spirited and dangerous."

"We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama."

Oh, chill out. Some dude hung a bunch of posters and it went viral. Big deal. A public challenge? I'm sure the guy's having a private laugh. Who knew hanging posters on a street corner could put the national media in such a twist?

I've read a few pieces where people are trying to figure out what the posters mean. If I had to guess, I'd say the guy's calling Obama a "joker" or a "clown" or a "phony" or a "socialist." A stretch, I know.

A trivial story on an otherwise slow news day. Besides, you can't have it both ways. There wasn't a peep of outrage over the hundreds of different "Bush/Hitler" posters and bumper stickers over the years. You can't start crying now that someone's going after your guy - well, you can, but nobody should care.

Free speech. Ain't it a bitch?

The Hurt Locker - Review

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jeremy Renner/Anthony Mackie
Written by: Mark Boal
Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes

War movies these days aren't really war movies. They're more psych-drama mixed with one or two battle scenes. They're often heavy handed on a message (war is terrible, war is evil, war kills and makes friends cry), and they're usually pretty boring.

The Hurt Locker has a touch of all this, but it works because the movie isn't about battles. It's about a bomb squad, the guys who defuse Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that are left at the side of the road by terrorists and insurgents. That allows a lot of room for silence, but not of the good kind. It's a silence that's waiting to blow you to smithereens.

Jeremy Renner is excellent as Staff Sergeant James, team leader of a bomb squad. He's the guy that dons the suit and walks in while everyone is else is running out. His character is interesting and fun, which is a switch from the usual morose heroes in today's war pics. He's fearless, a little crazy, and basically what a hero should be: a guy that makes us think, "That's who I'd be."

There's some very good scenes in this movie and none of them have loud noises. A duel between two snipers is especially well done. The tedium of it. The heat. The boredom. The waiting. And bang.

The movie only goes off the rails three-quarters through when it sidetracks into a subplot involving a young Iraqi boy who has gone missing. It rings false because the movie has taken too long before deciding to "care about the kids," and the conclusion of the subplot is pretty unsatisfying.

This movie has the usual crying jags and temper tantrums. It's old. War is awful and of course I can't say what I would do. Maybe I'd lose my marbles. But from a film/writing point of view, war movies are tedious and paint-by-numbers: insert dead friend here, estranged wife there, temper tantrum this way, crying crack up that way, and wrap it up with a character saying, "What's it all for, anyway?" There hasn't been a new way of telling a war story in a long time. This movie comes close, but can't help itself and eventually caves.

Still, it's well done and it's worth seeing.

Photo: Rotten Tomatoes

Gotta Love It

This guy's a trip.

Here's the gist: "A report just came out yesterday. Said things were even worse than we thought back when we knew what we thought. Get it? So even though the stimulus package sucks, it's actually doing well. Not because it's doing well - but because things were more sucky than we thought. And no, the stimulus wasn't supposed to 'stimulate.' It was just supposed to 'put the brakes' on the recession, which, as I said, was really hard to do because the recession was even more sucky than we thought. So. Not my fault. Everything's cool. It's not that the stimulus isn't working, it's that the recession was worse than I told you it was. Cheer up, sport."

And that's all in the first thirty seconds. Revisionist history is such a gas. Maxim: lower the bar enough and you can make even cow dung look like Everest.

I swear I've just watched the :25 to :31 part of this clip half-a-dozen times. It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages. I have to hand it to him. The chutzpah it takes to say that line with a straight face is unreal. I also love the usual "Since I took office" stuff, as if he's Zeus just down from Olympus, and not a Senator who could have opened his mouth about the dangerous brink ahead any old time he felt like it.

Love. This. Guy.

I Love You. Here's 10 Bucks

I was waiting in line at a McDonald's today and overheard a few kids yapping about their summer vacations. One of the kids said, "We have to go away next week." A girl replied, "We haven't gone anywhere...This is the best summer ever."

You hear it all the time from friends and morning show anchors: "The kids need a vacation...We need some family time...The kids are going to love it."

Hogwash.

Looking back on my childhood, I discover that McDonald's Kid is right. The best summer was a summer without Big Vacation. No sitting in the backseat of a car for ten hours a day. No fighting with your brother every five minutes. No being told to "keep it down back there." No sleeping in the same hotel room as your mom and dad (this was always a rip off – they got the queen size, I got the pull out couch). No posing for pictures in front of yet another statue of some dead guy.

Maxim: Kids don’t go to Niagara Falls because they want to see Niagara Falls. They go because you shove them in the car.

The best summer a kid can have is a summer without their parents. Oh, sure, kids love the free room and board, but they only love their parents until they become a teenager. Up until then it’s all snuggles and kisses and catch. Then puberty hits and for the next eight years parents are lame. When you're a baby, parents are parents. When you're an adult, parents are friends. When you're a teenager, parents are the cops, prosecution, and parole officer all rolled into one.

When I was a kid there used to be these dire warnings about Latch Key Kids. You’d see them on TV all the time. Parents were told that working late and leaving their kids alone bordered on abuse. The commercials would have ominous music and show some kid unlocking the door and entering a big creepy house. Then they’d cut to a shot of the kid sitting on the front porch, despondently looking down the street, hoping for mom and dad to come home and give him a hug.

Yeah, right. I didn't get it. For one, I didn't know what a latch key was. We just called them keys. For another, what was so wrong with being alone in the house? Whenever I got home from school, an empty house meant two hours of cartoons and no homework. My personal nirvana was when my parents would “go out for a while." They'd leave ten bucks on the table, tell me to be good, and take off. I'd jump for joy.

Three whole hours without parents felt like paradise. That ten dollars represented a Whopper and fries, a VHS horror movie, and a few quarters left over for Pac Man. I’d eat my fill at the local fast food joint, play some video games at the convenience store, then scare myself with a copy of The Exorcist, and then – the sound of the car in the driveway. End of the night. Twilight of the Latch Key Kid. Damn.

Whole weekends without parents were beautiful. These came along once you were old enough not be stuck with grandma. Forty-eight hours of solitude. Unbelievable. TV, and macaroni and cheese, and movies, and TV, and frozen pizza, and video games, and TV, and enough soda to kill. All that for twenty bucks. You can’t find deals like that anymore.

You'll never hear it from Dr. Spock, but Family Vacation is overrated. Want a happy kid? Buy them off. Turn the tables and say you're going to give them some peace and quiet. They’ll love you for it.

The National Felony League

Bear with the quotations for a minute.

Me, on July 24, 2007: The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

Me, on May 28, 2009: The sports shows are slowly leaning towards a reinstatement of Michael Vick.

He was released from prison a couple of weeks ago and has given no press appearances, but the sycophants that make up the sports media are already bending. Funny, that. He doesn't even have to say "whoops" or "prison sucks," and already they're kneeling.

Yahoo! Sports writer Jason Cole, July 27, 2009: In short, how many people could commit a crime punishable by prison or jail time, lie to their boss and the owner of the business repeatedly, continue to embarrass the employer and somehow think they could return to their job as soon as the sentence ends?

Realistically speaking, that’s a very unrealistic notion.

To be clear, this is not an argument that Vick, who repeatedly lied to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell two years ago, shouldn’t play football again. On the contrary, Vick deserves another chance.

Just not right away.

That's a sports writer. Once he has his nose in the backside of an athlete, there's no way he's going to pull it out again.

Cole goes on to say, "In this case, Vick brought more punishment on himself by how he treated his employer along the way."

Cole's either an idiot or insane. Only in the strange world of the shameless sycophant will you find a man describing big pay checks as punishment.

The National Felony League has now proven to be a complete joke and a great home for liars and lowlifes. League commissioner Roger Goodell says Vick will only be reinstated after 5 weeks of good behavior. 5 weeks. What a test of character. Does anyone seriously think Goodell is not going to reinstate Vick once those 5 weeks are up?

It's a thumb in the eye of every hard working fan that goes to work, does his job, and tries to live a decent life. Michael Vick ran a dog fighting enterprise on his own property, admitted to strangling and drowning dogs himself as well as watching his friends electrocute them, broke several laws, lied to the league, and lied to the cops. Outcome? Business as usual and big bucks, baby. Hell of a lesson for keeping kids from wandering off the straight and narrow.

Vick disgusts me, but sports "journalists" and Roger Goodell disgust me more. Roll over and beg, boys.

Short Cuts

Some more quick reviews of movies I either didn't have time to write about before, or just couldn't be bothered to review because they were lame.

The Watchmen: A bunch of has-been super heroes comes out of retirement to save the Earth. Good effects, stupid ending.

Horsemen: Dennis Quaid plays a cop. Guess what? His wife's dead. Guess what? He's estranged from his kids. Guess what? There's a serial killer about town. Guess what? Quaid is morose and will catch the killer at any cost. Guess what?

Push: A guy has the power to 'push' people through the air, through walls, through plate glass windows, through anything. It's an X-Men rip-off in the sense that there's more 'mutants' like him around, and there's another group of mutants that want to kill the good mutants and take over the world. Now that I've written that, I see that it is exactly an X-Men rip-off.

The Haunting in Connecticut: Lame horror flick about a haunted house. You've seen it a million times before.

Knowing: Nicholas Cage plays a guy whose son finds a piece of paper that prophesies disasters like plane crashes and train wrecks. Nic Cage has been in some real flops over the past decade, but this one is surprisingly good. I was totally prepared for it to stink, but it didn't.

International: Clive Owen is an Interpol agent investigating a dirty bank that has ties to arms dealing. Pretty good movie, and it feels relevant for the times, too. The shootout scene in the Guggenheim is the best shootout scene in a while.

Killshot: Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane in a movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel. This was shot before Rourke did The Wrestler, and it was scheduled and rescheduled for release a ton of times. Not a great sign, as that means it was hacked to death in post-production. It got a limited release, then got dumped into the video store. It deserved it. It's not terrible, but not good. Just run of the mill shoot-'em-up.

Make It A Ford

I wrote this back on March 30:

If a free market fan wanted to show the government that they didn't want politicians in their lives (not to mention cars) then there's one thing they should do: make it a Ford.

It looks like it's become a popular idea. Here's some news from today's Washington Post:

Ford Motor on Thursday posted a surprise profit of $2.26 billion for the second quarter, ending a streak of four straight quarterly losses.

In recent months, the carmaker has claimed market share from its American rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, while those companies struggled to restructure their operations in bankruptcy court.

The article doesn't mention it, but GM and Chrysler took government cash while Ford didn't. GM immediately found out what it means to dance with the devil when the President of the United States canned the president of their company, instantly making GM stand for Government Motors.

Result? The only US automaker not to take government cash is making money.

The Salesman in Chief is having a splendid month, isn't he?

Perfection

I'm still not sure what a perfect game means. Sure, sure, no hits, no walks, but is that all the pitcher's doing?

In last night's Sox/Rays game, Larry Wise caught a would-be homer in the ninth inning to save Mark Buehrle's perfect game. As with any pitcher's "win," a perfect game depends a lot on the other eight men on the field. So did Buehrle pitch a perfect game or did the White Sox win a perfect game?

When you get down to it, the only way a pitcher could possibly claim a perfect game for himself would be to throw 27 strikeouts, making the rest of the team not players but bystanders. (Take the 27 strikeouts at face value for argument's sake; it is possible for a pitcher to strike out 4 guys in an inning if the hitter swings, the catcher misses the ball, and the hitter beats the throw to first. The hitter still "struck out," and the pitcher has to face the next guy. But the perfect game would be shot, too).

Roger Clemens came close twice: he struck out 20 batters apiece in two separate games. Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson both struck out 20 guys in a single game. The only pitcher to ever strike out 27 batters in a single game was a guy named Ron Necciai. He played minor league ball back in the '50s. It wasn't a perfect game, but a no-hitter, and Necciai needed to strike out four men in the ninth because of a catcher's passed ball.

So has there ever really been a "perfect game" by a pitcher? Depends how you look at perfection.

You can argue it till the cows come home. A perfect game is either a fantastic feat done by a very good pitcher, or a statistical anomoly (there's only been 18 perfect games in the history of baseball) compliments of a good - and lucky - team.

Outrageous Outrage

An absolute beauty of a statement from Eliot Spitzer's lawyer. Spitzer was the New York governor who got busted sleeping with a high price hooker, forcing his resignation:

In March, we told you about a high-end escort who claimed that former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer had gotten overly aggressive during some kinky role-play (a charge Spitzer's lawyer called "outrageous and defamatory").

Cheating on your wife with a hooker while serving as governor? A mistake. Getting kinky? Outrageous lies!

Don't Anther

When it comes to living in the "natural world," we're pretty pathetic. Centuries of campfires, houses, streetlights and DVD players have turned us from robust rulers of the world to so much Spam on the hoof.

Take your average person. Place a blindfold on him, walk him five miles into the woods, and then leave him behind. There's a very good chance that the guy will wander around and die before he ever finds his way out of there. Fire building and spear making have been replaced by compasses, GPS units, and Meals Ready to Eat. Without a handy supply of food and electronics, we're toast.

That's why a story like this amuses me:

In one attempted attack, a Princeton resident spotted a cougar stalking two young children who were swimming in a river, but was able to shoot the cat before it pounced, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.

"Given the young age of the children the chances of surviving the pending attack would not have been great," police said in a statement.

Another cougar was killed while prowling in a campground and another near a park swimming pool, where children were playing.

Princeton is a rural community in the mountains about three hours drive east of Vancouver.

Wildlife experts say that cougars seem to be attracted to young children, possibly by their high-pitched voices and erratic movements, and that the cats may confuse them with the wildlife prey they normally seek.

I figure most wildlife experts are crackpots. They're forever rolling out the "mistaken identity" excuse. Since wildlife experts love animals, and want everyone else to love them too, they constantly preach that tigers, bears, sharks and cougars never really mean it when they rip our heads off. It's all a tragic accident. If the bear or tiger only knew a little better, he'd be a pet. But, since it was dark out or I was acting like a deer, the animal attacked me. Poor Fluffy, he's so confused.

Hogwash. Take the above story about the cougars: the cats may mistake children with "the wildlife prey they normally seek." Say what?

Can someone tell me one animal that acts like a child at a swimming pool? "Marco...Polo..." Splash, splash, splash! "Got you!" "Did Not!" "Mom, I want a hot dog!" "Billy's a jerk!"

I was out for a walk in the woods the other day and I was struck again by a) how quiet the woods are, and b) how loud we are. We're the stupidest animals going. We crash through the bush with reckless abandon, slather ourselves with mosquito repellent and sunscreen, yap at the top of our lungs, and never once look around to see if we're being hunted. If a cougar attacks us, it's not a mistake. It's easy pickings.

You can't blame the cougar for taking advantage. But don't hide it under Mr. Nice Guy stuff. The cougar population is exploding, they're looking for food and bingo: a bunch of defenseless, small animals running around a watering hole without a care in the world, or a small animal pointing and giggling as daddy trips over a log. To a cougar, that's called lunch.

Our human ego makes me laugh. "Mistaken for prey they normally seek." We are prey. We always were.

The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther.
-- Ogden Nash

"Bound and Gagged, Given Talking Points"

Another beauty from The Onion:


Human Rights Group Campaigns To End Use Of Child Politicians In Africa

Intellectual Alert - Peggy Noonan (Again)

I haven't posted an Intellectual Alert in a while, mainly because there's so many that I can't keep track. However, Pegs never fails to disappoint in the condescension department. As a hack of towering conceit, she warrants another highlight. So here goes:

Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

That is an Intellectual Alert in a nutshell: it's not that you think disagreeable thoughts, it's that you don't know how to think. Noonan's Intellectualism folows the old elitist maxim that people who disagree with you aren't wrong. They're insane.

Actual genius and true judgement vs. lunatics and morons. It goes without saying which group Pegs thinks she's in.

Badger Bombed

I can never pass up a drunk animal story:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A badger in Germany got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge, police said on Wednesday.
A motorist called police near the central town of Goslar to report a dead badger on a road -- only for officers to turn up and discover the animal alive and well, but drunk.

A Fitting Memorial

Not to be a killjoy over the whole thing, but after flicking past the Greatest Funeral On Earth for the umpteenth time, I have to wonder: are the families of the kids that Jackson settled out of court with watching this parade of sanctimony? I wonder what they're thinking.

There's something creepy about watching a basketball stadium full of people stare at a coffin while the dude's brother wears a glittering white glove - glove, not gloves - and sings Smile. Freaky. It only get freakier when you hear the person in the coffin is missing his brain:

Michael Jackson will be buried this week – without his brain. As his family tries to finalise details for the King of Pop’s funeral on Tuesday they have been told it will be held back for tests.

They faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it – which they have decided to do.

A funeral-cum-freakshow. Somehow apt.

I found a fairly funny live blog over at THR. It provides some reality. Here's James Hibberd's take:

11:30 a.m.: A low-key (for him, anyway) Al Sharpton [What? You thought he wouldn't be there? - SB] gets an ovation with this line: “I want his three children to know: There was nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with, and he dealt with it.” Young Prince Michael looks nonplussed, chews gum. Somehow you get the impression that kid is never going to have to clean his room. As for Sharpton's sentiment, it's nice and all. But Jackson's various seeming addictions (drugs, debt-chasing overspending, the surgeries, hanging with kids) were the very model of somebody who was unable to deal with his issues.

Public Enemies - Review

Director: Michael Mann
Written by: Mann/Bennett/Biderman
Starring: Johnny Depp
Runtime: 2 hours 23 minutes

If you put people in fedoras, they are legends.

Think about your average bank robber from today. Some stick up guy at a gas station or a liquor store. When you see the security camera footage on the nightly news, all stick up guys look like bums. Eventually they get caught and put in prison and you find out - if you find out - that their life story is the ho-hum stuff of juvenile delinquency: raised poor, stole some cars, busted for assault a few times, and finally nabbed knocking over a five and dime. None of them are hailed as heroes. More often than not, they're described as scum bags and losers.

That isn't the way bank robbers were back in the day. Or at least that's not the way Hollywood and our minds project them. Back in the time of fedoras and Thompsons, they had great names: Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly. John Dillinger isn't remembered by a nickname because he didn't need one. How can you have a better nickname than Public Enemy #1?

Why did I just write that? How can you have a better nickname than Public Enemy #1?

It's funny how we look at robbery when it has the sepia tint of memory. Armed robbery in black and white looks so cool, so interesting, so fun, so glorious. Who wouldn't want to be a bank robber in the 1930s? And now that I think about it, it works both ways: back then, FBI agents were "G-Men." Now they're "Feds." How boring.

These were some of my thoughts while watching Public Enemies, a slightly wonky title given that the movie revolves around one Public Enemy. Though Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson make an appearance, the movie centers on Dillinger. He's played by an always good Johnny Depp, who looks perfect for the role.

The movie takes some liberties with history. Doesn't matter much. If you're looking to films to give a history lesson, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Truth might be stranger than fiction, but truth can be a bitch when you're making a movie. So tack a "based on" credit to the opening and let fly.

This is a Michael Mann movie from the word go. He still likes to go handheld most of the time, and there's plenty of extreme over-the-shoulder camera angles. Guns blaze and sound like guns, and when people get shot they are punched full of holes. The Thompson submachine gun is a co-star of this movie, and when it goes off there's a muzzle flash five feet long. (Halfway through the movie, watch as one character gets blasted; the way he goes down will remind you of DeNiro's character's demise in Heat, another Mann film).


This movie isn't all cops and robbers. It tries for some kind of humanity, which could have been fatal. Dillinger is not the savvy, fearless man we've come to dream about. Depp plays him as tough and slick in the early going, but as the pressure mounts and his friends are gunned down, he begins to get paranoid and frightened.

That's normal. That's how life works: pressure grinds down the toughest of us. But showing this can kill a movie about a tough guy and turn it into melodrama. This movie doesn't do that because the script doesn't allow a long winded soliloquy about "getting out of the life," and Depp doesn't become a caricature of robber-with-a-conscience.

I don't know how Mann does it, but he always makes a movie that's either pretty good or very good. Public Enemies is just all right, but it's Michael Mann's just all right. Which means you'll enjoy it even if it is uneven and sometimes a yawn. (Miami Vice was terrible. Terrible. But it was shot by Michael Mann, so for some reason I quite liked it. Weird, I know. The man just makes things look like you want to enjoy them).

Public Enemies won't win any prizes, but it won't waste your time, either. See it.

Movie Poster: Yahoo Movies

Palin Hangs Them Up

Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska comes as a bit of a surprise. I'm hoping that she didn't pull the plug in order to contemplate a run at the presidency in 2012. If that's the case, then her goose is cooked and the resignation was a move of sheer political folly: you can't quit a governorship claiming lame duck status and then ask people to elect you president. Still, I wouldn't put anything past her. When you get down to it politically-speaking, she has nothing to lose.

If she resigned because of the beating that she and her family took over the past year, then I can't blame her. I wonder how I would feel. One day I'm just sitting around running a sparsely populated state, going hunting, trying to build an oil pipeline. The next, people are making fun of my handicapped kid, calling my 14-year-old a slut, calling me a slut, scrutinizing my religious beliefs, and dragging my name through the mud at every turn. Sooner or later, you might want to sit down and say, "You know what? Screw them and screw this."

Palin was vilified for being a woman and being a conservative. If she had been in favour of abortion, she would have been fine. That is the only test of Modern Feminism: are you pro-abortion or not? If not, then 'feminists' will destroy you. Gender has nothing to do with 'feminism.' Abortion is all.

For me, the most memorable hit piece on Palin comes from a 'feminist' named Cintra Wilson. I read it from time to time just to remind myself of the hypocrisy that is rife within the halls of Big Media and Modern Feminism:

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

I am willing to bet everything I own that Cintra Wilson didn't give a passing thought to Sarah Palin before she was named as McCain's running mate. It's almost certain she had never heard the words "Sarah Palin." But when Wilson saw Palin for the first time, her first thoughts were those written above.

How's that for feminism? Having a handicapped child unequivocally proves that you're an anti-abortion crusader. Cintra's message to mothers of handicapped children: you love your politics more than your baby. And allowing your teenage daughter to have a child? Why, you're nothing more than a deranged political zealot.

Some support. Some feminism.

Wilson's arrow is just one from the quiver of Palin Hate over the past year. I wonder if I could handle that much hate, especially when it was aimed at my kids. I remember one feminist commentator saying that Palin should stop "dragging out the handicapped baby" during the campaign, and another lamenting that Palin is not, in fact, a woman. Jay Leno joked about the names of Palin's kids - one of them should be named Rifle - and David Letterman bashed Palin so often it was pathological. His last attempt, saying Alex Rodriguez had slept with her 14-year-old daughter, was just the latest in a long line of slander. Andrew Sullivan, a writer at The Atlantic, spent a ton of time and filed more than a few pieces asking Palin to release her medical records so the world could find out if her youngest child was hers or her girl's.

10 months ago, nothing. Ten months later, enough slime to fill all the buckets in America. Could you hack it?

Politics is a tough game. Politicians deserve tough questions and scrutiny. They should expect bitter jabs and gossip. But let me ask you this: tell me the names of George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John McCain, or Dick Cheney's children. No? Can't do it? No surprise. These men are attacked for their philosophies and their political ideology.

Family, sex, and religion were fair game for Palin alone.

It's been a tawdry, disgusting, disturbing ride. Now maybe we can hop off the bus for a while. But a quick note to young, pretty girls, compliments of the media and Modern Feminism: know your place, baby, and know it well.

That Was A Wimbledon

Two great players. Roddick gutted it out to take Federer to the brink, and Federer came out on top to become the winningest Slam tennis player of all time.

The best part: neither of them needed to grunt and scream like an idiot every time they swung the racket, something which has driven me away from tennis over the past ten years.

Congrats to Federer and Roddick both.

Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

"I Just Told Her To Hang On Tight. I Won't Let Go."

This has to be the picture of the year, compliments of Andrea Melendez from the Des Moines Register.

After a boat went over a dam, a man and a woman ended up in the water. The man drowned. A rescue crew tried several times to get her out of the water. No go. So the construction crew did it.

"They just harnessed me up and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her and the crane drug her to the boat and that's it," Oglesbee said. "What are you going to do if she's like that? It's no big deal. The whole crew did it."