The Joyous Death of a Bad Bill

Cranial-rectal inversion can be quite painful.

Today the pet project of the Hispanderer-in-Chief, George W. Bush, got shot down in flames on the Senate floor. S.1639, the amnesty bill for illegal aliens, was so immensely unpopular among the masses that irate callers actually managed to shut down the Senate switchboard.

I won't go into the details about how bad the bill is because I don't have 30-40 uninterrupted hours available to do so, but I will take the time to thank anyone who contacted his or her senator via telephone / fax / e-mail to speak out against this travesty. I repeatedly contacted my senators, Warner and Webb, both of whom exhibited nothing but political cowardice on the issue until after it was already decided. I look forward to voting against both of them at the earliest opportunity.

An extended middle finger goes to many senators, including (but not limited to) Ted Kennedy, Trent Lott, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, that intolerable jackass Harry Reid, and anyone else who supported this garbage.

Oh, and Mr. President: "See you at the bill signing." BA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Way to go, folks. Chalk up one for The People. It's Miller (actually, Saranac Pale Ale) Time.

The Sopranos' Final Episode: Brav-fucking-O

I was in New York City when the final episode of the Sopranos aired, and after watching it I walked away in a stupor. Suspense was built up to the very end, and then the screen went blank in such a way that many fans thought something was wrong with their cable connection. Suddenly, the credits started running in absolute silence, and all I could think of is that the ending raised more questions than it answered.

Shortly after that, it occurred to me - that was the idea all along.

Nosing around the Internet to see what the general opinion was about the episode, I noticed that just about all the polls I've run into have very similar results. The last one I saw, for instance, was at nbcsandiego.com (for as long as it lasts, you can find the poll here), the home page of San Diego's NBC affiliate, KNSD. As of this writing, the results were as follows:

Approved of the ending - 2964 (including me), 26%.

Didn't approve - 8336, 74%.

What does this indicate to me? Well, for starters 74% of those who responded either don't understand the show or must have missed at least 50-60 of the show's 86 episodes.

Points worthy of consideration:

* The Sopranos is nothing like Six Feet Under. It does not wrap up every plot in a neat little bow and explain everything to you. Anyone expecting a montage at the end showing how each character lived until his or her very last breath is forgetting unresolved plots such as the Russian who got away in the 37th episode ("Pine Barrens").

* No ending would have pleased even half of the show's viewers. Some wanted Tony to get whacked, some wanted Phil to die, others wanted both of them to live but for A.J. or Meadow to die, some wanted Carmela to be the only one to survive, and the list could go on for another 150 lines or so.

* It is standard Sopranos practice to have far more action in the penultimate episode of each season than in the season finale.

* During the fishing trip in the first episode of the second half of season six ("Soprano Home Movies," episode 78), Bobby tells Tony that when you die, everything goes black. As such, nobody except for David Chase knows if Tony survived dinner at Holsten's or not.

We don't know if Meadow's inability to parallel park saved her life or not. We don't know if the guy going to the bathroom had a weapon hidden in there (like in "The Godfather"). We don't know if the black guys opened fire on Tony and his family (perhaps Junior, who once used a couple of black guys to put a hit on Tony, isn't as insane as he makes himself out to be?). We can only hope - but don't know for sure - that A.J. was finally whacked.

Sure, 74% of the fans whine and bitch because the ending wasn't spelled out for them, but any ending whatsoever would have pissed off the majority anyway. Unless we actually get a Sopranos movie in a few years, it's up to you to decide how it all ends. At first I was speechless seeing the ending, but after a few minutes' thought I came to the conclusion that the ending was ingenious, if unappreciated by the unwashed masses.

The series finale kept us in suspense right up to the second that it went black, and for my part I thought it was brilliant. The only downside was getting a Journey song stuck in my head for days.

Remington 3200

P.S. - Holsten's, the restaurant in which the final scene of the show took place, is a real restaurant - an ice cream joint that serves burgers, fries, onion rings, etc. The actual real name of the place is Holsten's Brookdale Confectionery. You can find it in Bloomfield, New Jersey, on 1063 Broadway (973-338-7091). The final scene of the show was shot there on March 23rd, 2007, and the restaurant is 9.8 miles from Tony's house.

Yet Another Public Service From Yours Truly

You've only got three weeks to drop her a line and let her know how much you care (she's scheduled to take off the orange jumpsuit on June 26th):

Paris Hilton #9818783
Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF)
11705 South Alameda Street
Lynwood, CA 90262

A Day Without Illegals? I'll Take 365 a Year, Thanks

In case you missed it, May 1st in America was “A Day Without Immigrants,” where illegal immigrants all over the country pledged to take time off of work, boycott basically everything, and really show us “gringo” bastards how important they are (yes, that’s right - another name for yesterday’s “hold my breath until my face turns blue” whinefest was “Nothing Gringo Day”).

Now, note that the most widespread title of this socialist hissy fit was “A Day Without Immigrants,” not “A Day Without Illegal Immigrants.” See, these “guest workers” were marching to protest for “rights” that illegal immigrants don’t actually have. Try to imagine going into any other country and saying, as many of yesterday’s illegals did, something like this: “I’m here illegally, I have no intention of following your immigration law - and I demand a job, education for my kids, health care and other social services at the expense of taxpayers here legally, because it’s my right and you’re a racist if you don’t agree.” Try it in Mexico, for instance - where if you’re there illegally you don’t even have the right to emergency medical care. Or try it in somewhere in the Middle East and let me know how it works out for you.

Because this is still such a hot issue, I thought now would be a good time to dispel some of the garbage that has been perpetuated as of late. I wrote a total of seventeen of these down from news reports I saw yesterday, and this is how I respond to them.

1.) "Undocumented workers contribute a lot to the economy."

First of all, they’re not “undocumented workers,” they’re “illegal aliens.” Second, do some research and you’ll see that illegal aliens cost the economy a lot more than they put into it – through many expenses such as unpaid hospital bills, welfare, food stamps, education for their kids, and in many cases gang activity and incarceration costs. This is to say nothing of the number of jobs they cost people here legally and how they depress wages (as an example, California meatpacking jobs in 1980 which paid $19 an hour average out to $9 an hour over a quarter of a century later).

2.) "We pay taxes, we have rights."

A very small percentage of illegals pays income taxes. As for sales taxes, based on your argument I should have been allowed to vote in at least twelve different states in 2004. If you’re for amnesty, or for unrestricted immigration, just wait and see how much you’ll pay in taxes when millions more qualify for the EITC, by the way.

3.) "Nobody human being is illegal."

(That's verbatim. Really.)

Spare me - word games like this don’t even impress schoolchildren. No one is saying that are breaking the law by being human, nobody is saying that they are illegally impersonating humans, so give it a rest. Even the most intellectually dishonest among us should be able to agree that human beings can be in certain places illegally. If you don’t believe me, try making an after-hours “undocumented withdrawal” from your local bank and then explaining it away with “no human being can be illegal.”

4.) “They’re just trying to feed their families.”

Well, not all of them are, but for those who are “just trying to feed their families,” if there’s so much more opportunity here then following the law isn’t too much to ask. Bank robbers are just trying to feed their families, too.

5.) “Are you prepared to pay $10 for a head of lettuce?”

Only someone truly ignorant in agriculture could possibly fall for this ridiculously ill-informed argument. Labor is a miniscule part of agriculture overhead, so the only way people would have to pay $10 for a head of lettuce is if the lettuce were picked by rock stars, Hollywood actors and professional athletes. There is a litany of material that refutes this absurd “$10 lettuce” argument, which is generally designed to take advantage of people’s ignorance. One suggested source: The University of Iowa’s “How Much is that Tomato in the Window?” The bottom line is simple: out of every dollar you pay for produce, about three cents goes to labor - which means that anyone

6.) “They do the jobs Americans won’t do.”

The worst part about this appallingly stupid argument is that our Spender-in-Chief, George W. Bush, constantly bleats this same drivel in between licks of Vicente Fox’s ass. Americans won’t do landscaping, construction work, restaurant work, warehouse work, mechanical work, retail work, outdoor work, etc? Like hell they won’t – they just won’t do it for peanuts. Illegals don’t do jobs Americans won’t do, they work for wages that Americans won’t work for – which is, in some cases, illegal (when the work is paid at below minimum wage and income tax isn’t paid), and in others costs people here legally THEIR jobs.

7.) “They aren’t hurting anyone, they’re just good people looking for a better life.”

Even the “good” ones hurt people who lose jobs to them, they hurt people in the southwest relying on hospitals who close because of illegals going in for unpaid health care, they hurt people in states whose congressional representation is affected by people in the state illegally, and they hurt people by putting other strains on social services which people here legally have to pay for. Then there are the ones who aren’t “good people,” to include thousands of gang members and convicts (putting people in jail isn’t free, and – and even the younger of the two Washington snipers.In Florida alone, the cost of illegal “immigration” is about $315 per household (read the breakdown for yourself here), and believe it or not, that’s not something that everyone can afford without feeling it. Don’t even think of telling me that those who can afford it should be happy to pay it just because they can afford it, either.In Los Angeles, where a wave of illegals recently marched and chanted “With All Due Respect, Los Angeles is Ours,” 95% of all outstanding homicide warrants are targeted at illegals, and the LAPD isn’t allowed to enforce immigration law even on people who are deported and sneak over the border to come back (read more here). Through violent crime or not, illegal “immigrants” hurt the poor. A lot.

8.) “America is a nation of immigrants.”

This tired old line is effective only on those who don’t understand any aspect of the issue whatsoever. First of all, America is basically a nation of descendants of immigrants (most people living in this country were born here – over 85%, in fact), not “a nation of immigrants.” Second, the word “immigration” denotes a legal process and one of at least some assimilation, not people moving here to demand “rights” they don’t have, demanding bilingual education for their kids, and settling in to take advantage of a welfare society which didn’t exist when we actually were a “nation of immigrants.” Third, hardly anyone in the country is against legal immigration, we just want the law followed.

9.) “Being anti-immigrant is being racist.”

Again, very few people in America are against legal immigration, and second of all, even less are running around saying “Let the Irish and the Chinese illegals stay, but get rid of those damn Mexicans,” so spare us this sort ineffective race-baiting until you hear anything like that.

10.) “There’s plenty of room for more people.”

There is in China too, if you’re talking about geography, but the country is horribly overpopulated compared to the capabilities of its social structure. In American major cities, increases in illegal immigration have led to increased crime levels, unsustainable traffic volume and massive strains on health care systems, not to mention skewering congressional representation away from smaller areas. Further, I’ve often found that the same sort of people who claim we need non-stop immigration is usually the group who would scream bloody murder if you cleared a forest for a new town anyway.

11.) “More immigration leads to more diversity, which is our greatest strength.”

More legal immigration might. More illegal immigration wouldn’t, but more on that in a moment.Since this is the most diverse country on Earth and is also one of the most racially divided, you’re going to have a tough time convincing me that “diversity” (a code word for “quotas,” as evidenced by Affirmative Action and the way our “Diversity Lottery” for visas is structured) is really “our greatest strength” to begin with. If “diversity” were truly one of our greatest strengths, we wouldn’t have all-black colleges – so why not try telling a black student at such a school that in order for the full academic experience he should bump elbows with whites, Hispanics and Asians more often, and see how far that flies? “Diversity” is a scam, a way to get people to accept racially-based quotas.Nevertheless, if “diversity” is truly your best argument in favor of going easy on illegals, keep in mind that illegal immigration actually reduces ethnic diversity in this country. The way things such as the Diversity Lottery are structured would allow smaller groups to have more representation over here. Although Hispanic immigrants are actually less than half of all immigrants in the country, they make up the vast majority of illegal immigrants, cutting down on opportunities for ethnic groups with less representation. As such, any thought that illegal immigration actually adds to “diversity” only works if the words “embrace diversity” mean “deplore an excess of blacks and whites.”

12.) “The cost of not educating ‘undocumented’ children is higher than the cost of educating them.”

This stupidly circular "throw in the towel" argument assumes that refusing to admit these kids (or just deporting them) isn’t an option, and that isn’t the case. These kids already have another country with the responsibility of educating them. The only reason we have so many children who are illegals here are stupid “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies in many states, but if it’s made clear that kids don’t get a free ride just because of misguided attempts to pull on taxpayers’ heartstrings “for the sake of the children,” parents will find another way. Few parents will sacrifice their kids’ education for a better job, so this argument boils down to “Since the kids are here illegally because the parents have some sort of a right to be here illegally, and since nothing will ever be done about any of this, we have to make sure they’re taken care of,” or in other words, “since it’s wrong but will inevitably continue, break out your wallet.” That’s not much different in principle than saying “the cost of giving heroin to addicts is less than the cost of not giving it to them” or “the cost of giving money to compulsive gamblers is less than not giving it to them,” based on the idea that if you don’t do it they’ll turn to even more violently misguided behavior. Sorry, no sale. If you put an end to education for kids who are illegals, some might turn to crime, but one of the major incentives for illegals to be here at all goes away.

13.) "Undocumenteds should be allowed to have driver’s licenses because they’d be registered like you want and have insurance, and would drive more safely, too."

"Undocumenteds?" Give me a break.

So, they were willing to break the law to get here to begin with, they were willing to drive illegally to begin with, but now all of a sudden the license will serve as a magic wand? Further, not since Prohibition has it been a good idea to send the message that you can change a law by breaking it. Lastly, a license doesn’t automatically mean insurance – fraudulent insurance documents sell like hotcakes in states largely populated by illegals. Can you guess why?

14.) “We need to be a more inclusive and compassionate nation.”

Blow me. Who is being excluded? Everyone’s welcome to apply - and no race, nationality or religion is excluded. The simple fact is that we can’t afford to take everyone in. As for “compassion,” please don’t be so quick to spend other people’s money – that’s what governments are for. Even if we took in all of Mexico, Cuba and Haiti and allowed everyone in those countries to just skip the immigration process (reducing our economy to a shambles for quite a long time in the process because of all the people who would immediately go on welfare), what about the other 99% of the world’s poor? Surely you wouldn’t exclude them on the basis of geography, would you?For that matter, why not be more inclusive and compassionate and open the doors of your home to anyone who needs a sandwich or wants to get out of the cold?

15.) "Don’t blame them, blame the people who hire them and give them an incentive to be here. Blame the system and the laws that are too hard to obey."

Right. Don’t blame rapists, either, blame those girls who have the gall to try to dress nicely. Illegals are fully responsible for being here. By your logic, we shouldn’t blame the employers, either, since they’re only circumventing a complicated tax code and crushing government regulation – we should blame the politicians. And yet we shouldn’t blame the politicians, either, because it was you and me who put them in office. We're the assholes at fault, let's beat ourselves up!16.) "Your ancestors were immigrants. Immigrants built America."Yes, but they were legal immigrants (came over in the 1940s), and you’re talking about people who march in illegally and demand “rights” like you assholes are doing. In fact, doing that where my ancestors came from would have gotten you skinned alive and thrown into a giant bag of salt.As for the second part of this laughable statement: before the 1965 Immigration Act, immigration averaged about 235,000 per year. That’s around 45 million immigrants total, which turns out to be under 5% of the Americans who lived here and “built America.” America was basically “built” by 1965 – enough to have become a superpower by then, anyway – and over 95% of those who “built” America were Americans, not immigrants.My ancestors were immigrants. Yours were, too. So were the ancestors of the Indians (“Native” Americans, if you prefer) and everyone else. Everyone. Are you seriously suggesting redefining the world’s boundaries based on untold centuries of ancestral wanderings? Be careful what you wish for, because if we go back far enough I may be able to prove that one of your ancestors wronged mine somehow, after which I will claim your iPod and your car as my birthrights.

17.) "You need us as much as we need you."

That's not even close to the truth mathematically, financially, or culturally. We have millions of legal immigrants here for the sake of “diversity” and culture (more than enough to have twelve seperate “history months,” if you're one of those who believes in such divisive garbage), whereas illegals are still under 5% of the nation and take up more resources than they contribute. We'd be much better off without illegals at all, period.Following the law isn’t too much to ask, and if people who want to live here can’t be bothered to do it, screw them. Don’t listen to people who whine politically correct odes to the poor, misunderstood illegal alien without knowing some facts first.

By the way, the turnout for "We Hate You, Gringo, You Owe Us" Day in the Washington, D.C. Metro area was poor, and the supposed effect we were supposed to feel wasn't reported as much by anyone I saw except for the notoriously socialist NPR. The major "casualties" seemed to be small grocery stores, which a lot of us can get by without. The only city reported to really be "affected" was New Orleans, currently full of illegal alien construction workers with its "core" population spread all over the country thanks to Katrina.Color me unimpressed. I'll be glad to take 364 more days without illegals, thanks.

A Flip of the Middle Finger to Some Real Shitbags

I'd like to spend this entry tipping my cap to some real jerks. There are tons to choose from, but a few really stand out to me...

1.) Shaun White, an American snowboarder who won gold in Turin.


Selfish shitbag Shaun White

White, nicknamed "The Flying Tomato" because of his red hair, won his gold medal and then decided that the best way to get some benefit out of it was to let the media know he has the hots for figure skater Sasha Cohen.


Typical male teen's dream babe on blades: Sasha Cohen

Cohen is pretty cute and it's hard to blame any teen, much less White, for his taste - but let's not forget that he won the gold already. Sasha Cohen hasn't gotten to her medal round skating yet, and after Michelle Kwan had to pull out of the Games Cohen could well be our highest-profile athlete at this point. The pressure on her has to be enormous, and White selfishly added to it without thinking of anyone but himself. As if Cohen didn't have enough problems already, the media is now asking her if White "has a chance." If White had any class at all, he'd have respected Cohen enough to refrain from making it any harder for her to pursue her lifeling dream, but nooooooooooooooo....

Hey, Shaun - you won a gold medal in a new event that was done early in the games and have the luxury of not having anything to worry about. Sasha Cohen is trying for any medal in a much more difficult sport with tougher competition and a hundred times the worldwide attention, but who cares about her? What matters is YOU, because it's all about YOU. I hope your behavior is all Sasha needs to figure out what a self-centered jerkoff you are. I was completely on your side as a proud American when you won gold, even though your sport does nothing for me, but now even Bode Miller strikes me as having more class than you.

Flying Tomato? Flying Asshole is more like it.

2.) Nadine Thompson, CEO of a cosmetics company, who lost a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines after accusing the airline of racism.

Ms. Thompson, a behemoth who according to court records is 5'8" and was between 300-330 pounds at the time of the incident, sued after a Southwest supervisor saw her legs and hip protrude onto the next seat and told her that she'd have to buy an extra ticket. This is the standard Southwest policy for "customers of size," and is pretty well-known (hell, it's been an issue for spirited talk radio debate for a few years now), but since the Southwest employee was too polite to spell out the reason for her, she decided that it had to be racism. She was escorted off the plane by sheriff's deputies, after which she threw around terms such as "racist pig."

During her suit, she claimed that the incident left her "humiliated" and she's had to see a psychiatrist to deal with her feelings. What she really should do is see a nutritionist to deal with the extra fully grown adult male's worth of weight she's carrying.

Fortunately, a jury laughed her case out of court, but Ms. Thompson's ridiculous accusations of racism are the sort of thing that make people turn a deaf ear to legitimate racism complaints. Then again, she doesn't consider herself a "customer of size," so it could be denial. You be the judge.



Nadine Thompson apparently sees nothing but racism - and food - at every turn

She has said she won't appeal her loss, but that didn't stop her from race-baiting some more. She now claims that she didn't get a jury of her peers because the jury was all white and "...there wasn’t even an ethnic minority there to advocate for me." Maybe what she needed was another beach ball with limbs there to advocate for her. She reportedly claimed that she was "bullied" and that words were her only way to fight back, but some of the words she chose were "racist motherfucker" and the guy who supposedly bullied her took a vacation after the incident and upon returning asked for a position with less responsibility. It's hard to imagine anyone bullying a fat, angry, racist woman like Nadine Thompson.

On the other hand, three cheers to the jury for sending her out of the courtroom without dessert.

3.) President Bush, for not putting an immediate stop to the idea of a company from the United Arab Emirates controlling five of our most important ports (in other words, letting the UAE government - which once supported the Taliban - control five of our ports, to include the closest ones to the White House).

The fact that Jimmy Carter sees nothing wring with the idea should have been all Bush needed to kill it off. Instead, he's threatening to veto any legislation that would slow up the deal. He's never used a veto before, but he will veto this.

Mr. President, you've screwed us many times with expansion of entitlements and other wasteful spending, you've slandered the Minutemen and shown little but contempt for the people in your office, but this is above and beyond the call. Since when are some people's feelings more important than other people's lives? Can't we at least get some lubricant here?



Memo to President Bush: when this incompetent turd approves of something you're doing, you're seriously fucking up somewhere

4.) New York State Senator Jim Alesi, for his attempts to ban a toy and shove more Big Government Nanny State down our throats.

Alesi is attempting to ban the waterball yo-yo, a toy which injured 405 kids last year. Yes, you read that right: there are millions and millions of such yo-yos out there, and a whopping 405 kids were injured (during the same time, over 25,ooo kids were injured using foot-powered scooters, over 250,000 were injured while rollerskating, and over 900,000 kids were injured on bikes) Alesi, completely ignoring the fact that well over 99.9% of kids who use these yo-yos manage to use them safely, maintains that the yo-yo could wrap itself around a kid's neck and cause death. There's never been a case of such a thing happening, but Alesi is one of those self-serving lovers of Big Government who focuses on select products to pick on because he thinks it will help his career somehow.

Look at this asshole, pictured below trying to explain the dangers of the yo-yo, and tell me he can even use a yo-yo like this - much less assess its dangers:



New York State Senator Jim Alesi tries to convince you that this yo-yo is more dangerous than bikes, skateboards, scooters, snowboards, baseballs, footballs, basketballs, hockey sticks, hockey pucks, small metal cars, erector sets, welding sets, paintball guns, slingshots and hundreds of other toys which are responsible for more than 405 injuries a year

5.) Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who called the December 26th killing of 15 year-old Jane Creba "the consequences of exclusion."

Last week it was reported that the gang shooting which produced the crossfire that killed Creba was the result of one piece of scum feeling disrespected because another piece of scum knocked a hat off the head of the first piece of scum. I've said words to this effect before, but it bears repeating: Martin, who truly disrespected the Creba family, is a true piece of scum himself.

Jane Creba: killed by scum that former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin would rather hug than throw in jail

A brain scan of Paul Martin wouldn't look much different than this

6.) President Bush. Just because the port deal thing deserves to be mentioned at least twice.

If any foreign relations move looks ripe to be second-guessed as the mushroom cloud disspiates, it's this one. Political correctness has killed people before, but now it could kill tens of thousands or more in one fell swoop. Thanks a fucking lot, Mr. President.

So Now the Winter Olympics are Racist?

The Winter Olympics started last week, and the Washington Post was there to sum it all up for us. Thanks to an article by staff reporter Amy Shipley, I now know that the Winter Olympics are are a waste of time, a waste of money, and are usually hosted by deceitful racist hypocrite whites who "exclude" other countries (even though all are welcome to participate) thanks to handy tools of hate such as racist weather patterns. As such, to a sensitive and culturally aware person like Amy, there really isn't any reason why huge countries like Canada or Russia should be able to enjoy hockey, skiing and other winter sports at the Olympic level, and the only reason they are still allowed to do so is because of racists bastards who are going out of their way to keep Africans and Latin Americans out. Keep in mind that this article was the lead story in the February 11th issue. As an added bonus, It's full of annoying cliche and sidesteps real stories (like the Taiwanese flag issue or the two Koreas marching in together) because the author sees only racism and exclusion. One wonders if she ever met my buddy Paul Martin.

It's because of people like Amy Shipley and the people who employ maniacal shrews such as her that there is no hope of putting an end to racial problems within any of our lifetimes. Keep stoking the flames, Amy - we're perfectly able to enjoy the Games without your approval, and boy, are you doing society a lot of good.

"Super" Bowl, My Ass

A Baker's Dozen things even more disappointing about the Super Bowl than my spectacularly errant prediction:

1.) Seattle's decision to have their players introduced to the tune of a song called "Bittersweet Symphony." You'd think superstitious professional athletes would know better than that.

2.) The way Aaron Neville and Arethra Franklin butchered the National Anthem. Neville is generally horrible anyway with that just-got-kicked-in-the-nuts sound of his, but Franklin sounded like an angry Swiss alps yodeler even by her shrieking standards.

3.) Absolutely classless Steeler fans with their prissy little towels booing a number of former Super Bowl MVPs, to include Tom Brady during the coin flip. I really wish Brady had flipped them off in return.

4.) That ridiculous offensive interference call against Darrell Jackson. Push-offs aren't generally called unless the defensive back is moved by the push or has his forward progress stopped. Neither was the case on this play, and it left me wondering if the refs thought they owed one to Pittsburgh after that ridiculous call on the Troy Polamalu interception in the Indy game. If so, they more than made up for it here, but didn't stop screwing the Seahawks with just one bad call. If Jackson's touchdown should have been called back, then so should have over half of all passing touchdowns over the course of the season.

5.) The even worse call on Ben Roethlisberger's "touchdown." Vinny Testaverde must have been laughing up a storm if he was watching, since he once managed to screw Seattle like that too. The 7-3 score at the end of the first half was correct, but it should have been Seattle in the lead.

6.) Seattle's utterly retarded clock management at the end of the first half. The second half clock management was awful as well, but this was so bad you'd think the Seahawks were being paid to throw the game. I felt like handing a knife to Mike Holmgren and asking him who's special.

7.) The Rolling Stones sounding like drunken high-schoolers during yet another massively disappointing halftime show. Mick Jagger looked like he was moving around just to make his colostomy bag less noticeable.

8.) That absolutely absurd low-block penalty against Matt Hasselbeck. This call was so bad that even Al Michaels blew a gasket in reaction to it.

9.) The fact that no matter who scored for Pittsburgh, we had to see Jerome Bettis' reaction - as if it were the Pittsburgh Bettises in the game rather than the Pittsburgh Steelers.

10.) The absolutely wretched play of Jerramy Stevens. Given the chance to show up a loudmouth like Joey Porter, Stevens dropped ball after ball and was so bad that you almost didn't notice Seattle kicker Josh Brown missing two field goals or punter Tom Rouen's inability to keep the ball out of the end zone.

11.) The fact that Hines Ward was a "by default" MVP because nobody else had stats worthy of the award.

12.) The fact that Bettis had to pick the postgame celebration to announce his retirement and make it all about him. He couldn't have waited one lousy day and let his teammates have their share of attention; he had to tell us right then and there that Detroit was "the last stop for The Bus" - after two full weeks of being a press magnet to begin with. Why people continue to call that overeating, overrated blowhard a "class act" is beyond me. At least we're getting rid of him.

13.) Chris Berman's insipid postgame blathering, to include giving us yet another rundown about Bettis "going home" to play in a Super Bowl (as if he hadn't already received several hundred over the past couple of weeks) and then telling us that "you just can't get a better storyline than that." You know you're about to hear lameness at its highest level when a commentator begins with festering crap like this: "Well, the Rolling Stones sang it, 'I can't get no satisfaction.' I don't think that was the case in Pittsburgh, Pa."

Note that I never even got to the ridiculous holding call on Sean Locklear.

The NFL has actually claimed that the game was officiated properly - which means this is the last time I ever go out of my way to watch a "Super" Bowl.

Super Bowl 2006: All You Need to Know

One of the underlying themes of every Super Bowl ever played is one of the teams pissing and moaning about not getting enough respect. Sadly, this year we've got a new twist to this boring old line: now, both teams - the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks - are complaining about lack of respect.

After the Pittsburgh knocked off the #1 seed in the AFC, the Indianapolis Colts, the "no respect" fest was in full swing for the Steelers. The normally literate Hines Ward, Pittsburgh's Pro Bowl receiver, was reduced to butchering the language and assaulting the ears of those around him by screaming "Ain't nobody give us a damn chance!" - a sentence which, amazingly, was supposed to convey past tense. Incidentally, if Mr. Ward would have seen who collected the jackpot in my local pool, he would have known that the author of these words, who used that jackpot money on a 32" television, did give Pittsburgh a chance.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks, who have gone 13-1 since a 2-2 start (the one loss being to Green Bay at the end of the year when the Seahawks had home field advantage all wrapped up for the playoffs and sat their starters) are currently suffering the indignity of being the NFC's #1 seed and yet being an underdog to the AFC's #6 seed. Why? Because that #6 seed became the first team ever to beat a conference's #1 seed, #2 seed and #3 seed, all on the road.

This game is bursting with stories full of potential to bore and annoy - Jerome Bettis playing in his hometown, Mike Holmgren trying to become the first coach to win a Super Bowl with two different teams, Bill Cowher being the league's most tenured coach without a ring, this being the 40th Super Bowl, etc. Rather than bore my readers with detailed analysis of key matchups such as Pittsburgh's defense versus Shaun Alexander or Seattle's offensive line, I'm going to stay focused on this insipid Rodney Dangerfield-like whining - because it's a much of a key to the game than anything else.

"Nobody's been pickin' us, don't jump on the bandwagon now," said Steelers linebacker Joey Porter shortly after the Steelers knocked off the Denver Broncos. This sort of whiny bullshit is what we've been getting from both teams for two weeks. Porter, obviously unaware that most people picked them against both the Cincinnati Bengals and the Broncos, actually asked the media to pick Pittsburgh's (still undetermined at the time) Super Bowl opponents - get this - "so we can keep our edge." Porter, who momentarily gained my respect by quite correctly accusing referees of trying to help the Colts win, and getting away with it sans punishment, went a step further by going into a hysterical rant after Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens had the audacity to predict victory for his own team.

If someone feels that he needs to be an underdog to "keep our edge" in the nation's biggest sporting event, two conclusions immediately suggest themselves: 1.) the man isn't worthy of the respect he demands, and 2.) the man won't respond too well when he takes his first punch in the mouth. The same can probably be said for his team as well. It's rare when two teams in the same game prance around like wounded peacocks demanding respect, but when it happens it's generally a good bet that the team that whines less wins. Here, we actually have a team that asks to be disrepsected so that it can whine about lack of respect!

Mr. Porter, your wish is hereby granted.

Seattle 34, Pittsburgh 13.

Six More Weeks of Winter

Today, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Supposedly, that means six more weeks of winter.



Bill Deeley, left, and Punxsutawney Phil: separated at birth?

It's the end of an era, folks. Bill Deeley, 56, who has been the Master of Ceremonies at Gobbler's Knob (don't blame me, I didn't make up the name) for the past 15 years, is stepping down because he doesn't have the energy or time to perform this ridiculous ritual once a year and take the freaking groundhog to a few parades and special events every year. Keep that in mind the next time you hear George W. Bush spew forth blather along the lines of "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people - and we are going to keep that edge."



Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, 2/2/06: a rockin' good time was had by all

Let's just hope President Bush doesn't see his shadow today - otherwise, it's six more weeks of wasteful government spending. America's budget is as fat as, well...



An average groundhog (Marmota monax) weighs about 12 pounds (5.44 kg). Punxsutawney Phil weighs 20 pounds (9.07 kg)

The State of the Union: Translated

For those of you who missed it, President Bush delivered the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address Tuesday night (a transcript of the speech, as well all SOTU addresses back to 1945, can be found here). He bloviated for 51 minutes, and covered exactly what you'd expect: the same words about Iraq we've heard dozens of times before and a shameful domestic shopping list full of new and innovative ways to piss away our tax dollars.

For the benefit (and hopefully amusement) of my readers, I am going to comment on / translate selected parts of the speech. In each instance the president's words will be in italics, followed by my response. Please note this does not include the entire speech or anywhere close to it.

Here we go.

In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and respect for one another — and I will do my part.

A standard platitude, but it still never ceases to amaze me how often Bush tries to placate Democrats who will hate him no matter what he does.

The only way to protect our people ... the only way to secure the peace ... the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership - so the United States of America will continue to lead.

In other words, if you were hoping that America would eventually tone down its role of world policeman, you're shit out of luck.

Second, we are continuing reconstruction efforts, and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom.

In case you missed the subtlety here, these words are supposed to make you happy about being continually fleeced by the government and spending so much on the war.

As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels — but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.

This was the only time I actually clapped while listening to the speech. This was basically Bush's way of raising his middle finger toward Democrats, and it was nice to see him flip them off for a change instead of flipping off American taxpayers - even if just for that moment. Note that he will stick a red-hot poker up the rear ends of taxpayers later in the speech, though, and repeatedly.

Marine Staff Sergeant Dan Clay was killed last month fighting the enemy in Fallujah. He left behind a letter to his family, but his words could just as well be addressed to every American. Here is what Dan wrote: "I know what honor is. It has been an honor to protect and serve all of you. I faced death with the secure knowledge that you would not have to.... Never falter! Don't hesitate to honor and support those of us who have the honor of protecting that which is worth protecting."Staff Sergeant Dan Clay's wife, Lisa, and his mom and dad, Sara Jo and Bud, are with us this evening.

I thought this was tacky as hell. There are better ways to honor a fallen Marine than drag his family to Capitol Hill and put them on a TV screen before millions of viewers. If I thought this was sincerely intended as an honor instead of a PR trick, this wouldn't bother me - but I don't. My deepest condolences to SSG Clay's family, of course, but I'll bet that the behind-the-scenes reaction to their appearance looked a lot more like a high five between two staffers than a tissue wiping away tears.

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands.

Uh-oh. If you're looking for some sign of economic restraint, this is not good news. "Encouraging economic progress" is long-established Washington-speak for "throwing tax dollars at other countries without consulting taxpayers." "Spreading hope" is pretty much the same thing, although it isn't limited to financial involvement.

Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need.

This is a complete load of shit. I encourage all Americans to find out what countries receive foreign aid from the United States and then decide for themselves which among them are "friends" in "desperate need."

We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery.

"We show compassion," of course, means "your government throws your tax dollars at recipients of its choice and you get no input." It's actually a relatively old political code term, but Bush has brought it to unprecedented levels of frequency in use regarding foreign aid; it's usually used to describe domestic income redistribution. As for the rest of this, two points:

1.) It pisses me off no end to hear any politician of any party attempt to speak for all Americans like this. Democrats often try to tell us that the American people WANT a tax increase because they are supposedly more than willing to pay more for government services, and Republicans just as often try to tell us about how the American people view certain issues from a moral standpoint. Neither side ever gets a much more than half the vote at the national level, and yet these pompous blowhards constantly try to speak for the whole country.

In my case, for instance, I'm agnostic - so I don't believe that anyone has "God-given dignity." Bush doesn't speak for me here, and he doesn't speak for a large part of his base, the people who put him in office in the hopes that we'd see some sanity applied to government spending and that we'd stop throwing money down the drain in the name of "compassion." Most of our foreign aid to poor areas goes to dictators, not needy people, and it's long been time to put an end to that crap.

2.) Government shouldn't be in the compassion business AT ALL to begin with; that's what private charities are for. Economist Walter Williams summarizes my feelings on this issue quite well in a column called "Not Yours to Give."

We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption, and despair are sources of terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking, and the drug trade.

Here Bush continues with a common practice called "tear-jerking." The idea is to make you all weepy and sympathetic to the plight of those who are the recipients of U.S. largess after government uses its police powers to forcibly extract money from you through a punitive and confiscatory tax code. The most common example of this is the oft-heard claim that a tax increase is necessary "for the children."

For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life.

For people everywhere, the United States is an automated teller machine, and our Spender-in-Chief is using this speech to make it clear that he isn't going to do a thing to put a stop to this.

Short-changing these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country.

Amazingly, President Bush is now trying to convince you that he's throwing your money at other countries so that you'll feel good about yourself and sleep better at night. This reminds me of one of the world's biggest assholes, United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who pranced and stomped around in a huff after the tsunami disaster, claiming that countries should raise taxes for more tsunami relief because "people want to give more." Apparently, nobody has ever given the the man an English dictionary that contains a definition of the word "give," or explained that lower tax levels do not legally preclude private donations. I would have expected better from Bush, though - and instead, he too acts as if donations mean nothing unless they're the result of taxation / confiscation. It's enough to make anyone who believes in fiscal sense and limited government throw up his lunch.

I urge Members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

Translation: "I want to throw a whole lot more U.S. taxpayer money at these countries." Since we'll never end foreign aid entirely, there's no reason to "urge" this unless he's looking for a big, big, BIG increase. Bend over, folks, and have some lubricant handy.

In all these areas — from the disruption of terror networks, to victory in Iraq, to the spread of freedom and hope in troubled regions — we need the support of friends and allies. To draw that support, we must always be clear in our principles and willing to act. The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world. Yet we also choose to lead because it is a privilege to serve the values that gave us birth.

Perhaps you should speak for yourself, Mister President. "We" don't choose to lead, government does. Most of us grassroots yokels upon whom you and your Democrat counterparts spit upon with such contempt would gladly shed this role of "leadership." How about letting Europe and Asia pull their weight for a while and giving our wallets a break?

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars.

As I stated earlier, there was one point during the speech where I clapped. This is the one point where I laughed out loud.

I wonder how President Bush works up the stones to suggest that the federal government is a good steward of our tax dollars when earmarks ("pork") such as cash to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and $231 million for the "Bridge to Nowhere" which will service the whopping population of 50 on Gravina Island, Alaska. If you want to see how good the federal government has been with our money, check the CAGW.org pork report here, or check the site's 2005 Pig Book describing last year's pork barrel projects that our Capitol Hill representatives thought were more important than letting us keep our money. Still not convinced? Then check the pork database on the site that allows you to look up every wasteful and unnecessary pork project Americans have been forced to pay for over the last eleven years.

Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending

Amazingly, Bush expects credit for this. They still increased spending, mind you, they just "reduced the growth." So if you gained fifteen pounds a year for fifteen years from 199o-2004, but only gained twelve pounds in 2005, are you a successful dieter? No, you're a gluttonous fucking slob.

We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy - even though this economy could not function without them.

Where exactly do we hear these claims, Mister President? The claims we hear are that ILLEGAL immigrants are bad for the economy, and those claims are absolutely correct, despite your endless prattling about "jobs Americans wont take" (all of which should be done by convicts or able-bodied welfare recipients), despite the ridiculous and inaccurate warnings about $5 heads of lettuce, despite all of the race baiting involved in the issue, and despite the shoulder-shrugging about not being able to round up and deport 12-15 million illegals (who says you have to? Just remove all incentives for them being here and the majority of them will leave).

We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements.

This is the height of hypocrisy. He has repeatedly praised a pyramid scheme like Social Security to the sky and stuck us with a Medicare expansion of roughly a trillion dollars over the next ten years, and now he chirps about how it might come back to bite us? Give it a rest, Mister President.

This year, the first of about 78 million Baby Boomers turn 60, including two of my Dad's favorite people - me, and President Bill Clinton. This milestone is more than a personal crisis - it is a national challenge. The retirement of the Baby Boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the Federal government.

So have you, Mister President.

By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire Federal budget.

Oh, eek. ALMOST 60%? Don't make me laugh. What percentage is it right now - 53, 54%?

The reason why pyramid schemes (in other words, people coming in early getting money from people coming in later) like Social Security are illegal when run by private citizens is that mathematically, you eventually have to run out of participants - and as such, the people at the end get financially screwed. Yet the government has no problem running a ripoff like this, even though if you ran a similar scam in your office you'd be in violation of God knows how many RICO statutes and on your way to jail. There have been over 20 tax increases and benefit reductions since the inception of this farce of a program (which, despite its billing as "an income supplement" for seniors, was nothing more than a money grab - all you have to do to see that is to compare the original collection age with the life expectancy at the time).

Considering how bad so many Americans - including me - are with money, a forced savings program isn't the worst idea, but Social "Security" is the biggest financial screwing ever perpetuated on the country. Taxes get higher, benefits get lower, you can arbitratily be denied benefits (yes, believe it or not - they can say "no" to you for any reason, or no reason at all, after you've been forced to "contribute" for your entire life), and you don't own your account - which means if you die before collection age, you don't get to leave it to anyone. If you're going to have a forced savings program, why not savings bonds (answer: because politicians couldn't borrow then to spend the money elsewhere, like they do with Social "Security" money - it's all IOUs in that box, folks) or something like that that the person forced into the program actually owns?

And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices - staggering tax increases, immense deficits, or deep cuts in every category of spending.

This was the most heartbreaking moment of the speech for me. He actually considers deep spending cuts to be a bad thing, an "impossible choice." I could just cry.

This commission should include Members of Congress of both parties, and offer bipartisan answers. We need to put aside partisan politics, work together, and get this problem solved.

Groan. Another commission. I don't even remember what this commission is about, but I don't have to know much about it to know it's going to be another massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Oh, and note the standard plea for "bipartisan answers," working together, blah, blah. I swear, if you listen to five or six of the speeches, you could practically write one yourself. Impromptu contest: if you're the first to write in and name a federal commission that was worth the money invested, I'll send you a whole dollar of genuine American currency.

Keeping America competitive requires us to open more markets for all that Americans make and grow. One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy American. With open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker.

This statement is a model of self-delusion. With labor union members often getting salaries and benefits well above and beyond what their labor is worth, it doesn't matter how open the market is. There's a reason why the Japanese consistently kick the snot out of us in the automotive industry, there's a reason why Korean cars are doing so well over here, there's a reason to assume that the new Chinese car on the market will do well, and there's a reason why little shitbox American cars cost twenty grand or more. The reason? Unions - or, more specifically, the tendency to cave in to them.

And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty ... allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally ... and reduces smuggling and crime at the border...

The use of the word "humane" here means this: if someone from another country is having trouble finding a job, it's supposedly a moral imperative on our part to welcome him with open arms, even if we need to support him with social programs funded by tax dollars. It means that living in America is now some sort of right. It also means that in Bush's mind, other countries should be able to export poverty to us instead of reforming their own economies.

The use of the word "rational" here means "a program that doesn't require me to pay attention to laws that are inconvenient for me."

As for his remarks about crime and smuggling at the border, Bush's policies regarding border security are such a joke that I won't bother addressing them.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care. Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly...

Says who? Where, exactly, is that written? The government has used thin interpretations if the Interstate Commerce Clause to stick its goddamned nose into everything from health care to pension plans, but the government has no actual responsibility to provide health care for anyone. Health care should be an individual responsibility (or the responsibility of charity for those unable to work), and it would cost a whole lot less if self-serving politicians would keep out of it.

It's really quite simple - just read the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. It's short, but sweet:

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So again I ask, where in the Constitution does it say (or even remotely support) Bush's "Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly?"

For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care...

Pull your head out of your Oval Orifice, Mister President. The government is largely (not completely, but largely) responsible for the rising cost of care, and no measure taken by the government over the years this issue has been whined about has ever reduced the cost.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

Maybe we wouldn't be if we drilled for more of our own oil, perhaps in frozen wastelands like ANWR (which, when established, actually included a provision for drilling) which, when shown on CNN, are depicted as sunny places with lots of chirping birds, playful rodents, gleeful skipping children flying kites, multicolored butterflies, prancing bunnies and frolicsome deer - even though the real image is nothing like it.

The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly 10 billion dollars to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources — and we are on the threshold of incredible advances. So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative — a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy...

...and there you have it. Outside of the Department of Agriculture, what government agency is more overfunded than DOE, a bureaucratic behemoth still trying to recover from the disastrous stewardship of Hazel O'Leary? And now Bush wants to increase funding on a major project by 22%?

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people - and we are going to keep that edge.

In many ways, this is the biggest crock of shit in the whole speech. I could speak volumes about our embarrassingly bad education system, our lazy workers and our culture of entitlement, but why should I make the effort if Bush is contradict his own statement for me? Read on.

Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our Nation's children a firm grounding in math and science.

Okay, here's the part that escapes me - if "our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people - and we are going to keep that edge," shouldn't our kids already have a system that provides a firm grounding in math and science? We've thrown trillions of dollars into our miserable public education system and still haven't been able to develop a system that values achievement over self-esteem. Kids these days couldn't calculate a tip in a restaurant without a calculator, and throwing more money at a broken system isn't going to solve the problem.

Remember, Bush let Ted Kennedy write a bloated, expensive education bill in an effort to "reach out" to Democrats. It costs taxpayers billions and got us nowhere. Now throwing more money at the problem is going to change that?

First: I propose to double the Federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next ten years.

No problem, Mister President. I'm sure that won't cost much and will lead to the same excellent results we've always had by pumping money into the worst schools, dollar-for-dollar, in the civilized world.

Second: I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit, to encourage bolder private-sector investment in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life — and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come.

Here's a better idea - get the public sector out of the business entirely.

Third: We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations.

Here we go again: "our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people," but we have to encourage kids to take math and science and make the courses hard enough to compete with other nations? The man is the President of the United States and just completely contradicted himself - within a minute - in front of the entire world. Nice. So much for our "edge." The fact of the matter is that any average sixth grader in an underfunded Eastern European school in which three or four kids share one textbook could run circles around an American high school freshman who has his own book, cell phone, Palm Pilot, iPod, etc, because we're too busy telling our kids how special and wonderful they are, how nothing is their fault, how a 'D' paper isn't bad as long as they really, really, really tried and how we all must be politically correct so as not to offend hypersensitive assholes.

Preparing our Nation to compete in the world is a goal that all of us can share.

Translation: "Whatever ineffective, wasteful idea I come up with will be paid for by you assholes." This is like a little kid who just shot a hockey puck through a window and can't afford to pay for it telling his friend "The replacement of that window is a goal we both can share."

America is a great force for freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.

If you thought your wallets were in trouble earlier in the speech, prepare to really take it up the ass now. When a politician talks about "compassion," he's talking about more bullshit social programs and forcible income redistribution.

A hopeful society depends on courts that deliver equal justice under law. The Supreme Court now has two superb new members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. And I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law, and not legislate from the bench. Today marks the official retirement of a very special American. For 24 years of faithful service to our Nation, the United States is grateful to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Speak for yourself, Mister President. Justice O'Connor was no stranger to legislation from the bench, a fact most notably demonstrable in her opinion on the Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court case (otherwise known as the University of Michigan Affirmative Action case): "The Court takes the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its use of racial preferences as soon as practicable. The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." In other words - "Screw the Equal Protection Clause for the next quarter century at a minimum; I'm going with the path of least resistance here instead of upholding the Constitution I swore to uphold." The decisions to put Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court were the the biggest mistakes of Ronald Reagan's presidency, and that includes Reagan's curiously dimwitted amnesty for illegal aliens. I'm grateful only for her decision to retire, and cannot wait until Kennedy follows suit.

A hopeful society expects elected officials to uphold the public trust. Honorable people in both parties are working on reforms to strengthen the ethical standards of Washington - and I support your efforts. Each of us has made a pledge to be worthy of public responsibility - and that is a pledge we must never forget, never dismiss, and never betray.

The ethical standards of Washington? Insert your own joke here.

As we renew the promise of our institutions, let us also show the character of America in our compassion and care for one another.

Remember what "compassion and care" mean in Washington lingo. Keep in mind that these words come from the same man who had the audacity to call Social Security "a symbol of trust between generations."

A hopeful society gives special attention to children who lack direction and love. Through the Helping America's Youth Initiative, we are encouraging caring adults to get involved in the life of a child.

This actually isn't too different from Paul Martin blaming the Toronto Boxing Day shootings and the killing of 15 year-old Jane Creba as "the consequences of exclusion" - you see, these young thugs will straighten out with a few more hugs. I'd rather see promises of stronger sentences for gang violence here. The "exclusion" theme rears its ugly head later in the speech, too, and pretty soon.

A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency - and stays at it until they are back on their feet. So far the Federal government has committed 85 billion dollars to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We are removing debris, repairing highways, and building stronger levees. We are providing business loans and housing assistance.

Actually, Bush committed $200 billion, and this makes me wonder where personal responsibility is supposed to come into play. The federal government passed out $2,000 debit cards to people who used them for beer, cosmetics and other non-essentials. Homeowners who chose not to buy insurance are getting tons of taxpayer money. We have thousands of Gulf Coast residents living in hotels, for months already, on the taxpayers' dime. I see no reason why it should be the responsibility of people from other states to pay so much for people who chose to live uninsured in a city located below sea level or in an area which is consistently pounded by natural disasters.

Further, why is it that there were no complaints about FEMA after the dozens and dozens of natural disasters we've had in Florida over the past decade or so - but when a largely black city gets smacked after the mayor and the state's governor drop the ball, twiddle their thumbs and whine like schoolgirls, Bush sprints to placate race-baiters who came up with ridiculous accusations (Bush blew up the levees to kill black people), loud-mouthed and talentless rappers (Kanye West and his "Bush doesn't care about black people"), liberal media types with insanely wrong projections (you don't see any of them retract their ridiculously errant rantings about blacks being disproportionately affected by Katrina, do you?)? Why didn't we pledge $200 billion to Florida after the same area got hit with three or four hurricanes within a month? Because the race-baiters are playing the race card for more money, and Bush is actually playing into their hands. Sure, FEMA wasn't perfect, but it isn't by design a first-responder and can't go in until the governor asks for help, which Lousiana governor Kathleen Blanco delayed doing while sparring with incompetent asshole New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. While Blanco was bitching about the feds supposedly not doing enough to help the people in New Orleans, she did find time (and a pile of money) to redecorate her office, too.

So why is Bush throwing so much money at the Gulf Coast? Because some race-baiters got their panties in a wad and saw an opportunity to extort massive amounts of money from the government, and now the American taxpayer has to pay for Bush's spinelessness.

Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived. In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country…

Here we go. They "have felt excluded." This is Bush's way of letting you know that he plans on throwing even more money at minorities in an attempt to pick up some more of the black vote for his party and to pointlessly suck up to leftists who will never cut him any slack no matter what he does.

If this is a surprise to you, it shouldn't be - read his post-Katrina speech of September 15, 2005 when he said, among other things, this: "Our third commitment is this: When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm. Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality. When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those streets. When the houses are rebuilt, more families should own, not rent, those houses."

When President Bush talks about "bold action," he means only one thing: throwing money at a problem and expanding the size of government - and in this case he also let people know that we was going to force the taxpayers to buy houses for people in the Gulf Coast. Why didn't Florida residents get new houses after hurricane after hurricane? Why don't homeowners in Texas and Kansas get new homes after tornadoes? Because there weren't Ray Nagins and other assholes demanding federal bailouts, because there aren't voting demographics in those areas that are worth using billions of dollars to chase, and because the majority of those people insure their homes. I see no reason why the federal government has the right to financially sodomize the rest of the country to bail out New Orleans or any other Gulf Coast area.

A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented, and treated, and defeated.

Remember, "acts boldly" means "throws shitloads of money at the problem." Earlier the speech Bush indicated that he wanted to throw money at other countries, and now he's letting you know that AIDS spending is going to increase, too. Since we're not going to cure it any time soon (AIDS and HIV are viruses, and we have never cured one, not even the common cold), this is yet another way of pouring taxpayer money into health care, which should be a personal responsibility.

I waited my entire life to see Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House simultaneously. Granted, I find some of their positions on religion and social issues to be offensive, but not any more offensive than Democrat socialism. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I actually believed the Republicans in 1994 when they promised to bring government spending to manageable and sensible levels, but now I see what I should have seen before: Republicans are only fiscally conservative when Democrats are in power. Bush is spending like a drunken Democrat and expanding the size, scope and cost of the federal government faster than anyone in history, and that's outside of new spending because of 9/11.

Whoever wins the White House in 2008, I hope the opposite party wins the Senate. After seeing the Republicans put a permanent wooden stake through the heart of the idea of fiscal conservatism, limited government and sensible spending (and having seen the disastrous "leadership" of Democrats when they control all three posts), it has finally dawned on me that gridlock is the best and last hope for the United States of America.

By the way, all you animal lovers should make sure to stop by the home page of the First Dog. You paid for it. Your tax dollars at work.

Wasteful spending, useless pandering and missed opportunity, thy name is George W. Bush.

Rest in Peace, Brigitte Serre

Most of us have heard this piece of advice from our parents and teachers dozens of times, and it's almost always good advice: "Don't judge a book by its cover." Sometimes, you'll hear it phrased as "You can't judge a book by its cover."

Sometimes, however, you can.

On January 25th, 2006, a 17 year-old girl named Brigitte Serre was working her very first night shift as an attendant at a Shell station in north Montreal. Her shift ended in a violent death; her body was found in a washroom at the station after she had been stabbed to death, allegedly by a former co-worker. The motive, as you might expect: robbery. Since then, four people have been arrested. Let's see if it's actually possible to judge any of these books by their covers - and then, as a public courtesy, Remington 3200 will provide you with the proper conclusions to draw.

The first contestant:



Joël Nantais

Joël Nantais, 18. This guy turned himself in. Presumably, the coward of the group who wanted to be the first to cut a deal. Charged with two counts of armed robbery and a single count each of conspiracy, forcible confinement and being an accessory after the fact.

Our second guest:



Tommy Gagné

Tommy Gagné, 19. Charged with first-degree murder, unlawful confinement and armed robbery.

Loser number three is a charming young example of the kind of kid all parents want to call their own:



Sébastien Simon

Sébastien Simon, 18, charged with first-degree murder, forcible confinement and armed robbery. This asshole actually worked with Serre at the Shell station and has the words "Thug Life" tattooed to his hands. Police allege that he was the mastermind of the plot and that Gagné was his main accomplice. I always do my best to try not to judge people too quickly, but in this case it seems pretty safe to assume Simon was born in a porcelain bowl, tapered on both ends.

Finally, the fourth jerkoff in this story is so pathetic that he's almost a source of comedy in the midst of one hell of a tragedy:



Sergio Moniz

Sergio Moniz, 27, told Le Journal de Montreal that he had no intention of surrendering himself to police because (brace yourself for this) he has a seven year-old son and "would never do such horrible things." While maintaining that he wasn't going to turn himself in to police, added that he had already left the halfway house where he was supposed to spend the next month for drug possession. You can just picture his son bringing him to school on Career Day, can't you? Just try to imagine the caring, concern and sense of responsibility in his voice as he says "My son saw my photo on television. He's going to think his father is bad. And if it's proven later that I had nothing to do with this, I'm going to wear this mark for the rest of my life."

It's enough to make you laugh and cry. Oh, and as if this needs to be said: all four of these shitheads have criminal records. As of this writing, it looks like only three - the teens - will face charges in Serre's death, which must be a big relief for all of you who were concerned that Moniz's kid might spend time without that role model of a father of his.

Now since this crime took place in Canada, it's a good bet that even if one of them confesses and takes all the responsibility onto himself, he won't get more than three or four years in jail anyway, but here's the question: what conclusions can you draw from this tragedy?

Well, remember what Paul Martin said about the Boxing Day shootings in Toronto that cost Jane Creba her life: "I think, more than anything else, they demonstrate what are, in fact, the consequences of exclusion." See, if these four dickheads had received more hugs and government freebies, Brigitte Serre would still be alive. Just ask Paul Martin.

I've actually commented more on Martin's stupidity than I intended to when I resumed this blog (and the Boxing Day incident wasn't the inspiration for this blog, it simply happened to be the first article), but every time I hear about anything like this tragedy I think of what Paul Martin would be telling the citizens of Canada (you know, just before finding a way to blame the United States). To my Canadian friends who wonder why I hold Paul Martin in such contempt, this is as good of an example as any. Paul Martin was a complete and total fuckwad who thinks that if only your government would coddle thugs more (at taxpayer expense), thugs would stop punching holes in teenage girls. Good riddance to Martin and everyone like him who lost on Election Day.

As for Brigitte Serre, I saw some scenes from her funeral today and learned a little more about her: she was apparently a leader among her entire peer group, often being the first others turned to for advice and sometimes even giving her friends money to help with rent (mind you, this was at age 17, earning gas station wages). By all accounts, a really nice kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and employed by some brainless dolts in a country where murderers are given the sort of kid gloves treatment that does little to dissuade the bad element from lives of crime. Another senseless waste of potential, and another crime that won't bring any real punishment. In short, an indescribable shame.

The only thing worse than the loss of a kid like this is knowing that the scum that killed her continues to waste oxygen that she should be breathing with us.

Rest in peace, Brigitte.



Brigitte Serre, 1988-2006

Hypocrisy, thy Name is...

Near the office where Remington 3200 works, there's a food court that has a small Chinese restaurant in it. This restaurant isn't very good, but it does sell a halfway decent breakfast plate for a pretty low price.

On Friday morning when Remington 3200 was standing in line for breakfast, he noticed that the woman in front of him - a black woman of average height and above average weight - openly made fun of the voice of the Chinese girl who took her order. More specifically, the black woman imitated the Chinese girl's high-pitched, thickly-accented English word-for-word and then laughed as if she had said something funny.

It's just a thought, but I wonder how this woman would have reacted if the Chinese girl had responded by imitating her childlike sentence structure, poor grammar, primitive pronunciation and surprisingly masculine voice. Since the black woman works for the mayor, the restaurant probably would have lost its license and / or lease before lunchtime. Had I imitated the black woman in the same exaggerated manner in which she imitated the Chinese girl, my guess is that this woman have had a social actions complaint complete with charges of racism on my boss's desk within an hour of finding out who I was, and in today's age of political correctness and selective sensitivity I'd lose my job before the end of the day. In today's society, making fun of minorities is unacceptable - unless, of course, those minorities are Asian. It's not too much to ask to be treated with respect and common courtesy, but you've got to be willing to do the same. This woman wasn't, and I really hope the Chinese girl spit in her food.

I also hope against hope that this black woman (who almost certainly wouldn't have tolerated having this sort of behavior directed at her) is reading this, and the next time she decides to treat us to what passes as her sense of humor, I hope she thinks twice and stuffs a fucking sock in it.

Congratulations, Canada

It's a day late, but I'd like to congratulate Canada for ditching Prime Minister Paul "Dithers" Martin and giving Stephen Harper a chance to lead a minority government. Not that I think Stephen Harper is perfect or anything close to it, but Martin was such a flaming ass that any change would have been a good one - even had it been Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe.

As I read through the Canadian press yesterday to get reactions to Harper's victory, I was delighted to see that one of the major campaign mistakes attributed to Martin was his incomprehensibly stupid "consequences of exclusion" remark in response to the death of Toronto teen Jane Creba. I thought Martin should have lost his job for that alone (see my December 31st, 2005 entry in this blog). Other mistakes included amazingly dimwitted attack ads and the infamous "beer and popcorn" gaffe from Martin's director of communications, Scott Reid (in case you missed it, in response to Stephen Harper's proposal to give $1,200 a year to families with small children, Reid said "Don't give people 25 bucks a week to blow on beer and popcorn" - implying that Canadians aren't responsible enough to spend money properly and that only the government knows how). However, please don't be misled into thinking that these were rare errors in campaign strategy - they were examples of exactly what Martin and his liberals really are (snotty, elitist garbage who will piss on anyone and piss off everyone necessary to push forward their agenda).

Needless to say, with few exceptions the only Americans who will be sorry to see Martin go are fans of bloated know-it-all Michael Moore. Martin never missed a chance to blame the United States for violence occurring in Canada, even though Canadian crime rates per capita are much higher than ours - by Canada's own admission. As an example, David Frum, columnist from Canada's National Post, recently wrote that "Canada's overall crime rate is now 50 percent higher than the crime rate in the United States." Sample statistics from both countries include these from 2003: assault at 746 per 100,000 people in Canada as opposed to 295 per 100,000 in America, sexual assault at 74 per 100,000 in Canada as opposed to 32 in the States. Yet Dithers had no problem blaming the United States for the Creba killing, and some of his liberal lemmings were quick to follow suit. Why? Perhaps because we haven't come up with dumbass gun laws that allow people banned from carrying them to keep them with friends (again, see my December 31st entry)? Or perhaps it's because Martin decided that the United States' refusal to sign on to the utterly ridiculous Kyoto Accord (which has nothing to do with improving the environment; it has to do with filling the pockets of dictators and banana republics, and excludes the two countries with over a billion people apiece as "developing nations") is a sign that we lack "global conscience" when Canada's record on greenhouse emissions is significantly worse than ours?

Whatever the case, Canada's relations with the United States (Canada's biggest trading partner) are almost certain to improve now that Dithers is on his way out. This is where Harper himself deserves kudos, as he actually managed to win despite the fear-mongering of those who essentially claimed that Harper would sell out his country's interests just to placate George Bush. Canada's liberal press - in particular, the socialist Toronto Star - are now praising the "wisdom" of the voters for only giving Harper a minority, as if all the voters met first and hashed out everything before heading to the ballot box. What these accolades really are is a sigh of relief that Harper didn't get a majority (something Harper could have had, had he decided not to appear on every television show that would have him and not to try to reassure voters scared of him by essentially saying "don't worry, the courts will keep me in check"), but any change is a good one. Paul Martin's corrupt administration is a thing of the past, and maybe Canada - a country that loves social safety nets and punishing achievement like few others - might get a taste of decreased Nanny State and actually like it. Whether they do or not, and whether or not they switch back to unfettered liberalism the next time there's a nationwide vote, the main thing is that Canada had the good sense to send Dithers packing. Just by stopping a hypocritical dolt from leading the country, the collective I.Q. of the country just took a noticeable leap upwards.

Congratulations, Canada. You just shed about 200 pounds of ugly fat. Nicely done.

Rest in Peace, Chris Penn

Yesterday, one of my favorite actors was found dead by his housekeeper in his Santa Monica condo. Probably best known for his role of Nice Guy Eddie Cabot in the movie Reservoir Dogs, Chris Penn - the brother of the far more annoying Sean Penn - died at the age of 40. The cause of his death has not been determined as of this writing, but foul play has apparently been ruled out.



Gone too soon: underrated actor Chris Penn

Chris was one of those rare actors who was equally convincing no matter whether he played a good guy or a bad one, and he had a rare talent for turning absolute crap into watchable fare (Best of the Best and its sequel, for instance). Aside from the Eddie Cabot role I particularly liked his performances in Best of the Best 2 and True Romance; he was an immensely likeable actor who was just as talented as his brother without all the controversy and know-it-all political blather.

I'll miss the guy. Rest in peace, Chris.



Chris Penn, 1965-2006

The Soviet Socialist State of Maryland

I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am not to be living in Maryland anymore.

Yesterday, the Maryland House of Delegates voted (88-52) to overturn Governor Robert Ehrlich's veto of what has become known as the "Wal-Mart Bill." The bill, which is actually called (you may want to stick your finger down your throat before reading this one) "The Fair Share Health Care Fund Act," dictates that any firm which has 10,000 employees or more has to either spend 8% of its revenues on employee health care or cough up that much to the state in taxes. Wal-Mart, which employs 17,000 people in Maryland, has long been the target of socialist liberals around the country for not caving in to overpriced and underproductive labor unions and - conveniently - is the only company affected by the bill.

I have yet to find a law that forces anyone to work at Wal-Mart, and I do not recognize government at any level as the best judge of what someone's "fair share" is. Further, it isn't as if Wal-Mart will pay anything in the end; the extra money will come from customers in the form of higher prices. Since well-to-do people aren't generally Wal-Mart shoppers, what has basically happened is that Maryland just passed a de facto tax on the poor and lower middle class to pick up health care costs for Wal-Mart employees.

Listen to this drivel from Vincent DeMarco, head of the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, an advocacy group in Baltimore: ''This is a great moment for working families of Maryland and for businesses that do the right thing...This measure will sweep the country." Yeah, Vince, it's great - except for Wal-Mart already rethinking expansion in Maryland and other states which are considering socialist crap like the Wal-Mart bill, and except for those with less soon having to pay more. Wal-Mart didn't get to the top of the retail world caving in to socialist carping, and if it has to increase health care spending, someone other than Wal-Mart will pay for it, you brainless jackass.

Leaving aside how the actual title of the bill disgusts me ("fair share," my ass), I honestly hope Wal-Mart lays off about 7500 employees or cuts wages to make up for this instead of passing the cost on to the consumer. Not that I have anything against those 7500 employees, but I would love to see Wal-Mart extend its collective middle finger to Maryland's socialist Democrats and to other states which are considering this hammer-and-sickle garbage.

Dewey Defeats Truman

In 1948, on the day of a presidential election in the United States, those in charge of the Chicago Daily Tribune decided that it was so important to print an edition before the polls officially closed that they took a gamble. The gamble backfired as badly as can be imagined, and as a result the paper as the paper churned out an edition that still evokes chuckles today. As you can see by the below image, Harry S. Truman got quite a kick out of the most famous journalistic blunder in the history of the United States of America:



November 2, 1948: Harry S. Truman struggles to come to terms with his crushing Election Day defeat

Well, after 57 years and change you'd think the media would have learned their lesson. Sure, some of the gaffes appear so incompetent as to actually be intentional (Dan Rather's Microsoft memo, the major television networks calling Florida for Al Gore in 2000), but then there are others in which you know the media just dropped the ball in their haste to report whatever the hell they wanted to be true. Well, today we got a classic from the two highest-selling newspapers in the country which may someday be mentioned whenever the "Dewey Defeats Truman" edition is brought up. The issue which was grossly misreported today: the tragic West Virginia mine accident in which 12 of 13 miners died. Nobody is going to get the same level of amusement out of this that Truman got in 1948 upon hearing how he got shelled in the election, but if not for the level of the mine tragedy itself, it would be awfully easy to laugh at our supposedly reliable media:



January 4, 2006: The New York Times churns out a new edition of Democrat-sponsored BS, displaying its typical level of accuracy in reporting the consequences of Monday's West Virginia mine explosion



January 4, 2006: USA Today, kicking ass and taking names in the quest to report the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

Congratulations, leftist morons. Nicely done. Why not send some souvenir copies to the families of the miners? Hey, here's an idea: go back to trying to convince us that New Orleans was a racist incident with a disproportionate number of minority casualties, you incompetent jackasses.

Sorry for the short entry, everyone, but I have stop now to write to these fine media institutions and send my heartiest congratulations for their flawless reporting and painstaking accuracy. I just hope I can stop clapping long enough to write.

Some Resolutions I'd Like to See

Happy 2006, everyone.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I wish others would. So instead of making some of my own, I will now share some that I'd like to hear.

ASHLEE SIMPSON: "I resolve to shut the hell up. At all times."

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (for now) WIDE RECEIVER TERRELL OWENS: "I resolve to stuff a sock in it and show a little more respect for the people who throw the ball to me."

GEORGE W. BUSH: "I resolve to stop spending like a Democrat, to veto at least one bloated spending bill this year, to stop calling my amnesty plan for illegals a 'guest worker program,' to stop with the ridiculous claim that illegals take 'jobs Americans won't take,' to cut entitlements, to cut government spending overall, to stop acting like the government is the answer to everything, and to get my lips off the rectum of Vicente Fox."

PAUL MARTIN: "I resolve to wait until Canada's record on greenhouse emissions is equal to or better than America's - or at least not way worse, as it is now - before the next time I choose to claim that the States have no 'global conscience' for not ratifying the Kyoto Accord. I also resolve to stop using the tragic deaths of innocent teenagers as a way to promote my agenda of coddling gang menbers."

UBIQUITIOUS SHOW HOST RYAN SEACREST: "I resolve to fake my own death and disappear from public life."

TALENTLESS WARTHOG ROSIE O'DONNELL: "I resolve to act as if nobody cares that I'm a lesbian, especially since nobody does."

ANY AND ALL SPORTS TALK SHOW HOSTS, AS WELL AS FOOTBALL COMMENTATORS AND ALL ESPN TELEVISION PERSONALITIES: "We resolve to stop bombarding sports fans with images of stupid end zone celebrations, to stop tying to inject the emotional aspect of sports into every possible story, and also to stop using the word 'football' as an adjective in ridiculous-sounding sentences such as 'Michael Vick is a special football player who helps his football team win football games.' In order to do this, I will listen to tapes of my previous work and get used to how stupid I've been sounding for years. Lastly, we resolve to stop acting as if the skin color of managers and head coaches is an issue that warrants almost daily coverage, and to stop acting as if it's the job of professional sports leagues to engage in quotas and social engineering."

ATLANTA FALCONS QUARTERBACK MICHAEL VICK: "I resolve to take criticism like a man after each and every one of my typically bad passing performances instead of whining like a little schoolgirl who can't find her favorite stuffed animal, to remember that I wouldn't be in the NFL if I couldn't run, and to come up with an alias more clever than 'Ron Mexico' before going to VD clinics."

ALL OUTLETS OF THE UNITED STATES MEDIA: "I resolve to come to grips with the fact that nobody with an active brain cares about the love lives of Brad, Jennifer, Angelina, Ben, Jennifer, Jennifer, Jessica, Nick and all other people blessed with more looks than talent."

VICENTE FOX: "I resolve to finally get it through my head that exporting poverty to the United States isn't some sort of entitlement."

JACQUES CHIRAC: "I resolve to get my canards in a row before telling the United States how to act."

JESSE JACKSON: "I resolve to stop being responsible for so much of the racial strife I pretend to be trying to solve."

AL SHARPTON: "I resolve to stop acting like Jesse Jackson."

GEICO: "We resolve to stop inundating America with the same old 'I've got good news' commercials and come up with something that nobody has heard hundreds of times."

MASTERCARD: "We resolve to follow Geico's lead and give those tired old 'priceless' commercials a rest."

CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, AND ALL OTHER LEFT-LEANING MEDIA OUTLETS: "When covering ANWR, we resolve to stop showing images of mountains, streams and wildlife and show the actual area in question."

THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY: "We resolve to stop acting as if legalization of drugs is the most important issue facing Americans today."

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: "We resolve to stop acting as if prayer in school is the most important issue facing Americans today. We also resolve to stop acting as if every baby aborted since Roe v. Wade would be a productive, taxpaying citizen today."

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: "We resolve to stop acting as if the preservation of a frozen wasteland about the size of Dulles International Airport is the most important issue facing Americans today. We also resolve to be more concerned with the safety of Americans instead of the rights of terrorists, and to stop acting as if higher taxes and more social programs are not only the solutions to every problem, but the only solutions to those problems."

NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST MAUREEN DOWD: "I resolve to finally get over the fact that Michael Douglas cast me aside like the parsley on a plate of meat loaf and stop taking my PMS out on the rest of the world."

FOOTBALL COMMENTATOR JOHN MADDEN: "I resolve to do a better job of hiding my homosexual lust for Brett Favre."

THE 535 REPRESENTATIVES OF THE CONGRESS AND SENATE: "We resolve to do what the American people elected us to do by taking care of issues Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of in every conceivable poll: secure our borders, stop the flow of illegals, stop social services to illegals, get rid of citizenship as a birthright for children of illegals, remove all other incentives for illegals to be here, deport illegals, scrap and replace the current tax code, stop insane pork-barrel spending, ratify English as our official language and pass strict laws on eminent domain to neutralize the disastrous Kelo v. New London decision by the Supreme Court."

Rest in Peace, Jane Creba

Imagine that on the day after Christmas, you and your 15 year-old daughter are shopping for bargains in a popular and usually safe section of your hometown, when suddenly gunfire between gangs erupts. Your daughter, caught in the crossfire, takes a bullet in the torso and is mortally wounded.

I can't even imagine that level of grief, and I hope you've never experienced anything close to it. However, now try to imagine that the mayor of your city uses the tragedy as a political opportunity, and that the leader of your country writes off the death of your daughter as "the consequences of exclusion," defecating on her memory while taking advantage of the situation to promote his "hug a thug" agenda.

That's exactly what happened to Bruce Creba and Virginia Barton, the parents of Jane Creba. On December 26, 2005, at 5:19 p.m. on Toronto's popular Yonge Street, gunfire erupted in in front of a Foot Locker store (340 Yonge St.). Seven people were wounded, and Jane Creba didn't survive.



Jane Creba, killed on December 26, 2005 by misunderstood and "socially excluded" youths who simply needed more social programs and a few more hugs

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, facing an election on January 23rd after his Liberal government fell to a recent no-confidence motion, wasted no time in an attempt to use the tragedy to his political advantage, expressing the following drivel about the Boxing Day shootings: "I think, more than anything else, they demonstrate what are, in fact, the consequences of exclusion," in effect pissing on Jane Creba's grave before she was even buried. I think, more than anything else, Martin's words demonstrate that he is, in fact, a flaming asshole.

In other words, Paul Martin's answer to this tragedy is to try to convonce you that a bright and promising teen died because taxpayers hadn't been sufficiently fleeced to provide enough freebies to keep gang members happy.

I could speak volumes about Paul Martin, but this depiction of a Martin brain scan should sum up most of what I would say if I wanted to spend weeks typing up what I thought of this moron:



Remarkably accurate scan of the brain of Canadian PM Paul Martin

Tragedies like these often bring out stupidity from a variety of fronts. For example, Detective Sergeant Savas Kyriacou of the Toronto police force was temporarily deprived enough of brain power by the Creba killing to uncork this gem at a press conference: "It was a tragic loss and a tragic day. I say tragic because it's a day when Toronto has finally lost its innocence." This statement is so stupid that it would be difficult to explain without charts (one would think a police officer of his rank would know his own city better than that) but at least Kyriacou was genuinely affected by Jane Creba's death and had his heart in the right place.

You'd think that his political rivals would have jumped on this and taken advantage of such stupidity and insensitivity on Martin's part, but such is not the case. Jack Layton, the leader of Canada's New Democrat Party (like they need more Democrats up there), blamed the shootings on "poverty, unemployment and social exclusion" - yet another call for higher taxes, more ineffective social programs, and further coddling of thugs who use idle time to shoot up crowds.

Both Martin and Layton are calling for more gun control, ignoring the fact that Canada's $2 billion gun registry doesn't stop crime, and joining the march towards a handgun ban is Toronto Mayor David Miller. Yep, that should make those bad ol' criminals turn in their guns and take jobs at fast food restaurants. After all, I'm sure the gun used to kill Jane Creba was obtained legally.

As someone who is vehemently in favor of legal gun ownership for law-abiding people who pass background checks, I could go into painstaking detail about how ineffective gun bans are, how crime increases as a result of gun bans, and how gun bans simply make the streets safer for criminals who have no intention of complying with these laws - blinding you with a series of statistics that probably won't influence your thinking anyway, regardless of which side you're on regarding this issue. But Paul Martin, aside from basically excusing the shooters, also found a way to make use of his knee-jerk tendency to bash the United States on December 27th while using Jane's death to his advantage: "What we saw yesterday is a stark reminder of the challenge that governments, police forces and communities face to ensure that Canadian cities do not descend into the kind of rampant gun violence we have seen elsewhere," a none-too-subtle shot at the USA.

Miller was even more blatant: "The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto." Sure, Dave. If we were capable of exporting violence, we wouldn't have any. By the way, let's see some proof that those legally-obtained weapons used to kill one of your constituents came from us to begin with - every country has gun runners, you arrogant ass.

The template for thug-hugging, America-hating liberals is simple: when an innocent victim dies, regardless of age, blame everyone and everything except the killers and the utterly pansified system that coddles them. Get this: one day after Jane Creba was killed, a Toronto judge released a 23 year-old drug dealer named Marcel Laframboise, who "allegedly" (chuckle, snort, guffaw) committed first-degree (premeditated) murder of an Ottawa man during an attempt to collect a drug debt - on $50,000 bail! That's probably America's fault too, with Canada being at fault only in their "social exclusion" of the otherwise lovable Mr. Laframboise.

By the way, here's how the gun control that Messrs. Miller and Martin love so much actually works in Canada: earlier in the month, Constable Valerie Gignac...



Only the good die young: 25 year-old Laval Constable Valerie Gignac was killed on December 14, 2005

...was killed while responding to a seemingly routine noise complaint in Laval, Quebec by a high-powered rifle shot that went straight through her bulletproof vest. The "socially excluded," misunderstood poor soul that pulled the trigger was a short, fat, ugly loser named Francois Pepin...



"Socially excluded" loser Francois Pepin, who must have gotten his rifle and ammo from the United States

...who in 1999 was banned from possessing firearms for 10 years. The unusually strict conditions of this ban were as follows: the socially excluded Pepin was ordered to store his guns at a friend's house and only use them during hunting season. Amazingly, Pepin didn't follow the law. Yes, much like the Washington snipers, who didn't let the Assault Weapons Ban stop them from picking off mothers and bus drivers with a banned Bushmaster rifle, Pepin chose to ignore the sort of laws that Miller and Martin so cherish. The result? One less good cop in Quebec's second-largest city.

So, while the Creba family was just beginning to cope with the shock of having Jane's life senselessly snuffed out by criminal scum, Martin and Miller (who was on vacation in Spain and didn't exactly rush back) raced to figure out how they could use this tragedy - anything to further their agendas. Try to imagine dealing with a loss like the Crebas' compounded with the audacity of politicians at the highest level of your city and country treating your daughter's death like a lucky break that they could exploit.

As usual with stories about tragedies like this, the victim is spoken of as if he or she were a saint loved by everyone, but I've done quite a bit of reading into this case and it seems that Jane Creba really was something else. Straight-A student, softball star and universally loved. Her death was a real loss that Paul Martin and David Miller see as little more than a springboard to help them keep their jobs.

On January 23rd, Canadians go to the polls. The prediction here is that by then, Canada will have forgotten all about Jane Creba and leave the Liberals in power. The feeling here is that even if it's the mentally deficient Jack Layton or the milquetoast "conservative" Stephen Harper, any change would be a good one - and this comes from someone whose country is run by a world-class jackass who bloviates like a Republican but spends (and coddles illegals) like a Democrat. Regardless of whether you share my views on gun control, I would hope that the opportunism of Martin and Miller disgust you as much as it does me.

Like many, I've heard thousands of stories about senseless killings and become desensitized enough to them to not lose any sleep the same day I hear about them. However, the Gignac killing still has me spitting nails, and the Creba killing angers me like none other that I've ever heard of. Coddling killers and spitting on the memory of a dead tenth-grader in order to promote an agenda - no matter what that agenda may be - is as disgusting as it gets. I'm not generally known for my sensitivity, as will become clear as this blog grows in size, but my heart really goes out to the Creba family - they lost their daughter and then watched the leaders of their city and country use her death like a pawn in a chess match. Keep them in your thoughts.

Rest in peace, Jane.



Jane Creba, 1990-2005

SUPREME LUNACY

Not since the Kentucky Derby, in which the horse I picked finished 19th out of a possible 20, have I been so far off on a prediction. President George W. Bush revealed his U.S. Supreme Court (USSC) nominee this week, and to my utter shock he picked a white male who is only 50 years old. I have no idea what sort of justice John G. Roberts will be, but I have to admit a perverse pleasure in seeing Bush finally stand up to the quota mongers and pick who he thought was best. Unfortunately, based on what I've seen so far from Bush, I have little reason to believe that Roberts won't turn out to be another David Souter, a man who has arguably inflicted more damage on this country than Osama bin Laden.

Elsewhere, our buddies from the United Nations are back in action, this time demanding control over the Internet. The UN isn't just corrupt (you know, that little "Oil for Food" scam that turned out to be the biggest financial scandal in the history of the planet), and criminal (there's that little matter of its formidable squad of rapists boinking its way through Africa), it's also inept (it has a readily quantifiable record of failure in everything it does except for passing out blankets). Even if it were a good idea for one world body to control the Internet, the UN clearly isn't up to the task. Here's a message to Kofi Annan and all of the incompetent scumbags who work for him and / or cover up his crimes: we invented the Internet, and you couldn't survive without our dues or our loans. You're welcome to use the Internet, but keep your goddamned hands off of it. The thought of not having an Internet at all would be better than letting you have any influence over it whatsoever, you impotent bedwetting turds.

This week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) goes to USSC Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who criticized President Bush's choice of John G. Roberts to replace her. Her criticism wasn't based on Roberts' past cases, his politics or his qualifications, mind you - it was based on his plumbing. Yes, the bitter old crone O'Connor is upset that a woman wasn't chosen to replace her.

Now personally, I would have preferred Janice Rogers Brown, but not because of her genitalia - I wanted Brown because of her view that socialist New Deal programs are a violation of the Tenth Amendment. O'Connor, however, has this twisted view that Supreme Court justices are supposed to represent certain demographics. I don't have a law degree, much less a position on a judicial bench, but even I know that Supreme Court justices are supposed to interpret the law, and nothing more.

Even if you agree with O'Connor's notion that the Constitution and interpretation thereof should take a backseat to some sort of representational "diversity," the hard truth behind the matter is that both women currently on the USSC have been absolute disasters. O'Connor literally suspended the Equal Protection Clause and rules in favor of Affirmative Action for - get this - another 25 years. Either Affirmative Action is Constitutional or it's not, but she opted to blow off the Constitution in favor of her personal opinion, and didn't even attempt to come up with rational explanation in her written decision.

O'Connor's female colleague, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted in favor of eminent domain for private development and the effective elimination of private property rights. She once opined that racial quotas are appropriate even when discrimination cannot be demonstrated, but has a long history of ignoring minorities when it comes to her own staff. She has no objectivity at all and doesn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution, much like O'Connor. Bader Ginsburg brings nothing to the USSC but a steadfast love for socialist Big Government.

O'Connor's idea on the qualifications of a USSC justice are based primarily on the absence of a penis, and that alone shows how unworthy she is of the post she has held since Ronald Reagan put her on the court. She would have earned an RCA for her demonstrably absurd decision on Affirmative Action had this blog existed back then, so it is no surprise that on her way out of the court she found a way to claim her rightful and long overdue recognition. Congratulations, Justice O'Connor, on receiving an award that you have done so much to earn, and enjoy your retirement as a truly worthy recipient of the coveted Rectal Cavity Award.

DOLTS ON ICE

Before I get into this week’s example of sports as a model of the American economy, let me wish Sabine Herold and the other seven or eight people in France whom I actually like a Happy Bastille Day. To the rest of you, I hope you enjoy the 2012 London Olympics.

If you haven’t felt a massive sense of absence over the last 301 days, you won’t be even remotely interested to know that the National Hockey League (NHL) labor dispute, which resulted in the loss of an entire season, is over. If you were a hockey fan before the lockout, you might not be so wild about the game when it comes back – but if you want to understand the American economy, the lockout is a great place to start.

Once upon a time, there was a league full of dumbass team owners. This league, called the NHL, was in financial trouble because the owners made bad decisions on how to allocate revenue and pay for overhead. Much like the United States government does in similar circumstances, the owners decided to make the workers pay for it.

“We want you to accept less net income for the same work,” said the dumbass owners. “We must have a salary cap on your earnings, because we make bad decisions and you must be punished for them. We want to call it ‘cost certainty’ instead of a ‘salary cap,’ though.”

“No. We will not accept a limit to our earnings, we want to keep more of what we make,” said the hapless players.

So both sides stuck to their guns. Eventually, with the season on the brink of cancellation, the players offered to accept a 24% reduction in pay in lieu of a salary cap.

The owners, knowing that the stupid North American public always sides against millionaire athletes, stood firm. The players caved yet again, and offered to accept a salary cap – but it was too late to save the season.

So, after 301 days of bickering, what did the players and owners get? Well, the owners got everything they wanted and more. The 24% pay cut, which was supposed to be instead of a salary cap, wound up being in addition to it – and idiot players are actually talking about how it’s a good deal.

Now, picture being assaulted by a criminal so skillfully that even though he breaks half of your bones – to include those in your writing hand – you feel compelled to send him a thank you note. That’s what the owners just did to the players’ association.

So now, the salary cap is 39.5 million per team and no team can spend more than 54% of its revenue on players, which means the cap is much lower for most teams. Teams lucky enough to be called “small market teams” will get a whopping 5% of the revenue of the top ten money-making teams, but are not required to spend that money on players to improve the team. The only thing players got was a raise in the minimum salary to $400,000 – but that was offset by an $850,000 cap on player salaries for the first four years. In other words, these guys lost a quarter of their pay, had their future earnings limited to even less than what they’re making now, and no player can be paid more than $7.4 million – which means that the NHL can and will lose major talent to foreign leagues. All of this because the owners made bad fiscal decisions and wouldn’t accept responsibility for it – you know, just like how American politicians raid the Social Security surplus and spend it on other stuff, which is why we’ve had 20 or so tax increases to keep funding a failing proposition.

The players should be utterly embarrassed to have shut down a season when agreeing to the owners’ original demands would have saved it and left them much better off than they are now. The last time I saw a defeat this one-sided was the Gerry Cooney vs. Ken Norton heavyweight match (all 54 seconds of it).

Worse still, we now have a guarantee of enforced mediocrity. Much like the socialist system of income redistribution we have in America, everything has to be fair. It isn’t fair that one team can afford more than another, or has better players. Screw the concept of a dynasty, because it isn’t fair.

I am a fan of the Buffalo Sabres, and was much prouder of them for losing in the 1999 finals in six games against a higher-priced team than I would be seeing them win in a watered-down league where no one is allowed to keep a team together and watch it get better. As soon as a player has one good season in his fifth year, his team won’t be able to afford to keep him, and that player’s choices will be narrowed down to which team has cap room for it. The system in place effectively gets rid of a team’s chances to defend a championship, thereby practically ensuring that a different team will win every year – because that’s what’s fair.

You may think $400,000 per year is a lot of money – but when you throw broken bones and crushed teeth into the equation along with constant travel and loss of the ability to eat in a public restaurant without being hounded, it isn’t. You may think $7.4 million is a lot of money, but if you’re demonstrably one of the top 15-20 in the world at what you do, it’s nothing. Meanwhile, the owners – having successfully porked the players highly, mightily and without lubricant of any kind, will be ensured a profit in exchange for offering a watered-down version of a league I used to love.

Count me out.

This week’s Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) goes to an American jackass R&B singer who goes by the name of Omarion. He was in London during last week’s bombings and although was not injured or inconvenienced in any way, decided that a little bit of free publicity and sympathy was in order, so he asked his fans to pray for him. “Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning. He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support.” No mention of the casualties suffered by his host country, of course – just pray for him.
When asked why anyone should pray for him, his publicist Shana Gilmore said to Reuters “He wasn’t hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that.”

Now this is bad enough, but it’s also a none-too-surprising gaffe from a 20 year-old jerkoff who can’t get attention – and it’s not why he’s receiving this week’s RCA. No, his RCA is for his Clintonesque attempt to weasel out of the bad publicity that his “it’s all about me, hold me” stunt brought to him. Brace yourself for this drivel from the asswipe’s homepage: “According to representatives at the artist's record label, Sony Urban/Epic Records, statements and sentiments appearing in a Reuters-syndicated article (Thu Jul 7, 2005 9:22 PM BST) and attributed to the American R&B singer Omarion were never made by the performer. Contrary to statements made in the article, Omarion is in no way affiliated with the PR marketing firm mentioned in the piece. The "publicist" quoted in the article is not a legitimate representative of the artist, is not known to the artist, and is not acting on the artist's behalf. Omarion regrets any association with the article and hopes that fans will not be taken in by unfounded and unauthorized statements.”

Uh, yeah. And speaking of England, I’m next in line for its throne. All of his previous statements were okay, but this one is suddenly the one that fails the PR QC check?

Word up, ‘O’ – the next time you want to lie like Clinton, get some advice from the Man himself. Had you just said anything that would have accepted some responsibility, I’d have respected it – you know, something like “Sorry, I was shocked, scared and not thinking clearly, I take full responsibility for my astonishingly dimwitted statement and ask the forgiveness of the great people of London and across the United Kingdom as a whole,” or “I’m a young imbecile who screwed up and should have invested more than a millisecond of thought into what I was saying during a time of great tragedy for my host country,” I’d have been first in line to shake your hand and say “nice recovery.” Instead, you added insult to injury by tacitly mocking the intelligence of everyone who heard your lame excuse and was expected by you to believe it. Enjoy your RCA, jerkweed.

IMPRESSIVE RCA FIELD, BLOWHARD NBA COACH, AND BICYCLE INDIFFERENCE

This week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) has so many worthy potential recipients that I could dedicate this entire column to them alone. We have President George W. Bush, pledging even more taxpayer money to Africa (which is how he won his first RCA), which given Africa's current governments is no more useful than paying off a gambler's debts. We have Senator Hillary Clinton (Socialist-N.Y.) writing a Washington Post op-ed with Senator Carl Levin (Socialist-Mich.) about how North Korea's nuclear capabilities are Bush's fault instead of her husband's and Jimmy Carter's and saying that the only way out is more aid to a country run by a gargoyle who has no interest in seeing his people fed, clothed or sheltered. We have Bob Geldof, who was the figurehead of the Live8 concert, claiming that a third of the world watched the show and "It's now time for leaders to act" on a bunch of issues, foremost of which being debt relief for Africa (Geldof claims that because two billion people supposedly saw the concert - chuckle, snort, guffaw - two billion people are therefore all for debt relief; this is like saying that everyone who watches The West Wing is for gun control, high taxes and Title IX just because Aaron Sorkin is). We have Chris Martin from Coldplay referring to the Live8 concert as (brace yourself for this) "the greatest thing that's ever been organized probably in the history of the world." We have the usual socialists prattling on about potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees as if they should have a say before the nomination takes place, to include Ted Kennedy (Socialist-Mass.), Chuck Schumer (Socialist, N.Y.) and so on. We have a true jerkoff, Garry Trudeau, coming up with a Sunday comic attacking bloggers who don't agree with Democrats. We have an as-yet unidentified group, currently rumored to be a secret division of al-Qaeda, which attacked London's public transportation system in rush hour but couldn't manage any more casualties than you'd expect in a garden variety European soccer riot.

The list goes on and on, and I haven't even scratched the surface. Any of the above candidates could have won the award during almost any other week. This week's winner, however, is French salopard-in-charge Jacques Chirac, who managed to talk his way out of receiving the 2012 summer Olympic Games for Paris by spewing forth his opinions on Britain and its food (among other things). Once London won the Games, Chirac was rewarded with a 28% approval rating, which is at least twice what he deserves. Way to go, Jacques, you stupid merdeux. Congratulations on being the first-ever recipient of an RCA to serve as leader of a sworn enemy of the United States of America.

Sports-related observation: for weeks and weeks now, we've heard daily reports about NBA coach Larry Brown and where he might wind up working next year. Not only do I not care, but neither does the vast majority of the country. Further, I would like to be the first to blame him in print for Detroit losing the NBA finals, four games to three, to San Antonio. Mind you, I didn't want Detroit to win (and for that matter, I'm probably not the first person to blame the self-centered blowhard for his team's loss), but the media crunch on Brown and his prospects for next season are the only things I can think of to explain the Pistons' lethargic play in the first two games of the series, both of which were solid blowouts in favor of San Antonio. The last time I saw a coach let his next season become the main story during a final in which his team was involved was when Bill Parcells took the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl and made his travel plans to coach the Jets while his team was getting pounded by the Green Bay Packers. No one who understand professional sports could possibly believe the crap that has come out of Larry Brown's mouth as of late - the old blowhard simply loves the constant media speculation and having his name in the papers every day. The world of sports would be a lot better is the pompous ass would shut up and fade away. Hell, in a less active week I'd give Brown an RCA on general principle.

Between Lance Armstrong's attempt to win a seventh straight Tour de France and President Bush taking a spill on his bike this weekend, never before has bicycle riding received so much media attention - and never before have I cared less about it. As impressive as Armstrong's achievements are, there is no way that damned French bike race is an annual event - much like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, it appears to pop up every two months or so. Quite frankly, although I wish Mr. Armstrong luck, the only concern about this is that a victory by him could make Jacques Chirac look even worse. Other than that, the event can't end quickly enough for me. As for President Bush, it's a shame that the tumble he took didn't change his views on pissing away taxpayer money for PR that he'll never get for himself or our country.

LETTER TO A SANCTIMONIOUS BITCH

This week's column is a lot longer than usual, but if you've been reading my rants for a while and still keep coming back for more, you might find this one worth printing.

When you've got a blog that has more than a dozen readers, occasionally you find column ideas in your e-mail inbox. Not all of them are good, but sometimes you find a killer here and there - as I did this week.

Shortly after John Kerry lost the 2004 election, some lady from New York wrote "A Letter to the Red States," in which she basically chewed out the states whose electoral votes went to George Bush. One of my readers sent it in and suggested that I respond to it. I decided to do just that, and it follows below. The original letter is in italics, my response to each paragraph follows thereafter. Be sure to read to the end to find out who won this week's coveted Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) - you've probably never heard of this idiot, but you'll be astounded at what he did.

A side note to my overseas readers: the terms "red state" and "blue state" refer to a now-famous map that was published in the newspaper USA Today shortly after the 2000 presidential election between George Bush and Al Gore. The map can be seen here - even though the socialist Gore won the popular vote, the bulk of his votes came from the 677 counties illustrated in blue (where you find the most welfare recipients, illegal aliens and other parasite beneficiaries of income redistribution), whereas Bush won the 2,439 counties illustrated in red. Because of this map, and a similar version of which USA Today published in November of 2004 (see it here), states that go to Democrats are now called "blue states," and states which go to Republicans are now referred to as "red states."

Happy reading (or, to most of my overseas readers, priyatnogo chteniya).

Letter to the Red States
By A Woman from NYC, Nov 8, 2004

Sorry, I try not to deluge people with my ramblings. But I had to write this and, having written it, had to send it. Even though I don't know anyone I can send it to (without alienating my Republican in-laws, who are the only "middle country" people I know.) I am writing this letter to the people in the red states in the middle of the country - the people who voted for George W. Bush. I am writing this letter because I don't think we know each other. So I'll make an introduction. I am a New Yorker who voted for John Kerry. I used to live in California, and if I still lived there, I would vote for Kerry. I used to live in Washington, DC, and if I still lived there, I would vote for Kerry. Kerry won in all three of those regions.

Letter To A Sanctimonious Bitch
by a Man in Arlington, Virginia, June 29, 2005

Sorry, I try not to deluge people with my ramblings. But I had to write this and, having written it, had to put it in my blog - even though I don't know who will read it. I am writing this letter to the people in the blue states on the coasts of the country - the people who voted for John Kerry. I am writing this letter because I don't think we know each other. So, I'll make an introduction. I am a Virginian who voted against John Kerry. I used to live in California, and if I still lived there, I would have voted against John Kerry. I was born and raised in New York, and if I still lived there (as most of my relatives do), I would voted against John Kerry. I lived in Washington, DC on September 11th, and if I still lived there, I would vote against John Kerry. Kerry won in all three of those regions.

Maybe you want to know more about me. Or maybe not; maybe you think you know me already. You think I am some anti-American anarchist because I dislike George W. Bush. You think that I am immoral and anti-family, because I support women's reproductive freedom and gay rights. You think that I am dangerous, and even evil, because I do not abide by your religious beliefs.

Maybe you want to know more about me. Or maybe not; maybe you think you know me already. You might think I am some neo-Nazi hater of children, brown people and the elderly because I think that John Kerry is a complete joke. You think that I am bloodthirsty and greedy, because I think taxpayers should be able to keep more of what they earn – regardless of their income level. Maybe you think I’m some sort of religious zealot, even though you would be incorrectly applying a stereotype (I'm agnostic). Maybe you don’t think I care about the rest of the world (although admittedly, if your definition of “rest of the world” is Kofi Annan and the United Nations, you would be correct). You think that I am dangerous, and even evil, because I do not put your interests above those of vast regions of the country and do not subscribe to your pacifist, Big Government beliefs.

Maybe you are content to think that, to write me off as a "liberal" - the dreaded "L" word - and rejoice that your candidate has triumphed over evil, immoral, anti-American, anti-family people like me. But maybe you are still curious. So here goes: this is who I am.

Maybe you are content to think that, to write me off as a "conservative" - the dreaded "C" word - and sulk that your candidate failed to win over enough people with his oft-mentioned, rarely described “plans.” But maybe you are still curious. So here goes: this is who I am.

I am a New Yorker. I was here, in my apartment downtown, on September 11th. I watched the Towers burn from the roof of my building. I went inside so that I couldn't see them when they fell. I had friends who were inside. I have a friend who still has nightmares about watching people jump and fall from the Towers. He will never be the same. How many people like him do you know? People that can't sit in a restaurant without plotting an escape route, in case it blows up?

I am a native New Yorker, but currently a Virginian. I was in D.C, on the Red Line of the Metro, on September 11th. I will not claim to have seen the planes slam into the Pentagon like John Kerry did, because I did not see it happen (nor, for that matter, did Kerry - not even Superman could have seen that incident from the Senate office he was in at the time). I was on my way to work that day when I saw my boss locking the front door to the office, telling me to go home and not to use the Metro. I took a taxi home to watch the coverage on television. I have a friend who lost her husband in the Pentagon. She will never be the same. I lost a good friend from my first tech school after Basic Training. How many people like them do you know? People that would die if we adopted a policy of having meetings with terrorists instead of killing them?

I am a worker. I work across the street from the Citigroup Center, which the government told us is a "target" of terrorism. Later, we found out they were relaying very old information, but it was already too late. They had given me bad dreams again. The subway stop near my office was crowded with bomb-sniffing dogs, policemen in heavy protective gear, soldiers. Now, every time I enter or exit my office, all of my possessions are X-rayed to make sure I don't have any weapons. How often are you stopped by a soldier with a bomb-sniffing dog outside your office?

I am a worker. I work in D.C. police headquarters, which the government told us is a "target" of terrorism. The subway stop near my office was crowded with bomb-sniffing dogs, policemen in heavy protective gear, and workers from the D.C. Emergency Management Agency. Now, every time I enter or exit my office, all of my possessions are X-rayed to make sure I don't have any weapons. How often are you stopped by a cop with a bomb-sniffing dog outside your office?

Welcome to the real world. Terrorists can strike anywhere, and as you can see, you're not the only person who lives in a "target" area.

I am a neighbor. I have a neighbor who is a 9/11 widow. She has two children. My husband does odd jobs for her now, like building bookshelves. Things her husband should do. He uses her husband's tools, and the two little girls tell him, "Those are our daddy's tools." How many 9/11 widows and orphans do you know? How often do you fill in for their dead loved ones?

I am a neighbor. I have a neighbor who is a 9/11 widower. His wife was five months pregnant when she died. He is bitter, but is rational enough to realize that 9/11 would not have been called off had Al Gore won in 2000. The 9/11 commission made it clear how long the plans for 9/11 were underway, and even the poorest math student would know it began during the Clinton Administration, which is when the first World Trade Center bombing took place and so many bombings against American targets since then. He knows that if the terrorists who killed his wife and unborn child are to be punished, it won’t be done by way of a policy that treats terrorism as a “nuisance” and a law enforcement problem - the very strategy employed by Clinton and Gore, and part of what would have been Kerry's "more sensitive" war on terror (some deterrent it proved to be!). When he gets lonely, he often comes over to my place for a few beers, and inevitably, tells me how much he misses his wife and how glad Gore was not in charge when 9/11 happened. He remembers bitterly the 1997 Gore Commission’s conclusions which made it even tougher for airline security to do their jobs. How often do you lend an ear to those who have lost loved ones?

Again, you're not alone - and you're not special. There are millions and millions of people in your city and mine who are in similar situations.

I am a taxpayer. I worked my butt off to get where I did, and so did my parents. My parents saved and borrowed and sent me to college. I worked my way through graduate school. I won a full tuition scholarship to law school. All for the privilege of working 2,600 hours last year. That works out to a 50 hour week, every week, without any vacation days at all. I get to work by 9 am and rarely leave before 9 pm. I eat dinner at my office much more often than I eat dinner at home. My husband and I paid over $70,000 in federal income tax last year. At some point in the future, we will have to pay much more - once this country faces its deficit and the impossible burden of Social Security.

I am a taxpayer. I worked my butt off to get where I did, and so did my parents. As a registered Republican from a hugely pro-tobacco state, you probably think I’m some sort of Wal-Mart dependent that buys Skoal as often as food, but I speak three languages and was once an interpreter for the Department of Defense. I paid a boatload in federal income tax last year - not as much as you and your husband (I only worked 2264 hours last year), but then again as a single guy I get no deductions, so I get to keep even less of a percentage of my pay than you do (but still too much for John Kerry's liking). At some point in the future, I will have to pay much more – thanks to the impossible burden of a Ponzi scheme called Social Security (the very program which Democrats will not change unless tax increases are involved), and also because different vote-buying schemes called "social programs" which are designed to solve problems but never solve anything, never shrink, and never go away. Although I would gladly let the government keep every cent of Social Security I’ve been forced to “invest” in exchange for just being let out of the program, I will never have the chance that Bush is attempting to secure for our youth – the chance to invest a portion of that money somewhere else. Sure, there are no guarantees, but Social Security isn’t guaranteed, either – you have no right to benefits and can be arbitrarily denied, and there are those of us who prefer to take our chances anywhere else. Social Security was created by Democrats and is defended by Democrats, even though it is the biggest financial screwing in the history of the country - so if you're blaming Bush for it, I cordially invite you to go screw yourself.

In fact, the areas of the country that supported Kerry - New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts - they are the financial centers of the nation. They are the tax base of this country. How much did you pay, Kansas? How much did you contribute to this government you support, Alabama? How much of this war in Iraq did you pay for?

The areas of the country that supported Kerry - New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts - are, as you point out, the financial centers of the nation. They are a significant part of the tax base of this country, but not all of it – and yet they’re full of condescending know-it-alls who produce almost no food but rail against states such as Kansas and Alabama for not paying as much in taxes as the larger states do. Your candidate, Kerry, favors income redistribution for everyone except for himself - so why are you bitching about it? The answer to that question is simple: you're an elitist snob who looks down on real Americans because they don't pay as much tax as you do. Try living without the food and appliances they produce for a few days and then tell us how much tax money means to you. You make me sick - because you work in a financial center, people in flyover states are supposed to blow off what's important to them and just vote with YOU in mind? You're a selfish, sanctimonious bitch and you missed your true calling as a Hollywood propaganda maven.

I am a liberal. The funny part is, liberals have this reputation for living in Never-Neverland, being idealists, not being sensible. But let me tell you how I see the world: I see America as one nation in a world of nations. Therefore, I think we should try to get along with other nations.

I am a conservative - in terms of fiscal matters and national defense, anyway. The funny part is, conservatives have this reputation for living in a shell where no one else matters. But let me tell you how I see the world: I see America as a leader in a world of nations. We have liberated millions, and saved many of our strongest detractors from oppression (Just ask France). I would love to pull out our troops from everywhere we have them stationed, but it simply isn’t realistic – even Bill Clinton knew that (we still haven't left Bosnia). We're not perfect, but who would you have be the reigning superpower if not for us? China?

I see that gay people exist. Therefore, I think they should be allowed to exist, and be treated the same as other people.

I see that gay people exist and recognize their right to exist, but am troubled by how often I have to hear about it. I personally don’t prance and skip into my office and demand that people “embrace” and “cherish” me because of my love of women, and I do not march up and down city streets with signs extolling the virtues of Straight Pride. No one I know would deny a gay’s right to exist, but the attitude is the same: be as gay as you want, but don’t expect the rest of us to care one way or another.

I see ways in which women are not allowed to control their own bodies. Therefore, I think we should give women more control over their bodies.

I personally have nothing against abortion, but think a Constitutional "right" to abortion is absurd. Even if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, rights would revert back to individual states – you know, the same sort of thing liberals want for gay marriage. Are you willing to trade one for the other? Would you overturn Roe v. Wade in exchange for gay marriage instead of taking a reasonable compromise such as civil unions?

I see that people have awful diseases. Therefore, I think we should enable scientists to try to cure them.

I see that people have awful diseases, but leave it to liberals to decry lack of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research as a “ban” on it or to claim that only the government could have made Christopher Reeve walk again. The federal government has never cured a disease. In fact, diseases are more easily cured without government being involved, because big time funding means big time interference and big time oversight. Government staying the hell out of it is the best way to "enable" scientists to cure diseases - no one is stopping them EXCEPT for government, you dolt.

I see that we have a Constitution. Therefore, I think it should be upheld.

I see that we have a Constitution. Therefore, I think it should be upheld – which would rid us of most social programs on the federal level (read the Tenth Amendment) and Affirmative Action (ever heard of the Equal Protection Clause?). Be careful what you wish for.

I see that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Therefore, I think that Iraq was not an imminent danger to me. It seems so pragmatic to me. How do you see the world? Do you really think voting against gay marriage will keep people from being gay? Would you really prefer that people continue to die from Parkinson's disease? Do you really not care about the Constitutional rights of political detainees? Would you really have supported the war if you knew the truth, or would you have wanted to spend more of our money on health care, job training, terrorism preparedness?

I see that there we haven't found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when since got there (we still can't find that teenager in Aruba within 134 square miles, and Iraq is the size of California), but know that a.) if they're truly gone it's because we got there too late, and b.) we were never required to find them – Iraq was required to show evidence of their destruction. They never did, and repeatedly violated seventeen resolutions of the same United Nations that so many of your fellow liberals cherish so very much. Saddam Hussein paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers $25,000 apiece - don't you care about our allies? It seems so pragmatic to me. How do you see the world? Do you really think that changing the institution of marriage so radically will make people more tolerant than simply calling it a “civil union,” which is more than a fair compromise? Do you really believe that only the government can cure Parkinson’s disease, even though so many diseases have been cured without the government’s interference or funding? Do you really see any clause in the Constitution that guarantees rights to people who are trying to kill us, and are their non-existent "rights" more important than the rights of society to protect itself? Would you really have supported the war under any circumstances, since it’s so obvious that if you think it’s the government’s job to be involved in health care, pension plans and job training? Per the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution you say you want upheld, where is the federal government given the power or authority to be involved in such activities?

Political detainees only have Constitutional rights if they are American citizens. I do care about the rights of citizens, but those detainees who aren't citizens have no rights under the Constitution or the Geneva Convention. I do not care about their "rights" any more than they care about our right to exist.

I am an American. I have an American flag flying outside my home. I love my home more than anything. I love that I grew up right outside New York City. I first went to the Statue of Liberty with my 5th grade class, and my Mom and dad took me to the Empire State Building when I was 8. I love taking the subway to Yankee Stadium. I loved living in Washington DC and going on dates to the Lincoln Memorial. It is because I love this country so much that I argue with my political opponents as much I do.

I am an American. I had an American flag outside of my house in March of 2003, but it was soiled by vandals the day after we attacked Iraq. I, like you, grew up just outside of New York City; I took my first trip up the Empire State Building at age seven. I lived in downtown D.C. for six years. It is because I love this country so much that I argue with my political opponents as much I do, and why I feel so angry at its rapid slide towards socialism. Sooner or later, the big spenders in our government – from both my party and yours – will run out of other people’s money with which to buy votes.

I am not safe. I never feel safe. My in-laws live in a small town in Ohio, and that town has received more federal funding, per capita, for terrorism preparedness than New York City has. I take subways and buses every day. I work in a skyscraper across the street from a "target." I have emergency supplies and a spare pair of sneakers in my desk, in case something happens while I'm at work. Do you? How many times a month do you worry that your subway is going to blow up? When you hear sirens on the street, do you run to the window to make sure everything is okay? When you hear an airplane, do you flinch? Do you dread beautiful, blue-skied September days? I don't know a single New Yorker who doesn't spend the month of September on tip-toes, superstitiously praying for rain so we don't have to relive that beautiful, blue-skied day.

I am not safe, but then again I don’t expect to be. The simple, common-sense steps that could have saved thousands of lives (paying more attention to Arab males aged 40 and under than we did to elderly white ladies just for the sake of appearance) would never be allowed by liberals who think nothing of some individual rights (ownership of guns and land, for instance), but sure seem to get bent out of shape when a terrorist gets sent to Cuba or a child molester isn’t having a comfortable enough time in prison. My parents live in New York City, which doesn’t receive as much federal funding as small towns in Ohio because it has much more local law enforcement resources than small towns in Ohio do - and I' for the record, do not think that you are worthy of more police protection than people in Ohio are. I take the D.C. Metro Red Line every day, and it’s a major terrorist target. I work in one of the first places that is likely to get hit if D.C. ever becomes the focal point of an attack. I have emergency supplies, canned goods and a change of clothes in a bag near my desk, but feel less likely to need it with George Bush in charge than I would under a Kerry administration which wanted a "more sensitive" war on terror.

The key point, though: I chose to live here, just like you chose to live where you are. You and I have both lived in other places, a few in common, and chose where we wound up. We were not assigned an apartment by a Soviet-style government, and it is not the job of people in Alabama and Kansas, the states you so callously deride, to vote with us in mind. I chose to live in a terrorist target because I will not let terrorists make my decisions for me; people in Kansas and Alabama had nothing to do with that decision and had no influence over it. Expecting them to vote with either of us in mind instead of themselves is the height of arrogance and stupidity. Having read your letter, I see that you are the perfect embodiment of both.

I am lonely. I feel that we, as a nation, have alienated all our friends and further provoked our enemies.

I am not lonely, because I do not let the fact that not everyone agrees with me to isolate me. I feel that we, as a nation, have sent a clear message to the rest of the world and our enemies – we won’t be swayed by socialists and won’t listen to lectures of pacifists, the policies of whom are all proven failures. Bill Clinton's dumbass deal with North Korea, hailed as a triumph by you and your fellow liberals, basically forced the American public to pay for Kim Jong-Il's nuclear arsenal, and only liberals were stupid enough to believe thinking that Ki Jong-Il would keep his word. I do not feel any more isolated than I did before 9/11 or March of 2003, because I realize that no matter what we do, countries will never be happy with the top dog – we’re not giving enough foreign aid, we’re not caving in often enough, we’re not allowing Israel to be boiled off the map. I find it sad that you summarily dismiss the 30 or so countries that joined us, and instead focus on the countries which were profiting on the Oil-for-Food scam. How many of those countries were actually our friends before 9/11? Germany and France certainly weren't. China definitely wasn't, and our relations with Russia have been tense for years.

I feel unprotected. Most of all I feel alienated from my fellow citizens, because I don't understand what you are thinking. You voted for a man who started a war in Iraq for no reason, against the wishes of the entire world.

I do not feel unprotected, because I trust George Bush (with all of his faults, and there are a ton) to keep this country safe from attack more than I trust the rest of the world combined, and much more than I trust the same sort of limpwristed diplomacy that could get Seattle vaporized by North Korea. I do sometimes feel alienated from about half my fellow citizens, because I don't understand what they are thinking, until I hear some of them parrot liberal talking points - especially since you and your ilk ignore the fact that we had more countries in this coalition than we had during the 1991 Gulf War. I wonder what those countries think about your utter disregard of them.

You voted for a man whose lack of foresight and inability to plan has led to massive insurgencies in Iraq, where weapons are disappearing into the hands of terrorists.

You voted for a man who supported the same war you hate, but then he didn’t support it, and, well, he wanted to threaten, even though that didn’t work before, and has an SUV, except for when his family owns it, and wants to conduct a “more sensitive” war on terror. As for the weapons that are disappearing into the hands of terrorists, feel free to cite some examples - after all, you claim that Iraq is free of weapons.

You voted for a man who let Osama Bin Laden escape into the hills of Afghanistan so that he could start that war in Iraq. You voted for a man who doesn't want to let people love who they want to love; doesn't want to let doctors cure their patients; doesn't want to let women rule their destinies. I don't understand why you voted for this man.

You voted for a man whose twenty years in the Senate did not result in so much as one significant piece of legislation with his name on it. You voted for a man who agreed iwith Bill Clinton's decision to turn down Sudan's offer of handing over Osama bin Laden to us. You voted for a man who could never clearly lay out any plan, other than the fact that his plan is "better" than Bush’s. You voted for a man who wants state’s rights for gay marriage but not for gun ownership or abortion, who truly believes that only the government can cure disease, and thinks that terrorists who are willing to kill themselves will be scared off by a jail sentence. I don't understand why you voted for this man.

For me, it is not enough that he is personable; it is not enough that he seems like one of the guys. Why did you vote for him? Why did you elect a man that lied to us in order to convince us to go to war? (Ten years ago you were incensed when our president lied about his sex life; you thought it was an impeachable offense.) Why did you elect a leader who thinks that strength cannot include diplomacy or international cooperation? Why did you elect a man who did nothing except run away and hide on September 11?

For me, it is not enough that Kerry is "educated" (with a worse grade point average in college than Bush had, by the way) or speaks French. Why did you vote for him? Why did you elect a man that lied to us repeatedly about his Vietnam service, changed his story all the time (Cambodia in 1968 under Nixon, for example, even though Nixon didn't take the Oath of Office until January of 1969), and thinks that four months in Vietnam 35 years ago entitles him to four years in the White House? (Then again, when you claimed that Clinton’s obstruction of justice was no big deal and tried to pass it off as nothing more than an obsession with sex, I should have picked up on your way of thinking.).

If Bush lied about weapons, then so did John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, France and the rest of your leftist pals. Check the Senate testimony archives for yourself. Why would you elect a person who slams his opponent for not getting France, China, Germany and Russia on board with Iraq, but then grudgingly admits that getting France, China, Russia and Germany on board was impossible (something most of us picked up on when France, China, Russia and Germany said “no freaking way”) Why do you accuse Bush of running and hiding on September 11 when Kerry himself said he sat stunned, unable to think for 40 minutes - and lied about seeing the Pentagon getting hit? Why do you think that an eighteenth UN resolution would have done what the previous seventeen resolutions failed to do?

Most of all, I am terrified. I mean daily, I am afraid that I will not survive this. I am afraid that I will lose my husband, that I will never have children, that I will never grow old and watch the sunset in a backyard of my own.

Most of all, I am terrified for the future of our country, and I mean daily, because it's full of idiots like you. It’s only a matter of time before our economy crashes, because there’s only so much largesse you can vote for yourself, so much pacifism and sensitivity you can engage in with people who want to kill you (and who have serious contempt for the brand of weakness you peddle) before you pay the price for your litany of pansy-ass drivel? There are many people like you who think the rest of the country should vote your way because of the situation you put yourself in, but thankfully your pompous stace was given all the consideration it deserved. There are people who honestly think that the opinions of Michael Moore, Barbara Streisand, or even people on “my” side like Drew Carey or Dennis Miller are more important than your opinion or mine. The naiveté, ignorance and stupidity of you and your ilk frightens the hell out of me - if not for people who think like you, 9/11 may well have been stopped at Logan Airport. People like you think that terrorists' feelings are more important than other people's lives - as evidenced by the way liberals applauded the findings of the 1997 Gore Commission.

I am afraid that my career - which should end with a triumphant and good-natured roast at a retirement party in 2035 - will be cut short by an attack on me and my colleagues, as we sit sending emails and making phone calls one ordinary afternoon. Is your life at stake? Are you terrified? I don't think you are. I don't think you realize what you have done. And if anything happens to me or the people I love, I blame you. I wanted you to know that.

I an afraid that your career is something that you think we should put above our own, and it saddens me that anyone who could think like that is allowed to drive cars or vote. If you and your husband paid over $70,000 in federal income tax, you can afford to move - and if you're that terrified, that's exactly what you should do. As such, if anything happens to you or him, it’s your fault far more than ours – and I wanted you to know that. The rest of the people in this country are not required to take your situation into account over their own, especially since you condescendingly sneer at them for not paying as much tax as you do. Even if you are misguided enough to believe that a Kerry victory would have put a stop to terrorism, and I really laugh at you if you are, the way you think everyone should put their own lives aside and vote for someone based on the lives of people in “important” places like where you and I live makes me sick. You’re not worthy of their consideration at all, or mine. You are the worst our country has to offer - the type of person who believes she is more important than others in her country based on where she lives. You are scum, garbage, trash, and flotsam. When we get hit again, and everyone knows we will, I will not mourn your loss if you are one of the victims. Even though I hate Bush too, it’s people like you that make me elated that Bush won. You and the rest of your whiny, pacifist, socialist ilk disgust me. I wanted you to know that.

THIS WEEK'S RCA

This week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA), like all of the previous ones, was won in the face of astonishingly fierce competition. John Kerry certainly deserves it, what with his New York Times op-ed piece in which he told us all what sort of speech former RCA winner George W. Bush should have given last night. Get over it, Senator Kerry: you lost, and nothing would be dumber than setting a deadline for pulling our soldiers out of Iraq when al-Qaeda reads our newspapers, you stupid elitist assbag.

However, this week's RCA was won by a relative unknown, someone most Americans have never heard of, someone who rose to the challenge of overshadowing John Kerry and the rest of his merry band of socialists. Say hello to a man who has acted like as much of a rectal cavity since the RCAs were born: Superintendent Edwin P. Compass, the chief of police in New Orleans, Lousiana.

In our thoroughly wussified culture, in which some people's feelings are more important than other people's lives, it's no surprise that out nation's police departments are required to endure feelgood garbage along the lines of "sensitivity training." In a nation where out convicts have access to gyms, cable television, college educations and e-mail, one would think we're being sensitive enough to criminals, but that isn't the case. As such, various experts in "sensitivity" are hired to tell our nation's police officers how to gently and tenderly arrest our upstanding class of criminals, whose only fault is that they weren't properly pampered by our half-socialist Nanny State.

The sensitivity "expert" hired by Superintendent Compass? Dennis Muhammad, the security chief of the Nation of Islam. You know, the hate-filled, bigoted organization led by none other than Louis Farrakhan.

Mind you, I'm not Catholic, but if we can follow the logical assumption that Mr. Muhammad will preach his boss's teachings, he will be parroting the words and opinions of a man who has openly mocked Catholicism, gays, Jews and even the pope. Louis Farrakhan is a bigot seething in hatred, and no one in his organization has any business lecturing law enforcement officers on sensitivity.

A personal note: in 1995, I was in New Orleans with an ex-girlfriend who wanted to go down to the shore and get a hair wrap (this is where one small strand if hairs is braided along the side of the head and a bead is put on the end). When she was done, we took a stroll down the pier in the area towards the beach, and what did we see? A bullet-ridden corpse which had washed up on shore and had half if its face eaten away by fish. We had been in the city for less than twelve hours, and we had been staying in the "safe" areas of the city. New Orleans is one hell of a dangerous place if you're in the wrong area at the wrong time. Making the police go through "sensitivity training" in a city which exceeds even Las Vegas in debauchery and violations of the Ten Commandments is stupid enough, but hiring the right hand man of a confirmed bigot to conduct the training is sheer lunacy.

How would the New Orleans training go under Mr. Muhammad if he preaches the crap that Louis Farrakhan sells? Well, since I don't know any New Orleans cops, I'll never know for sure, but here's a guess: "When arresting a suspected criminal, the arresting officer must take into account our rich cultural diversity. A Muslim suspect should be let go immediately, and if for some reason a Muslim has to be detained - as a material witness, of course, since he is clearly not guilty of any crime - he should be put up overnight at the priciest hotel in the area and given a copy of the Koran with a set of reading glasses and a variety of ethnically-sensitve meals. Jews should be struck with nightsticks where their foreskins would be if the dirty kikes still had them. Catholics should be skinned alive and thrown into a giant bag of salt, but only after being read their Miranda rights. Above all, the highest standards of sensitivity must be adhered to."

For allowing the city of New Orleans to transfer taxpayer money to an organization of hatred and forcing his subordinates (who risk life and limb every day for a pretty meager salary) to listen to the ramblings of the security chief of a bona fide hatemonger, Edwin P. Compass wins this week's Rectal Cavity Award. Congratulations, Superintendent Compass. Allah ahkbar, you flaming jackass.

To my Canadian friends: this is being posted on July 1st. Happy Canada Day, and see you next week.

THE CULT OF THE APOLOGY AND THE END OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

When did the United States of America become the home of most wussified culture on the planet?

For the record, I was born in the mid 1960's and still remember the day when being offended was a sign of a thin skin. In the 1970's and 1980's, people could laugh at jokes and didn't get their panties in a bunch at the first disagreement.

As most of you probably know, last week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) winner, Illinois senator Dick Durbin, finally apologized for his dumbass remarks - remarks so stupid that even fellow Democrat Richard Daley (mayor of Chicago) called on this moron to apologize. Durbin's apology was carefully worded and didn't show any real remorse at all, but in a technical sense it was an apology.

Within almost no time at all, another former RCA winner, RINO (Republican in name only) Arizona senator John McCain was praising Durbin, saying that the apology was the "right thing, the courageous thing, and I believe we can put this issue behind us." Right behind RCA winner McCain was Senate majority leader Bill Frist (not much of a Republican himself, by the way), who referred to Durbin's apology as "a necessary and appropriate step."

My question: why was the apology "necessary?" And if, in fact, it was necessary, why was it "courageous?"

For my overseas readers, here's a rundown on how the apology works in America: you can say anything and do anything you like, apologize, and be praised for "courage." Beat your kids, drink yourself out of house and home, smack your wife, it doesn't matter at all - just apologize, and if the offended party doesn't agree to put it behind him and "move forward," he is now the bad guy. The way it works in reverse is this: if you find anything about someone else's actions disagreeable, just demand an apology and say that it's necessary so that we can all "move forward." If the other person refuses to apologize, he's scum and you get to bask in the coveted honor of being an offended party!

I'm only using Durbin as an example here because his foot-in-mouth routine is in the news and on so many minds, but the Cult of the Apology predated Durbin's stupidity by many years. An apology, you see, is supposed to make everyone hold hands and sing together, as this ridiculous comment on the Durbin situation by South Carolina senator Lindsey O. Graham will attest: "It was good for the troops, and it was good for Senator Durbin."

Really? Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows the troops couldn't care less about an apology from Dick Durbin, and although I personally think his remarks warranted a sincere apology, it's not as if he gave one. Further, most people would have respected Durbin more if he had the guts to stick to what he believes, as offensive as that may be.

As I listened to McCain letting Durbin off the hook today, several thoughts struck me - most of them unprintable - but the first and foremost was what a waste of money most floor time in the Senate is. For McCain to pretend that everything is all right now was the height of folly, transparency and stupidity.

The Cult of the Apology has, in fact, let many people off the hook - celebrities addicted to drugs, professional athletes who cheat, baseball managers who beat their wives, politicians who break laws and their constituents' trust, etc. Supposedly offended parties who were ready to scream bloody murder until the cows came home suddenly found themselves fully placated and ready to give hugs to anyone passing by as soon as an apology was issued.

Do you know who really owes us an apology, by the way? Five U.S. Supreme Court justices, to include Justice Anthony Kennedy, the recipient of this week's Rectal Cavity Award. Justice Kennedy joined four other Marxists in a 5-4 decision which states that eminent domain laws no longer just apply to public interests (schools, roads, railroads, hospitals, etc.), but to private ones as well.

Put another way, if your house is where some rich developer wants to put up a mini-mall, amusement park or whatever, all he has to do is go to your town / city council and say "if you kick that person off his land, I will build a mall there that will provide more tax revenue than he's paying" to get your local government to force you to sell your property for "fair market value." Of course, "fair market value" will be much less than the government says your land is worth when it comes time to pay property tax, and you are not reimbursed for the hassle and expense of moving or the time you lose at work. On top of all that, your "fair market value" will be taxed to the hilt – so you may have to take out a mortgage even if your house was already paid for.

“Just compensation,” my ass. If it were actually just, the property owner would sell before eminent domain became part of the transaction. Now, big corporations can insult property owners with lowball offers, knowing they can always bribe local officials into using the police powers of government to kick the poor saps out of their houses for even less money if necessary.

Private property rights in the United States of America are now, officially, a thing of the past.

Have you lived in the same home all your life - perhaps a home that you bought from your parents, a home that has been with your family for several generations? Are you a new homeowner who has saved all of your life to buy a house and has just moved in? Are you over eighty years old, on a low fixed income and barely able to pick up a can of soda, much less pack up all of your belongings? Tough, it doesn't matter - if some rich asswipe wants to build a Chuck E. Cheese where you live, out you go on your ass with a pittance of what your property is worth. Your local government needs tax revenue with which to buy votes and redistribute income more than you need property rights. Screw you, scum.

A good way to be sure a USSC decision completely sucks is if both the far left and far right hate it. As soon as it was announced, I took a look at the two most popular political message boards in the country - the far left Democratic Underground and the far right Free Republic. Both sites have thousands of members and I couldn't find one who supported this idea. Few people would truly object if there was a real need to use eminent domain law to build a hospital if it could be established that the site in question is indispensable for the project, but how can anyone justify displacing homeowners or trampling their private property rights for a Wal-Mart or a mall?

The worst thing is that most Americans didn't even know that this case had been in front of the USSC for months, they didn’t know how often such eminent domain abuse was taking place in the country before today's decision, and they just don't see how the USSC is stripping our Constitutional rights away one case at a time as they legislate from the bench. During just this administration alone, the USSC has taken away speech rights by upholding the wretched campaign finance reform President Bush stupidly signed into law (hoping the USSC would bail him out), has sanctioned racial discrimination, has repeatedly cited international law instead of holding up our own, has decided that "interstate commerce" can involve only one state if the federal government wants to overrule a state decision, and now has taken away property rights.

Runaway government has now reached the point where we have the leftists from Democratic Underground agreeing with Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. You can't blame the Democrats here, either - seven of our nine USSC justices were appointed by Republicans, to include David Souter - the man former President George Herbert Walker Bush swore up and down would be a "reliable vote" for conservatives. Ol' Bush 41 deserves a retroactive RCA for nominating Souter, but alas, I only award one per week.

Of course, the list of RCA candidates for this week is considerable - there are four other USSC justices who joined Kennedy, but to see him join the liberals was sickening. Even Sandra Day O'Connor, who would have been the first USSC RCA winner had this blog existed during the Michigan Affirmative Action decision, thought this was ridiculous. As such, Justice Kennedy wins this week's RCA, beating even Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer (who think President Bush should run judicial nominees by the Senate minority), John McCain (a former RCA winner who let Dick Durbin off the hook this week), all-world asswipe Dick Durbin and others. Justice Kennedy not only wins this week's RCA, but beats out the most formidable one-week field since the award was created.

Congratulations, Justice Kennedy. When you die and leave a vacancy on the USSC, which will be a great moment for our country, I hope some developer digs up your grave to make room for a Costco or a Sam's Club.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* So far, my "worst movie ever" poll has produced a list of well over 100 movies. Of the top ten on the list, I've only seen two. Only one of my personal top ten has made it so far. Keep 'em coming, folks.

* Congratulations go to plastic pedophile Michael Jackson for getting away with going to bed with young boys and managing to have millions of people support him anyway. Given how racist our system of justice is, it sure is a good thing Jackson isn't black anymore, isn't it?

* The worst song in the world has to be "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Nobody sings it unless they're already at a game, and the song just blows dog overall. How Harry Caray managed to sing that song so many times to millions of Chicagoans and not get shot is beyond me.

* Here's one of many things that pisses me off about any restaurant better than McDonalds: you can't order an entrée without being stuck with side orders you don’t want but have to pay for anyway. Only in crappy restaurants can you order a cheeseburger without being stuck with two unwanted side orders. People often assume that fast food restaurants are popular because of the "fast" part, but the service in such places is rarely all that fast anymore. These restaurants are popular because they're cheap, no tip is expected and you can order individual items without being stuck with a side of cole slaw you never wanted in the first place.

* If you're shopping for a computer these days, keep the aforementioned McDonalds principle in mind. That "bargain" computer system offered at your local major outlet always includes at least one component that they can't sell separately, usually (but not always) an unpopular or poor-selling printer, sometimes an obsolete monitor. Do yourself a favor and buy your components separately.

* If you've been following the saga of that missing teenaged girl in Aruba, try to remember the last time you heard a nationwide story that paid so much attention to an ugly girl of the same age. This girl looks like Anna Kournikova, so of course there's a media swarm around the story - reminiscent of the wartime saga of Army Private First Class Jessica Lynch. Lynch wasn't the only female prisoner of war at the time, but she was the only pretty one - and as such, the only one an average American could name at the time (or now, for that matter). If this girl who went missing in Aruba was fat and / or ugly, the only people in the States who would know she was missing would be her relatives.

* This week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) goes to Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the #2 Democrat in the United States Senate, for comparing the Guantanamo Bay prison (0 dead so far, but - gasp! - five documented abuses of copies of the Koran provided by U.S. taxpayers) with the regimes of Adolf Hitler (roughly 9,000,000 dead), Pol Pot (about 1.7 million dead) and Soviet gulags (approximately 2.7 million dead). Durbin's comments were proudly paraded on al-Jazeera's website, as was his refusal to retract them so Senator Durbin - having provided aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war - has reached the legal definition of "traitor." Locking the smarmy bastard up at Guantanamo, where prisoners are provided with copies of the Koran, prayer rugs, prayer periods, ethnically-sensitive meals, reading glasses, decks of cards, chess sets, health care and better food than the soldiers who guard them (you know, like Hitler, Pol Pot and the Soviets provided for their prisoners), would be too good for him.

Durbin knows that his comments are intellectually dishonest, but making George Bush look bad (as if Bush needs the help) is more important to him than national security. This is one of those times where a reactionary Republican explosion of anger is actually 100% justified, and a festering chunk of dung like Durbin has no business representing the same state that gave us Abraham Lincoln, but until we have a chance to vote the flaming jackass out of office the best I can do is present him with this week's RCA. Congratulations, Senator. May you choke on your next ethnically sensitive meal, you pompous piece of garbage.

READER MAIL

Before we get to our first-ever reader mail segment, so as not to be late with the weekly honor that I now bestow upon those who earn it, this week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) goes to President George W. Bush for throwing away yet more taxpayer money - $674 million this time - in the name of "famine relief" in Africa. Still worse, there are now promises of "debt relief," which will cost taxpayers even more and do nothing but lead to a clean slate for Africa to run up more debt it can't pay.

I'm completely against the government doing what charity should to begin with, but if I thought this "famine relief" would actually work I'd almost be willing to overlook this. That said, this is simply pissing away money that will go to the pockets of dictators rather than the purchase of food. Africa has a ridiculously high amount of natural resources and yet can't feed itself because its various governments are so restrictive and overbearing that economic success is demonstrably impossible.

The proper course of action is to do nothing, deprive the African dictators of resources and let them fall. As long as these governments are in charge, Africa will remain a toilet down which billions of dollars of various "relief" will be flushed with no significant results. Instead of taking the proper course of action, though, Mr. Bush has decided to screw the taxpayers of this country once again, throwing money down the drain in the name of "international goodwill" that won't lead to anyone liking America any more than they do or don't already.

Granted, this is the result of a request from Tony Blair, who has been a faithful ally to America and who risked his own political viability to support Mr. Bush's plans in Iraq when his constituents were overwhelmingly against the war. However, from a practical standpoint, it would have been better to simply give the $674 million to Blair and let him decide what to do with it. At least in that case the American taxpayers, who are quite fond of Mr. Blair, would have fewer problems with this.

Instead, Mr. Bush has opted to treat the taxpayers of America with even more disregard than he already has, which is hard to imagine. For this transparent act of "goodwill" that will do no good and produce no goodwill, Mr. Bush earns this week's RCA. Congratulations, Mr. President. Given Howard Dean's ridiculous conduct this week and the boorish actions of Hollywood jackass Russell Crowe, it's hard to imagine anyone besting either of them for this prestigious award, but you did it. I have no doubt that this won't be your only RCA. Hail to the Chief! Sing with me!

Hail to the Chief
He's pissing away our money
We have no choice
As he screws us once again!

Hail to the Chief
He loves to coddle those dictators
When it's time to pay
He just sticks us with the tab!

Hail to the Chief
He provides Iraqis health care
Spits on his own folk
And spends some more again!

Hail to the Chief
He just loves illegal aliens
Kisses their asses
And forces us to shell out!

Hail to the Chief
We have no choice in the matter
As our potential
Gets quickly spent away!

Hail to the Chief
We mean nothing at all to him
All he wants is money
And you know where it comes from!

Hail to the Chief
He is just as bad as Clinton
The only good news is
He cannot run again!

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for...reader mail!

When you have a blog long enough and a few people here and there start reading it, you start getting mail. This week I'm going to answer some of it publicly. I'm reproducing the letters as written, with no correction of typos, so that you can get an idea of the type of mail I'm starting to see:

1.) Dear Mr. 3200,

Enclosed please find my list of the ten worst movies of all time. I know I have to wait for the reader results, but just between you and me, what's the worst movie you've ever seen?

Love your blog, hope you keep it up.

Best wishes,

C.M.

Dear C.M,

You’ve probably never seen or heard of the worst movie I've ever seen, and I don't want to influence the voting anyway; I'm expecting quite a few responses by the end of the survey. I can tell you that last week's rant about "Sideways" aside, that movie doesn't make the list. I can also tell you that one entry on the list is a sequel to a movie that is actually on my top ten favorites, and not just because the sequel was a disappointment - it really is that bad. Sorry, though - you'll just have to wait for the readers' list and my personal one.

2.) Hey, Jerkwad -

How the hell can you talk about tax cuts like there (sic) a good thing and say Bush didn't cut them enough? He cut them more than enough for his rich friends and didn't give the poor anything. Clinton had a surplus and some of it could have been put into Social Security or other important programs. Our health care system is a disaster and no one can afford it anyway. Canada is right across the border and they get health care for free. News flash, moron: TAX CUTS RUIN OUR PROSPERITY. Get a life, you f***ing loser.

Up yours, you f***ing neocon ***hole.

Vincenturion

Vince,

I'll ignore your use of "neocon," because of you had read any of my blog you'd know I'm not a neoconservative at all. Instead, I'll focus on the appalling lack of knowledge and brain cells you demonstrated in the rest of your letter:

a.) The rich got bigger tax cuts because the rich pay more taxes. Bush passed tax cuts, not welfare increases. Tell me, when you shop for groceries, does the cashier hand your change to someone else because they need it more than you?

b.) Clinton's surplus was projected. If you have a ten-year contract at work for $100,000 per year, are you a millionaire now, you inbred dolt? No, and worse still, "surplus" means you're being taxed too much anyway. Another fact unknown to mindless cretins like you: surplus funds, by law, cannot be diverted to entitlement programs - so even if we did have an actual surplus, not a cent could have been used for Social Security, you retarded turd.

Comparing out health care system to Canada's is not unlike comparing a Mercedes to a Pinto (for my foreign friends: the Ford Pinto was a cheap 1970's-vintage car which often exploded if crashed into from behind). Although it varies from province to province, the list of things not covered by Canada's system is growing every day - British Columbia, for instance, just had a court decision that denied coverage for autism. The average wait for an MRI in Canada is 12 weeks, unless you're unlucky enough to live anywhere in Alberta - in which case it's 39 weeks.

News flash (to use your words): if you need an MRI, you can't afford to wait that long, and that's only one example. Canada actually sends out letters to heart patients which apologize if the recipient is deceased, which tells you what waiting times are like up there - and why so many Canadians come here when their health care needs inevitably exceed the capabilities of their system.

In America, most people have their own health coverage, but we have Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. What we also have is the choice to spend our money how we want, instead of being forced to pay for health care (it's not "free," you moron - Canada's tax rate borders on communism) that isn't there when we need it. That's what your hero, President Clinton and her husband Bill, tried to stick us with in 1993 - and it should tell you something that Congress exempted itself from that plan before it even came up for a vote. However, if that's the health care you want, I REALLY hope you get it. When the next elections come around, our society would be much better off without mindless buttholes like you.

c.) As for "tax cuts ruin our prosperity," only an imbecile like you could base our prosperity on how much money the government has instead of how much money the people have. Congratulations on being the author of the most ignorant letter I've received since starting my blog.

3.) Dear Remington 3200,

Please consider going back to back to your "Random Thoughts" articles. When you write about a specific theme, it's hit or miss. I don't listen to Mike and Mike, so that article was wasted on me, but the random thoughts are almost always amusing. I appreciated the article on Social Security, but sometimes the item your (sic) covering in theme articles isn't relevant to me, and I don't think anyone would complain if you stuck to random thoughts.

Keep up the good work, though.

Jonah the El Mondo Gigantiico Terrifico Whaleslayer

Jonah,

I write about whatever strikes me at the time, which means that the "specific theme" articles, as you refer to them, are actually random thoughts. I'm glad you read my blog and I hope you continue to do so, but if I started taking requests I might as well become a DJ.

4.) Attention, Jackass,

It must be nice to have all the answers to the problems of the world. Why not run for office and spread your brand of intolerance all over America and the rest of the world?

P.L.

My most esteemed P.L,

It's often overlooked that most bad policies are actually good policies that have gone too far. For example, tolerance is a good policy, but taken too far it allows for criminals who hate America to be welcomed here with open arms and social services, and for drooling retards like you to drive cars and vote. I'd consider running for office for your benefit, but what would you do when I won, curbed welfare and unemployment subsidies, and taxed parents at a rate of 90% for letting useless parasites like you live in their basement?

5.) My Good Sir Remington -

What weapons do you recommend for home defense for my wife and I (sic)? We're both of average size for our respective genders and neither of us have a lot of experience with guns.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Waiting for a break-in

Konnichiwa, Most Honorable Waiting,

Almost any Remington shotgun would be good (I'm not getting paid for this, in case you ask); as long as you're comfortable with it and have fired it well enough to know it. Some models are better than others - for example as much as I love the 3200 for trap and skeet, I would not recommend it for the job of home defense. The Remington1100, for instance, holds five shots as opposed to the 3200's two, but if you do some shopping you'll find that there are models that are even more suited to home defense. All you have to do is try them out and see which one fits you best.

If you're looking for pistols and are still in a position to need advice from others (no offense), stick to a revolver - revolvers are natural pointers and don't jam. My advice is to get the highest firepower and hottest load you can handle well for 50 rounds, even if you'll never have to fire that often in a home defense situation. For the wife, I recommend a Ruger SP-101 revolver - its balance and design keeps the hand sting to a minimum, and a schoolgirl could handle one with a broken wrist. The SP-101 is my top choice for a backup piece, but I'd have no problem using it as a primary weapon if necessary, something I can't say for a lot of .38s. For you, I recommend test-firing as many revolvers as your local factory / sales rep will let you try out. If you're married to the idea of an automatic, you need to a.) get as familiar with that gun as you are with your wife, b.) be absolutely certain that you can reload the weapon in the dark, and c.) ensure that the weapon will properly eject whatever loads you choose - a jam as a result of cheap factory loads could cancel Christmas for you.

For your wife, a .38 is enough if you've got something along the lines of Glazer slugs - they provide can all the stopping power of a .357. For you, the choice is whatever feels the best - I prefer a 9mm. Blowhard macho types will tell you that you need something bigger and better, but if you can handle a 9mm properly, your assailant will not be getting up for more. The worst mistake you can make is settling for more power than you're comfortable firing 50 times at a clip; countless tragedies during invasions begin with a wild shot and a dropped weapon. On the other hand, do not settle for too little firepower - a .22 caliber is suitable for an assassin but not for you, and I know of no decent .25 caliber pistol in existence (even if it were enough for home defense to begin with).

The key for both you and your wife, however, is practicing with whatever weapons you choose as often as conveniently possible. I can't stress that enough. When selecting any weapon - pistol or shotgun - find a local professional to teach you to shoot properly, listen to what he or she has to say, and then find a second one. Compare expert opinions, combine them with the results that suit you best, and you should come out with something that will suit both of you.

This should be a side note, an incidental piece of advice, and I shouldn't have to tell you this, but I actually know someone who needed this advice once: RIFLES ARE NOT FOR HOME DEFENSE. You want a pistol or a shotgun - NOT A RIFLE.

Lastly, outside of the advice to practice as often as you can, make sure to buy a new weapon and break it in yourself. Used weapons are bargains for experts, not for you. Just as you'd be stupid to buy a used car without consulting a mechanic, you'd be even dumber to buy a used weapon of any kind without knowing weapons so well that you wouldn't have to ask a stranger like me for advice in the first place. Guns for home defense are a lot like toilet paper and tires in one respect: out of all the things you could save money on, this is not the place to save a few bucks.

Good luck, and whatever weapons you choose for you and your better half, I hope you never have to use them. Drop a line anytime.

That's it for this installment of reader mail. Have a great weekend and keep those movie entries coming.

THE RCA THAT SLIPPED THROUGH THE CRACKS

Sorry, all - I couldn't resist the pun. Last week's Rectal Cavity Award (RCA) slipped through the cracks ("cracks" - get it? Har, har, chuckle, snort, guffaw). The winner: George Schulz, head of Amnesty International (AI), who defended the claims of AI weaselette Irene Kahn that the Guantanamo Bay (commonly referred to as "Gitmo") prison in Cuba is a modern-day "gulag." Over the weekend, when pressed for evidence of "systematic torture," Schultz couldn't produce any, and said that this is why international organizations need to be allowed into Gitmo. The very word "gulag" comes from three Russian words (glavnoe upravlenie lagerej) that describe a camp system where I'm pretty sure prisoners didn't get constant medical care and checkups, dental care, exercise periods, ethnically-sensitive meals, reading glasses and copies of the bible of their choice. I'm willing to bet that in gulags, Soviet authorities didn't start investigations about "abuse" of bibles which were provided by Soviet taxpayers.

On one hand, Schulz does deserve some credit for being willing to make an ass out of himself in an attempt to defend a subordinate, but on the other hand the man is as transparent as glass. He donated the maximum allowable amount to John Kerry's presidential campaign but claims that personal politics have nothing to do with his slamming of Bush and his policies. I'm still waiting for Schulz to condemn civilian beheadings on tape and countless car bombings from "peaceful insurgents," but the man is too busy making sure that no Gitmo prisoner has to - gasp! - wear underwear on his head like some did at Abu Ghraib, another apparent "gulag."

Congratulations, George - rank has its privileges, but with greater rank comes greater responsibility, so it looks like Irene Kahn loses and you win. You are the recipient of the second-ever RCA, and you should be proud. With all of the competition you had this week, your behavior and subsequent victory is quite noteworthy and reminiscent of rectal cavities that send shudders up and down the spines of even the most seasoned proctologists. Way to go, George!

DEEP THROAT, CRAPPY MOVIES, THE EU AND SICK KIDS

In case you live outside of the United States (or in a cave within the States), the big news this week is that W. Mark Felt, who was the #2 man in the FBI during the Nixon administration, claimed in a Vanity Fair interview that he is Deep Throat. For those not in the know, Deep Throat is the alleged secret informant whose alleged leak to two now-famous Washington Post reporters led to Watergate and the downfall of Richard Nixon. The reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, refused to reveal their source while the "source" was alive, and rumors about who Deep Throat may be persisted for over three decades. Now, a senile 91 year-old whose daughter wants to cash in before he dies steps forward and claims to be Deep Throat. Needless to say, our heavily leftist media is drooling all over the story and calling Felt a hero.

Now that we've covered the background for those who may have needed it, let me throw in a few disclaimers before I delve into my typically thought-provoking analysis. For the record, I never thought there was actually a Deep Throat; there were too many holes in the story and the "source" wouldn't be around to defend himself after death. Now, after about a third of a century, people with dollar signs in their eyes want us to believe this ridiculous set of circumstances. I still think it's all a large, steaming pile of BS - but for the sake of this blog entry let us assume that Felt is telling the truth and was actually Deep Throat. If so, here are a few remarks on this old gold-digging blowhard:

The media hails him as a hero, but he orchestrated several break-ins which were no different than the one he blew in Nixon for. If he had done so to a Democrat such as Kennedy or Johnson, the media would be giving him treatment right now that would make their destruction of Linda Tripp look like a tea party. Felt duped two young reporters into bringing down the government out of personal spite because he didn't get J. Edgar Hoover's job. The drooling press neglects to mention that Felt was indicted for illegal investigations into Vietnam War protesters and eventually got pardoned by Ronald Reagan. He violated God knows how many FBI non-disclosure agreements, collected a pension for over thirty years, and spoke up only when his daughter wanted money. Worse still, he enabled countless Khmer Rouge atrocities and made the Carter presidency possible. Now, the press calls him a hero - but back during the days when Felt was denying that he was Deep Throat and was asked if Deep Throat was a hero, Felt himself answered in the negative. While G. Gordon Liddy kept his mouth shut and served prison time like a man, Felt - who should have been doing jail time then and should be prosecuted now whether he is Deep Throat or not - was living a pretty comfortable life at taxpayers' expense.

So, Nixon and Liddy took the fall, while Felt and similar scum like odious slimeball John Dean skate (or as my Russian friends would say, "emerge from the water dry"). Nixon's crime wasn't in ordering the break-in, as Bill Clinton did when he leaned on his secretary to lie under oath - his crime was in the cover-up of John Dean's operation. While Nixon was in fact guilty of a crime, Felt was guilty of several - and actually had Nixon testify in his defense at one point. It's hard to imagine a bigger stab in the back - especially from someone who had the authority to go public. Instead, the sleazy coward went on a vendetta and lied to the entire country for over 30 years. W. Mark Felt was vindictive scum who knocked the free world off its axis three degrees because he didn't get a promotion, and our leftist media was more than happy to take down the man who exposed Alger Hiss, their darling Soviet spy. Felt knew that the leftist Washington Post would stop at nothing to bring down a Republican president during wartime, so instead of going to a grand jury with evidence of wrongdoing like he should have, he went to reporters. So now after 30 years the man is a hero?

W. Mark Felt was - and is - a vindictive traitor, a felon, and a reprehensible chunk of scum, whether he is in fact Deep Throat or not. He is very, very lucky that I am not a federal prosecutor. If I thought he'd live long enough for me to become a federal prosecutor of influence, I'd start hitting the law books now.

One last note about W. Mark Felt, the thoroughly detestable darling of today's American media: when I was stationed in Germany, I used to work night shift, when business was slow and any conversation topics would do. One night after work back in 1990, over a poker game my co-workers and I were speculating about Deep Throat and my boss at the time, a hell of a good guy, said he thought Deep Throat was W. Mark Felt. As I say today, I believed back then that there was no actual Deep Throat, but I do confess that I never gave the idea of Felt being Deep Throat much serious thought. Wayne, I know a fair number of our ex-shiftmates read my blog, and I hope you're one of them because I hereby tip my cap to you. Good call, Boss.

Okay, now for a much-needed topic change: the topic we're going to cover movies that suck so badly that they could entirely clear my living room carpet of dust. I know I'm currently running a poll on garbage movies, but I have to comment on one I saw this past weekend - because if I can keep just one of my readers from seeing this cinematic piece of flotsam, I'll get credit should there be such a thing as an afterlife.

The movie in question is called "Sideways," a 2004 nominee for Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy. I haven't seen any of the other movies nominated for an Oscar last year, but this movie was so bad that any of the others had to be better. In case you haven't been subjected to this festering example of Hollywood dreck, here's the back-of-the-movie-box description: two guys, take a self-discovery road trip through California wine country.

Now for truth in advertising: one guy is engaged and can't keep his pants closed, while the other is a whiny loser who drinks too much, steals from his mother, gets mad at other people for being happy, keeps secrets from women until he can sleep with them, and does everything he can to spoil the mood of anyone around him. The latter manages to hook up with a beautiful and intelligent girl who has no reason to be attracted to the biggest loser since General Custer, while the former manages to screw his way into a severe beating and the loss of his wallet. How the viewer is supposed to sympathize with either of these jerkoffs is beyond me, but the bottom line is this: the movie is to be avoided at all costs. Guys don't act like these two bungholes, and if I didn't know better I'd say the movie was written and directed by a militant feminist who hates men.

Suffice it to say that the movie had only two high points: the use of Pat Travers' "Snortin' Whiskey" in the soundtrack, and the closing credits. The credits aren't anything special, of course, except for the fact that they signify the end of the movie.

Next up on the list for this week: congratulations to the French and Dutch for voting down the European Union constitution. For once, the laziness and arrogance of the French works out well for the rest of society. The French. who want to be an economic superpower but are desperate to hang on to their 35-hour work week and their six weeks of vacation, benefited from Jacques Chirac's being too scared to tell the country that you can't have it both ways. Throw in some reservations about being in a union with Germany (and, quite possibly, Turkey), and you've got a whole country that's perfectly happy being socialist unless they have to share with others. The irony is hilarious.

Shortly after the French said "non," the Dutch followed suit even more overwhelmingly, and now it looks like the great socialist economic rival to the United States has to jump through a few more flaming hoops before it trail behind us, Japan and China as a unified Nanny State instead of separate inept economic "powers." For once, the French voters got one right, refusing to pick up the tab for countries which are even worse off. Perhaps the citizens of France have seen what the U.S. government's lax attitude towards illegal immigration has done to our country and don't want to be taxed at even higher levels to support countries with miserable economic policies. Take note, President Bush - we're tired of subsidizing Mexico, you socialist Big Government goober.

Lastly, guess what the newest trend is in my office? People are bringing their sick kids in to cough, hack, spit and vomit all over the place. Yes, when a kid is too sick to be placed in day care, my INCONSIDERATE JACKASS CO-WORKERS have decided to bring their kids in the office to save a few bucks. Why not? They're children, and in our society children can do no wrong - even if they stab each other or set houses on fire - so if they're brought into an office where they don't belong to get other people sick, we should feel honored to pick up whatever disease the little snotbags have! None of my co-workers read this blog, but they might someday, so just in case they do: KEEP YOUR OBNOXIOUS LITTLE RUG RATS OUT OF THE OFFICE AND STAY HOME WITH THEM SO THEY CAN COUGH UP THEIR HAIRBALLS IN THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN HOME INSTEAD OF TWENTY FEET AWAY FROM MY GODDAMNED DESK.

On that cheery note, have a great weekend - unless you're one of my aforementioned INCONSIDERATE JACKASS CO-WORKERS.

JOHN MCCAIN: THE WHITE JESSE JACKSON

* Where were you when the Republic was saved? This week, fourteen senators conspired and backstabbed their way into jacking up the necessary vote count to confirm presidential judicial nominees. This preserves a sacred tradition of filibustering nominees that dates all the way back to the good old days of 2002.

* Pulling the so-called "nuclear option" would have made Bill Frist a hero with his base, and he was clearly ready to do it, but RINO (Republican in Name Only) John McCain felt that boosting his own presidential hopes at the expense of Frist's was more important than the Constitution. Way to go, Senator McCain. You gave Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid his first good night of sleep in six weeks (did you tap him on the shoulder to wake him the next day?), let the Democrats slip out of a noose that they put themselves into, pretty much guaranteed that we'll get stuck with another David Souter when William Rehnquist retires or dies, threw some good judges under the bus, and opened the floodgates for similar crap with the John Bolton nomination and things such as Social Security reform. Nice job, Senator. Go back to sticking your nose into professional sports and helping illegal aliens, you reprehensible turd.

* One word on the "nuclear option:" since no judicial nominee had been filibustered until 2002, an intellectually honest observer would apply the term "nuclear option" to the filibuster itself, not to a cloture vote to put a stop to it. We do not have intellectually honest observers in America, though - we have a leftist media. Speaking of intellectual honesty, the so-called "end of the filibuster" would have applied only to judicial nominees, and it's not as if the filibuster didn't have limits to begin with (for examples, use of military force bills and omnibus budget bills cannot be filibustered) - but did you read about any of that in your local paper?

* Starting with this article, I am announcing a weekly Rectal Cavity Award (RCA). This week's RCA goes to DC Congressional representative Eleanor Holmes-Norton. With socialist Democrat blowhards like Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid whining about the "rights of the minority," Holmes-Norton decided to ride the word "minority" in her usual way, prattling on about how the "nuclear option" would be a direct slap at racial minorities. Even considering her long history of race-baiting, this was a new low even for her. Congratulations to our first RCA winner, and rest assured that even with the formidable competition she has in her party, it's a good bet that this won't be her only one.

* Worst Film update: as of this writing, we have 54 submissions naming some pretty impressive Hollywood bombs. If you haven’t sent your top ten list, get on the horn and fire it in now.

YEAH, YEAH, I THINK BUSH SUCKS TOO

Half of America and the majority of the world thinks George Bush sucks. Let me assure you that I agree, but not for the reasons most of you think. Let me run down my case, and you can tell me what you think...

THE IRAQ WAR, ON THE WMD ISSUE: Even trying to sell the world on the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) angle was astonishingly stupid. It was never our job to find WMD - it was Iraq's obligation per UN Resolution (UNR) 687 (which ended the 1991 Gulf War) to provide evidence of their destruction. They didn't, and they repeatedly violated seventeen resolutions between and including UNRs 687 and 1441. All Bush had to do was say that Iraq was in violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement and take advantage of UNR 687's conditions to resume hostilities and do what Bill Clinton should have had the gonads to do in 1998. Going to the UN for "approval" when other countries were profiting on the Oil-For-Food scam was an amazingly dimwitted act.

THE IRAQ WAR, ON THE IRAQI FREEDOM ISSUE: Trying to sell Americans on Iraqi freedom was even dumber, and naming the campaign "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was just insulting. With America's "Gimme, Gimme Generation" (GGG) demanding more and more entitlements and government freebies at the expense of the taxpayers, why would taxpayers or the GGG care about the freedom of Iraqis? Right now, the GGG is whining about not getting health care when Iraqis do, and the taxpayers are whining about our rotten schools and city hospitals when we're building new ones for Iraqis.

THE IRAQ WAR, ON THE BATTLE ITSELF: If you're going to fight a war, fight it. Don't try to fight a "politically correct" war, just fight it. It is pure lunacy to let "insurgents," or whatever softened term our media is using for the enemy, to regroup in mosques. It is even dumber to worry about museums and relics, and worse yet is Bush's coddling of pacifist whiners who think underwear on someone's head is torture. Now for the record, I would not have gone to the UN for "approval," and I would have first tried to use the UN's refusal to enforce their own resolutions as a basis from withdrawing from the UN entirely (with the aim of starting over as we did with the League of Nations), so I probably wouldn't have opened fire in March of 2003, but since we did, why the hell are we coddling anyone? Can you imagine the Chinese or the former Soviet Union worrying about angering people over a mosque here or there? Can you picture them apologizing for Abu Ghraib? If Bush had any common sense, he would have realized that the majority of the world will never approve of the Iraq war anyway, so apologizing for Abu Ghraib and scapegoating a few dumb soldiers was an ineffectual move that weakened us. Remember: when "the other side" (or whatever our pacifist, socialist, leftist media calls the enemy) beheads civilians on tape, the world has no problem with that - but when an Iraqi has to ear underwear on his head or has an ugly girl laugh at his genitals, the International Red Cross screams bloody murder and Bush scrambles for cover like a schoolgirl surrounded by pitbulls.

GUANTANOMO BAY AND THE KORAN "SCANDAL": Now there are rumors about pages of the Koran being flushed down the toilet, and again Bush is scrambling. The other side - "insurgents," "activists," "peaceful merchants," etc, is whining about the possibility of pages of the Koran being flushed down the toilet, and Bush is "outraged" and "demanding a full investigation." Of course, there is no problem with Muslims shooting Russian schoolchildren in the back or raping them, beheading civilian contractors, or even wiping their behinds with the American flag or burning it. Those copies of the Koran were provided to those prisoners by American taxpayers (against their will, to be sure), along with ethnically sensitive meals, reading glasses and unparalleled medical care (at one point, there were 164 doctors for 157 prisoners). And when Palestinian gunmen stormed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, they used pags of the Bible for toilet paper. now I'm not religious, but there is a difference between being "better than them" and kissing the area they wiped with our flag and pages of the Bible. Instead, Bush bleats on about how Islam is "a religion of peace" and demands full investigations to see who can be used as a scapegoat to get his cowardly ass off the hook. If you're going to fight a war, fight it to win or go home, and stop worrying about PR that you'll never get.

SADDAM IN HIS TIGHTY WHITIES: Not surprisingly, Bush is "demanding a full investigation" to see who he can screw over on this, because - as should be expected - when a British tabloid runs a picture of Saddam in his underwear, it's America's fault in the eyes of the world and Bush runs for cover like a cat surrounded by, well, pitbulls. That picture seemed to show Saddam well-fed, lacking scars, and a whole lot better than the hundreds of thousands of people that he had killed, not to mention the people that he and his sons raped or threw into woodchippers.

WORLD TRADE POLICY: Bush enacts steel tariffs, and then caves into a demand from the socialist World Trade Organization (WTO) to end them. Regardless of whether you believe in free trade or not (Bush laughably calls it "a moral imperative"), with this cowardly move Bush ceded a major part of our sovereignty to the WTO.

ILLEGAL ALIENS: We have somewhere between 10-15 million illegal aliens sucking up social services and soaking taxpayers like there's no tomorrow. We have hospitals closing in the southwest because illegals are getting medical care without paying. Illegals get college education for free or at cheaper rates than citizens in some states. So what does our Fearless Hispanderer do about it? Well, here's his master plan: a.) propose amnesty for illegals and provide them a path to citizenship, b.) verbally attack a law-abiding volunteer watch group, the Minutemen, by calling them "vigilantes" when all they do is watch the border and call the Border Patrol, and c.) do nothing when the Border Patrol is ordered to make sure the Minutemen's efforts don't result in more arrests. With anywhere between 75% to 80% of the nation wanting something done about illegals, Bush chooses to spit upon those who voted for him (and many who didn't) in favor of placing his tongue between the ass cheeks of Mexican president Vicente Fox.

DOMESTIC SPENDING: In more than a full term, Bush has failed to veto so much as a single piece of new spending. After one of the very few things he did right - tax cuts, albeit ones that were way too small - he offset that with massive spending increases and plunged the country deeper into debt, growing the size and scope of the federal government faster than Bill Clinton ever dreamed of. The message here: his "compassionate conservatism" is compassionate to everyone but fiscal conservatives.

EDUCATION: He let Ted Kennedy write the education bill. Grades are going down, at a much higher cost. Enough said.

THE FIRST AMENDMENT: He stupidly signed the campaign finance reform bill, knowing it was bad legislation, hoping the U.S. Supreme Court (USSC) would bail him out by declaring it unconstitutional. The USSC failed to do so, almost costing him his reelection by allowing loopholes for 527s (named as such because of Internal Revenue Service tax code article 527) such as George Soros's MoveOn.org to raise massive funding against him, as well as limiting freedom of speech in this country. Way to go, George.

THE FARM BILL: He approved a farm bill so incredibly bloated that for the first time in my life I saw the leftist Washington Post and is conservative counterpart, the Washington Times, agree on something - it was too fat and full of pork. In a country as deeply

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: He applauded when the USSC ruled in favor of Affirmative Action for the next 25 years (if it's unconstitutional then, why not now?), applauding USSC Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's open contempt for the 14th Amendment / Equal Protection Clause.

HOMELAND SECURITY: After 9/11, Big Government weenies such as Tom Daschle prattled on with slogans along the lines of "you can't professionalize unless you federalize." True to his "compromising" form, completely ignoring the common-sense notion that compromise is little more than the absence of leadership at presidential level, Bush raced to federalize airport security. After promises of more training and performance from airport security personnel, as well as promises of better personnel overall and getting rid of incompetent workers, Bush caved into the demands of the likes of Hillary Clinton and others to "minimize turnover" and keep the same crappy employees. So now, we get the same level of incompetence that we had before, but at twice the cost. Now, thanks to our wimpy-ass president, our hapless airport security personnel has nice shiny new uniforms, access to the Family Leave Act, and they still can't stop reporters from bringing guns on board and encouraging terrorists to try the same thing. Thanks again, George - when we have our next disaster and the Dems politicize it to further their Big Government agenda, I know we can count on you and your Big Government conservatism to cave in to their hysteria ad stick us with things like more spending waste and higher airline taxes. After all, the last time you increased those taxes we had a surplus under that column, but what the hell - anything we taxpayers can do to expand your Big Government is not really so okay with us. Good thing you don't care.

HEALTH CARE: After running as a fiscal conservative in 2000, Bush managed to stick us with a Medicare expansion that was originally estimated to cost $400 billion over ten years. Since any idiot knows that entitlement programs almost always cost more than twice their original estimate (the only one in our history that didn't was the Montgomery GI Bill, and that's only because the number of military personnel in the U.S. forces is regulated by Congress), it was no surprise that less than two weeks later the "estimated cost" swelled to over a trillion dollars over that amount of time. There's fiscal conservatism for you - among the things covered by Medicare are ambulance runs for elderly people who don't want to pay for taxis for downtown shopping shopping runs, and erectile dysfunction drugs for old men. That's what we need to pay for, Mister President - Viagra for old men desperate to get in as many rolls in the hay as they can before Sergeant Stiffy stops saluting. Thanks once more, George.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Although his proposals for private accounts are superior to the massive ripoff that we have going on now, his desire to "save and strengthen" a pyramid scheme that royally screws taxpayers is reprehensible. Yet more Big Government from our Socialist-in-Chief.

SPPECHES: Aside from his inability to pronounce basic words like "nuclear," Bush's attempts to sound inspirational during his speeches and weekly radio addresses are so gut-wrenching that I am ready to declare German as my first language. If you're not from America and need help in decoding his litany of drivel, here is one of many definitions you'll need: whenever Bush refers to something as "a moral imperative," it means "something you'll hate and will screw you over, but something I'm going to stick you with anyway."

I could go on for days, but you get the idea - I may not agree with you on the reasons why Bush sucks, but I do agree with you that he does.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* I just noticed that a good friend of mine from Russia links to this page from hers. Thanks, Iren, and I'm returning the favor here - although I think more of your friends will be able to read my blog than the reverse. I hope the hot water has been turned back on :)

* For my overseas friends who missed it, on Wednesday we had a couple of morons flying a small single-engine Cessna - without maps, mind you - over Washington, DC. They got lost and came within three miles of the White House before getting a Black Hawk helicopter escort out of DC's airspace. In our post-9/11 culture of red alerts, it took almost no time to evacuate the White House, the Supreme Court, all three Senate buildings and the Capitol building. Every police force in the city was put on red alert, other emergency forces were sent out at full tilt, and the city was in absolute chaos for about an hour until the Secret Service called off the alert. Federal and city budget specialists are currently calculating costs incurred by the incident, which includes thousands of combined man-hours of work - not to mention the strain on our emergency services, which would have been unable to respond to any other major event which could have occurred at the time. Whatever the final figure arrived at turns out to be, it will be in seven figures at a minimum. For reasons that completely escape me, these idiots will not be charged with a crime or sent the bill for costs incurred. Yes, once again the taxpayer is expected to suck up the costs of others' stupidity - Black Hawks have responded to about 300 incursions into DC airspace since the beginning of the calendar year (the official total is 280 from January 1 to April 15, with an undetermined number still under investigation), and not one criminal charge has been filed. Just a suggestion: the next time something like this happens, charge the morons involved with multiple violations of federal law (pilots are required to have and follow navigational maps per FAA law), confiscate their belongings to make up for the costs, and throw their asses in jail - or simply shoot the next pair of morons down in flames. We don't have the resources to put up with this sort of garbage, taxpayers are being screwed over badly enough, and using my ideas would reduce the number of unauthorized incursions from about 70-75 per month to zero.

* Here's a good indication of how badly screwed up the nation's priorities are: on radio news yesterday, I heard the DC evacuation given second billing to Macaulay Culkin's testimony at the Michael Jackson trial. The news report I was listening to was broadcast at 1:00 p.m, a mere 57 minutes after the Cessna made it to the three-mile mark from the White House. We had the entire city on red alert and the president holed up in some bunker at the time, and the media chose to focus on what happened between a washed-up child film star and a plastic pedophile. If that strikes you as no big deal, let me tell you a quick story: I was on ICQ with a friend in Moscow this morning who knew every detail of the Culkin testimony, but nothing of the Cessna and the citywide evacuation that took place in our nation's capital. Having been to Moscow several times, I can tell you that a.) the city is full of very good English speakers, b.) you can watch CNN, MSNBC there, and c.) you can buy the International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times) and USA Today there. I've got friends there that watch and read these sources constantly to improve their English, but in actuality no English knowledge is required to get exposure to our media over there with sites like inosmi.ru, which provides translations of our media's daily litany of drivel. The moral of the story: if you ever want to know why people in other countries think Americans are idiots, start with the group of misguided, celebrity-worshipping imbeciles that make up our nation's media.

* Why I'm not a gambler: each year, my friends and I pretend to care about the Kentucky Derby (for my overseas friends, this is the biggest horse race of the year, which takes place on the first Saturday of May each year and has run for 131 years) and get together to make predictions. Not one of us knows or cares a whit about horse racing, but usually at least one of us does fairly well in our predictions - I'm just never the one who does well. This year, I exceeded all my expectations of horrid prognostication: the horse I picked to win, Bandini, finished a cool 19th. For those not in the know, there were only 20 horses in the race.

* I have developed a foolproof system for identifying idiots in America. Although this system will not immediately identify every idiot we have, those that it does identify are absolutely guaranteed to be unequivocal idiots who should immediately be handed a bib to soak up their drool. Here's how my system works: ask your suspected idiot which political party he or she belongs to. Regardless of whether the answer is Republican or Democrat, here's the follow-up question that will help you pick out idiots: "on which issues do you disagree with that party?" If the answer is "none," you've got a real, live, brainwashed idiot on your hands. I, for example, am mostly Republican but agree with Democrats on issues such as religion in school and abortion. One of my best friends is mostly Democrat but agrees with Republicans on guns. Every intelligent person I know whose political views are known to me has at least one major disagreement with his or her party of choice, assuming there is a party of choice. I know a handful of people who agree with their party of choice right down the line on every single issue, and believe me when I say that every single of these people are idiots - even by idiot standards.

* There is very little that I prefer about Canada's system of government and way of life over ours, but Canada's recent vote of no confidence in their government really makes me wish we had the same option down here. For that matter, Russia has two things about their system of government that I wish we had in the States: a flat tax instead of the Communist Manifesto "progressive" one we have, and the option to check "ni za kogo" on their ballots, which basically translates to "all of these bastards suck, and not one of them is worthy of my vote."

* Starting today, you can see Jane Fonda in our movie theaters, playing the role of a mother-in-law from Hell who torments the character of overrated actress Jennifer Lopez. This is a sure sign that Fonda will soon make another appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman," during which Letterman will once again place his lips on her ass and try to convince us that she wasn't a traitor during the Vietnam War. I'm not old enough to have served during that war, but count me among the thousands and thousands of military veterans who are not buying the garbage that Letterman and Fonda are selling.

* Starting with this week's article, I'm taking nominations for the ten worst movies of all time. I'll be taking nominations for ten weeks from today's date, after which I'll publish my readers' list in this blog and compare it to my own. Send the titles of the ten worst clunkers you've ever had the misfortune to sit through to me at remington3200@hotmail.com or via ICQ to #203203203.

* Three cheers to the Washington Wizards for sticking with their decision to keep spoiled weasel Kwame Brown on the bench despite their 2-0 deficit in their best-of-seven series against the Miami Heat. The Wizards are shorthanded, outgunned, and will lose royally - but they've really earned my respect. The Wizards have taken a step that the NBA as a whole should take if it ever wants to regain its credibility - they took the proper stand of telling a whiny brat that they don't need his brand of crap to take a dignified stand against a superior opponent. Sadly, the only way the NBA is willing to take such a stance against the Almighty Dollar is when a moron like Ron Artest charges into the stands and starts taking swings at spectators.

* Personal note: a good friend of mine from Moscow is going to Berlin this weekend to be present at a friend's wedding. Gute Reise, Schätzchen. I sure wish I could join you. I'll raise a toast to you from here; raise one to me from Luisenbrau.

HALF LITER DAY, HISPANIC BASEBALL PLAYERS AND SOCIAL "SECURITY"

Half-Liter Day

First off, let me belatedly wish all of my Russian-speaking friends a happy Half-Liter Day. It only comes around once a century, and it's upon us today: 05/05/05 (it should be obvious, but just in case: in Europe a half liter is listed as "0,5 liters"). I first learned about this relatively obscure and highly unofficial holiday while talking to a Russian friend of mine on February 2, 2002 (02/02/02); he got married on 01/01/01 and was very amused to learn that my maternal grandmother was born on 9/9/99, so he told me the story about Half-Liter Day and some other interesting stories about 1905. After sending out Happy Half-Liter Day wishes via e-mail yesterday to all of my Russian-speaking friends around the world (Russia, Ukraine, England, Germany, France, Canada and the U.S), I got several responses - all of them thanked me, three wanted to know how an American could possibly know about Half Liter Day, and one of those three informed me that the real drinkfest would take place today, on May 6th, because it's Friday. So, to my Russian friends who read this blog: this evening I'll have a beer with you all in spirit - I've got a couple bottles of Baltika 6 (Porter) in my fridge, and I'll down one of them in tribute to all of you tonight.

Hispanic Baseball Players

Here's a sports-related item that will demonstrate how badly political correctness (PC) has gotten out of hand in the United States: a number of sports commentators, along with Boston Red Sox first baseman David Ortiz, are shocked - SHOCKED, mind you - that four of the six major league baseball players who have been suspended for using steroids are Hispanic. Ortiz himself is Hispanic, so I understand this sort of whiny sentiment from him, but the fact that so many people blindly fall in step with Ortiz's reasoning is a bad sign for America's future. Here's what bothers Ortiz: not all Hispanic ballplayers speak good English, so they "probably didn't know the rules" - you know, as if the steroids scandal involving future Hall of Fame inductees like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds wasn't covered by the media anywhere outside the States.
As per usual, the PC crowd thinks it's our responsibility as Americans to make sure that a.) we speak all languages, and b.) foreigners don't have to assimilate to our culture at all, even if they're making seven-figure salaries. Well, if I were an athlete living in a country where I didn't know the local language, I'd be busting my back to learn it - and if I were earning millions of dollars over there, I could AFFORD A FUCKING TRANSLATOR! These Hispanic ballplayers have plenty of bilingual teammates and are just as responsible for knowing the rules of Major League Baseball as Americans are - which is not too much to ask if you're here making more money in a year than most Americans earn in two decades.

The hypocrisy among the PC weenies is staggering: if we Americans are in another country and can't speak anything but English, we're "ugly ignorant Americans" - but if foreigners are here and they can't speak English, it's perfectly okay and we're ignorant for not bending over backwards to make sure everything is perfect for them. Now, I actually agree somewhat with the first point if American tourists overseas actually expect everyone to be fluent in English for their convenience, but the second point is ridiculous. I was recently accused of being insensitive to other cultures because I've made no effort to learn Spanish over the course of my life - I guess being able to speak German and Russian makes no difference. Now, we've got Hispanic major league baseball players who take steroids, and the problem isn't them cheating - it's us not providing them with 24/7 translators and not cutting them a break when they screw up.

I personally don't believe for a moment that the suspended players didn't know the rules, regardless of what their levels of proficiency in English. Even if they did, however, it was their responsibility to know the rules, not ours to provide translation. We spend enough on multilingual government publications in ten or fifteen different languages to explain to immigrants how they can suck up our social services like a Hoover DeLuxe already without having to cater to rich young athletes who can afford translators. The number of sports radio talk show hosts and commentators who were willing to get on board with David Ortiz's astonishingly stupid remarks just to look politically correct with their PC media masters is not a good sign for this country. This is, however, exactly what we should expect from the same group of socialist morons who insist that we put water stations on our southwest borders so that illegal aliens coming into this country have an easier and safer time breaking our immigration laws.

Social "Security"

If you follow American politics at all, you know that President Bush is trying to reform Social Security and establish private accounts. Democrats, despite Bill Clinton's support of private accounts during his administration, are against the idea - partially because it would curb their ability to buy votes with taxpayer money, but mostly because Bush supports the idea now. Bush, who has the audacity to call Social Security "a symbol of trust between generations" instead of what it is (pure welfare, and a complete financial screwing) is in fact suggesting a better alternative to what we have now, but that's only by default - after all, a dung sandwich on fresh French bread is better than it would be on a stale hamburger bun. Here's my idea to reform Social Security: let this abomination of a program die a quick death.

Here's how Social Security works: for your entire working life, you're forced to "loan" roughly an eighth of your pay to the government in exchange for payments in old age, should you live that long - but you're not guaranteed anything (among legal precedents stating this: a1960 U.S. Supreme Court case, Flemming vs. Nestor, which states that the government can arbitrarily reduce or deny payments for any reason). If you're lucky enough to live long enough to get your pittance of a return, you're taxed on it - and penalized if you have an income on top of it. Politicians in both parties call this monstrosity "the most successful social program in our country's history," which is true in their case - they get to raid the surplus to buy votes with ill-advised programs and pork projects. They even have the audacity to call Worse still, the system is "pay as you go," which means that there is no actual trust fund - money coming in goes straight to retirees. Oh, and if you die before 62 and don't have dependents, the government just keeps the money. Small wonder why our corrupt politicians call the program "successful."

This sort of program is illegal anywhere in the country unless the government is running it. If you doubt that, set up an identical paycheck pool / pyramid scheme in your office in which people coming into it early get payments out of those coming in later (the very definition of a pyramid scheme, which is exactly what Social "Security" is)- and see how long it takes the FBI to arrest you for violations of several federal laws and RICO statutes.

President Bush, who ran for office as a fiscal conservative, has been anything but -so far, he's failed to veto so much as one single piece of new government spending, he's stuck us with massive expansion of socialist entitlement programs such as Medicare, he's increased the size and scope of the federal government faster than Clinton ever could have, and now he's on a quest to "save and strengthen" this inexcusable program that screws achievers and sucks up a huge portion of our national budget.

If any of our politicians cared more about the people they're elected to represent than they do about their own careers, we'd never have to put up with this sort of garbage - but alas, we're stuck with this crap because they don't. If President Bush had a fiscal conscience, he'd take advantage of the fact that he can't run for office again and relieve us of this unconscionable burden - but don't count on our "fiscally conservative" president doing us any favors. After all, it's a lot easier to throw taxpayer dollars at illegal aliens, Iraqis, tsunami victims and senior citizens who couldn't plan their own retirement than it is to follow the Constitution (which doesn't allow for any of this, as outlined in the Tenth Amendment) and actually act in the interests of the people who put you in the Oval Office.

MIKE AND MIKE: SUCK AND SUCK

If you’re not a sports fan, there isn't much here for you this week. Even if you are, if you're not a listener of ESPN radio or Fox Sports radio, you won't get much out of what follows - but for your benefit, I'm going to confine half of my examples to non-sports matters so that you can follow along, should you care to read on.

If you are a fan of both, you've probably heard The Dan Patrick Show, The Steve Czaban Show, SportsBash, Bruce Jacobs and others. I personally like Czaban better than anyone else, but most of the shows are pretty good - even during dry spells like now, with a lackluster NBA season and no NHL hockey.

Then there's "Mike and Mike in the Morning." You’ve NEVER heard anything this bad, and if you don't believe me, just drum up their show on espnradio.com from 7-10 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time (for my foreign readers, that's the same time zone as New York and Washington).

The team of "Mike and Mike" consists of a talentless gerbil named Mike Greenberg and a likeable-but-unsuited-for-the-job ex NFLer named Mike Golic. No one - and I mean NO ONE - has a talent for filling a show with lame cliches and astonishingly unfunny attempts at humor like these two do. As if that's not bad enough, no one can beat a pointless point to death like these two clowns.

Words don't do them justice, so what I'm going to do here is pretend that these guys, instead of interviewing and discussing the most recent exploits of an athlete or team, are doing a feature on "Office Worker of the Month."

If Steve Czaban (or Dan Patrick, Bruce Jacobs, or almost anyone but Mike and Mike) were doing the interview, it would go like this…

Czaban: Okay, we've covered how you won the award, but give us some of the inside scoop - have you ever stolen any office supplies?

Worker: Well, yeah, everyone pretty much helps themselves to a few pens and pads of paper, but they're like hotel towels - expected losses. It's not like we steal laptops.

Czaban: Okay, we'll be right back after we pay a few bills. You're listening to the Steve Czaban Show on Fox Sports Radio.

Now, here's how Mike and Mike would stretch this out into an endless litany of drivel…

Greenberg: Okay, we have to know, but as I ask this question I want to stress that this is not an accusation. I don't know you personally, I never met you until today, and am not accusing you of anything, but the question has to be asked. Have you ever - and keep in mind, this is not an accusation - gone home with office supplies? I mean this question in an ambiguous sense, which means that for all I know, if you did take any office supplies - and I'm not accusing you, mind you - it could have been absolutely intentional. But the question does have to be asked, so I'm going to put it as straightforward as I can without actually accusing you of anything wrong: have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, brought home office supplies?

Worker: Well, yeah, everyone pretty much helps themselves to a few pens and pads of paper, but they're like hotel towels - expected losses. It's not like we steal laptops.

Greenberg: So you have, in fact, brought home office supplies. What we need to know is if it was intentional or unintentional - and keep in mind, I'm not accusing you of anything. The question has to be asked, but I want you to know I'm not pre-judging you in any way or accusing you of anything. Still, the question is what it is.

Worker: Hell, sure it's intentional. We need a few pens, a highlighting marker, a Sharpie or a couple pads of paper, we just take them. The boys in the corner offices know about it and don't -

Greenberg: So what you're saying, if I understand you correctly - and I want to make sure I do, so that this question has no accusatory tone - is that you take these supplies home intentionally. Is that correct? Have I come to an accurate and fair conclusion?

Worker: Sure, what's the big deal? It's like the bibles in a hotel - no one counts on them being there after a guest stays -

Golic: Are the pens Bics, Papermates, Parkers, what?

Greenberg: Well, that's not really the point here, Mike. What's of interest to me is the total dollar value of the office supplies taken. Theft - well, it is what it is, but there are degrees of theft, usually defined by dollar value.

Golic: Well, that's what I was getting at, but quantity is important too, it's something you gotta consider. Parkers are obviously more valuable than Bics, so what's more important - the theft of ten Parkers or a hundred Bics, and which theft is more indicative of an attempt to get real dollar value?

Greenberg: That's an excellent point, I didn't think of that, but my point is dollar value combined with frequency, which could indicate someone taking advantage of a favorable situation, but could also mean a pathological behavior - and I want to stress that I'm not making an accusation when I say that.

Worker: Well, I -

Golic: I was getting at the same thing, but another thing you gotta consider is that if you're talking Parkers, it could be Christmas shopping. If it's Parkers we're talking about, are they boxed when they're taken?

Greenberg: That's an excellent point. So, what's the lowdown on the office supplies? I'm referring to frequency and dollar value here, but it's not as if I'm driving at a pre-determined conclusion here. I want to stress that I'm not accusing you, but it's a question that has to be asked. The situation is what it is, but I have to ask.

Worker: Really, it's nothing big, a few Bics and pads of paper every now and then, nothing like boxed Parkers -

Golic: So we're not talking about boxed Parkers, but my point was that if we were, it could be Christmas shopping or another way of acquiring more dollar value than what you're describing.

Worker: No, nothing like that, I -

Greenberg: I see your point, Mike. But my point is that it's not just dollar value, but frequency. Theft in itself - it is what it is, but -

Golic: But I was saying the same thing, about both dollar value and frequency, but I also wanted to bring up the Christmas shopping thing, which -

Greenberg: Christmas shopping at the office - well, it is what it is. But what we had to know - without accusing anyone, mind you - was the dollar value and the frequency of the theft, which in and of itself is what it is.

Golic: I see your point, I just wanted to bring up the Christmas shopping angle, which is something you gotta consider.

Greenberg: I see your point, but do you see mine?

Golic: Absolutely I see your point, but I feel that if we're going to ask the question, we have to go all the way, not beat around the bush.

Greenberg: That's an excellent point. So we've established the theft of office supplies, which - well, it is what it is.

Golic: It is. I see your point.

Greenberg: I'm glad you do, because I think I saw your point from the beginning, but wanted to make sure you saw mine.

Golic: I do now.

Greenberg: So next, we have NFL news with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink."

Golic: Do we play "Take a Chance on Me" by Abba now?

Greenberg: No, that's part of our NBA draft coverage, right now we're talking about football discussions with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink."

Golic: So we play "Safety Dance" now?

Greenberg: Actually, that's what we use for the NCAA tournament, which is over. What we're gonna do now is break down the NFL draft with about football discussions with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink."

Golic: But whatever we play, we play it way too long, right?

Greenberg: Yes, because we're so unhip. It's amazing how unhip we are. My wife was commenting on this with a neighbor, who - just like jon Bon Jovi - is someone she'd leave me in a minute for. That's how unhip we are, and I think anyone would agree with us, if only to humor us. But now it's time to break down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink." How are you, Stink?

Schlereth: Hey, guys, what's up?

Golic: Not much, we're just -

Greenberg: In case you're just joining us, we're Mike and Mike, breaking down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink." Stink, who were the winners and losers of the draft?

Schlereth: Well, you've got to look at Detroit after that surprise pick of -

Greenberg: Stink, are you saying that Detroit had the best draft?

Schlereth: Not necessarily, but it is an interesting draft, especially with Rick Mariucci running the West Coast offense out there and the first pick being a receiver -

Golic: I agree. The West Coast offense - well, you've got to consider that.

Greenberg: So Golic, are you saying you agree with Mark Schlereth, Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink?"

Golic: Didn't I just say that? My point is that it's something you gotta take into account.

Worker: Are you guys done asking me questions now?

Greenberg: Yes, I'm sorry, we've moved on to breaking down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink."

Schlereth: I found it interesting that the Buffalo Bills, with no first-round pick, didn't pull off a Travis Henry trade, and -

Greenberg: We're Mike and Mike in case you just joined us, and we're Mike and Mike even if you're not. We're breaking down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink." Stink, you make an excellent point about the Bills. Golic, what do you think?

Golic: Well, the Bills had no first-round draft pick, so a lot of people expected a trade involving Travis Henry. That's something you gotta consider.

Greenberg: That's an excellent point. Stink, what do you think?

Schlereth: When I was with the Broncos, that's not how the team handled drafts, but cap issues have changed things since then, and -

Greenberg: And you were a Super Bowl champion with the Broncos, Stink. This is Mike and Mike breaking down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink." Stink, what was the biggest surprise of the draft?

Schlereth: Well, aside from Detroit's pick in the first round, you've got the Jets picking a kicker in the second round, which took a lot of people by surprise, and -

Greenberg: Stink, that's an excellent point. Golic, what do you think?

Golic: Well, taking a kicker in the second round can either work out for you in the long run or be a bad idea in retrospect. That's something you gotta consider, something you gotta take into account.

Greenberg: That's an excellent point, Golic. Stink, is it the best idea to take a kicker in the second round?

Schlereth: I don't think so. The Chargers had a great year last year, but it wasn't all because of Nate Kaeding, and outside of Jim O'Brien you don't see rookie kickers making a big impact. Take Sebastian Janikowski for example, who was a first round pick, and -

Greenberg: That's an excellent point, Stink. Golic, what do you think?

Golic: Well, taking kickers in early rounds can be risky. They can make a big impact, but they don't always, and that's something you gotta consider - I mean, it's something you gotta take into account.

Greenberg: I agree. Stink, so did the teams follow the strategy of drafting the best player available, or did they draft based on signability?

Schlereth (clearly astounded at the stupidity of the question): Well, some teams seemed to, whereas others didn't. The 49ers, for instance, clearly had a strategy of drafting players based on supporting the previous player they drafted - first a quarterback, and then an offensive lineman to protect him, and so on, whereas other teams like Detroit seemed to take the best player available regardless of their needs, and still other teams drafted players based on their chances of signing them for dollar amounts within their salary cap.

Greenberg: That's an excellent point. I was just mentioning the same thing to my wife, who would leave me in a minute for Jon Bon Jovi. Golic, what's your take on this?

Golic: Well, some teams were worried about signability issues, and others just wanted the best player available. Both strategies have plusses and minuses, it’s something you gotta take into account.

Greenberg: That's an excellent point, Golic. We're Mike and Mike in the Morning. Thanks for starting your day with us. We'll be right back after a quick break, when we'll continue breaking down the NFL draft with Mark Schlereth, who we affectionately call "Stink."

There you have it, people. The show really does sound like that - if you think I'm exaggerating, go ahead and tune in at your own risk. Mike and Mike: suck and suck. And THAT'S an excellent point - one which you gotta consider, one which you gotta take into account.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* While standing in line at a 7-11 this morning, I noticed that they now carry a new impulse item: a laminated card, the size of a business card, which shows you how to calculate a tip of 10%, 15% and 20% for whole dollar amounts ranging from $1 to $50. The fact that these cards exist are bad enough, but what's worse is that there were only a couple of them left. Supporters of public education in its current form are as stupid as the people who need these cards badly enough to pay $2.99 apiece for them. We're raising a generation of idiots in this country, people, and our future is not a bright one.

* Recently we had a school bus accident in the D.C, Metro area; the bus plowed into a garbage truck and two preteens died. Tragic, yes, but it led to the usual barrage of cliches about children being "our most precious resource." News flash: AIR is our most precious resource. Without children, our population will die out in a hundred years, but without air our population will die out in about a hundred seconds. Can't we possibly learn to deal with bad news without all of these retarded cliches that make us sound like drooling buffoons? Well, maybe not: media accounts of this accident, predictably, go on to say that we're "struggling to make sense of the tragedy" and "searching for answers."

* If you're not a good judge of people, feel free to rely on this handy tip: a person's intelligence is generally inversely proportional to the number of reality shows he or she watches.

* Here's a suggestion for improving our country: make people produce their most recent W-2 form on Voting Day. If you didn't pay any income tax the previous year, you don't get to vote (and before you start chirping about "Constitutional rights," there is not actually any Constitutional right to vote - if you don't believe me, read it for yourself). Why the hell are we giving equal say to people who don't contribute to society? If you don't support this idea, consider putting your money where your mouth is - take in a homeless person and give him or her equal input to yours on household decisions.

* While we're on the subject, let's also get rid of the Earned Income Tax "Credit." There is no reason for our government to give welfare checks to people who pay no tax, an insult to our intelligence to call it a "credit" instead of welfare, and no Constitutional basis for that sort of income redistribution.

* The greatest black comedy ever made just came out on DVD: "A Shock to the System," starring Michael Caine. Don't ask questions, just go buy it.

* Sports salary caps suck. I don't know about you, but watching what's left of the National Football League, which features two good teams, two bad ones and 28 mediocre ones bores the snot out of me. We just had two 8-8 teams make the playoffs and win first-round games. Why not just give everyone 8-8 records, determine playoff teams by coin flips and get it over with? As for the NBA, am I the only person utterly galled by the fact that a team as Detroit is the reigning champion? If you want everything to be "fair," shut up and move to Cuba so that your life can suck equally with everyone else's down there.

* I just read a story about a surrogate mother who is suing to keep the child, which leads me to wonder: why can a woman rent out her body for nine months but not for one night? Don't get me wrong, I've never bought a hooker - not for myself, anyway - and wouldn't start if prostitution became legal, but why the hell is our government involved in this sort of business between consenting adults? Oh, and I hope the surrogate mother loses her case and gets counter-sued for legal costs and emotional distress.

* The stupidest song ever written: "Take Me out to the Ballgame." No one ever sings it unless they're already AT the ballgame, and it's annoying to boot.

* All I want for Christmas: an end to untalented children being used in commercials. People have to start realizing that just because a child is small does not mean the child is automatically cute. Some are, but way too many of the kids in commercials for apple juice and the like are not.

* Can any of my readers give me a good reason why Ben Stiller is a star? Remember, I said a GOOD reason.

* If you're a movie fan and like psychological thrillers, here are two obscure gems from Canada: "Cube" and "Treed Murray." It's really a shame that Canada's socialist structure has beaten down their film industry to the point where they can release killer movies and nobody notices. Neither of these movies, however, are difficult to find (eBay, amazon.ca are good places to start).

* One Canadian movie that is about to be released stateside, however, is worth avoiding: "Going the Distance," soon to be released under the name of "National Lampoon's 'Going the Distance'," and it would be a ripoff even as a rental. You heard it here first.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* Here's a gem from our Fearless Leader, the Spender-in-Chief, George W. Bush, on the pope's funeral: "I happen to feel it was a special moment that was part of a special ceremony for a special person. And it helped strengthen my faith." Oh, is that how you happen to feel, Mr. President? What a load of crap this is - aside from beating to death the most overused word in the English language ("special"), it helped strengthen his faith? If any one of you knows of a way to squeeze any more cliches into only 26 words, could you let me know? With all due respect to you and your office, Mr. President, shut up and go veto a spending bill for once in your presidency.

* Pop quiz: You're an airman in the United States Air Force, sitting in a room with an Army captain, a Marine captain, a Navy captain, and an Air Force captain. In the following order, the Army captain orders you to turn off the air conditioner, the Navy captain tells you to leave it on, the Marine captain tells you to unplug it, and the Air Force captain tells you to destroy it. Keeping in mind that you're in the Air Force, what do you do? Answer below.

* Am I the only one who is tired of this drivel about how the American people need unity? The last time we had anything close to it, it cost us the World Trade Center and over three thousand lives, and it lasted about a week and a half. When you have haves and have-nots, you will never have unity, and when you try to ensure equal outcome you'll only anger those who value individual responsibility and achievement. Unity is impossible, so shut up and "move forward" (see, because of Bush I'm now starting to use revolting cliches myself).

* Tomorrow is Tax Day. I'd love to see Tax Day and Voting Day fall on the same date. It'd be nice to get rid of some of the leeches we have in Washington.

* Also in Washington today: the first professional baseball game in 34 years. You would be amazed at how many people called in sick in this town today.

* Have you noticed that the Democrats, in an effort to keep the Death Tax in place, have started using Paris Hilton as a poster girl? The way it works is this: you're supposed to hate Paris because she's young and dumb and lucky - so much that you actually prefer to see the government confiscate half of what she inherits so that politicians can invest the money their way. Well, although I was never a fan of hers before, I now hope Paris Hilton not only keeps every cent, but wins the lottery and avoids paying taxes on that, too.

* Pop quiz answer: leave the air conditioner on. A Navy captain is the equivalent of a colonel in the other three branches of service, dumbass.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* If you're a resident of the state of Virginia, you've got to be laughing your ass off watching Lt. Governor Tim Kaine running as a fiscal conservative. It makes one wonder: if fiscal conservatism is the way to win elections, why don't any of our corrupt and incompetent politicians actually practice it?

* I now actually know someone who is suing McDonalds for making him fat. It's a co-worker who eats there almost every day, and now is upset that he weighs about 340 pounds. I've heard of morons like this, but now I actually know one.

* Although anyone who pays attention to the Michael Jackson trial is, in my opinion, a clueless loser, the case illustrates one important point: it's not race that guides these matters, it's money and the quality of lawyer one can afford. If an everyday plastic pedophile had to rely on an attorney provided by the state, he'd already be in jail being treated like a little boy at Neverland. Rich plastic pedophiles get long, drawn-out trials, and don't be surprised to see Jackson walk. After all, he's claiming that all this is happening to him because he used to be black.

* Next time you see a picture of Jackson, remember that he paid to look like that.

* It's not going to be much longer before I start wearing a cardboard sign around my neck that says "No, I have no spare change or cigarettes. Piss off."

* When you see the Democrats charge after Tom DeLay, pay attention to what's really happening: an outright attempt to eliminate the Ethics Committee. It's not too hard to figure out why Democrats would want to do that.

* What makes people on subway trains think that others want to hear them singing to the tunes on their iPod? I'd like to see a law that allows us to punch people in the mouth in response to unsolicited singing.

* Just in case you haven't been following it, Maryland is trying to pass a bill that says that employers with more than 10,000 employees have to spend 8% of their revenue in health care programs for their program OR contribute to the state's health care programs. The only target of this shakedown? Wal-Mart. Socialism is alive and well in the Soviet Republic of Maryland, and this is one reason why I moved the hell out of the state. I only hope Wal-Mart has the good sense to close up a few stores and tell Maryland to go to hell - it's a message other states need to hear.

LET HER DIE

The Terri Schiavo situation, which as of late has garnered more than twice the headlines of Social Security reform, UN reform and the war in Iraq combined, has been going on for about fifteen years. I must confess that I've been aware of it for about a fifteenth of that.

I first heard about it listening to Glenn Beck's radio show; Beck screamed about this issue as if he were under enemy fire. Shortly thereafter, an entire gaggle of conservative talk show hosts followed suit, to include the true heavies of the industry: G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the man who started it all and who still does it better than anyone. As a staunch fiscal conservative, I listen to all of these shows and like all of them except for Hannity's (in the interests of full disclosure, as a staunch social libertarian I listen to NPR and Air America as well), and they unanimously bleat on to this day about the need to save Terri Schiavo - no matter what the cost.

In case you've spent the past year living in the same cave as the one in which I spent the fourteen years before that, here's the 411: Terri Schiavo suffered a heart attack at 25 after a bout with bulimia and a rare condition which made her heart swell up to the size of a medicine ball after she overhydrated herself. Her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, claims that it was her wish not to have to live in a vegetative state - and, in fact, she has been repeatedly diagnosed as suffering from a persistent vegetative state, or PVS. Her parents, of course, are vehemently opposed to anything that would allow Terri to die of anything other than old age.

Predictably, conservative talk show hosts and their legions of fans have launched countless diatribes regarding the sanctity of life, whereas the Left has responded with how Terri should be allowed to die with dignity - you know, right about now, as if the dignity she's supposedly losing now hasn't faded over the past 15 years. Both sides are full of crap, but if you look at their hidden agendas you shouldn't be surprised - Terri is little more than a pawn in the fight over the abortion issue.

As I looked into the issue further, I found myself astounded by the conclusions drawn by the conservative heavyweights with whom I agree about 75% of the time. In case you haven't raced to catch up on the issue over the past year as I have, allow me to summarize in the most general way possible: the Left regards Terri as little more than a four-limbed paperweight, whereas the Right portrays Terri as a thinking, feeling person who could recover at any moment. If you look at sources from the Left, you'll see details (many which are not in dispute) such as a 1996 CAT scan and subsequent ones that show nothing left of Terri's cerebral cortex. If you look at sources from the Right, you'll see video clips of her being responsive to human contact and capable of displaying emotion.

Well, as for the medical data such as the CAT scan, such data reduces this to a quality of life issue, and those who view it this way are way off base - over 99.9% of these cases are solved peacefully, without litigation, some being in better shape than Terri and some worse. We could argue the quality of life issue until we're blue in the face, with one side saying that it's nobody's place but God's to judge. The other side would promptly point out that if you're ever in a situation where you have enough time to pull either a 90 year-old or a 12 year-old of equal weight out of a burning car, and you don't know either one or anything about their lives, you know you're going to save the younger one anyway. if you don't like that example, substitute the two hypothetical characters with an average teen and a paraplegic teen. Like it or not, all of us make quality of life decisions about people every day, especially when we're trying to figure out or best dating options for the weekend. Quality of life is not the issue in a case where no one but the family is usually involved.

As for the video clips, if you give me enough time and enough film, I could splice together enough separate shots (with no special effects or manipulation) to produce video clips of chess god Gary Kasparov being checkmated by an ordinary housecat. When I first saw the material that I was being pointed to by the likes of Beck, Ingraham, Liddy, Hannity and :Limbaugh, I was astounded at how clear-cut it seemed in Terri's favor, which was a sure sign that it wasn;t even remotely objective. After all, if the evidence which so clearly portrayed Terri as a caring, feeling, normal person deprived of nothing other than the ability to speak was competely true and objective, why would it take so much time for the media to pick up on it?

What makes this case unique isn’t quality of life, Terri's future, the supposed cruelty of her husband (more about that in a moment) or any of the other reasons touted by one side or the other - what makes it unique is a.) the absence of a living will, b.) the fact that Terri's parents don't agree with the conclusions and wishes of her legal guardian, and c.) political pundits with audiences of millions have taken on her case as some sort of cause.

The husband and legal guardian of Terri, Michael Schiavo, has been portrayed by the Right as a cruel and unfeeling adulterer who has been living with another woman and fathering her children for years while spending his spare time engaging in repeated attempts to kill Terri. The Right, in fact, has gone so far as to claim that Terri's condition was the result of attempted murder, and that if Terri wakes up she'll spill the beans on him, thus making it necessary for him to have her dead post haste. The Left counters with allegations that he started a new life with his in-laws' blessing. The Right talks about the cruelty of allowing her to starve to death, while the Left claims that the part of her brain that would register that sort of pain is long gone.

With the background out of the way for those who needed it (and apologies to those who didn't), I can say that I have looked into all available evidence of this case and can come to only one conclusion: LET HER DIE. This does not mean that I side with the Left over the Right; in fact I find both of their arguments to be juvenile and self-serving. I am not a doctor, I am not a lawyer. I do not know if Terri feels pain, I do not know if Michael Schiavo is acting in accordance with Terri's stated-but-unsubstantiated wishes.

What I do know is this: the case is the result of a disagreement between Terri's parents and her legal guardian. The case has been heard 19 times by 16 judges in Florida, with a series of appeals to include three that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and the USSC has refused to rule on it all three times. There has to be a reason for that. There have been repeated attempts to wrest the status of legal guardian from Michael Schiavo, and none of them were successful - somewhat curious, given that he's supposedly a murderous, adulterous piece of flotsam. There has to be a reason for that, too.

The Right, which has seen repeated court decisions go against its collective wishes, has been reduced to comparisons of this case to the well-known history of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Let's dispense with this sort of drivel right now: Kevorkian broke the law and was convicted by a jury of his peers; Michael Schiavo has followed the law for years and was never on trial to begin with. What bothers me is that while the Right assails Michael Schiavo, the Left is so focused on its apparent goal that it doesn't even bother to publicly invite others to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

I freely admit that it's possible that the Right is correct about him - he might be scum who just wants his wife dead. However, let's not forget the following: he has been offered a million dollars to walk away and leave guardian status to Terri's parents, but refused. He has allowed himself to be turned into a pariah, and it would have been easy to avoid that sort of negative notoriety. He was awarded money because of malpractice and is accused of not spending it in Terri's best interests, but there is little left and he chose to keep up the fight rather than take a cool seven figures and walk. Am I the only person in the United States who at least considers it possible that the guy is telling the truth and happens to be on the wrong end of one hell of a PR machine?

Well, whether Michael Schiavo is a good guy or evil personified, there have been only slightly less judges and lawyers involved in this case than there are molecules in our galaxy, and no one has ruled him to be an unfit guardian. As legal guardian of Terri, he wanted the feeding tube removed, and got his way after eons of legal battle and tremendous damage to his reputation.

Accordingly, the federal government, never at a loss to step in when its presence is basically unwarranted and completely unwanted (ask any baseball fan about that), was quick to react when the Florida courts finally ordered Terri's feeding tube removed: it hustled a bill through Congress giving itself authority to order another review at the federal level, apparently because 20 reviews would be more effective than the 19 that already took place. This is the same federal government, by the way, that went to war with Iraq because 17 UN resolutions were more than enough and an 18th would have done no good. I happen to agree with the decision to attack Iraq and thought it should have been done under Clinton, but whether you agree with me or not, which side of this coin do you want to come up the next time there's a controversy?

At any rate, Congress, citing Article III of the Constitution, stuck its nose into the issue the same way it has long interpreted the phrase "promote (not "provide," as in common defense, but "promote") the general welfare" to mean "get involved in health care, income redistribution, education and pension plans." As such, our president got a wakeup call at 1:11 in the morning, in his jammies, to sign the bill - which he did.

The federal review became the 20th one to get shot down, upon which the Bush administration admitted that it was hoping for a different outcome (and no less than Denny Hastert came out and said so). The case went to the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, which followed suit. The case then went to the Supreme Court, where Justice Anthony Kennedy (who has jurisdiction over the 11th Circuit Court) refused to overturn any previous rulings. Again, the Bush administration expressed its disappointment and instantly dove into Florida law looking for another loophole. As of this writing, Judge James Greer - who is about to get booted out of his congregation for his decision, as if he's the only one who came to it - denied (brace yourself for this) Florida governor Jeb Bush's attempt to wrest guardian status from Michael Schiavo.

Now, regardless of your feelings about the case, here are the facts:

1.) Michael Schiavo is the legal guardian of Terri Schiavo, and he has made his decision.
2.) Florida courts, after extensive review, sided with him 19 times.
3.) No attempts to portray him as an unfit guardian or a guardian without Terri's best interests at heart were even remotely successful.
4.) The federal government passed a "narrowly tailored" (chuckle, snort, guffaw) bill to give the other side another trip to the plate, freely admitting that it hopes for a different outcome. By "narrowly tailored," they claim they mean that this is only because of Terri and that the case won't be used as a precedent for future federal intervention. If you believe that, stop reading right now - because if you do, you're way too stupid to understand anything that follows.
5.) The Right, which usually decries federal interference in state decisions (remember Elian Gonzalez?) applauded the move.
6.) The Left, which usually applauds federal intervention in state decisions, is now feigning outrage at it happening now.

The dirty little secret neither side wants you to know - and you don't have to be as conspiracy-minded as Oliver Stone to realize this - is that both sides want living wills outlawed. The Right wants them outlawed because of the supposed "sanctity of life" issue, and the Left wants them outlawed because they would rather have the federal government decide these matters than have families decide them.

The dirty little reality that the Right won't admit is this: the Left won this issue. Terri will die, and the precedent for federal stomping of state decisions regarding patient disposition has now been set. Pandora's Box I can just picture how Democrats, upon seeing the Republicans speed their hopeless little bill through Congress, raced to their cigar clubs to pour themselves some fine wine and toast the GOP's emotional idiocy. Remember when it was the Democrats who took (and rightfully so) a lot of crap for letting emotions, instead of logic, decide their decisions? Those days are now gone. The Left won on both counts.

The Right, in their haste to ignore repeated state decisions, has now opened the door for the Left to order the deaths of marginal patients so as to direct financial resouces to other social programs. There's no guarantee that such a thing will happen, of course, but only the most optimistic and naive person could believe that it won't. Also, if you’re of the opinion that the Republicans' impressive string of victories since 1994 will continue forever, you're grossly underestimating the number of people who vote for Democrats because they want government freebies or a softer stance on crime. The Democrats will take power back eventually, and not that it matters, but I predict that it will happen no later than 2012.

So what we have here is a case that went through 19 state-level decisions before the Feds interfered. Now that they have, I believe that state courts have no more importance or substance than the villages of Potemkin or cultural awareness programs in maximum-security prisons. The bottom line, in my view, has nothing to do with Terri's quality of life - I simply do not believe that this one life is worth casting aside so many state decisions like a misbehaving puppy, to save one life, if it means that the federal government will be making these decisions in the future (which they will, now that the "narrowly tailored" precedent has been set). The cost of more federal intervention in our lives is going to be much higher than this one life.

If, at this point, you're saying "if that intervention saves one life, it's worth it," you're a moron who should get whatever tubes you have cut and cauterized immediately. The "if it saves one life, it's worth it" line could be easily used to reduce the national speed limit to 10 miles per hour and to outlaw just about every household appliance and electronic device you own or have ever touched. Such measures would definitely save lives, but would never make it to the House floor for a vote because of the damage they would do to the economy. Society has clearly decided that the lives that would be saves are not worth the inconvenience. Assume for a moment that I could clearly and definitively demonstrate that reducing the speed limit to 10 miles per hour would save 50,000 or even 100,000 lives - would you accept that if it meant the loss of your job and the certainty that you'd soon be sharing a cardboard box with a guy who hasn't showered in a month? Even if you would, you'd be in the minority.

At what point does one decide that there has been enough court review? At what point do you decide that state courts, as attractive as they are to believe in, are good for nothing but the collection of fines for speeding tickets? Doesn't it chill your spine to know that the only reason we had additional federal review after 19 cracks of the whip was that a presidential administration passed a bill in haste to in an attempt to overturn a repeatedly-reached decision that they openly admit they didn't like?

It doesn't matter that Terri won’t get better, and it's not as if I'm asking her to "take one for the team." It's not a case of judges playing God or deciding who lives and dies, it's a case of how many times the same decision has been reached by so many judges before the same federal government - which could order your death in order to save resources for other priorities - shoves its foot in the door and keeps it there.

Well, the "narrowly tailored" precedent has now been set, and here's hoping that at a minimum, you don't believe the "narrowly tailored" drivel. As soon as that BS bill was passed, the first thing the Feds did was "assure" us that it won't be used as a prececdent - which should be a sure sign to anyone with a modicum of brain function that it will. If you have half a brain, you'll fill out a living will while they're still legal. If you don't, you'll become a pawn in a much larger game, as Terri Schiavo has.

This isn't a case of the Florida courts changing the rules of an election within a few days, as they did in November of 2000 with Florida Supreme Court judges being either Democrats or Independents appointed by Democrats. This is a case of 19 reviews being done by 16 judges over 15 years with a ton of appeals, and it still wasn't good enough for the Imperial Federal Government.

At some point, no matter how sympathetic you are to Terri's plight, you run the risk of the following: you get the Feds to stomp on state decisions to rule for you this time, but in the future the precedent allows for the federal government to order the cessation of life support for 10, 15, 20, 50 or 100 Terri Schiavos so as to divert "much-needed" resources to other "essential programs."

Win the battle, get shelled in the war. If you applauded federal intervention over last weekend, this is what you're in for.

So at what point do you decide that one life is or is not worth inviting (further) massive federal intrusion into your lives? At what point do you decide that 19 decisions in favor of a legal guardian are or are not enough? At what point do you decide that you'd rather have the federal government's lawmakers - none of whom have ever met the family of a patient like Terri, much less the patient himself or herself - make the call? Do you honestly believe that just because the Feds rule your way this time, they always will?

If you're in Bush's "error on the side of life" camp, how do you respond to the fact that while he was governor of Texas, he signed into law a bill that allows life support for marginal patients to be cut off if the family can't pay for them?

This case has been reviewed repeatedly and the same conclusion has been reached 19 times on the state level, reached twice on the federal level, and turned down three times at the Supreme Court level. When do we choose between rule of law and pure emotion? If pure emotion is the way we're going to go, please let me know now - there are plenty of laws I'd like to disregard.

Terri Schaivo has received more judicial attention and review than all the people you've ever met will receive in their lifetimes, combined. That's not enough?

When the Imperial Federal Government steps on 15 years' worth of state decisions to try to overturn a decision it openly admits it doesn't like, all of us lose. The size and scope of the Imperial Federal Government has more than doubled since 1994, and here's a note to all of you Bush fans: that isn't all Clinton's fault. Now, thanks to an amazingly dimwitted Republican blunder, the feds have their foot in this door.

For the record, my living will is as follows: if I am ever diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state and show no improvement within a month, pull the damn plug. If, for some reason there is any controversy, I appeal to you, Mom and Dad - get the plug pulled before the Feds get their foot even further into the door. The country will be better for it.

RANDOM THOUGHTS & 2005 MLB PREDICTIONS

* Who was it that decided that wrapping a piece of cloth around one’s neck and tripling one’s chances of dying in a freak accident makes one look professional? Ties suck.

* I watch the Terri Schiavo saga unfold, and it amazes me how blatant rule-of-law conservatives are about being willing to blow off the law in this case. After nineteen rulings by sixteen judges, further and repeated federal review mandated by a hastily-passed, "narrowly-tailored" bill that "won’t be used as a precedent," and three refusals by the U.S. Supreme Court, it has been determined that Michael Schaivo is Terri’s legal guardian and that he gets to make the call. Obviously, I’m going to write a column on this one - watch for it soon.

* In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Minuteman Project, it’s a group of about a thousand people who are doing what the federal government refuses to do – watch our borders – and they’re doing it with their own money. They are doing nothing but watching and reporting, not attempting to enforce the borders themselves, and how does President Bush react? He calls them "vigilantes." Someone should get a dictionary for Dubya, and the rest of us need to resign ourselves to the fact that Bush is more interested in kissing Vicente Fox’s backside than he is in our national security. If you were a member of al-Qaeda and needed to get into the States to blow up a building or city, what better a way to do it than cross our southern borders which Bush has made so much effort to keep open to illegals? Sadly, we’re going to have to endure another 9/11 before we get anyone to even think about stemming the flow of illegals into the country, and even then nothing will be done.

* By the way, if you voted for Bush and feel utterly screwed, I understand. I really do. I know that voting for Kerry would have been like voting for Kofi, but I really hope that at least once more in my life I have a chance to vote for someone instead of against someone who's marginally worse.

* Will someone PLEASE explain to me why Courtney Love is a celebrity, or why she merits any sort of attention of any kind? I saw some item on her in a local newspaper today and have yet to meet any person who cares even a whit about her.


* Before anyone else puts up predictions for Major League Baseball, here are mine.

AL East: New York Yankees – Too much talent to overcome.
AL Central: Chicago White Sox – As good as anyone in a bad, bad division.
AL West: Anaheim Angels – By default; Oakland’s window is closed.
AL Wild Card: Boston Red Sox – Best of the AL rest.
NL East: Atlanta Braves – I’ll keep picking them until they finish second.
NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals – Houston is their only serious competition.
NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers – The Giants are too embroiled in controversy.
NL Wild Card: New York Mets – Offseason moves will pay off in a big way.

AL Playoffs: Yankees over White Sox, Angels over Red Sox, Yankees over Angels.
NL Playoffs: Cardinals over Mets, Dodgers over Braves, Cardinals over Dodgers
World Series: Yankees over Cardinals in five.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* After yesterday's testimony in front of Congress by Mark McGwire, I'm more convinced than ever that he was hopped up on 'roids. Not since Gary Condit swore up and down that he wasn't sleeping with Chandra Levy have I seen a less convincing performance than yesterday's by McGwire.

* Like many of you, I believe Congress has better things to do than grandstand on the issue of steroids in baseball, but to say that have no right to do so is absurd - steroids are illegal outside of baseball, too, and baseball has an antitrust exemption that I really wish Congress would yank.

* For the record, I don't care if kids use steroids. I honestly don't. If kids want to take drugs that will shrivel their testicles, then down the road some of the truly stupid won't reproduce. While the rest of the world bleats on about how we must "protect the children," I'll sit back and root for natural selection.

* Toyota has the worst, most obnoxious car commercials in the entire free world - and that includes Mazda's wretched "zoom zoom" commercials and local commercials such as the Vinnie and Angelo commercials in Rochester (N.Y.) . Toyota's local commercials are almost as bad as their corporate ones, and some are even worse (those of you living in L.A. and being tortured by Toyota of Orange commercials would probably give me an 'amen'). I'd really like to see the Toyota ad execs strapped to chairs and forced to watch their own crappy commercials the way "A Clockwork Orange" taught us.

* If you separate emotion from your understanding of law and the Constitution, you'll realize that our government had no business donating millions to tsunami victims. Of course, the United Nations doesn't recognize donations unless they're the result of a government confiscating the money from its citizens. Recipients of foreign aid are extremely fortunate that I am not president.

* Creighton, one of my opening-round NCAA picks, jumped out to a 10-0 lead last night and lost by two. I hope Ward Churchill gets a job there.

* Just once, I'd like to make it from my house to my office, work a day and get back home without being asked for spare change by bums. "Spare" change? As if I keep secondary change in case my regular change breaks down on the highway? If I could develop some sort of bum repellent, I'd be a rich guy.

* I'll elaborate on this in future posts, but for now: you have no right to a job, and the minimum wage should be $0.00. You have no right to a "living wage," and if your salary is close to minimum wage, you need to develop some skills. Lastly, if you don't have time because you have kids, it's your fault - having kids if you're not financially secure is not fair to them or to the taxpayers that will be soaked because of your poor decisions. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it: you don't deserve tax credits for your kids, either - singles / childless couples have to pay school tax, and that's more than enough soaking of them to finance your choices.

* Google's new e-mail service sucks (it'd be nice to sort by sender - and give us folders along with tags, please), but the price is right and their mail notifier is pretty cool.

* The Republican-controlled Senate shot down Bush's teeny, tiny, miniscule Medicaid cuts yesterday, which should prove to all of you that if you support the idea of smaller government, you have no representation on Capitol Hill. None. I remember when I used to consider third-party votes a waste of time, but I'm at the point where I want every incumbent except for Tom Tancredo and Norm Coleman to lose their jobs.

* Finally, Senator Harry Reid is threatening to shut down non-essential Senate functions if the Republicans use the so-called "nuclear option" for Bush's judicial nominees. Senator, please shut down the Senate even if the Republicans don't.

REMINGTON 3200's NCAA BRACKET

Happy St. Patrick's Day, all.

Making sure you all have a full two hours before the games start, I present prognostication of staggering power and accuracy. Book the flight and the room at Harrah's.

MY BRACKET:

First Round Winners

Illinois
Nevada
UW-Milawukee
Boston College
LSU
Arizona
St. Mary's
Oklahoma State

Washington
Pacific
Georgia Tech
Louisville
Texas Tech
Gonzaga
Creighton
Wake Forest

North Carolina
Iowa State
Villanova
Florida
Wisconsin
Kansas
Charlotte
Connecticut

Duke
Mississippi State
Michigan State
Syracuse
Utah
Oklahoma
Cincinnati
Kentucky

Second Round Winners

Illinois over Nevada
Boston College over UW-Milwaukee
Arizona over LSU
Oklahoma State over St. Mary's

Washington over Pacific
Louisville over Georgia Tech
Gonzaga over Texas Tech
Wake Forest over Creighton

North Carolina over Iowa State
Florida over Villanova
Wisconsin over Kansas
Connecticut over Charlotte

Duke over Mississippi State
Syracuse over Michigan State
Oklahoma over Utah
Kentucky over Cincinnati

Third Round Winners

Illinois over Boston College
Oklahoma State over Arizona

Louisville over Pitt
Wake Forest over Gonzaga

North Carolina over Florida
Connecticut over Wisconsin

Syracuse over Duke
Oklahoma over Kentucky

Fourth Round winners

Oklahoma State over Illinois
Louisville over Wake Forest

North Carolina over Connecticut
Syracuse over Oklahoma

Final Four

North Carolina over Syracuse
Louisville over Oklahoma State

Championship Game

North Carolina over Louisville, 154 points

RANDOM THOUGHTS

* This is my first-ever post in this blog. I'll spare you the boring intro and get right down to business...

* Congress is, not surprisingly, sticking its nose into Major League Baseball and the steroid mess - right in the middle of spring training. When asked if receiving subpoenas to appear in front of a gaggle of overpaid, self-promoting careerists fits well into their training regimens, I'm sure that Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmiero and Jason Giambi will react with unbridled enthusiasm. What you're seeing here is Washington's attempt to get involved in an issue with what most people in the country consider to be a problem, just so they can look like heroes and give you the idea that you're getting a good value for your tax dollars. It's too bad they don't do the same thing with illegal immigration.

* As if most fundraisers weren't bad enough, when did it become accepted practice for parents subject their co-workers to this sort of garbage by bringing kids into the office to run amok with overpriced candy bars and pencils? Helpful hint: try to sell them something when they bother you.

* Tony Blair today called for doubling foreign aid to Africa. Tony, Tony, Tony...you've been a great pal to George Bush, but both of you need to learn that throwing money at problems is not the way to solve them, especially when you're talking about the mess in Africa. A better idea: cut off aid entirely for a year or two and wait for a few dictators to be overthrown, so that any aid Africa gets would go somewhere else than a few select Swiss accounts. Also, waiting until Kofi Annan is no longer the Grand Poobah of the UN would be a good idea, especially if the Sudan is still part of Africa by then.

* Speaking of George Bush, he's pushing his ideas to "save and strengthen" Social Security, a Ponzi scheme that he has the gall to call "a symbol of trust between generations." Mister President, "a symbol of trust between generations" is when a father gives his car keys to his son. When the government confiscates a percentage of your pay for fifty years or so to fund this version of Marxism, gives you a pittance back at a time, taxes you on it and has the audacity to call it a "benefit," it's best defined as "theft" - especially when Congress routinely dips into the so-called "Trust Fund" to fund their reelection campaigns.

* Oh, and Mister President: please veto at least one new spending program before the end of your second term so that for just a moment, I can pretend that Republicans control both houses and the Oval Office.

* Today's breaking news involves some psycho who opened fire in an Atlanta courthouse, and if my sources are correct, at least one judge is dead. I have few details, only an opinion: I condemn any such shootings, but if something like this had to happen, it's a shame it didn't take place in the 9th Circuit Court.

* Elsewhere, former President Clinton is recovering from surgery to repair scar tissue in one of his lungs. It's truly a shame that Clinton couldn't have been subjected to the same quality and speed of health care that he tried to stick us with in 1993 - if under such conditions he could have made it through a quadruple bypass and yesterday's surgery, he'd really have carved out a legacy for himself.

* The NCAA selection committee meets on Sunday to see which 65 college basketball teams make your office's bracket, and in the meantime a bunch of thoroughly meaningless conference tournament games are taking place. News flash: if you truly care about the results of these conference tournaments, and your team's chances depend upon them, then your team may as well stay home. My bracket picks will be posted early next week, as I try to reclaim my 2003 office title.

* Good news for all of you losers who bought hybrid cars: two states have already introduced legislation to tax you on mileage instead of gasoline, and the other 48 will eventually follow suit. If you actually bought your hybrid because of the promise of how much money you'd supposedly save, and you really didn't see this new tax coming, I'm already laughing at you. No problem, though - in that underpowered piece of crap you're driving, you're sure to be safe in a collision (chuckle, snort, guffaw).

* There's a steak dinner in it for anyone who can give me one good reason as to why Ryan Seacrest is a celebrity. Remember, I said a good reason.

* If you actually care about the Michael Jackson trial, you didn't play in enough traffic as a kid.