April 2004 Archives

So, I'm at work this morning, even though I'm supposed to have today off. I don't mind, since we have a lot of work to do, and things need to get done. The company's success is my own success.

My only issue is that we've really got no one to watch the kids this afternoon when Heather goes to her sister's house for the gala scrapbooking event. I told Heather that I thought the cats would be great for the job, could teach the kids to eat from the bowl, use the litterbox, and we'd end up saving on food and diapers, but the wife wasn't keen on that. I figured I'd raise some Tarzan-like children, but the wife nixed that. Oh well...

So we'll be in Harrisburg this weekend, and I'm watching the kids. Well, who knows, maybe under my supervision, they'll still end up like Tarzan.

While I'm posting some Commercial Goodness...

Trunk Monkey - Anti-Theft
Trunk Monkey - Road Rage

I've talked about the commercial before, but if you haven't seen it, or you want to watch it obsessively, like I've been doing, here it is. (WMP required)

I'm working on finding out who the guy is that plays the Rubberband Man, and I hope to interview him soon. I'll keep you posted.

It's 00:35, do you know where your developer is?

Odds are he's in bed, unless he's working on my project, at which point he's in front of a computer coding through late hours and wishing he was in bed.

But I want to focus on the positives, like I'm going to be getting up for work in a few hours, so I'll save myself the hassle of sleeping, dreaming, being rested.

This is much better.

To serve and protect, huh?

The worst thing about this story is the quote The Portland City Council approved the settlement, based on a review by the city's risk management division that indicated "there is risk the City may be found liable."

They beat the shit out of an old, blind woman, I had better hope that they be found liable. Unless she was breaking out the sai lum pai kung fu and kicking their asses like some ancient Shaolin master, or Granny was cranked up on meth, there's no reason at all for the police to taser an old woman and kick her while she's on the ground.

"If everyone made a pistol from their own skin, I think they would think twice about using a gun. I think there would be less violence in the world," she said. "But it's not that easy. Violence will always exist."

This woman redefines the word fucktard.

I saw this earlier on the news, but this is bigger than I first imagined...

Jordanian officials broke up an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Amman, Jordan that was ready to blow up chemical munitions in the heart of the city, which would have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

I'm glad that the Jordanians were able to avert a major disaster before it happened.

This confirms what I've seen as a pattern of Al-Qaeda attacks against Arab governments. I believe that Al-Qaeda is attempting to destabilize Middle Eastern governments, which have, to this point, been more successful in hunting and killing terrorists. Moreover, moderate Arab governments are a threat to organizations such as Al-Qaeda, that would demand a literal interpretation of the Koran, and twist its meaning to attack non-believers.

Since 9/11, Al-Qaeda has targetted the very governments that have spawned them, turning away from America as a target. I'd like to be able to credit many factors for this, but without empirical evidence, I'd just be blowing sunshine up someone's butt.

I have seriously given up any hope that fuckface Fred Phelps is in anyway a rational human being. I believe that he is nothing more than a bitter bigot that spreads his hate speech across the country in the hope that he will provoke some showdown that will give him publicity and some twisted form of legitimacy.

Here's a link to a story about him arriving this past week at Portland State University to harrangue students and the school.

I think most frustrtating for me is seeing his followers dragging the flag through the mud and stepping on it. I can't stand hate speech, but that flag is a symbol of all that people have done to protect his right to harass people and spread his filth. Instead, he spits in our faces.

Fuckface is nothing better than the Taliban, or Osama Bin Laden, and would like nothing more than to plunge us into some quasi-religious hell where only he magically knows the will of God. bleh. What a fuckface.

So Claria, the infamous spyware company formerly know as Gator, has hired a former FTC Consumer Protection Attorney as their "Chief Privacy Officer".

On the surface, this looks like a good thing, and might indeed result in some increased privacy protections for the individuals that are trapped in the GAIN network, but pardon me if I'm skeptical.

Claria has just announced that they are filing an IPO. One of the issues that is certain to come up will be the mountain of privacy concerns that people have raised about Claria, so they need to demonstrate some action. Hiring a lawyer from the FTC says to me that they are more interested in covering their butts than in really working with the consumer.

I will howerver, maintain a partly-open mind. (Kind of like a partly-cloudy day) If I see things improve, then I'll be happy. But right now, I think that this is just a corporate-level attempt to disguise what they're really up to, and look like they're taking action, without having to do much.

I just got done reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I don't think I will ever eat at a fast food restaurant again...

Dear Buttmunch in the Mercedes,
I know that you feel that now that you're in your 20's and you've got a Mercedes, you've blown up, and this is the big time. I guess that makes you assume you can confidently cruise below the speed limit in the left-hand lane talking to Buffy and Biff on your cellphone and sip your latté, all the while playing with the doodads and gadgets in your shiny new car.

It doesn't.

It also doesn't give you the right to get mad when I take the initiative, pass you on the right and get in front of you. It also doesn't give you the right to pull up next to me on the highway, endangering other people by yelling at me and weaving in and out of lanes.

I don't know. Maybe you expected me to be scared that you were inching closer to my car, or you that your perfect Gap-model acne-free face scrunched up in pent-up yuppie rage would make me quake in my boots for fear of pissing off "the man"...

But to throw your latte out the window at me just makes you a complete ass. I don't know if you thought that would prove a point ("Don't drive in front of me, or I'll cover your car in frothy milk") or that it would show me that you mean business, but you failed.

Listen up Poindexter: you're an ass, and you adequately proved it.

I could have had a gun. I could have been a seriously homicidal. I could have followed you to wherever you were going and beat the shit out of you. You're a twig, and I would have snapped you across my knee. I could have been a police officer, or had the police go to your house and arrest you.

But most importantly, you solved nothing. If I see you on the road tomorrow and you're driving in the left lane like a dickface again, I'm going to do the same thing, and I'll do it over and over and over again, and I'll let you scream and holler and piss and moan, and I'll keep giving you the finger.

It's stupid to get that worked up about someone else in traffic, but then, based on your behavior, should I have expected any less from you?

I'm only recalling fragments, but I remember dreaming that I was in a German Disco, and people were running around smearing a gold glittering paste on each other that had an Ecstasy-like drug in it. I kept trying to dodge the people that were smearing it, and I was trying to get out, and just as I neared the door, someone got me on the neck, and I could feel the drug enter my body. I thought my eyes were burning and I wasn't able to walk straight. All of the hallways seemed to wobble and the walls vibrated. Part of me was terrified, but it was like I was disconnected from parts of myself and I couldn't feel myself caring enough about my own terror to do something about it, so the terror sat like a horrfied child in a dark corner of my soul.

So people were upset about the results of last night's American Idol...what did you expect from Barry Manilow night? The three diva's fans are not Manilow fans. So they tuned out and didn't vote. It's got little to do with people not recognizing talent, so much as apathy.

It sucks that good people lose so early, but that's the luck of the draw, right?

A few days ago, Chuck Hagel appeared on the news talking about reinstating the draft.

I respect Sen. Hagel's military record in Vietnam, and I believe that he thinks he's doing the right thing, but I must again disagree. Our military works better as a volunteer service, and anyone who has served since it became a volunteer service will tell you that. My friend Jeff is in the Air Force, and he has said that same thing. My brother-in-law is in the Marines, and he has said the same thing. I have a colleague who served in the Army, and he has said the same thing.

But I don't want to rest on the opinions of others, and I wish I had more time to discuss this in detail, but I do have to go to work. But I will say this. I will support the draft, if and only if, the first people to head overseas and fight will be the children of the politicians who want to bring the draft back. Let's see Chelsea Clinton in a squad with the Bush twins fighting in Afghanistan (that might actually make a great TV show, come to think of it). Let's have Chuck Hagel's children tapped to go do front-line duty as radio operators. Let's see Fritz Hollings 7 grandchildren secure a building in Najaf. I don't want to see a cushy position for any of them if they agree to reinstate the draft.

There should never be another Vietnam, with the rich kids hiding behind their parent's influence to avoid combat. We either all go, and go equally, or you all can just shut the hell up about the draft.

Muckraker Alex Jones has a "story" up on his website about "clear" evidence that the second plane flown into the WTC fired a missle at the tower before it hit.

You be the judge but I personally think the man's a fucking lunatic. Just make sure you wear your tinfoil hat before you enter.

I've seen this before, but I wanted to post it again. From author Ed Howdershelt:

There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.

This would be my soapbox. :) I'm using the ballot box next week and in November. I reserve the last two for future use. ;)

We always hear that women live longer than men, and I think I've figured out why...Dealing with women is taking years off of my life. For example, consider this conversation with my wife today:

M: "Hey honey, what stores have sales on soda today?"
H: "Didn't you already get soda?"
M: "No. I'm going to stop on my way home. Where should I go?"
H: "I'll just have my mom go."
M: "No, I'll stop. Are they on sale at Clemens?"
H: "You should just stop at Wawa."
M: "I don't want to stop at Wawa. I need to go to the store. Which one has soda on sale?"
H: "I'll just have my mom stop by."
M: "Why won't you just tell me which store has soda?"
H: "I'll take care of it."
M: "Hello, which store has soda on sale???"
H: "You should have stopped at Wawa on your way home."
M: "Okay, but I didn't stop at Wawa, so please tell me which store has soda on sale!"
H: "My mom can do it."
M: "Is this a State Secret? Am I not allowed to know?"
H: "I thought you already had the soda."
M: "Heather, I need to stop at the store. I have to pick up other things for work. Which store has soda on sale...For the love of God!"
H: "Clemens."

I personally think that conversation took a month off my life.

My blood pressure spikes during every conversation like that, and they happen at least once a week. I know I'm not the only man that feels that way. And that, ladies and gents, is why men die sooner.

(To my wife's credit, she stays at home all day with the kids and raises them, and that can be difficult, and I think by the end of the day she's exhausted, but still...would it have killed her to just tell me the name of the store when I asked her?)

FoxNews.com is reporting that a doctor in California is campaigning to be allowed to prescribe marijuana for ADD. On the surface it seems ludicrous, crazy even, that anyone would want to give their kids pot.

But think about it for a second...

1. There are some controlled substances that have been used in legitimate medical experiments and have been proven effective. Using LSD to treat severe autism in children and to treat schizophrenics comes to mind.
2. The types of drugs that we DO prescribe for ADD and ADHD have not been proven to be effective in many circumstances, are expensive, and often have debilitating effects, like addiction, that are hard to manage.

I understand that pot abuse can have it's own detrimental effects, and I don't buy the argument that just because it's natural it's better. (Cyanide is all-natural and occurs in apple seeds, for example, but you're not going to catch me pushing for the widespread use of it. Same with Ricin, which occurs in castor beans)

But what I think is important here is that we do two things.

1. We not shut the door on this possibility and give doctors and scientists the ability to test the efficacy of using pot to treat ADD. The more tools in our medical toolbox, the better.
2. We not get in the way of the States to determine their own policies towards these types of things. Part of what makes us great as a nation is the ability of individual states to chart their own course. States often have more political will to tackle tough societal issues which the nation as a whole will not. But as States make changes in laws and attitudes and can demonstrate that it is not the end of the world, the laws of the nation generally follow.
   
   An example would be gambling. I know that many people have problems with gambling, but Nevada and New Jersey have both shown that gambling has not destroyed them. Now, more states are willing to consider gambling. If pot is indeed a problem, and California discovers, it, then we have not lost anything. If it indeed proves to be worth the effort and helps people, and eases people's suffering, and have few side-effects, then we all gain.

Let's not shut the door on this possibility, and give pot a chance.

I linked to the article yesterday, but here is more interesting stuff from Bob Woodward's interview on 60 minutes Sunday night:

But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell (of the decision to go to war), Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.

”Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.

“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"

After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, “I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."

But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,’” says Woodward.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

So, let me see if I've got this straight...Bush shared top-secret information, state secrets with a foreign nation, a foreign nation that's been known to support terror and has a horrible record on human rights. In exchange for that information, said nation agrees to manipulate the oil prices so Bush stays in power. WHY ISN'T BUSH BEING IMPEACHED? Sharing of State Secrets alone is a high crime. Are we just going to let those in office do what they see fit, when they see fit, or are people really going to stand up and start asserting their authority as the governed?

At least I'm not alone in my incredulity.

So O'Neill and Clarke come out and say that Bush had been planning war with Iraq for a while, and everyone scoffed. Now, Bob Woodward comes out with a book that is sanctioned by the White House and says that Bush was determined to take the fight to Iraq, practically from the get-go.

Honestly folks, covering your ears, shutting your eyes and shouting "LaLaLaLa...I can't hear you" doesn't make the truth any less true. It only makes you look stupid.

So, for all my talking about The Apprentice and American Idol, I really despise TV. I think it is 97% mindless drivel that is insulting to the viewer. Honestly, I think most TV Shows assume that I have 74 IQ, and I must wear a bib to catch the drool. It's always talking down to me. The shows that are supposed to be funny, aren't. They try too hard. The shows that are supposed to have morals and teach morals, try to ram them down my throat in some saccharine sweet form. (Does anyone know what saccharine even is any more?)

So, I'm in favor of TV Turnoff Week. I think it's time for people to turn off their TVs and go do something else.

WAIT! I didn't mean go sit in front of your computer. Tut tut. TV Turnoff Week is a good start, but what if we turned off all the glowing screens in the house for a week? Now, that would be interesting. I doubt if I even have the willpower to resist.

People yelled at me before for spoiling the end before they got to see it...so be warned

I listened to Air America Radio this morning (the liberal radio network). The various shows mocked Bush for not really answering any questions straight on last night in his press conference. I admit he danced around the issues when the questions were pointed. However, this does cut both ways...during the Democratic debates, you'd see the candidates sit there on their stools, and Bob from Buffalo, NY would stand up and say "I have a question for John Kerry. How do you feel the drug war is going, and what would your policy towards drugs be if you were president?" and John Kerry, or whoever, they were all doing this, would sit a little straighter and raise that microphone to their face, and with great conviction say "I'm glad you asked that Bob. Drugs is an important topic for us to consider, and it's funny you should mention war, because I think George Bush should not have pulled us into this war with Iraq and he needs to get kicked out of office."

And you're sitting there wondering, so what does he think on the drug war?

I'm disturbed that none of the politicians want to get nailed down on an answer. Either you have a conviction, or you don't, and if you do, and you believe in something, stand up and say it. How can I trust you to lead, if I can trust you to tell me where you want to lead me?

The Be Nice To Mo Program
This is an attempt to be nicer to myself, which might sound strange, but I think that I'm doing myself a huge disservice in many ways. I eat too much, I eat the wrong kinds of foods, I don't exercise enough, I don't get enough sleep, I'm not managing my money well, I don't spend enough time with Heather going on dates, and I'm not writing enough.

So I'm kind of doing Easter Resolutions, or, if you prefer, Fiscal New Year Resolutions...

1. I will sleep more.
2. I will eat less.
3. I will eat healthier.
4. I will spend less time in front of the computer and TV and spend more time with my children and my wife.
5. Heather and I will go out on more dates, just for our own sanity's sake.
6. I will manage my money better.
7. I will spend more time exercising and getting healthy
8. I will spend more time writing and working towards making that my full-time job.

I was supposed to have a dentist appointment for two teeth that have been killing me on my left side in the morning, but they rescheduled me for the middle of the afternoon, so I stayed home today and relaxed. Which was good, in retrospect, because Owen didn't let Heather and I get any sleep last night. We were both up dealing with him screaming. We think he's teething and he has a cold so he's just miserable.

But I went to my dentist at 2pm and we decided to fill the two wisdom teeth rather than pull them (I had cavities, shhh, don't tell my mom). They injected me with 6, count them, 6 shots of novacaine and away they went. Oh blessed scream of the drill, the smell of your own teeth burning, the dull ache of the drill in the nerve even though they gave you anesthetic. It was a blast. My teeth still hurt tonight.

And on the plus side, when it was all done, I was half-a-head shorter because I would have sworn the left side of my face wasn't there.

On to other things...

So, probably not most of you know this, but one of the things that I really wish I could do, and do well, is dance. I watch something like Saturday Night Fever, and I want to be John Travolta. So when I saw the Old Navy 10 year celebration sale commercial with all of the 70's stars doing the Hustle, I thought "Man, that should be me. I should be dancing."

Well, I found this to get me started on my way. Hustle on!

I've talked about Claria before. That's the company that installs Gator on your machine and then watches everything you do and reports back to the company so they can sell your personal information to other companies. They call it "behavioral marketing services". Those of us not suckling at the tit of Satan know it by it's more appropriate name "spyware".

Apparently, life is good at Claria, and they want to find more ways to suck out your information, because they're filing an IPO which should bring them a fat pile of cash. Seriously, this is like underwriting privacy theft, and giving it legitimacy. NOT A GOOD IDEA.

I'm making a new TV show to capitalize on the success of The Passion
I'm going to meld "I Dream of Genie" with the Son of God:

I Dream of Jesus...

"Jesus! Jesus!!!!"
"Yes my son?"
"Did you turn the water in the pool into wine?"
"Oh yes my son. Was that wrong?"

The Army and Dupont want to treat and release VX Wastewater into the Delaware River. The residents in the area are understandably upset that the military wants to release the reprocessed remains of a highly lethal nerve agent into the main watershed of the Philadelphia Region.

I have a suggestion though, if I may. Dupont and the Army both assure us that once processed, the water is safe and will not harm the environment. Let's process it then, and hook it up to the Pentagon's plumbing system and let the military brass drink it and wash their hands in it. The same goes for Dupont. At the Dupont HQ in Delaware, they should use the wastewater for everything, from cooking foods in the executive cafeteria to all of the private bathrooms used by the Dupont top-brass.

See, it's not that I think that Dupont or the Army are lying to us, or intending to deceive, and I certainly do not wish them harm. I just feel that they would be a hell of a lot more careful with the water, and cautious, and vete it more completely if they were the ones that had to consume it. That's the real issue here. They're disposing it, but we're the ones that will consume it, in the fish we eat, the water we drink, the air we breath, as it blows in off of the river. They're removed from the issue, and I think that should be remedied.

So, now the Justice Department is looking at porn all day trying to start building obscenity cases. Again, is this the best thing we can think of? This is it folks? The most important thing that our Justice Department can work on is PORN? Fuck it all to hell! Why why why why?

*sigh*

I just can't stand it. This is where my tax dollars are going. Because we can't have BlacksOnBlondes.com corrupting the search for truth, justice and the American way.

Dear IRS, please give me back all of my money. I don't agree with the policies of the current administration, and I don't want my hard-earned dollars going towards them. I've got better uses for that money.

So Richard Clarke says that he and the Clinton administration took Al-Qaeda seriously as a security threat. Then why was Al-Qaeda never mentioned in Clinton's final security briefing to Congress?

I'm not sure that ANY administration believe Al-Qaeda was a serious threat, and I think that Richard Clarke is overstating how any of the administrations he worked for viewed terrorism.

I do not, however, feel that this diminishes the charge levelled by Clarke that Bush was pre-occupied by war with Iraq. This was also the same charge that Paul O'Neill stated. I ask again: How many people will need to raise this flag before we pay attention?

So, we're hearing a lot about the supposed John Kerry $0.50 increase in the gas tax from the Bush-Cheney campaign, but I'm not hearing anything from the President and his administration about the time Dick Cheney proposed a bill to increase taxes on oil and gas saying "let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States". (Energy Security Policy Act of 1986, H.R.5667, introduced 10/9/86, 99th Congress 2nd Session, 132 Cong Rec E 1350, Vol. 132, No. 139; Inside Energy/with Federal Lands, 10/13/86)

Oh, and what about the fact that John Kerry voted AGAINST the increase in taxes saying it would be bad for American families to pay more for gas? Again, the administration falls very quiet.

I however hear the din of Bush supporters crying out "Oh but the world was very different then, and that was 20 years ago." Right, which should also hold true for the world of 10 years ago when Kerry said he'd support an increase in gas taxes as well.

Strange, again, the room's gone quiet.

I watched Rocky this morning, and then Fight Club. I want to go join a boxing club now, and do some amateur boxing. I've never been in a fight before, and I do think that Tyler Durden is right in 'Fight Club' when he says "How much can you really know about yourself when you've never been in a fight?".

The only problem, right now I look more like Paulie, and less like Rocky. NO GOOD. :)

George steered his Bug into the right-hand lane.
"You hungry?"
"Only a little."
"Mind if I stop?"
"Go ahead."
George pulled off the highway and down the ramp, underneath a lush canopy of green trees. I saw as he turned that there as a McDonalds down the street, beyond the gas stations. "McDonalds again?"
"Sure, why not?"
"We've eaten there 6 times since we left home."
"Well, I'm hungry."
"Yeah, but there's a neat looking diner right over there."
"Eh, I don't know about diners. The food, it's all, you know...at least with McDonalds, I know what I'm getting. And it's neat to see all of the other things that they server that we can't get back home."
"I don't get it."
After George ate, and we got back in his car, we drove for a while down 95, further and further south. As the sun started to set, I said "We should find a place to stop and get some rest."
He grunted "Yea, alright"
Within minutes we were sitting in front of a Holiday Inn. "What's this?"
"A Holiday Inn. What's weird about that?"
"Well, there's that place across the street that looks cool."
"That looks like a local place."
"What's wrong with that?"
"You never can trust them. What if the service sucks?"
"I've had bad service at chain hotels too."
"Well, this is where I want to stay."
I relented. It was just better to not piss George off.
We got two sixes of Rolling Rocks at the gas station and sat on lawn chairs in front of our hotel room, watching the sun set over the swimming pool.
I turned to George. "Hey, I was looking at a map, and I saw that there's a road running almost parallel to the highway for 100 miles tomorrow. It was the old highway, but we get to drive through some nice countryside and see some old historical sites. What do you think?"
George took a long draw from his beer and looked out at the sky, turning dark red over us. "I don't know man, that seems kind of dumb."
"Why?"
"Well, we could hit local traffic, and it might take longer."
"Yeah, but we're ahead of schedule, and it's not like we're on a schedule anyway."
"I just want to stick with 95."
I knocked the bottom of my beer on the arm of my lawn chair.
"Dammit George, you want to stay on the highway, and avoid local roads. You only want to eat at McDonalds, and you only want to stay at chain hotels. Everything's the same...boring. I can't tell one day from the next!" I was getting pissed. "Why did you even come on this trip anyway?"
George looked at me for a second, considering. "To get away from it all and try something new, of course".

Why is it that, when a woman falls in love with another man, and cheats on her significant other, ala a romance novel, it is just that, romantic? But when the husband goes out and gives into feelings of passion for another woman you have ladies lining up volunteering to castrate him?

Take something like 'The Bridges of Madison County' ( a dated example, I know ). She stays home while the husband and kids go to the state fair and she's home in the bathtub shtupping Clint Eastwood. Women were tripping over themselves to speak about how romantic and wonderful the story was.

Spin that around and make Clint Eastwood at home while the wife's at the state fair with the kids and some photographer shows up and they make love all weekend, he'd be lower than dirt, the worst kind of scum, the most vilest human ever.

WHY? Can someone explain this to me, please. I'm dying to know what that origin of this blatant double standard is.

Bush and crew keep saying that no one could have ever imagined that terrorists would use planes as bombs and fly them into buildings. It's unimaginable. Okay, how do they explain this:

"Al Qaeda had planned attacks in London, Paris, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Singapore, and Rome, but most of the conspirators were arrested a short time after the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, no one had hijacked an aircraft in the U.S. using a "real" weapon in almost 15 years, although crashing planes into structures is not new. The Israelis shot down a Libyan jetliner they said was headed for a building in Tel Aviv in the 1980s. A Cessna 150 fell 50 yards short of the White House in September, 1994. French commandos prevented a jumbo jet, hijacked in Algeria by the Armed Islamic Group, from crashing into the Eiffel Tower the following December. In the mid 1990s, terrorist Ramzi Yousef plotted to have his friend Abdul Hakim Murad fly a light plane loaded with chemical weapons into CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., or to have him spray the area with poison gas. A Turkish hijacker attempted to crash an aircraft into the tomb of former Pres. Kemal Ataturk in Ankara in 1998. With enhanced security on at airports and passengers on commercial airliners who will react to any danger, this threat has diminished."

(source: Is terrorism's threat overblown? (National Affairs).(Column) USA Today (Magazine), Jan, 2003, by Scherer. John L.)

The restaurant covered up all of the 100 year old pictures of naked women on the menu. Also today in Tennessee, all truckers were warned that they had "better cover up them nekkid silver titties" on the silver silhouettes of naked women they put on their mudflaps, in case anyone thought they were indecent. A Mattel truck was stopped at the border coming from Kentucky with a load of Barbies and was seized, citing deceny laws. Said Sherriff Buford T. Hogg "You can take their clothes off! That's just plain wrong! No 7 year old is getting these mini-playmates."

Tune in next week when John Ashcroft and Pat Roberston take turns painting a pair of pants on Michelangelo's David, Live! from Florence, Italy!

for Troy. My favorite, the one I was pulling for is out of the running for "The Apprentice". I'm crushed. Oh well. Here's hoping Bill crushes the competition and wins.

I haven't seen a Kerry political ad, so I can't debunk any of them, but I wanted to take a moment to say that I think the ad where Bush claims Kerry wants a $0.50 a gallon tax increase on gas is a sham. I felt fairly certain that Kerry, despite whatever other faults he may have is not a complete raving moron, and would NOT propose increase the taxes on gasoline when prices are as high as they are. So I poked around for a bit and I found this, from the Kerry campaign and this this, from the Orlando Sentinel (Free Reg Required) which both clearly state that Kerry's support for an increase in gas taxes was in 1994, 10 years ago. And support is a shady word, because he neither sponsored, nor voted on a bill to raise the taxes, but instead said that he agreed with another senator (Charles Robb) that increasing the gas tax would lower gas consumption. That's a world of difference from supporting a gas tax increase.

This is just shameful, and even moreso that Bush would approve it to run, when it's filled with such disinformation. How can I trust the President to give me the correct information on anything, like the war in Iraq, for example, when he's willing to lie about someone else's political record in Washington?