The speech

Michael Moore is a mole

Maybe it was his zeal to save American democracy from the sinister control of huge corporations. Or maybe, if you believe folks at CNN, Michael Moore was just being a jerk.

...the acclaimed director of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' initially refused to return a hard-to-get convention floor credential yesterday to CNN - a subsidiary of the Time-Warner media conglomerate - after being interviewed in the Fleet Center on the cable net's CNN 'American Morning.'

Reliable CNN sources said Moore punctuated his refusal with an eruption of abusive profanity at a female guest-booker and male staffer who attempted to retrieve the floor pass, dropping the F-bomb and muttering the C-word.

Yesterday, Moore and his associate producer, Joanne Doroshow, vehemently denied the account, saying that Moore surrendered the coveted credential when asked and never hurled abuse at the CNN staffers.

'Oh, my God, I never use that kind of language,' Moore told me. 'It's a complete lie.'

But I'm told that when Moore's interview with CNN anchor Bill Hemmer ended, a producer politely asked Moore for the credential, and Moore erupted profanely within the hearing of multiple witnesses.

Then, with CNN's credential around his neck, Moore circled the floor doing interviews with other broadcast outlets - while CNNers huddled trying to figure out how to retrieve the pass.

An unlucky female booker trailed him to obtain it, even following him into an elevator.

'F- c-!' Moore allegedly muttered - though it was unclear if Moore was referring to her or was still seething about his interview with Hemmer.

...a CNN spokesman said: "There's no apology (from us), and there's no apology forthcoming. CNN expects an apology from Mr. Moore to the female staffer he abused."

Intoxicating liberalism

Be honest. With those pearly whites and that helmet hair, doesn't John Edwards remind you of a televangelist?

I kept waiting for him to blurt out: 'Have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ?' and hit us up for a donation.

A favorite moment of the convention: Wednesday's 'Minute with the Lepers,' where George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis were introduced to wave to the crowd.

The three weren't allowed anywhere near the podium. They were consigned to the convention floor, sitting amidst delegates who presumably were under orders to tackle them if they tried to make a break for the CNN booth.

Now, class, what do McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis have in common?

They are liberals. They are losers.

And the Democrats have had quite enough of liberal losers, thank you.

Proof that the US created 9/11

Reasonable phobias

Thomas Ray McKinnis was afraid of heights. Yet three years ago, he made good on a lifelong dream. He became a pilot, conquering the skies.

His dream ended on a rainy Tuesday, when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed into a house on fog-shrouded Grand View Drive in Exton. Both McKinnis, 53, and his wife, Cynthia Mae Merritt, 48, who was the only passenger, died. No one on the ground was injured.

Oh, that liberal media...

Blindness

Multitudes of boots are arranged carefully on the lawn, with a sign explaining, 'These 907 pairs of boots represent the U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war.' Then there's a sloppy pile of shoes with another sign: 'These 1,000 pairs of shoes represent a small fraction of the estimated 16,000 Iraqis killed in the war.'
There are no million shoes for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi, Iranian and Kuwaiti victims; only his American victims seem to matter, and only those Iraqis killed in connection with a U.S. military intervention. Come to think of it, there also are no 3,000 pairs of shoes for those who died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--even though the group sponsoring this display styles itself Sept. 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

We approach a middle-aged man of ample girth, who seems to be in charge. 'How many shoes do you have for Saddam Hussein's victims?' we ask.

He stands silent, facing us. He seems to be staring us down, but we have no way of knowing for sure, as he's wearing sunglasses, even though the day is overcast.

Finally, after perhaps 15 seconds, he breaks the silence:

'Shame on you,' he says.

He explains that his group has simply chosen--arbitrarily, if we understand him correctly--to highlight the U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in the liberation. He offers an analogy: 'There are books that are written about one thing, there are books that are written about other things.'

We persist: Saddam's victims don't count unless they're American?

'Somebody else is dealing with that.'

We point to the shoes representing the fallen soldiers: 'Yeah, these guys are dealing with that.'

Why the Democrats are doomed

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents.

Cool T-shirts

Lucky Guy

The 17-by-60-foot swimming pool has an underwater music system and a floor painted in a fossil motif. Swimmers can dive under a glass wall and emerge outdoors by a terrace. Locker room off the pool has four showers and two baths.

"Mom, remember when I used to dream of having a huge, plushly carpeted game room with my own private disco off to the side, 50 hired disco dancers, 25 video games, a full service bar, and seven red pool tables with a giant stuffed camels hanging from the ceiling?"

More good news from Iraq

You are indeed falling prey to the Media as noted by another friend. You may be interested to know that we, who are in the middle of it all, see a definite improvement in the overall security situation already, believe it or not. As for the terrorism and the "insurgency", nobody was expecting that it will just disappear suddenly. In fact, we expected much worse. The enemy has no agenda, no clear political objective, he is just desperately striking left and right and committing more and more terrible atrocities that will only increase the hatred and repulsion against him; while the offensive against him by the patriotic Iraqis is gaining momentum. The majority are going to get stronger and stronger, and this is already observable in the new security formations. We are in the thick of it and don't feel discouraged at all.

I was sitting there waiting for my turn when someone came in and after "Al Salaamu Slaikum" and "Allah bil khair" he asked the barber, "Did you see the last list of the agents and spies in street no. 20?"

"No, how many names are there in this one?" said the barber.

"This one is short. There are only 250 names in it" said the guy.

No one commented on this, as it may be dangerous to say what you really believe in this neighborhood.

I volunteered to break the silence, "250!! These are all traitors? If there are 250 traitor in one single block then how many honest people are left in this street?" one of the guys said, "Very little. This place is filled now with agents and spies."

I smiled inside as I remembered the days of Saddam when we couldn’t dare to speak fearing Saddam’s agents who seemed to be everywhere. I was living a somewhat reversed picture from the past and it was a bit amusing. I went adding, " I don’t think it’ll take a long time before things get better" This phrase could be interpreted in 2 different ways but still no one dared to approve of what I said. People here are still afraid of a very small criminal group that is capable of everything and believe they’re the only ones who are right and who have honor while all the rest are cowards spies who should be killed without hesitation.

Gore, v 2.0

Gorebot, v 2.0. Copyright, 2004 DNC focus groups 1-4.

Run sequence: "Candid:"
Animatronics:
head swivel 15 degrees clockwise - check
smirk enabled - check.
Eyebrows tilt upward - check.
Run sequence: "Sincere."

Cue voice, after "golly gee shucks" laugh.
Look "wistfull-" check.

"Huh-uh"

"You know," Pause one second, run sequence "Candid."

"I kinda hoped to be here under different circumstances."

Hands in front, grasping invisible ball- check
Eyes direct toward camera - check.
Voice elevated - check.
Crescendo enabled.

"I hoped I'd be here talking about my re-election as President of The United States!"

Pause for applause - check.
Smirk smile enabled - check.
Head nodd - check

My big prediction

Good news

The Afghans are growing increasingly optimistic about the future of their country and approving of its current political direction. According to a poll conducted by Chaney Research, AC Nielsen India Org-Marg and the Afghan Media Resource Center for the Asia Foundation, President Hamid Karzai remains popular in Afghanistan, enjoying favorable opinion of 62% of those polled. The interim government's performance gets a tick of approval from 57% of Afghans. In other results from the same poll, 64% of Afghans believe that their country is moving in the right direction (versus only 11% who think Afghanistan is moving in the wrong direction). More significantly, two-thirds of those polled support the United States, and only 11% still favor the Taliban. Eighty-one percent plan to vote in the coming elections, although a majority express concerns whether the poll will be completely fair.

Medicare fiasco

Another aspect of the new 'health crisis', and probably the one that is most disturbing, is the elevation of obesity to the status of a disease and what that means in terms of your liberty.

Medicare announced on July 15 that, after proclaiming for 40 years that obesity is a personal problem, not a clinical one, it now classifies the No. 2 cause of preventable death in America as an illness.

What Medicare did, without so much as a 'let's consult with the payers' is reach deep into your pocket and add another cost for you to 'share'. Yes, dear reader, you are now going to pay for diet programs, stomach stapling and diet maintenance. They may not have taken the money yet, but for each 'disease' they insist on creating, its only a matter of time before they fund its treatment.

Instead of obesity being a personal problem, it is now your problem. And you will pay, like it or not, to help anyone classified as 'obese' lose that weight , if they're a Medicare (and most likely Medicaid) member.

Worth a look...

Fight the power!

New York's crusading attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, is at it again.

This time, he's leading New York City and eight states, including New Jersey, in a lawsuit against five of the nation's largest power companies in an attempt to slow global warming.

The companies annually emit 10 percent of the United States' carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to global warming. The lawsuit filed Wednesday doesn't seek monetary damages. Instead, it asks a New York federal judge to set yearly emissions reductions from the companies' 174 fossil-fuel-burning plants.

Media distortions

Aid to North Korea

A neat game

TrouserGate Update

CLINTON AIDE ACCIDENTALLY TAKES 9/11 DOCS, NOTES, JOLLY RANCHERS

Former Clinton Administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger admitted 'inadvertantly' stuffing highly classified documents and notes into his pants, absent-mindedly removing them from the national archives on five occasions, accidentally mailing them to DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, who mistakenly buried them in the World Trade Center excavation site.

According to FBI sources, Berger also stopped off at a Bethesda, MD Chevron FoodMart, where he inadvertantly stuffed his pants with three bags of Jolly Ranchers, a 24-pack of Bud Lite, a copy of Maxim magazine, and Listerine Pocket Mints before driving off without paying for 14 gallons of unleaded super.

An apologetic Berger said that "my bad," and offered to return several cans of Bud Lite to the Chevron.

Here they come!

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - Four learning-disabled students sued the organization that administers the medical school admission test, alleging they were denied extra time to take the exam in violation of California's disability laws.

The discrimination lawsuit, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, argues that students who have trouble reading can learn to practice medicine if they receive enough time and a distraction-free setting in which to complete the Medical College Admission Test.

'Without accommodations, I really can't show what abilities I have,' said plaintiff Brendan Pierce, 28.

Pierce and the other students allege that they asked the Association of American Medical Colleges to give them more time to take the MCATs in April but were turned down because the organization said their disabilities were not severe enough to qualify for special treatment.

Retha Sherrod, a spokeswoman for the association, said the group had no comment on the lawsuit but was committed to providing 'appropriate accommodations' for disabled applicants taking the test.

Pierce, who has dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000 with a psychology degree and has completed premedical courses at Mills College. He said he's always done well in school, having been given extra time on his exams since junior high.

Account of 9/11

But spending is fun!

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday that Congress has lost the ability to manage crucial long-term budget issues and new mechanisms are needed to keep future costs from ballooning beyond the nation's ability to pay.

Greenspan defended President Bush (news - web sites)'s three rounds of tax cuts, saying they had helped ensure that the 2001 recession was mild and brief and have provided critical stimulus to keep the current rebound on track.

But he warned that rising deficits could become a problem over the next decade as Social Security (news - web sites) and Medicare costs escalate with the retirement of baby boomers.


"Looking forward, fiscal policy is going to become a very critical issue on the agenda for macroeconomic policy," Greenspan told the House Financial Services Committee.


Greenspan again supported a return to pay-as-you go policies that would require Congress to offset future increases in government spending or new tax cuts with cuts in other government programs or tax increases.


The administration supports reinstituting the pay-as-you-go mechanism for spending but not for tax cuts, because it would complicate Bush's goal of making permanent the 2001 tax cuts. The cuts are due to expire in 2011.


A decade-long requirement for pay-as-you-go budgeting expired in 2002.


Greenspan suggested that Congress should go beyond pay-as-you-go provisions to provide ways to rein in government spending or tax decisions if the costs of those actions balloon above the original estimates.

Well said

Liberals believe government exists to improve society. Conservatives/libertarians believe government exists to protect society, rather than change it.

Good ole Spike

Spike Lee says he'll never attend a Nascar event because he doesn't think he'd like the music:

"I just imagine hearing some country-and-Western song over a loudspeaker at NASCAR: 'Hang them n-- up high! Hang them n-- up high!' I'm not going to no NASCAR."

Now I'm no Nascar fan, or a country & western music fan for that matter. In fact, I can probably count the number of people I know who do like these things on one hand. But this smells a bit like blatant stereotyping to me, something the black community has fought against for centuries in this country. And I don't think it smells very nice no matter which direction it's coming from. Has Spike Lee ever spent any amount of time listening to country music? Because I didn't think that racist violence was a general theme.

Maybe this angry little black man would change his mind if he actually spent some time listening to some country classics. Like I said, I haven't heard much myself, but sometimes the country titles alone provide a fair amount of amusement. Here are some of my favorites:

At the Gas Station of Love, I Got the Self Service Pump
Are You Drinkin With Me Jesus?
Did I Shave my Legs for This?
Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes at Me
Drop Kick Me Jesus (Through The Goal Posts Of Life)
Get Your Biscuits In The Oven, And Your Buns In The Bed
Hand me the Pool Cue and Call Yourself an Ambulance
He Went To Sleep and The Hogs Ate Him (Now Claude's Gone Forever)
I Changed Her Oil, She Changed My Life
I Flushed You From The Toilets Of My Heart
I Still Miss You Baby... But My Aim is Getting Better
I Want a Beer as Cold as My Ex-Wife's Heart
I'd Rather Hear A Fat Girl Fart Than A Pretty Boy Sing
If My Nose Were Full of Nickels, I'd Blow It All On You
One Day When You Swing That Skillet (My Face Ain't Gonna Be There)
Redneck Martians Stole My Baby
She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy

Weird stuff

Zany terrorists!

An Islamic web site posted Sunday a statement attributed to a group close to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi offering a reward of the equivalent of $337,000 Cdn to whoever kills Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

The statement by 'Khalid bin Al Walid Brigade' labelled Allawi as an 'American stooge' and said that its assassination unit has vowed to kill Allawi and other Iraqi leaders.

'We vowed to God to kill you. Your head and those of your cronies are wanted by Sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,' said the statement. 'If we cannot deliver the reward of 200,000 Jordanian dinars ($337,000 Cdn) to whoever gets us Allawi's head, his reward will be delivered in Heaven by Almighty God,' it said.

BackBlog-Blogger switcheroo

Eat your heart out, Arafat

Under Ariel Sharon, Israel has put down the intifadeh the old-fashioned way - by fighting back. Palestinians who accuse Israel of conducting state terrorism are right. Israel has indeed terrorized the terrorists into submission. The size and cost of the defeat is just now sinking in. The crowds torching Arafat's military installations are conducting their own version of a 9/11 commission.

Meanwhile, Israel is burning with a different kind of heat. The economy is going full-blast. Cranes and business startups are everywhere. Only the Palestinians are absent. Until the intifadeh, Gazans and West Bankers made good money there. Now their jobs are gone - to foreign workers and advances in technology.

There is a self-confidence in Israel unlike anything I have seen since the Six-Day War. Israelis have discovered that they have the resources to wage war with whatever ruthlessness victory requires. That attitude includes the determination to complete the security barrier being constructed through the West Bank. The recent World Court ruling that the barrier violates international law was greeted in Tel Aviv with derisive contempt, and not only by hard-liners. The barrier saves lives. In a war, everything else is secondary.

Does this mean there is no such thing as shame anymore?

In another story Reuters also reported that 'the wife of freed Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz thanked her husband's kidnappers on Tuesday for not harming him'. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said ''it was a time of trial and a time of triumph'. She also spoke with Philippine diplomats in Baghdad, thanking them for their efforts. After hanging up, she raised her arms and said: 'Well done!'"

Voting themselves poor

Symbolically significant as it became in its own terms, the 35-hour week was also part of a wider European approach to sclerotic labour markets that can now be seen to have comprehensively failed. In many countries besides France, the cure for high unemployment has been sought in the encouragement of shorter working hours. Another common response to growing insecurity about jobs has been to increase job protection and make it harder to fire people. And a widespread reaction to growing global competition that has lowered pay at the bottom end of the market has been to entrench high minimum wages.

As many pointed out at the time, these measures made little sense. The notion that there is a fixed amount of work to be shared out, so that shorter hours for all must mean more jobs, is widely derided by economists as the ?lump of labour? fallacy. Making it harder to fire people serves mainly to discourage hiring them in the first place. And high minimum wages translate not into better-paid workers but into more people without jobs. These observations are no longer just matters of theory: the recent experience of France, Germany and other continental European countries shows that they apply in practice too. As the OECD's recent Employment Outlook noted, the empirical evidence points to a clear correlation between high levels of job protection and high levels of unemployment.

Belatedly, Europe's governments are realising this, and coming round to the need to free up their labour markets, not tie them down in even more red tape. Indeed, they have begun to grasp that excessive regulation of labour markets, far from being a sensible response to slower growth, is actually a significant cause of it.

Hopefully it's not true, but I fear it is

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

The coming civil war in the PA

Harry Potter gets embroiled in French politics

A French literature professor at a teachers' training institute thinks Harry (Potter) "glorifies individualism, excessive competition and a cult of violence," which he thinks is bad. A philosophy professor responds that Harry Potter is a socialist tract.

The Star summarizes:

The five Harry Potter books -- enormously successful in French translation -- are stuffed with "neo-liberal stereotypes" which caricature approvingly the "excesses of the Anglo-Saxon social model," (Ilias) Yocaris wrote.
Thus all representatives of the state (the Ministry of Magic) are lampooned as ridiculous, or incompetent or sinister. Harry goes to a "private" school, whose "micro-society" is a "pitiless jungle" that glorifies "individualism, excessive competition and a cult of violence."

Public institutions are unable to protect individuals. Au contraire, Harry Potter and his friends find that they have to break the magical state-imposed rules to protect themselves from evil forces.

...Le Monde last week published an equally erudite reply to Yocaris. Far from being a capitalist lackey, Harry Potter is the first fictional hero of the anti-globalist, anti-free market, pro-Third World, "Seattle" generation, according to Isabelle Smadja.

...Harry and his friends show great concern for the "house elves," the unpaid servants of the magical world. The fact that the elves are mostly content with their lot is, says Smadja, a "pertinent" critique of globalization.

Even worse, many of the wicked characters have French names, such as Voldemort (flight of death) and Malfoy (bad faith).

Actually, the Harry Potter books are about optimism and hope, argues King at SCSU Scholars, quoting Diane Durante of (shudder) Capitalism Magazine. Good can triumph over evil, if it's got the guts to fight.


The Potter series is very popular in France, perhaps indicating that not everyone there is a left-wing intellectual.

Maybe it was just a typo...

An item yesterday misquoted an article in the Times of London.

The quote should have read, "Finding water, shelter and food are the three keys to survival on a desert island, according to experts," not, "I grafted you into the tree of my chosen Israel and you turned on them with persecution and mass murder. I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants, but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt."

Our weekend

What is wrong with the Times?

There is one thing the sovereign state of Iraq can offer its citizens today, and Iraqis are banging down the doors to get their hands on it: a passport out of the country.

Remember the future?

Do you remember the future?

Chances are you remember it well if you came of age in the 1950s or '60s, that era when everything was "modern," "space age" or "new and improved" and we looked forward with awe. The future was where people would zoom around on jet packs and plan weekend getaways by lunar lakes. The future was where everything would be made better.

Technology would see to it. Better living through chemistry and all that. In the future, a woman would clean her house at the touch of a button. A man would finish his office work in half the time with the help of his robot assistant. All these new conveniences would free us to live more gracious lives. The bulk of our days would be devoted to leisure.

Well, the future came and I don't know about you, but I haven't found any extra leisure. I did, however, find a refrigerator with a television in it.

Strange people out there....

Impending bankruptcy? No problem!

Medicare is discarding its policy that obesity is not a disease, potentially throwing open the door for millions of overweight Americans to make medical claims for treatments such as stomach surgery and diet programs.

Funny movie

Good news

Al Qaeda operations in Iraq have encountered some unexpected problems.

Iraqis have become increasingly hostile to al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign. Religious leaders, which al Qaeda expects to get support from, have been openly denouncing these bombings. Iraqis, aware that they are more likely, than American soldiers, to be victims of these attacks, are providing more information on where the al Qaeda members are hiding out.

Most of the al Qaeda in Iraq are foreigners, and easy for Iraqis to detect. As a result of this, many of the al Qaeda men have moved back to Fallujah, which has become a terrorist sanctuary. The interim government is trying to convince the tribal and religious leaders of Fallujah to back a military operation in the city to clear out the various al Qaeda, criminal and Baath Party gangs. But the gangs of Fallujah are quick to threaten any local leader that shows signs of supporting the government.

While the Fallujah leadership is intimidated, many residents of Fallujah are not, and are providing information to the coalition, which has led to attacks, with smart bombs or coalition and Iraqi troops, on buildings used by al Qaeda, or other gangs, as headquarters.

Food pyramid power

Apparently the food pyramid is coming in for some criticism from within the government for failing to accomplish its goals, which it clearly has, and may be replaced, which is fine.

However, I just couldn't help laughing at this:

Most Americans are familiar with the federal Food Guide Pyramid - but a lot of people don't understand how to use it.

Too many are confused by the recommendations and can't figure out how to implement them. The proof, Agriculture Department officials say, is that two out of three Americans are fat.

Um, no, actually. The fact that we're fat almost certainly has more to do with the fact that we don't really care what the government has to say about our eating habits. I know this may be difficult for certain people to believe, but even with perfect knowledge, people will continue to engage in activities that are causally implicated in less than ideal health, such as eating cheeseburgers, say, or drinking alcohol, or fucking. Why? Because they're fun and people enjoy them and think they're worth the inherent health risk. The problem, if you consider this to be a problem, isn't lack of knowledge or understanding, it's that people have different priorities than certain authorities think they should have. And we are fortunate enough to live in a nation where the government can (so far) only recommend dietary strictures to us, not enforce them. So, enjoy your freedom! Have a cheeseburger, or a margarita, or some really good oral sex. You may not postpone the grave quite as long as you might have, but it'll be a heck of a lot more fun getting there.

If you repeat it enough, maybe it will become true

Kerry Lied!!!!!!!

John Kerry:'We've got more African Americans in jail than we do in college. That's unacceptable,' he added.

In fact, it seems that there are more than twice as many African Americans in college than in jail.

U.S. Census Bureau (2000): African Americans in college: 2,224,181

U.S. DoJ Office of Justice Programs: 'Prison and Jail Inmates at MidYear 2003' (p.11): 'Table 13. Number of inmates in state or federal prisons or local jails' -- Black Americans in jail: 899,200.

Those nearly 900,000 incarcerated African Americans still represent a tragic waste of lives and potential. But fortunately, things are not nearly as gloomy as John Kerry wants to believe they are.

It's possible that Kerry is basing his claims on other data, but it would be interesting to learn what his sources are.

Voices in Iraq

People of the U.S. and Allied nations, I hope you realize the full import of this great enterprise. For you have not only helped us to get rid of an awful dictatorship, but you are now helping us to be liberated of our own shortcomings, superstitions and the rust and dust of centuries. And what help! By the blood and sweat of your own young men and women; and there are those of us who can appreciate. And what America is really doing now is conquering hearts and minds, for the first time, in this part of the world. And this will be one of the greatest conquests and the key to solving the problems of the region and consequently the cause of peace in the World.

I wish I could explain myself better, for I realize these words will meet much skepticism; yet this is one of those feelings from the guts that I have talked to you about before.

Salaam

One of those days

"Justice" overkill

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man who accidentally shot himself in the testicles after drinking 15 pints of beer was jailed for five years on Tuesday for possessing an illegal firearm, a court spokesman said.

David Walker, 28, was arguing with a friend at a pub in South Yorkshire, northern England, when he went home to get his sawed-off shotgun, which he jammed into his trousers.

But as he walked back to the pub, the gun went off, blasting pellets into his testicles. Doctors later removed what remained of his testicles during emergency surgery.

Walker admitted possessing a prohibited weapon at a hearing in June at the court in Sheffield.

MXC masterstroke

Future Bush campaign ad

Senator Edwards talks about the need to provide health care for all, but that didn't stop him from using a clever tax dodge to avoid paying $591,000 into the Medicare system. While making his fortune as a trial lawyer in 1995, he formed what is known as a 'subchapter S' corporation, with himself as the sole shareholder.

Instead of taking his $26.9 million in earnings directly in the following four years, he paid himself a salary of $360,000 a year and took the rest as corporate dividends. Since salary is subject to 2.9% Medicare tax but dividends aren't, that meant he shielded more than 90% of his income. That's not necessarily illegal, but dodging such a large chunk of employment tax skates perilously close to the line.

The Internal Revenue Service takes a dim view of such operations and 'may collapse the structure entirely and argue the S corporation is not truly a separate entity,' in the words of Tax Adviser magazine. Attorney CPA magazine lists it as No. 11 of its '15 best underutilized tax loopholes,' but warns that the IRS 'has successfully litigated cases against individuals, particularly sole shareholders of personal service S corporations, reclassifying such deemed distributions as wages subject to social security taxes.'

Potty mouth

Times change

Immigrant kids work harder.

They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder -- and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism.

Where others may see inequities, immigrants tend to see a ladder to be climbed. With a hyper-optimism, they move ahead, upward and outward, undeterred by any barriers that fate throws in the way of their hopes and dreams.

And they pass this spirit of enterprise on to their children. A University of Chicago study in 1995, for example, found children from a variety of minority groups whose mothers are immigrants outperform students from their same ethnic group whose mothers were born in the United States.

The story of my life

Very flattering....

John Rogers:

Wackiness: 8/100
Rationality: 10/100
Constructiveness: 20/100
Leadership: 20/100


You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Darwin rules

Pelicans mistake Arizona asphalt for lakes

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- More than 30 endangered brown pelicans have crashed onto sidewalks and roads in Arizona, mistaking the heat-induced shimmer of the paved surface for lakes and creeks.

"They try to land on the water, but it's asphalt and it's 'Bam! That doesn't feel so good,"' said Sandy Cate, director of the Arizona Game and Fish Department's wildlife center at Adobe Mountain in north Phoenix.

NAACP brouhaha

You'll understand if it appears to me that Mfume is the one who would like to treat the President like a prostitute, smacking him around one day....then complaining that Bush won't come see him.

Well, if that's the way it works, I'm sending this letter to Mr Mfume through the NAACP website....

Dear Mr Mfume,

I'm sorry to see that you've become a race pimp, using your organization to leverage race for political advantage. Apparently, the equal rights movement--a noble cause--has become captured by special interest political advocacies. I hope that the African-American community can break free of these chains, too, and I hope that you will be recognized as part and parcel of this intellectual slavery.

By the way, you are cordially invited to dinner with my wife and I this Saturday.

Regards,
Jon Henke

So, what do you suppose the odds are he'll be joining us for dinner Saturday?

Obesity nonsense

What? Killing bugs is wrong?

Here is some heartening news for invertebrates: under new Government proposals, creatures such as insects, worms and slugs will be protected from mistreatment if it can be proved that they suffer pain and distress.

This will pose a legal dilemma for gardeners, who have a number of ingenious ways of disposing of the plant-guzzling invaders. Some cut the offenders in two; others employ saucers of beer, in which drunken slugs drown. A spokesman for Peta, the animal welfare group, has welcomed the proposals, saying: "Compassion must be extended to all living beings. Stamping on a slug sets an example to children that 'might makes right'."

Just in: Bush enrages more people

Thiruvananthapuram, July 2 (IANS) Angry youths in this Kerala capital Friday burnt an effigy of US President George W. Bush, not because they are anti-American but because he has named his cat India.

Members of the citizens group Prathikarana Vedi assembled before the Kerala assembly saying that Bush calling his cat India was an insult to the country.

"This is a disgrace to our great country and this has come from none other than US President George W. Bush. This is nothing but an insult to India because there are hundreds of thousands of Indians in US, and many who occupy key posts in the White House," said M.A. Latheef, president of the group.

"He should make amends," Latheef added.

Dismantling the fence and other fantasies...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Following their victory in the U.N.'s highest court, the Palestinians will ask the General Assembly next week to demand that Israel destroy the barrier it is building to seal off the West Bank.

After Friday's ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, that the barrier violates international law, the Palestinians and their Arab supporters said they will seek a resolution enforcing the decision.

In a sharply worded advisory opinion, the court said Israel should tear down the barrier, compensate Palestinians harmed by the structure and return property confiscated for its construction.

The court urged the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council to consider "what further action is required to bring to an end to the illegal situation."

A frightening future

There is no gradualness and there are no countermeasures to a dozen nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously in American cities. Think of what just two envelopes of anthrax did to paralyze the capital of the world's greatest superpower. A serious, coordinated attack on the United States using WMDs could so shatter the United States as a functioning advanced industrialized society that it would take generations to rebuild.

What is so dismaying is that such an obvious truth needs repeating. The passage of time, the propaganda of the anti-American left, and the setbacks in Iraq have changed nothing of that truth. This is the first time in history the knowledge of how to make society-destroying weapons has been democratized. Today, small radical groups allied with small radical states can do the kind of damage to the world that in the past only a great, strategically located industrialized power like Germany or Japan could do.

It is a new world and exceedingly dangerous. Everything is at stake. We are now deeply engaged in a breastbeating exercise for not having connected the dots before 9/11. And yet here we are three years after 9/11, the dots already connected themselves, and we are under a powerful urge to ignore them completely.

OK, you win....

Campaign finance reform clears things up

We're told that once John Kerry and George Bush accept public funds to run their campaigns after their respective nominating conventions, they will be banned from raising funds or spending funds contributed prior to the nomination.

That presumably means Kerry must somehow spend all the record-breaking millions he's raised so far before the convention. But what can he spend it on? Can he pay for October ad time in advance? (How do you stop him?) Can he pay Bob Shrum and his other consultants their full-year fees? Can he pay for his plane in advance? If so, the restriction might not be so hobbling. But it was hobbling enough that Kerry considered delaying his formal acceptance of the nomination to postpone the cutoff date.

So how, exactly, does it hobble?

The frogs! The frogs!

Since Mr Bashir’s regime is so weak, a tough approach by America, the UN and Sudan’s neighbours (on Wednesday, the African Union echoed Mr Powell’s calls for the militia’s disarming) ought to yield results. Besides the stick of sanctions, the carrot of aid is being offered, if a formal peace deal with the southern rebels is signed. If there is no response, America may also have to consider establishing a no-fly zone over Darfur, like the one that protected the Kurds in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Justice across the pond

An appeals court in Sweden has thrown out the life prison sentence imposed on the man who killed Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh last year.

Mijailo Mijailovic, 25, will now be taken from prison to a closed psychiatric ward after tests concluded he was suffering a mental illness.

...Mijailovic would have gone to prison for 15 years, the normal term in Sweden for those sentenced to life, but now he faces being placed in a psychiatric institute for criminals.

However, there are no time limits for psychiatric patients, and some experts say he could be set free in a matter of months if deemed healthy.

Day at the beach

Give me my shrimp

It seems the Commerce Department has decided in a ruling issued tuesday that "China and Vietnam have been dumping their product in the US market at unfair prices."

When I read that, my question was "unfair to whom?"

That was answered the very next paragraph when I read the word "tariff". Unfair to whom? US shrimpers apparently. It seems that because of China and Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Thailand, Brazil, Ecuador and India, American consumers have been able to enjoy their favorite seafood at a much lower price.

Well, by God, not any more.

According to Wally Stevens, President of the American Seafood Distribution Association: "If U.S. shrimpers were to get the penalties they want, shrimp prices would rise 44 percent," he said.

Uh huh

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The Louisiana Supreme Court ordered a country club to open its men-only restaurant to women, rejecting claims that members sometimes dine there in the nude.

"In the twenty-first century, it is simply archaic to cite protection of women from the sights and sounds of a locker room environment as an excuse for excluding them from the public dining area as it exists in this country club," Justice John L. Weimer wrote for the unanimous court.

Finally

Grilling time!

Today's commercial lump charcoal, still retaining the shapes of the wood chunks it was made from, burns hot and clean, with minimal amounts of smoke. It therefore earns my vote (and the secret ballots of most grilling experts) as the best possible fuel for grilling.