For The Farterland!

Maybe he powered the Hindenburg

It may sound like a Woody Allen scenario, but medical historians are unanimous that Adolf was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler’s curse since childhood and only grew more severe as he aged. As a stressed-out dictator, the agonizing digestive attacks would occur after most meals: Albert Speer recalled that the Führer, ashen-faced, would leap up from the dinner table and disappear to his room.

(h/t to Insta…I think)

Not Being an Economist, STILL

…I don’t think this is exactly a recessionary number.

U.S. economy grows at 3.9% pace in third quarter
The U.S. economy shook off the worst housing downturn in a generation to grow at a 3.9% annual pace in third quarter, the best performance in six quarters, the Commerce Department estimated Wednesday.

Make that ‘numberS‘.

…Despite rising worries about commodity prices, the GDP price index, the broadest measure of price changes in the economy, rose just 0.8% annualized, matching a nine-year low.

So whence the continual drumbeat of doom?

…A total of 8% of Americans say that the national economy is getting better, 18% say it is staying the same, and 69% say the national economy is getting worse.

I don’t get it. More…

…Consumers, whose spending is an important ingredient for the economy’s good health, actually rediscovered their appetite to spend in the third quarter. Their spending rose at a 3 percent pace, a considerable improvement from the second quarter’s rather weak 1.4 percent growth rate.
One of the reasons why people are continuing to spend is because the nation’s employment climate has managed to stay fairly sturdy despite all the problems facing the economy. Job creation perked up in September and wages grew solidly. The unemployment rate crept up to 4.7 percent but that is still low by historical standards.
Wage and job gains have served as shock absorbers for some of the negative forces of an ailing housing market, weaker home prices and more restrictive credit.

We’re doomed. Has no one asked a Democrat to explain the numbers? I haven’t heard anyone yet. They just prattle on and on and the media buys it, if not out and out does their own spinning, while guys like Larry Kudlow are called cranks/Bush apologists. Or worse.
Thanks to this, Charlie Rangel will get handed the chance to screw Joe Taxpayer in a year and won’t, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman says,

“….even have the goddam common courtesy to give him a reach-around.”

The MOST WONDERFUL Day of the Year

…is here!

Have a GREAT one!

For Marines

…one of Charlie Rangel’s concerns 5 years ago…

…Service in our nation’s armed forces is no longer a common experience. A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.

…haven’t proved to be true. In fact, quite the opposite.

Marines Begin to Reverse Sharp Drop in Black Recruits
The proportion of Marine Corp recruits who are African American jumped by 40 percent over the last 12 months, halting a seven-year slide that has worried service leaders.

A ‘SEVEN-year’ slide ~ that predates 9/11 if my math is correct. The astonishing thing are the casualty figures in the article…

…Of 969 Marines who have died in Iraq, 39 were African American and 139 Hispanic. Hispanics comprise 18 percent of enlisted Marines today up from 15 percent when the Iraq war began.

Wow.

Schwinn???

I thought you said schwing

A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.
Robert Stewart was discovered in his room by two cleaners at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, south west Scotland, in October last year.
On Wednesday Mr Stewart admitted to sexual breach of the peace in Ayr Sheriff Court, where depute fiscal Gail Davidson described how he had been found by the hostel workers.

No way.
Way.

Funny, I Thought He* Drove…

a Subaru

Police in Zululand say they seized two cows and two goats found squashed into the back of a tiny Fiat Uno.
…Police chased one overloaded Fiat Uno into the night, after receiving a tip-off at around 0300.
The driver abandoned the car after he realised he was being followed and ran off into the bushes.
All the seats except the driver’s had been taken out and the cows and goats loaded in their place

Looks like He* had to cancel a party a few weeks ago, too

The authorities say in another instance the rustlers managed to cram two cows and seven goats into a Toyota Tazz before being pulled over.

These poor creatures who escaped His* clutches will get the help they need

Police said they hoped these animals would be given a trauma debriefing – but did not elaborate on what that would entail.

Oh, I’d guess a barbecue will be involved.
*The name has been left out to protect our Dear Friend.

Good! This Drudge Headline…

Forecasters Blow It, Again: ’07 Hurricane season may rank as most ‘inactive’ in 30 years…

…is okay by me in WHAT it says, just not HOW it says it. I want Dr. Grey and all the weather guys doing their damndest based on what their knowledge and the weather patterns are telling them. If it turns out to be too much, who cares? We are at least prepared for if it turns out to be right..or worse. Woe unto us if they get cautious and second-guess themselves, giving us a false sense of safety. People will always do a bit less than is called for to prepare ~ it’s human nature.
Addendum: If, for two years in a row now, the very BEST that climatology has to offer ~ from universities and research centers to government entities with their satellites and reams of data gathering ~ have significantly misread the auguries and Delphi-like, issued predictions of coming disaster that were nowhere near the eventual outcome (in otherwords: BLEW IT), how ~ HOW ~ using those same technologies, observations and data streams ~ do the Global Warming necromancies rise to the level of INFALLIBILITY for our future? If it’s green in GREENland again, how can you tell it wasn’t meant to be?
You’re damn right we’re the Anti-Al Gore blog. Because he can’t answer that question.

Maybe These Guys Haven’t Got the Message Yet

“Young people now have a lot of possibilities for the future.”

ACK!! No, No , NO! It’s doom, we’ re DOOMED DOOMED doomdedy doomdoomdoomed!!! More evidence of the apolcalypse…

Its four oldest trees — in fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named Rosenvinge’s trees after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment in 1893 — are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had glued on fresh needles.
“The old ones, they’re having a second youth,” said Mr. Bjerge, 78, who has watched the forest, called Qanasiassat, come to life, in fits and starts, since planting most of the trees in it 50 years ago. He beamed like a proud grandson. “They’re growing again.”

Talk about a mixed frickin’ message… As for ‘Greenland’ just being real estate hype…

…Greenland, a self-governing province of Denmark, was settled by the pugilistic Viking Erik the Red in the 10th century, after his murderous ways got him ejected from Iceland. Legend has it that he called it Greenland as a way to entice others to join him, and, in fact, it was.
It was relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years.

Until frozen over during the Little Ice Age, which incoveniently for the farmers, came out of nowhere. Got damn cold. I love how they say they’re growing AGAIN. Things have to have been green and hospitable ONCE for them to do it AGAIN, n’est pas? And the Greenlanders they talk to are positively giddy about turning the southern part of the island into a self sustaining agri-belt.

Al Gore may be having a cow about glaciers but in Narsarsauq they’re on the phone ordering from the Burpee catalogue. “Shit howdy! FRESH beefsteaks next year!”
The one thing that’s bugging me and needs further explanation is polar bears. Assuming that the pack ice retreated the same way it has now when Greenland turned…um…green, WHAT did the polar bears do? I mean there HAD to have been polar bears lumbering around, stealing sheep or something. They adapted then, right?

Common sense ~ they HAD to have or there wouldn’t be any here now. We’d be digging their frozen, partialy thawed, retch inducing corpses out of permafrost otherwise: fodder for Discovery Channel’s “Raise the Frozen Carcass ~ Look at Those Tiny Gonads (the technical term)” series. Somebody needs to ask one what he remembers. I’ll let Bingley do that ~ he’s the people person out of the three of us.

No “Blood For Oil”…

But what about “Blood for Eleanor”? Read the remarkable story of the Marine Crusader refers to below, Mitchell Paige.
Semper Fi, Marine.

GI Joe, a real world hero?

The hill had held, because on the hill remained the minimum number of able-bodied United States Marines necessary to hold the position.

I Just flew In From Brazil

…and boy are my arms tired.
So I’m fixing up a nice steak and some Bingley Rabe™.
Oh, and drinking a bottle of this

Guaranteed jet-lag cure.
In case you’re wondering, there’s plenty of coffee in Brazil

and jaboticabas are the weirdest damn trees, period

“No WAY!!!”

Way.

Crazy Football Play I`ve never seen so many laterals.

If something done two times is ‘twice’, what’s it called when it’s done FIFTEEN?
SI says it’s a “Lateralapalooza”, whatever the technical term turns out to be. I’d agree.

“To Kill a Mockingbird”

UPDATE: I am gobschmacked. It is local BLACK leaders who want the word replaced!!
Can you believe it? If ever there was a paean to human decency, it’s this play.

There is ignorance. And there is IGNORANCE.

Probably Not…

“I don’t know if we can really understand their experience by wearing the hijab just one day,” she said.

LGF reports that, in an apparent attempt to bring the everyday life of a Muslim woman to some fragile minded college co-eds, they’ve scheduled a day of dress-up. Obviously, while it’s difficult to replicate the REAL attitudes of the predominant Islamic world, I have a few easy recommendations that require little in the way of props or expensive overhead.

1) ROCKS: Cheap and easy to fling. The discriminating stoner (leaving out the toking variety) would know exactly which shape goes the furthest or makes the most satisfying thump or crunch or crack on contact. Now, you ARE allowed to grovel on the ground and attempt to cover yourself with however much your hands will shield, but it’s gonna be a mess eventually, especially if there are lots of male attendees.

2) FLEXIBLE LARGE BLACK HEFTY BAG: Why stop at hajib when you can have the whole burqua burqua thing going on for mere pennies. Slice a couple openings for peepholes and you’re on your way to burqua babe-dom. I believe these also come with a…
3) HEFTY ULTRA FLEX DRAWSTRING: …saving time and money when your male relatives go on a mercy killing rampage because your brother boinked the neighbor’s goat/daughter and ~ good old Islam ~ SOMEBODY’S gotta pay for that shit. If they slice you into little pieces, you’re already in the bag. If they’ve only got enough time to choke the life out of you, they can use the drawstring, keeping with the ‘easy clean-up’ theme because…? You guessed it. You’re already in the bag.
4) DULCET TONED HOLY MAN: These are available online by the bushel load.

You can get tapes of ugly, rotted toothed clergy saying almost anything you heart desires ~ from calling you ‘cat meat’ (does not include the ‘P’ word) to railing against Israel to explaining the mundane regulations surrounding WHUDU. Lotsa choices, lotsa imams. Start slowly, because if you get the one who’s into stoning, lashes and beheadings right off, you don’t leave yourself much chance to further your knowledge.
And you’ve only got a day.

Anything I Can Do

…to support the global economy. If it means supporting our southern neighbors, so be it.

Vina Concha y Toro S.A. VCO, Chile’s largest producer and exporter of premium wines, reports results for the third quarter 2007, ended September 30.
Net income for the quarter increased 96.1%…

Of course, it doesn’t hurt when a 1.5L bottle is $6.50. Then there’s a 10% case discount making the Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot 85/15 bottle an VERY affordable $5.85 each, not to mention no sales tax at the base package store. And the icing on the cake?

It’s a damn fine slurp.
Free trade isn’t free, but it’s sometimes affordable.

There Are Words in This Life That Have a Visceral Thrust

Words that, in the proper context and the proper place, can open eyes and touch lives. Are meant to. Vile epithets meant to teach a moral lesson that transcends the time frame of the work it appears in. So what happens when political correctness tries to smother an American classic? When political correctness tries to tidy up the ugly sentiments expressed so eloquently in order to move hearts and right wrongs ~ to stare hatred and ignorance in the face?
Well, it becomes “To Kill a Mockingbird“…without ‘nigger’.

Controversy Over Actual Words In ” To Kill A Mockingbird”
…It’s a story about racial injustice during the great depression.
In the story, the “N” word is often used describing African Americans.
School leaders feel the message of the story is the same without using the “N” word.

A pivotal moment from the play…

Scout: Atticus, do you defend niggers?
Atticus Finch: [startled] Don’t say ‘nigger,’ Scout.
Scout: I didn’t say it… Cecil Jacobs did; that’s why I had to fight him.
Atticus Finch: [sternly] Scout, I don’t want you fightin’!
Scout: I had to, Atticus, he…
Atticus Finch: I don’t care what the reasons are: I forbid you to fight…
Atticus Finch: There are some things that you’re not old enough to understand just yet. There’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man.
Scout: If you shouldn’t be defending him, then why are you doing it?
Atticus Finch: For a number of reasons. The main one is that if I didn’t, I couldn’t hold my head up in town. I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do somethin’ again.
[he puts his arm around her] Atticus Finch: You’re gonna hear some ugly talk about this in school. But I want you to promise me one thing: That you won’t get into fights over it, no matter what they say to you.

…loses it’s punch at the very beginning. There’s no need for Atticus to display revulsion when the substitute vile word pops out of Scout’s mouth, nor any need to sternly correct her. So why waste his breath on the rest?
Or Bob Ewell’s twisted visage ~ his malicious maw saying that word over and over, flung like the filthy spittle that eventually finds its way to Atticus’ cheek. Use the substitute word and…the audience wonders what all the fuss about. Ewell’s innate, monstrous inhumanity ~ the tangible baseness of his character ~ is stunted. As written, no one wants to be Bob Ewell! No one leaving the theater wants to be seen as a Bob Ewell. That’s the power of Harper Lee’s writing. But Bob Ewell with her words tidied up for modern, delicate ears?
He’s just another cranky guy in overalls.
Who spits.

I Cannot Confirm the Existence of Such a Contest

…but I can sure agree with the expressed sentiment.

The following is the 2007 winning entry from an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term. This year’s term: Political Correctness.

“Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end”.

“I’m Certain That They Were Just Taking Food and Water…”

“…that regular Americans just would not consume.”

Touché!

Someone Found Us Whilst Researching This Most Foul of Manufactured Substances

spoiled miracle whip

…and it got me to wondering.

How would you know?

I mean, it already stinks and tastes like sh*t.
I guess if it starts to eat through yer Cracker, there’s cause fer some concern…

Gnashing My Teeth

Insta linked to this and comments hadn’t really been completely partisan hack-ups. Then I read Bill Bradley’s comment:

Bill Bradley* : Jeff, or should I say, dorsai, and I do catch the reference, you’re trying to flip Katrina into an anti-Democrat thing. As the saying goes, lotsa luck.
Obviously the local Democratic leadership was incompetent.
And obviously the Bush Administration screwed up. As my friends who worked in the White House acknowledge.
That’s not so hard, is it?
Oh, the other reason why Florida and Mississippi had an easier time of it.
They didn’t get the brunt of the hurricane.**
Oct 24, 2007 03:02 PM

I saw red and responded:

“They didn’t get the brunt of the hurricane.”
Are you joking? Surely you are. Have you even driven on US 90? My God, they were blown ~ BLOWN ~ off the map from Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, and Gulfport to Biloxi. Whatever points you try to score on the administration, deserved or otherwise, don’t you DARE try to minimalize the enormity of the destruction AT LANDFALL ~ FORTY FEET of WATER ~ that occurred in MS. New Orleans suffered the AFTERMATH ~ the flooding AFTERWARDS.
Once it brushed over the lower tip of Louisiana (maybe you ought to check THOSE pictures, too) Mississippi BORE the BRUNT.
I’m gobschmacked.
Oct 24, 2007 03:13 PM

The esteemed Mr. Bradley deigned to correct me thusly:

Bill Bradley : Well, “tree hugging sister,” and isn’t this turning into a waste of my time, I’ve not only seen pictures, I’ve run video of the hurricane hitting Gulfport, Mississippi right here on NWN.
Oct 24, 2007 03:18 PM

I have manners:

tree hugging sister : Well, “Mr. Bradley”, I’d then have to suppose our disagreement is semantics: depends on what your definition of “brunt” is. I read it in the M-W sense: the principal force, shock, or stress. In effect the utter destruction wrought by the storm surge/hurricane winds immediately. New Orleans has born the greater cost as an end result, which is, indeed, the second M-W definition.
“…and isn’t this turning into a waste of my time…”
How awful for you. I stand chastised and haven’t called anyone a savage or worn my Bush button like some battling partisans above. Apologies.
Oct 24, 2007 03:39 PM

He showed Gulfport tape right there on his bloggedy blog blog, so he KNOWS. Got me there, my churlish chum. Otherwise known as:

“Katrina: I SAW the Movie“

Damn. And ouch!

Bill Bradley : … Incidentally, “tree hugging sister” with the anti-Al Gore blog, my name is a real name. It doesn’t go inside quotation marks.

Apologies again.

tree hugging sister : I was tweaking you. Cheeky, eh? Apologies again. Especially since you haven’t “fake name” anyone else you’ve answered with a nom de plume. I took exception.
An ANTI-GORE blog?! Oh good Lord no, we’re not as one note as that! Please. We skewer everyone ~ it’s a point of honor not to toe a political line. Gore just makes better faces.
Oct 24, 2007 03:59 PM

* yes, THAT Bill Bradley
**emphasis mine

Utter Coolness

An HMX bird just went over the house at 200-250 feet.

We waved.

Squirm, Baby, Squirm!

Fiasco inferno!

… The documents appear to expose that once the veracity of Beauchamp’s diaries were called into question, and an Army investigation ensued, THE NEW REPUBLIC has failed to publicly account for publishing slanderous falsehoods about the U.S. military in a time of war

.
SMOKin’!

Beside Myself With Glee Upon Reading This

…At one point, Governor Schwarzenegger cut off Shipman’s pleas for negative assessments of the effort by grabbing her arm. He bluntly scolded,

“Trust me when I tell you, you’re looking for a mistake and you won’t find it because it’s all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it’s good news.“

Oh, yes.
More, please.

Are You Allowed to Actually Say ‘BREAST‘

…to these misogynistic assholes*?

US First Lady Laura Bush arrived in Kuwait on Wednesday, her third stop in a Middle East tour aimed at promoting awareness of breast cancer and restoring Washington’s image in the region.
Bush’s plane landed at an air base north of Kuwait City, where she was received by Education Minister Nuriya al-Sebih, the only female member of the cabinet.

I was thinking how droll the whole campaign is ~ chattering at people who don’t allow women to be SEEN (Period!) by doctors and who don’t allow women to BE doctors, so maybe something could be seen. Makes diagnosis damn near impossible.
As far as the protests about ‘why DOESN’T she SAY something‘, I think her outfit says it all, frankly.
A vision of American ‘BITE me’ in an uncovered head, perfect make-up and PANTS suit. You’ll remember the notable suck-up who wasn’t as courageous.

*Anything who can CHOOSE whether or not to wear a caftan while their women are FORCED to wear a carpet.

The Newsweek Cover

Students Rioting in Pakistan
…With ISLAMIC RAGE BOY front and center?

major dad saw him first.
UPDATE: Hmmm…