Would Your Parents Accept This “Apology”?

Mine wouldn’t:

“Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line,” the Illinois Democrat said. “To them I extend my heartfelt apologies.”

No “I was wrong” but just the usual “I’m sorry if I offended you” crap. Useless garbage.

Speaking of Ships

It’s gone.

Happy Summer From Sandy Hook!

And a heartfelt Thank You to everyone who keeps her flying free.

Solar Sailing

This announcement has everyone from the Instapundit on down all a-twitter. But if you look at the graphic illustrating the project, anybody would recognise it as this:

From 23 years ago, a little movie called ‘Tron‘. (Never saw it? Oh! Please do.)

So, Bingley…

How were the cheeses?

Here’s to Tears For Fears

Police: Lions free kidnapped girl
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Police say three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by men who wanted to force her into marriage, chasing off her abductors and guarding her until police and relatives tracked her down in a remote corner of Ethiopia.
The men had held the girl for seven days, repeatedly beating her, before the lions chased them away and guarded her for half a day before her family and police found her, Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo said Tuesday by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, some 560 kilometers (348 miles) west of the capital, Addis Ababa…
“…A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they (the lions) didn’t eat her,” Williams said. “Otherwise they probably would have done.”

I know I’m a sucker, but I just love these kinda stories.

Tonight, CBS 8 p.m.EST/PT

(We’ll see how many ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ quotes make the cut.)

Schmaybe, Schmaybe Not

A thought about this weekend’s U.S. Open (won in magnificent form by Michael Campbell, by the way) and all the
‘will Tiger beat Jack‘ speculation. We knocked it around a little here, too. (Had to drown out the incessant droning and reverent incantation of ‘Payne Stewart this, Payne Stewart that, eerily like Payne Stewart there‘, taking a page out of NASCAR’s Earnhardt moans and groans ~ so give it a rest already!) What we came up with was a qualified ‘probably’ and only for the Major win category. I mean, old Tiger’s halfway there. Where we both agreed ‘it will be a cold day in Hell before Tiger gets close’ is the runner-up column. The Golden Bear has 18 SECOND places in Majors, on TOP of those 18 firsts. WHILE slogging around the country from tournament to tournament in a station wagon, with Nancy, the five kids and puppies for company. Tiger, on the other hand, just tied the knot this year, so his life has been golf. Even with the myriad advantages, it looks like he’s only been second twice, usually ending up in the pack if he doesn’t win. Now tied with Ben Hogan and Gary Player is a far from shabby spot to hold and we all know that berth is only temporary. But for overall Championship play in a Major setting, we boldly vote ‘Jack’.

I May Not Live To See The Dawn

But I can not resist posting this quote:

You can take the girl out of Wellesley, but you can’t take Wellesley out of the girl.

It’s been nice knowing you guys.

…When They Pry My Cold Dead Fingers From The Mug

An incredibly condescending article in the Washington Post on Javanomics.

At a Starbucks across the street from Seattle University School of Law, Kirsten Daniels crams for the bar exam. She’s armed with color-coded pens, a don’t-mess-with-me crease in her brow and what she calls “my comfort latte.”
She just graduated summa cum laude , after three years of legal training that left her $115,000 in debt. Part of that debt, which she will take a decade to repay with interest, was run up at Starbucks, where she buys her lattes.
Part of the $115,000 debt Kirsten Daniels of Seattle incurred to finance law school went toward her regular caffeine fix.
The habit costs her nearly $3 a day, and it’s one that her law school says she and legions like her cannot afford.

David Adesnik fisks this with both barrels, and the result is lovely. As the Man says, read the whole thing.
What an interfering, nosey-assed article.

Read more »

GMC Redux

According to MSNBC.com, there’s fixin’ to be a dust up twixt the dinosaurs at GM and the always feisty UAW. Fingers are pointing like light sabers…

As GM’s engine stalled this year, CEO Rick Wagoner has laid much of the blame on the automaker’s runaway health-care costs.

Now, no one’s here to say the UAW doesn’t have the sweet deal from hell, always has (and should be looking at how to bend before it all breaks), so there’s probably a fair amount of truth in that statement. A statement made all the easier to issue thanks to United Airlines, their pension default and PBGC. But our gentle readers know, as right-to-work as we are, we’d tend to go along with the union’s situation assessment for the current slide in GM’s fortunes.

The UAW fired back that GM can’t “shrink its way” to prosperity, but instead needs to design cars people want…”
…”If we don’t fix some of the basic problems that exist when it comes to the product,” UAW president Ron Gettelfinger told NEWSWEEK, “then it seems to me that no matter what we did, it wouldn’t be enough. Ever.”

Um, yeah. Your stuff’s WEAK there, Mr. Wagoner. FUGly weak. Couple that with quality problems, the much-more-appealing products from the competition (American manufactured in many instances) plus the current price of gas, and it looks like GM stands for Gumby Made.

I Knew I Liked This Girl…

Did Tom Cruise try to recruit Scarlett Johansson to Scientology?

The “Lost in Translation” star was expected to co-star with Cruise in “Mission: Impossible III” but was dropped because of “scheduling conflicts.” But it seems that there may have been other conflicts as well. Cruise invited Johansson to a Scientology center where he showed her literature about joining his controversial church, according to a report. “After two hours of proselytizing,” according to RadarMagazine.com, “Cruise opened a door to reveal a second room full of upper-level Scientologists who had been waiting to dine with the pair, at which point the cool-headed ingénue politely excused herself.”

Man, how scary was THAT? One of those hair-of-my-chinny-chin-chin escapes, like trying not to get sucked up by the UFO beam even though they’re saying ‘do not run, we are your friends‘, then going missing for forty years, while the elders do weird experiments on your brain and force you to breed and birth obscene humanaliencruiseoids and then you come back in one piece, damaged but not destroyed and get a series on Fox and have to relive it over and over for 22 episodes a season…that would suck.

Who’s Your Buddy, Who’s Your Pal…?

Heard about the four hostages rescued by the Marines yesterday? Gitmo does indeed sound like a Gulag if you’ve only read the WaPo’s version. Jeez, even the headline “At Least 50 Insurgents Killed In Western Iraq, Marines Say” makes no mention of what they found. That finally appears paragraphs down, describing the unfortunate fellows only as…

“After a firefight Saturday morning, they raided a house and found four Iraqi men blindfolded, shackled and badly bruised in a room concealed by curtains.” and “The rescued men, all of whom appeared to be in their twenties and thirties, had welts and bruises on their faces and backs and were taken to a medical facility for treatment, Chase said.“

The Marines who found it were “shocked” and it appeared to be a “very bad place”, but the guys were just ‘badly bruised’? What gives? Sounds like Senator Durbin’s Gitmo, doesn’t it?
But then, CNN, damn their eyes, has an actual correspondant with the troops, who had a whole different take on what those four guys looked like, not to mention their headline:
“Arraf: Marines rescue tortured hostages as battle rages“.
Tortured? Read on.

Read more »

Happy Father’s Day to…

the Bestest Dads I know . Those little moments with you mean the most.

Hugs and biggest kisses to my heroes ~ Major Dad, Bingley, Crusader, Mountain Man, Mr. Summers, the Squid Terrorist and the Dads who stop by here to visit. We loves ya!

Why Radar Is A Good Thing

Coming home on Thursday we hit a thick fog bank between the Verrazano Bridge and Sandy Hook, and visibility went down to under 50′. When you’re doing 30+ knots on a boat with 300 people on it across one of the busiest stretches of ocean in the US, it’s nice to know (well, hope) that the Captain can see if there’s anything in our path.

A ‘Fight For The Right to Swill’ Update

As a result of consumer pressure for change and the Supreme Court ruling, other states are also thoughtfully considering the model direct shipping bill, including New York and Rhode Island, to name two.
But not Michigan.
Michigan state legislators are considering two bills (House Bill 4959 and Senate Bill 600) strongly supported by the Michigan wine wholesalers that, if passed, will remove intra-state direct shipping for Michigan consumers and wineries, which is vital to the economic livelihood of the state’s 40 family-owned and operated wineries. Nida Samona, Chairwoman of the State of Michigan Liquor Control Commission, recommended to Michigan legislators that the state ban ALL shipments, a huge step backward in the 20 year trend toward augmenting the current system with legal, regulated direct shipments.

I Thought at First…

…this headline was about Mr. Summers.
Rare chatty songbird spotted in California
Then I read…

Dropping her equipment, Lina focused her binoculars on the bird — a male perched on a branch about 30 feet away, singing and shaking his tail feathers. As she called her supervisor about the discovery, a female joined him and did a copulation dance.

…so never mind.

I Cannot Begin to Tell You How Pissed I Am…

…that THIS is gone.
I didn’t even know they had one…and it’s gone.

I’m Sorry Your Life Sucks There

But so does everyone else’s, you piece of shit. At least you’ll know what’s coming at you. And I hope it makes you cry like a little girl.

The U.S. military charged a staff sergeant from the New York National Guard with murdering his two commanders at a base outside Baghdad, in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.
The military initially concluded that the June 7 deaths of Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, of Milford, Pa., were caused by a mortar round.
But this week the military charged Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad on Thursday.
Martinez, 37, is a supply specialist with the Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard. Esposito, 30 and the father of a 1-year-old girl, was company commander and Allen, 34 and a father of four, was a company operations officer.

Operation Murambatsvina

What would your local civic leaders name their latest urban clean up campaign? Especially one aimed to “…weed out all criminal elements countrywide”?
Well, if your local alderman was Robert Mugabe, and you were poor and destitute and lived in a shack, he’d call it “Operation Murambatsvina” — drive out trash, with the trash being, well, you, natch.

Police Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka, quoted Tuesday in a government newspaper, said that 21,194 “illegal structures” had been demolished nationwide, and 32,435 people arrested since “Operation Murambatsvina”…began May 19.

Imagine the outcry if our Zionist Overlords demolished 200 shacks, let alone 21,000. However, this should assuage the International Community of Concerned Head Tilters:

Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere said Monday that people would be moved on to an “appropriate place,” adding that there is “nobody in Zimbabwe who does not have a rural home.”

That’s a relief.
Update:
Gosh, it was such a success they’ve extended the program! Now they’ve displaced 250,000 people.
No word from Kofi Annan if he’s “deeply concerned” yet.

Word of the Day

Brobdingnagian \brob-ding-NAG-ee-un\ adjective

: marked by
tremendous size

It’s Amazing How Ironic Irony Can Be

Two PETA Employees Arrested on Animal Cruelty Charges in N.C.

Police found 18 dead animals in the trash bin and 13 more in a van registered to PETA. The animals were from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties in North Carolina, police said. The two were picking up animals to be brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said Thursday.
Neither police nor PETA offered any theory on why the animals might have been dumped.
Local officials and veterinarians said they were told that PETA would find homes for the animals, not euthanize them.

Nice, huh? But I guess it’s ok, since they’re concerned and humane and stuff; it’s the “gas ’em with a smile” PETA attitude that sets them apart.
Sheesh.

When The Wolves Start Feeding On Themselves…

Is it a sign the end is near? Or does it show peevish frustration? The frothing paranoia in this editorial is amazing…amazingly reminiscent of the stuff one heard/hears from left-wing nuts in the wake of the elections in the US. Read Arthur’s post. “Bin Laden an american agent.” Ha! Has there been a better “What have you done for me lately?” than that? Or should that be “Who have you beheaded for me lately?”
Some other tidbits:

In addition, why is Al-Zarqawi massacring innocent Iraqi citizens and [members of] the Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi army and the Iraqi Interior Ministry?

Because that’s all he can do, and he wants to destabilize the situation so that the religious fanatic thugs who back him can take over.

Al-Zarqawi undeniably aims to harm the Iraqi people and members of the Iraqi forces, who undergo training to protect [their] homeland in the future. This massacre of the Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people is meant to strengthen the American occupation of the region

No, it’s meant to kill any and all who might want a more modern, westernized Iraq emerging and thereby giving other peoples in the region some dangerous ideas about how repressive a role they want religion to play in their lives.
(Thanks to Chrenkoff)

Heh…

Short Bus Rampage .

How Rocky J. Squirrel…

got his start.
I may need to make one of these…