Help Wanted ~ No Experience Necessary. The Unconscious…

…need not apply.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — A former personal assistant to Carlos Santana (search) has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the rock star and his company, claiming he was fired after his consciousness was “calibrated” and determined to be too low.
The lawsuit by Bruce Kuhlman (search), 59, charges that Santana’s wife, Deborah, brought in a man known as “Dr. Dan” so employees could grow closer to God and become better workers. The lawsuit alleges that “spiritual calibration” (search) allowed a person to develop a deeper level of consciousness.
“In Deborah’s view, the higher a person calibrated with Dr. Dan, the better employee they were because they were more ‘spiritually evolved’,” the lawsuit filed in Marin Superior Court said.

Man! I just can’t catch a break.

The Shameful PC-USA Leadership

I really wish that I could point out errors in this column by Lileks, but sadly I can’t. The leadership of my church, strike that, rather the leadership of my denomination (the leadership of my church is much more sensible), is chock full of leftist touchy-feelies, and stuff like this is the result:

The Presbyterian Church (USA) — not the members, but the learned elders — has announced it will use its stock holdings to target Israel for being mean to the Palestinians.
But they’re not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don’t you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they choose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it happens to be full of Jews.

The General Assembly passes every year resolutions that are far to the left of the individual congregations on various matters, and the local Presbyteries vote them down. It’s caused a lot of dissention and wasted time, and it’s sad. I guess the only people who have the time to belong to the General Assembly are lefty idealists; the rest of us have to work for a living.
Update: But I do have to disagree with Lileks on one point. I don’t think that the PC-USA leadership is consciously anti-semitic; sadly their toeing of the lefty line puts them in the same camp, however.
Thanks to the Blogfaddah for the pointer.

Sacre Fromage Bleu, Homme de Chauve-Souris!

Été avec hors des vacances est comme Paris sans fois gras!*

With unemployment hovering at 10 percent, a growing number of French can no longer afford a traditional August getaway — a summer ritual that symbolizes the good life a la francaise.
“Holidays have gotten very expensive, and more and more employed people who used to go find that they can’t anymore,” said Jean Froidure, a tourism expert at the University of Toulouse. He called the trend “very worrisome.”
“The vacation is a potent symbol in French society, a visible sign of a certain social standing,” Froidure said. “Not going on vacation can cause people to lose confidence not only in their own future, but also in French society in general.”

The French don’t start to navel gaze until plans for their seven weeks off a year get impacted? That could explain a lot.
* “Holy blue cheese, Batman! Summer without vacation is like Paris without fatty distended goose liver!”

Fairy Tales Can Come True

It can happen to you…and me, if we’re lucky.

“There’s been a big speculative bubble” in oil prices, insisted Tim Evans, an analyst with IFR Energy Services in New York. The bubble has been predicated on the idea that demand is still growing and supplies are tight.
Fact is, he said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” “there really is no shortage of oil” and won’t be until the fall of 2006. The U.S. inventory of crude oil is 10% bigger than a year ago. Refineries are producing 2 million more barrels a day of products than a year ago.
So, oil prices, he opined, are “exploring the top of the trading range,” which is a nice way of saying oil is near a top. And he thinks a big blow-off is coming and may be just starting. How low will oil prices fall?
As low as $30 a barrel is a possibility, Evans said. He wasn’t kidding.

Why does my Magic 8 ball keep saying if oil/gas prices start on their way downward to palatable levels, that building new refineries will suddenly vanish from the collective consciousness?

Sometimes Winning Hearts and Minds…

…can ask the impossible of our troops. And they get the job done.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Alpha Company’s motto is “Speed. Shock. Power. Violence. Attack.” But it also might read “People skills” or “Interpersonal relations.”
Those are the tactics that the company’s commander, Capt. Ike Sallee, uses to keep the peace in the southern Baghdad neighborhoods that Alpha Company patrols…
…Then Sallee’s men took a photo of Hussain. And they took some photos of themselves posing with the Iraqi commandos. One of the commandos offered to hold the hand of Sallee’s driver, a custom among Iraqi men.
“I’m not holding his hand,” the soldier said.
“C’mon,” Sallee said. “He’s hot. He’s hot.”

HAH !! Read…

…and weep. All things that buzz are belong to us.
Well, to Bingley anyway.

Having It Both Ways…

…and I’m not talking Bingley and David Hasselhoff. No, I’m talking about the ability of the moonbat population to twist anything. In a codicil to my post below on self delusion, I will add this snippet from another site that shall remain nameless. I found it on a Technoratic webstat ping related to my other recent post ~ the one from Newsweek about President Bush’s visits with the family members of servicemen killed in Iraq. The one about his empathy and kindness. The one we were all astounded and quite pleasantly surprised to find, as Newsweek isn’t exactly known for articles of that tenor. Another site that linked to it thought differently and I was blown away by the vituperative sample I saw. It started with some babble about ‘Rush’ and went straight into (I cleaned it up a smidge)…

My first reaction to this is, “say what?” What a f**king paranoid f**k he is. Delusional too. First of all, there is no “coordinated left.” We don’t have a Rove-type figure working for our side who releases forged documents to established journalists in order to ruin their career and force them into early retirement. Either Rush is stupid or just plain mean.
Secondly, if he really wants to talk about fabricated stories, let’s take a look at a recent Newsweek article put out in the nick of time to give Bush’s image a much needed dose of humanity. Too bad the whole article rings false. Are we really supposed to believe Bush cries for fallen soldiers? Give me a break. The bastard is on a FIVE WEEK VACATION during a time of war! Or struggle. Or whatever the thought police are calling it this week.

…a scatalogical reference to the article and then the moonbat, hateful coup d’ grace.

Come on Newsweek, give me a story I can actually believe, like Jenna Bush discovering the cure for cancer.

Dang. I mean DANG!
UPDATE: She makes these rabid animals seem so small, bless her heart.

‘Honor me in this way’
Marine’s mother tells mourners he would want the war in Iraq supported
WEST CHESTER, Ohio – The mother of a Marine killed in Iraq urged mourners Wednesday not to let their anger and sadness turn them against the U.S. fight in Iraq.
“Honor me in this way,” Kathy Dyer said during a memorial service for Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Dyer, 19, of the Cincinnati suburb of Evendale.
At the funeral at Tri-County Baptist Church, Kathy Dyer delivered what she believed would have been her son’s own message: “It has been with the greatest pride I have served … fighting to preserve freedom.”

Thank you for your son Christopher, Mrs. Dyer. Thank you for your Marine.

Because BingleyMan.XXX Asked Me To

…and for no other reason.
If you have the stomach for it, click through. He says this is for Sharon…
(Or was it Ken?)

Read more »

No, No And Flock (of Seagulls) NO!

Joe ScrewYourBorough, debonair TV personality, ex Congressman re-elected with 79% of the vote in 2000, only to bugger out a couple months later to ‘spend time with his children’, erstwhile partner-for-face-value-only in one of the most successful LIBERAL law firms in the country while having practised law for a whopping four years before going politico and wanna-be-rocknroller-like-Keanu-Reeves is NOW thinkin’ about…
…bein’ a Senator.

Scarborough for Senate?
Republicans press ex-congressman to face Harris
Republican Party leaders are courting Joe Scarborough to replace U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris in the 2006 Senate race against Bill Nelson.
Scarborough, a cable TV talk-show host and former U.S. representative, has met with senior party officials who are encouraging him to challenge Harris, said Collier Merrill, a Pensacola businessman active in the Republican Party, on Tuesday.

I notice nowhere in this puff piece does it mention his time looking pretty on pretentious billboards with Fred Levin and company.

In that event, we know who would be representing the people. That’s right! The Levin law firm! Their new billboard on Highway 98 shows 15 feet of smiles flashed by Mike Papantonio, Fred Levin and our very own former U.S. representative: Joe Scarborough. They say they’re “for the people.”

I vastly prefer Katharine Harris’s badly put on make-up to ScrewYourBorough’s put on face.
But they’re both losers.
I wanna vote JEB.

I Knew It All Along

My picture’s on the way:

Forget waxed chests and rock-hard abs. A new survey finds ladies like their men scruffy, a wee bit chubby – and definitely not a metrosexual.

Chick Magnet, that’s me:

Playgirl asked 2,000 of its readers what they find sexy in a man and the answers were surprising:
42% said they thought love handles were kind of sexy

Check

and 47% approved of chest hair.

Er, Ill have to borrow Ken’s Ronco Chest Toupee…

Rich playboys need not apply – only 4% of women said the size of a man’s wallet mattered. Metrosexuals are also out: 73% want a guy who is “rough around the edges.”

That’s me!

New York matchmaker Janis Spindel, a self-described specialist at setting up “highly successful, well-educated, attractive professionals,” confirmed the survey’s findings. “It’s scary, but women don’t care [about looks],” she said. “Men are very superficial and very shallow.”

Not surprisingly Janis is still single.

Read more »

Gaza

There’s an awful lot of emotion ~ anger, suffering, hopes and dreams, realized and not ~ in that word. We’re watching it play out across the news channels, talk shows, newspapers and blogs, and everyone’s got an opinion on why and what happens now. Zipping around this morning, I came across one of Stephen Green’s late night ramblings and it reminded me of something Major Dad had pointed out in Sunday’s Pravda. I haven’t seen these points anywhere in the rancorous back and forth, so I thought I’d do a little digging to see if this was an aberration. It’s not. And they’re not. These immutable numbers may well be the underpinnings of what makes the Gaza dream untenable*.

Why ‘Greater Israel’ Never Came to Be
By ETHAN BRONNER
FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?
But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their cherished goal – the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews – is not to be. The reason: not enough of them came…
…The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the world’s Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the world’s 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority – 5.26 million – make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.
Of course, Israel is a remarkably successful state, a democracy with a high standard of living and many proud accomplishments. Yet the misery that Zionists expected Jews elsewhere to suffer has not materialized. More than half a century after the establishment of the Jewish state, more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.

UPDATE: The Gateway Pundit has some heart breaking pictures.

Read more »

Pffft

Convicted Bali bombers get sentence reductions
Militant cleric gets four and a half months off in honor of independence day
JAKARTA, Indonesia – A militant cleric and 17 others convicted in the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali have received sentence reductions of several months to mark Indonesia’s independence day, wardens said Wednesday.
Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual head of the al-Qaida-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, was originally given a 30-month prison sentence for his role in the bombings, which killed many Australian tourists.
On Wednesday he was given a 4½-month sentence reduction, said Dedi Sutardi, the chief warden at Cipinang Prison in Jakarta, which means he could be released from prison in June 2006.

Of course, a 30 month sentence for the crime is a joke to begin with, so what’s a couple months less in the big scheme of things?

Another American Success Story

And I’m not just talking about the grill…

Foreman linked up with Salton in 1995 to promote the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine — a redesigned product that had been on the market without his name.
He didn’t expect much out of it other than 20 free grills for his various houses and one for his mother.
But within four years, 10 million grills had been sold and Salton paid Foreman $127.5 million and $10 million in stock to use his name for its product’s duration.

From this to this
is like the American dream, huh?

Read more »

I Predict Increased Fooooornication

Liberty University is now Sodom State:

Capri pants and flip-flops will be fine in class but shorts will remain forbidden as school starts next week at Liberty University, the college founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

The end is nigh.

Round Up The 85 Year Old White Grannies

Because, I mean, when 350 bombs go off we wouldn’t want to profile anyone, now would we?

Jamayetul Mujahedin, an Islamic militant group, claimed responsibility for the attacks in leaflets distributed around many of the blast sites.

Update: Dang, the grannies were busy overnight:

A pair of car bombs exploded Wednesday morning at a bus station in central Baghdad, killing at least 43 people and wounding 88, Iraqi police said.

Herr Summers Declares ‘Doitch Day’ at Die Schwillink

Sounds fun to us and how lovely to drag you all down to our level! As we routinely break into weird TOWACA patter of languages real and imagined, I thought I would suggest the favorite of my resources for German days.

Simply a wonderful language supplement, even for der alter Lustmolch*, like Herr Summers. Get one and eins, zwei, g’suffa!

Read more »

“You Bourgeois Bloodsucker,…

…you would be well advised to behave with discretion!”

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

Insults courtesy of the hardwork and enviable talent of Geoff Davis (and his NK-News),
evil capitalist genius.

Calif. man catalogs N. Korea’s rhetoric
Web site devoted to satirizing official news agency’s over-the-top writing
WASHINGTON – Few can denounce the ”imperialist ogre” or “kingpin of evil” as well as the writers at North Korea’s official news agency, and a California graphic artist is now cataloging their rhetorical masterpieces on a Web site.
Launched in May, www.nk-news.net boasts of having nearly every KCNA article since December 1996 — “over 50 megabytes of hard-core Stalinist propaganda … each article written in the unique and indelible style of the KCNA.”
Readers can get a taste of that KCNA style from recommended key word searches, such as “burning hatred,” which turns up 18 articles. The targets of that hot wrath include Japan, Yankees, ”U.S. imperialist ogres” and “class enemies.”
“Human scum” yields 25 KCNA reports applying that epithet to President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and diplomat John Bolton. Rumsfeld also keeps company with Japanese officials in the “political dwarf” category.

Oh Yeah, I BET They Do It Carefully…

To paraphrase that idiot Crodile Hunter ‘Danger, Danger, Danger!’

Crocodile blood may yield powerful new drugs
Tests show reptile’s immune system prevents life-threatening infections
SYDNEY – Scientists in Australia’s tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile’s immune system kills the HIV virus.
The crocodile’s immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.
“They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost always without infection,”…

Ah, reminds me of my younger days in the $500 pair o’jeans eco-system. I could wrangle for a free brewski with the best of them. A strong immune system is vital in the ongoing battle for dive domination.

…For the past 10 days Britton and Merchant have been carefully collecting blood from wild and captive crocodiles, both saltwater and freshwater species. After capturing a crocodile and strapping its powerful jaws closed the scientists extract blood from a large vein behind the head.

For reptiles here in Pensacola, we leave that to the nurse at the Escambia County Sheriff’s department.

If Kids Fail The Test, Make The Test Easier

Here’s a shocking headline:

Report: High school exit exams pressuring limited-English students

According to the story

Huge numbers of students who don’t speak or read English well may be denied a high school diploma based on graduation tests that do not fairly measure their skills, a study suggests.

Er, it seems to me that if they “don’t speak or read English well” then the test is measuring their skills quite fairly, no?

Graduation tests in math, reading and other subjects have become an increasingly common way for states to gauge whether students have earned a diploma — even though the content of the exams typically covers material learned through grades nine or 10, not grade 12.

Well maybe that’s because education is a cumulative process and what comes later builds on and requires what came before (“Gosh, I am sorry about forgetting the anesthesia, Mr. Bingley; You see, they covered that in the 1st year of Med School, and I only really needed to pay attention in my 3rd year to pass the Boards.”).

Some students may fail a math test, for example, because they lacked the English skills to understand the framing of a question, the report found. English learners also may not get enough time to learn the material covered on a graduation test because they spend a larger portion of their week learning English.

Sooo, I’m thinking they should learn English sooner, no? And friggin’ “bilingual classes” ain’t the place to do it.

Overall, states with exit exams are in dilemma — they’ve been challenged to hold all children to the same standards, but in doing so, they may withhold diplomas from many kids with limited English. Almost all states with exit exams implicitly require students to know English to graduate, but high schools often find immigrant students are just getting started.

What is the dilemma? They damn well better hold all kids to the same standards. Screw “implicitly” (which, as an aside, would make one hell of a bumper sticker); they should explicitly require students to know English to graduate.
Otherwise the only thing our ‘modern’ education system will have created is an entire generation of welfare recipients.

The Swilling Charges Past 18,000 Visitors.

Take THAT, oh ye who boasteth painfully upon thy readership.
In recognition of the honor of being vistor No. 18K,
we award Sir Rob of Appleton Lane, Crabbeshire
a jelly donut.

The Travesty in This Picture?

On the right’s an appealing 16 year old.

With 4 ~ count ’em! ~ FOUR pairs of $500 (yes, fivehunnertdollah) jeans in her arms.
Even if she buys a pair, there is something just so wrong with that.
Or am I jealous? Is it just me?

Stunned Fans? STUNNED?

As in shocked? No sir, I don’t see it.

Victoria Beckham — once known as Posh Spice — has stunned fans with an overseas interview in which she apparently admitted that she’s never read a single book. The confession — to the Spanish mag Chic — is particularly peculiar, because Beckham supposedly is the author of a book — while her hubby, soccer star David Beckham, is the supposed author of two..

Now, if you mean stunned as in BRAIN DEAD, then I’ll go along with it. And by the way, Bingley, I see there’ll be no more tête-à-têtes with your special friend. Pity, that.

Eva Longoria has been told to stop discussing vibrators. After the “Desperate Housewives” star confessed in an interview that she enjoys the devices, she says she’s received “truckloads” of them from Bingley, but adds that her bosses at ABC have told her to avoid the topic in future interviews.

Some Religious Humor

First a Catholic Joke:

A Catholic man is struck by a bus on a busy street. He is lying near death on the sidewalk as a crowd gathers. “A Priest, Somebody get me a Priest!” the man gasps.
Minutes drag on and no one steps out of the crowd.
A policeman checks the crowd and finally yells, “A PRIEST, PLEASE! Isn’t there a priest in this crowd to give this man his last rites?”
Finally, out of the crowd steps a little old Jewish man of at least 80 years of age.
“Mr. Policeman,” says the man, “I’m not a priest. I’m not even a Christian. But for 50 years now I’m living behind the Catholic Church on First Avenue, and every night I’m overhearing their services. I can recall a lot of it, and maybe I can be of some comfort to this poor man.” The policeman agrees, and clears the crowd so the man can get through to where the injured man lay.
The old Jewish man kneels down, leans over the prostrate man and says in a solemn voice:
“B-4…. I-19…. N-38…. G-54…. O-72….”

And a Protestant Joke:

A Protestant was shipwrecked, alone, on a tropical island. Finally, after many years of solitude a passing ship noticed him and sent a boat to pick him up. As they were coming away from the island one of the crew turned to the man and said “What are those three buildings?”
“Well,” said the man, “the one on the left is my house. And the one in the center is my church.”
“And the one on the right is the church I used to belong to.”

Y’Know, Major Dad Misses Those Days, Too

We were young, so in love, exhausted, raising Ebola. Things were ever so much…simpler then.

… I used to go shopping every day and prepare fresh meals. Our favourites were steak and kidney, tripe and onions, cow heel and beef and potted hoof. My husband never cooked, although he did do the washing-up when he could. My mother-in-law lived with us and she would look after the children when we went out dancing.

Wait…WAIT!!…Stop the music, stop the music. Major Dad never ‘washed up’ a freakin’ dish in his life!! Cow heel and hoof? Hoof and mouth? I hate that stuff!

And I’ll never cook it again, NEVER, do you hear me? Do YOU???
BuuWHA HAhahahaha! You can’t make me.
If you are so foolish as to try, I shall LAUGH at you and say,
“Potted hoof again, my A$$!!”
NEVER again, verstehen sie?
Ne. Ver.

Oo-RAH!

We’re all family.

Father of fallen Marine attends homecoming
CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (AP) — John Prazynski stood in the sea of welcome home signs and wondered why he was there.
Prazynski’s son, Lance Cpl. Taylor Prazynski, wasn’t going to be among the 900 Marines from the 3rd Battalion who arrived home Sunday. Taylor Prazynski, 20, was killed May 9 from an insurgent mortar shell…
…As late as last week, Prazynski was thinking about staying home so as not to turn a happy occasion somber for the other Marines and their families. But Taylor Prazynski’s company commander had called and told him that he should be there…
…A woman whose son is in Lima Company ran up to him.
“They’re here,” she said. “They’re here.”
He followed her into the middle of the crowd where a half-dozen Marines were hugging family members. He waited, and then someone told the Marines who he was. One after another, they stepped forward to embrace him.
“Your son lifted us,” said Taylor Prazynski’s squad leader, Sgt. Craig Corsi. “He was an awesome, awesome Marine.”
Prazynski’s soft voice faded with emotion.
“I appreciate you guys, and what you did.”

But who are we going to see on the news tonight?