Pig Of The Day

From our new friends at Britishbacon.com
Wonder how long before some EuroPanel makes them change that URL…

I Could Argue About Quite a Few of These

ASME’s TOP 40 MAGAZINE COVERS OF THE PAST 40 YEARS

The Dawning of an Age of Personal Responsibility?

Or at least the waning of the Age of Corporate Coercion?

Supreme Court rejects tobacco ruling appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Monday the government’s appeal aimed at reinstating a potential $280 billion penalty in its landmark racketeering case against cigarette makers.
Without comment, the justices denied a request by the Justice Department to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that barred the government from seeking $280 billion in past tobacco profits as a legal remedy for decades of alleged fraud by the tobacco industry.

Finding Friendly Skies to Fly

…in the current climate can be a challenge. This weekend could pose some problems, too.

Have any of the ticketing geniuses at Delta and Continental taken a recent look at the Mississippi coastline? Or at New Orleans? Who can make realistic travel plans within the next 20-odd days? Who needs these hassles?

Miller, Schmiller, Plame, Flame ~ I’m Confused

I’ve read read this article 6 times and still can’t figure out WTF happened. Miller knew and then she didn’t. The New Yawk Times thought she knew, but didn’t know for sure, so they never knew one way or the other what she really knew. Scooter Libbey has a goofy name for a grown man. Karl Rove is Satan. Saddest quote in the whole thing?

“The Times felt helpless,” Rosen said. “It couldn’t print the news. It was very much trapped.”

Sometimes it’s a blessing in disguise and the Times should try can’t ‘print the news‘ more often. The Washington Post has it’s own credibility, ‘truth in reporting’ problems. After noting “Bloggers were much blunter“, what ‘blogger’ do they quote first?

“This is as believable as Woodward and Bernstein not recalling who Deep Throat was,” wrote columnist Arianna Huffington.

Word of the Day

pomaceous \poh-MAY-shuss\ adjective
1 : of or relating to apples
*2 : resembling a pome

A much kinder, better sounding word than “pear shaped”, not that I’m resentful or anything.
*The word, which is ultimately derived from Late Latin “pomum” (meaning “apple”), was originally used of apples and things relating to apples, but later it was also applied to things that look like pears. (Pears, like apples, belong to the pome family.)

Yabba Freakin’ Doo

I don’t wanna see Wilma on a beach anywhere near here, thank you.

UPDATE: Statistics are a wonderful thing. NOT.

Oh, if this hits the U.S., specifically Florida, eventually as a category 3 or greater, history says we are long overdue as the frequency of late hits of category 3 or greater since 1965 is 1 in 13 years. From 1900 to 1964, it was 1 in 3.

Bangla-cola Update: Breaking the Code

This is our CITGO on the corner. After all this time, we’ve finally figured out that this:

…means

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Chicks And Beer

Well, to be precise, we’re talking 1 chicken and some beer. Yes, it’s time to cook the fabled Beer Can Chicken!
Let’s see, what do we need:
1 whole chicken
1 can of beer
2 tablespoons Worchestershisterinnagoddadavidashire sauce
2 tablespoons cajun spices (I made the mistake of buying the Commie™ Whole Foods Brand. Do not repeat my mistake. Thanks be to Prudhomme I had some Konriko to add to it to liven it up a bit)
5 more cans of beer
1 smallish onion
1 beer can chicken holding gizmo

Er, the other pot was from lunch. Ignore it and it will go away.
Like all Cordon Glue chefs I have chosen my ingredients with care. This brand of beer was chosen because it reminded me of an incident from my college days when this brand was just introduced. Back in those more enlightened times the consumption of beer (hereinafter refered to as “The Usual Beverage” or simply TUB) was not so regulated on college grounds as it is today. Heck, we were served TUB in the dining hall; whereas now it’s prohibited within 50 miles of any college students. Sigh. Anyhow, as I was saying before I was so rudely interupted, this particular brand of TUB, being the new TUB on the block, decided that the best way to garner brand awareness and market share was to sponsor lots of activities in conjunction with the various fraternities and sororities that lived for corporate freebies at Mr. Jefferson’s University. So one fine spring weekend there were hundreds of sorority ladies drinking this brand and galavanting about the Grounds wearing free t-shirts that had this brand name boldly emblazoned across the front.
Amazingly, it took a few hours before they realized this was not something they really wanted to do.
Anyhow, back to the vittles: (warning: if you’re on dial-up you may want to skip, as there are a lot of photos)

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‘Tis An Angry Sea, Laddie

Not having the resources of The Proffessor™, my little digital camera doesn’t do 3-D and 40 megapickles, but those are 8 foot swells that we’re rolling over off of Sandy Hook during the midst of our 8 Day Storm last week. We kept thinking we were headed towards Gilligan’s Island.
Yeah, yeah, I know 8 footers are nothing for you Seafarers out there, but in Raritan Bay they are something.

‘Splain Me This

After all the death, destruction and dire warnings about the Iraqi Constitutional referendum ~ when it actually goes off without a hitch or buckets of blood, when over 70% of registered voters have purple fingers (Even Sunnis voted in surprising numbers!) and there was very little accompanying violence from Zarqhawi’s thugs ~ WHY is loser a$$ Lewis Farrakhan’s 150K(!) strong ‘More Millions‘ march the big picture and lead (all DAY Sunday) story on MSNBC? WHY is THAT??
Is it because this is a SCARY picture…
or a bitterly disappointing one for our boys in the MSM?

Bless Her Brave Young Heart

Vivian Malone Jones, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama led to George Wallace’s infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” in 1963, died Thursday. She was 63.

…she recalled meeting with Wallace in 1996, when the former governor was in frail health…
“I asked him why did he do it,” she said. “He said he did what he felt needed to be done at that point in time, but he would not do that today. At that point, we spoke — I spoke — of forgiveness.”

I can’t imagine the courage it took to take that walk that day.

Presenting Paddling Piggies as Our Proprietary ‘Pork Post’

Have Gun, Will Shoot

Two concurrent stories on our local ABC affiliate seem to cancel one another out. A home invasion ring cracked…

Five people – including three teenagers – are facing charges after a pair of robberies in Okaloosa County.
Timothy Whitaker and Jaymie Greek, both aged 16. . . 14-year-old Kace Zuidhoek. . 20-year-old Dean Huffer. . And 23-year-old Juan Alvarez, whose photo was not available. . Are all charged with Home Invasion Robbery. .
Whitaker and Greek are also accused of using an airgun and knife to injure one of the victims. The Sheriff’s Department says more arrests are possible.

…followed by a seeming attempt to stir up controversy.

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Required Reading For Every Yankee Fan

…while chanting the mantra “Steinbrenner SUCKS!! Steinbrenner SUCKS!!” It will be a cleansing exercise.

…With general manager Brian Cashman almost certainly and manager Joe Torre quite possibly making their great escape from the Bronx, there will be no obscuring the view to the man at the top, the man most responsible for the Yankees’ recent flops.
It is George Steinbrenner’s rapaciousness that has led to a string of questionable and, in many cases, highly regrettable personnel decisions. Once upon a time, the Yankees were content to bring aboard complementary talent to bolster the classiest roster of superstars in the game.

He Was Strong…I Was Weak

He had that smile…and that pumpkin.
His name…was BOB.
And I knew right then I had to have him.

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Porcine Post of the Day

And how appropriate ~ shamelessly lifted from the BBC.

A Little Energy Clarification

On one hand we’ve been hearing these rosy “the pipelines from the Gulf are fully operational” and on the other, secondhand reports from a cousin who works for Chevron that they got schmacked badly. So what’s really up? The weekly fuel inventory report contained some industry stats.

Chevron Corp. said Wednesday it has restored oil and gas production in the Gulf to about 40 percent of its pre-hurricane levels. Also, Royal Dutch Shell Ltd. said its 340,000-barrel-a-day Deer Park, Texas, facility was already up and running, boosting output before the winter.
But Exxon Mobil Corp. said its shut-in natural gas volumes had decreased from 545 million cubic feet a day last week to a current 495 million cubic feet a day. Around 50,000 barrels of oil production remain halted, ExxonMobil said.
As of Wednesday, 70 percent of daily oil production in the Gulf and 59 percent of natural gas production remained blocked as platforms and rigs recover, according to the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service.
Since Aug. 26, the region has lost more than 55 million barrels of oil, or 10.2 percent of its annual oil production, and 277 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or 7.6 percent of annual gas production, MMS said.

Pipelines up are all well and good only if there’s something to run through them.

Never, EVER

…marry a guy named “Jim Bob”.

Arkansas Mother Gives Birth to 16th Child
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Michelle Duggar just delivered her 16th child, and she’s already thinking about doing it again…
…The baby’s father, Jim Bob Duggar, a former state representative, said Wednesday that mother and child were doing well.

Lisa, did you vote for this guy?

“I Think They Didn’t Want Anything to Go Wrong, Perhaps,

… So They Only Did the Easy Parts”

A bold, plain spoken, widely admired Marine of my aquaintance, who was instrumental in the introduction and stand-up phase of the Osprey, was once queried at a party by exhuberant Bell executives about how he liked their ‘program’. He told them…

“It’s a train wreck.”

…which blew every chance we had of EVER living in a Dallas McMansion when he retired, BUT I was SO proud of him (::My Hero::). The look on their corporate faces was PRICELESS. In shock. To this day, Bell and the hierarchy aren’t trying very hard to prove him wrong.

By almost every objective measurement, the aircraft — a Marine Corps MV-22 Block A model — performed significantly better than in the last round of operational testing in 1999-2000.
But the report notes that little realistic testing was done at night and in severely dusty environments, and it expressed continued concern about the aircraft’s ability to conduct aggressive defensive maneuvers. Critics argue that the aircraft can become unstable if pilots have to maneuver sharply out of certain situations.
In tests against simulated enemy defenses, the report states, “pilots noted that the current flight restrictions on aircraft maneuvering in airplane mode…restricted the aircraft’s ability to perform defensive maneuvers.” More testing is needed “in realistic tactical approaches to landing zones in high threat areas,” the report added.

Not being able to get the hell out of Dodge when they’re shooting at you could be considered a BAD thing, given what Marines do for a living. There’s more. The article, in it’s entirety, is in the extended section.

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Our Mayor Noggin Quote of the Week

With much of his city still vacant, Nagin launched his campaign. “My big message is: You can come back to the city,” Nagin told a group of about 40 at a shelter here, a three-hour drive from New Orleans. He urged the crowd to “get back to the red beans and rice and gumbo and all those things that you love.”

Let’s ask the Mayor when his family’s comin’ back from the new digs in Dallas, shall we? I mean, if it’s so great and all. He’s also touting how safe the streets are.

Crime is lower than it has been in a hundred years, he told the crowd

(Duh, they ate the criminals and the city’s a GHOST TOWN.) It’s falling on deaf ears because, while businesses are desperate for workers, there’s no place to live if you go back. Then again, a lot of the folks who’d never gotten out of New Orleans before in their lives are pretty happy where they’ve wound up. Of course the picture wouldn’t be complete without the whack jobs like:

…Cyril Neville. The youngest Neville Brother walked onstage at Madison Square Garden wearing a silent message on his T-shirt: “Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans.”

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Speaking of Ms. Miers

…Beldar has some advice for her, which I think should be required reading for anyone having to step in front of those pontificating a$$holes in leather chairs.

…For one thing, not one of the senators likely to be firing off hostile questions to Ms. Miers has a tenth of the dignity and aplomb that John Houseman had as the fictional (but entirely realistic) Professor Kingsfield.
But if it happens, I hope that Ms. Miers will have the panache to say something like, “You … are a SON OF A BITCH, Sen. Schumer!”

Would it were so, as it sorely needs to be done.
Oh hell. Give me busfare and I’ll go do it.

You Know

…I could give a rat’s patoot if Harriet Miers ever went to church a day in her life. I only care if she reveres the Constitution and will listen carefully and dispassionately to any arguments made before the Court. But you can’t flood the airwaves, touting how devout she is in a blatant effort to suck-up to the religious Right, yet then expect us to also believe that she never, ever said a word in passing about…you know. Like “…but I never inhaled”. The White House is handling this very, very badly.

A Moment of Eyeball Rolling Disgust

Does anybody besides me have a problem with a twice divorced mother of three wearing the whole white schlmear for wedding number three? I know we should all expect tackytackytacky, but God, wouldn’t it be refreshing if they surprised us once in a while?

Air Traffic Controllers’ Strike Ring a Bell?

That Northwest Airlines mechanics’ strike is looking even more like pure genius…NOT.

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