A Couple Late Night Gems

…at Radioblogger. And no, this isn’t the Pope speaking…

“For 12 years I wandered in the wilderness, went through a divorce and struggled with questions about my direction.

Then suddenly and movingly, I had a revelation about the connection between the work I was doing as a public servant and my formative teachings. Indeed, the scriptures provided a firmer guide about values applied to life,” he said.

(Hint: It’s another pius guy who wandered the wilderness nattily attired in Orvis tweed breeks and a magic hat, no doubt.) Then Duane asks THE REALLY intriguing question…

Would Jack Bauer want the President’s proposed interrogation techniques legislation passed?

DAMN!
That’s a toughie.

NASA’s Mystery Object Identified

I’m not too worried about this latest news from NASA:

NASA delayed the planned landing of the space shuttle Atlantis by at least a day Tuesday after engineers spotted an object that may have accidentally flown out of its cargo bay.
Landing had been scheduled for Wednesday morning. But a poor weather forecast and concerns that something crucial floated out of the craft prompted the delay, space shuttle communicator Terry Virts told the crew.

The Space Mystery!
Really, it’s not that difficult to figure out folks. Given the clues over the last week about how one fumble-fingered astronaut kept dropping screws and bolts made it pretty easy to figure out which astronaut it was.

Which of course means the ‘mystery object’ can only be

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Don’t Let The Doorknob Hit Ya…

Where the good Lord split ‘ya:

The chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial has been replaced, Al-Iraqiya state television reported Tuesday. The station did not say why the change was made, but the Arab satellite stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera said Judge Abdullah al-Amiri was replaced at the request of the Iraqi prime minister.
The name of the new judge was not reported. There was no immediate official confirmation that the judge had been replaced.
Prosecutors had asked for al-Amiri to be replaced after he allowed Saddam to lash out at Kurdish witnesses. And last week, al-Amiri stirred further controversy when he told the former president that “you were not a dictator.”

Of course, now we’ll probably have a ‘mistrial’ declared and have to do all this shi’ite over again.

I Have to Question the Wisdom of the Guy

…in charge of the newsletter when this…

Heritage Tail, Bladder Balls, and Laura Ingalls Wilder

…is his subject line.

Vote Democratic in November!!

Let’s stop this sh*t from EVER repeating…

US Treasury Sets New 1-Day Tax Receipt Record Of $85.8 Billion
…Total tax receipts were $85.8 billion on Friday, compared with the previous one-day record of $71 billion on Sept. 15 of last year, the Treasury said.
Within the overall figure, corporate tax receipts Friday were $71.8 billion, up from $63 billion in September of last year.
…”In fact, Friday’s gross receipts were the largest in a single day in the nation’s history – 20% higher than receipts on the same quarterly tax payment date last year,” Quarles said in a statement.

…itself. It’s sucks! It’s a travesty! It’s despicable!! And it’s a lie!!
I’ll whip them into shape when I get the big desk.

Awash in cash ~ who do they think they’re fooling?

Argh. ‘Tis a Fine Tide t’ Talk Like an Auld Sea Dog

An’ ya will er I’ll be splitting ye from yer skippers ta ye jacks. Avast scurvy dogs! How many leagues to me grog-filled Skull & Scuppers? Me mate,ol Rumpot, wants to swill a pint or two of grog afore we mans the braces! Use them Anglais ta Pirate translators I be wavin’ so ye’ll have a foggy fer the Swilling presented to yer honours…in PIRATE. A wee sample ta tickle yer grey matter.

…”Muslims be havin’ all this while felt oppressed, an’ th’ statement by th’ pope sayin’ he be sorry about th’ angry reaction be inadequate t’ calm th’ anger — more so on accoun’ o’ he be th’ highest leader o’ th’ Vatican,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar spake.
….”This has gravely hurt th’ feelings o’ th’ Muslims across th’ world, includin’ them from China,” Chen Guangyuan, president o’ Islamic Association o’ China, be quoted as sayin’ in an interview wi’ th’ Xinhua news agency.
…”We be lily livered,” spake Sonia Kobatazi, a Christian Lebanese…

When Muslims get “gravely hurt feelings”, they usually ‘gravely hurt’ swabbies aft. – Posted by tree huggin’ lassie

Aye ~ that the Muslim horn swollgin’ scallywags do.

Argh.

While The Prime Minister’s Away

The Army will play:

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) — Tanks have been seen rolling through the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, on Tuesday amid rumors of an attempted coup, witnesses tell CNN.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra — currently at the U.N. headquarters in New York — went on a government-owned TV station and declared a state of emergency, The Associated Press reported.
According to officials at the Thai mission at the United Nations, Thaksin has moved up his speech to the General Assembly to Tuesday night and will return to Bangkok after his address.

Better get that expense report in quickly…

Another Religion of Pieces Joke

“Honor” killings.

Honour killing claims life of six-year-old
A six-year-old girl was killed in an arson attack on her family home by men who disapproved of a relationship her older brother was having with a teenager, a court heard today.
Alisha Begum, the youngest of 12 children in her Bangladeshi family, became the innocent victim of an attempt to warn her sibling off seeing the 15-year-old when a blaze swept through her Birmingham home earlier this year, prosecutors said.

Those have always been mutually exclusive terms in my book. But ~ unlike the Muslim protestors at Westminister yesterday calling for the Pope’s MURDER ~ should you be inclined carry a hand lettered, anti-ISLAMIC HONOR KILLING sign to Crown Court and stand on the sidewalk with it…I’ll bet you’re hauled off to see the same barrister prosecuting this case.

Do NOT Run! We Are Your Friends!

Sure you are. We all saw the movie, pal.

NASA Tracks Mystery Object Near Atlantis Shuttle
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA mission controllers are tracking a mystery object hovering between the space shuttle Atlantis and Earth, and traveling at roughly the same speed as the orbiter, agency officials said Tuesday.
“Right now they’re just tying to figure out exactly what it is, how far away it is,” NASA spokesperson Kimberly Harle told SPACE.com. “It’s pretty much assessing the whole situation.”
Harle said that at 2:45 a.m. EDT (0645 GMT), just after Atlantis completed a check of its reaction control thrusters, the instrumentation and communications officer at NASA’s shuttle Mission Control room at Johnson Space Center noted an object between the orbiter and Earth, and traveling at about the same speed of the spacecraft.

NASA’s doing the prudent thing.

NASA Postpones Shuttle Landing Due to Mystery Object, Weather
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA will postpone the planned Wednesday landing of the space shuttle Atlantis and its six-astronaut crew to further assess a mystery object seen floating between the orbiter and Earth earlier today.

I’m pretty sure I know who it is. And I wish I could say “don’t worry…”

“Letter From America”…

Arms and legs from Britain??

NEW YORK (AP) — After “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke died, errors in the medical records accompanying his body fell through the cracks, one by one.
His name was misspelled. His birthdate was off by 10 years. His Social Security number wasn’t even close. The name of his doctor, contact information for a relative, the time and cause of his death: all wrong.
None of that prevented the removal and sale of the 95-year-old’s arms and legs. The fate of his pelvis and other tissue remains a mystery.

It’s amazing the errors/deceipts/frauds this case has highlighted in the cadaver biz:

…Where Kittredge’s name might have appeared on the records, there is instead a bogus name and phone number for a family member who supposedly agreed to donate her father’s body parts for tissue transplants.
Donated cadaver tissue is used in more than a million procedures a year in the United States to repair bad backs, fix ailing knees and replace heart valves. Most of these operations are safe and do tremendous good, but tissue that has not been treated properly or is taken from unscreened donors can infect a patient with hepatitis, HIV and other potentially deadly infections.
…The documents say that a person named “Susan Quint” of the Bronx — identified as Cooke’s daughter — consented to giving BTS the body parts. But Kittredge is Cooke’s only daughter, and she lives in Vermont, where she is a minister.
In addition, Cooke died of lung cancer, but the records list his cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest.” He was 95. BTS said he was 85.
The FDA sets no age and few health limits on donors, but some tissue banks consider cancer a disqualifying condition. It’s not known whether the disease can spread to a recipient.
The time the body was recovered was also fudged. Cooke died just after midnight March 30, 2004, but BTS lists it as 6:45 a.m. making the 9:30 p.m. recovery time look shorter and the body fresher and more suitable for processing.

Do you really want parts from a 95 year old guy who died of cancer implanted in to you?

Stoned On The Road Again…

Willie’s stoned out on the road again:

LAFAYETTE, Louisiana (AP) — Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop Monday morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said.
The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star’s tour bus, state police said in a news release.
“When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana,” the news release said.
A search of the bus produced 11/2 pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of narcotic mushrooms, according to state police.

11/2 pounds of pot and .2 pounds of ‘shrooms and he gets charged with a friggin’ misdemeanor???
The next time some celebrity goes on and on about what a fascist regime we live in, remember that.
Oh, and I guess all the peyote explains Willie’s pick for President.

What a Helpful Headline

…from Newsweek.

A Pope’s Holy War

Of course, they ask “what was he thinking” after confirming papist jihad in print for all who live in an “out of context” world.
I haven’t gotten as far as St. Peter’s Koranic toilet paper, but I’ll bet the mullahs will have thought of that already and will SWEAR they read it in there somewhere, too.
F*ckwads.

Via Tim Blair

…a timely Bill Leak cartoon.

It’s not funny because it’s true.

An Al Qaeda-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were “doomed,” as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence.
…The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as “the worshipper of the cross” saying “you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. … We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword.”
…However, State Minister Mehmet Aydin, who oversees the religious affairs in Turkey, said he expected Turkish authorities to cancel the visit if Benedict does not offer a full apology.
“We are expecting the authorities to unilaterally cancel this visit. The pope’s coming to Turkey isn’t going to foment the uniting of civilizations, but a clash of civilizations,” he said.
The secretary-general of the Turkish HUKUK-DER law association submitted a request to the Justice Ministry asking that the pope be arrested upon entering Turkey.
…”Muslims have all this while felt oppressed, and the statement by the pope saying he is sorry about the angry reaction is inadequate to calm the anger — more so because he is the highest leader of the Vatican,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said.
….”This has gravely hurt the feelings of the Muslims across the world, including those from China,” Chen Guangyuan, president of Islamic Association of China, was quoted as saying in an interview with the Xinhua news agency.
…“We are afraid,” said Sonia Kobatazi, a Christian Lebanese…

When Muslims get “gravely hurt feelings“, they usually ‘gravely hurt’ people back. It’s inconceivable to me that major dad and I have batted around this horrible hypothetical more than once since the Pope’s speech, but we have.

“What happens if one of these whack jobs (and/or their toadies) offs the old guy?”

I mean, what does? Outrage, fist waving, desk pounding with a little ‘he brought that sh*t on himself’ sprinkled on top from the apologists? Who avenges the Pope? Who speaks for His Holiness while the Islamic world dances in the street at the murder of a truly peaceful man? More importantly, who would lay the hammer of God down if the unthinkable happened? There is no mechanism for retribution and justice.
I really think everyone will be really mad and that’s about it. It’s terrifying.
UPDATE: One more for the roll call…

A notorious Muslim extremist told a demonstration in London yesterday that the Pope should face execution.

…outside Westminster Cathedral no less. Can’t you go to jail for yelling “GO BACK where you CAME from!” outside an Islamic mosque in the U.K.? So what gives?
Macabrely enough, his line reminds me of Caiaphus in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.

CAIAPHAS
Fools, you have no perception!
The stakes we are gambling are frighteningly high!
We must crush him completely,
So like John before him, this Jesus must die.
For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die.
ALL (inside)
Must die, must die, this Jesus must die.
CAIAPHAS
So like John before him, this Jesus must die.
ALL (inside)
Must die, must die, this Jesus must, Jesus must, Jesus must die!

major dad Says “The Rat Bastards“

I agree.

A nun shot four times at the Somali hospital where she worked forgave her killers as she lay dying, colleagues said Monday in the wake of her slaying, which has focused attention on Islamic radicalism in the Horn of Africa.
Sister Leonella, 65, muttered the words “I forgive, I forgive” in Italian after being shot by gunmen Sunday, the Rev. Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at a memorial Mass for the nun in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

“I Told You to Come Alone! So Who Are These Guys?” REDUX

“My network”
“The French.”

Chirac calls for UN to scale down Iran sanctions
Jacques Chirac, France’s president, could be heading for another clash with the US over the Middle East, after pushing the United Nations security council to scale down its threat of sanctions against Iran.
…”We must first find an agenda for negotiations, then during these negotiations I suggest that, on the one hand, the six (the US, the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia) renounce involving the security council and Iran renounces uranium-enrichment during the negotiations,” said the French president.

Bean Counters in Bean Town

…have bean proven horribly wrong.

Big Dig project managers persuaded the designer of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel ceiling to reduce by half the number of bolts supporting each ceiling hanger, The Boston Sunday Globe reported.
The newspaper reported it obtained a 1998 memo in which an official of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the joint venture that supervised the Big Dig, expressed confidence that two bolts would hold up the concrete ceiling panels.
…The ceiling designer, Gannett Fleming Inc., had planned to use four-bolt anchor plates.
“Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see why (the ceiling designer) requires a 4 bolt anchor plate when a 2 bolt anchor plate would be sufficient,”Robert Richard of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff wrote.

Not knowing the Bechtel guy’s background, I’ll just assume the ceiling designers were probably an engineering firm. I think they get taught to figure ‘how many bolts per bolted thingee doodle’ in school. (Right, Jeffs?)

Richard’s memo, dated June 23, 1998 and addressed to Gary Baxter, also of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, said Gannett Fleming should either cut the number of bolts in half or submit calculations”proving that 2 anchor bolts do not work,”the newspaper reported.

That’s a helluva choice ~ prove Richards right OR prove him…right. Sure glad it’s not my name on that memo. I wonder if he got a bonus for cost cutting. And I’m curious why the design firm backed down.
Ooooh. Sucks to be them.

The Pope Murders Children And Canadians

Clearly his insensitive remarks about violence and Muhammed are behind this latest outbreak of Presbyterianism:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked Canadian troops handing out candy to children in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four NATO soldiers and wounding many others, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.

Presented Without Editorial Comment

Man rejects first penis transplant
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Monday September 18, 2006
The Guardian
Chinese surgeons have performed the world’s first penis transplant on a man whose organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year. The incident left the man with a 1cm-long stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse. “His quality of life was affected severely,” said Dr Weilie Hu, a surgeon at Guangzhou General Hospital.
Doctors spent 15 hours attaching a 10cm penis to the 44-year-old patient after the parents of a brain-dead man half his age agreed to donate their son’s organ.
…Although the operation was a surgical success, surgeons said they had to remove the penis two weeks later. “Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off,” Dr Hu said. An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body.
Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who performed the world’s first face transplant on a woman who had been attacked by a dog this year, said psychological factors were a serious issue for many patients receiving certain “allografts”, or organs from donors. “Psychological consequences of hand and face allografts show that it is not so easy to use and see permanently a dead person’s hands, nor is it easy to look in a mirror to see a dead person’s face,” he wrote in the journal. “Clearly, in the Chinese case the failure at a very early stage was first psychological. It involved the recipient’s wife and raised many questions.”

Allah Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do

…when ~ in his name ~ shooting a defenseless, geriatric nun four times in the back…

An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.
Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.

…makes you a man.
Michelle Malkin has thoughtfully provided Pope Benedict’s email address.
benedictxvi-at-vatican.va

I Wouldn’t Be So Quick to Invoke John Paul’s Name

…my little Muslim friend.

“We hope that Pope Benedict XVI will follow the steps of Pope John Paul II, who carried out a series of constructive steps to conduct an interfaith dialogue,” Al Sabah said.

Perhaps it wasn’t in your local paper. I can assure you he had no patience with autocrats ~ religious or otherwise. He would gladly visit to minister, saint that he was…but it was at your peril.

And sometimes it was really, really hard to keep your desk when he left.
UPDATE and BUMP: Goodie. He (Pope Benedict) stuck to his “I’m sorry you don’t have the sense Allah gave you” guns.

Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was “deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn’t reflect his personal opinion.
“These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought,” Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.
…“At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims,” the pope said Sunday.

Diptera Made Me Think of This

…with his thoughtful post on not-so-thoughtful dressing by teenagers or of small children by parents who should know better but wish only to be known as ‘with it’, regardless of the cost later down the road. This photo of local HIGHSCHOOLERS was in the paper this morning. major dad couldn’t help commenting that if one of them had been our daughter…

…quite possibly there would be a problem you wouldn’t want to be within 5 miles of our humble abode when major daddy saw the picture over morning java. Even more horrific, I can’t imagine Bingley realizing what Bunny Bear wasn’t wearing to the game the night before.
Even our local columnist was channeling the DET today. I sense a trend.
But I’m quite sure we’re in the minority, as Diptera points out. There wouldn’t be an industry if everyone made sure their kids were dressed appropriately. But that would mean making an effort and perhaps an ugly scene laying down the sartorial law. Parents these days are consumed by their children fitting in and where they have to be in an hour, so big deal MacKenzie looks like an even cheaper Madonna ~ the old girl’s still raking in the dough, right?

Scotland Part 4: Whoa Nessie!

Sorry about the delay, but here’s Day Four in Scotland. As always, I’ll put most of the pictures below the fold to save both of us on bandwidth.
Anyhow, if you’re not going to be golfing or distillerying (neither of which were in the cards on this trip, sadly) then the point of going to Scotland is Loch Ness. From this point on, we were amazingly lucky in the weather. Whereas in the first three days we had typical misty-rainy-at-any-given-moment-weather, from this point on the weather was gorgeous: mid 70s with bright sunshine. All you SUV drivers, I salute you!
Loch Ness is just a short drive southwest from Inverness, and the main road hugs the western shore. You drive through the village of Drumnadrochit, which I can only describe as South of the Border with buttered sandwiches and crisps. Its main attraction is the Loch Ness 2000 Exhibition Center (Centre, dammit!), which is a suitably cheesey ‘investigation’ into the myth of Nessie. But they do have a great gift shop and a huge selection of whiskies, which you can shop at without paying the money to see the exhibit.
About a mile farther on down the road you reach Urquhart Castle, which has the finest visitor center/centre you will ever visit. It has a great view of the Loch, a cafeteria, a decent gift shop, historical exhibit, yadda-yadda, but what sets it above the rest is the film they show. You go into a darkened room and the film begins, detailing the history of the Great Glen and Urquhart Castle. The film goes over the various forces that fought for and controlled the castle, and ends with the garrison in the 18th century deciding to blow up the castle as they leave so that it will not fall into Jacobite hands. Boom! The charges go off, and the castle is in ruins. And then the lights stay off but you notice that the screen is rising? What the? And the curtains behind it are opening? And then you see

the actual ruins. It is very well done and very cool.

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A Note to the Islamic Apologists in the Blogosphere

If you must use examples during your fretful arguments to cast the Catholic Church in the worst light possible and blame it for all the world’s ills, stick to this century ~ Pope Pius, child predators, etc.
When all else invariably and inevitably fails (alas, including logic) and all tangents lead not to Rome…

“but Catholics had the Inquisition“

…is NOT the default choice.

On a lighter Inquisition historical note ~ Torquemada died today in 1498.

Hold On Little Doggies!!

Pope sorry for remarks

This al-Reuters headline is a little misleading. Lemme guess why…

Pope Benedict is sorry Muslims were offended by a speech on Islam that provoked fury around the world and led to calls for the leader of the Catholic church to apologize, an aide said on Saturday.
“The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers,” said Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in a statement.

He’s just sorry they don’t have a clue and not sorry for what he said. The New York Times could use a little schooling in comprehension.

The New York Times said in an editorial the Pope must issue a “deep and persuasive” apology for quotes used in his speech.
“The world listens carefully* to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly,” it said.

* One would guess ‘not’ at the Times.
The German chancellor gets it.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German politicians defended his comments, saying he had been misunderstood.
“It was an invitation to dialogue between religions,” she told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper in an interview.

Very Early This Morning Two Years Ago

…Ivan was busy blowing through major dad’s office.

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