Not Calling Your Tune

CNS:

Stimulus Bill Would Discriminate Against Religious Activity on Campus, Conservative Groups Say

President Obama’s economic stimulus bill would forbid colleges — both religious and secular — from receiving stimulus funds to improve facilities that are used for religious purposes.

The provision is found in the Higher Education Modernization, Renovation and Repair section (Sec. 9302) of both the House and Senate versions of the bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

According to the provision, none of funds of the $6 billion allotted to the renovation, modernization, or repair of college buildings may be used for facilities “(i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or school department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.”

I count this as a blessing (no pun intended).  The first penny that the Federal government gives your faith group purportedly for infrastructure will buy the rope they use to strangle your necks and control you in every way they can.

Four More Months, Four More Months

Great, now we’ll have to hear the media go on and on about the DTV transition for another four months.

Miracle of Miracles: (Some) State Senate Republicans Show Parts of Anatomy Known For Fortitude

Sen. Scott Rupp (R-Wentzville) is going to lead a filibuster.  Most of the Senate Republican powers that be, including Majority Leader Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) and last year’s nominee for Treasurer, Brad Lager (R-Maryville) seem to support Martinez, but I get the feeling that Rupp wouldn’t be making noises about talking her nomination to death unless he had at least nine other Senators on board.  Meaning that at least ten members of the State Senate have spines and nads.

Sen. Robin Wright Jones (D-St. Louis) is most on Martinez’s side, though that shows you how stupid Miss Jones is, because the new St. Louisans that Miss Martinez would like to see St. Louis have would hurt St. Louis’s black population most actuely in the pocketbook and in other ways.

Tomm Looney: Voice of Progressive Talk Radio

Clear Channel is thinking of flipping a Miami AM from libtard talk to Fox Sports Radio.  Local libtards complaining about right-wingers, except this is Fox Sports Radio:  The most stridently and vociferously political personality on FSR (In spite of the name, is a Clear Channel production) is Tomm Looney, a left-winger.  Who sounds like he’s 70 years old but isn’t really half that.

Fun With Weed and Meth

P-D Race:  Is “white trash” a racist expression?

Yeah, and also the unofficial motto of Jefferson County.

P-D Tech:  Have you considered switching Web browsers?

No, I’m happy with Firefox.

P-D:  Mo. AG to investigate Office Depot

When asked by the media for the reason, Chris Koster said that he was “takin’ care of business.”

P-D:  Mo GOP calls Sec of State Carnahan “a Caroline Kennedy echo”

Well, the analogy doesn’t quite hold, because at least Mrs. Antolinez thought she had to ride her dead father to at least one lesser public office before becoming a U.S. Senator, that’s more than I can say for Mrs. Schlossberg.

P-D:  Quinn’s coming-out party in D.C.

I hope that means he’s gay, otherwise he wants to pick your pocket.

IHT:  Republican [National Committee] leader vows to mix it up with Obama

They’ll have a big fight on the one issue they disagree about.

CNS:  Boxer Says House Will ‘Follow the Science’ on Global Warming Legislation

But not on racial equality legislation, there they’ll continue to believe in superstitious fads instead of racial differences.

CNS:  Herbie Hancock Willing to Serve as Obama’s Secretary of Culture

He might get the job if it doesn’t go to Herbie the Car.

P-D:  Donations poured in after last year’s Kirkwood shootings

Any money from cookie bake sales?

KSDK:  5 elementary school boys found with heroin, thought it was candy

But later learned it was Afghanistan’s GDP.

KSDK:  Fans of Texas school decide to cheer for opposing team

This is high school football in Texas we’re talking about here.  I prefer my organs, but someone else’s will do in a pinch.

KSDK:  Diverse group to advise faith-based office

If the group is truly diverse, then it has to include some atheists and agnostics.

SIL:  Saluki football team expects to sign plenty of high school players

Who else but high schoolers would a college football team sign?

Reuters:  Kyrgyzstan starts moves to close U.S. airbase

Good, because we don’t need military bases in countries we can’t pronounce or spell correctly.

Politico:  [Barney] Frank to bankers: People hate you

So saith Mr. Congeniality.

Politico:  The lonely life of conservative comics

Screw that, I’m having more fun than ever.  After all, what would Voltaire have been without his Paris?

News Factor Network:  AOL Picks Former Yahoo Executive To Lead Ad Sales

Pardon me, but wouldn’t this be like Bernie Madoff hiring Ken Lay to run his accounting department?

AP/Obama:  Do you know where your kid is? Check Google’s maps

The frightening this is that you don’t, but Larry and Sergey do.

AP/Obama:  Dope-smoking among teens down in many countries

The abstinence message is getting through:  That they should abstain from smoking weed until they have either an Olympic gold medal or an NFL contract.

Reuters:  Methamphetamine use costs U.S. $23 billion a year

Imagine, the tax money that could have been collected from this productivity could have funded a whole water slide park on the outskirts of Podunkville.

AP/Obama: Man celebrates birthday with 24-hour treadmill run

“It seems like one of the gym employees came up to me 23 hours and 30 minutes ago that my time is up.”

Take Two:  AP/Obama:  Man celebrates birthday with 24-hour treadmill run

And got a warning from the staff when he forgot to spray off the treadmill with the disinfectant spritz bottle.

Take Three:  AP/Obama:  Man celebrates birthday with 24-hour treadmill run

If he spent 24 hours on the treadmill, I hope for his sake that he followed it up with the world’s longest shower.

The Case Against Michael Phelps Winning Any More Olympic Medals

He seems to run afowl of the law soon after the Olympics.  It was the drunk driving thing four years ago, and now it’s the weed.

Then again, it seems to me that the only reason the Sheriff of the county where Phelps allegedly smoked weed is going to ask for charges is that he wants his name to be an answer to a question in a future issue of Trivial Pursuit.  Like the dickhead Illinois State Rep who was the only vote out of 118 in the House to vote against impeaching former Gov. Blagojevich, some people will do anything to get attention.  My bet is that Sheriff wants to be Governor.

UPDATE 2/6: Perhaps the Sheriff has another reason for ratting the sabres.  I noticed that he is the Sheriff of Richland County, S.C., where Phelps’s alleged weed smoking took place.  The County contains Columbia, S.C., and his heavily black.  My guess?  He’s taking heat over enforcing the law, i.e. having a disproportionate impact on blacks, and he’s mouthing off about Phelps in order to make it seem that he wants to punish whites, too.

Day Off

Can you believe it?  He wants to require city and county governments in South Carolina that do not recognize Confederate Memorial Day as a paid holiday to do so.  And not one of the white legislators in state government has thought to do this before now?

While South Carolina is definitely a deep southern state, it has a legacy of being the more liberal (or rather, less conservative) on race than its counterparts.  The reason is that the socio-economics of plantation slavery pre-WBTS in South Carolina was far more plutocratic than the rest of the South.  For some reason, the owners of such economic factors, i.e. the cash crop plantations, did not have very much tangible experience with their slaves and (after the WBTS) sharecroppers, so they did not have the same kind of experience that their counterparts in Alabama and Mississippi had.  South Carolina was more generous in granting the franchise to blacks than their neighbors, because the plutocrats thought that their sharecroppers would all vote in a bloc for the interests of their boss.

This might be why South Carolina’s black body politic might be slightly less hostile to Southern Heritage symbols and monuments than their analogues in neighboring states.

I Can Understand the Confusion

P-D:

Traffic sign hackers warn of zombies ahead

Madison County — A sign on Interstate 255 Tuesday warned motorists that the undead were ahead, causing double takes during the morning rush.

“Daily lane closures, due to zombies,” the sign said.

The Illinois Department believes a hacker with a cell phone and a password changed the electronic sign’s wording sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday. Shortly after construction crews corrected the sign, on the southbound side near Illinois Route 162, the message reverted back to the zombies warning.

I think I can help clear up some of the confusion.

Those things up ahead are not zombies, they’re really Illinois road construction workers.  I can certainly understand why some people think they really are zombies.

Interstate 64 in the Metro East was recently widened from two lanes in each direction to three lanes between Route 157 in Caseyville to Green Mount Road in O’Fallon.  Fairview Heights and O’Fallon are the high-growth urban sprawl areas of the Metro East, and you can probably guess why a lot of people want to move out of Belleville and places close to there.  They actually have been growing for a long time, mainly because a lot of people left East St. Louis for some strange reason.  Therefore, these new lanes were long overdue.

But the goofy part was that the project only added one lane in each direction for not even 7 miles, and, IIRC, all the surface roads on that stretch that cross I-64 go above the interstate on overpasses; there is not one bridge on the actual interstate over a road or a river.  So all they had to do was add pavement over relatively flat ground all the way, and that part that rises out of the river bottoms once you go east of Caseyville into Fairview.  And they put in soundwalls on both sides between 159 and the Lenin Trail, lest the people living in houses close to I-64 in that area might actually have to hear traffic, which they did all these years when that stretch was two lanes per side, big whoop.

That work took all of three years.  Not even 14 lane-miles of new pavement, no overpass widening to boot, and soundwalls for a few miles, took three years.  You know the construction crews had 24/7 work schedules, 24 hours a month, 7 months a year.

My only theory is that unions in Illinois are even stronger than they are in Missouri, and the state government in IL is even more pro-union than it is in MO, so the contractors and workers have every incentive to milk a road project out for as long as possible.  I’m pro-union mostly, but this is unconscionable.

Even 12-Year Olds Have Figured This Out

Finally, some people have finally began to figure out that modern medicine is almost nothing more than pharmacology, and that relationships between physicians and pharmaceuticals are the reason.

I figured this out when I was 12 years old.  Because my asthma and allergies were my most acute health problem in my life up until then, and it was at the age of 12 that I was last taken to the ER for an asthma attack, it got significantly better after then, my allergist was essentially my primary care provider.  I remember, during one visit to the allergist when I was 12, that I got a new allergist, the one I saw for most of my life before then just retired.

For several years before that point, I was on Proventil, which was the brand name of an inhaler that is now known as generic albuterol.  When I saw that new allergist, he changed my inhaler to Ventolin.  At first I thought that it was a different drug, perhaps a stronger one, but when I got it for the first time, I compared the labels — they were the exact same thing, same 17 mcg dosage, same ingredients, same propellant, same dosage.  The only thing different was the company that made the drug.

Once I saw that, and saw the name of the company that made Ventolin, I suddenly remembered that my new allergist had ink pens and notepads that had the company’s name on it.  The next time I was scheduled to see him, the appointment time was canceled and had to be moved to a later date, purportedly because my allergist was overbooked.  Once I actually saw him at the new time, he let it slip and told someone such that I overheard that he had a golf retreat in Miami.  I had the feeling that the money my mother spent on Ventolin slightly paid for his greens fees.

I figured all this out at 12.  And a lot of supposedly versed adults still don’t get it.

Caught the Last Train for the Coast

For some reason, I couldn’t get the song “American Pie” by Don McLean out of my head today.

Now I realize that it must have been something extrasensorily perceptive on my part, because today is the 50th anniversary of “The Music Dying,” that is a plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens.  Now I know what he meant by “February made me shiver.”

It Couldn’t Have Happened to a Nicer Creep

For a long time, I’ve been wishing that a groundhog would bite the inconsiderate narcissists of human beings that think it’s so wonderful to interrupt an animal’s hibernation.

Lo and behold, Staten Island’s official groundhog did just that to Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday.  The only other thing I could have hoped for was for the groundhog to be rabid, and the doctor giving Bloomberg the shots to be an NRA member, but that’s probably asking too much.

The New York Newsday called the bite “inexplicable.”  I can help explain it, by waking up the paper’s Editor-in-Chief at 3 AM, then handling him, lifting him off the ground, taking him out in the February cold, and showing him off to a bunch of dorks.  Get the picture?

Fun With CNS’s Headlines

CNS:  Daschle Says Sorry for ‘Unintentional’ Lapse in Paying Back Taxes

Some call it an “unintentional lapse,” others call it a Federal felony.

CNS:  ‘Provided That’ You Speak English, You’ll Understand Stimulus Bill ‘Except’ When You Don’t

La Raza protests, demands a Spanish translation for the explanation of the stimulus bill.

CNS:  Sen. Dodd: Limbaugh Can Express His Views Under 1st Amendment

How kind of you, Mr. Dodd.

CNS:  Obama Is First Feminist President, Panelists Say

Oh my, was this a diss toward Bill?

CNS:  NAACP President Plans to Hold Obama Accountable

For what?  His anticipated move to the right?

Take Two:  CNS:  NAACP President Plans to Hold Obama Accountable

Or else?  Are all those black voters going to vote for the white guy in 2012?

CNS:  Lesbians at Center of Same-Sex Marriage Fight in Massachusetts to Divorce

It’s been awhile that when two lesbians were at the “center” of something, that a lot of perverted men weren’t watching.

Reuters:  Kelly Clarkson says she “could never be a lesbian”

Because fun is prohibited in the American Idol contract.

CofCC:  Too much television can make children ‘mentally ill’

I agree, they might wind up saying such stupid and delusional things such as “our diversity is our strength” and “Martin Luther King was a great civil rights leader.”

James Edwards:  Far too many white people on TV?

Which channel?

Opposing Views:  OPINION:Students Deserve Better than Gay Chicago School CEO Huberman

On the other hand, he won’t be visiting the male locker rooms without everyone knowing why.

Slashdot:  Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit

I think it’ll make frequent and mysterious trips over New York and Israel.

V-Dare:  Ignoring the New York Times And Moving On…

Idea for a conservative URL:  www.ignorenytandmoveon.org

El Paso Times:   Military children invited to write diversity essays

They should be so lucky that I’m not an Army brat in El Paso.

Paul Thurrott:  Windows 7 Product Editions

Are we going to be graced with Windows 7 Home Premium Unleaded?

Yale Daily News:  Conservatives: Without a voice?

This is Yale we’re talking about, so they there’s a word in the headline that’s incorrectly plural.

USNAWR:  Can You Get a Great Workout in 3 Minutes?

Yeah, but you have to get her drunk enough, not only to let you, but to be happy with only three minutes.

NPR:  Calling For An End To The Culture Wars

“Here’s your white flag, right winger.” — M. Steele

Reuters:  Yum, parent of KFC and Taco Bell, posts lower net

Yuck.

Business Weak:  Can Obama Keep IT Jobs in the U.S.?

Yeahbut, you won’t get to do the job, honkey.

News Factor Network:  Google Backs Singularity University Vision for Leaders

But the leaders are hesitant to find out when Google claims the URL might harm your computer.

NPR:  Michael Phelps Photographed Taking Bong Hit

He can only top this by setting some swimming record in 4:20.

LiveScience:  Early Humans Had Nutcracker Jaws

Meaning that he probably never asked her for a Monica.

News-a-Rama:  Jeff Smith – From Bone to Little Mouse

That’s not St. Louis’s Jeff Smith they’re talking about, is it?  Because he does sound like a little mouse.

AP:  Officials nab traveler with pigeons in his pants

Australian officials didn’t want Australia’s dirty, filthy, squalid, disease-ravaged birds to be polluted by Dubai’s dirty, filthy, squalid, disease-ravaged birds.

Age Is Just a Number

If I’m reading this story right, and interpreting other versions in the local media correctly, then three different Carbondale men, ages 29, 46 and 63, were all out for one single woman.  She must have no problem with age differentials.

Judd: Rhymes With Flood, Crud, Dud and Mud

I don’t know about you, but I just don’t like it when Presidents use Cabinet appointments in order to shift the balance of power in the Senate.  That, you know by now, is that President Obama is trying to do by appointing Judd Gregg (R-NH) to Commerce, clearing him out of the Senate so that New Hampshire’s Democrat Governor can replace him with a Democrat.  That, combined with perhaps Al Franken holding on, means that the Dems would have 60, meaning a filibuster-proof majority.  The trouble with that mentality is that U.S. Senators generally have big egos, most of them think they should be President, and are far more likely to exhibit independent streaks than their House colleagues.  As it is with RINO/moderates within the Republican Senate caucus, the Democrats have a goodly number of moderates, such as Claire McCaskill, Kirstin Gillibrand, and others, and Joe Lieberman is technically an Indy.  It is highly unlikely that even if the Dems get to 60, that all 60 could unite against a filibuster.

The late news is that Judd Gregg will accept the nomination at Cabinet if Gov. John Lynch promises to put a Republican in his place.  Now watch Lynch break the promise — if he does, what recourse does Gregg have?  There was no paper agreement, and if there is one, then this would put Lynch in a somewhat similar position to Rod Blagojevich, even if it doing so was not a Federal crime.

President Bush floated a trial balloon to turn the same trick back in 2001.  I can’t remember if it was before Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords switched parties, or after, but I know it was before 9/11.  The speculation was that Bush would appoint then-Sen. John Breaux (D) to either an existing Cabinet-level job or pull out the duties of one Department into a new one, such as elevating Social Security and Medicare out of HHS into its own Department, with Breaux heading it.  Breaux’s departure from the Senate would have meant that the State’s (at the time) Republican Governor, Mike Foster, would have gotten to choose a replacement.  If this would have happened pre-Jeffords, it would have broken a 50-50 Senate deadlock and the “power sharing” arrangement.  After Jeffords, it would have returned the Senate to the deadlock.  But, it didn’t happen, because Breaux knew the whole scam of it, and thus refused.

Dear Kirsten: You’re Good Enough, You’re Smart Enough, and Doggoneit, People Like You.

Don’t listen to ‘em.  They’re not the ones who got you elected as a Democrat in a largely Republican district.  They’re not the ones who have now neutered any potential Republican opposition in 2010 and beyond, because you’re conservative enough on some things.  Follow your instincts, and you’re Senator for life.  As your soon-to-be colleague from Minnesota might say…

Worst Laid Scheme

The Everett (Wash.) Herald admits — Islam in American prisons is not much more than a black prison gang.  Most “converts” therefore fall away when they are released, and I imagine that most of the ones that don’t fall away want to keep their Arabic name in order to conceal their previous identity and its criminal record.

I have heard theories from reputable sources that the Libyan government financed the Islam proselytization in American prisons, especially towards black inmates, and that the purpose was to attempt to create terrorist cells to destabilize America.  If all this was a grand plan hatched on the other side of the world, it really didn’t work.  Not only for the reasons above, but that black thug types are notorious for their lack of patience and impulse control, and their propensity to get in feuds with each other in the absence of an external bogeyman or threat.  Two necessary qualities for terrorist cells and groups that are serious — The quintessential radical Islamic types (Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis, Pakistanis) are white enough thus smart enough to control their impulses and passions, and to wait to strike until the iron is hottest.  They’ll wait a century if they have to in order to attack you if they really want to.

Luck Be a Slash This Morning

I was thinking about the incident where Google went nuts on Saturday morning, labeling every search result as one that could harm your computer.

They’re lucky that it happened on a Saturday morning, not a weekday evening.  Otherwise, internet traffic overall would have decreased.  How much it would have decreased could be used as grounds for the U.S. Justice Department to bring anti-trust lawsuits against Google, as I have heard they were within a couple of hours of doing at one point last year.

100 Million People Watched THIS???

KSDK:  Somali leader wants united front against extremism

He and Somalia’s two other moderates have a tough task ahead.

AP:  Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow; winter to continue

Again, he didn’t bite anyone, as I hope he’ll do someday.

CSM:  For island players, this is the ‘Poly Bowl’

Don’t laugh, but I once thought that “Fubu” was some Polynesian linebacker.

AP:  Tampa police arrest 26, eject 18 from Super Bowl

Tampa police arrested 26 corporate Chief Marketing Officers for falsely imitating Super Bowl ads, and from what I’ve seen, they should have ejected 18 players.

Time:  What Sports Fans Get From Chanting and Cheering

Bread and circuses.

Time:  The Biology of Dating: Why Him, Why Her?

The biology of hangovers:  Why Him, Why Her?

Our Gang

P-D:

Bond’s new title: President Alfalfa, as he takes helm of secretive DC group

U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., was sworn in Saturday night as the new president of the Washington-based Alfalfa Club, which Politico describes as “one of the capital’s most secretive and prestigious organizations.”

It’s so prestigious that President Barack Obama was on hand for the closed-door 96th anniversary dinner, and gave one of several humorous addresses. According to Politico’s sources, Obama’s best lines included this explanation of the First Family’s delay in getting a dog: “The labradoodle we picked has some problems with back taxes…”

So, Kit Bond is Alfalfa.  Does this mean that Obama is Stymie?  My money is on Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) for Buckwheat.

Banking — One Of Those Jobs That Americans Just Won’t Do

The twelve American banks that are receiving the most Federal bailout money applied for 21,800 H-1B visa applications in the last six years.  The AP claims that the average salary for the jobs they wanted such visa holders to fill was $91,000, but I think that was just for outward consumption:  Once an H-1B visa holder gets the job, the company has such a worker by the balls, for at company whim, his visa can be revoked and must return to his country of origin.  Slave wages in Seattle are better than the slums of New Delhi.

Won’t You Be My Baby

The Times of London has two stories today about procreation:

(1)  A nine-month old chimpanzee and a nine-month old human being are about on par in terms of mental development.  Of course you know how it works out in the end, but the news does not surprise me — as you go lower down the animal chain in terms of intelligence, you will see that their young mature more quickly relative to the adult stage as you go further down.  This axiom has come into play in the taboo discussion of race, and why Head Start seems to benefit black children.

(2)  For seemingly the 548th time in my conscious memory, a white environmentalist do-gooder is whining about people having too many children, and warning that we shouldn’t be too happy in multiplying.  I wish him well in going to the kinds of people that are having more than two children on average and telling them not to procreate — they’ll turn him into liberal do-gooder missionary stew.  Really, though, what he wants is for white people to stop reproducing close to anything approaching replacement numbers.  Because as you know, us white people are screwing up the world by having too many children.  (Deja vu)

Garfield