Cool Summer

What global warming?  For the first time this summer in St. Louis, I heard the evening cry of the cicadas.  And it’s July 5.  Usually, you can count on their squaking by mid-June.  I heard them in Florence, Alabama two weeks ago, but they always start sooner the further south you go.

UPDATE 7/6: And where are the cicadas tonight?  It got hot and humid all of a sudden, and the late evening was upper 80s in temperature and lower 70s in dew point, or what etymologists call cicada heaven.  Didn’t hear a one.  There’s something amiss here.

Jesse Helms, 1921-2008

You didn’t have to tell him twice.  In fact, on most things, you didn’t have to tell him once.  And what was even better is that when John East held the state’s other Senate seat, Jesse Helms was called “the liberal Senator from North Carolina.”

The Mexico Connection

No wonder why Affluent America loves open borders.  Probably for the same reason that far-left anarchists save their most poisonous venom for those who want immigration restriction and genuinely secure borders.  Because that’s how they get their dope.

Heller Postmorterm

On the St. Louis CofCC Blog.

Rescue Me

AP:

Sports bra saves US hiker in German Alps

BERLIN - An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado state to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

What attracted the attention of the German first responders?  The bra itself, or the fact that she wasn’t wearing one?

The Part of Millions

AP:

Kennedy out of ’successful’ brain surgery

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy underwent what his doctors called successful surgery Monday to treat his cancerous brain tumor, and told his wife shortly after that he felt “like a million bucks,” a family spokeswoman said.

He commandeers a family that’s worth hundreds of millions.  So if he only feels like one million, then the prognosis isn’t very good.

Bob Dole Looks In Mirror

Politico:

Bob Dole yesterday sent a scalding email to Scott McClellan, excoriating the former White House spokesman as a “miserable creature” who greedily betrayed his former patron for a fast buck.

In an extraordinary message obtained and authenticated by Politico, Dole uses his trademark biting wit to portray McClellan as a classic Washington opportunist.

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”

“The proper thing to do in this situation is to hawk Viagra,” Dole confided to the interviewer later.

Other than the treason, Bob Dole is describing himself almost to a tee.  Dubai Brothers, anyone?

Uncomfortable But Not Immoral

WND:

Iran fights national threat from neckties

Iran is considering a new campaign to fend off the latest threat it has faced – men’s ties.

“Imports of some apparel are not banned but serious action should be taken to stop the import of ties which contradict the nature of Iranian culture,” Asghar Hamidi, the nation’s customs bureau deputy head, told the Fars news agency.

(snip)

The wearing of ties has been banned in government offices in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution because it represents a “westernization” of the Iranian culture. However, before that the U.S.-backed shah had promoted ties.

I have always wondered myself how western civilization evolved the notion that a man should wear a rope around his neck as a function of formality. You do realize that someone else with just the right strength and skill could choke you to death with your own tie, don’t you?

Fun With Zip Coded Headlines

C-Trib: Desmond Tutu: Equality of U.S. blacks an ‘illusion’

WeatherBug reading for Hell at the time of this writing: 30 Degrees. Yep, I agree with Desmond Tutu.

Washington Times: [Mitch] McConnell: Dems will ‘turn us into France’

Brush up on your French, because there’s going to be a lot more Dems in power pretty soon. N’est pas?

WND: [Brighton, Mich.] City spends $5.21 to collect 51 cents in taxes

The taxpayer returned a note with his payment accusing Brighton of being a four-bit town.

AP: Galaxy’s youngest known supernova is 140 years old

Oh, to be young and 140 again.

AP: Edwards gives long-awaited endorsement to Obama

Long-awaited by eight people, three of them aren’t even MSNBC hosts.

AP: McCain’s wife sells Sudan-related investments

She invests in Sudan, but somehow gets to be worth eight figures.

Reuters: Republicans respond to election “wake-up call”

You’re now waking up? Because the alarm clock has only been going off for about two years.

Scotsman: JK Rowling to speak at Harvard, but students say she’s ‘a flash in the pan’

On the other hand, she’ll give the University’s Lawrence Summers critics back their brooms.

AP: ‘Darth Vader’ spared jail in Jedi church attacks

But sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service, cleaning up the Death Star.

AFP: Chicago lifts ban on foie gras

I don’t know what the hell “foie gras” is, so it certainly couldn’t be Chicago’s most pressing problem.

Financial Times: View of the day: Icelandic krona

Placed next to eight U.S. dollars. Which is worth more?

AP: CBS network adds more comedy to its fall schedule

Unlike NBC, CBS is experimenting with the funny brand of comedy.

Reuters: “90210″ officially on the CW map

If they’re using today’s Beverly Hills as inspiration, then the show will top the charts in Riyadh, Amman AND Doha.

AP: Teen sells 17,328 boxes of Girl Scout cookies

Too bad she needed 17,329 to earn the Girl Scouts’ Shyster Badge.

Reuters: Green aliens and UFOs said to visit UK

When I think about problematic aliens in the UK, I tend to think that Nick Griffin is more the expert than Art Bell.

Reuters: Shrimp can see beyond the rainbow

Ironically, the pot of gold at the end is really a hatchery.

The King’s Taxes

Al, don’t put that wallet away after you hit $900.  Turns out you owe a whole lot more than that to an institution that’s a lot pickier about prompt and accurate payment.  And they’ll take a lot more than your Jag away from you if they don’t get.

Upcoming Book

Rumors are swirling that Reed Walters, the D.A. of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana, who heroically stood up to the pressure of the civil rights industry to prosecute the Jena Six Thugs, is going to pen a book about the saga.  In spite of himself, he was inspired by the campaign and the person of Barack H. Obama to come up with a title for the book:

The Audacity of Rope

World Records

AP:

Ill. man seeks to reclaim continuous exercise record

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - Until last summer, 50-year-old George Hood of Aurora held the world record for continuous exercise by a human being — 111 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds on a stationary bicycle.

Then his record was broken by another cyclist from Tasmania.

Now Hood wants to be the record-holder again by cycling on a spin bike for more than 132 hours straight, and raising $50,000 for the YMCA’s Spin for Kids event.

If he is successful, this means that he will have been approached by a gym clerk exactly 264 times telling him that he’s been on the bike too long and other people want to use it. Which would also be a world record.

Extricated From The Stew He Was About To Become

“He,” in this case, was one Jason Hammond of Jacksonville, Fla., who tried to break into a restaurant through its ventilation system.  If he would have been successful, he would have landed into a pool of hot oil.  As it was, the steam from the frying oil hit his exposed leg, which was painful enough that he screamed.

A similar thing happened in St. Louis in March 2006.

The Fall of the Rest

Newsweek:

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

Yeah, so? I don’t judge a civilization based on its landmarks, its gargantuan monuments, its Ferris wheels and the size of its shopping malls.  I judge it by the standard of living of its typical everyday people, and even considering the recent declining trend thereof in America, it’s still far better than most of the rest of the world.  After all, the world’s tallest building might be in Dubai, but would you rather take a chance being the average citizen of the UAE, or the average American? Would you want to live in Macao, China rather than Las Vegas simply because its casinos are bigger?

As far as Bollywood, yes, there might be a bigger movie industry in India, but are you going to pay $9 to watch two hours worth of Bollywood or Hollywood? Bollywood is great at mass producing flicks with simple plotlines that are favored by denizens of the third world with their simple mentalities, but not movies with a complicated storyline, multiple storylines, and dialogue emblematic of an advanced vocabulary.

Animal Abuse

They’re giving him VIAGRA?  Did his handlers ask the vet if the drug was right for him?  Was he checked for high blood pressure and other heart problems before he got the prescription?  Assuming it would have worked (the article tells us that it didn’t), was someone prepared to to watch him in action and call the emergency vets if he kept it up for more than four hours?

Separated At Birth

One is Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  The other is former Congressman and possible Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Bob Barr.  Which is which?

Sweet Ride

NY1:

A man who stole Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s car is headed to prison, along with a female accomplice.

Shawn Young, 36, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the October 2006 incident.

He was convicted of attacking a Bloomberg staffer who was in the mayor’s Lexus while waiting to pick up a colleague in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Evelyn Moreta, 17, was also convicted in connection with the crime. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.

The pair abandoned the car, which was recovered two hours later.

Even though all’s well that ends well, this takes a lot of fun way from Mayor Bloomberg.  While he has to sit back and watch his colleages Michael Nutter, Thomas Menino and Richard Daley whine about guns, the one crime in NYC that directly affected him was a result of fists and feet.

Bumper Bumbler

Spied these two bumper stickers on the back of a blue WV van this morning:  One read, “Use Biofuels,” the other read, “Stop World Hunger Now!”

Alarm Clock

About twenty minutes to five.  Beat my alarm clock by about twenty minutes…

It was a 5.4, but was felt here, Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee.  The reason is that Midwestern earthquakes are, geologically speaking, like yelling “hello” on the edge of the Grand Canyon, while California earthquakes are like yelling “hello” in a soundproof room.

Lesser Common Denominator

He hasn’t been “Konvicted” as much as he would like us to think and has never been “locked up” as a term consequence of any felony or misdemeanor conviction. Malkin has it.

Usually, people will fib down their rap sheet and prison record, but this one wants to fib it upward. The reason is that he wanted to display a certain image to the kind of people that like and buy his music. (Hence his proclivity towards the sport of human shotput.) What kind of message does this communicate about hip-hop fans that they want and prefer thuggery?

Lest his fans accuse him of “acting white.”  Forbid that, then people might confuse him for a hip-hopper who really does have a rap sheet.

Bad For Children

Reuters:

Venezuela axes “The Simpsons” as bad for kids

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has forced U.S. cartoon “The Simpsons” off its airwaves, calling the show a potentially bad influence on children, and filled its morning slot with reruns of the beach-and-bikini show “Baywatch.”

Probably because “Hugowatch” isn’t yet in the can.

Word(press) Up

Question for other WordPress.com bloggers out there:

Is it me, or does the new WP admin panel allude to Microsoft Office (esp. Word) 2007?

“I Was Fighting For What Was Mine”

AP:

83-year-old woman foils purse snatcher

SANTA FE, N.M. - An 83-year-old great-grandmother thwarted a would-be purse snatcher with a gas nozzle and an iron grip.

Bernie Garcia said a young man approached her at a gas station as she was buying fuel for her van and asked for money. When she told him she had spent all her spare change on gas, he tried to grab her purse.

“But I had it wrapped around my wrist twice,” Garcia said, and he was unable to pull it away.

She fought back, spraying his shirt with some gasoline. Both of them kept hold of the purse, and he pulled her to the ground and dragged her a short distance until another man confronted him.

The second man demanded, “Turn her loose, you something something,” Garcia said.

(snip)

“My son said, `Why didn’t you just give (the purse) up?’” Garcia said. “`Hell no,’ I told him. That was my purse. I was fighting for what was mine.”

How I wish many more people had Miss Garcia’s attitude and matters more grave than a purse.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to be those two in jail.  Word will get around that they got foiled and busted by an elderly woman.

Electile Dysfunction

Sure, Eliot. She just wanted casual conversation about classical music. And those waterfalls on the western edge of the state you used to govern were named after the blue pills.

Have You Seen This Man?

Chapel Hill, N.C. police would like to pump him, because they think he might know something about the recent murder of Eve Carson, a University of North Carolina student who was the President of the Undergraduate Student Body.

Don’t Worry. They’ll Find a Way to Blame This on George W. Bush.

AP:

Wounded Ohio officer dies at hospital

CLEVELAND - A police officer who was shot investigating a group of men drinking beer inside an abandoned garage died hours later at a hospital, authorities said Saturday.

Derek Owens, 36, and another officer approached a the men Friday night and chased them when they started to run away, police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

(snip)

Police had received complaints from residents about the neighborhood, where many boarded-up duplexes had been vandalized. Owens was a 10-year veteran of the police department.

One word:  Subprime.

Shooting At Kirkwood City Hall

Coverage at St. Louis CofCC Blog.

There Is a Fine Line Between Contender and Crazy

If he weren’t slightly on the crazy side of that line, he would be a serious Presidential contender today — in contrast to “Gates of Hell” obsessed John McCain and Mike Huckabee, who are both just barely on the contender side of the line.

AHN News:

Gainesville, FL (AHN) - Dr. Jack Kevorkian surprised a crowd of over 5,000 people at the University of Florida (UF) Tuesday night when he unleashed an attack on a “cowardly and deceitful Supreme Court,” assailed the “made up mythology of religion,” called American involvement in Iraq a “modified genocide” and declared that “whites can’t unite” because “they’re wimps.”

(snip)

Kevorkian told the crowd that a person should be able to “carry a kilogram of cocaine in your pocket as long as you don’t try to sell it or abuse it in some way; in your home you can smoke anything you want. You can have any rifle you want. You should be able to carry a rifle or an uzi down the street, as long as you don’t threaten anybody.”

Kevorkian praised the founding fathers, including James Madison, who was the chief architect of the 9th Amendment to the constitution while he served in the first session of Congress. “You don’t realize the power you have in the 9th Amendment… No one can argue with the 9th Amendment, it’s plain language. Only a tyrant says it’s not plain… some professors say it’s murky. Be honest; tell them ‘you’re wrong.’”

The 9th Amendment holds that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This, according to Kevorkian, is the strongest defense the American people have to protect their natural rights from a corrupt government.

But, “that’s the trouble with the tyrant, he owns the legislative branch; owns the laws. Anything he wants he just makes a law, now he’s got your control,” Kevorkian said. “The tyrant knows what he’s doing. He keeps you in the dark. He keeps you dumbed down with silly things to keep your mind off of what’s important… The tyrant knows psychology.”

America is “no different than Nazi Germany; they were aggressive too, [but] they were more honest about it. See, unfortunately for the Nazis, there was another power that could counteract them, the United States. Who can counteract us? America is like a bull in a china shop. There is no way to fight them. They can do what they want, lie, cheat and steal - and they do.”

Just a slight knitpick — the Soviet and British Empires also counteracted the Nazis.

Later, Kevorkian turned his attention to race and said plainly; “The whites don’t unite.”

“The whites, especially the old ones, they have petrified brains; their brainwashing is complete,” Kevorkian explained. “You’ve got an Irishman, a German, a Greek, a Frenchman and they don’t unite… they’re wimps… There’s no power in the unification of the whites. Who has the power in this country? Black people.”

“Blacks can unite,” Kevorkian explained. “Because of their common color” and “because they know what slavery is… Had they known about the 9th Amendment, history would have been different… The power of the blacks will lead you to act on the 9th Amendment.”

He also said that “When you vote for president, ‘you’re only electing an idiot on puppet strings…’”

Thank You 254,775 Times

Since WordPress’s statistics use Universal Time Coordinate (essentially the time in London not counting daylight savings), 2007’s statistical year ended as of 6 PM tonight.  And since 2007 was this blog’s first full calendar year in existence on WordPress, I added up the numbers.

You visited 254,775 times in 2007, averaging 698 a day.  The best day was November 28 with 1,673 views.

Thank you that many times.

Hanaway’s Clever Move By the Numbers

I already told why the decision to force sicko to serve his Federal time only after all state time is done was smart. Now, the Post-Dispatch has quantified my reasoning with this graphic. Operating on the assumption that the only way Devlin could get out of prison is by parole (i.e. no court rulings or Gubernatorial pardons), he could get out of state prison at age 71, then be taken to Club Fed for his 25, and he could be totally free at age 96.

Truthfully, if he gets anywhere close to other prisoners, he won’t make it to 42.