Dose oenophilic turophiles, da French,
Gimme a rash. I’ll give ’em Limberger,
Hit ’em with a wrench.
And let da dogs loose on their stench.
There, Sissy, ya happy now?
🙂
4 London bombers on CCTV
Surely you’ve seen it by now, but in case not, this BBC online article features “… a CCTV image of the four London bombers as they set out from Luton on their bombing mission.”
Read the article. Come back. Let’s talk.
Also posted at Balanced News Blog.
Edited to correct links I previously forgot to include.
Hey! Look at this!
Getcherself on over to Christine’s “other place” (BTW) and look at what she found squirreled away somewhere. Talented gal that Christine…
I always appreciate Christine’s thoughtful posts, both the “fun” coffeeblogging at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea and her most pensive, personal journal at By the Way. The post referenced above is a followup to an earlier post. Be sure to CLICK on her “Main” link, too.
*Sigh* ;-)
OK, traffic’s up; just checked blogosphere ecosystem ranking and it’s way up, too.
So, why are comments way down? Is it just a lot of folks popping in, thinking, “What is this crap?” and then for some obscure reason linking back, anyway?
Weird.
🙂
Do you think it’s my deodorant?
heh
Eragon-Saphira
(I read this puppy about a year ago)
A lil quiz at “Alagaesia”. The print’s a lil small in the thumbnail, but if you CLICK on the link to enlarge the pic, it reads,
“You are most like SAPHIRA
Like the majestic dragon, Saphira, you are brave and ferocious in battle but also deep in ancient wisdom. You think before flying headfirst into battle. You prefer the solitude of the wilderness to the populated cities of Alagaesia.”
Eragon is Book I of The Inheritance trilogy by Christopher Paolini. Paolini published Eragon when he was 18. As a first novel by a young writer, it’s actually quite good. Allowing for “first novel by a young writer syndrome” it’s a tad more than “quite good” in fact.
I’ll more than likely also read Eldest, the next book in the trilogy, and if it’s as good as—or hopefully better than—Eragon, I’ll likely pop for the third book when it comes out.
The Real Plame-Out Outrage
Finally some honest, forthright speech on the terrible, terrible “outing” of that Great American Hero(ine), Valerie Plame…
From Blame Bush via Woody’s News & Views:
The inspiration for six Ian Fleming novels and the hit TV series, Alias, Plame’s 35-year career as a super-duper top secret agent was what legends were made of. From her base of operations, Codename: Cubicle, Agent Plame spearheaded such major CIA operations as Project Fetch Director Woolsey a Cup Of Coffee and Operation Who Stole a Box of Staples from the Supply Room? In 1996, she singlehandedly thwarted a major terrorist attack by remaining motionless at her desk for several months while slowly tripling the size of her ass. Along with John Deutch and Aldrich Ames, Valerie Plame is one of the few CIA spooks who has earned the admiration and respect of progressives everywhere.
See the entire, courageous report made despite threats of vicious attacks by the Republikan (weenie) hate machine attack-Chihuahuas.
heh
For more on this lame-out “scandal” manufactured by Democraps and whimpily addressed by Republiclams, see: here or here.
A Modest Proposal
(A tip o’ the hat to Shakespeare and Swift… )
Shakespeare is often misquoted (and taken outa context as well) as having written, “First, kill all the lawyers.” And that’s but one variation among many of the line excerpted from Henry IV, part 2, Act 4 scene 2,
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Out of context? It’s in a scene featuring a kangaroo court whose whole purpose shows the value of those who know the law, as opposed to emty-pates who make rulings based on nonsense. (More on this point later—probably a post all its own.)
Nevertheless, it’s ironic that only a few hundred years have passed since that halcyon day when Shakespeare could view lawyers as protectors of rights, liberties… Today, it is the law that makes slaves of us all. A little extreme? Think about it for a bit. Can you honestly say that you have not broken any laws? How do you know? Have you read the sky-high stack of state, federal and local laws, regulations and ordinances? Could you understand them if you did?
When laws proliferate to such a burdensome level and literate people who lack induction into the arcane priesthood of their interpretation cannot decipher them, we are all at the mercy of selective enforcement: any prosecutor anywhere can find something to convict you of if he wants to.
And here’s the telling question: in a day and age where Martha Stewart can be sent to prison for denying having done something that was not a crime for her to do by a giovernment whose own witness used to convict her of “lying” (NOT under oath) to federal investogators has been charged with perjury for his testimony in the case; when Sandy Berger, who flat-out lied to federal investogators about having removed and destroyed documents that were pertinent to the 9/11 Commission’s investigation gets a “bye” on prison time and merely has his security clearance lifted for a while, does not the selective enforcement aspect of law enforcement bother you a tad?
Just think: no one, NO ONE, can know if they are in compliance with every federal, state and local law, because the laws under which we live have proliferated to the point that no one, NO ONE, knows them all. And only those inducted into the mysteries of their special language and the customs of their cultic application and manipulation can understand (or pretend they understand… for a hefty fee, of course) what the heck these cultic incantations mean.
Enough! Of the many things this country needs to survive as a civilized nation, one of the most important is this: scrapping every damned law passed since the Constitution was written and rewriting the whole thing (body of law) so that a literate person can carry around the laws of the land on his person and read and understand them. A good start would be to “sunset” every law, everywhere, so that law “makers” would of necessity become law “reviewers” and be forced to rewrite each and every law in their baliwick, a bit at a time, until all the current laws were either done away with or rewritten so that everyone who’s at least moderately literate can understand them. And tie every word in every law on the books to a common dictionary meaning of the word, tied to and tied down to a specific dictionary, specific edition, so that some damned judge somewhere has a harder time finding wiggle room to subvert the law by means of a phony “interpretation.”
THEN we can kill all the lawyers. (But I wouldn’t go so far as Swift’s “Modest Proposal” for the Irish… )
OK, OK, maybe we don’t have to kill them, just send ’em all to votech school to learn a useful trade…
Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi: y’all have some competition…
It took some digging, but I finally found a current portrait of Paul “Republicans want to kill us” Begala
Nah. That’s not a moustache. It’s just a collection of his favorite nose hairs.
Welcome to the horse’s ass wing of the Democratic Party, Paulie boy. By now, it includes just about 90% of the (NON-democratic) Democratic congresscritters. Don’t worry, though, you’ll be validated soon as the Ball-less Party congresscritters timidly submit to your slander.
What government contributes to the economy
Just read Robert Heinkein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the source (and context)…
Heard the one about the old guy who had a gummint job polishing the brass cannon outside the courthouse? Yep. Saved up his money, bought himself a brass cannon and went into business for himself…
heh