The Other Three Had a “Bad Attitude”

That’s right! We need to save our Government Bureaucrats for important things like finding ways to protect rich contractors from prosecution from nuisance charges like murder, theft, and graft.

Oh and talking about our congressmen. See the last column’s post regarding Tony’s official 2008 campaign kickoff.

Yeah, just imagine what would have happened if we’d tried to fight WWII with a bunch of Government Issues. Even worse, what if we’d had one of those Democrats who think the federal government can work as President. We’d all be speaking German and goose stepping. Thank God for the Republican principles of foreign and domestic policy, plus all those latter day Hessians who won it all for us. And now the liberals want to throw it all away.

It’s just your turn this week, sharon.

What’s really scary is if you conducted a survey asking the average American if the military should be socialized, 85% of them would say “No.”

God help us all.

Sharon, maybe you just need more ketchup in your diet. And while we’re talking about it, my Rage-O-Meter only goes up to 10. Where did you buy yours, anyway?

This actually creates a very interesting legal issue that unfortunately no one at the DOJ is capable of appreciating since they’ve all been replaced with fire-worshipping religious zealots.

The question is, what are these private security contractors under the eyes of the law? The State department’s extension of immunity to them might lead us to suggest that they are some type of soldiers, whereupon as agents of the Sovereign they qualify for Sovereign Immunity. But they don’t really seem to work for the Sovereign (unless we ordered them to “shoot everyone, everywhere”).

So we have 2 options for the legal status of these individuals to whom we extended immunity: 1) they are really bad agents of the sovereign, or 2) they are armed, un-uniformed, flying no flag, and fighting,

Under #2, they sound suspicious like “enemy combatants” from a legal standpoint. Talk about send a thief to catch a thief…

Boomer, I bought it at the same place that Blackwater buys its supplies: Killerz ‘R’ Us

Zach … Bingo! In fact, if any of these jamokes (I think that’s the technical legal term, by the by) gets caught by oh, I dunno, “AQI” or whatever clever acronym the White House is using these days, what’s to stop them “AQI” fellers from saying the Blackwater jamokes aren’t entitled to them, uh, Common Article III protections?

Imagine that … the terrorists goin’ all John Yoo on Blackwater’s ass.

Hmm. Kinda makes ya think, don’t it?

I’m ready for the debates to require an equal amount of time for all the candidates to respond to the questions. The “media appointed” three wise people on the Democratic side sound good enough. But the other candidates also have well reasoned positions on the issues and they are not getting the same opportunities to speak. Ditto for the Republican debates. Americans deserve a chance to hear all sides before deciding who will next lead us out of the many holes that Bush, Cheney, and the neocons have dug for us. (I guess you know how I spent my evening.) hedera, television does have an occasional brief shining moment.

The up side of being economically challenged is that flying is not really an option.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_ main.html?name=Toles&date=11162007&type=c

Yo, Sharon. You like da mountains of Crete? Guido says “Try da beaches!” He’s always droolin’ ’bout da Euro dames gracin’ da shore line.

Come in from the blasphemous cold while there is still time, lest you be cast into the Great Peat Bog, only to be cut into blocks and burned in the eternal fires of damnation as low-grade fuel.

Also, bumper sticker of the day: Life is like a corn dog. Don’t ask me why, it just is.

I’ve got no quip for this one, Sharon. I knew it, but seeing it in black-and-white simply stops me in my tracks, as it should everyone.
I lost two first cousins to the Korean War, one of whom sank deeply into alcoholism and the other of whom, when he shot what he thought was a North Korean soldier and discovered it was a twelve year old girl, had to be institutionalized.

Landis, I concede that the Jolly Roger is a flag, but when one says, “Flying no flag” in this context, the implication is, “Flying no flag of a country.”

becca (and brian), maybe it’s coincidence and maybe there’s something really going on, but yesterday I was driving along and realized that the car ahead of me had a Flying Spaghetti Monster sticky on the trunk lid - you know, like a Jesus fish or a Darwin fish, only with noodles. It was quite nice, too, raised, not just a decal. Now that is mainstream.

How do we get one of those for the Great Lobster??

Dave von Ebers:

what’s to stop them “AQI” fellers from saying the Blackwater jamokes aren’t entitled to them, uh, Common Article III protections?

I hate to be the one joining our illustrious Waterfowler on this argument, but I don’t think that them AQI fellers would treat our uniformed soldiers or our mercenaries/contractors any better than they are treating the Iraqi civilians.

The argument that we shouldn’t torture prisoners because we wouldn’t want our POWs to be tortured is completely missing the point. I don’t know that Waterfowler and I continue to agree on this point but the reason we shouldn’t torture prisoners is because WE SHOULDN’T TORTURE ANYONE regardless of whether they would do it to us. It’s what is SUPPOSED to make us BETTER!

This has to be a record. Fanny has still not cleared the comment I posted under the “What’s at stake” thread, a week ago. The whole thing is moot now, I’m just checking to see if anyone ever cleans that stuff up.

All the time, Dale.

Nope, Dale. Never has.

Dale-

Absolutely….in an almost paralyzing way. Helpless, paralyzing, frustrating sadness that pegs way above 11.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=2&n=Top/Opini on/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Frank%20Rich&oref=slogin& oref=slogin

Man, I don’t know about you guys, but any more these days, when I try to buckle down and read pieces like that excellent Frank Rich op-ed, I find myself suddenly attracted to shiny objects outside the window, or switch to Cute Overload and zone out watching fluffy puppies.

It’s a defense mechanism, I know, and we all need to stay vigilant, I know, but, man, I don’t want to make myself feel even more powerless and angry.

And to top it off, Dennis Dixon tears his ACL and the Ducks’ season is over.

Pass the ketchup.

Whichever candidate can tap into the LOLCats vibe is going to run away with the election.

David, like I said over at my place, I hate that damn Rennselear Polytechnic!

Oh, and in case anyone failed to notice …

Illinois 41
Northwestern 22 …

Can you say “sole possession of second place in the Big 10″? I knew you could …

Now, if only Ohio State could somehow finagle itself into the national championship game … we might be talkin’ Rose Bowl.

(Try to imagine my demonic laugh right about now …

Bwhah, hah, hah, hah …)

It was a hit here, SeattleDan.

Can’t believe I forgot to say Go, Illini, Dave. I guess I was just so wound up about my Lions. It is still possible for OSU to make it to the BCS championship game. I would love to see the Zooker Gang in the Rose Bowl. If not, I hereby officially bid for your guys versus my Gators.

11-18-07

Dear Diary,

Today, I literally opened the door to truly creepy weirdness. I was downstairs in the White House looking through the archives for past workarounds of the laws banning drilling in the ANWAR. Cheney’s office has been relentlessly harassing Interior to get rid of the current environmental laws that are hogtying his friends, keeping them from cashing in on all the $100.00/barrel oil business. “What the Hell good is all that anal penetration the military is doing in the Middle-East, if we don’t take advantage of $100 market? What the fuck do you think all that mess in Iraq is about. Freedom? Ha! Come on Dirk, get your ass in gear. Open the frigging oil spigot, you douche bag.” When did Lynn Cheney start working the phones for the Veep?

Anyway, I had to take a whiz after a while, so I went out to look for the restroom. You may not know this, Diary, but the basement of the White House is the “junk room” for every presidency. (And speaking of douche bags, I tripped over a cardboard box as I rounded a corner and out spilled a douche bag from the Garfield Administration. That certainly was unappetizing.) Well, there are boxes everywhere, 3/4 of the light bulbs are broken or burned out, and none of the doors marked. After opening three doors and reliving the hilarity of the Fibber McGee moment, I finally found what looked like the restroom under the North Portico and walked in. Nope. Wrong. It was the Presidential Bowling Alley, the lights were off and candles lined both sides of the alley. An altar was erected in front of the Brunswick Pin Master. Perhaps fifty monks in black hooded robes were kneeling in prayer. Dick Cheney entered from the shadows holding what looked for all the world like the soon-to-be-pardoned Presidential Thanksgiving Turkey. He positioned himself in front of the altar, raised the turkey (as if to offer it to the heavens), lowered it slowly and then bit his head off. Blood and groans from the monks flowed through the room and, me? I got the Hell out, took a leak into the Garfield douche-bag box, placed it back on the stack and left the building. Boise was never that weird, not even with the Democratic legislature was in session.

Dirk

Nov. 16, 2007

Catholic News Service:
Faith-based diplomacy can be antidote to extremism, says U.S. expert.

In a world of increasing religious extremism, faith-based diplomacy can offer an effective path for dialogue and international problem-solving, a U.S. expert said at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Wait ein minute - die Amerikaner have experts on diplomacy? IT’S A MIRACLE!!! Sonovabitch!! The prayer actually worked. But one must asked - “What took so long, anyway?” und “Where have they been keeping these experts, for God’s sake?” Well, forget about that. I’ll have Cardinal Pietro find out their names on the Google. We’ll bring them all here to the Vatican and get to work. This is very good news. Maybe the planet won’t be blown to bits after all… maybe.

I have to confess that the FSM never did grab my imagination, but the Boreded Ceiling Cat is another matter…

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-national-bible-week -party-down-yall.html

Vinnie, I´d find the whole ¨justa dumb guy who like-a ta break-a da knees¨ a lot more convincing if I hadn´t overheard you and Guido exchanging pillow talk in Latin. (And don´t think I didn´t see you replacing the hotel mousetraps with the humane kind!) But it´ll be our little secret. Tutto bene, tu sei un perfetto gentiluomo and if I ever get around to having kids, I promise–you will be The Godfather.

Continued from October 14 - Rage Against the Ditto Machine:

…And why would you keep a common survey map in your safe, if it didn’t have some sort of value? I admit I was stumped and put it away for a week or so.

Then, late one night I was watching a movie on TV - a half decent film, “Romancing the Stone” - and it came to me. I pulled out the negatives, examined them closely with a magnifying glass and bingo! There it was!…

There it was! On the final negative (one of the shots I took at an oblique angle as I burned the last few frames of film) you could see the other folds, running at an angle to the normal map folds. I got out my copy of the map and folded it like the negative showed. The mysteriously drawn lines on the map now formed a rough sketch (just like in the movie!) of Dean’s Canyon - still on the ranch but safely outside the security perimeter - with an “X-marks-the-spot” at the base of the third landslide from the entrance. I knew this site well (it was the first place that Rocio and I had unbridled, kinky, tantric, noon day s.., well, I’m sure you’re not interested in that.). I sneaked quietly out the window, grabbed a shovel from the tool shed, and made for the Jeep. Silently pushing the vehicle down the dirt road, I waited until I was near the bottom of the hill - out of sight line from the house - popped the clutch and drove for the canyon. It took four and a half hours of digging around the base of the slide before I hit pay dirt. It was the absolute mother lode of Abramoff graph and corruption and, one would think, a rather large portion of Mr. DeLay’s retirement plan - all in easy to redeem, non-traceable bonds, certificates of deposit and securities. There were even seven of those bundles of shrink-wrapped hundred dollar bills. Mr. Delay is much smarter than he looks (and now, much poorer than he thinks). Using part of this money, Rocio and I had funded our aborted “People’s Revolution” down in Central America. We still had most of the loot stashed in sixteen safety deposit boxes down at Sugar Land Savings and Loan. We emptied one of the boxes into our backpacks, walked out of the bank, caught a cab to the airport, and flew off to a vacation paradise that has always intrigued me.

Sharon, that’s hysterical. The thing is, when somebody (SeattleTammy?) first posted the LOLinator (was it here, or on Peter’s site?) and I quickly discovered that my site was not one that could BE LOLinated, one of the first things I did was go to catholic.org and LOLinate their online Bible!

Maybe I should find the thing that translates anything into Soop Dogg-speak and run the Bible through that. Fo’ shizzle.

Landis, forgive the delayed reaction, but let me say this: I never, ever said that the only reason torture is bad is because it might happen to our guys. That happens to be one of the main reasons our military objects to torture, and rightly so, but I have never said torture is anything other than an absolute evil; morally unacceptable under any circumstances. Period.

As far as AQI and the like, of course they are unconcerned about quaint things like the Geneva Conventions. That was kinda sorta my point (with a healthy dose of hyperbole). We say that we don’t torture ‘cuz we’re better than the bad guys … then we engage in, um, “harsh interrogation techniques” that look and walk and talk like a duck. Or, like torture, more to the point. We say folks who don’t adhere to the norms of armed conflict - ya know, wear a recognizable uniform, operate under an identifiable flag, adhere to the laws of warfare and whatnot - aren’t entitled to the protections of Common Article III (to quote the Supreme Court — Wrong, wrong, wrong!, or words to that effect; but I digress) … then we send mercenaries into a conflict zone where they do many of the things the “bad guys” do (see above) … but we sure as hell would bleat like stuck pigs if any Blackwater employee was waterboarded or whatever, just the same.

So, anyways, I’m with ya on the whole “torture is wrong” thingy. I just loves me some irony, is all.

My Lions are going into a den of Mt. Union Whatever-They-
Ares who have outscored their opponents like 596 to 42 (I did a quick sum in my head of the scores of their games). Have we no rules for who can play in Division III?

OK, they’re a private liberal arts college with an undergraduate enrollment of 2300, so they are reasonably Division III, and they sound like a good school. But they are killing their opponents across the board (they’re the Purple Raiders, according to the Google). Mostly they don’t even allow their opponents to score.

Yeah, Dave, but I think you misspelled “coastal”… win some, lose some.

Do the Coastal (I assume) Carolina Chanticleers realize that their team name is also used by a brilliant gay men’s chorus in San Francisco?? I mean brilliant, too - they sing like angels and their male sopranos (not, AFAIK, castrati) have higher vocal ranges than I do…

For the record, Word did not pick up the misspelling of “costal.” What’s a “costal” anyway? Is it short for Pentecostal? As in, “Hey, Ma, any of them costals been comin’ ’round sellin’ bibles today?”, or something like that …

Still, the best thing about the NCAA’s is the odd-ball team names. Chanticleers, Purple Aces, Catamounts, Racers, Camels, Spiders, Engineers …

The next best thing, of course, are the great players’ names … anyone remember Fennis Dembo? (Special extra credit points if you can identify the team he played on … without Googling his name.) And how about Guillermo “Panama” Meyers?

Ah, you just can’t make that stuff up.

I can’t believe it, hedera, I finally get to drop this into a conversation - Si vos can lego is , vos have nimium erudio. How do you know that stuff anyway? Oh, yeah, you used to be a librarian, right?

I do know that it’s the Richmond Spiders and the Western Carolina Catamounts, but you got me on the players. And while only a fool trifles with the repository of knowledge in the possession of a reference librarian, I do like ‘Costals as you used it, Dave,

And the Catamounts are also the name of the University of Vermont’s teams.

Kids, be very nice to David, he has had a very rough day.

Thanks, Dave. Reminds me of the first BCS championship game, UF v. Nebraska. I got through that thrashing somehow, and we went on to win it all the next year. Don’t think my Lions can do that next year - I’ll be happy if we’re seeded a bit higher and don’t have to play the semi-pro Mt. Union Purple Raiders (no more cheap quips) until later than round two.

Answer to Awphuk trivia question in #71: a fenced cow pasture. It was still a large open area on the southwest corner of University and 13th (US 441, the highway Tom Petty sings about in one of his songs) north of the administration building and east of the main library when I was there ‘60-’64 & ‘67, but no fence and no cows. Albert the Alligator was, however, still kept in a pen by the Century Tower center campus until two football players decided to wrestle Albert, a modest 6-7 footer, but a strong sob nonethless. They injured Albert, so that was the end of an alligator being able to be in a pen center campus. When the administration tried to discipline the two boneheads, the state legislature (old school southern Democrats who morphed into southern Republicans) passed a resolution making alligator wrestling a 3-credit course at UF. Boneheads exonerating boneheads - ya’ gotta love it.