Yeah, okay, the really rich folks responsible for The Simpsons get me to post about their movie - which will make gobs more money for them. Like they need it. And they get me to do it for free, not even sharing a mere dollop of the gobs, so to speak. But at least I get to display my very own Simpsons avatar. You can make one for yourself over at their (really rich but miserly) website.
(And no, it looks nothing like me. I'm much more handsome. Mom said so.)
Goes to the hospital for emergency surgery together. (Darned if we can think of a good rhyme.) Two American brothers were gored by the same bull at the same time in the annual running of the bulls (aka the goring of the tourists) in Pamplona, Spain. The picture says it all, with both of the brothers hanging like bad Christmas ornaments from the horns of an enraged bull.
Lawrence and Michael Lenahan were gored simultaneously by the bull, which also injured 11 other people Thursday. It was the worst day for injuries in the nine-day festival.
"I started yelling at my brother to show him I was bleeding everywhere but he showed me he was bleeding everywhere," said Lawrence Lenahan, a 26-year-old Air Force captain from Hermosa Beach, Calif., in a telephone interview from his hospital bed.
He was gored in the buttocks, while Michael Lenahan, 23, of Philadelphia, was injured in his leg and was recovering well from surgery at the same hospital.
The brothers had watched one bull run before taking part. Thursday's run — the sixth day of the festival — was their first.
The pack of six 1,300-pound bulls and six steers — intended to keep the bulls running in a single pack — disintegrated shortly after the animals set off on the course through the narrow, cobblestoned streets of Pamplona.
The run lasted 6 minutes, 9 seconds, compared with the usual length of 2 minutes because one bull separated — the most dangerous thing that can happen.
"I remember looking back and thinking I was in trouble," Lawrence Lenahan said.
Gee, ya think?
The globe-trotting personal injury lawyer/tuberculosis patient who ignored warnings to stay off international flights has, as predicted, been sued.
Montreal lawyer Anlac Nguyen filed the motion in Quebec Superior Court on behalf of seven Canadians and two natives of the Czech Republic. Eight were passengers on the flight with Andrew Speaker and the ninth is a brother and roommate of one of the passengers.
Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta personal injuries attorney, was in Europe when he learned tests showed he had an extremely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB.
Despite warnings from health officials not to board another international flight, Speaker took a Czech Airlines jetliner to Montreal in late May as part of his return trip home. He subsequently became the first American quarantined by the federal government since 1963, and is currently undergoing treatment under isolation in a Denver hospital.
Health officials now say Speaker's strain of TB is not the extremely drug resistant kind but a more treatable, multi-drug-resistant form of the disease.
"They do not have tuberculosis, but nobody can say that they won't have tuberculosis either," Nguyen said of his clients. "And that will not be known, not now, not next year, but for many years in the future, so the pain and suffering that the people have gone through are real. They continue to suffer now because of the uncertainty."
Nassim Tabri sat one row in front of Speaker. Tabri, a 26-year-old Montreal graduate student, found out about his possible exposure when a reporter called him after news of the incident broke last month.
He is seeking $134,900 — the highest amount sought among the nine plaintiffs, mostly for pain, suffering and "loss of opportunities".
"At the very first moment that I found out, I was obviously very stressed, very shocked," said Tabri, who slept through most of the flight. "I'm still very stressed out about it. He deliberately got on this plane, endangered our lives and this is very selfish and reckless behavior that deserves to be punished."
Nguyen said one of the plaintiffs, a 72-year-old man, tested positive for tuberculosis in an initial skin test, but it was unclear if it was related to contact with Speaker.
Tip of the iceberg. There will be many more filed in the near future.
This has got to be the ultimate recycling story of all time. An American stuntman who has worked in more than 400 films has built a 50-foot long replica of a viking longship. Out of 15 million recycled Popsicle sticks. No, really. And it went for a sail today.
A replica Viking longboat made out of 15 million ice cream sticks has been launched in Amsterdam harbour.
The ship was painstakingly glued together by former Hollywood stuntman Robert McDonald and two friends - a job that took two years.
The sticks were collected by children all over the world. Mr McDonald is claiming the world record for the biggest boat made that way.
He hopes to sail the 15m (50ft) ship across the Atlantic.
The ship carried a crew of 20 on its maiden voyage.
"It's a dream come true. It's truly worth all the hard work," said Mr McDonald, quoted by Reuters news agency.
"I never want to look at glue again. I don't think I will be in a hurry to look at ice cream sticks again."
Oh, Lord, from the fury of the Creamsicle, please deliver us. (I find these things just for Lars Walker, you know.)
UPDATE: More here, including some pictures. Apparently, this is McDonald's third Popsicle stick longship! Here is the website for the Sea Heart Foundation, McDonald's charity.
Oh, you think we're making this up, don't you? Oh ye of little faith. The grounds of the United States Department of State have been taken over by killer wasps. Real killer wasps - their name even says so. Monstrously ginormous killer wasps the size of your thumb (not making that part up either.)
WASHINGTON - As if the insurgency in Iraq and the fight against terrorism wasn't enough, U.S. diplomats are now struggling with a new threat: menacing "killer" wasps that have infested areas around the State Department's headquarters.
Large numbers of the fearsome looking insects, which can grow to about two inches, are congregating in the vicinity of State's Harry S. Truman building and causing distress to employees, according to an internal memorandum obtained by The Associated Press.
These are 'cicada killer' wasps, which, despite their somewhat alarming appearance and name, are generally not aggressive and do not pose a threat to humans," said the notice, which was distributed on Thursday in a bid to ease fears.
Here is a website that plays down the menace of two-inch, cranky-when-disturbed killer wasps. They say that the wasps are only cranky during mating season. Which is all summer. f you have never seen one of these beasts, you really do not understand how disturbing it is to be chased by what appears to be a four-engined wasp that sounds just like a lawn mower. (We know of what we speak here. We have made a hole in the air when departing the vicinity of these things. Being allergic to regular wasps, we do not wish to find out how fast one of these could kill us.)
Our sources tell us that the State Department has dispatched several crisis teams to negotiate a treaty with the wasps. They are running out of teams, however and the wasps appear to be exceedingly well fed.
Or not.
DETROIT (AP) - Democrats John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton consider themselves among the top presidential candidates.
They were caught by Fox News microphones discussing their desire to limit future joint appearances to exclude some lower rivals after a forum in Detroit Thursday.
Edwards says, "We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group."
Clinton agrees, saying, "We've got to cut the number" and "they're not serious." She also says that she thought their campaigns had already tried to limit the debates and say, "We've gotta get back to it."
Not really surprising coming from the folks who tried to eliminate the secret ballot for unionization voting so unions could strongarm people more easily.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana
This news from Britain indicates that the current crop of "education" bureaucrats there have willfully decided to condemn students to ignorance of the past entirely. They have eliminated Winston Churchill and even Adolph Hitler from the history curriculum. In order to make room for lessons about trendy fads and poorly defined "life skills".
Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed.
Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues.
Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching.
This means pupils may no longer hear about his stirring speeches during the Second World War, when he told Parliament that defeating Hitler would be Britain's "finest hour".
The only individuals now named in guidance accompanying the curriculum are anti-slavery campaigners Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce.
The omission of Churchill added to a growing row over Labour reforms to secondary education - the most radical since the national curriculum was introduced in 1988.
The lights of Western civilization are flickering and dimming all across Europe. But never more so than in Britain. They are purposely taking the past away from their people. It is both horribly sad and horribly frightening. Students may never hear the words of a true hero of Britain. The man who made stirring speeches and warned - repeatedly - of the coming darkness. His words are even more prophetic now than they were when he spoke them:
Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind.
There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented, in my belief, without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool.
Those words from Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech of 1946 could as easily have been spoken about the crisis that is bearing down on the West right now. But the lights are going out. No one is paying attention.
The proof that Blue Crab Boulevard is widely accepted as an authoritative source came with the revelation that the British examination board in charge of textbooks gets all it scientific information about animals from us. That happened last year when the board published books that informed students that polar bears eat penguins. This latest story is actually an even better indicator of the sheer power of the Crabitat. Iran has begun arresting squirrels!
Police in Iran are reported to have taken 14 squirrels into custody - because they are suspected of spying.
The rodents were found near the Iranian border allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices, according to Sky News.
The reports have come from the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
When asked to confirm the story, the national police chief said: "I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information."
The IRNA said that the squirrels were kitted out by foreign intelligence services - but were captured two weeks ago by police officers.
A Foreign Office source told Sky News: "The story is nuts."
Obviously, they are taking the information we provide about the Animal Uprising™ very, very seriously. Which speaks volumes about the stability of the Iranian government.
UPDATE: Ynet has this item filed under "paranoia". Along with a picture of a waterskiing squirrel. Bwahahaha.
Charles Krauthammer titles his column this week "Deserting Petraeus". He points out that a betrayal of the general that was sent to Iraq by a unanimous vote in the Senate just a few months ago - and just as that general's strategy is beginning to show some signs of actually succeeding - is wrong.
Finally, after four terribly long years, we know what works. Or what can work. A year ago, a confidential Marine intelligence report declared Anbar province (which comprises about a third of Iraq's territory) lost to al-Qaeda. Now, in what the Times's John Burns calls an "astonishing success," the tribal sheiks have joined our side and committed large numbers of fighters that, in concert with American and Iraqi forces, have largely driven out al-Qaeda and turned its former stronghold of Ramadi into one of most secure cities in Iraq.
It began with a U.S.-led offensive that killed or wounded more than 200 enemy fighters and captured 600. Most important was the follow-up. Not a retreat back to American bases but the setting up of small posts within the population that, together with the Iraqi national and tribal forces, have brought relative stability to Anbar……..
…….A month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we could still win in Iraq. The general, who had recently attended two memorial services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the life of a single soldier.
Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus's plan just as it is beginning — the last surge troops arrived only last month — on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.
That's the logic of the wobbly Republicans' position. But rather than lay it on Petraeus, they prefer to lay it on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and point out his government's inability to meet the required political "benchmarks." As a longtime critic of the Maliki government, I agree that it has proved itself incapable of passing laws important for long-term national reconciliation.
I believe that Petraeus would not risk the lives of his soldiers if he thought Iraq was lost. He would be actively trying to get them out. He is not doing so. That should tell you more than the partisan posturing of politicians. We can not allow this man and the soldiers he commands to be kneecapped by politicians trying to micromanage a war and usurp constitutional powers they are not entitled to. Nor can we allow them to whitewash the damage that their undermining of the general and the troops will do to America's long-term interests. Whoever takes the White House in 2008 will have to cope with a vastly increased problem in the Middle East and a vastly diminished America as a result of the Reid-Pelosi led charge to retreat. The stupidity and short-sightedness in play here is breathtaking.
Victor Davis Hanson does a sentence-by-sentence demolition of the editorial in the New York Times this past Sunday calling for surrender in Iraq. Make no mistake that the Times was calling for outright defeat of the United States. Hanson tears the vapidity and mendacity of the New York Times apart.
On July 8, the New York Times ran an historic editorial entitled “The Road Home,” demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but “The Road Home” pulls it off. Consider, point by point, its confused—and immoral—defeatism.
1. “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
Rarely in military history has an “orderly” withdrawal followed a theater-sized defeat and the flight of several divisions. Abruptly leaving Iraq would be a logistical and humanitarian catastrophe. And when scenes of carnage begin appearing on TV screens here about latte time, will the Times then call for “humanitarian” action?
2. “Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.”
We’ll get to the war’s “sufficient cause,” but first let’s address the other two charges that the Times levels here against President Bush. Both houses of Congress voted for 23 writs authorizing the war with Iraq—a post-9/11 confirmation of the official policy of regime change in Iraq that President Clinton originated. Supporters of the war included 70 percent of the American public in April 2003; the majority of NATO members; a coalition with more participants than the United Nations alliance had in the Korean War; and a host of politicians and pundits as diverse as Joe Biden, William F. Buckley, Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Francis Fukuyama, Kenneth Pollack, Harry Reid, Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman, and George Will.
And there was a Pentagon postwar plan to stabilize the country, but it assumed a decisive defeat and elimination of enemy forces, not a three-week war in which the majority of Baathists and their terrorist allies fled into the shadows to await a more opportune time to reemerge, under quite different rules of engagement.
There is a lot more. It is worth reading. He is especially hard on the Times' sugar-coating or complete disregard of the real - and devastating - consequences to the United States and the entire Middle East that would follow a withdrawal. And the short-sighted and hyper-partisan politicians are completely ignoring those realities as well. There will be serious damage done to the US by this highly immoral rush to retreat. The world will blame America, not the political parties involved, America.
A huge escalation in the scope of the battle being waged in Lebanon against an al Qaeda aligned group with ties to Iran may signal that something bigger is going on. The Fatah al-Islam group fired about a dozen 107mm katyusha rockets at a Lebanese village well outside the current zone of battle. The Syrian government had told its citizens to be out of Lebanon by this week. Coincidence? That would be highly unlikely.
Security sources said al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam fighters fired about a dozen of the 107 mm rockets which landed several miles away from the Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon, causing some material damage but no casualties.
They said two Lebanese soldiers died in fresh battles at the camp on Friday. Another soldier wounded in ferocious fighting on Thursday died of his wounds, bringing the military's death toll in the past two days to nine.
Fighting between the army and Islamist militants has killed 216 people since May 20, making it the country's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The military, concerned about being sucked into a war of attrition, has stepped up pressure on the coastal camp to force the militants to surrender.
But the well-trained and well-armed militants, some of whom fought in Iraq or trained to go to fight there, have so far rejected all calls to surrender.
Witnesses said the army was bombarding the battered camp with artillery and tanks. Militants were responding with sniper and rocket fire. Black and grey smoke billowed from the camp's battered buildings, most of which have been reduced to rubble.
The report concludes with some chilling words: "The violence has further undermined stability in Lebanon, where a paralyzing 8-month political crisis has been compounded by bombings in and around Beirut." With Syrian troops already reported to be inside the border of Lebanon in the Bekaa valley, these are not cheerful words at all.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof - Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America
I wont indulge in a lot of hyperventilation about three loud protesters yesterday in the United States Senate gallery who attempted to disrupt an opening invocation by a Hindu priest. Their behavior was rude to the extreme and they were arrested for it. I'll just point out the words of the Constitution of the United States. I take those words seriously. A growing number of others do not. Whether it is a self-proclaimed, putative Christian behaving boorishly to someone of the Hindu religion or the screeching from the atheists about Christians in general, it is becoming increasingly common. It is wrong.
I was raised in the no longer existent Lutheran Church in America. There was no Lutheran church in the town I spent my early years in, so we worshiped with the Presbyterian Church there. Growing up, my best friend was Roman Catholic. I have friends in most major Christian religions. I know and respect a number of Mormons. I also have friends who are atheists. I have worked with a number of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in my professional life. None of us had problems based on religion between us. That, I think, I what the founders intended.
And I believe that is how it should be. It saddens me that so many feel otherwise lately.
Note: I started writing this last night but put it aside to make sure it was phrased right. In the interim, Dan Riehl discovered that the Times of India has a better grasp of the Iraq issue than the New York Times or the screeching left in general. The op-ed he links to is obviously written by someone who firmly believes America was wrong to have gone to war. But is also honest enough to point out that we are in it and cannot pull out without destabilizing the region and possibly the world.
Abandoning Iraq at this stage is not a sign of democratic leadership. Such a retreat from Iraq is not only shirking responsibility but is also shortsighted and harmful to US long-term interests.
Surely, US withdrawal from Iraq at this stage would be against their national interests. It would not only intensify the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq but is also likely to enlarge that conflict over the rest of West Asian-Persian Gulf region. It would increase Iranian influence over Shia regions of Iraq. While US legislators lecture India against dealing with Iran, by advocating a US withdrawal from Iraq they would enhance the stature of Iran. Such contradictions in the US policy towards Iran raise serious problems of credibility.
This is exactly what the left will not acknowledge. The world will view the abandonment of Iraq as an American failure, not the failure of a political party.
Media | Gaius Friday, 13 July , 2007 | 
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