Hit me, it finally did.

So yesterday I'm watching yet another hour of CNN's fawning coverage of yet another Obama rally with yet another shot of a member of the proletariat holding up yet another sign that says "CHANGE WE NEED."

On first inspection, it strikes me as an incomplete concept. Maybe we DO need change, but does it necessarily follow that that change must be a step toward socialism? No.

Then it finally hit me. It's not intended to be a complete thought. It's a subliminal message to the Star Wars geeks. It's Yoda-speak.

It's not "Change we NEED." It's "CHANGE we need," which is how Yoda would say "We need change."

And change is all the money you'll have to live on if Obama gets his way, my little green friend.

Anybody know . . .

... where I can get a (preferably cheap) flash drive that will run off of Windows 98? It doesn't have to have a lot of storage, just enough for the occasional Gummint Cheese comic strip and rantposts too lengthy to type as I sit here in the library.

They've upgraded to new computers here, and the new ones don't have 3.5" floppy drives, which is what I used to bring anything I wanted to post here that would take too long to do as I sit here.

And all the flash drives I can find require a minimum of Windows 2000.

Speaking of CNN . . .

... anyone know why they let Glenn Beck get away from them and why they replaced him with some ferret-hugging granola muncher?

John The CNN Contributor.

Got another crawl on The Rick Sanchez Show yesterday:

"Someone keeps stealing Frampton's Obama signs; does Ted Nugent have an alibi?"

(You can see it scroll across beginning at 1:19 and again at 6:12 here. )

Only marginally clever, I know, but they won't run any texts I send that have any substance to them.

Thursday & Friday both they've gone with the "Name one person Obama hangs around with that's anti-Semitic" story, like it's some big mystery and the answer is "nobody that we know of."

Both days I sent an answer -- Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson. They rejected it both times.

I don't know how much he hangs around with Al Sharpton* or I'd send that answer in, too.

* UPDATE: Quite a bit, apparently.

This April, Obama made an appearance at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the same organization that shouted racial and anti-Semitic epithets at the Jewish owner of Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995. The National Action Network quotes Mr. Obama as saying, “Reverend Sharpton is a voice for the voiceless, and a voice for the dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.”

Looks like Obama's gonna win.

And he'll do it with or without Missouri. If I had any hope that it would make a difference, I might reconsider my decision to vote for Libertarian Bob Barr and vote for McCain instead. But it won't make any difference. My vote either way won't make any difference in Missouri, and Missouri's electors won't make any difference on who wins the Presidency.

I guess the best we can hope for is that the Republicans can hold onto enough seats in the Senate to maintain a filibuster, and that they'll do it often.

We spent 40 years, untold hundreds of billions of dollars, and who knows how many lives fighting the Cold War to keep socialism from spreading across the globe, and we are on the brink of imposing it on America ourselves. Why did we bother? Why did all those young men and women die in Viet Nam? Wasn't the whole point of that little exercise to stop the communist/socialist dominoes from falling? Well, the biggest domino on the planet's about to fall, and the ones that will push it over are the American voters.

We have seen how this movie ends, people. And whatever theater it's shown in, it ain't gonna end well (pardon my grammar). In the Soviet Union, it ended with total societal collapse and a splintering of the country itself, after decades of breadlines and hopelessness. In North Korea, it is ending right now with people literally eating each other because they are starving. In China, it ends with tanks in Tianenmen Square and babies dying from tainted milk and people "disappearing" for speaking out against the government, and the only progress made comes from the country's gangsters who bribe the right corrupt politicians into letting them break the cripplingly oppressive rules everyone else has to follow. And it Cuba, it ends with the slow death of bleak stagnation that means the only cars people have are 50-year-old clunkers held together with baling twine and duct tape. Unless, of course, you're one of the lucky few that gets one on the black market one stolen from America.

That's the future America is heading for if Barack Obama is elected President. The Fairness Doctrine. Equal results guaranteed despite unequal effort. Caribou being more important than people. The politics of envy. The resentment of ability. The rewarding of failure. The evaporation of gun rights. Giving terrorists a voice in how we live our lives. The death of individual rights. The destruction of the greatest force for good our world has ever encountered -- capitalism. The rejection of every idea that built this country in to the most free, most powerful, most good nation in the history of mankind. The end of America itself.

But hey, it's all worth it as long as we punish everyone who has the gall to be more successful than we are, right?

Why I Don't Give Out Candy On Beggar's Night.*

If you want your kid to have candy, buy him candy.

Don't try to manipulate/coerce other people into buying him candy FOR you.

SUGGESTION: You can afford a lot of candy for him with what you'd spend on a costume.


*- "Beggar's Night" is a more correct term for Halloween.

John the Texter.

I got another crawl onto the bottom of the screen on The Rick Sanchez Show last week.


"al-Qaeda remembers how their endorsement of Kerry backfired & so they "endorsed" McCain because they want Obama."

Before it crawled across the first time, however, a panelist made that very point, so it looked a little silly.

Obama says he's going to "ask" the wealthy to pay more taxes.

When did the definition of "ask" expand to include "imprison you if you don't comply"?

Question.

If objective analysis of Obama's voting record places him to the left of self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders (as it does), how is Obama not a socialist?

Unless you live in MO, OH, or ND (maybe NV & IN) . . .

... if you vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, you are wasting your vote.

If you live in CA, TX, or NY, for instance, your vote for either of the two major-party candidates will make zero difference to the outcome.

So why not vote for a third-party candidate and maybe help them achieve the threshold to be included in the 2012 debates?

Me? I live in MO. And, although I am not thrilled with their candidate, I will support the Libertarian Party by voting for Bob Barr.

I believe in the Libertarian Party. It's just that sometimes I don't believe in the Libertarians.

There has to be some penalty for McCain-Feingold and for the Giant Sociaist Takeover of The Banking Industry. So, R.I.N.O.* John McCain and D.I.N.O.* Barack Obama do not get my vote.

And someone PLEASE tell me what the f*** McCain is doing spending so much time in PA, with no hope of flipping the state his way?

* - Why is it that the "In Name Onlies" are always to the left of the party they "belong" to?

Finally.

I may FINALLY be back on some semblance of a schedule. So my posting should resume it's normal weekly status.

I do have to go back to West Plains Tuesday (I'll try not to drink the water) but it shouldn't interfere with my Wednesday posting.

And that one and this one.

Except that one.

Too many balls in the air this week . . .

... so no posts.

(Exception: Obama's true colors, like Joe Biden's, couldn't stay hidden for long. Now we just have to see if there are enough real Americans left to defeat him.)

Observation.

The STUPID EVIL GENIUS-In-Chief has been doing some reading, apparently.

Specifically, The Art of War and some Machiavelli.

Consider:

Bush knows Obama will win the election. How better to ensure a Republican takeover of Congress in 2010 and a Republican White House win in 2012 than to plunge the country into The 2nd Great Depression, which will fully hit home on Obama's watch?

My One-Point Plan to Rescue The Economy.

1. Sew Paulson's Mouth Shut.

Every time he opens it, the Dow goes into freefall. Take Wednesday for example. With an hour to go until the closing bell, the Dow was up 100 points. Then Paulson just had to begin talking to the press. At the close, it was down just shy of 200 points. Cause and effect, people.

Has anyone else ever wondered . . .

... why people are so eager to settle for "the lesser of two evils" but not for the LEAST of THREE EVILS?

Represent, yo.

I got my message through to a national audience again yesterday, and it was again on CNN. The first time, you'll remember, was with my now-defunct (and apparently now cybersquatted) blog The Puffington Host in the now-defunct segment "Inside The Blogosphere" on the now-defunct show Inside Politics.

About a week ago, Rick Sanchez' show began crawling text messages from viewers on the bottom of the screen. I've sent a different text every day, from noting that the Banking Stabilization Bill sounds like one of the schemes dreamt up by the badguys in Atlas Shrugged to wondering when Congress was going to drag some of the deadbeat borrowers who skipped out on their debts in front of the cameras.

Yesterday, the topic du jour was the sheriff who referred to Barack Hussein Obama at a McCain campaign rally, and how awful and racist it was to do so.

I had been about to give up sending comments, because good ones "somehow" never seemed to make it onto the Ted Fonda Liberal Opinion Network, and stupid, borderline-retarded ones were repeated ad nauseum. (I can't count the times "Rick, this is great!" scrolled across the bottom of my TV that first day.)

But the notion that referring to someone by his or her full name is somehow racist enticed me to try one more time. It actually made it on and crawled across once in the last ten minutes of the program.

Here's what I sent:

RICK, were the Left being racist against whites when they repeatedly referred to "George Herbert Walker Bush"? -- John in Thayer, MO.

For some reason, they edited out "Thayer." Maybe they thought it didn't actually exist, since it's in flyover country.

I don't understand.

Didn't W assure us that Big Brother would only eavesdrop on terrorists, and not whack off while listening to Americans having phone sex?

And the winner of Best Website I Cannot Use Is . . .

... Spinspotters.

Why must I be so tormented by the sad clown of life?

I'll never be able to quit smoking if I can't give up being such a slut for gimmicks.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Camel Crush.

(My apologies for the shakiness; you can't seem to find professional-looking cigarette commercials these days.)



The gimmick? It starts off as a normal non-menthol cigarette, but it has a little menthol zit embedded in the filter that you pop when you want to make the smoke a menthol.

At least that's what it feels like; a zit that's under the surface of your skin. It especially feels like that when you pop it.

Brooklyner ticketed for having a beer on his own front stoop.

There's no way he said that with a straight face.

Here's a snippet for you.

''We are not trying to be Big Brother,'' Mier said. ''We just want to watch the areas in the public lots where there's a lot of vehicle and pedestrian traffic.''

In other words, "We are not trying to be Big Brother; we just want to watch the areas where people are."

Question.

How long could it take to key in an eight-digit number?

Here; let's time it.

Duh-duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh.

How long was that? Less than a second?

Certainly, not as long as it would take for a bunch of Pleasantville's booger-pullers to put their grimy little digits on a fingerprint scanner. From my recollection of middle school, you'd have to stop and Windex the thing after every scan.

Leave it to McDonald's . . .

... to totally retardify Star Wars toys.

They COULD have given out (admittedly cheap-looking) action figures and little spaceships.

That's what they COULD have done.

But no.

What they DID was put enormous, retarded bobble-heads of characters on TOP of little spaceships.

Don't be looking for THIS Star Wars geek to be gobbling up Happy Meals anytime soon.

Freudian slip.

Remember all the times that Barry O has scolded us and lectured us and insisted that he's NOT a Muslim?

Oops.

It only matters, of course, in that he has repeatedly denied that he is a Muslim. As long as he is not a militant* Wahabi-style Muslim, it would not be a problem had he not lied to us about it all along.


* - I recognize that "militant" is a subjective word. By "militant," I mean "at least as militant as Michelle Obama's eyebrows."

It's like wearing a poodle for a hat . . .

... it just don't make no sense!

(Those of you squeamish about TMI regarding bodily functions, back away now.)

So I pick up a Debrox Earwax Removal Kit. Too many years of listening to Guns n Roses full blast on the headphones are starting to catch up with me. That, and earwax and ear hair seem to come with the territory of being a Hirsute Old Fart.

Thing is, you have to tilt your head and put the drops in and stay that way for several minutes before using the bulbous booger-puller to suction the liquid out. I am easily bored, so I read the carton of the Debrox Earwax Removal Kit. Perhaps I shouldn't have.

Because listed among the inactive ingredients is something I didn't expect -- flavor.

Yeah, you read that right -- flavor. In an Earwax Removal Kit.

Don't believe me? Go to the pharmacy or grocery store and check it out for yourself.

No doubt the Bellamy Brothers had this in mind as one of the things that makes their Old Hippie get out there in the Twilight Zone.

FYI, Debrox's customer service number is 1-800-245-1040.

Biden Flashback to the pre-hairplug days.

Serial plagiarist Joe Biden is WAY smarter than you.




Nope, no hint of liberal elitism there, right?

Q: If he's so smart, why is he still riding the Welfare Train?

A: Maybe he wants to get a peek of these.

Here is the part where we make up a word.

And the word today is "whiteman-ner."

Which ticket is whitemanner?

Barack Obama (1/2 whiteman) plus Joe Biden (1 whiteman) = 1.5 whitemen.

John McCain (1 whiteman) plus Sarah Palin (O whiteman) = 1 whiteman.

If Heather can have Two Mommies...

... why can't Barack have Two Daddies?

Too bad I'm not a seamstress.

I'd start making pants that LOOK like they're low-slung and show off the unmentionables, but actually DON'T.

It should be fairly simple for anyone with any proficiency on a sewing machine.

Just cut off the top of a pair of drawers and sew them onto the top of a pair of jeans. They then become one article of clothing that simulates the look that literally has the Fashion Police in an uproar.

And it'd make me quite a bit of coin, I'd guess.

I'm surprised they didn't run into a stained blue dress in there.

Apparently, the Republicans have been digging around in the Clinton closets for collectivist campaign themes.

"Country First." -- No, John. INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES first!

"Service Before Self." -- No, John. The government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

"Serving A Cause Greater Than Self." -- Ayn Rand would vomit.

A snarky little college rag (with a brilliant staff, I might add) at then-Southwest Missouri State University once commented that the Clintons' vision of communitarianism struck them as communism with a few extraneous letters thrown in. That is as valid an observation now as it was then.

Wanna free tire gauge?

Slime's giving one away to the first 10K.

Apparently, the Potential Spoonerism Prevention Manager was off that day.

So I'm in the local grocery store, perusing the aisles of the $1 stuff. Most, if not all, of it is made in Red China.

I check out the toys. I don't know why I check out the toys; I never buy the toys, but I check them out anyway.

One of the toy items is these cheap little tops that light up when they spin, three to a pack.

But it is not the contents of the package that catches my eye. It is the writing on the front.

In big, tacky letters, one of the selling points is:

CUNNING STUNTS!!!

It's official.

In our latest super-scientific* poll, 57% of respondents agree that rooting for the sports team of the school that makes you pay property taxes is akin to Ned Beatty rooting for the rednecks in the movie Deliverance.

A new poll will be up shortly.



*- By "super-scientific," I of course mean "not scientific at all."

Remember the last episode of LHOTP*?

You know, the one where they blew up the town rather than let the scurrilous scalawag take it from them?

Think of that when you read this story of heroism.


*- LHOTP: "Little House On The Prairie"

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8-27-08.

Puerto Rico makes Wal-Mart raise milk prices.

Kenny Hulshof reminds us Jay Nixon tried to penalize a gas station for selling cheap gas.

9-yr-old ball player kicked off team for being too good.

Long-term effects of Oklahoma's nanny-state-funded pre-K are not OK.

Clayton NC bans "tethering of animals."

Hickman NE targets aging horse for eviction.

Is it a legitimate government function to ban "vineyards on hillsides with slopes greater than 50 percent"?

Why do the Democrats hate trees? And on a related note, why is it that, four years after this incident, the Democrats are still being thwarted by the Evil Balloons?

BECK: Penn, did you see -- did you see the thing on the balloons? It`s biodegradable balloons. They can`t get them to degrade. And there is still somebody on a compost heap right now pouring extra liquid on them -- damn these balloons. They`re supposed to biodegrade.

JILLETTE: What scares me about that story was that they didn`t say pouring liquid on it. They said liquid.

BECK: Liquid, yes.

JILLETTE: That scares me a lot. Because when I mean water, I often say water. That`s a word most people know.

BECK: I`ve never, ever -- I`ve never said, "You know what? Gosh, I could go for a big glass of liquid."

JILLETTE: Exactly. So I`m worried that what they`re pouring on those balloons might be something we don`t want to know about.

BECK: Right. Like acid.

Gummint Cheese: Introducing Little Mikey.

We look back in our archives and find this little ditty, circa 1978...

Click pic to embiggen.

If it didn't include the entire subscription base of RADAR magazine BEFORE, I'm guessing it does NOW.

Frightening stuff.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

[H/T 2 Survivalist News via Bear Ridge Project.]

Excellent Random YouTube Video Of The Week.

This one is dedicated to the memory of R's lettuceless, tomatoless BLT he devoured last night.

Let Me Guess: Milky Way ad execs have driven through Texas recently.

Good thing they didn't drive through Oklahoma. If they bastardized "Drive Friendly, the Texas Way!" that badly, I'd hate to see what they'd do with "Watch Your Speed; WE Are!" or "HITCHHIKER MAY BE ESCAPED PRISONER!"

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8/20/08.

Barack Obama sees no correlation between legislating paid sick leave and nanny-state liberalism.

Big Brother Is Warrantlessly GPS-tracking You.

The Card Check Bill, coming up soon in Congress, would abolish the secret ballot in unionization efforts.

What? A Texan wants to park his F-150 in his own driveway? Oh, THE HORROR!!! [H/T 2 Dickster's Random Thoughts.]

Clive homeowner fights back against the uniformity-loving Pleasantvillians by declaring his yard a "nature preserve."

ENFIELD NY breaks lease on communications tower property, plans to sieze it via eminent domain.

Paducah smoking ban makes casualty of eatery.

MA State Rep introduces ban on Rent-A-Pets.

Which uses more electricity, a timer or a box fan?

Our former new-found friends the Soviets . . .

. . . are on the march again (Hence the Reagan campaign ad you'll see below). The world is a scary place again.

According to the Whited-Hutchison Steve Austin Theory, that means the Bigfoot stories should start increasing right about . . . now.

Jay Nixon thinks your local gas station owner is Big Oil.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

From Thomas Pally on TPM Cafe:

[To conservatives]it is fine to sabotage the effectiveness of government since that also undermines its popularity. That makes it harder to defend government, and easier to shrink it.

Pally decries in many words what I can rejoice in three:

STARVE THE BEAST.

West Helena Mayor: A is A; A is NOT A.

Here's a charming little quote from West Helena's little dictator:

Mayor James Valley sees it this way: “Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here. The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK, and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

Vice-Dictator Eugene "Red" Johnson chimes in:

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

There have been several instances where I have had trouble sleeping and as a result, smoked up all my cigarettes. So I went to the 24/7 convenience store and bought more. Tell me, "Red" (apt nickname, by the way) whose rights am I violating by doing so? And tell me what exactly the purpose of 24/7 convenience stores is if nobody has any business being out after what YOU deem are appropriate hours?

On CBS, Dictator Valley pipes up again:

"I've heard the critics, and they make an academic argument, but I invite them to come down here on the streets and deal with the problems we've been dealin' with," said Mayor James Valley.

The United States Constitution is not an academic argument.

Arkansas cop beats up wife, uses government database to check up on ex-wife's boyfriend.

Meanwhile on Nanny Island . . .

Staten Island to fine businesses for opening their doors while running the air-conditioner.

Slate asks the same question I did.

How does the government know Americans are driving less?

The Button Police.

Good to know the Yuma school system doesn't have any real problems, freeing up personnel and time to count students' buttons.

This is news???

Actually seen on the bottom-screen crawl on CNN sometime in the past few days:

"The Pope sometimes wears a cape and a fur-trimmed hat."

Is the point of the new Burger King commercial campaign . . .

. . . that if you eat at Burger King, a deranged cow will stalk and murder you?

Because that doesn't seem like a very good selling point.

There's a minor ongoing theme in the movie Men In Black . . .

. . . that suggests the only news you should believe is the tabloids.

Life in Post-America Linkfest: 8-11-08.

Which is worse for society, people smoking pot or jackbooted thugs breaking down the doors of people they know are likely innocent and shooting their dogs?

Doctor secretly and without permission sterilizes patient, is neither arrested nor de-licensed. In my book, that's eugenics.

Stone arch collapses in Utah; park officials place the blame on gravity. Good to know the government thinks we're too stupid to know that gravity is what makes things fall down without them telling us.

Entire neighborhood in West Helena AR placed under house arrest without charge.



Yet another death from "nonlethal" Taser.

Jackson MS city councilman pushes ban on sale of guns at pawnshops.

For the second time I can remember . . .

. . . I voted in the Democrat primary yesterday.

The first time was so I could vote against Bill Clinton. (I voted for Jerry Brown, who had a brief moment of sanity and was advocating a flat income tax at the time. No snide comments, boos, or hisses from the peanut gallery; especially you, Mr. Whited, or I may have to mention Pat Deaton! :) )

Yesterday I did it to vote against Tim Ward.

Hey, Jeremiah, here's an ad idea.

You should start making commercials, playing the last few seconds of this Hulshof commercial . . .



. . . and contrasting that with every one of Hulshof's subsequent ads, all of which attacked his primary opponent Sarah Steelman, and none of which spent a single moment talking about Missouri's future.

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8-6-08.

Englewood CO siccing the poop police on people who don't pick up the dog poop in their own yards within 72 hours.

So, in theory, your a-hole neighbor could wait until you're on vacation, turn his dog out to take a dump in your yard, then turn you in to the Poop Police if you don't clean it up.

SanFran institutes $1000 fine for "improper recycling," including not dumping your foodwaste into a compost heap, which is just what every apartment needs.
In St. Paul, Big Brother loves your trees. And the water bill you have to pay.

"Chicago, Chicago, That Nannystate Town . . ."

Jawbone Bluetooth gives a discount for getting caught breaking the law.

Shock Therapy is hip again!

Homeowner's Association stands in the way of teen Prime Mover's solution to the energy crisis.

Maryland H.O.A. also hates the earth.

Susana Tregobov dries clothes on a line behind her Maryland townhouse, saving energy and money. But now her homeowners association has ordered her to bring in the laundry. The crackdown came after a neighbor complained that the clothesline "makes our community look like Dundalk," a low-income part of Baltimore.

Tregobov and her husband plan to fight for their right to a clothesline, but the odds are against them. Although their state recently passed a law protecting homeowners' rights to erect solar panels for generating electricity, it is still legal in Maryland for communities to ban solar clothes-drying.

Can anyone claim Tasers are nonlethal force with a straight face anymore?

Answer: Jesus old.

The skeleton(s) found recently in Thayer may date to 500 B.C.

Which means the musketball presents us with an interesting enigma.

My three best explanations:

1. It's not a musketball, but something else. Maybe a petrified horse turd.
2. The native Americans had muskets before the Anglo-Saxon invasion, but somehow the technology was lost in the sands of time before Whitey arrived.
3. The musketball contaminated the scene later.

I am waiting patiently for the phone call asking me for suggestions on what to do with the remains of my ancestors.

I'll tell them to do a forensic analysis to confirm the skull has Native American features*, then make resin duplicates of the remains, place those duplicates in the Thayer Information Center with a respectful display, then make your best guess at what tribe(s) inhabited the area 2500 years ago, and return the remains to that tribe to do what they want with them.

And, of course, make a documentary film about the archaelogical dig and have the opening at the old theater in Thayer. Just don't put too much butter on the popmaize.


* - If it's not Native American, maybe the dating is a little off and it's Jesus. This would prove the Mormons right in their belief that Jesus came to the New World after his little experience in the Middle East. Or maybe, just maybe, it would prove that there were European-looking people here before the Native Americans, people who the Native Americans committed genocide upon, which would of course, on the grounds that they are pro-genocide, remove their moral standing to object to the genocide attempted upon them. Oh, wait. That already happened.

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 8-1-08.

South L.A. enacts one-year moratorium on new fast-food joints.

ILL-DEM State Legislator introduces bill banning Texting While Walking.

Big Brother Is Watching You Sit On Your Hog, Pretend To Hit The Throttle, and Go VROOM!VROOM!!!!

"Sous-veillance" is a retarded word, but a good idea. SOMEONE has to watch the watchers.

SanFran bans pharmacies from selling tobacco, on the theory that cigarettes are bad only if bought at Walgreens.

Cop pauses beating of PTSD vet to take a call on his celly; then resumes.

Cop shoves cyclist off his bike, blames victim, lies about it.

Long, of New Jersey, was charged with assault and resisting arrest after the cop insisted the cyclist had tried to run him over in a Critical Mass rally Friday in Times
Square.

A dramatic video starkly contradicted rookie Officer Patrick Pogan's statements. It shows the 22-year-old cop running toward Long and slamming him to the sidewalk.

Bush still planning to dance on the graves of the Tiananmen Dead.

Couplatoons for U.

Question.

Why is it that whenever I voice my opinion, the locals act as though I had blown up a busload of nuns with a missile launcher?

Hoffa old or Jesus old? Or maybe Adam old?

Flooding uncovers skeleton along Warm Fork River.

I note there's nothing in any report so far to suggest it was in a casket.

Our new chief of police described the skeleton as "very old." I'm wondering HOW old.

Life In Post-America Linkfest: 7-26-08.

Modern-day Poor Richards targeted by Memphis police director.

Jackbooted Thug Tasers Man Seven Times While He Was Alive, Then Two More After Death For Good Measure.

Cops who lost brutality lawsuits promoted for their "aggression."

Why don't we hear anything about the eminent domain dark side of media darling T. Boone Pickens' plan?

California Uber Alles.

Bexley OH considering ban on picketing in front of homes.

They must hate trees in Moorpark.

Minneapolis City Council rescinds ban on police compiling "political dossiers."

The Sun-Times hearts the Windy Nanny-City.

Perhaps I am missing the point.

Is the message behind this commercial . . .



... that Old Spice Double Impact will make your lower half smell like a horse?

Not arrested yet.

Here I call upon the vast and undoubtedly infallible medical knowledge of my readers.

Is a fasting blood sugar value of 84 mg/dl too low?

I can't seem to get a straight answer on this.

I even went to the pharmacist and asked, and she went into this big, long complicated thing including, among other things, how tall I am and never did answer the question.

Just a reminder.

The Freedom Tower is still going to be hideous-looking.

I haven't seen an idea put into motion with so little forethought since Mr. Hand married Steve Jobs and went with a hyphenated surname.

Surprise, surprise.

Harpy Hillary Rodham-Clinton's griping again.

She's the biggest nag since Mary Todd Lincoln.

My life is pretty boring lately.

Not much to post.

Unless you want to hear about the dream I had where I was a contestant on a reality show against a bunch of children, and the challenge we were competing in was similar to the Grand Prize Game on the old Bozo Show, where you throw the balls in the buckets, only we were seated and the buckets were on a table in front of us. The farthest bucket was barely further away than the length of my arms.

Needless to say, I won.

Hell no, I wasn't gonna let the kids win! There were half a million dollars at stake!

Big 3 American Beer Search Update.

It's worse than I thought.

Rolling Rock is now owned by A-B, which will soon be owned by the Belgians.

Schlitz ond Old Milwaukee were bought out by Pabst, which was bought out by Miller, that South-African beer.

Which means my poll is pretty much useless, so I'm removing it.

There are some American beers out there, but none of them seem to be nationwide.

Tangential Diversion.

Why is it "Poll Respondents" but "First Responders"?

Finally, a useful poll.

72% of poll respondents say Bud can no longer call itself "The Great American Lager" if InBev succeeds in their buyout.

Remember when Bud derided Miller (and now, I guess Coors) as "That South-African Beer"?

With the Big Three of American Beermaking now in foreign hands, which three beers should replace them?

Obviously, I'm gonna vote for Shiner Bock, even though it's more regional than national. And I guess Samuel Adams would have to be in there too. But I'm having a hard time coming up with a third.

I know, let's do a poll. If you don't see your suggestion listed in the poll, leave list it here.

Hey, Bob. I gotta suggestion.

Pick Sam Nunn as your running mate. C'mon. It'll be cool.

Barr/Nunn '08.

I'd still rather vote for Paul/Gigot, but that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen.

But I thought NASCAR was a conservative sport.

Let me get this straight.

Bob Barr can't campaign at a NASCAR event.

But Barack Obama can sponsor a car there.

I can hear the People Against Everything salivating already.

This will give them a reason to begin work on banning baseballs.

Or requiring that MLB move to those squishy, oversized softballs the retarded kids use.

Tony Snow, R.I.P.

Apparently, schools in The Jop need to concentrate on language and grammar skills.

At least, I assume Mike Pound went to school in The Jop. I could be wrong.

[George Will] likes to make obscure (at least to me) historical and mythical analogies. At least I think they’re analogies, they could be metaphors. Or similes. I can never remember which is which.

If it says my love is a red, red rose, it's a metaphor. If it says my love is LIKE (or as) a red, red rose, it's a simile.

And if you're confusing either one with an analogy, seek psychiatric help immediately.

*MY* Two Cents Worth, dammit!!!

Upon returning from my morning cig run yesterday, I discovered The Man was trying to maize-hole me on the water bill again by manipulating the meter readings. The little black City Utilities pickup was parked by the intersection just below me.

It had only been 22 days since the last time they read it. Last month they read it late; this month it was early. It figures. And dollars to doughnuts they'll read it late again NEXT month.

I had rationed my water usage to achieve the 20-unit minimum for which I would be billed at 31 days. Yesterday, I reached 14.3. That meant I would be billed for 5.7 units I didn’t use, which I’m pretty sure is 570 gallons.

I was pretty sure the meter maid hadn’t gotten to my house yet.

So I did four loads of laundry, washed out the bathtub, mopped the bathroom floor, watered the ‘maters, filled the watering can for the next day, and refilled all the bottles of sugar-free Kool(ish)-Aid in the fridge.

I did so much laundry, I had to dig out the pink Pantycopter to fit it all on the clotheslines.

I managed to use up another 1.8 units of water.

When I later ran the numbers, the electricity I used doing the laundry cost two cents less than those 1.8 units of water would have cost if I had waited to do the activities after the meter was read.

That was an awful lot of work for those two cents, but it’s two of MY cents that I kept the city government from getting.

Apparently, the Aussie constitution includes a right not to get annoyed.

...a dozen demonstrators poked fun Wednesday at a new Australian law
meant to protect participants of next week's World Youth Day from being annoyed
by opponents.

They'll be having one of those Intervention things for ME one of these days.

Saturday night I decided to quit cigs and nearly quit caffeine.

Sunday afternoon, I had to revise the decision.

Not too bright of me to try to quit them both at the same time. It caused insatiable appetite and a giant, invisible C-clamp to steadily tighten at it's contact points on the sides of my forehead.

So I gave up on quitting the caffeine and decided to limit my smoking to a pack a day.

Monday, I ran out of cigarettes around noon.

I made it past what I thought was the worst part that afternoon, the fatigue and sweaty forehead, by taking a nap.

Around six, I was feeling almost human again.

At seven, I watched an episode of A&E network's INTERVENTION.

The guy smoked crack using a rolled-up piece of Diet Coke carton.

All I could think about was how much it looked like a cigarette. It was like some sort of Lung Cancer Porn; I could not take my eyes off the scene.

When the scene was over, I had to make a trip to the convenience store.

Two packs of Camel Menthols.

I guess there ARE atheists in foxholes after all...

Collectivists on (Well, okay, *IN*) PARADE

Here is the latest evidence that we have but one major party in America, and it is the Borg Party.

This weekend, PARADE “magazine” asked John McCain and Barack Obama “What is Patriotism?”

Here is the title and an excerpt of each of their responses. Without peeking, see if you can guess which nominee gave which response.

Nominee #1, What is Patriotism?

SACRIFICE FOR THE COMMON GOOD

That is the community we strive to build -- one in which we recognize we share
common hopes and dreams, one in which we continue to insist that there is
nothing we cannot do when we put our minds to it, and one in which we see
ourselves as part of a larger story, our own fates wrapped up in the fates of
all who share allegiance to America’s singular creed.

Nominee #2, What is Patriotism?

A CAUSE GREATER THAN SELF-INTEREST

We are blessed to be Americans, and blessed that so many of us have so often
believed in a cause far greater than self-interest, far greater than ourselves .
. . [T]he gift we can give back to our country is a patriotism that requires us
to be good citizens in public office or in the community spaces where government
is absent.

So, which response comes from the nominee of which wing of the Borg Party?

[TANGENT: Here's a quote from Obama's answer -- "I remember listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence and explaining how its ideas applied to every American . . . We can say and write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door."

Apparently, Mama Obama never spent any time in Thayer, MO. ]

Hugo and The Bunny Man.

For reasons discussed elsewhere, I spend no money in Thayer unless I absolutely HAVE to.

So, when I found myself in Salem last week with time to kill, I decided to pick up some things I have been doing without. I went to a little discount grocery store south of town and bought, among other things, frog legs.

On the way back, I decided to stop at a little convenience store that has been there forever and buy some gas.

When I was running the streets of Salem, it was a Sinclair station. I think the last time I checked, it was a Phillips 66.

I never thought to look for what brand it was, until I was pulling out.

Citgo.

But in my defense, Hugo Chavez has never showed up in my front yard and told me I am not ALLOWED to have an opinion.

Had I seen the Citgo sign, I *STILL* would not have waited until I got back to Thayer to fill up ($20), but I wouldn't have bought Citgo, either. I would have bought my gas at the Shell station in Salem.

I've hidden my Man Card so they can't take it away from me.

I blew out the rear speakers in my titty-pink station wagon.

What was I listening to, you ask? Motorhead? Judas Priest?

No.

Speaking of Maxipads . . .

I’m sitting in my car Tuesday, waiting for the library to open. As usual, they’re late. For the umpteenth time, I wonder when people just stopped caring about doing things the right way, like showing up on time.

Lying on the sidewalk, about halfway between me and the door, is what appears to be a white piece of paper of some sort.

Finally, one of the librarians arrives.

I get out of my car and start toward the library.

When I get to the object on the sidewalk, I realize it is not a piece of paper, but a lightweight feminine hygiene product. Gross. At least it doesn’t appear to be used.

I go on about my business and enter the library for my blogging fix.

About ninety minutes later, I come back out.

And notice two more of the things between the original and my car, over by the edge of the grass.

I get a mental picture of some woman having a VERY bad day, trying to chase down her panty shields in a windstorm.

For a moment, it’s an amusing image.

But then I wonder why she had an open box of panty shields OUTSIDE.

Now I’m gonna get her finger germs on my butt.

In my quest to reduce my consumption of oil-based products, I buy loose rolls of toilet paper for a quarter apiece at a local grocery salvage store rather than buy them shrinkwrapped in plastic in bundles of multiples of four or six at the grocery store.

I just have to be careful not to buy rolls that are half-gone or have water damage.

At least, I HOPE it’s water damage.

Yeah, yeah; I know that at some point in their past they were almost certainly shrinkwrapped just like that. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that rather than throw out the toilet paper just because the package was damaged, they’d make the responsible decision to recover the toilet paper.

And if I DID buy the Toilet Paper Of The Masses, it would be TWO plastic shrinkwraps bought and thrown away (the one thrown away due to damage, plus the one I would be buying) instead of just one.

I tell you all this to set up the following.

So I’m standing in line at the register at Ken’s Salvage Grocery. I’ve filled my cart with ten Cups Of Noodles ($.10 each), ten of those little plastic bottles of Kool(ish)-Aid that kids drink ($.10 each), a package of very slightly out-of-date Cherry Cordial Hershey’s Kisses ($1), a used paperback for my mom ($1), a couple of 16-oz. packages of turkey coldcuts to make sammiches with ($1.99 each), a box of individual packets of True Lemon ($2), a slightly dented tube of Pringles ($.75), and four rolls of the aforementioned toilet paper, which are resting on top.

One of the rolls has a festive, simple little floral design on it.

The woman in line in front of me turns around, focuses on this roll of toilet paper, and . . . get this . . . CARESSES IT WITH HER FINGER!!!

“Oooh, I haven’t seen that kind in a long, long time!” she remarks, “I used to buy it ALL THE TIME, and I really LOVED it!”

Is it too much to ask for a man and his asswipe to remain unmolested in the checkout aisle?

I GET that other people have rubbed their grubby little hands on it while it sat in the bin on the shelf, but there’s something about it being in my cart, being fingered right in front of me, that rubs me the wrong way.

Everyone uses toilet paper; we all know that. But when you see toilet paper in someone’s grocery cart, you’re supposed to pretend like you don’t see it. You’re not supposed to comment on it, and you’re SURE AS HELL not supposed to caress it with your finger!

It’s one of those Unspoken Rules That Holds Society Together, just like not buying your condoms at a store where the people know you, or if you’re a cashier, not broadcasting a request for a price-check on aisle three for the Super-Absorbent Maxipads over the store’s loudspeaker. It just ain’t right.

So if I run into her in the regular grocery store and see that she has some of those Super-Absorbent Maxipads in her cart, I’m gonna make sure everyone in the store knows about it.

“Are those the SUPER ABSORBENT MAXIPADS, ma’am? My washing machine overflowed and flooded the laundry room, and maybe if I got some of the SUPER ABSORBENT MAXIPADS like yours, I could use them to soak up the water!”

Speaking of terrifying . . .

. . . I don't remember the 80's being this creepy:



I'm gonna have nightmares for a month!

Okay, it's official.

McDonald's is now officially the most terrifying place on earth.




Also check out When Ronald Met Calvin Klein's Obsession here and here.

Who says one vote doesn't make any difference?

Sure, it's one vote of a Supreme Court Justice, but we were one flip-flop away from the right to keep and bear arms being a collective, not an individual, right.

And if the right spelled out in the 2nd Amendment became collective, not individual, how long would it take for the rights spelled out in the OTHER amendments to be interpreted the same way.

Imagine a country where you cannot have individual religious beliefs; you can only belong to an organized church.

Imagine a country where you cannot speak unless you gather up a bunch of people who agree with you.

Imagine a country where you cannot write your Congressman without a bunch of cosigners.

Imagine a country where you cannot blog unless you belong to the People's Unified Bloggers Association.

Imagine a country where you can't challenge an arrest unless you can find a bunch of people who question the officer's probable cause standard.

We were one vote away from that.

But isn't "the extreme" . . .

... what MAKES an ideological interpretation an ideological interpretation and not a pragmatic interpretation?

Here's today's Idiot Jerkoff Quote of the Day:

Like a college student who gets his first taste of Ayn Rand and then starts
interpreting everything—his government, his professors, his girlfriend—from an
objectivist viewpoint, they’ve taken an ideological interpretation to the
extremes.

Short-E?

Am I the only one that notices that Wall-E looks an awful lot like a cuter, squishified knock-off of Johnny Five?

[Update: No, I'm not.]

"Drilling in Anwar" . . .

. . . takes on a whole new meaning.

Even if we're talking Two-Buck Chuck here . . .

. . . isn't wine still more expensive per gallon than gas?

Hyperwatting.

Hah.

A few days ago, I took my trusty screwdriver to the basement and turned the thermostat on the water heater from halfway between "Hot" and "Very Hot" to just "Hot."

It seems to be saving me about 2 kwh a day.

One of these days I'm gonna grow a sack and flip the breaker, turning it off altogether, only turning it on about an hour before a shower or washing dishes.

'Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear.

These may be the worst four words ever strung together:

"Super-Christian cheerleader Grace."

Does my talking somehow preclude you from going?

This is wrong on so many levels.