Duane with his goldtop.
Wail on, Skydog!
The first laugh I've had all day
The Political Junkie brings back the good times with a touching year-end tribute to the one and only Iraqi Information Minister.
God, he was fun.
Lots more quotes here - just scroll down a bit. My fav?:
"They are nowhere near the airport ..they are lost in the desert...they cannot read a compass...they are retarded."
Mohammed, of Iraq the Model looks back on a wonderful year.
Good bye 2003, my eyes saw the greatest scene through you, and I lived my happiest moment in you (the tyrant falls)
Is there anything greater than that?
Good bye 2003, in you I listened to the most beautiful words "ladies and gentle men, we got him"
Good bye 2003, the legend of my people was written through out your days with blood and tears.
Good bye 2003, you were the best.
May 2004 be full of happiness, freedom, peace, and prosperity for all the Iraqi bloggers and their people.
Be sure to check out World Net Daily's "Most Spiked Stories of 2003". These are the biggest under-reported stories of the year. The persecution of Christians, especially in countries whom we consider to be our allies in the War on Terror, merits a whole lot more coverage than what it's gotten.
I wrote a beautiful haiku for y'all:
Wild shenanigans
Sperm whale with a credit card
Big Fat Teddy K.
Useful Fools has just received a Dean memo on region-appropriate car decals.
Sorry, Dean, no chance for you in the Stars-and-Bars-Ichthyus-Nascar-NRA region.
Dean thinks the other Democratic candidates are being mean to him, and he wants the head of the DNC to make it stop. In fact, it would be best if all the other boys just went on home. Lieberman has some things to say about that:
"I've got some news for Howard Dean," Lieberman added. "The primary campaign is a warm-up compared to what George Bush and Karl Rove have waiting for him. . . . He's going to melt in a minute once the Republicans start going after him."
Yeah, buddy.
Paul Bremer is doing a great job.
Ali, of Iraq the Model writes about a conversation he had with a cab driver:
Then he said "you know who I would really like to be the next president? This man" and handed me a newspaper with Paul Bremer picture on the front page.
I laughed and said "but he's American, he can only be a temporary civil administrator, not an elected president"
The driver said "so what! We could ask the Americans to lend us his services and give him the Iraqi nationality. He sure deserves it"
Thanks to Michael over at Southern Appeal.
Southern discomfort
Howard Dean's whistling wrong Dixie
Zev Chafets, New York Daily News, 12/28/03.
A few weeks ago at a ritzy fund-raiser for the Committee to Protect Journalists, my wife, Lisa, was introduced to a man named Steven Isenberg.Isenberg was once Mayor John Lindsay's chief of staff. Later, he was the publisher of Newsday. Now he teaches literature at the University of Texas in Austin.
That gave them something in common: Lisa is a graduate of the University of Texas.
"Are you from Texas?" he asked.
"No. I'm a Louisianan."
And he said: "Well, you're the cleanest one I've ever met."
Reading Howard Dean's Christmas Eve interview in The Boston Globe reminded me of Isenberg. Both are New York liberals who now live among people they regard as their inferiors.
Isenberg thinks these people are too primitive to bathe. Dean imagines that they're too stupid to think.
The Dean we have come to know is the very model of the modern metro-secularist, a Christian so tepid that in the 1980s he quit his Episcopal church in a dispute over a bicycle path.
But on the eve of primary season in the Bible Belt, Dean has found religion. And not just any religion. That old-time religion.
He confided to The Globe that he prays every day, is a committed believer in Jesus Christ and plans to include his relationship with his Savior in his hitherto godless campaign speeches.
This will probably come as a surprise to Jesus. It will not, however, shock Southerners long accustomed to the Northern belief that they will swallow anything.
This assumption runs especially strong in what Dean likes to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." These people don't believe in much, but they are fervent on the subject of their own superiority. To them, America's red states (as identified in TV maps on Election Night 2000) are populated by ignorant cowboys, unwashed swampies, hellfire preachers, beauty parlor bimbos, redneck sheriffs, Confederate flag wavers and retarded hillbilly kids sitting in trees playing the banjo.
This picture of Southern inferiority, like all articles of faith, is immune to both empirical observation and personal experience. To guys like Dean, Dixie is and will forever remain a vast county fair where a slick Yaleman can sell 5-gallon jugs of snake oil in return for votes.
But that doesn't work, especially not in national politics.
There's a reason no Northern Democrat has been elected President since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 (in a contest at least as close and as fishy as the 2000 vote) or that only three have gone to the White House in the past century and one, Woodrow Wilson, was born and raised in the South.
You'd think that Ivy League Democrats would have figured out by now that they can't win the states south of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi (or downscale from Zabar's) by transparent pandering. Howard Dean in the pulpit is like Michael Dukakis in a tank - at once ridiculous and insulting.
It's possible that Dean will do all right in the Southern primaries. If he does, it will be attributable not only to the weakness of the Democratic field, but also to the falsity of Dean's own caricature of the South. There are enough of his people down there - techies, yuppies, peaceniks, gays - for him to make a respectable primary showing.
But not enough for him to win any red states in November and certainly none of the Southern states.
If he goes down in flames, the Steven Isenbergs of the world will say, in their unguarded moments, that white Southerners were too dirty and dumb to vote for him. But that is wrong. A lot of them will vote against Dean because they are smart enough to spot a phony.
Howard Dean isn't fooling anybody. He's not the first carpetbagger that's come through here.
Those Miccosukee cops run a tight ship.
Drivers Angered by Miccosukee Police Checkpoints
Nearly every night since early September, Miccosukee police have been stopping drivers turning onto Loop Road from Tamiami Trail/U.S. 41 along the eastern edge of the Big Cypress National Preserve in Miami-Dade County.
That is one secure road.
This is one of my favorite poems from Dusty, an Army nurse who served in Vietnam.
"DEROS (1968)" ~Dusty
Wobbling down the jetway in unaccustomed pumps
the confines of a Class A skirt impeding my progress
stateside stockings rubbing raw my nerves
a freakish fraud in back-in-the-World drag
I wish only for familiar fatigues.
Coping with crowds of vast, turbulent hurry
I take no notice of the college kids
(ordinary sight on this part of the planet)
so clean-cut they could be from Kansas--
until the beer cans hit their mark
one splashing my skirt, another dinging my shin.
Stunned, I ponder the existential question:
were those beer cans half empty
or half full?
Laura Bush is a peach.
When she first learned of the stealth visit, she wanted to accompany her husband, but knew he did not plan to invite her.
Dubya's a lucky guy.
"The high-water mark for weird for centuries to come".
``Look at that mug shot. That's not even a deer in the headlights because no self-respecting deer would look like that. Even Bambi had better people doing his makeup.''
Michael Jackson officially crowned King of Weird.
A Sun-Sentinel headline:
Polls: White Men Flocking to 'High Noon' Bush
The ideal "is that a real man is a man of few words and determined, resolute action: like in [the movie] `High Noon.' And Bush captures this almost perfectly and effortlessly."
Yes, he does. But in this movie not everyone hid behind shutters. And Grace Kelly stayed and helped him kill bad guys.
This was my old job in the Army. I was a Russian linguist.
I don't know how the guys in this pic have their sleeves rolled up. We would be all bundled up - some of us even sitting inside sleeping bags. It was like a meat locker in there.
We made sure the Czar's boys didn't come screaming through the Fulda Gap. And we made the lights blink!
I'm probably the only person whose favorite part of "Apocalypse Now" is the scene where they're playing the tape of the radio voice intercepts of Colonel Kurtz. You can hear the operator giving the zulu-time voice-overs as he records. He steals the show.
Thomas Edison had an estate in my hometown of Fort Myers. It has a botanical garden, and my brother would climb the walls there and steal fruit from the sausage tree.
My brother told me that over at the Edison Home they had Thomas Edison's last breath in a jar. I found this very disturbing and had nightmares about it. I asked my science teacher if this was true, and he said "Of course not. A man's laying there dying, and someone's going to stick a jar over his nose and mouth?"
Fast forward twenty-five years and I'm standing in a bookstore. I see a book by Tim Powers called "Expiration Date". On the cover is Thomas Edison, and HIS LAST BREATH is coming out of a broken vial.
Is this an old carney with oil-slick tattoos?
Nope, it's a man with pellagra.
This was the Scourge of the South, and came from having a corn-based diet. It had a 40% fatality rate. A Dr. Goldberger of the National Health Service figured out that it wasn't caused by germs but by nutrition. They had an educational campaign to alert people, and when my dad was a kid in the 30's, a worker came out to the house to talk to my grandmother about it. He said to mix up the diet and replace some corn with rice, amongst other things. So instead of grits and eggs in the mornings, she fed her ten kids rice and eggs. My father says they were very unusual, with their rice-eating.
There's supposed to be a movie in the works about it, with Jeff Goldblum playing Dr. Goldberger.
Oh, that wacky Dissident Frogman. Press his red button.
The Mad Cow Was from Kanukistan.
I thought they had a mad cow up in Alberta not so long ago. We were still buying their cows?
This whole thing has got me thinking about Kuru, or Mad Cannibal disease.
Basically, we're not to eat our own kind. It's unhealthy. Unless it's a "lifestyle choice".
Somebody over at the Democratic Underground thinks that W. caused the earthquake in Iran. That's crazy talk. It is well known that earthquakes are caused by rabbits pounding on the ground with their hind legs.
AYS from Iraq at a Glance, commenting on Mo:
The leader of Libya ( for the first time) behave like a reasonable man .. he was using his mind when he’s decided that.
I am sure that he’s imagined himself instead of Saddam in that hole !! yes.. let every crazy president feels the same..
They might use their WMD weapons in any time..
But when the leader of Libya heard what happened to the tyrant he said immediately : Oh.. no.. I am sorry ! I found some weapons in my country .. come and take it.!!
Domino's Pizza founder and CEO Tom Monaghan's new conservative Catholic university, Ave Maria, is up and running over by Naples.
Flaherty, the admissions counselor, said that on the weekends, some students have visited Planned Parenthood in Naples, where they "pray to end abortion.''
I think the ideas of praying and ending abortion probably made the Miami Herald reporter a little green around the gills.
Anyways, welcome to the neighborhood, y'all.
Mr. Cracker and I differ on our politics. Every four years for the past couple of decades I do a little dance and tell him how I'm cancelling out his vote.
It's the little things that help cement a relationship.
Drudge reports that the terrorists were planning on crashing the plane into Las Vegas.
That won't do, as the most gorgeous male athlete in the world lives in Las Vegas. He's busy training for the Australian Open, and does not need planes flying into him at this time.
We'll learn more about what happened in the days to come. Thank God for the all the lives that have been spared.
"For unto us, this day, a child is born, a son is given, and he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Merry Christmas!
Norad tracks Santa.
He better not try to fly in here from France tonight or we'll have to blow his butt right out the sky.
The Glass Ceiling and the Pack of Bitches Sisterhood
There's a report out that says:
For the first time since tracking began 20 years ago, U.S. women outnumber men in higher paying, white collar managerial and professional occupations.
That's a nice fact. But then they lose me:
"As a growing number move into upper management roles, those further down the ladder will reap the benefits by increasingly being targeted for advancement," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
John, you think women are going to promote other women just because? What you know about us ain't much. Women *not* promoting women is more like it. I bet most of these ceiling-busting women caught their breaks from men. Probably from nice guys like you, John.
Sometimes the boot on your face is a high heel.
Duane showing us his belly.
Wail on, Skydog!
From my hometown:
FORT MYERS -- A woman was charged with retail theft after allegedly forcing her 11-year-old daughter to help shoplift clothes she planned to give her for Christmas.
The girl and her siblings don't live with the mother, thank goodness. The police bought all the kids clothes for Christmas and threw the mom's butt in jail.
Bet y'all haven't looked at a Duane Allman pic all day.
Wail on, Skydog!
Death to Barney!
Shiloh doesn't love Barney. What she does love is sinking her teeth into his soft, cottony guts.
I love it!
From The New York Post:
'BUSH' WITH BUTCHER IN SOLITARY
By STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN
December 21, 2003 -- Saddam Hussein is a psychologically broken man - muttering curses and spending his days staring at a portrait of President Bush hung in his jail cell, according to the chief civilian administrator in Iraq.
Paul Bremer told "60 Minutes" in an interview airing on CBS tonight about his half-hour meeting with the Butcher of Baghdad.
Bremer and four Iraqis who visited Saddam to verify his identification are the only people to see the defeated madman in his cell, believed to be in Baghdad.
New details about Saddam's capture emerge in the interview.
The dictator had two machine guns with him in his "spider hole" when he was nabbed, but didn't fire a shot, said Dr. Mowaffak al Rubaie, one of the Iraqis who accompanied Bremer.
Al Rubaie, who had been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam's goons, got sweet revenge, mocking his former tormenter's cowardice.
"You did not shoot a single bullet," al Rubaie said to Saddam. "You can sacrifice all Iraqi lives, but when it comes to your life you spare that . . . Saddam Hussein, you are a coward."
"In My World"
Frank J's "In My World" series really cracks me up. Here's the latest one.
"I say we cut him into four pieces and place each piece at the four corners of the world as a warning to others," Rumsfeld offered.
"I say we give him a taste of his own medicine," Bush said, "and bury him in a mass grave... a mass grave of one!"
We'd already gotten such a wonderful Christmas present, but there's Mo putting more presents under the tree!
Libya has provided intelligence on hundreds of al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants, and renounced attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction, in an effort to end its pariah nation status.
Mr. Cracker put the outside Christmas lights up yesterday. Yay!
I've got a pot of water with vanilla extract in it boiling on the stove so the house will smell Christmassy.
Saddam's got the Christmas spirit too!
From Scrappleface:
Libya to Give Up WMD, U.N. Demands More Time
(2003-12-19) -- Just hours after the announcement that Libya has offered to give up its weapons of mass destruction program and submit to immediate, unconditional inspections, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Libya must be given more time to make the decision to abandon WMD.
"You can't just announce this all at once," said Mr. Annan. "Libya should invest the time to build a true multilateral coalition before inspections can even be contemplated. This is a 12-year process at minimum."
In related news, Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean said that Libya would have destroyed its WMD program much sooner if the United States had not invaded Iraq.
"America will not be safer when Libyan WMD are destroyed," said Mr. Dean.
Libya is abandonning its WMD programs and will allow unconditional inspections. Looks like Gaddafi doesn't want our boys giving him a rectal exam. Oho! (As A-double-lizzle-to-the-A-to-the-hizzle would say.)
Useful Fools has some commentary on this.
UPDATE: The President's statement today.
Instapundit has more.
Zeyad of Healing Iraq scooped the whole world with his blogging on the big anti-terrorism demonstration in Baghdad. The Weekly Standard has a great article on this.
"When we were marching on Dec. 10 I told Omar that maybe we didn't need to cover the protests after all since it looked like reporters from all the major media agencies were doing so. As you can see in my pictures there were scores of reporters and cameras all over the place. And since the rallies ended in front of the Palestine hotel we thought that it would be impossible for the media to ignore this event. I felt a bit awkward walking along reporters carrying just a little digital camera while they had all the equipment."The last thing we expected was to be the first to publish anything about the protests. It felt both good and awful at the same time. Good for scooping Reuters, AFP, AP, and other wire services and media stations. And awful for the people that depended on these services for their news. I'm telling you there were reporters from every station in the world at the demos that day and yet only a few mentioned them at all."
Way to go, Zeyad!
I love Iraqi blogs. This post on the Mesopotamian was the icing on my cake of Thanksgiving day:
AHLAN WA SAHLAN; GWB
IN THE NAME OF GOD THE COMPASSIONATE; THE MERCIFUL
Ahalan (= Kinsmen: it means you have come amongst kinsmen)
Wa = and
Sahlan (= Plateau or plain easy land: meaning you have trodden welcoming land)
These are the traditional words of welcome in the Arabic language.
Yes GWB, though the visit was brief, it was very meaningful. We know that you have come, not as the President of an invading nation, but as the friend who wishes to renew commitment to our people, and as long as your intentions are what you have repeatedly said (and we don't doubt your sincerity), the land and the hearts welcome you.
It gives us pain that the visit is so short and that the masses cannot in the present circumstances come out to give you the welcome that you deserve, but the day will come, the day will come (God's Willing). Yes the day will come when the millions will come out to welcome the best friend that the Mesopotamian people have ever had, and he will be amongst the most devoted and allied people that America will ever have.
The bones in the mass graves salute you, Avenger of the Bones.
Hail, Friend and Ally, Hail, Sheikh of Sheikhs, GWB; Descendant of the Noble Ancient Celt.
This is our dog Shiloh. She's sleeping her way across Alligator Alley after a overly-exciting visit with family. It was the first time she could relax in *days*, she said.
Greetings and Salutations.
Time for me to get moving on Christmas.
