Happy three-year blogiversary to Fad over at Farm Accident Digest.
Fad has readers return multiple times during the day to check his blog by clever use of intermittent reinforcement- the most powerful of all operant conditioning techniques.
Will you get there in time to read one of his brilliant posts before he deletes it? Or find only a post saying a post was deleted? You'll just have to keep checking.
There are so many interesting articles on the Iraqi election, you could be reading all day.
Savor this wonderful, historical event. And remember to ink up today.
To show my respect for the bravery shown by the Iraqi people in defying the terrorists, and to stand in solidarity with their hopes for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I'll be inking my finger tomorrow. I hope all y'all will too.
(Via The Corner.)
UPDATE:
Nevermind. Raed says it's all lies. He does a mean Baghdad Bob.
Saddam's gone, Raed. Time to move on with you new life of non-privilege.
UPDATE II:
Zarqawi vowed the streets would run red with the blood of voters. Instead, they ran purple with the ink of voters.
Here are some very nice ladies in Baghdad giving Zarqawi the finger.
Preliminary data shows a 72% voter turnout so far. All we Americans have to worry about it is rain, yet we don't go to the polls in those numbers. And these people are all arriving on foot. Go, Iraqis! You are brave people.
After all car movements were prohibited, thousands of Iraqis make a trip on foot to the town of Al Alamara, Iraq, to place their votes Sunday, Jan. 30 2005.
Think getting to the polls on foot is extreme?
Some arrived in wheelchairs.
This one in a baby stroller.
This man with no wheelchair had a donkey pull him into the polling place on a little cart.
Another man was carried on someone's back.
This Iraqi soldier is crawling to the polling station as a sign of respect, his voter's registration in his mouth.
Over at Iraq the Model is the story of one Iraqi's visit to the polls:
I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants.
I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".
Yes brothers, proceed and fill the box!
These are stories that will be written on the brightest pages of history.
UPDATE:
Lots more good coverage over at Tim Blair's.
The polls in Iraq are now open.
God bless and preserve a free and democratic Iraq.
From The Observer, a sad and timely article entitled "Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy."
There are a lot of Liberal Al's out there- people who hate Bush so much they want democracy in Iraq to fail.
A fellow by the name of Al, whose politics are very different from mine, likes to stop by several times a week and discuss them with me. He's the same one with whom I wagered on the election. For him there's nothing President Bush has done, or ever will do that's right, with the exception of having married Laura. That's the only thing my friend will give Dubya credit for. He believes Iraq is entirely a fiasco because the people are incapable of appreciating democracy.
Today he walked up to me and while he was looking down, stapling some papers, said, "You heard they hit the embassy in the Green Zone." As he said this, a smile played across his lips. I sat there looking at his little smile.
"You're happy some of our people got killed," I said, flatly.
He stalked off, saying, "No, I care if people get killed, unlike some people."
But I saw that smile. If it hurts George W. Bush, it can only be good news.
UPDATE:
Liberal Larry is stealing my friend Liberal Al's material!
There's a very interesting article on author Dean Koontz in the Australian. I'm in the middle of his latest book, "Life Expectancy", now.
Around 15 years ago my sister-in-law mailed him a fan letter; they've been corresponding ever since. I find it pretty remarkable that with his wealth and fame he'd be such a good penpal.
Nice guy.
Maybe one day he'll have a character in one of his books live in a cabin in the backwoods of Georgia and make Christmas tree ornaments for a living. He's got the material for it.
Lilly's Behavioralist visited today. He hadn't realized that a block away from us is an elementary school, and I hadn't realized that a place like that is dog trainer heaven because of all the foot traffic. We spent our time over there, watching parents pick up kids from school, and determined that 100 feet is as close as people can be to her before she goes postal. In planetary distance that probably works out as "Don't come any closer than Pluto." We'll be trying to gradually bring her Line of Death closer and closer inwards.
We could tell she's begun to make the connection between seeing people and getting rewarded because sometimes she would look at someone then look directly up at me in expectation of her treat. Freeze-dried liver, baby. Can't beat it. So, we are making progress. One day soon she'll begin to feel that elderly gardeners, mothers pushing babies in strollers, and yappy little foofoo dogs are no threat to us. She'll beat her swords into ploughshares and the lion will lay down with the lamb.
Rob of Pious Agnostic has excellent pics from his visit to an old-time Florida roadside attraction, Gatorland.
There's a Gatorland Gatorcam on my sidebar. He should have waved to us.
In Australia, Iraqis danced in the streets, twirling scarves and singing, and proudly displaying blue ink on their fingers which told the world they had cast the first votes.
"When I look at the ink on my finger -- this is a mark of freedom," said Kassim Abood, outside a polling booth in a disused furniture warehouse in western Sydney.
I deal with people like this on a fairly frequent basis on the job. The good thing is that it saves me from working myself up into a tizzy over most things in the news. I can only produce so much adrenaline during the course of the day.
Hope nobody lost any sleep over that dirty bomb hoax. I'm saving all my spare hopes and worries for the Iraqi election.
Why doesn't anybody talk about the First Longhorn? Why is she kept out of the public eye? Is there some deep, dark, secret?
From a post by a fool named "Huck", whose website is indexed in Google News:
That is right. Carlie Brucia allowed Joseph Smith to murder her. Even though it was Joseph Smith who murdered Carlie Brucia, it was Carlie Brucia who allowed it to happen. Did her parents do enough? I'm sure they thought they covered all the bases when talking to their daughter. If you're a parent can you do more? The simple answer is yes.
Carlie Brucia was an 11-year-old, not a worldly-wise adult. That a little girl didn't see through Joseph Smith doesn't make her complicit in her own murder. We don't know what Joseph Smith said to her, what ruse he used to make her, hesitatingly, walk away with him. We also don't know what she did the second she got out of range of the surveillance camera.
We do know she kicked out the ceiling panel of the car she was murdered in. I'd say she was trying to not allow Joseph Smith to murder her.
The date for the trial of Joseph Smith has been set for November 7.
Portrait of an artist with Gibson, empty cold-pill bottle, and guitar-face.
Wail on, Skydog!
This morning I came within one second of having a 100% successful walk with Lilly. We clicked-and-treated our way past a man and lady walking on the other side of the road, followed rapidly by a man on riding mower.
We got to our front porch where, flushed with success, I stopped to reward her for not having threatened to whoop up on any innocent passer-by for one entire walk. My neighbor chose that moment to yoo-hoo her greetings from the street. She actually yoo-hoos. The pandemonium shattered the delusions I was harboring about how quickly we were going to roll through this training. Did I just do three whole days of training for my health?
Mr. Cracker usually drives the dogs to the garbage dump in the evenings for a big roam-around. So far he hasn't taken the clicker. I'm starting to suspect I might be the lone dog trainer in the family.
Shiloh got a laugh out of my saying that if dolphins could learn this way, so could Lilly, quipping that dolphins are intelligent mammals. She actually quips.
This is the strangest story I've read in a while.
The only two Jews in Afghanistan, Ishaq Levin and Zebulon Simentov, spent all the last decade arguing and trying to get each other into trouble with the authorities.
Levin has now passed away and Simentov is dancing a jig:
He said he felt no sadness at the passing of his sparring partner.
“He was a very bad man who tried to get me killed,” he said, grinning as he warmed his feet on a diesel-burning stove in his run-down living room. “Now I am the Jew here, I am the boss.”
Florida has the Safe Haven law, where people can leave a baby that's less than three days old at a fire station or a hospital, no questions asked. There are always going to be cases like this, however, no matter how hard the authorities try to provide alternatives. The people who do that sort of thing do so almost immediately after the birth, and the police would have to be standing right there to stop the baby from being dumped.
It's a good law, and I know they're trying to prevent tragedies, but some people are just too far gone mentally to take advantage of it.
Tonight Mr. Cracker's mother came over with a big bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She'd opened up the bag to get a cookie to break in two for the dogs, when Lilly knocked her down, took the bag, then stuck her German Shepherd head inside the cookie bag like it was her feed sack.
Boy, she got a time-out for that one.
It turns out one of the neighbors used to be married to Michael Savage, back when he was just Michael Wiener. She was pretty funny. She said that in the interest of time, she could describe him and distill years of experience for me like this: "If you poured all his neuroses, narcissism, selfishness, and infidelities into a funnel, what would come out of the other end of the funnel would be one. single. little. nut."
I don't know about all the stuff that got poured in there, but I'd already figured out the part about his being a nut. Some people think it's all an act, though; just a part he's playing to earn a living.
It's very cold outside, so there weren't many people out. There were two, however, and Lilly went 50% with them. A lady walking a dog came up behind us on the opposite side of street. I had the hood on my jacket up and missed that one, but Lilly didn't. Bark, lunge. A dog/lady combo might have been too strong to resist, in any case.
We did have success approaching and walking by a man who was walking around his sprinkler truck. She looked at him. Click, treat. She looked at him again. Click, treat. He got back in his truck and we walked by quietly.
We got lots of bags of new, fresh treats for training. I took a suggestion from a book and offered her raisins. Ha. Raisins don't cut it. Raisinettes would, I'm sure.
The global warming nutters are at it again- right before the Kyoto Protocol takes legal effect on signatories.
It's very interesting how junk science has emerged as a political tool. Ideologists gather false, misleading, or unverified data, hold a press conference, and they're off to the races. In the end, it's all about power and money.
I've decided to start keeping a little tally of the people Lilly hassles during the course of her day, in order to chart her progress.
So far today, it's only two. One lady for the morning walk, one lady for the afternoon walk. They were both people who were passing on the sidewalk. The lady this morning actually clutched her heart and started babbling. The lady this afternoon wanted me to get the dog further away from her, but I apologized and told her I couldn't drag the dog by the neck.
I'm not supposed to drag her away from the scene of crime, cursing and mortified by her behavior, though, of course, I'd like to. Screaming at the dolphins and spanking their butts doesn't get them through the hoop; a whistle and a bucket of fish does. This sort of process will work for Lilly as well. It will, it will.
These two aside, she let quite a number of children play basketball, baseball, and swing on swings without saying a word. Additionally, she let a lady continue to plant flowers in total peace, and two dogs in the distance went unchallenged.
I stuffed her so full of treats on the morning walk that later on in the day she suddenly puked an entire bucketful right under my computer table.
Thankfully, my friend the carpet shampooer is here for me 24/7.
On the walk back this afternoon, she found an almost whole box of doughnuts on the ground that some construction workers had left. She opened the box, inspected the wide variety of doughnuts that were there, then selected the plain one. Interesting. Mr. Cracker said he would have picked the plain one too.
The Boston Irish Son of Nixon is apparently not enjoying his winter wonderland. If Drudge headlines are any indication, Son of Nixon will soon be the next Oetzi the Iceman, buried in the glacier that's surely encasing him in an icy tomb even as we speak. Found a thousand years from now, archeologists will ponder the remote control clutched in the Boston Iceman's hand. The Frankie Muniz posters found at the dig site will leave them all feeling a little uncomfortable.
Come down to Florida before you freeze your butt off, Son of Nixon.
Firas, of Iraq and Iraqis, on the price of freedom:
Election is a fact and is going to take place on the 30th of January no matter what, and may be some of us are not going to see the day after that day and loose their lives electing the right people or at least who we think right people, but it will be the price for our freedom, may be we didn’t pay enough to remove Saddam, so it is the price we are going to pay that day, the 30th of January 2005 to overcome our fears and be free people who did pay for their freedom.
Its not a dreamy words and not banner words for election campaign, I am not a candidate and I am not going to be one but after few years from now inside Iraq or any where else in the world it will be very prodding to sit beside a chimney fire and tell the story of that day to a grand sun or two, or at least to remember that day a lone and remember that we weren’t afraid of a bunch of masked head choppers who wanted to take us to dark ages where we would be slaves of evil.
They say people get the government they deserve. January 30th will be the day that Iraqis show what they're made of.
May they stand as tall as the Afghans and the Ukrainians.
Congrats to Ukraine's Yushchenko at his swearing in as president. Attending the ceremony was Colin Powell, who met with Yush yesterday. At that meeing Yush told Powell:
"I'm sure that on Independence Square you will see hundreds of thousands of people with very bright eyes," Yushchenko said. "None of that would have been possible without our partners who share the same democratic values as we do, in which I include President Bush and you."
Tremble, tyrants.
Not in attendance was election maven Jimmy Carter, out-of-action on the world's foreign election scene since giving a high-five to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's "win" in August.
Public bikini waxings, Iron Man, and pepper-sprayed hippies. What more could you want? Do yourself a favor and check the blog "Caption This!" every day. Good stuff.
The Behavioralist came to visit yesterday. Lilly launched herself at him, cursing, when he arrived and then in a split second it was a lovefest. He said she was the sweetest German Shepherd he'd ever met and that aggressive dogs become more aggressive as a stranger approaches, while she does exactly the opposite. He marvelled at the 180-degree turn in her behavior.
We sat at a table where he could take down her history and the family dynamic. She continued pestering him for hugs, kisses, and pats, and he taught me a trick for stopping this, which I had to practice all the while we talked.
I took the dogs out for a long walk and he walked with us to observe Lilly's interaction with people. He said Lilly's aggression is mild; that she is a very friendly dog who is only over-reacting to stimulus in her environment. It's not just one thing she's reacting to, but a series of things happening that progressively send her pressure up until there's a final trigger. Firstly, I'm to concentrate on keeping her excitement level down by gaining control of the leashes and slowing the walk, then I'm to associate in her mind seeing a stranger with getting a treat. She was averaging 20-25 seconds from seeing a stranger in the distance to reacting negatively, so during those quiet seconds I'm to pop treats in her mouth. See a stranger, get a treat. Over and over with this message, until the two things become paired associates.
Shiloh said it takes 25 seconds for the stranger info to get from Lilly's eyes to her brain.
He gave me a lot of literature and said he didn't think he needed to come back, but I asked him to come back next week so I can have things reinforced and also so Mr. Cracker can participate.
He told me to never get another Shepherd because it would be doubtful I'd find another one as overtly affectionate as this one, while Lilly was repeatedly trying to sit in his lap. He thought she was a great dog.
Of course, we know that, but the people we encounter on walks surely think she's a death beast. She acts like one. We'll work on this until she sees the appearance of strangers as meaning only good things for Lilly.
In one of the nice things about blogging, after posting a Yahoo picture of a young soldier taking a picture of herself with ZZ Top's Dusty Hill, I now get to see how the picture she was taking turned out:
SPC Cassandra Rogers found her way to Florida Cracker and has graciously sent the pics she took of herself with ZZ during their visit to Walter Reed. Thanks, Cassandra. You totally and completely rock.
Here's the rest of the band:
Cassandra with Billy Gibbons.
Cassandra with Frank Beard.
President Bush's "Hook 'em, 'Horns" gesture Thursday got lost in translation in Norway, where shocked people saw it as a salute to Satan.
Pictorial evidence shows that the back of the hand, not the palm, should be showing for it to be a Devil/Heavy Metal sign.
Thanks for the good laugh, Norway! It might be better to "beef up" on foreign customs before spreading calumny.
UPDATE:
Some people are ignorant of customs, while others are just basic run-of-the-mill churls.
Which twin has the bedhead?
The Rootin'-Tootin' Texas Lone Star Wing-Ding Fandango float was a big hit
Jenna says "Hook 'em."
The President says "Hook 'em."
Laura wants 'em hooked as well. Soon we'll all be saluting the flag with the Longhorn sign.
Organizers crossed their fingers Mickey Rooney wouldn't reenact his ass-baring Superbowl ad
Hey, John, why the long face?
May these people never be pleased with the outcome of an election.
The loveliest First Lady ever and the best thing that ever happened to Dubya.
God bless our President and God bless this nation.
SPC Cassandra Rogers of Spokane, Washington takes a cellphone photo of herself with Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2005 at Mologne House on The Walter Reed Army Medical Center Campus. ZZ Top, in town for the inauguration of President Bush, took time out to visit and sign autographs for injured service members.
Words of wisdom from America's greatest general:
[W]e made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
Happy Birthday, Bobby Lee.
General Lee and Traveller
I don't post on illegal immigration because it's the one topic sure to make me blow a gasket. Don't tell me they do jobs Americans won't do; I know Americans who've lost their jobs to them.
Suffice it to say, I'm glad citizens groups like the MinuteMan Project will be patrolling the border since the Federal Government isn't doing the job adequately. I've no doubt President Bush's "guest worker" plan is going to deservedly crash and burn.
Duane and Dickey Betts, somewhere on the road.
Wail on, Skydog!
Add "Watch to see what I can still do" to the list.
My favorite is still General's Sedgwick's "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--."
That was one way to learn about Kentucky windage.
Special one for Baron and probably a few others of you out there:
They're only kobolds!"
It's a shame that some people caused a commotion at that New Jersey family's funeral. That was not the time or the place for signs and protesting, much less rampaging down sidewalks. There shouldn't be any hot-headed jumping of the gun on this story. If this turns out to be murder in commision of a robbery, or any other non-religious, non-political reason, it's going to make a lot of people look kind of lynchy.
On a Hialeah home:
The homeowners would have to be aware the Secret Service are going to take them in for this. They also put swastikas on their house. So is it Bush and Jews they dislike? Or is it a BusHitler theme they're going for and has nothing to do with Jews, or what? Crazy people can be so confusing.
A contributor to Blogs for Bush, a site I, a die-hard Bush supporter, enjoy very much, posts a snotty opinion about conservative Southern Democrats:
OK I Give Up. Why Are You Still A Democrat ?
Democrats have become too liberal and lost touch with the needs of their rural constituents:
"We are not the Democrats of the national party. We tend to be more conservative in our views on all of our issues," said Georgia state Rep. Gerald Greene, who has represented District 134's eight counties for 22 years.
Mr. Greene, why are you still a Democrat? If you do not believe in the things the National Democrats believe in and you do believe in the things the Republicans believe in then you are in the wrong party. It is as simple as that.
The sad thing sir, is you know it.
Both Representative Greene and the constituents who keep returning him to office are conservative; they just happen not to be Republican. You know, like that guy Zell Miller. Would you say he's out-of-touch? Of course not.
Remember the 29 counties in Florida that sent the Dems into a tizzy because the people were registered Democrats but voted Republican? We do tend to do that. You still liked having those votes, though, right? Of course you did.
I can guarantee you that most of those Democrats are more conservative than many Republicans who are floating around out there. No party owns the key to conservative thought or the Southern mind.
Whether it's coming from the Left or the Right, nobody likes condescension. Try some sugar next time.
Not since Henry Morton Stanley set off into the wilds of Africa to discover the whereabouts of explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone has a newspaper reporter been sent off to a locale so exotic and dangerous as the one the Washington Post's David Von Drehle found in America's ferocious and uncivilized Red States.
That the land's woefully ignorant inhabitants, who go naked but for boots and cowboy hats, enjoy universal suffrage, will surely be the topic of many future articles in newspapers along the Boston-Washington corridor.
Country Store and Tim Blair have all the details.
I got a call-back from the dog training place. They're not sending a trainer for Lilly; they're sending a $100.00-an-hour certified Behavioralist. I checked with the Humane Society and they said that was indeed the recommendation when the problem is aggression.
On the bright side, if this guy writes a training book, there's no way Lilly won't make the cut. A three-legged, half-withered dog threatening to kick the world's ass could be worked into just about any chapter, I would think.
Of course, Shiloh has recommended that Lilly's Behavioralist be certified in whippings.
Countries are gearing up for the Iraqi expat vote in the upcoming election. The US has seven registration and voting centers, two of which are in Nashville. Who would have thought there'd be so many Iraqis there?
I do recall that a lot of the Kuwaitis who went through the abbreviated Army basic and worked with our unit in the first Gulf War were students from universities in Tennessee. Perhaps because it was a Tennessee National Guard unit that was attached to us, and the Kuwaitis had been assigned to them.
The Kuwaitis were the funnest part of the whole deal. We had the world's most idiotic field First Sergeant and the Kuwaitis gave him all the disrespect I wanted to.
In his article "CBS Betrays Its Blood Lust for Bush", The Herald's television columnist, Glenn Garvin, gives the best summation of the CBS Rathergate panel report that I've seen. It's especially satisfying seeing this article in print in the pages of the Miami Herald, whose editor last year swore there was no such thing as liberal bias in the news. Garvin concludes:
So CBS reporters spent five years on a story they had been told from the beginning was shaky; they plotted a book deal for a source to encourage disclosures that ''could possibly change the momentum of an election;'' they got in bed with the Kerry campaign; but political bias doesn't have anything to do with it?
That's a conclusion that will play very well at CBS, which has spent three decades burying its head in the sand to avoid being confronted with Rather's political shenanigans. He publicly insulted President Nixon, then got into an on-air shouting match with the first President Bush. Just three years ago he gave a speech at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas. If the network had disciplined Rather for any of those things, if it had sent a message that it wouldn't tolerate confusion between its reporters' personal politics and their professional duties, it might have avoided Monday's humiliating mess.
Likewise, the independent panel would have done CBS an immense favor by advising the network to take a hard look at itself. Former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg, in his book Bias, wrote that many newsrooms are locked in a collective groupthink that prevents them from noticing their political leanings any more than a fish notices water.
It's not that there's a morning meeting where reporters and editors sit down to conspire against Bush or Republicans; rather, because they overwhelmingly share the same liberal ideology, what strikes outsiders as political bias simply seems common sense to them. If ''everybody knows'' that Bush is a liar, a coward and a spoiled rich kid, there's no need to spend a lot of time proving it.
The independent panel came tantalizingly close to putting its finger on the problem when it said CBS pursued the Bush story with ''myopic zeal.'' But the panel attributed the myopia to competitive journalistic instincts, the drive to get a story first, rather than politics. After all, everybody knows there's no liberal bias in the news business.
V the K captures the magic that happens when you combine Teddy Kennedy, alcohol, and a female. Check it out.
The last entry's my fave.
He also links to this, which, if nothing else, allowed me for the first time in 25 years to understand more than five words to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song."
The Fat Guy, a member of that staid, decorous tribe known as Texans, ponders a blogger meet-up in Georgia:
That would be fun. Those Deep Southerners are spooky, though, given to hallucinating dead relatives and generals, and weeping over Granny's outhouse back in the holler.
So sue us for being sentimental!
In a special to the Fort Myers News-Press, from Governor Jeb Bush's journal of his tour of the tsunami damage:
Tonight, I saw the Norwegian guy who heads the disaster operation at the UN. He was speaking as though his agency was in charge of the Banda Ache operation. In fact, we saw no one from the United Nations on the ground.
Hah, I didn't know Governor Bush wrote for the Diplomad.
Loretta Lynn's ranch has a simulated coal mine, which sounds just a tad hokey to me. Although considering her background, and the fact that most people have never been in any kind of a coal mine, it might be appropriate.
Nah, it's hokey.
I was never in a coal mine. I was in a salt mine once, though, over in Austria. I licked the wall, but it didn't taste like salt at all; it tasted like dirt and mold. It's not recommended.
You won't see a happier crowd than Country music fans in Japan.
Nice work from the photographer both for taking the pics and putting the page together. I think y'all will find the images interesting and very familiar.
Laura Bush says that for this term she'll be focusing on the well-being of little boys. I'm glad to hear it. Hopefully she'll draw attention to the fact that in classrooms across America little boys are being doped with Ritalin and other drugs because they won't sit still like little girls.
90% of the Ritalin in this world is used in the United States. All those little boys in other countries are somehow managing without it.
I wouldn't dope my dog, and people are drugging little kids for piddly little bullshit reasons. Maybe one day they'll have a switch at the back of their necks so we can turn them off when we get sick of them. Kidsters.
I took the step today of calling for an appointment with an in-home trainer for Lilly. There's no way I could take her to any classes that had other dogs.
It seems the more comfortable she's gotten in her new home, the more she tends to read the riot act to any person or dog not in this family. She may be withered from the waist down, but from the waist up she's a barking, lunging German Shepherd who wants a confrontation. What was at first embarrassing is now getting a little scary as she won't listen to me when she's trying to get at somebody and all I can do is hold on with all my might. So far she's not snarling or snapping when she's doing this, so thank goodness for that. Once she actually meets the stranger (and there are a LOT of brave strangers out there), she's as nice as can be. But she really shouldn't expect the whole world to submit itself for her approval.
I'm out of my league trying to modify canine aggression, so I'm forced to try something completely new and call in a professional.
Except for that, she's a very sweet girl.
The underwater mountain was definitely not on the USS San Francisco's chart of the ocean. There was a breakdown in the communication process somewhere:
Pentagon officials said they have found a satellite image taken in 1999 that shows the undersea mountain but that the image was not incorporated into existing navigation charts provided to the Navy, the New York Times reported Saturday.
Do I feel guilty about kidding about this before? Yep.
A former Gambino goon and the real Donnie Brasco review Mafia movies:
''The most ludicrous was The Godfather, because The Godfather put so much bull---- into what it was supposed to be like,'' said Montiglio.
``I mean, these people will murder you over their paranoia . . . Paranoia has so much to do with this life. The honor, the respect, and all the bull---- you see in The Godfather -- arrrgh.''
Real mobsters love The Godfather, Pistone said, precisely because ``it elevates them so much beyond what they really are.''
''It makes the mob boss into such a highly intelligent individual, giving advice, reciting all these parables,'' he said. 'In real life, it's more like, `The [bleeping] guy stole 50 grand from us, let's whack him!' . . .
``In The Godfather, you know, all these guys were dressed nice, they all had offices, they all spoke eloquently. And that's what they want to portray, but that's not really the way they are.''
Some movies are more realistic and got the thumbs up:
Pistone and Montiglio said a few movies -- particularly Casino, Goodfellas and of course Donnie Brasco, in which Pistone was played by Johnny Depp -- got the Mafia right: a bunch of stupid thugs who will kill anybody, even each other, if there are a few bucks to be made.
And what do they think of Tony Soprano?:
Tony Soprano? The two old Mafia hands cackled at the idea of a mob boss seeking psychotherapy for panic attacks.
''Joe,'' asked Dominick Montiglio, ``if you ever had a boss that was seeing a female psychiatrist, how long would he last?''
''Never would have happened,'' Joe Pistone replied, shaking his head mournfully at the thought.
''We would have shot him,'' Montiglio agreed.
Sorry, Tone. I think we all kind of figured that part of the story could never be.
As much as I get a kick out of hearing the Soprano characters talk about The Godfather, it's even more of a kick to hear about it from the real deal.
If I don't get more traffic, the Lord's going to call me home.
FEMA just keeps digging a bigger hole for themselves in the Hurricane Frances probe.
The wind map they released this week to justify their $30 million expenditures in Dade appears itself to be a fraud:
In a phone conference with reporters Monday, FEMA officials said they had found no evidence of widespread fraud in Miami-Dade and were confident in the legitimacy of the Hurricane Frances claims. As proof, FEMA cited wind speeds of up to 85 mph "in the parts of Miami-Dade County that received our assistance," according to a statement from Daniel Craig, recovery division director.
FEMA backed up its statement by releasinged a wind map of the Labor Day storm, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Center as its source.
But NOAA spokeswoman Donna McCaskill told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "We didn't make this map. It looks like some of [NOAA's] data might have been misrepresented in it."
Indian River County, which actually got hit by Frances, received $12 million from FEMA.
Frances did a lot of damage, but it wasn't in Miami-Dade.
UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin is on it. Thanks, Michelle.
What FEMA did in Miami-Dade was fraud, waste, and abuse on a massive scale. The lengths they're going to now to cover it up is amazing.
It's such a slap in the face to the counties that did get beat up by Frances. Those counties' Representatives are not going to let this one go.
Poor Prince Harry and his unfortunate sartorial choice for a costume party. It's just not as funny as when Keith Moon used to walk around like this. I guess the lesson is you need to be a comedian or a drummer to pull it off.
UPDATE:
No, Mel Brooks doesn't have to apologize. He falls under the "Comedians and Drummers" clause.
One of my associates, a young, very pretty girl, said to me yesterday, "Can you believe it about Brad and Jen? Is there no hope for anyone?"
I thought about telling her that I've been married for 20-something years, and that her co-worker across the way has been married for 30-something, but after a moment's comtemplation realized that she's envisioning a palace of love and wouldn't be interested in our hovels.
Sometimes they come in even handier than usual. The cups, I mean.
Demure Thoughts links to a good run down on the craptastic new Clint Eastwood film "Million Dollar Baby."
I have to agree with the reviewer's conclusion on Eastwood-directed films:
Bonus reason- and this applies to almost all Clint Eastwood directed movies - just because a movie is slow and humorless and depressing and badly shot doesn't mean it's art. It means its slow and humorless and depressing and badly shot.
When Library of Congress recently added "Unforgiven" to the National Film Registry, all I could think is that they must be running out of good movies to archive. It's the film equivalant of Wham! getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"Culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," my ass. It bored me to tears.
Not surprisingly, hate mail from the left sounds just like hate mail from the right.
No matter their political persuasion, the people who send stuff like this are all very much alike.
This updated article on the nuclear submarine accident, gathered from internal Navy e-mails, says that what the sub hit was not on any chart. The damage to the sub and the large percentage of injured crew made it hard for them to get back to port after the accident. Also, they tried multiple times to get the mortally injured sailor, Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph A. Ashley, off the sub. The recounting of the conversation between the sub's captain and the sailor's father is really sad.
I'd assumed that the captain had pulled a Greeneville. I was wrong and I'm sorry now that I posted so lightly on the topic.
(Via contributor Gmac.)
What the heck you doing, Duane?
Wail on, Skydog!
There's still much hyperventilating going on at the idea that Kid Rock might possibly have been asked to play at an inaugural youth concert. Calls are being made to the event organizer to demand to know whether Kid has been invited, and if he has, to demand that he be told he's uninvited. The organizer isn't taking the calls.
For the coup de grace, it's now been discovered that DUI'er Kelsey Grammer's been asked to MC an event honoring the military.
The whole inaugural's going to be one big drunken orgy.
I really wish we'd learn to pick our battles better. There are so many more important things on which to spend all that outrage.
Most feminists dislike the "I had an an abortion" t-shirt. It's because they've internalized their oppression. If not for that, every single woman in America would be wearing one with pearls:
The negative reaction many feminists have to the shirt reveals a fundamental contradiction in the current state of pro-choice politics—or, more precisely, the extent to which those who are pro-choice feel ashamed, at some level, to support abortion. The fact that so many women read a simple statement as a “celebration” of the procedure speaks volumes about the feelings women have internalized as a consequence of the conservative assault on women’s rights. Although most of the women I spoke with were uneasy about their response to the shirt, repeatedly insisting that they were pro-choice even as they told me they would never wear it, some reacted to a photograph of the shirt with anger.
“The only reason anyone would wear such a shirt would be to piss people off,” one 19-year-old woman snorted. “No one who was serious about supporting abortion rights would wear it.
A little late to stuff this in our Christmas stocking, but the Sandy Berger case is finally going before a grand jury:
The probe was touched off last spring when stunned archives staffers reported seeing Berger sneak classified documents out of a top-secret reading room in his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for the commission.
They then ran a sting operation in which they coded some documents and confirmed they were missing when Berger left.
The former Clinton aide and, at the time, top foreign-policy adviser for Kerry, admitted "accidentally" destroying some of the documents taken from the National Archives.
The Tampa Tribune has a nice article on the remaining veterans of the Great War.
The two that they interviewed, both here in Florida, 109-year-old Ernest Pusey and 107-year-old Homer Anderson, have each had their service recognized by a commander-in-chief. The same one, as a matter of fact: George W. Bush.
A lot of presidents have come and gone since WWI. I'm glad that one remembered to thank these men. It means a lot to them.
Me and Karen Carpenter both have trouble with Mondays, rainy or otherwise. We start to differ when it comes to taking 80 or 90 laxatives in one fell swoop, though. That was strictly her bag.
That being said, while everyone else is on Rathergate with all four feet, I found this gem:
"We were caught off guard by this perennial Republican attack-dog mentality," says Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a potential 2008 presidential candidate, reflecting on 2004.
That's right. Governor Bill Richardson does not know the meaning of the word 'perennial' and yet he flings it out there in public discourse just like he does, puzzling gardeners across America.
Something 'perennial' catching the DNC off guard would be pretty lame, after all.
As for attack dogs, if the media's willing to step in and wear that spiked collar on your behalf, you don't have to lift a finger.
Sorry your dog CBS got chewed to hell, Bill.
Speaking of dogs, mine ate a wall:
I don't know how she managed not to electrocute herself.
Why are people criticizing Alberto Gonzales? I thought he was really good in all those Barney Christmas movies.
This kind of thing always happens whenever a Mexican-American tries to make a name for himself in film.
On the same day I read that the next rage in blogging is using video to be your own personal news anchorman, I read that to have a successful blog I should compress and limit my still pics to spare the bandwidth of people with dial-up accounts.
I was so confused.
Luckily, I ran across some data that clearly showed that people who voted for Bush use broadband, while Kerry voters are all on dial-up.
Whew.
The Duane Allman pics stay.
You can also count on me to provide you with other outstanding photos, such as Johnny Cash flipping off the country music biz. I am the digital Smithsonian of this precious Americana. Or something.
I won't be doing any Vlogging, however. I don't want to have to comb my hair unless I'm getting paid for it.
The NY Post has a small but interesting piece on the James Webb book "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America" (and cost John Kerry the election).
I knew that NASCAR races drew more people than Major League Baseball games, but I didn't know that there are more country-western radio stations in the United States than the next two most popular formats combined. Pretty cool.
Sometimes country radio screws up badly, though, and only a Billboard ad can make a guy feel better:
Would you want this crude man at your inaugural festivities?
Get used to it, Barney. This is the way it's going to be.
No matter how bad things get for the fisherfolk in India whose villages were hit by the tsunami, there's one bright spot remaining: they can still shovel shit on the untouchables.
(Via the most excellent What's a Kyer?)
Dino Rossi will go ahead with contesting the Washington election and pushing for a revote:
Republicans have been building a case over the past few weeks, gathering evidence of voting irregularities, including illegal provisional ballots and a handful of votes cast by dead people. They are pushing for a revote, an unprecedented step in a statewide election.
"There are so many improperly cast and counted ballots that this election is invalid," said Rossi, a real-estate millionaire and former state senator. "You cannot tell who won. The only way for us to get out of this problem is for us to have a revote."
Rossi won the initial tally by 261 votes and a machine recount by 42 votes, then lost a hand recount to Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes out of 2.9 million ballots.
I guess when an election is this close, that "handful" of votes by dead people might just matter.
If there is a revote, who knows how it will turn out. While some will change their vote due to anger at election fraud, others might cast an anger vote against the dragging out of this election.
The dead people vote will remain unchanged, though. They're usually pretty hardcore in their beliefs.
One of our nuclear submarines, the USS San Francisco, has run aground south of Guam. Since this is not SOP, I here and now make the prediction that somebody is so fired.
UPDATE:
I've updated here. It doesn't look like the skipper did anything wrong at all.
I can't see the objection to including Kid Rock in the inaugural festivities. As far as I know, he's a Country singer. The only times I ever hear him are on Country radio, and the only television channel I see him on is CMT. If you'd object to Kid, you'd definitely not want Bocephus in there. Would you object to Bocephus? This is how it is with our culture. God, country and family are first, but there's plenty of room left over for rowdiness.
He's decided to sit at our table, and he's fit in quite well. After all, whose posters does Gretchen Wilson sing about having on her wall in the song "Redneck Woman"?
Skynyrd, Kid, and Straight.
Even Charlie Daniels has a past, guys, and Hank Williams, Sr. would have put the bad boys of any music genre to shame.
Coming from a different direction than me, Bill and Jeff weigh in.
Epiphany Day in Tarpon Springs, Florida means the boys dive for the cross.
It's a part of the local church's liturgy that draws thousands of apparently unoffended people to watch.
Here are some interesting links on the people of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a restricted area that some were criticizing India for not allowing outside aid, aside from Indian, into.
The Sentinelese are supposed to be the last true Paleolithic people, and once had this delightful encounter with a film crew:
In the spring of 1974, North Sentinel was visited by a film crew that was shooting a documentary titled Man in Search of Man, along with a few anthropologists, some armed policemen, and a photographer for National Geographic. In the words of one of the scientists, their plan was to "win the natives' friendship by friendly gestures and plenty of gifts." As the team's motorized dinghy made its way through the reefs toward shore, some natives emerged from the woods. The anthropologists made friendly gestures. The Sentinelese responded with a hail of arrows. The dinghy proceeded to a landing-spot out of arrow range, where the policemen, dressed in padded armor, disembarked and laid gifts on the sand: a miniature plastic automobile, some coconuts, a tethered live pig, a child's doll, and some aluminum cookware. Then they returned to the dinghy and waited to observe the natives' reaction to the gifts. The natives' reaction was to fire more arrows, one of which hit the film director in the left thigh. The man who had shot the film director was observed laughing proudly and walking toward the shade of a tree, where he sat down. Other natives were observed spearing the pig and the doll and burying them in the sand. They did, however, take the cookware and the coconuts with evident delight.
A local hooker visited a john at home, saw he had child porn, and called the cops on him:
A prostitute turned in a customer after seeing child pornography, including a video of an apparent toddler rape, on the man's home computer, police said.Detective Carlos Negron said police were contacted by the woman on Tuesday, saying that while working at the man's apartment as a prostitute she saw numerous pictures of children who appeared to be between ages 3 and 16 performing sex.
The woman told police that it was a disturbing video that showed the rape of a younger child, perhaps no older than 2, that caused her to make the call after she left the apartment, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.
Negron said Federico Eduardo Amezaga, 29, let investigators search his apartment, where they found numerous photos and videos of children performing sex acts.
I guess he thought she wouldn't mind.
It's plain silly to say that Wall Street bankers caused the tsunami. Clearly, Israel did it.
Not to impress Jodie Foster, either.
The bosses at Halliburton have inscribed a new name on their payroll: "Beazley, Miss."
Special link for Bill: a video of her presentation to the media!
Discipline must be getting a bit lax in the Army Officer Corps. An officer's publicly whining about having to shut down his warzone blog. If he were enlisted with that attitude, there'd be latrines to clean, parking lots to police call, and blades of grass to be plucked from cracks in the sidewalks all over base.
Maybe a little wall-to-wall counseling if he were found to be annoying enough.
We've all seen the pics of WWII letters home. There were always portions blacked out.
Suck it up, sir.
Vanity Fair editor, self-described intellectual, and empty shell of a human being James Wolcott; guest-blogging at Farm Accident Digest, explains the subtleties of his rooting for one type of natural disaster and not another:
Hurricanes are not tsunamis. Can the difference be more obvious than that? I was cheering for the big, spinny, windy things, not the crashing, streaming, wavy thing.
Here's another one of Duane at Chapel Hill in that snazzy new shirt.
Wail on, Skydog!
So the captured urban-dwelling Miami alligator in the news today was "farm-fed on Santeria and voodoo," was he?
I hate it when people come over here and try to shove their heathen religions down our gators' throats.
If Miami's all agog at their 12-foot, 400-pound city boy, I wonder what they'd think of his country cousin, a 13-foot 6-inch, 760-pound former Deacon of 1st Baptist of Palatka:
The Tamil terrorists, who haven't been keeping up with current events, think it's all about them.
UPDATE:
It's really all about Jan Egeland:
U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said he was encouraged by the military response to the Dec. 26 tsunami, singling out U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman for praise.
"The group that the U.S. initiated have proven very useful in responding to my 12-point wish list for everything from helicopters to transport planes to air traffic controllers," Egeland said in New York.
Glad we could be of use to you, Jan. Thank you for letting us be a part of your mighty plan.
OEJ is on the trail of one of the strangest men in the Blogosphere, serial blogger Gene Chapman.
Chapman starts and abandons blogs like a personal-publishing Bluebeard. OEJ tracks him through a dozen different blogs, all the way to his last post today: an audio-post of him stating he was going to set himself on fire at the IRS office.
Chapman has some conflict with the IRS. He's also wrapped so tight he makes Michael Moriarty seem like Jeff Spicoli in comparison.
It's compelling reading from an interesting new blogger.
The mess tent suicide bomber in Mosul was a Saudi medical student dressed in an Iraqi military uniform.
What exactly do they teach in Saudi universities? It's not the poor Saudis who are out terrorizing.
(Via F.R.)
It's been nine days since the tsunami struck, and the UN still hasn't actually gotten around to helping anybody:
They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN.
Meanwhile, the American-Australian coalition is providing relief non-stop.
FEMA officials predict a busy week ahead as expected claims pour in from Miami-Dade residents seeking Asian tsunami disaster relief.
"We've been inundated with calls from Miami about tsunami-damaged cars, televisions, and large kitchen appliances," said the head FEMA inspector for Southeast Florida. "The sooner we can get checks in the hands of the victims, the sooner they can begin to rebuild their lives."
The new Newsweek article on John Kerry is lovingly written, not surprising when one of the bylines is Eleanor Clift, but despite the reverent tone he comes off as a pathetic figure.
He's been reduced to chasing reporters down the street to show them mash notes from schoolgirls, in a effort to prove he's likeable to someone, somewhere.
He wants to be loved, as does everyone. But who expects a whole country to love them? Away from his small pond, he lost an election and appears to be shattered. This man is far too brittle for runs at the presidency.
Can you imagine Hillary Clinton acting like that?
What a pansy.
It was christened the "Miss Jackson."
1 TSU1 Asia Earthquake Disaster Relief
BACKORDERED: This item not currently in stock.
They're not charging a shipping & handling fee or a sales tax, though. Can't beat that. I guess I'll get it when I get it.
Just go read everything at the Diplomad, a blog run by Foreign Service officers. It's unbelievable. I thought humanitarian stuff was the one thing the UN was good at. After all this time (It was the Christmas quake, remember?), the UN is still having meetings about what to do.
I'm glad no one needed rescuing, or needed water to drink or food to eat. They would have been SOL.
Here's their latest great idea: Americans and Australians running the relief efforts should pretend they're from the UN.
(Via Country Store.)
There's a whole lot of white-hatted dudes over in the Indian Ocean doing wonderful things for some folks who really need help.
Trying to land.
I wonder what the men are doing with the guy in the back.
If you can't land, drop it. Manna from heaven. Frigidaires from the sky.
So says the Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals. They've been overblessed with presents for the wounded troops and ask that you let some other places and organizations benefit from your largesse, you stingy, selfish, Americans.
As an old lady (Only .02% of female bloggers in my age bracket!), I felt free to konk out early. Gotta have that beauty sleep.
Do y'all have any resolutions? Mine is to be more patient with fools.
It's a tough one, but I like to set the bar high.
In case any of you were wondering what happened with my bloghosting, I got my old domain name back and set it for here, so now all roads leads to Florida Cracker, whether .org or .net. I would say it's part of my plan for building an empire in the upcoming year, but really, there's a limited market out there for redneck wimmen.
My best wishes for a bright and prosperous 2005 for all of you.
