In this funny and quite bloody game, you help Barney teach Miss Beazley how to protect the White House from liberal America-haters.
Pretty cute.
Against any common sense, the other day I called the home of a suddenly-absent very sweet little old man who'd been coming into my place of work every day for years. I got his machine, hung up, redialed and left a message.
Today a crying little old woman came in and brought me a present. She had come to thank me for the call. Her husband had passed away.
He had been feeling poorly last time I saw him. I had wanted to tell him I was thinking of him and was hoping he'd get to feeling better, if that was the reason he hadn't been around. That was the message I left on his machine. She was the only one left to hear it.
Interesting development, the new president of Iran said to be one of the hostage takers.
Do I think the Iranian people legitimately elected this guy? Probably not.
But I welcome this golden opportunity for payback. Let's get started.
UPDATE:
A quote from memory expert Elizabeth Loftus. Woot! I love that lady. She should be given a medal for bringing the "recovered memory" industry crashing to the ground.
In this particular case, she's advising caution.
The CIA should be able to give us a definitive answer, one way or another, based on factors other than memory or eyeballing photos.
A nice haircut makes you feel like a new person.
Wail on, Skydog!
Improve your mind with extensive reading with the help of this week's Cotillion hostesses: MaxedOutMama, Rightwingsparkle , and Not A Desperate Housewife.
Columnist Howard Troxler doesn't have much hope that local and state governments are going to be able to resist their new Supreme Court-given powers:
"The U.S. Supreme Court has basically handed a big pile of crack cocaine to every state and local government in America and said, 'Try not to get addicted.'"
Meanwhile, President Bush's silence on the subject is coming through loud and clear.
Congrats to AYC for her new job over at Homeland Security's Office of Infernal Devices. From the looks of her first gadget, she's got all the right stuff.
My interrogation methods are far more crude. To break this suspect, for instance, I wrapped him with 100-mile-an-hour tape, dabbed a bit of Torture SolutionTM to the tip of his nose, then let him alone for a while with his own sick brain.
A Catholic Archbishop in Zimbabwe, Pius Ncube, is calling for international assistance against Bobby Mugabe:
"The United Nations should arrest Mugabe, bring him to trial, insist on free and fair elections," he said. "There's a peasant-ification drive here, something like Pol Pot did."
It's called "Operation Drive Out Trash." Trash that voted against Mugabe.
"These people, they are being forced to go to the country but in the country there was a drought this year and there isn't enough food - Zimbabwe only produced a quarter of the food they produced formerly, five years ago," he added.
"We've seen what happened in Rwanda. People are standing around, the UN standing around, the African countries did nothing about it," he said. "Do we want another Rwanda to take place due to a mad man who's just after power?"
He's particularly harsh on the African Union and South Africa in particular:
He condemned the African Union as a "club" that was refusing to act because it resented the economic and political power of the West. He singled out South Africa for criticism in particular.
"The South African government cannot talk about interference; they have done nothing but support Mugabe," Archbishop Ncube said June 24.
Think he's cruisin' for a Mugabe bruisin'? He thinks so too:
"I am aware of the dangerous situation of speaking up but that is the only thing I can do to speak up for the people. I'll go back there. I am so angry. I am ready to stand before and gun and be shot," he added.
It may come to that.
Look for Don Cheadle to play him in the inspiring movie on his martyrdom. No, scratch that -- this is a conservative Christian we're talking about.
Either the papers are misquoting him, or Mr. Clinton is having another "vivid" childhood memory. If it's the latter, take it with a grain of salt:
Clinton spoke briefly before Graham's sermon and recalled how the man known as America's pastor had refused to preach before a segregated audience in Arkansas decades ago when that state was in a bitter fight over school desegregation.
"I was just a little boy and I'll never forget it," said Clinton, who was joined by his wife, Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton. "I've loved him ever since. God bless you, friend."
Billy Graham spent his career being pointedly non-political and sidestepping divisive issues. He wouldn't "refuse to preach before a segregated audience."
Little Rock's school troubles began in 1957. Billy Graham had very quietly begun removing ropes that separated the races at his meetings back in 1953.
He preached in Little Rock in 1959 and this is what happened:
[Governor] Faubus is in attendance as evangelist Billy Graham preaches for 45 minutes to an audience of 30,000 in the second of two revival meetings in War Memorial Stadium.
Graham refers to the desegregation crisis, declaring that "only Christ can heal these scars and wounds." About 600 people come forward in response to Graham's regular call for public witness. He challenges the news media "to carry this story of hundreds of people of both races standing at the foot of the cross to receive Christ."
This sounds more like it. Billy Graham has only ever had one thing he was going to talk to people about.
What does a really terrific song need? Why, if it's Jo Dee Messina's, it also calls for a skanky video where she not only pretends to know how to play a guitar, but also makes tons of gratuitous guitar face -- in between twirling for no reason, showing her abs and behind at every angle, and acting like a kick-boxer!
Money shot
Good song though. I'd cross an alligator-infested swamp for a cool chunk of Dobro.
UPDATE:
Joy! Here's a link to just the audio.
It's always nice when daddy has pull. Too bad this little bit of courtesy extended to the cocaine-smuggling daughter of a diplomat might bring down the government in Peru.
Then again, Peru just never seems to have any luck when it comes to governments, being one of those "Countries That Love Too Much." Its last president left it for Japan, sending in his resignation by fax.
So sad.
It's nice to know there are some things I can always count on, like my couch's horizontal continuity and Madonna's being a retard.
This article is in the lead for most sensationalistic reporting of the fatal shark attack in Destin.
Writer Jonathan Lemire tried to write a breathless narrative, but it only hyperventilates before going on to completely suck.
Kudos to the old guy surfing who swam over to the scene of the attack, punched the shark in the nose, and got the girl to shore. That took courage.
Sorry for the girl and the family who lost her.
Although we do get a lot of shark attacks here in Florida, most are not fatal, and all of them happen in the ocean or Gulf, and not in anyone's garden whilst they are watering their petunias. I find that an important distinction.
You're usually OK as long as you don't go too far out. You certainly don't want to be the length of two football fields out in the water, like this girl was.
I'm all for keeping out their way, but it takes a real environmentalist like Joseph A. Davis to suggest sharks should kill humans tit-for-tat.
What effect, if any, the 1992 and 1993 federal and state limits on shark fishing have had on the number of attacks in Florida, I don't know.
Next time you're in Atlanta, perhaps you'll take time to visit the new Tupac Shakur Arts Center and have lunch in the Tupac Shakur Peace Garden.
On your way out, you can stop by the Tupac Shakur gift shop and get an AK-47 stick-on tattoo for the kid.
(Via Lonestar Times.)
Bunny boiler Lena Driskell was not gonna be ignored:
Furious that her geriatric romance was ending, a 78-year-old woman clad in a hairnet, stockings, bathrobe and slippers fatally shot her 85-year-old ex-beau as he read the newspaper in a senior's citizen's home, police said.
``I did it and I'd do it again!'' Lena Driskell was quoted as yelling to the officers who arrived at the home to find the woman still waving the antique handgun and holding her finger on the trigger.
The Supreme Court can be overridden by a two-thirds majority in Congress. [We'll cross the ratification bridge when we get to it. -Ed]
Please contact your congressmen. If you don't have their e-mail, you can find it here.
The Fort Myers News-Press has a good article on the local reaction to the eminent domain decision. Worry and anger sum up my feelings and those of many others at this moment.
Be aware that it's not just the city councils and their use of the urban blight clause you have to concern yourself with -- counties are also getting in on this deal. Rural land can evidently be considered "blighted", as well; if it's coveted enough.
UPDATE:
No one I know in real life is het up and talking about the flag-burning amendment. Almost everyone I know is talking about what happened yesterday. If we want to amend, we need to push while there is momentum.
Write your congressmen and visit the Castle Coalition and the Institute for Justice to see what else you can do.
What the Supreme Court did today is the type of thing that makes normally content and complacent people come out of their bag.
There's an eminent domain case going on now here in Hollywood. The Mach family has owned a business there since 1971 and is having their store taken away by the city to make room for a condominium.
These are just piddly-ass little city council members in Podunk, USA and they can take someone's property away.
Said the developer:
"I'll tell you, and Mr. Mach and everyone here, the only reason there will not be a deal cut that puts the eminent domain aside ... is because of an unwillingness by Mr. Mach to accept a number markedly above the fair price for his property," Abele said
That sounds like the mugger complaining about the bitch who didn't want to let go of her purse.
How many paint chips did Formula One boss Ernie Ecclestone have to eat as a child to make him dullard enough to tell racecar driver Danica Patrick that "women should be all dressed in white like all other domestic appliances"?
That doesn't even make sense. I mean, even after Labor Day?
Formula One has never been able to crack the market in the United States, and Ecclestone's stupidity, combined with last week's goat rope in Indianapolis, make certain it never will.
Ernie should do his sport a favor and resign. Or he could do me a favor and dive under Danica's wheels.
It's hard to believe the Supreme Court would sign off on cities using eminent domain for private developments. What a vile ruling from John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton all bought pigs in a poke.
The only remedy now will be for states to use their own laws to clamp down hard on cities or they'll be like kids in a candy store.
Institute for Justice attorney Dana Berliner sums up the situation:
"If jobs and taxes can be a justification for taking someone's home or business, then no property in America is safe. Anyone's home can create more jobs if it is replaced by a business, and any small business can generate greater taxes if replaced by a bigger one."
Michelle Malkin has reactions from around the blogosphere.
A rare pic of Duane playing with Derek and the Dominoes.
You'll see this pic in the ABB slideshow at the website for Mama Louise's restaurant in Macon.
Wail on, Skydog!
"Let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room."
Hey, if the story is true and Allah really did turn that bad little girl into a dog, at least he made her a super cute one.
(Via Classical Values and Itsapundit.)
This week's shindig is hosted by the Cotillion's own Nitro Girls Sadie, Crystal, and Tammy.
Come and see what it's all about at the Cotillion.
Jody of Steal the Bandwagon ponders an article wherein a 54-year-old woman complains that a mean clique of women at work won't eat lunch with her:
For all the sympathy I try to feel for this woman, I just can't do it. I want to feel bad for her, honest. I understand her problems; I am a woman and I have worked with women. We are mean, vindictive and cruel. We will snub you, talk about you, play office politics and will throw you under a bus just to see you bleed. We can be very emotional and very immature and did I mention, mean?
Her advice to this lady is both funny and sensible.
The post is so good, I'd like to blockquote the whole thing -- but I don't want those sleepness nights, worrying about Jody dumping my body out in the Everglades.
Rigoberta Menchu is in town and the local paper is waxing rhapsodic about her, giving not so much as a hint of the fraudulent autobiography scandal attached to her name.
It's like writing about Courtney Love and leaving out the drugs.
UPDATE:
And here I thought everybody knew about Rigoberta's own version of a magic hat /Christmas in Cambodia whopper. And she doesn't just lie about one period in life -- she's bullshitting about decades.
Congrats to Dan of Riehl World View for his appearance on Fox to discuss his trippindicular work on the Natalee Holloway case.
Whenever Fox needs someone to talk about Duane Allman or alligator attacks -- I'm here, baby. I'm here.
(Via WuzzaDem, who has a video link.)
For the last month or so we've been working to cure whatever is putting blood in Lilly's urine.
Since we've had her, not a month has gone by that she hasn't had one or more trips to the vet. I've resigned myself to the fact that her health is always going to be on the verge of total craptastic ruin. You wouldn't know it, because she's always so cheerful.
I'm glad she came to us instead of to a couple that had a lot of kids.
Found in the house from which Marines recently liberated tortured Iraqi hostages:
"a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."
"And thus it is exactly at moments like this that desperate candidates often find themselves uttering more insane blather than a Moody Blues monologue."
Daniel Ruth's got it going on in his column today about the three haven't-a-hope-in-hell gubernatorial candidates presented at the latest meeting of the Florida Democratic Party.
Damn, but those MB monologues were a nuisance.
The next musical crime from the past I want alluded to in a political column: those boring and self-indulgent twenty-minute drum solos.
BAKU, Azerbaijan - Thousands of demonstrators chanting "Freedom" and carrying portraits of President Bush marched across Azerbaijan's capital Saturday, demanding the resignation of the government and free parliamentary elections — in the biggest protest in years.
"I thought I had heard and seen every vile, disgusting crime scene, but was in for a new shock when I started this investigation," [Detective William Howard of the Kansas City Police Department] would say later...
(Via J Rob.)
Although I don't think there have been any improprieties commited toward the prisoners at Gitmo, I do believe having them there is a liability and has been so from the beginning. I've felt uncomfortable about it from day one.
Build a place for them at Fort Chaffee or some other post here in the States.
Lock them up here. It worked well enough for our Nazi POWs.
The House has passed a bill to slash funding for the UN if it doesn't do something about the corruption and lack of accountability:
The House voted Friday to issue an ultimatum to the United Nations: reform or lose U.S. financial support. Lawmakers also made clear to the White House that its more diplomatic approach wouldn't do.
Led by Republicans, the House voted 221-184 for a bill that would withhold one half of assessed U.S. dues, currently around $440 million a year, if the U.N. doesn't accomplish nearly four dozen steps to improve its accountability and root out corruption.
Failure to comply would also result in U.S. refusal to support expanded and new peacekeeping missions.
The administration didn't greet this news with ululations, worrying that it might cause more harm than good.
The House today also cut funding to PBS by 25%, which is a damn fine start. Let it stand on its own two feet. Time to bust up the Big Muppet and Big Barney cartels.
A gif too nice to wait for Wednesday for, and one that is surely too much for my sidebar; no matter how much I'd like to have it there.
(Via skydogj.)
In an interesting turn of events, Governor Bush has called for an investigation into the 911 call Michael Schiavo made on the morning of Terri's collapse:
In a letter faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, Bush said Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m., and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at 5:40 a.m.
"Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was made, and I am aware of no explanation for the delay," Bush wrote. "In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome."
We'll see how this shakes down.
UPDATE:
Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe has agreed to the governor's request.
First a cargo plane, now the Goodyear blimp.
I do wish aircraft would stay off of Broward roads.
It must be all that concentrated metal of our traffic jams sending up disruptive magnetic fields.
Somehow the death of Terri Schiavo is all about him.
She was a real live person who was put to death for the crime of getting her brains scrambled.
Nobody smirk anymore at the notion of Eskimos putting old people out on ice floes, Greeks exposing deformed or unwanted babies on hillsides, or Romans tossing infants onto dungheaps -- our thin veneer of civilization has worn through.
(Via WuzzaDem.
See also: Michelle Malkin and Wizbang.)
UPDATE:
From the statement by the Schindler family:
First, the IME's report confirms Terri's physical condition and disability. We all knew Terri was seriously brain-injured before the IME report. This is nothing new. The IME's report also confirms that TERRI WAS NOT TERMINAL. THAT TERRI HAD NO LIVING WILL, THAT TERRI HAD A STRONG HEART, and THAT TERRI WAS BRUTALLY DEHYDRATED TO DEATH.
Second, our family would encourage the media to remember that this case was allegedly about "Terri's choice." There is absolutely no evidence that Terri wanted to die of dehydration, or that she believed that that the level of one's disability gives anyone the moral and legal right to end another's life.
Exactly.
Hopefully, the ACLU will file suit against the nationwide chain the Piercing Pagoda for its draconian requiring of minors to obtain parental consent before getting their ears pierced.
Although piercing is a surgical procedure which carries the risk of infection and blood-borne illnesses such as hepatitis, tetanus, and AIDS; the mall chain has made no exceptions for fashion emergencies.
The following link will take you to:
a. Random thoughts.
b. A post that sprang fully-grown from the head of Zeus.
c. The work of a brilliant blogger whom everyone should bookmark.
d. All of the above.
The Cracker answer: d.
Feel like you could use a nice cry?
This ought to do it.
Here's another nice one from Duane's time in Muscle Shoals.
Wail on, Skydog!
They say that in the South, football is a religion. FSU quarterback Wyatt Sexton might have taken that notion too far.
They want you to burn those sweatpants.
And they want you to come with them to The Cotillion.
It's surprising how many of these places I've been to.
Fred Bear Museum in Gainesville? Fred put an arrow in just about every large mammal on the planet. If there were still wooly mammoths lumbering around, he'd have nocked arrows for one of those guys too. Then he'd have stuffed him and put him in the museum with the others.
Honey Bee Factory in South Fort Myers? I've seen the hive, baby.
Waltzing Waters in Cape Coral? The sound of the Wurlitzer still echoes faintly in my mind.
We were hard, hard, hard up for entertainment back then.
Some daring pilots deciding to push the envelope in their commuter jet, had the snot kicked out of them by the demon that lives in the thin air.
Demon:2, Pilots:0.
They were having fun while it lasted, though.
Kathy Trant was given $5 million by friends, strangers, and the government because they felt bad that her husband was killed. In four years she managed to fritter it all away, calling it "blood money."
Now she's back to warn us of the dangers of overspending.
She's still very, very sad about losing her husband, but she's dragged herself away from the rollerblading court she had installed at her home to warn us all that money doesn't grow on trees.
The article writer kindly notes that overspending is a "chronic problem among Americans," so Kathy Trant's $5 million-dollar bender really isn't so out of the ordinary.
Maybe it isn't for Keith Richards. I think it would be considered very out of the ordinary by most Americans.
It's her money and she can spend it as she likes -- just don't lecture about wasting a largesse that most of us can only dream of. And don't ask for any money.
Nice way for the NY Post columnist Cindy Adams to pile on to a man in hell.
She brings Mark Lunsford, in New York to talk to legislators, to her home to interview him. The guy's worried sick that the whole case against the man who kidnapped, raped and murdered his little daughter will be thrown out on a technicality. So she leads off the resulting column by looking down her nose and writing, "Long hair, tattoos, this trucker from Homosassa, Fla., looks a little like a bum."
Only to a hateful, elitist witch. To the rest of us he looks like a trucker from Homosassa, Florida.
The universe has already taken its best shot against Mark Lunsford and connected, so there's nothing left that's going to hurt this guy. But Cindy Adams' description of him was so rude and ignorant, she owes him a public apology.
Then she can go back to writing catty fluff about celebrities and leave the rest of us alone.
(Via Lucianne.)
Florida's political blogs are getting noticed.
Not by me, though. Those guys have no P-shop skillz.
I've seen Barbie photo-essays, but this is by far the best of the best. The wardrobe and background are perfect. For a second I thought I'd stumbled into the life of the model Gia, only none of the dolls were shooting heroin or had any noticeable abcesses.
My advice: whoever put this together should find the right plot and film it -- they could have the next "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story."
Which contributes the most to a photograph: the photographer or the subject?
Mamamontezz has a nice eye for how the beauty inside ordinary things can be brought out with the skill of the right photographer.
There are also those who find the female form to be the most engaging, whether photographed by the professional or the amateur; a view I don't hold to for a lot of reasons.
Although it would help, I don't think a photographer has to be exceptionally skillful when they have an exceptionally engaging subject. The subject helps to make up for what the photographer lacks.
You'd have to be truly awful with a camera to mess some things up:
West of Bakersfield.
I'm no fan of tasering, but I do find this clip of Florida officers giving a major drama queen a jolt to be amusing.
I suppose they could have just grabbed her and yanked her out of her car bodily, but then we would have missed out on an Oscar-calibre performance.
While you're over there at Ifilm, check out Triumph the Insult Comic dog mingling with Michael Jackson fans at the trial.
My favorite part: a woman dressed in a clown suit refuses to talk to Triumph, saying she doesn't talk to dogs. Triumph says, "Yeah, I wouldn't want to compromise your dignity."
Good stuff.
Veterans of the USS Liberty have filed a war crimes brief against Israel for the 1967 attack on their ship that killed 34 and wounded 172.
Although President Johnson chose to let it go, I don't blame these guys for wanting to get some personal satisfaction for what was done to them and their shipmates.
The Liberty was an intelligence-gathering platform operating in international waters off Israel during the Six-Day War. The attack by jet fighters and torpedo boats was sustained, lasting 75 minutes. A wounded Captain McGonagle earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on the bridge that day.
JERUSALEM — Israel is considering using an unusual new weapon against Jewish settlers who resist this summer's Gaza Strip evacuation — a device that emits penetrating bursts of sound that leaves targets reeling with dizziness and nausea.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.
Florida child to head up Gaza Strip evacuation efforts.
In testimony, mosque-leader Muneer Arafat, says he declined Sami Al-Arian's invitation to join the Palestinian Islamic Jihad because "there were too many people with big egos and they encouraged violence." Then he added:
"They are sending their kids to Duke University and Yale University ... while they are sending someone else's kid to do a suicide bombing."
This reminds me of American supporters of the IRA. Their own families sit snug and cozy here while they send money to carry out nastiness in Northern Ireland.
Whenever I hear a new bilish Howard Dean pronouncement, all I can do is shake my head. That "D" on my voter's registration card doesn't stand for "Dean, the hate-filled clown." If his goal is to alienate the moderates in the party, he's succeeding.
Janet and AYC? got him dogpiled.
Regarding the Progressive ladies: it turns out Kos really isn't giving them any.
Considering this development, I think my post of June 08 shows some greatness of mind.
Nah, it doesn't. Anyone up for a pie fight?
And someone run it by me again how Conservative women are the priggish ones.
(Thanks to MOM for pointing out the feminist refugee forum.)
UPDATE:
Congrats to the Cotillion for being AOL's Blog of the Week!
If you have to go to prison in California, try to get into the Protective Housing Unit in Corcoran. It's primo. It has all the famous felons, meals prepared by staff only (to include a sack lunch that inmates can eat whenever they choose), and no official lights-out policy.
It's the safest place in the entire California prison system, aside from that one unfortunate incident in 1999 when someone left a door open and general population inmates rushed in, beating up mass-murderer Juan Corona and smashing Charles Manson's guitar.
Of course, even in prison you'll have to deal with life's little hassles:
In most prison settings, said Richard Caruso, a former correctional officer at Corcoran who guarded protective unit inmates in the early 1990s, informing on a fellow inmate would probably result in quick reprisal or even death. But inside the unit's safe confines, many snitches operate with impunity.
"The PHU inmates are always telling on each other, trying to make themselves look good in the eyes of staff," he said.
For several hours a day, the inmates are free to roam and eat inside a large day room with metal tables and chairs. During a tour of the unit in the late 1990s, a reporter encountered Manson, wearing Birkenstocks and pleading with top corrections officials that his guitar be returned.
Nearby, a gang hit-man-turned-informant, his body covered with tattoos, wanted his photo taken as he held up a Bible. In the corner, Corona was mumbling that guards had denied him access to a plot of chili peppers he had planted in the yard. In the center of it all, a child molester had two tables piled high with legal documents as he prepared another appeal. "Welcome to my law office," he said with an ironic grin.
"It is like a Beckett play," said Fresno attorney Catherine Campbell, referring to late Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett, known for plays about people in absurd situations. "It is full of very strange people, packed in together.
Sounds like it would make a great new drama series for CBS.
If convicted, this will be Michael Jackson's new home. Celebrities really do get all the breaks.
How inspiring that a foreigner, through hard work and frugality, could one day afford to send his son off to an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp. The circle of love is completed by the son's bringing his new knowledge and skills back home to his own town -- a town that had no professional terrorist.
It's a typical immigrant success story. America, what a country!
I don't know how many of you are familiar with the case, but I'd like to note the passing of Susan Billig, a local woman who actively and constantly searched for thirty years for her daughter Amy, who went missing from Coconut Grove in 1974.
I grew up reading in the paper about her searches, and as time passed, I began wishing she would let it go, for her own sake. She just couldn't do it.
Now she has.
Susan Billig died without ever finding her daughter.The Coconut Grove woman -- whose 31-year quest to find her missing teenage daughter took her from drug dens to prisons across the country and even across the Atlantic -- died Tuesday of complications from a heart attack. She was 80.
''I don't think she ever found peace,'' said her son, Josh Billig. ``She took that as a really tough wound right to the grave.''
The story of Billig and her daughter Amy has reverberated in Miami for more than a generation. Some have forgotten the details over the intervening three decades, but not Billig, who remained a stoic figure undaunted by time.
This much we all know: On March 5, 1974, 17-year-old Amy disappeared near the Billig's Coconut Grove home. She was on her way to her dad's art gallery in the Grove, then a Bohemian enclave.
Some said Amy accepted a ride from a biker. Others said she got into a van or pickup truck. Clues were strewn across the state -- her camera along Florida's Turnpike in Central Florida; her hairbrush at a convenience store in Kissimmee.
And there was Susan Billig, knocking on doors, passing out fliers, calling police, holding news conferences. She painstakingly checked out the stories she was told: Amy was seen buying tea in Seattle; a biker was with her in Tulsa; she was a sex slave in Saudi Arabia.
The years melted away and the twists turned tragic, but never hopeless.
Her husband, Ned Billig, died of lung cancer in 1993. When he died, she was recovering herself -- also of lung cancer.
Ned's dying words to his wife: ``I want to see Amy before I die.''
Over the years, Coconut Grove grew from a Bohemian haunt to a tourist magnet. Tips poured in. Some were crazies playing with her.
Among them, Henry Blair, a former U.S. Customs agent who investigated the case. Blair had prank-called Billig, teasing her with false clues about her daughter's whereabouts. In 1996, Blair was sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to pay the family $5 million -- as his income would allow.
Susan's son, Josh Billig, grew up -- she once said she wished she had spent more time with him. Josh Billig never held it against his mother.
''I tried to assure her that it wasn't a problem for me,'' Josh Billig said.
He has two daughters now.
Last year, on the 30th anniversary of Amy's disappearance, her mother spoke to The Herald: ``Because I didn't know if she was dead, I couldn't forsake her and move on.''
Hers was a familiar story in the news. It was featured on shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted.
No one wrote about Billig as tenderly as Edna Buchanan, now a novelist who covered the case for The Herald.
''I always feared that her husband, that Sue and that I would die without ever knowing what happened to Amy,'' Buchanan said Tuesday night.
``I think about it every day, every night of my life because the cases that haunt you are unsolved ones. She never gave up and endured risks that no one would ever take to try and find her daughter.''
Even a last major revelation did not convince Billig that her daughter was dead.
In 1996, a woman in Virginia told the BBC that her husband, a biker named Paul Branch, told her on his deathbed that Amy was kidnapped and gang raped near the Everglades. Amy fought back, the widow said, then was drugged, cut up and left in a canal.
In recent years, the family had come to doubt the credibility of the story, Josh Billig said. Amy's disappearence remained very much unsolved.
Buchanan never bought the theory: If the biker's story were true, too many people would have known. The word would have gotten out.
''The biker chicks grow older. They become mothers themselves. They develop consciences,'' Buchanan said. ``A lone serial killer -- I still adhere to that theory.''
During the final years of Susan Billig's life, her son said, her search became less intense. The leads dwindled.
In the last year, she suffered three heart attacks. The last one weakened her too much and left her in the hospital for more than two weeks.
Billig resigned herself not to the fact that Amy was dead, but that she might not solve the mystery while alive, said Josh Billig, 47.
Last year on a rainy day, Susan Billig went to Peacock Park in Coconut Grove, where her son built a coral rock bench to honor his sister.
''I've kind of almost lost the feeling that she's alive,'' she said at the time. ``But not entirely. I can't stand to be that sad.''
She died at home surrounded by family. Plans have not been finalized for funeral services.
Susan Billig is survived by her sister, Ray Scheckner, 87; her son, Joshua; and, she believed to the end, her daughter, Amy, who would today be 48.
What's wrong? Kos not giving you any?
(Via the ladies of The Cotillion, who believe in the improvement of the mind through extensive reading.)
Duane doesn't realize there's a chipmunk right in back of him.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
Suzy got out a can of "Gregg Be Gone" for me. Thanks, Suzy!
UPDATE II:
With the skill of a Stalin-era photographer, Carl makes Gregg vanish. Thanks, Carl!
A friend of mine died this week. He died of a heart attack at age 52. Even though he has a long obituary that emphasizes that he had a light-hearted personality and was extremely well-liked, it can't say near enough what a good, kind, smart, and very funny man he was.
He combined being a total smart ass with being a good, friendly guy.
He was very kind to me personally over these last ten years and I'll miss him, every day, for a very long time.
If y'all had known him, you'd feel the same way. There really aren't as many people that could be said for as should be.
A big round of applause for SoxBlog for bucking the conventional wisdom and calling this shot last August: John Kerry's not the brainiac he's purported to be.
From today's news:
Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Considering that Sox has this figured out close to a year ago, I'd say he's the one with the snapping synapses.
(Via Lucianne.)
This week's Cotillion has started.
If you don't have anything nice to say...come sit down by us.
Our should-be Patron Saint, Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
The original lovely, Conservative, opinionated American woman.
According to Katherine Graham's "Personal History":
"After one party they both attended early in 1920, my mother described Alice as having been in a very carnal sort of mood," Graham wrote. "She ate three chops, told shady stories and finally sang in a deep bass voice: Nobody cultivates me, I'm wild, I'm wild."
I'd like to see Ann Coulter do that.
Here's the full background on the Sami "Death to Israel" Al-Arian investigation, with all the major players and articles going back to 1995. The trial of the former USF professor begins today.
Michelle Malkin has more.
If a newspaper can have a Sweeps Week, this is it. The Rocky Mountain News will be publishing the results of their Ward Churchill investigation all week:
University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill fabricated historical facts, published the work of others as his own and repeatedly made false claims about two federal Indian laws, a Rocky Mountain News investigation has found.
The two-month News investigation, carried out at the same time Churchill and his work are being carefully examined by the university, also unearthed fresh genealogical information that casts new doubts on the professor's long-held assertion that he is of American Indian ancestry.
It's going to take a lot to knock this fake Indian off the gravy train he's been riding for decades. Let's see what the News has brought to the party.
(Via Poor Schmuck.)
Today is the anniversary of the death of President Reagan.
Go watch Mr. Politics's video tribute to the life of this remarkable man and have a nice cry.
I also want to send out a little prayer for, and say thank you to, Nancy Reagan.
She could have tried to keep her husband all to herself, but instead shared him with our People and supported him in all his goals.
President Reagan once said that if he had decided to be a shoe salesman like his father, that Nancy would have been there helping him to sell shoes.
She surely would have.
Without Nancy, there could have been no Reagan legacy. So remember her on this day and be glad that her tremendous love and support helped bring such a great American as Ronald Reagan to the world stage.
(Via Trey Jackson and Michelle Malkin.)
There are plenty of good articles out today about Dr. Rafiq Sabir, noted ray of sunshine, and sworn liege of Osama Bin Laden.
Expect more interesting revelations about this Palm Beach Wahabi-wannabe in the coming weeks.
Glancing through the two articles in the Post and the Sentinel, I'd say Sabir had a damn hard time controlling his women. He was also in debt up to his eyeballs. Between those two problems, life with al-Qaeda must have looked like an oasis of sanity to a guy who's spent his alloted time on this earth ruining his life with his own two hands.
They say that imitation is a form of flattery, and I'd never kick too hard about that.
"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"
A gullible gentleman in Fort Myers got conned out of $15 grand by his compadres in a buried treasure version of the classic pigeon drop confidence game:
Vazquez's story began May 9, he said, when a man came to his business at 2081 Alica St., Fort Myers. He identified himself as Mario Parra, a government worker gathering soil samples along Fowler Street and connecting roads.
Vazquez, a native of Mexico, allowed it and chatted casually in Spanish with the man who said he was from Venezuela.
"He was very nice," Vazquez said.
The next day, the man returned with a metal detector and shovels. He said he found gold or silver in the soil and wanted to dig for it. He introduced another man as his brother, Armando Parra.
The two men chose a spot behind his business, broke through a layer of asphalt and dug for three days. Eventually, his curiosity overcame his doubts. Vazquez decided to help dig and soon they unearthed what police described as a clay capsule with a leather scroll inside.
Parra told Vazquez the writing on the scroll was from a Spanish Roman Catholic priest named Federico Guzman, who lived in the 1800s. Vazquez, who is Christian but not Catholic, believed him.
"It was a piece of old leather. Everything looked so real. I thought it was true, everything," said Vazquez, who has lived in Fort Myers for three years.
He read for himself the scroll's revelation in Spanish of a buried treasure on the site. To recover it, the scroll instructed the diggers to wrap $68,000 and a Spanish Roman Catholic Bible in cloth, place it on an altar and pray for nine days. Then, resume digging.
Vazquez, who said he rarely attends church but prays daily, put $15,000 in a toolbox. The other two men showed Vazquez money, wrapped it in the cloth and put it in the box. They told Vazquez to keep the box safe while they went looking for a Bible. They promised to return soon to pray.
Vazquez waited six hours before looking in the toolbox.
He found three stacks of newspaper cut to the size of dollar bills. The money was gone.
Of course it was.
This website is a good source of info on all manner of cons, including the classic ones.
After a decade of silly internet e-mail scams, it's refreshing to see you can still draw a mark in with a good old-fashioned leather scroll.
Are You Conservative? has found a European interview conducted by Dr. Phil that might leave you with a nice, warm feeling. Depends.
I can guarantee you, though, that if you're a big Oprah fan, you're in for a treat.
If you never get out to Nevada to Max Baer Jr's planned Beverly Hillbillies-themed casino, at least you can visit the website.
It is a disturbed mind that had a vision of male bartenders dressed as Granny, spitting alcohol onto flaming torches.
Indeed, the whole enterprise may be a cry for help.
Then again, the guy does have a degree in business, and as a director spent $110 thousand to make Macon County Line - and earned himself a profit of $25 million.
Speaking of movies, today Max offered a good quote regarding what he sees as the misrepresention of his father's character in the movie Cinderella Man: "They didn't have to make him an ogre to make Jimmy Braddock a hero."
They do if it's a Ron Howard film. He's about as subtle as Elly May's wardrobe.
Last night I got a horrible phone call.
Imagine that a demon had taken up telemarketing- that is what this man sounded like. His actual words were innocuous, but his voice was so scary that after a few sentences, I couldn't bear listening anymore and hung up the phone. I went to tell Mr. Cracker and he had a good laugh at my saying I'd been called by what sounded like a demon.
Today when I got home from work, he asked me if I'd heard from any demons today and started laughing again. It was him. He'd been testing out a new phone system and had used some clips from "True Lies" that he'd added distortion to.
He said it had worked so well on me last night that he'd been inspired to continue his experimental calls at work today with much pranky success.
Geeks just wanna have fun.
UPDATE:
Here's the call.
Mr. Cracker put it on his mobile phone, so he could go into people's offices, click 'send', and watch them get the recorded call -- actions I consider both geeky and dorky.
No one at work realized they were talking to a recording.
I hate greyhound racing. Race horses are million-dollar investments; greyhounds are just cheap, disposable amusement. Unfortunately, one-third of the nation's greyhound tracks are located here in Florida.
The dogs that survived the recent fire at the Naples track -- the ones that the fire department and local vets worked so hard to resuscitate -- are probably going to be destroyed anyways. Almost all of them are.
A stray dog scrounging in an alley will have a longer life than a racing greyhound. And these are dogs that are bred on purpose.
UPDATE:
Being in a fire (and in the newspaper) might be the best thing that ever happened to these dogs: people are calling in to adopt them.
Another gold star for News-Press reporter Karen Feldman, whose name I see in some of these articles. She's the one who wrote about my girl Lilly.
I'm glad Ace enjoyed his time over at the Cotillion, but it was kind of creepy hearing him muttering to himself in different voices while he was bussing the tables.
Ace has been kind enough to include some helpful categories for our blog posts, bless his heart.
It's pretty disappointing to find out that the heretofore unnamed cad that Carly Simon was singing about in "You're So Vain" is just some FBI guy I've never heard of.
I was so sure it was Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty.
Regarding its Memorial Day article by John Eudy on the soldier from a Texas unit taking down the Nazi flag from over the Reichstag, the Chronicle editor has this to say:
In an e-mail to the Chronicle Tuesday, Eudy acknowledged his mistake. Eudy said his purpose was to honor the memory and exploits of a local soldier. The incident did not and could not have happened at the Reichstag building during the fall of Berlin to Russian troops.
In four paragraphs, it's twice mentioned that Eudy isn't a member of the Chronicle staff. Can't say I blame them for underscoring the point, as it has been established that the "mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data", and the like, is reserved for staff op-eds only.
It's wonderful when people come together in agreement.
Englishman Leslie Burke's back in the news. He went to court again in his continuing bid to make certain that doctors won't starve and dehydrate him to death as his neurological disease progresses:
"They tell me I'm a legally competent person to refuse (life support), but I'm not legally competent to make the decision that I don't want the end of my life to be hastened," Burke said. "I find that contradiction very hard to understand."
(Via FR.)
He'd won his case earlier, but doctors had appealed.
What's Duane up to? Let's go in with the slidecam.
Best pic ever of a little bottle and a whole lot of genius.
Wail on, Skydog!
.jpg){kind=link}
