The results of the autopsies are in, and I was curious to see exactly how many slugs our cop-killing visitor took subsequent to his routine traffic stop. It looks like the patient developed a fatal case of massive, sudden-onset lead poisoning:
Angilo Freeland, the man who shot and killed Polk County Deputy Sheriff Matt Williams on Thursday, was shot 68 times by SWAT team members, according to an autopsy conducted Friday night.
Newton's third law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The lawmen's first law, however, says that when someone shoots an officer seven times, then lays the muzzle on his temple and pulls the trigger yet again, they're going to turn him into puddin' when they catch him.
So in the case of the lead-footed Mr. Freeland, it looks like speed really does kill.
***
Further updates:
Keeping Watch
Previous postings:
Together Forever
The Hunt Ends
Manhunt Underway
The Twin Cities are leading the way in improving airport customer-service:
About three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are Somalis, many of them Muslim. And about three times each day, would-be customers are refused taxi service when a driver sees they're carrying alcohol."It's become a significant customer-service issue," said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, on Thursday.
The airport authorities are working on a system of color-coding the lights on the cabs to make it easier to direct passengers to the appropriate vehicles. They haven't decided on the colors, but I think they should keep yellow in reserve as it would be a good choice for designating which cabbies will carry Jews.
(Via Tim Blair.)
For the murdered team of Deputy Matt Williams and K-9 Officer Diogi, a touching and fitting arrangement found on the Polk County Sheriff's website:
Deputy Williams will be interned at the Auburndale Memorial Cemetery, located on Thornhill Road & Recker Highway.
...
K-9 Diogi will be cremated, and his remains will be interned with Deputy Williams. Master and faithful servant will be together forever.
***
Further updates:
Keeping Watch
A Ticket Written In Lead
Previous postings:
The Hunt Ends
Manhunt Underway
Blow your depression away!
(Via dormfridge.)
Getting caught with either one is bad for a political career:
Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned from Congress on Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former male page."I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.
Foley, 52, had been considered a shoo-in for re-election until the e-mails surfaced in recent days.
While the letters look innocuous, the quick resignation says they aren't. The normal procedure would be to fight for your good name, even when you're Ted Kennedy and don't have one. Either Foley's opponent, Tim Mahoney, got ahold of some red meat, or Foley naturally folds like a cheap suit. I'm betting on the former. I say he wanted to turn that page over.
(Via Gmac in comments.)
UPDATE:
The instant messages are just a tad more damning. He wanted to turn that page over and dog-ear him.
Does Mark Foley make you a little horny? He wants to know.
Hi, I'm Steven Tyler Needs A Strand Of Pearls! Boy, it's been a rough week, both with coming out about my struggles with Hep C and running out of my favorite Revlon "Moondrops" color, Snowsilver Rose. But I'm here, man, I'm here; and I'm ready to rock out with some great links. When you hit the links, be sure to look around; you might discover a favorite new blog:
*The Daily Gut is following Mr. Clinton on his visit to England.
*First they came for the go-go dancers...V the K has the follow-up.
*The Max Cleland clock edges closer to midnight
*First it's beavers building unauthorized dams, now it's bears shitting in the woods. When will wild animals stop wreaking havoc on our wilderness?
And
*Speed Trap: The Mayor of Mitchieville is running quite a racket with his quizzes. He's judge and jury in his little burg and everybody has to dance to his mad, cacaphonaic tune.
The latest on the manhunt for the killer of Deputy Williams and Diogi:
Hundreds of police were swarming "through every square inch" of thickly overgrown Florida woods Friday as the manhunt intensified for an accused cop killer."I want to say to his friends, that if you try to hide him or move him, we'll put you in jail," said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd at a Friday news conference in Lakeland.
"We're watching associates, we're watching their movements, we're watching people who we have linked to him all over the state of Florida at this time," he said.
Police insist they will not rest until they capture the man, whom they suspect of killing a sheriff's deputy and wounding another during a routine traffic stop. They think he is involved in a narcotics ring.
Eh, illegal Jamaicans are famous for not being here to pick tomatoes.
The police are searching a large, wooded area, between 75-150 acres. It sounds like they'll be needing some more dogs -- bloodhounds. The killer's got quite a few aliases, the latest are Alex or Andrew Cloxton or Angleo Freeland.
One item of good news is that they believe Diogi may have gotten in a bite.
UPDATE:
He's dead.
The search for a man who shot two sheriff’s deputies fewer than 24 hours ago has ended fatally today, according to the Polk County sheriff. The suspect was shot to death this morning as he hid in a hollowed-out area under a fallen oak tree west of Lakeland.“God will be the judge and jury this time,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.
The man was shot multiple times.
Good riddance.
The Williams family has been informed of the murderer's death -- a grim satisfaction to whoever delivered the news.
My condelences to the Williams family for their terrible and senseless loss.
Sheriff Grady's announcement here. (Video)
***
Further updates:
Keeping Watch
A Ticket Written In Lead
Together Forever
Previous posting:
Manhunt Underway
A nice beginning to some well-deserved revenge:
An inmate serving a life sentence for molesting and murdering a 10-year-old girl named Katie was apparently forcibly tattooed across the forehead by a fellow prisoner with the words "KATIE'S REVENGE," authorities say. Anthony Ray Stockelman, 39, was removed from the general prison population for his own safety last weekend after authorities discovered the tattoo, officials said.Prison officials said an inmate has been identified as a suspect.
"If I had to guess I'd say it's a statement from the inmates," said [Katie] Collman's father, John Neace.
(Pic via Lost in Lima, Ohio.)
It was a routine traffic stop. Police never know what's going to happen when they walk up to a car window:
Police were searching for a man who shot two Polk County sheriff's deputies and a police dog following a traffic stop Thursday, authorities said.The Polk County deputies were taken to a hospital after the noontime shooting in north Lakeland, Sheriff Grady Judd said.
He wouldn't release their names or discuss their conditions because relatives had not been notified. A hospital spokeswoman referred questions about the deputies to the sheriff's office.
The shooter was first approached in a traffic stop, but he then fled into a wooded area, Judd said. Shots were fired, and the two deputies and a police dog were hit, he said.
The shooting occurred near Kathleen High School, which was locked down, Wood said. A woman at the school who would identify herself only as Mrs. Platt said students were locked in their classrooms and were safe.
Television video footage showed armed police with shields searching a wooded area with traffic backed up on nearby Interstate 4, which runs through the city about 35 miles east of Tampa. A law enforcement helicopter flew over the area, and armed officers were seen surrounding a ramshackle building.
More here:
The shooting occurred in north Lakeland, Fla., near a high school. The suspect police are hunting was described as a black male wearing a white shirt with dreadlocks, who may still have a shotgun. Police said the incident began when the deputies made a routine traffic stop.The suspect showed police a fake ID, then asked if he was going to be arrested. One of the deputies said "I don't know," then the suspect ran into the nearby woods. The two deputies and a canine dog pursued the suspect, and around 12:30 p.m. ET, "numerous" shots were fired, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.
"As a result of that incident, two of our deputies have been shot, the canine's been shot and the suspect's still at large," Judd told reporters shortly before 3 p.m. ET Thursday.
Police surrounded a house where they believed the suspect was hiding out when the fugitive shot twice at them twice, he said. The police returned fire, and the suspect ran off again. There have been "numerous alleged sighting" of the suspect in the area, Judd said.
"Listen to me folks. We will find him, we will bring him to justice. The sooner, the better," Judd said.
He added that police are still trying to notify the families of the wounded deputies and that their names would not be released until that happens.
Television video footage showed armed police with shields searching a wooded area with traffic backed up on nearby Interstate 4 in the town about 35 miles east of Tampa. The incident happened at Memorial Highway and Wabash, near Lakeland.
Illegal alien? If so, he wouldn't be the first to gun down an officer during a routine stop.
(Via Sandspur in comments.)
Video update here.
The police will allow no live video, as the suspect could by now have access to a television.
UPDATE II (video)
Two Lakeland PD later had a run-in with him and gunfire was exchanged. The police weren't injured and the suspect fled again.
One of the deputies has reportedly now died.
How sad, it was the K-9 unit. They'd gone in as back-up for the first deputy:
A K-9 sheriff's deputy Matthew Williams died from his injuries, Local 6 News reported. Another sheriff's deputy Doug Spears was shot once in the leg and was expected to recover. Williams' police dog also died from injuries in the shooting.
Here's a page dedicated to K-9 officers, both human and dog, handlers and PSDs, killed in the line of duty. Theirs is a unique partnership.
UPDATE III:
The suspect was a Jamaican with a fake ID.
Here's a photo of Deputy Williams. An Internet search shows he was very involved with his K-9 partner Rocky, but I don't know yet if this was his partner today.
UPDATE IV:
Deputy William's partner was K-9 officer Diogi.
A video update of the sheriff announcing Deputy Williams' death has the sequence of events, and the Orlando Crime Blog is doing good work keeping people abreast on the events.
Deputy Williams and K-9 Officer Diogi.
UPDATE V:
The police have identified the suspect as Eswardo Ramclaim.
***
Further updates:
Keeping Watch
A Ticket Written In Lead
Together Forever
The Hunt Ends
The picture-painting insult of "He's the kind of guy who has to squat to pee" may soon lose its perjorative meaning as local schoolboards decide that boys are just urinating all wrong:
A local decision that schoolboys must sit on toilet seats when urinating has provoked political debate.The head of The Democrats Party, a splinter group of former Progress Party hardliners, Vidar Kleppe, is outraged that boys at Dvergsnes School in Kristiansand have to sit and pee.
Kleppe accuses the school of fiddling with God's work, and wants the matter discussed at the executive committee level of the local council, newspaper Dagbladet reports.
"When boys are not allowed to pee in the natural way, the way boys have done for generations, it is meddling with God's work," Kleppe told the newspaper.
"It is a human right not to have to sit down like a girl," Kleppe said.
A little more sugar and spice, boys; that's all they're asking.
(Via Johnny Triangles and Ace of Spades.)
Lots of Floridians win the Carnegie Hero medal this year, among lots of good people in general.
Have a gander at some good news for a change.
They've been saying this about him for decades:
A riches-to-rags story could be unfolding in Horatio Alger's hometown. As this Boston suburb gets ready for its 11th annual Horatio Alger Street Fair, town leaders are considering dropping Alger's name from the festival next year because of allegations of pedophilia against the 19th-century children's author.
Never would have expected it from the author of "Ragged Dick."
Confiscating his iPod was the last straw:
A South Florida teenager has joined the ever-growing number of Cuban migrants --but in the opposite direction most of his fellow islanders travel.Alfredo Diaz, 14, flew to Havana via the Bahamas last week after using his father's credit card to buy a plane ticket over the Internet, the father said Tuesday. The boy had told his father he wanted to visit home after some troubles at school. He has lived with his father in the U.S. for six years, but is now back with his mother in Cuba.
...
The father said the boy was also upset over his aborted candidacy for class president, which ended after he was accused of casting ballots for himself in the name of his friends. Diaz punished his son --canceling his computer privileges and confiscating his iPod.
In a reverse-Elian, the father's asking U.S. officials to help him get the boy back.
Oh, how sad. According to the Australian Koala Foundation's executive director Deborah Tabart, who employs a scorched-earth policy on similes, Australia's koalas will be extinct in ten years, maybe partly due to murderous black and white cats:
"The koala is like the canary in the cage," Tabart said.
Is the cage in a koal mine?
The government there continues to deny there is a cuddly marsupial shortage.
Meanwhile, extinction came even sooner for Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks" comic strip. Finding it too taxing to add a few comments to a four-panel cartoon drawn by an assistant, McGruder went off to recharge his batteries and now will not be returning.
Duane jamming up a storm in St. Paul on July 24, 1971.
Wail on, Skydog!
The picture I took it from.
Courtesy of Billastro, a newspaper review on one of their performances in Minnesota earlier that year. You can tell from it just how unknown they still were in some parts, and how impressively they played.
Allman Brothers Perform in St. Paul
Minneapolis Tribune; 3/26/71
by Scott Bartell"The Allman Brothers, playing in O'Shaugnnessy Auditorium at the College of St. Catherine Thursday night, turned out to be just what this reviewer needed -- a spoonful of lovin' music, blues, and a little more.
"The Litter, a local group that has cut some albums and toured the country, came on as a warm-up band but hardly even got warmed up themselves. As I remember, they used to be more interesting -- now they just seem affected, especially on their farther out numbers. But they got a bad deal on the sound system and a lot of time was wasted.
"Their last song, an original piece of pseudo-Fifties rock'n'roll called "Ozone," was pretty good, though, and they got through it all right. I began to feel comfortable with the Auditorium -- when things were working properly, it felt like a clean Fillmore East.
"The Allman Brothers inherited their share of electronic flak, too, but soon got past it and really played.
"They began with some short, tight blues like 'Statesboro Blues' and 'Someday Baby' ['Trouble No More'], which showed just how together they really are. The two drummers provided a fine rhythmic drive, subtle but confident, and one man alternated on piano and organ while doing the vocals in a strong, husky 'black' blues voice; meanwhile the two lead guitarists traded fluent riffs with the support of a very able bassist.
"As they went on, each song got longer and further out, until their sixth one became almost a concerto in length and variety of musical ideas: begining in a slow Latin-style tempo, the guitarists and organist traded breaks that really wed technique and spirit, while the others changed and evolved around them. It must have lasted 20 minutes, as did their final number, 'You Don't Love Me, Baby.' But time seemed to stop as the Allman Brotehrs Blues Band played and then trasncended the blues.
"Some people protested at the lack on an encore, but it seemed plenty to me. Lack-luster emcee Marilyn of KQRS was unable to explain why the musicians had to quit because her microphone also went dead."
The silliest dog article I've ever come across (and I'm a sucker for dog stories), has got to be this one by Jon Katz in Slate. In it his dog Orson has taken to biting people, and he repeatedly states that since he'd previously done loads of training with the dog, his only choices are: build a kennel with high walls, move to an even more isolated area away from people, take the dog for expensive medical tests to determine if there's an underlying biological cause for his behavior, or have it euthanized.
After long, long paragraphs of soul-searching, he ends with:
What pushed me through my lethargy was a passage Arendt cited from Immanuel Kant: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me."Orson and I had been under the starry heavens all summer and now, I had to listen to the moral law within me.
Weighty thoughts, indeed. Ever thought of buying a freaking muzzle?
In the past month, two Sago miners who were on duty the day of the explosion, but who were not with the trapped crew, have commited suicide. While that may be understandable as some by-product of survivor's guilt, what's odd is the occurence of heroic rescuers doing themselves in.
If a lady sees a snake around Yankees, she's on her own. Celia Rivenbark found out the shocking truth of it when she hollered "Snake!" in a community of Long-Islanders and no men sprang into action.
It's like making kids take their worm medicine; they don't want to do it, but it's good for them:
*Police have arrested the mother and two cousins of a pregnant 16-year-old who are accused of forcing the teen to drink turpentine in an attempt to induce an abortion.**
*A pregnant, 19-year-old woman was kidnapped by her parents on Friday, bound with a rope and forced into their car for a trip to an abortion clinic in New York state, the Portland Press Herald reported Monday.
Kids can be obstinant, but a good parent knows to hang tough.
A video of an amazing Texas dog named Skidboot.
Wish my dogs payed the bills.
(Via Owen in e-mail.)
UPDATE:
The perfect restaurant to take your mom to on Mother's Day.
The only part I'm wondering about is this:
After fleeing China's civil war back in 1949, [Mr. Guo] moved to Taiwan, and then to Atlanta, Georgia, where he began to look deeper into traditional Chinese medicine, and experiment on the appendages of man's best friend.
How was he able to to perfom culinary experiments on Atlanta dogs?
If you haven't seen any of the web-only Star Trek: New Voyages episodes, check out this vignette. It's really quite elaborate and funny.
I love a good autobiography, and will read them by just about anyone so long as they're interesting and well-written; but the life of Time's art critic Robert Hughes is one I can do without a slice of. Trees were ground into pulp in order that he may proffer readers a taste of the bitter slurry of hatred he feels towards a slutty first wife and the ignorant louts who caused him so much aggravation after he hit them while he was driving on the wrong side of the road.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I'd rather read about the continuing adventures of Andrew Sullivan's halo.
Florida gubernatorial hopeful Jim Davis' choice of a black running mate has highlighted some more churches that need their tax-exemption yanked for breaking the rules:
It is a question that many black leaders in South Florida, where nearly a third of the state's Democrats live, hope to answer with a resounding yes. Ecstatic over the Jones pick, a number of Baptist ministers began extolling the Davis-[Daryl] Jones ticket from the pulpit Sunday.
...
'Chance to make history'Meeting in Liberty City, members of the Baptist Ministers Council of Greater Miami and Vicinity issued a "clarion call" last week to trumpet that message from black churches.
They also announced plans to use vans, buses and other church resources to mobilize black voters -- no easy task in South Florida, where turnout for midterm elections is typically even lower than the statewide average. In the primary, for example, turnout was almost 20 percent statewide but less than 12 percent in Broward.
"But that is just not acceptable in 2006," said Willie Sims, pastor of Peaceful Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Miami. "Especially now that we have a chance to make history."
A reminder from the IRS:
Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. The prohibition applies to all campaigns including campaigns at the federal, state and local level. Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes. Those section 501(c)(3) organizations that are private foundations are subject to additional restrictions that are not described in this fact sheet.
***
Previous posting:
Partisan Politicking In The Pulpit
Those who imagine they know what a chill wind on freedom of speech feels like should put on a parka and head to Egypt where they can get the real thing:
Egypt has banned editions of two French and German newspapers, Le Figaro and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, because of articles deemed insulting to Islam, the state news agency MENA said on Sunday.Under a decree issued by Information Minister Anas el-Feki, the two editions will not be able to enter the country, it said.
"They published articles which disparaged Islam and claimed that the Islamic religion was spread by the sword and that the Prophet ... was the prophet of evil," it added.
The edition of Le Figaro, dated September 19, contains an opinion piece on Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by French philosopher and high school teacher Robert Redeker.
"Merciless warrior, pillager, murderer of Jews and polygamist -- that is how Mohammad portrays himself in the Koran ... Hatred and violence live in the book by which every Muslim is educated, the Koran," Redeker wrote.
The edition of the German newspaper, dated September 16, contains an article by German historian Egon Flaig looking at how the Prophet Mohammad was a successful military leader.
Not a cursed lone survivor, Judge Richard Bohanon instead turns up Forrest Gump-like at the scenes of our nation's tragedies:
For the first time, a federal bankruptcy judge has discussed his unique spot in history — as a witness to the two most deadly terror attacks on U.S. soil.Judge Richard L. Bohanon was in his office, a block away from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, when a truck bomb exploded on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was in New York on a temporary assignment in an office near the World Trade Center towers.
"Somehow, I was spared — twice," Bohanon told The Oklahoman. "I was put in peril, but I was never harmed."
I hope authorities tagged him before releasing him back into the wild.
Here's an excellent downloadable documentary on the Cocaine Cowboys in Miami and the infamous Griselda Blanco, she of armored-war-wagon-in-the-Dadeland-Mall fame. Tony Montana was a boy scout compared to this lady.
The file gave me a couple of error messages before finally downloading successfully, and it does take quite a while to finish.
The viewer for it is here; without it, you'll only have the audio.
It's an outstanding work on a period of time when Miami was Dodge City.
(Via Three Oh Five.)
A one-year anniversary marked for Cindy Sheehan's "a little wind and a little rain."
In this book excerpt, Time magazine correspondent Michael Weisskopf loses a hand and discovers a bellybutton.
I'm sure the rest of the book, where he focuses on men far worse off than he, is much better. This excerpt, however, reads too much like the Heartbreak of Psoriasis.
Luckily for me, my wooden-legged great-great grandfather wasn't nearly so introspective a fellow.
The Sunday Times has interesting reading on events in Thailand:
THE Royal Thai Army will adopt new tactics against a militant Islamic uprising, following the coup that sent Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted prime minister, into exile in London last week. According to sources briefed by the army high command, Thaksin’s bungled response to the insurgency in southern Thailand, which has claimed 1,700 lives in two years, was a critical factor in the generals’ decision to get rid of him.Military intelligence officers intend to negotiate with separatists and to use psychological warfare to isolate the most violent extremists, in contrast to Thaksin’s heavy-handed methods and harsh rhetoric.
The coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is a Muslim who has sworn loyalty to Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the symbol of nationhood in this majority Buddhist country of 65m people.
The king has since bestowed his approval on the generals, a sign to Thais that the royal palace shared the belief that Thaksin had to go.
While Thaksin was unpopular all the way around, this is not the way to go about things. The king isn't doing his people any favor.
That's Russian for sites you'd want to see while traveling.
There are lots of gorgeous 360-degree panoramas of the sites in St. Petersburg, Russia here, while panoramas of the Pavlovsk Palace and its interiors can be found here.
One of the best things about the Internet is having access to beautiful photographs like these.
A cunning ruse from the people who cracked the Enigma code. I think:
POLICE have agreed to consult a panel of Muslim leaders before mounting counter-terrorist raids or arrests. Members of the panel will offer their assessment of whether information police have on a suspect is too flimsy and will also consider the consequences on community relations of a raid.Members will be security vetted and will have to promise not to reveal any intelligence they are shown. They will not have to sign the Official Secrets Act.
(Via Ace, who thinks otherwise.)
UPDATE:
I doubt anyone agrees with me on this one, but I remember the excellent work of the Double Cross Committee and maintain a faint hope.
It is the only pig-like animal native to the United States.
Learn about its mating habits in Kinky Friedman's latest gubernatorial ad, and then watch it in action as it stuffs a bill down a Fox reporter's bra.
(Via Baron in e-mail.)
A belligerent drunk gets protected from his own foolishness:
An alleged drunken motorist who brandished a pool cue while driving at a group of motorcyclists was hit by his own car after he attempted to approach the bikers on foot, authorities said.Richard Brooks, 50, of Concord, was pulled to safety by the motorcyclists after his car _ which he left in reverse _ knocked him into the highway on Thursday, said Officer Scott Yox of the California Highway Patrol.
Brooks, who was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and driving under the influence, told authorities he was offended by skeletons some of the riders wore on their leather Harley-Davidson jackets and what he perceived as their attempts to appear tough.
"It was his impression that they thought they were better than him," Yox said. "They were irritating to him and he felt he needed to do something about it."
The leather skeleton jacket is perhaps worn by the Greater Los Angeles Biking X-Ray Technicians Club.
(Via Baron in e-mail.)
How convenient. Bin Laden dead just in time for the Macy's parade:
“The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006,” the document says. His geographic isolation meant that medical assistance was impossible, the French report said, adding that his lower limbs were allegedly paralyzed. On Sept. 4, Saudi security services had their first information on bin Laden’s alleged death, the unconfirmed document reported.
While typhoid is on the list of appropriately disgusting ways for him to go, the death remains unconfirmed.
CBC Chairman Guy Fornier
Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott
Actress Drew Barrymore
This is off the top of my head only and should not be considered the colonical list.
Despite some people's crying ignorance and poverty as the root of Islamofascism, the fact remains that the 19 9-11 hijackers were well-educated and financially stable. Now we witness Muslim insurgents in Asia issuing their demands in the Japanese form of poetry known as Thai Coup.
These are not illiterate peasants, but educated and sensitive people able to express their deepest desire to behead their enemies in a 5-7-5 sentence syllable structure:
Free-thinking people
Living life as you see fit,
You're asking for it.
These could prove a bonanza for American educators, as Thai Coup is typically presented in elementary school curricula as an introduction to poetry, and may now be combined with multi-cultural studies.
It's hard to tell from the garbled translation, but apparently the production of the new Nicholas Cage film "Thai Coup" has been temporarily disrupted.
I can't imagine what producers were thinking when they decided Cage was the man to bring Herman Melville's classic novel to life on the screen. In his first film not set in a modern era, be prepared for Cage to play Tommo the 19th-century self-made castaway as "quirky," much like he plays all other characters. Perhaps he'll decide the best way to give voice to a deserter of a 1840's whaling ship is to have him speak like Bugs Bunny throughout the film.
As for the novel itself, "Thai Coup" was orignally presented to the public as biographical, but like Alex Haley's "Roots" and James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces," it has wended its way over to the fiction shelves as it became apparent it was only loosely based on fact. It remains a high point of the American Romantic movement, fascinating and intelligent, with a lush and descriptive narrative.
Getting a royal endorsement, is he? Better late than never, I suppose. All over the news is that boy. My, my, an astronomer as rock star. And why not? The telescope is just as good a phallic symbol as the guitar. (Yes, yes, I know he predates the telescope, but astronomers and eroticism are inexorably linked in any case.) But be honest with yourself: what do you really remember Thai Coup for -- his modified heliocentric solar system or the fact that he wore a copper nose? I won't lie; I remember him for the nose. And I bet over the centuries Johannes Kepler has kicked himself into a powder over not having any physical oddity making him worth remembering by the masses.
Why are protesters gathering to denounce it? It's a wonderful and ancient Chinese form of exercise. While they're gathered, they should try practicing it instead of protesting it. They'd feel a lot better.
A story on death's best friend, taxes:
A liberal church that has been threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status over an anti-war sermon delivered just days before the 2004 presidential election said Thursday it will fight an IRS order to turn over documents on the matter.
They'll fight it with much indignation, outrage, etc. IRS spokesman Terry Lemons has answered them with a gentle reminder that there is no constitutional right to be exempt from federal taxation.
This is what drew the IRS's attention:
The dispute at the 3,500-member Episcopal church centers on a sermon titled "If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush," delivered by a guest pastor. Though he did not endorse a candidate, he said Jesus would condemn the Iraq war and Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war.
So far the only church to be stripped of its tax exemption is one in Binghampton, New York that ran full-page newspaper ads against Clinton in the 1992 election.
Fun things to help you forget, even if it's ever so briefly, that you're going to die some day:
*Dark movies in a portrait: With Cheese has found an interesting game.
*In e-mail, Carl in Atlanta has invited all of you to a tea partay. Remember to RSVP.
Kinky Friedman, underdog candidate, sets aside the wisecracks in his latest ad -- and gives the camera time to his rescued dogs. They seem more than happy to help daddy accentuate the positive. Behind his ads is a fellow who specializes in dark horse candidates and has helped get quite a few of them elected; most recently, Ned Lamont.
Also, in a move that Friedman rightly calls gamesmanship, his rivals have found a joke Kinky used his comedy act 26 years ago, and have asked that he apologize for it. He's refused.
UPDATE:
Rightwingsparkle gives a little videoblog introduction to Kinky.
***
Previous postings:
Kinky Friedman Barbecues Sacred Cows
Kinky Adds Zest
Quote Of The Day
Open Carry Kinky
Action Figure Sold Separately
Kinky And Friends
Rutabagas?
If only this could have been prevented:
[Luz Maria Franco-Fierros's] battered, disfigured body was discovered early Monday along a subdivision road north of Castle Rock, about 20 miles south of Denver. Investigators say Franco-Fierros had been dragged behind a vehicle for more than a mile, leaving a bloody trail. Preliminary autopsy results said she suffered fatal head injuries and strangled as she was dragged.
Oops, it could have:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they believe [suspect Jose Luis] Rubi-Nava is an illegal immigrant from Mexico.Denver police confirmed Thursday they arrested Rubi-Nava on a traffic charge in April but released him.
Police spokeswoman Virginia Quinones said the arresting officer suspected Rubi-Nava's identification may have been forged, but she said the department was not responsible for verifying a suspect's immigration status, and a new Colorado law directing police to cooperate with federal immigration officers was not yet in force.
Suspicious immigration status - Have a nice day. Suspected forged document - Have a nice day.
Glad someone let the police know they're supposed to enforce the law.
These fellows don't seem to have any actual knowledge of how the papacy works. I guess that would make them ignorant. Perhaps they should demand to speak to the Pope's manager:
About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam.
Benedict "should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths" and "making insulting remarks" against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention.
Now comes the Westophobia and the threats. In a customer service setting, I believe this is the part when the irate person threatens to sue the whole company:
The "pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). ... If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences," it said.
The ellipsis after the word "Prophet" tells me that AP cut the "pbuh." Some might consider that an insult, AP.
The gathering this statement arose at featured more shit-stirrers than a Roto-Rooter convention in Vegas:
The meeting was organized by the radical Islamic group Jamaat al-Dawat, which runs schools, colleges and medical clinics. In April, Washington put the group on a list of terrorist organizations for its alleged links with militants fighting in the Indian part of Kashmir
I've read Pakistan has one of the youngest populations in the world. No doubt many young boys will be receiving fine educations at Jamaat al-Dawat-run madrassas.
The good news:
Ethiopian scientists unveiled on Wednesday a 3.3 million-year-old fossil of a girl, which they believe is the most complete skeleton ever found.The fossil including an entire skull, torso, shoulder blade and various limbs was discovered at Dikaka, some 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa near the Awash river in the Rift Valley.
"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference.
The bad news:
Under Sharia law, she's only worth half a hominid.
What a great activity for a kid's club!
[Wynclif] Jean was also seen at the new Verizon Wireless store in North Miami on Saturday, where he gave a mini freestyle performance along with rap acts from kids belonging to Miami Police Department's Do the Right Thing program. The event featured a ``Shake It Like Shakira'' contest, in which those best able to do just that won tickets to Saturday's AAA show.
In addition to the tickets, the grand prize winner was awarded some really nice crotch jewelry.
Problem:
The fashion week controversy wherein Spain has refused to allow models with a body mass index of less than 18 to appear in their show, and Italy is contemplating following suit, has prompted a response from clothing designer Giorgio Armani:
Guest editing Britain's Independent newspaper, Armani conceded that he had always used models "on the slender side", adding: "This was because the clothes I design and the sort of fabrics I use need to hang correctly on the body".
The paper notes:
Armani is holding his first show in the British capital Thursday night as part of London Fashion Week and was editing the paper to raise awareness of "Product Red", an initiative to raise money to fight AIDS in Africa with corporate partners including Gap and American Express.
Solution:
Since in Africa AIDS is known as "Slim" for its wasting effects, and Mr. Armani wants to help AIDS sufferers in Africa, why not employ them as his runway models? He would be helping them by giving them a good job, plus on their bodies his clothes would be sure to hang correctly. Bonus: if anyone criticizes him for having too-skinny models, he could retort "They have AIDS, people!" It's a win-win-win situation
Here's an excellent column by James Lileks. It's witty and true, and you'll not be sorry if you give it a read.
I'll just quote the part where he touches on what's fair game:
At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical towards large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion -- unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood -- and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots. (Boo, hiss!) When those theo-neos get tough on radical Islam, it's just a convenient mask for their dislike of the Scary Non-Christian Dusky Hordes. Besides, what about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Huh? OK, then.
It's enjoyable reading from start to finish.
Female Muslim pilgrams should have some space to pray in at the Ka'ba:
“WOMEN should have the right to pray in the area surrounding the Ka’ba,” said Sheikh Ahmed Al-Banany.“No one can ban women to have their equal rights in the Holy Mosques since Allah has given every one equal right in His House,” said Suhaila Zain Al-Abedeen, a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.
How's it set up now?
Statistics show that the mataf area around the Ka’ba is 18,000 square meters. It can accommodate around 36,000 pilgrims. At present 96.5% of the area is allocated to men, only 3.5% of the total area is for women.“Every pilgrim should have half meter to pray but what is really happening is that each male pilgrim occupies around 35.6 centimeters while female pilgrims occupy 17.5 centimeters,” said Zain Al- Abedeen.
Prayer-space hogs!
This equal-space thing is a great idea, but let's not get carried away:
“What we advise is to allocate an area for women around the Ka’ba circuit during the year and it can be removed in the rush seasons such as Haj and Ramadan.”
I guess the off-season's better than the absolute zilch that Saudi Arabia is currently contemplating giving them.
Regarding the litigation between Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries and the Contra Costa library, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to uphold the library's ban on religious speech in its meeting rooms:
I thought it was fairly standard among library systems to allow no group to use a meeting room more than six times a year. That prevents "clubhouse" use (and prevents the library's becoming a free-speech zone). If the group was seeking to hold ongoing services on the premises, then the conflict arose from Contra Costa's library's inadequate and overly lax meeting room policy: they appear to have allowed open and free access for all speech but religious. Other ways for the library to stay out of the courtroom is to forbid any profit (taking up a collection) and to charge meeting room fees for non-sponsored events.
Perhaps with some reframing, the Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries could have obtained actual library sponsorship itself, like CAIR (.pdf) did. Then the library would have promoted their meetings with flyers and posters.
The conflict did land in court and a decision was rendered which surprises me. I can't say I understand their thinking.
As reported in The Mercury-News:
Government libraries can block religious groups from worshipping in public meeting rooms, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.The decision overturns a lower court order allowing a Christian group to pray in a Contra Costa County library.
The Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries, which initially was rejected from holding prayer services at the county's Antioch branch, had won a court order allowing them to pray in meeting rooms open to other groups. A federal judge said it had a First Amendment right of religion to use the public's facilities.
But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling Wednesday in a 2-1 decision.
"Prohibiting Faith Center's religious worship services from the Antioch meeting room is a permissible exclusion of a category of speech," Judge Richard Paez ruled.
In dissent, Judge Richard Tallman said the county went too far.
"Rather than adopting a policy of neutrality and placing reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on every group that uses the library meeting rooms, the county has gone to great lengths to exclude a non-disruptive community group based on the views it wishes to express," Tallman wrote.
I would say that this is the loony 9th Circuit, but since the Kelo case in the Supreme Court, it all seems off-track to me.
In light of the Contra Costa decision, it's interesting to read the Anti-Defamation League's take .pdf) on speech in meeting rooms in public libraries. It now reads like an old textbook from the 50's:
A library cannot decide whom to allow to use its meeting rooms and facilities on the basis of the content of the user’s speech. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of freedom of speech to all Americans, even groups whose opinions are reprehensible. To place an outright ban on the speech of certain groups would be unconstitutional and contrary to a fundamental tenet of American democracy.
It goes on like that. Very quaint and sweet.
Login/pswd=thelover@gmail.com/thelover.
(Robert Loblaw, Eugene Volokh, and Jordan Lorence also weigh in.)
Hang up and Flee: Does talking on a cell phone negatively effect your ability to elude the police during a chase?
Even with her car being shot at and police chasing her, Katie Lee Vest still couldn't bring herself to hang up her cell phone.While chatting away in her big, white blue-roofed Cadillac, police say the 24-year-old woman — who claimed she was pregnant — turned a suburban Lantana neighborhood into a stunt-driving course Tuesday while fleeing from a Lantana motorcycle cop after an attempted traffic stop. She drove off the street, between homes and into a fenced-in residential back yard in the Sea Pines neighborhood.
Seemingly trapped, with the officer yelling for her to stop, police say she quickly reversed, nearly striking him. Officer Joel Shackelford's Harley-Davidson fell on him, but he managed to fire a single shot, hoping to strike the car's tire, said Lantana police Capt. Andy Rundle.
Other officers picked up her trail and finally knocked her car off the road, ending the 20-minute chase. She was still on the phone when captured. Quipped Lantana police Capt. Andy Rundle, "Hopefully she was talking to her attorney, because she's gonna need one."
It ain't gone if you can get it:
Mark Giorgio figured a 50-foot plunge was worth $20. Giorgio, 47, was counting his money and walking across the U.S. 41 bridge over the Manatee River Monday when a $20 bill blew out of his hand and flew over the rail.He followed. And plummeted 50 feet into the river. Then he swam about 100 yards to fish the bill from the water.
"I got my money back, hell yeah," Giorgio told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "Twenty bucks is a lot of money when you're broke."
He was fished from the water by a passing Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer.
Giorgio, who said he was already suffering from a broken collarbone, refused treatment for cuts and scrapes he suffered in the fall.
With a broken collarbone to begin with.
All young guys think they have an "S" on their chest.
(Via Baron in e-mail.)
Velasco Elementary School principal Sam Williams has a bad idea come back and bite him in the ass.
He wasn't sorry when he approved the idea, but he's quite sorry now.
Though running for political office, it doesn't appear that Kinky Friedman has any interest in toning down his persona to be politically correct:
Kinky Friedman has thrived on brash commentary, outlandish attire and crude humor. But some critics say the independent candidate for governor has gone too far with his comments about African-Americans.Friedman, in a video clip that some of his opponents began circulating Tuesday, calls Negro a "charming word" and uses it in an explanation of what he would do to sexual predators if he is elected in November.
"Throw them in prison and throw away the key and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself," Friedman said in the TV interview, which CNBC broadcast late last year. The comments hardly made a splash at the time, but the video, posted on www.youtube.com, is sparking fresh criticism.
...
Friedman offered no apologies then or now, saying he is generating controversy only because he is doing something so rare in politics today: telling it like it is."Anybody who feels that anything is offensive about this should definitely vote for one of the other three candidates," Friedman said in an interview Tuesday. "If I've got to lie to people, sweep the truth under the rug and worry about offending people, I'm not going to be very effective."
The video's from last year, but now that he's tied for second in the governor's race, people are doing some rediscovering.
(Star-Telegram login/pswd=bobbobcat@earthling.net/n0spam.)
UPDATE:
Editor & Publisher thinks there's a bit of organizing behind this fresh look at Kinky's old vid.
One of the extras of living near a teaching hospital is getting to be the involuntary audience for body part pranks played by medical students. Skulls wind up at bus stops, and limbs end up in the employee refrigerators next to the cheese sandwiches.
I once found half a leg while getting a soda. The only eyebrows it raised were mine; everyone else was used to it:
A doctor has pleaded not guilty to stealing a hand from a New Jersey medical school cadaver and giving it to an exotic dancer, authorities said.
Ahmed Rashed, a 2005 graduate of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, was charged Monday after voluntarily returning from Los Angeles, California, where he is in a residency program, said his lawyer, Hassen Abdellah.Rashed, 26, is free on $1,000 bail.
The dancer, Linda Kay, kept the hand in a jar of formaldehyde in her bedroom. Friends have said she called the hand "Freddy."
...
The charge against Rashed carries up to 10 years in prison.
I'm surprised they're giving him such a hard time about it. Van Gogh and his prostitute, this guy and his stripper...it's all about making that grand gesture.
Something pretty's being played here.
Wail on, Skydog!
The line forms here.
Also: Liberal Larry has come up with a sure-fire way for the Pope to show his sincere repentance.
Canadian tourists often are befuddled by our spaghetti-like piles of overpasses. Thank goodness this pair, wanting to check out the clubbing in South Beach, didn't end up in Overtown or Liberty City:
Lounging near baby pools in an air-conditioned building at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution on Monday, two arctic hooded seals that beached themselves during the weekend were recovering and possibly heading home.Meanwhile, marine scientists were trying to figure out how the seals, which normally live off the coast of Newfoundland and Greenland, ended up stranding themselves about 3,500 miles away at the St. Lucie Inlet State Park Preserve in Hobe Sound on Saturday and in Palm Beach County on Sunday.
"Why are they in Florida? That's the question," said Greg Bossart, Harbor Branch's director of marine mammal research and conservation.
The cute stub-nosed duo, named Sandy and Patches, are currently being treated for having way too much fun in the sun. Rescuers are trying to line up a jet to fly them home.
There's also a coup in Thailand, election riots in Hungary, and an Islamic religious leader in Jakarta saying, "If the rage continues, perhaps what the pope said is true," but these little wayward seals are so adorable.
From the Miami Herald:
****
"A T-shirt decorated with the words ''Crack Whore' costs $16.95 on the Internet.Maggie Williams considers this, her head tilted like a confused terrier.
'Who would buy that?' she asks in a raspy voice. `That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.'
Maggie states this with authority. She has spent nearly half her 52 years selling sex acts to earn cash for crack, five bucks at a time."
Famous in these parts due to her longevity, Maggie even has a video-interview out (NSFW). She's pretty funny in it too, in a crack-whorish sort of way.
Unfortunately, the first 30 seconds of the video are of the punks who interviewed her: after that, it's Maggie's show.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
In a burst of industriousness as a child, I decided to paint the cement floor of an outside utility room where I used to sneak a smoke. Almost finished, I turned and looked at the doorway. There was a freshly-painted floor between me and it. Soon after, there was a fresh set of sneaker prints going across it.
Dorkafork's been noticing quite a few people painting themselves into a corner lately with their views on Islam.
(Via INDC Journal.)
UPDATE:
Pwyll has more thoughts on this.
Final words from a fine lady:
An elderly nun shot four times at the Somali hospital where she worked forgave her killers as she lay dying, colleagues said Monday in the wake of a murder that has focused attention on Islamic radicalism in the Horn of Africa country.
Sister Leonella, 65, muttered the words 'I forgive, I forgive' in Italian after being targeted by gunmen in an apparent execution-style killing, father Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun's memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday.
Fitting words from a lady who'd spent her life doing good.
(Via FR.)
***
Previous posting:
Penguin Season Opens Early In Somalia
Many interesting tales to be found here, including that of Benjamin Franklin's hurtful son:
The other son, William (1731-1813), was with Franklin in 1752 when he flew the famous kite. William was the last royal governor of New Jersey before the Revolution; when the war broke out, he sided with the British. He was tried as a traitor and imprisoned until 1782, when he was deported to England, where he remained for the rest of his life. But in 1784, after receiving overtures toward reconciliation from his Tory son, Franklin wrote to him. "Nothing has ever hurt me so much," he confessed, "as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake ... we will endeavor, as you propose, mutually to forget what has happened."
The children of Karl Marx and Theodor Herzl famously set new standards for sad and miserable famous lives.
Time to take grandma's car keys away:
Two elderly women are recovering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion after locking themselves in a hot car in Daytona Beach.Police say their battery apparently died, the automatic locks failed, and they didn't know they could unlock the doors manually.
The women were trapped for nearly two hours before a passerby spotted their plea for help, which they wrote on the back of a tissue box.Rescue workers smashed a window to get the ladies out.
When I'm old, I'll probably get killed while I'm crawling along 200 miles below the speed limit in my flying car, the top of my head barely poking over the control panel, left turn signal on since the Mid-West, big bra on the front to keep the crushed nanobots out the grill -- and I'm hit from behind by a spacecraft because I'm driving in the space-shuttle-only lane.
As I recall, the AP interviews with Tojo and Hitler were outstanding, and those ride-along photos snapped from atop SS Major Joachim Peiper's tank during the Battle of the Bulge all deserved Pulitzers:
That [Bilal] Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn't make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor."Journalists have always had relationships with people that others might find unsavory," she said. "We're not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides."
Hussein must have gotten a promotion while in jail. The local stringer photographer is now a journalist in good standing with a major cooperative of American newspapers and broadcast stations.
Her identity still unreleased, she was said to be one the longest-serving foreign members of the Catholic Church in Somalia:
An Italian nun was shot dead at a hospital by Somali gunmen Sunday, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence.The nun, who was not immediately identified, was shot in the back at S.O.S. Hospital in northern Mogadishu by two gunmen, said Mohamed Yusuf, a doctor at the facility, which serves mothers and children. The nun's bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed, doctors said.
After venting on Anglicans and Greek Orthodox, they finally managed to find themselves a real live Catholic to ice: an elderly nun. Now that took some big men.
I always thought the topic of feral children was interesting, but I never knew it could also be hilarious. Real cases are extremely rare. To me there's a difference between the documented abuse of keeping a child caged and isolated at home, and claiming that a child has been "raised" by animals. I'm less inclined to believe the latter. Have a look at the video and see what you think of the dog-raised Oxana Malaya.
31 years after skipping bail, 87-year-old Maria Otero is sentenced to 31 years in prison for killing a 13-year-old boy for swimming in her apartment building's pool. Age has not mellowed Maria, and according to her testimony, she's still fairly certain the kid needed a bullet in the head:
In court, Otero tried to explain what happened that day in 1975 when she caught a group of boys swimming in her pool. She owned the Edgewater apartment building and lived on the fifth floor. She had run them off before but they came back. She was worried about her property insurance and, wanting to scare them, pulled out her gun.''It was a way to get the boys to leave,'' she said Friday. ``The kids were going to drown or get hurt there.''
She insisted that she slipped on her balcony and the gun accidentally went off.
''I want the parents to understand that I am not a criminal, and I didn't do anything,'' she said. ``There are accidents every day. Why couldn't mine be an accident?''
At the 1976 trial, two of Johnnie's friends testified Otero aimed and fired at them as they were running away. Johnnie was already across the street from the apartment building when he was hit in the back of the head.
With Johnnie's parents sitting in the courtroom, Otero said she understood their suffering because her own son had died. But her sympathy rang hollow when the prosecutor questioned her, noting her son had died of cirrhosis of the liver as an adult.
''Your son wasn't 13 when he was killed. As a matter of fact, he wasn't killed, was he?'' Aponte-Frank said.
''No, because he wasn't swimming in a pool where he shouldn't have,'' Otero snapped, causing several in the courtroom, including the Miami detective who arrested her, Andy Arostegui, to gasp audibly.
(If needed, login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
News agencies are breathlessly reporting that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the sole supplier of coral snake antivenin, is ceasing production, leaving the world with the gnawing problem of how to save bite victims without it. Regarding paralyzed production and fellow-corporations' declining to produce the expensive and seldom-used antivenin, a Wyeth spokesman said, "It's about the bottom line and fear of shareholders. You could call these CEOs yellow, but when a product's always in the red, you've got to pull the plug."
Patricia Facchini, the latest coral snake bite victim saved by the antivenim, understands paralysis, as she was paralyzed by indecision upon seeing the fangless serpent hanging from her wrist, allowing it to chew her for a good two minutes before finally flinging it off.
The highly-venomous snake is famed in Florida folklore for only killing the inebriated.
How many people will be killed from Islamists becoming violent at the suggestion that they're violent? Place your bets.
I'll take your wagers for number of Christian churches attacked worldwide. Early activity suggests you choose a high figure. Difficulty level: in many Islamic countries there will be no church attacks at all, in keeping with the forbidding of the building of churches.
And remember: help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.
UPDATE:
First person killed?
According to the website Islam Memo, one Christian was killed in Baghdad after the Pope's speech two days ago. The speech created a wave of anger throughout the Islamic world, including Iraq. A poster has been placed in many Baghdad mosques for the previously unknown group, "Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi," (Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions). This group threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize in three days in front of the whole world to Mohammed.
I take it these Boy Scouts aren't the kind that help little old ladies cross the street.
Their victim probably wasn't even Catholic.
More over at Michelle Malkin's.
(Via FR.)
Blogger Cathy secretly filmed small children, some as young as two, stomping grapes to provide their parents with alcohol. Slogging 'round and 'round in endless circles they went, like tiny bathing-suit-clad oxen tied to a grinding stone.
Was she in some third-world country? No, it happened right here in our own land.
What a great kid. Regaining his health and mobility is going to be a very long battle:
Doing what came naturally to him almost cost Joseph Edward Michael "Mikey" Evans his life.The 13-year-old seventh-grader at West Hernando Middle School was hiding behind a palmetto bush in Royal Highlands with his friend, 10-year-old Dustin Wright, eluding two boys who were chasing them.
Mikey felt a "sting" on his right ankle, just above his sneaker. He knew it was snake.
Mikey hoisted Dustin onto his back so the younger boy wouldn't be bitten. He carried his friend 60 to 70 feet out of the woods, said Mikey's dad, Joe Evans, before coming to a house and asking the residents there to call 911.
By the time Joe Evans and his wife, Lorrie, arrived at the scene, at about 8:30 p.m. July 27, paramedics had also arrived and Mikey was already hallucinating, convulsing and acting combative.
The exertion from carrying his friend pumped the venom more quickly through his body.
That's with EMT showing up within minutes.
It was difficult to save his life, much less his leg. Local fundraisers are being held to help pay for his care. I'll find out if there's a way for people outside the area to contribute.
UPDATE:
I have his mailing address. If you'd like to send the family a card and/or donation, leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I'll send you the information.
I'd do matching funds, but you bastards would bankrupt me with your vicious generosity.
Angry, angry, angry. So very angry with Pope Mussolini-Hitler:
[...Anger still swept across the Muslim world, with Pakistan's parliament unanimously adopting a resolution condemning the pope for making what it called "derogatory" comments about Islam, and seeking an apology from him."Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
Frontal lobes are over-rated.
(Via With Cheese.)
Nice try, but Andrew Sullivan's too smart to fall for this. The story's dateline of Wisconsin, however, set him to wondering whether windigos are hairy and buff:
Two teenage boys amassed a cache of guns, ammunition, bombs and other weapons at their homes and apparently planned to use them to attack their high school, authorities said Thursday.The boys, both 17, were arrested Thursday morning at East High School, but their identities were not released pending possible charges, authorities said.
Police Chief Craig Van Schyndle said officers who found the materials also found suicide notes.
"From statements that we heard it gave us great concern that, yes, it was in the very near future something was going to take place," he said.
Way to scare the Green Baysian voters, Rove.
There's a twist in the story of the nurse who strangled a hammer-wielding intruder. She might have taken out a hit man sent to kill her:
The estranged husband of a nurse who recently strangled an intruder in her southeast Portland home has been arrested for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, authorities said Thursday.Michael J. Kuhnhausen was arrested early Thursday morning, according to police, who declined to comment on whether his arrest is related to the burglary.
It is, or they would have said it wasn't. The husband could have at least warned the guy.
(Via Fark.)
UPDATE:
The "burglar" was indeed a hit man sent by the husband. This was determined from information in the day planner the well-organized hit man carried with him to the scene.
(Via Owen in comments.)
Dark tunnels don't scare lone Sago mine survivor Randal McCloy -- he's going to be a father again! Congrats to the McCloy family.
A mere glance at a photo can at times bestir a profound and vivid nostalgia.
Today I gazed upon a picture of members of the International Solidarity Movement, a peace organization that places the noblest of young Westerners in the war-torn West Bank and Gaza Strip as human shields to protect the helpless Palestinian people from Zionist depredation. My eyes, parched for all that is good, drank in the photograph of their sharing a moment of levity with the al Aksa Martyrs Brigage as an impoverished spirit would a goblet full of the milk of human kindness. How I rejoiced in knowing that fellow-member and martyr-Queen Rachel Corrie was on high gazing down upon their good works with her bright and shining face, crowned in her diadem made from beams of moonlight, twinkles of stars, and the hopes and dreams of all peace-loving people everywhere.
As this image touched my heart, my soul, my senses, I was swept away in a Proustian revery of the peaceniks of my childhood, and could smell the delicate fragrance of the flowers they placed in the barrels of the National Guard's guns.
(Via Tim Blair.)
Is there no end to the types of fraud Nigerians will perpetrate on the Internet? Their latest victim is Dunedin resident Kathleen Hall, who was sent fraudulent checks for Internet sex acts she performed in good faith. Her victimization's been compounded by an unthinking and unfeeling provincial-minded police department who, in an act of outrageousness, arrested her for trying to cash the bad checks. She's due for a hefty bit of compensation when she sues them for false arrest -- and that check better not bounce!
There's no use going after the scammers. Even if the police department pinned a badge on Stretch Armstrong, the Nigerians would be beyond the long arm of the law. Besides, quite frankly, they've been punished enough.
A change in policy for the Montreal police lead to a quick ending of rampage yesterday. Before 1989, they'd relied on the SWAT team to go in after unknown shooters. Then Marc Lepine demonstrated what one killer can do if given enough time. Yesterday, gunman Kimveer Gill only got three minutes to do his thing before being taken out. The first there, first in policy saved a lot of lives. Kudos to the first responders for their bravery and for a job well done, and thanks to all the guys who'd run to the sound of gunfire while I'm fleeing as fast as I can.
Poor little death-loving Goth. I'm waiting for a handicapped rampage or a nerd massacre, because being bullied has been widely established as being a root cause for mass murder.
UPDATE:
Is this the wrong time to link this?
A Spiegel reporter tells an Islamic informational wienermobile to hold its horses:
It's as if parts of reality had been overlooked in the Islamobile. There are no struggles, no problems, no September 11, 2001 attacks in the Islamobile. The discord and conflict of recent years never make an appearance.But Kuri, the educator, stands by the door, waiting for people to educate. "We've almost forgotten about September 11," he says. "We have to look forward. We're hopeful." But the Islamobile isn't an education tool -- it's an advertising bus, on a tour through Germany.
(Via FR.)
Menu update: As we move from the bologna sandwich days of the general primary on to the main race itself, the Republicans have come down decisively for banana as their official Florida Governor's Race Sandwich. This new partisan sandwich is made with one not-yet-ripe banana, Wonder bread, and Hellmann's mayonnaise -- because Miracle Whip would add too darn much zest and zip.
I would have congratulated Republican candidate-for-governor Charlie Crist on his wise decision of choosing a running mate from my own Lee County had he not selected a legislative human cipher like Jeff Kottkamp. "Boys," Charlie Crist said, "I need mediocrity made flesh and I need him fast."
More from the smoke-filled back lunchroom tomorrow, when the Democratic candidate makes an announcement of his own.
What's new in the Miami courts? A class-action lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of child slaves:
Rulers of the United Arab Emirates were accused in a lawsuit of enslaving tens of thousands of boys over three decades and forcing them to work as jockeys in the popular sport of camel racing.The lawsuit was filed last week by unnamed parents of boys suspected of being abducted, sold and enslaved. They claim more than 30,000 boys could have been victimized and seek class-action status.
The lawsuit alleges Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, the deputy ruler, were the most active perpetrators.
The lawsuit was filed in Miami because the members of the royal family maintain hundreds of horses at farms in Ocala. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
If you haven't watched the Bernard Goldberg report on this, the video is here.
If you'd like to watch the debate between the "Loose Change" folks and the Popular Mechanics guys, it's here.
I tuned out after ten minutes when the LC researcher called the PM guys liars. A presentation of facts will never change a fanatic's mind.
(Via FR.)
From the St. Pete Times, an inspiring story of a triple-amputee and his unbreakable spirit:
Michael Wiley has broken traffic laws across Pasco County for the past 22 years, even though he has no arms. Now he faces a charge of domestic battery.Wiley was once convicted of kicking a state trooper with his good leg. This time, he is accused of striking his wife with his head.
As his mother once said, "He's proving to the world he's as good as ever."
Hopefully they'll be able to get Sean Astin for the movie.
Americans may be divided on other issues, but there's one thing we all agree on:
An unruly passenger who reportedly tried to yank open a cabin door in an airliner en route to Washington was jumped last night by fellow passengers who helped federal air marshals subdue him.
...
The man "was pulling on the rear-door release handle," said the passenger, Stephen Lockwood of Northern Virginia.A flight attendant ordered the man to stop, but he continued to pull on the handle.
Two or three passengers standing nearby intervened, Lockwood said he was told by others onboard.
"They jumped him," Lockwood said. "He resisted," and a vigorous scuffle ensued.
"The guy took quite a beating," Lockwood said.
Bet he did.
(Via Lucianne.)
Duane, all slicked up and feeling frisky at a show in his hometown of Daytona.
Wail on, Skydog!
But she does handle herself well in an emergency:
A father on a bike ride with his 10-year-old daughter decided to help her get over a fear of heights by having her jump off a bridge, police said on Tuesday.The daughter, who was not identified, was not injured by the 25-foot jump from the Lantana bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway around 7:45 p.m. on Monday.
But Dad -- Troy Stewart, 31 -- broke a leg and was taken to JFK Hospital for treatment.
Police said dad and daughter were out riding their bicycles when the father asked if she wanted to get over her fear of heights. She said yes and they pedaled onto the bridge to a spot about 50 feet from shore. Then they jumped off the span from about 25 feet above the water's surface.
It was not immediately clear how father and daughter made it back to shore or how police and rescue workers were summoned, but the child rode back to her home on the 200 block of Ocean Avenue and told her mom what happened.
The investigation continues.
25 feet isn't all that high. It's rather freakish that he broke his leg.
"The investigation continues" line is ominous, and I imagine the Department of Children and Families will want to have a word with him.
All my dangerous lessons as a child were pretty much self-taught, sometimes repeatedly to get the full learning experience.
This was tried once before:
Attorneys for a man accused of fraud say he was charged at the behest of presidential adviser Karl Rove in retaliation for a flood of spam e-mails sent to a campaign Web site. A federal prosecutor says the claim is "absurd."Assistant U.S. Attorney David M. Siegal urged U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Monday to reject arguments that Rove caused the criminal investigation that led to charges against Robert McAllister.
Siegal said lawyers for McAllister made the "patently absurd argument that the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District is a shill for Karl Rove and has arrested and indicted their client in some sort of vindictive retaliation."
McAllister's lawyer Gerald L. Shargel said Monday he plans to try to call Rove as a witness, if the court allows it.
UPDATE:
Sean Penn names names. If I were a crazed moonbat I'd have gone with "Beezleshrub" though.
Al Gore, not content with trying to insert himself into this country's politics, is over in Australia getting into theirs. It earned him a smacking for trying to tell them their business:
"There are three places I do not go for advice on climate change," fumed Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, dismissing the film in which Gore singles out Australia as trailing the rest of the world on climate change."One of them is to unsuccessful candidates for the US presidency who cannot even convince their own people that they are right. The second place is the movie," he said, adding that the third was the Australian opposition.
Gore had Sunday urged Prime Minister John Howard to lead Australia into the battle against climate change.
In the film, Gore criticised Australia and the United States as the only countries not to sign the
Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.Howard retorted that he did not take policy advice from films and said he would not meet Gore.
Stanley Goldberg, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division, would share Howard's concern about junk science becoming policy:
"These people keep assuming, oh, warmer sea surface temperatures, more hurricanes. But it's much more complex than that," he said. "It's frustrating because some people are basing political decisions on this."
Which might be why Al is liking this new High Druid gig: it's influence minus the voting booth.
(Via Lucianne.)
Everybody Wang Chung tonight:
Islamic militants who closed down a Somali radio station have allowed it back on the air so long as it does not play music or love songs, the station's director said Monday.Radio Jowhar can only broadcast news bulletins and readings from the Quran and other Islamic lectures, according to Said Hagaa Ahmed, director of Jowhar's only radio station.
...
Islamists in the capital have banned movie viewing, they have publicly lashed drug users, and they have broken up a wedding celebration because a band was playing and women and men were socializing together.
The band's just getting warmed up.
Michelle Malkin has great coverage of this five-year anniversary of 9-11 for those who want something comprehensive.
I'll spend part of this day reading the amazing tales of those who survived, and watching the beautiful tribute to the search and rescue dogs who climbed the rubble.
I'll go with what was true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, and worthy of praise about that day.
Mr. Cracker is home today. That's much better than five years ago when I was trying to get a call through to him in the Ukraine.
I didn't have to be to work until noon that day, and turned on the TV for the dog on my way out. That's when the worst day of my life started.
Feel free to share your stories and links.
UPDATE:
My favorite Onion story from 9-11 --it was a perfect reflection of my state of mind. And here's the first thing that made me laugh:
JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS—The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na'ar, Islam's Hell."I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"
**This post is sticky. For yesterday's posts, scroll down.**
"Did you hear about Cantor Fitzgerald?"
In the days after 9-11, how many times that question was whispered. All lost.
One of those lost was Michael P. O'Brien.
The day before was a good day for the O'Briens. An 18th wedding anniversary for Michael and his wife Rachel. The next morning at work, he called her to say the building had been hit, and they were trying to evacuate.
He was a meticulous man, good at his job. But what he's remembered for is his sense of humor and how much he enjoyed being with his family. He took time to create wonderful memories for his children.
"The look in his eyes when he saw his children summed up everything," said his sister Bridget. "He raised the bar on fatherhood."
From Newsday:
In June, just months before he was lost in the attack on the World Trade Center, Michael O'Brien took a trip to Las Vegas. Along with two other couples, O'Brien and his wife, Rachel, wanted to renew their wedding vows. Elvis, or at least an imitator of him, they decided, would officiate."He was always good at making me laugh," his wife said. "Even if we were fighting."
O'Brien, of Cedar Knoll, N.J., had been at Cantor Fitzgerald for one year working as a senior vice president of the municipal bond desk. From his 104th floor office in Tower One, the 42-year-old built a solid reputation in a practical career, but, at home, it was his sense of humor that was valued most.
From the moment he met her as a student at SUNY Oswego in 1978, O'Brien wooed his future wife with his practical jokes. Once during college, when she was visiting his family in upstate New York, O'Brien brought her a bottle of aspirin to cure her headache. He told her the tablets were chewable. They weren't."He was always the life of the party. He was a great guy," his wife said.
Since the time he was a young Boy Scout in New Hartford, Conn., O'Brien loved to go camping. He used to ride his bike from Utica to Long Island with a tent tied to his bicycle so he could spend two nights sleeping under the stars.
Later, as a father, he took at least two camping trips a year - one with the entire family and the other with the couple's three children, Derek, 14, Sarah, 12, and Kevin, 7. O'Brien also coached his children's soccer teams.
At his memorial service on Sept. 18, family and friends described O'Brien as honest, generous and fun-loving. More than 900 people filled the church to say goodbye to the man who always gave them a reason to smile.
For those of you who haven't seen it, have a look at an amazing living tribute to all the victims of 9-11.
Did you feel the earthquake?
A strong earthquake rumbled in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday and was felt across the southeastern United States, the U.S. Geological Service said.The quake, with a magnitude of 6.0, came from about 6.2 miles (10km) below the Gulf surface, about 250 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola, Florida.
The tremor hit at 10:56 a.m. EDT (1456 GMT) and was felt in parts of Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama. Media reports from Tampa, Florida, said residents reported feeling their buildings vibrate for up to 20 seconds.
They're tracking locations, so if you did, you can report it here.
I've felt two big quakes before, the Loma Prieta in California 1989 and the more moderate, if completely unexpected Roermond in Germany in 1992. This one didn't make it to my house.
UPDATE:
Maxed-Out Mama has the hi-larious reactions of Democratic Underground denizens. Go enjoy.
(Via Owen.)
Don't expect in-flight book-reading to make a comeback any time soon:
The FBI is investigating the case of a 21-year-old Hamtramck man with a one-way ticket to Yemen who tried to board a plane with a knife hidden in a phone book.Mohammed Ghanem, a native of Yemen, remains in jail after a Romulus judge set a $500,000 bond on Saturday. Ghanem was stopped on Thursday at Detroit Metro Airport by security officials with the Transportation Security Administration after they detected that he had a knife "artfully concealed" in a book, said airport spokesman Michael Conway.
Someone had carved out the inside of the phone book, and placed the knife inside it, said Ghanem's attorney, Nabih Ayad. "He said he didn't know where the knife came from,'' Ayad said. Ghanem was on his way to Yemen to get married, he said.
Since he tripped the well-known flare of buying a one-way ticket and tried to carry a metal weapon through a metal detector, I can only surmise that he truly didn't want to go through with that wedding.
Was Islamism's birthplace Greeley, Colorado? So it appears to be in a riveting three-part essay by author Martin Amis.
The article's long, but interesting all the way through -- just right for a Sunday read.
What a strange tale it is surrounding Major Jill Metzger:
A U.S. Air Force officer who went missing for three days in Kyrgyzstan said she felt like she was in a trance when she followed written instructions that abductors stuffed into her pocket on a package they identified as a bomb, police said Saturday.
...
Kemilbek Kiyazov, chief of the Chuysk regional police department, said, "Her first testimony was that when she split up with her group in the department store, someone put a hard object and a note saying it was an explosive in a back pocket of her jeans."In the note there were also detailed instructions about where to go and what to do. Metzger says it was as if she were in a trance and fulfilling someone else's wishes."
Kiyazov said the major reported that she was met by three men and a woman who put her into a vehicle, took her to a house and placed her in a dark room. He quoted her as saying she managed to escape after an abductor brought her food and she struck him.
Kiyazov, who said he personally talked with Metzger, told AP that her blondish hair had been dyed dark brown and her hands were stained with dye.
So what do you think? Think she might have had an attack of the crazy eyes?
Liberal Larry explains why "The Path to 9-11" docudrama is so objectionable. It really cleared up a lot of my misunderstandings on this issue, and I'm sure you'll find it illuminating as well:
Democrat leaders are furious over an upcoming ABC dramatization of the 9/11 tragedy that unfairly portrays President Clinton as too distracted by Monica Lewinsky to pursue Osama Bin Laden. It's clearly a partisan attack, intended to divide Americans at a time they should all be uniting behind Democrats. As President, Bill Clinton was perfectly capable of both defending this nation from terrorists AND ejaculating all over the hired help. That's what true leadership is all about.
Like Mr. Clinton said, "Just tell the truth."
It takes a while to manually strangle someone -- about three to five minutes. Thus we know that one Oregonian miscreant was given ample time to spare a thought or two for the choices in his past that led him to the sorry state of being throttled to death by the woman whose home he'd been attempting to burglarize. Perhaps in his last moments he regretted tossing out that membership application to the Y:
A nurse returning from work discovered an intruder armed with a hammer in her home and strangled him with her bare hands, police said.Susan Kuhnhausen, 51, ran to a neighbor's house after the confrontation Wednesday night. Police found the body of Edward Dalton Haffey, 59, a convicted felon with a long police record.
...
Haffey, about 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, had convictions including conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, robbery, drug charges and possession of burglary tools. Neighbors said Kuhnhausen's size — 5-foot-7 and 260 pounds — may have given her an advantage.
How surprised he must have been by his predicament!
Good job on Nurse Kuhnhausen's keeping her cool and maintaining a steady pressure.
(Via Lucianne.)
I'm never sharp enough to cotton onto the wheels within wheels of a conspiracy, particularly one involving the US inJustice system. I'm glad someone's on the job.
Have a spot of tea while catching up on Susan Lindauer theories.
UPDATE:
They aren't making reich-wing conspiracies like they used to:
A woman accused of helping an Iraqi spy agency under Saddam Hussein was released from prison Friday after a judge ruled the government cannot force her to be medicated for delusions of grandiosity and paranoia so she can stand trial.
Letting her escape his clutches has just cost Karl Rove some of his cachet in my estimation. He now looks a bit pudgier, and for the first time I'm noticing his eyes are set just a little too far apart.
From Wired, a fascinating article on the use of electricity to stimulate the brains of the comatose:
No one is sure exactly why electrical stimulation works, but there is strong evidence that it has undefined but profound effects on the brain. We know that electricity can rouse unconscious animals and that deep brain stimulation is widely used to treat Parkinson's disease and dystonia, a disorder in which muscles twist and contract uncontrollably. [Japanese neurosurgeon Tetsuo] Kanno and his team have also recorded that patients receiving stimulation have higher levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, as well as increased blood flow in the brain – both conditions are associated with arousal. This increased activity could well lead to nerve cells in the brain forming new connections more quickly, which a recent paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation showed can lead to minimally conscious patients reawakening.
If someone did a CAT scan of American coma research, they wouldn't find much activity. A "fragile consensus" has been established and it doesn't involve trying to wake anybody up.
You'll have to look overseas for astounding discoveries being made in this field.
In a high-class neighborhood in Bombay, rotting corpses lie waiting to be devoured by the vultures that will never come:
For centuries, the Zoroastrian dead have been wrapped in white muslin and left at a leafy funeral ground on downtown Mumbai's Malabar Hill, where they are devoured by vultures. Only then, according to the tenets of the ancient religion, can the soul be freed.But with just a handful of the endangered birds remaining in the city, and with solar panels installed to speed up decomposition working poorly during the monsoon rains, some Zoroastrians are demanding a change.
Pictures of rotting corpses piled at the funeral grounds, secretly snapped by a mourning woman, have sparked a furor over the ancient rituals.
Just when I think I can no longer be surprised by Third World backwardness, I'm given another example of their wallowing in a morass of ignorance. Have they no rational, enlightened Indian who will, after gazing out on this pitiful and putrescent acreage of the flower of human evolution now waiting to serve as carrion, step forward and suggest the use of house vultures?
Get some vultures, clip their wings, and keep them on the premises. Initiate a captive-vulture breeding program if you have to.
Join the 21st Century, for crying out loud.
(Via Lucianne.)
Was a delicious strip of pork heaven the basis for a Vero man's losing his job...or was it an unporked administrator?
A man who worked for Sebastian River Medical Center for 33 years claims he was fired for allegedly stealing a 40-cent strip of bacon at the hospital cafeteria as retaliation for rebuffing sexual advances from a department head.In a lawsuit seeking damages against the hospital, Richard J. Wighard Sr., 58, of Grant, claims he was sexually harassed by the hospital's director of human resources, Kam Storey, and was fired after he declined to go out with her.
The sequence of events puts Wighard, Storey, and the bacon in the lunchroom together:
After Wighard turned Storey down and went through the cafeteria line, Storey claimed Wighard "intentionally did not pay for a 40-cent strip of bacon apparently hidden by a pancake."The lawsuit said Wighard "paid the cashier the requested amount for all the food.
"The reasons articulated by Sebastian River Medical Center for terminating plaintiff were false, incredible and contradictory," the lawsuit said.
Wighard, who earned $35,000 a year, was fired July 18, 2005, after Storey filed a complaint with hospital administrators accusing Wighard of theft.
What is Storey's story? Why was she so hypervigilant as to the whereabouts of this strip of bacon? And why would she expend the time and effort to file a formal complaint on its behalf?
Lies. Secrets. Crisp accusations and salty tears. Smouldering desire hidden under a blanket of bureaucratic efficiency, like a piece of bacon under a pancake. There are more things hidden in this tale than just pork products. Much more.
Reverse-Midas Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is casting about for other things to make a hash of. Not one for loose ends, he clearly wants to tie everything up neatly into a tidy bundle of crap:
Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry failed to inform [Lt-Gen. Dan] Halutz about the decision to lift the air, sea and land blockade of Lebanon the following day. The chief of General Staff and other generals heard about the decision – which Halutz was vehemently opposed to – through the media. Olmert is now frankly telling his cabinet ministers and confidants that Halutz “was not a good military adviser to the prime minister during the Lebanon war,” although this is one of his primary functions. The prime minister is also accusing the chief of staff of having pressured him to approve the Israeli Air Force offensive at the outset of the Lebanon War persuading him that the air force could achieve a quick win. Halutz, he says did not accurately update him on the sites targeted for bombing or the progress of ground battles, leaving him short of data for the right decisions.
A country that spends its existence on a tightrope needs to be led by a Wallenda. Right now they've got a clown with a seltzer bottle.
(Via FR.)
It is to laugh:
Some 13 young people were sent to the hospital with severe medical symptoms after ingesting what they thought were marijuana cookies at a University of California at Berkeley student housing cooperative Wednesday night, UC Berkeley police Lt. Doug Wing said.Berkeley and Alameda County firefighters responded to the Cloyne Court co-op at 2600 Ridge Road at about 8 p.m., Alameda County Fire Department Battalion Chief Dan O'Hara said.
They found a group of about 30 people ages 18 to 25 suffering shortness of breath, racing heartbeats and anxiety, he said.
O'Hara said about 13 of them were sent to the hospital and two more were treated at the house after reportedly eating the marijuana-laced cookies.
According to Wing, police don't know if the cookies were laced with some other drug or if they simply ingested too much, but police are treating the situation as a criminal investigation at this time.
I exercised poor judgement in regards to culinary confection creativity one day long ago during finals week. In a reversal of the usual adage, this was a case of too much soup spoiling the cook. Luckily only the Friday exam got hosed during the ensuing mental and physical repercussions.
(Via Fark.)
There aren't too many songs that are memorable for a bass riff. I heard it thumping a thousand times through a hot dashboard in 1969. This is a nice-looking video that you fellows will appreciate, if only as an artifact of a long-forgotten era of nicely-coiffed girls in pretty dresses.
A tale to inspire Theodore Dreiser:
An Oregon woman is accused of shooting her husband after he shot her pet chicken.The Eugene-Register Guard reports Mary Kay Gray has been jailed on felony assault charges.
Her husband, Stanley Gray, is recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The chicken died at the scene.
Boy meets Girl = Tragedy. What a gritty masterpiece he'd have made of this.
I'd rather watch a sack race than our current Florida governor's race. This entire contest has been like being sent off to school with a bologna sandwich and an apple every day for months,with no end in sight. It numbs the mind and crushes the spirit.
Thank goodness Kinky Friedman's tossing me a bag of barbecue Fritos by polling so well out in Texas. He said some words today that set my heart a-flutter, and I hope a state as full of characters as Texas is will do me and Florida a favor and vote this zesty gentleman into office:
Kinky Friedman, the proudly politically incorrect entertainer running for governor, said Wednesday he wouldn't put just 1,500 National Guard troops on the Texas-Mexico border, he'd send 10,000."We've waited 153 years for the feds to help us," Friedman said. "They haven't yet. We have our own army. I want 10,000 Texas National Guard troops on the border and I want them now."
I do too, Kinky. I do too.
Aww. What a sad face.
Looks like he could use some compassion.
Another day, another Hollywood star has an on-camera meltdown. This time it's Morris the Cat who's coming unglued.
INDC Bill has the video.
Five years later, some 9-11 widows are still waking up in tears about that pot of gold:
This was the lottery that nobody wanted to win. The day New York's Twin Towers were destroyed by hijacked planes, hundreds of widows were left destitute. As the full extent of the horror of 9/11 became evident, public donations poured in.During the feverish days following the attack, Congress established a billion- dollar compensation fund, and grieving wives became overnight millionaires.
No one could have known that for many of them, the money would destroy their lives once again, attracting jealousy, resentful relatives and making them even more depressed. Some would become squandering, spendaholic widows, their payouts fuelling addictions which could not replace the husbands they had lost. Others would become embroiled in legal battles with their families, their lives eaten up by bitterness.
I'm glad the widows of the Oklahoma City bombing didn't have to face such heartache.
Duane, Dickey, and Berry at Fillmore West.
Dickey sighed with relief at being the exception to the rule that the only way out of the Allman Brothers is death.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
For those who missed it mid-week, there's some nice Duane-era audio/video to be had at SugarMegs.
In light of the British government's putting its stamp of approval on the veiling of women in its hospitals, here are some new uniform designs for females in the United Kingdom:
Laundryroom attendant
Tattoo artist
Nurse
School Teacher
Water Plant Operator
Bedding Designer
Salad Bar Stocker
Cashier
Beekeeper
Ornithologist
The Ninja uniform remains unchanged.
Lots more here, if you'd like to make your own.
Because I don't cover my face. British hospitals are ready to help me out:
Inventor Ms Jacob added: "I noticed a gap in the market and thought that it would be great if there was a gown that helped to preserve a patient’s modesty.
"Patients." Evidently British men are being counted as prospective wearers.
There's a market for clitorectomies as well. Get cracking, National Health Service.
A very inventive way of spending Labor Day weekend:
A jogger missing for four days was found stuck in a waist-deep swamp near the University of Central Florida.Eddie Meadows was forced to drink swamp water to keep hydrated during the four day ordeal. The 62-year-old left to run at lunchtime Thursday but never returned to his office at a nearby university research park, authorities said. A UCF police dog found Meadows parched and covered with bug bites on Monday.
Some people would pay good money for a real, honest-to-God adventure like that.
According to the BBC, some fellows of unidentified origin will get to enjoy one of those comfy Danish jails I've heard about:
Danish police have arrested nine suspected terrorists, the country's security intelligence service says.The suspects, believed to be all men under the age of 30, were picked up during overnight raids in Odense, Denmark's third largest city.
From USA Today, much more info and a shocker thrown in:
The arrests occurred at 2 a.m. in Vollsmose, a mostly immigrant suburb west of Odense, Denmark's third-largest city.Lars Findsen, head of the Danish Security Intelligence Service, said the suspects had acquired materials to build explosives "in connection with the preparation of a terror act," without elaborating. He did not reveal the planned target of the attack and said it was hard to evaluate how far the plot had come along.
"With the general terror situation, the Danish Security Intelligence Service didn't want to run any unnecessary risk," he said.
Findsen said the suspects — comprised of ethnic Danes and immigrants aged between 18 and 33 — would face a custody hearing later Tuesday.
Some background for the story:
Terrorists have not hit Denmark in 20 years...
That would be when Hezbollah bombed a Northwest Orient Airlines office, a nearby synagogue, and a Jewish home for the elderly in Copenhagen, Denmark.
...but the 2005 London transit bombings stirred fears that the Scandinavian country could be targeted for its participation in the Iraq and Afghanistan coalition forces.
The bombings 20 years ago were retaliation for Israeli raids on 2 south Lebanon villages.
It's always something.
"My actions prove that God takes care of idiots."
--Guy Gabaldon
A cunning, brave, and very crazy Marine has passed away after a long, good life:
Guy Gabaldon, who as an 18-year-old Marine private single-handedly persuaded more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers to surrender in the World War II battle for Saipan, has died. He was 80.Gabaldon died of a heart attack Thursday at his home in Old Town, his son, Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Hunter Gabaldon, said Monday.
Using an elementary knowledge of Japanese, bribes of cigarettes and candy, and trickery with tales of encampments surrounded by American troops, Gabaldon was able to persuade soldiers to abandon their posts and surrender. The scheme was so brazen — and so amazingly successful — it won the young Marine the Navy Cross, and fame when his story was told on television's "This Is Your Life" and the 1960 movie "Hell to Eternity.""My plan, as impossible as it seemed, was to get near a Japanese emplacement, bunker, or cave, and tell them that I had a bunch of Marines with me and we were ready to kill them if they did not surrender," he wrote in his 1990 memoir "Saipan: Suicide Island."
"I promised that they would be treated with dignity, and that we would make sure that they were taken back to Japan after the war," he wrote.
The 5-foot-4-inch Gabaldon used piecemeal Japanese he picked up from a childhood friend to earn the trust of the enemy, who believed his story of hundreds of looming troops. In a single day in July 1944, Gabaldon was said to have gotten about 800 Japanese soldiers to follow him back to the American camp.
His exploits earned him the nickname the Pied Piper of Saipan.
His knowledge of Japanese was a bit more than elementary: he was raised by a Japanese family in Los Angeles and was in Military Intelligence precisely because of his language ability.
You'll find an excellent interview with him here, where he discusses both his prisoner-collecting and his helplessness in stopping civilians from throwing their children off the cliffs.
For fellow Andre Agassi fans, I've put up a slideshow of some nice pics from my collection.
How sad and shocking. Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin has been killed by a stingray:
"CROCODILE Hunter Steve Irwin has died after a stringray barb caught him in the chest.The 44-year-old international TV star was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary when the incident happened.
Ambulance officers received a call to a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef. The Queensland Ambulance Service said the call was received about 11am and an emergency services helicopter was flown to the boat with a doctor and emergency services paramedic on board.
Irwin had a puncture wound to the left side of his chest and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Irwin leaves his wife Terri and young children Bob and and Bindi.
His wife is understood to be trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and has yet to be told of her husband's death."
He lived an exciting but very dangerous life. What a tragedy this is for his family.
UPDATE:
Here's a bit more information. This one's saying it wasn't the venom but the barb itself that did the damage. I don't see how a barb could actually do that. A perfect angle, maybe?
UPDATE II:
More on the barb. It indeed functioned as a knife.
Also, there's a nice write-up here, and a fun video of a happy team in happier times.
Hi, I'm Scoliosis Barbie! I'm not really crippled; I've just come from modeling at Houghton Mifflin. They could have employed someone with an actual affliction, but let's be honest: who would you rather look at -- me or Geri Jewell?
Anyway, Florida Cracker has caught the inclusiveness bug, so here I am to present the links:
*Liberal Larry marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by reminding all Caucasians to get their white guilt booster shot.
*WuzzaDem got his invitation; did you?
*The blame about Plame goes mainly down the drain.
*It's best to only be provocative about people who won't kill you for it.
*Hot on the trail of truth, With Cheese uncovers a fauxhistory scandal at CNN, and the Mayor of Mitchieville discovers the Missing Link!
And
*The Fat Guy says the only blog he reads anymore is Ace's. I'd be miffed if I weren't so darn busy plotting a terrible, terrible revenge.
After waiting in vain for some forceful statement of refutation from Steve Centanni regarding his forced conversion to Islam, I can only conclude he's comfortable being a coward.
This bizarre disclaimer just doesn't cut it:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint, and don't get me wrong here, I have the highest respect for Islam, and learned a lot of very good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do, because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on."
Not every man can look down the barrel of a gun and be a hero like Fabrizio Quattrocchi, but every man who's been craven in a moment of desperation can at least ask for his nuts back once it's all over. It's the difference between being a coward and being an irredeemble coward.
You have to have at least a passing knowledge of what honor is in order to know you don't have any, and Centanni seems blissfully unaware. Needless to say, he's not Southern.
He saved his hide in a tough situation -- that's fine. Heat hardens steel and melts wax, and I'll not fault him for having a ceraceous character. I probably have one too. His continuing to parade around afterwards as a eunuch, however, is something else entirely.
Wheelchair-bound after an unfortunate incident with a kite, a key, and an electrical storm, President Franklin Roosevelt was frequently heard to say, "The only thing you have to fear is lightning."
(Via Fark.)
Adnan Gulshair Muhammad El'Shukri-Jumah, an al-Qaeda bigshot and sleeper agent based in Miramar, thought we were really nice folk -- too bad about those few quirks that put us on the to-Jihad list:
In a recent interview on the front stoop of the family home, [El'Shukri-Jumah's mother] Ahmed -- a tiny woman with warm brown eyes and a big smile, dressed in a flowing black robe and head scarf -- said her son didn't like South Florida's freewheeling singles scene and the nightclubs and bikinis."But he like America so much," she said. "People, he say, [are] very nice and kind. If only they more decent, he say, this would be the best place on Earth."
I take it he never went with Mohammed Atta and the boys on any of their many trips to the strip clubs.
The production of anti-Semitic attacks in Britian is up following a successful worker replacement program. Mass lay-offs of unproductive neo-Nazi skinheads combined with both a sizable influx of highly-trained east-Asian immigrants brought in under newly-adapted hiring practices focusing on diversity and an intensive media advertising campaign, has successfully raised the level of attacks to a nearly all-time high.
According to glowing reports to be formally issued by an all-parliamentary inquiry on Thursday, this represents not merely short-term success, but a rosy outlook for the future as well, with production being certified as endemic.
New terror busts in the UK:
British police said on Saturday they had arrested 14 men in a major new anti-terrorism operation in the capital just three weeks after uncovering a suspected plot to bring down U.S.-bound airliners over the Atlantic.Officers arrested the men in raids in south and east London on Friday night and early on Saturday morning.
"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's Anti-Terrorist Branch have arrested 14 men under the Terrorism Act 2000 in a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation," London police said in a statement.
The men were arrested on suspicion of "the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism", and were being held at a central London police station, police said.
They gave no details of what the men were suspected of doing, but said the operation was not related to the arrests of more than 20 people on August 9-10 in connection with an alleged plot by a group of British Muslims to blow up U.S.-bound airliners using liquid explosives.
Nor were they related to the July 7 attacks last year when four British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people in rush-hour attacks on London transport, they said.
The police said the arrests followed many months of surveillance and investigation in a joint operation involving the police anti-terrorist branch and the security service.
Said Peter Clarke, head of Metropolitan Police anti-terror efforts, "What we've learned since 9/11 is that the threat is not something that's simply coming from overseas into the United Kingdom. What we've learned, and what we've seen all too graphically and all too murderously, is that we have a threat which is being generated here within the United Kingdom."
Here's a nice Duane-era presentation from SugarMegs (who has other ABB items) for your listening and viewing pleasure.
American textbook publishers are smacking themselves in the forehead, saying, "Why didn't we think of that!"
Classic literary characters such as Pinocchio and Tom Sawyer have been converted to Islam as part of a controversial move for the Turkish school curriculum.The move by Islamic publishing houses to insert references to the Islamic faith throughout literary classics provided to schools throughout Turkey, which is a secular state, has drawn strong opposition from the country's leaders, said Britain's Telegraph newspaper.
Turkey's first Islamic premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has demanded that the offending publishers be reprimanded for their decision to insert the religious references, as well as for various slang and insulting terms aimed at the president and the prime minister.
There has been no reported response from the publishers regarding the incident thus far and Huseyin Celik, Turkey's education minister, has sworn to take legal action against any further publications.
"If there are slang and swear words, we will sue them for using the ministry logo." he told the Telegraph.
I love the part where the Islamic court sentences boy-chasing Becky Thatcher to a good flogging for acts incompatible with chastity. Afterwards, when she defiantly gives Tom a pansy, I was all on pins and needles wondering would they stone her or just hang her. What a rollicking adventure.
(Via Fark.)
No matter what your teachers tell you, there really isn't such as a thing as "second winner":
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, convinced he won't be awarded the presidency, has vowed to create a parallel leftist government and is urging Mexicans not to recognize the apparent victory of the ruling party's Felipe Calderon.
Como se dice "Sore Loserman" en espanol?
Company spokeswoman Debbie McDowell swears on a stack of Ikea catalogs that this dog's image wasn't photoshopped. Considering they're appreciated more for their in-store restaurant than their bland product, I'd disagree. My nose is so sensitive, I can smell one drop of publicity stunt in a bucketful of water. Whatever makes people take a closer look at their catalog has got to be good for the bottom line.
