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It’s a war on peaceful Christmas!
The owner of this wreath and the house it’s adorning is being fined $25 dollars a day by her home owners association. The reason? Because the president of the home owner association believes this wreath is some sort of anti-Iraq war protest.
Or it’s a symbol of Satan.
As it turns out, both of these things are strictly forbidden by the home owners association. You would think the woman who owns this home and the peace/Satan wreath would know this since she used to be the president of the home owners association.
Black Friday at Ruby Tuesday
Sheri and I headed out first thing Friday for the first official day of Christmas shopping. For some reason, the day is referred to as Black Friday. I don’t really know why and I’m too lazy to go look it up. Plus, I just don’t care.
We went to a lot of stores on Black Friday. The worst was Best Buy. It was a mad house. It reminded me of the fall of Saigon. Except there weren’t any Huey helicopters lifting people to safety from the top of the store and there weren’t any Vietnamese people. At least I didn’t see any Vietnamese people. We ended up not getting anything at Best Buy. Out of all the things we had on our list, the only thing we could find on sale was one single DVD. It wasn’t worth standing in the massive line. Read the full article »
Non-handwashing Hagerstown men using public restrooms have been warned
One of my favorite parts of the local newspaper is something called Mail Call. It’s where people that want to share their opinion with Herald-Mail readers call a special phone number and leave a message on voice mail. Newspaper staff take these voice mails and publish them in the paper.
Most are extremely boring, but a few of them are sometimes extremely funny and quite entertaining. Here is one from yesterday’s edition (24 Nov):
“In local public restrooms, I’ve noticed that fewer than half the people make any effort at washing their hands. And of those who do stop at the water faucet, the majority only run water over their hands without applying soap. Probably fewer than one in 10 actually leave the restroom with clean hands. And the well-dressed are no more likely to wash than the guy in blue jeans. Think about that next time you shake hands or eat from a salad bar.”
I always thought wearing blue jeans was considered well-dressed in Hagerstown.
I picture some guy standing in the men’s room at the Hagerstown Valley Mall with a clipboard taking notes. At least he is not observing whether men are using an adequate amount of toilet paper or not. At least I don’t think he is. I’ve never really noticed. I try not to look around so much when I’m in a public men’s room. It’s a philosophy I wish more men would adopt as their own.
One of the reasons I don’t like shaking hands with other men is that I always automatically assume they just got done handling their junk or picking their nose.
Happy Thanksgiving
Today is November 23rd and one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving Day. It’s one of my favorites because I don’t have to buy anyone anything and I actually get to eat a lot of food without feeling like a total glutenous pig. At least not more then normal.
I not only get today off, but tomorrow as well. Saturday and Sunday too. If my math skills are not failing me, that’s four whole days off from work. Sometimes it’s good to be an American. Sure, the rest of the world hates you and you work more then the rest of the industrialized world, but the rest of the world doesn’t have Thanksgiving. Not even the Canadians, and everyone knows they copy us on everything. The rest of the world might have socialized health care and real mass transit systems, but they won’t be roasting any turkeys stuffed with favorable breadcrumbs today.
This year we are going over to my wife’s brother’s house for dinner. We are getting off easy this year. All we have to bring is a green bean casserole. Yesterday my wife made the same dish for her work party. It was kind of a dress rehearsal. I think last year we were responsible for the mashed potatoes which was kind of a pain. It involved a lot of peeling.
Today I’m not eating anything other then my mother-in-law’s corn bread dressing and cream corn casserole. She makes a corn bread dressing that it absolutely stupendous. The same with the cream corn casserole. It’s ridiculous how good they both are. I’m not going to waste any room in my stomach for anything else. No turkey, no mashed potatoes. No yams. I’m definitely not going to have any bread. Eating bread on Thanksgiving Day is a rookie move. It’s only bread and you get eat that every single day. You are much better off concentrating on the special food. The food you can only get on November 23rd. Like my mother-in-law’s cornbread dressing and cream corn casserole.
After eating, I will probably watch some football. American football. Then I’m going to top off the Thanksgiving Day celebration by going out and taking away land from an Indian. At least I’m going to try. Though I try to do this every single year, I have never been successful.
All the Indian land here in Maryland was already taken away years ago.
Happy Thanksgiving!
But I don’t want to be a World War II buff
According to the Miami Herald, I am now a World War II buff. It’s a label I strongly reject. How does one even become a World War II buff? I don’t watch the History Channel. Something I believe World War II buffs do all the time. They certainly don’t just flip past it to get to other channels. I don’t want to be a buff. Not about World War II or anything else for that matter. Really.
I was never contacted by anyone at the Miami Herald before they wrote this article. I certainly never told anyone that I was a World War II buff. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else ever referred to me as a buff.
Here is the article from the Miami Herald:
Skull emblems are huge sellers these days, so Scott Deutsch had no problem placing 50,000 T-shirts emblazoned with a distinctive version of the gory symbol in Wal-Mart.
Trouble is, this particular skull and crossbones was the insignia used by a division of the Nazi Waffen SS — the Death’s Head or Totenkopf. Wal-Mart yanked the shirts off the shelves last week.
”We would never have done that shirt if we had known,” said Deutsch, president of Miami-based Orange Clothing Company, a manufacturer of young men’s apparel. “Furthermore, I’m Jewish.”
The T-shirts are now flooding back into Deutsch’s warehouse, leaving him with a loss of more than $200,000.
Wal-Mart started pulling the tops after a Maryland blogger — and World War II buff — noticed them in local stores and took a photo of the squashed-looking skull with his cellphone.
After Rick Rottman checked the emblem and saw it matched the Nazi insignia, he posted an item on his blog, bentcorner.com, on Nov. 9 along with comparison photos.
Wal-Mart, which had placed the T-shirts in stores a couple weeks ago, reacted quickly. ”We would never have placed the T-shirts on our shelves had we known the origin or significance of the emblem,” the retailer said in a statement.
The Death’s Head was used by the Third Division of the Waffen SS, which was notorious for war crimes. Many of its men were concentration camp guards.
Deutsch said his designers found the skull in a European ”trend book.” Apparel makers use trend books to decide which motifs and styles to manufacture for the upcoming season.
The T-shirt was made for Wal-Mart’s private label, No Boundaries.
Skulls, Deutsch said, have been popular emblems for the past five years.
”It’s a cool, bad-ass image in the young men’s market,” he said. “We do skulls all the time.”
A Miami native, Deutsch started Orange Clothing in 1999. The company manufactures in China, where it has an office in Shanghai, and Latin America. It sells $10 million worth of clothing a year to retailers such as Macy’s, Dollar General and JCPenney.
Deutsch said he doesn’t know what he’ll do with all the extra T-shirts, which have also started cropping up on eBay. But he’s sure about one thing.
”We’re checking the origins of the skulls now,” he said.
So the totenkopf shirts sold at Wal-Mart stores was done so by a company owned by a Jewish man? You couldn’t make this stuff up.
What’s a trend book? Are clothing designers allowed to just copy things and then pass it off as their own? If so, it makes me wonder just what they are actually designing. Maybe they didn’t know they were copying a Nazi SS totenkopf, but they had to know they were copying something. Something not designed by them. Something that might have been trademarked by another artist or designer. The company or person that actually created the image. It’s an exact copy of the Nazi SS totenkopf. They didn’t even reverse the image. They didn’t change the shape or add anything.
Maybe next time they are paid to design something, they should design it instead of lifting it from a book.
It’s strange that a clothing maker that provides clothes for Macy’s also makes clothes for Dollar General. Talk about a wide range of products. No matter which way the economy goes, they are covered.
Nazi shirt was an accident, Miami designer says [Miami Herald]
Congressman Rangle wants to draft Paris Hilton into the Army
Congressman Charles Rangel wants to bring back the draft:
Congressman Charles B. Rangel has long advocated returning to the draft, but his efforts drew little attention during the 12 years that House Democrats were in the minority. Starting in January, however, he will chair the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Yesterday he said “you bet your life” he will renew his drive for a draft.
“I will be introducing that bill as soon as we start the new session,” Rangel said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He portrayed the draft, suspended since 1973, as a means of spreading military obligations more equitably and prompting political leaders to think twice before starting wars.
Spreading military obligations more equitably is code for making rich kids serve in the military. Oddly enough, not that many rich kids enlist to serve in the military. In fact, it’s not just rich kids that choose not to join the military. Kids that can go to college tend to go to college.
Does anyone really think it’s only kids that cannot go to college or find a decent job also happen to be the most patriotic of their generation? That they somehow love America more then other kids? I don’t think so.
Some believe that the fact the military is supposedly an all volunteer force has caused too many Americans to feel detached when it comes to sending our military into harm’s way. War sucks, but they all volunteered, right? Too many people actually think like that. It stops people from asking questions when our leaders rattle their sabers. When they want to invade another country.
Maybe more people would be reluctant to wage wars of choice if they actually had loved ones in the military. A son, a daughter, a niece, a nephew, or a grandchild. At least I would like to think so.
If Elvis Presley can be drafted into the Army and sent overseas to drive a truck, so can Paris Hilton.
Amid Uproar Over War, Rangel Renews Call for Draft [Washington Post]
Why would someone want to buy a Microsoft Zune?
I honestly cannot see why somebody would purposely choose to go out and spend money on a Zune mp3 player. Microsoft’s lame attempt at producing something to compete with Apple’s popular iPod mp3 player. I understand that Microsoft felt the need to once again go out and copy something another company first came up with. Once they realize consumers like whatever another company was able to come up with on their own. It’s what Microsoft does.
They “created” MSN when they realized people liked going online with AOL. They “created” Internet Explorer when they realized people like accessing the web with Netscape. They saw how scary popular the iPod was so they “created” an mp3 player of their very own.
Microsoft doesn’t so much as create as it does mimic. In the case of copying Apple’s popular mp3 player, they seem to have done a poor job. Worse then they normally do when they copy something. They actually chose to make one of the three available colors brown. Who does that?
Just who do they expect to go out and buy a Zune? People that have lost bets and must now do something both stupid and humiliating? Are iPods banned somewhere in the country that I’m not aware of? One of the reasons iPods are such a killer piece of hardware is because it meshes easily and seamlessly with iTunes. Microsoft has Windows Media Player. Ouch.
I’m sure there are some Microsoft loyalists out there that will run right out and buy one of these things. I just cannot imagine anyone really wanting one of these Zune players more then they would an Apple iPod.
Microsoft’s Zune Only Looks Simple [Washington Post]
My desktop computer hardware specs
I’m not a big gamer. I’ve played both EverQuest and World of Warcraft, but I get bored after sitting at the computer for 12+ hours killing things for experience points and loot. That personal fact pretty much rules me out as a serious MMORPG aficionado.
With that said, I saw a game at Target that I think I might like to play. It’s called Warhammer: Mark of Chaos and it is based on the Games Workshop’s uber geek tabletop miniatures game. I’ve never played it, but I have always thought the miniatures were cool looking in a very geeky kind of way.
I looked at the minimum game specs listed on the box and my poor old desktop barely meets the minimum hardware requirements for this game.
I went to Window’s Game Advisor and did a quick check. They didn’t show Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, but it did give me my system’s stats. You the reader can see what a sorry piece of gaming hardware my desktop computer truly is.
My System Specifications
- Processor: Intel Celeron (0.18u) 2700MHz
- Display Card: ATI RADEON 9200
- Memory: 1024MB
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP
- Free Disk Space: 21.73GB
- Display Card Memory: 256MB
- Display Driver Version: 6.14.10.6444
- DirectX Version 9.0c
- Optical Drive DVD
- Sound Card Realtek AC97 Audio
Bush puts a guy in charge of family planning that does not believe in birth control
When I was reading this over at the Washington Post, I had to stop and make sure I wasn’t reading it over at The Onion. To tell you the truth, I’m still not convinced it’s not a prank:
The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”
Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.
Demeaning to women? Huh?
He will be in charge of $283 million dollars a year for funding birth control and birth control information for poor women. Even though he doesn’t believe in it. Birth control that is.
This doesn’t makes sense. Even for George Bush. It’s like putting someone in charge of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) that doesn’t believe in steel toed safety boots or hardhats for construction workers.
Frankly, I just don’t get it. I guess this means the amount of abortions will continue to increase every year under Bush. They have done so every year since he has been president. In contrast, abortions decreased every year under Clinton. If a woman has easy access to birth control, it’s less likely she will need an abortion. The two are inversely proportional to each other.
John Murtha got 86 votes too many
It looks as though John Murtha wont be Majority Leader after all. Good.
Democratic Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland has been selected by the Democratic caucus to serve as Majority Leader in the 110th Congress, easily defeating Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania — who had been backed by incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — on a 149-86 vote.
I’m only sorry that Murtha actually got 86 votes. He deserved to get none.
Why his constituents constantly reelect him to Congress is their business. I have no say in that. I don’t understand why they would constantly reelect him every two years, but it’s really of no concern to me. I just know how I feel about him. When I listen to the FBI tapes from 1980 where he is offered a bribe and technically refuses to accept it, yet still leaves the door open for a future time leaves me massively unimpressed. I guess he technically didn’t break any law. He sure didn’t come off looking ethical.
Ethics are important.
Maybe the Democratic leadership misunderstood the American people this past election day. It wasn’t just Republican unethical behavior Americans were unhappy with. It was all unethical behavior that we didn’t like or want.
It’s been argued that the reason Murtha deserved the position of Majority Leader was because he had become such an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. Really? Isn’t that his job? Like all elected officials, it is his duty to speak up about when he sees that things are going wrong in Iraq. That the war was a mistake. That it’s being managed very badly. The fact that he now thinks the Iraq war is going badly gets him no points from me. It just shows that he is aware of the obvious.
Setting the record straight about Lou Scally
It has recently been brought to my attention that I once posted something negative about Hagerstown’s favorite TV weatherman Lou Scally. I don’t remember doing this, but the person who told me about this is very credible and is what you would call a reputable source.
It was Lou Scally himself told me of this.
He personally told me that he once read a negative post I wrote about him on my blog. The post told a story of seeing him in the Hagerstown Lowes home improvement store. It read that I approached him to say hello and he was rude to me. Though I remember once seeing Lou Scally in Lowes, I don’t remember approaching him. I also don’t remember writing about him on my blog. If anyone other then Lou Scally told me this story, I would have immediately dismissed it as being simply not true.
If Lou Scally tells me it is going rain, I grab an umbrella. If Lou Scally tells me it’s going to snow, I grab a heavy coat and a warm hat. It wouldn’t matter if it was the middle of July and it was over 90 degrees outside. I’m simply not in the practice of questioning the word of Lou Scally.
When Lou Scally tells you something, you take it for fact and you don’t argue. You don’t question it. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the weather or where to go to get a good steak dinner.
Lou Scally went on to tell me that in my post I compared his level of celebrity with that of newspaper columnist Tim Rowland. Evidently I wrote that Tim Rowland was a bigger local celebrity then Lou Scally. Though I am a fan of Tim Rowland and his columns, I do not condone pitting one man against the other.
Nobody wins in such a contest. Instead everyone loses.
It’s like that old Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and Mister Spock are forced to fight each another in a battle to the death on the planet Vulcan. I think it was over some Vulcan girl Spock was going to marry. If Spock wins, Kirk is dead. If Kirk wins, it means Spock is dead. Luckily Doctor McCoy was on hand to secretly give Kirk some kind of drug with his hypospray. The thing that looked like a pepper shaker. This special drug made the Vulcans think Kirk was dead.
Stupid Vulcans.
Can I state with complete certainty that I never wrote anything negative about Lou Scally on my blog? I would certainly like to say this, but I have been known to do dumb things from time to time. Just ask my wife. She will tell you about the time I accidentally paid the car payment twice in the same week.
So let the record show that I don’t think Tim Rowland is a bigger celebrity then Lou Scally. Tim Rowland writes a column in the newspaper. He has written several books. He even has a podcast. Lou Scally is on TV providing the weather forecast. He has a radio show. He has an alley named after him. He is featured in many local TV commercials.
Both men are local celebrities.
Wal-Mart Nazi swag now on eBay
Ben Popken from The Consumerist has discovered that some of Wal-Mart’s Nazi t-shirts are now being listed on eBay. I have to think that the eBay seller who listed them knows the significance of the Nazi skull since he lists them as being Totenkopf in the listing’s title.
The seller made sure to also list them in the Militaria/WW II (1939-45)/Germany/Medals, Pins, Ribbons catagory. I’m guessing that’s where one goes when they want to find Nazi stuff on eBay. When you cannot simply run out to your local Wal-Mart.
Totenkopf Shirts On Ebay [The Consumerist]
Wal-Mart sells Nazi swag to kids
Magellan over at ExploreForTruth has posted that his local Wal-Mart is still selling the Nazi SS t-shirts. He also purchased one and took a pic, which demonstrates that the shirts haven’t been put on hold or frozen in Wal-Mart’s central inventory computer system. Something that would be very easy to do if they actually wanted to. He makes a good point on his blog:
I know they said it could take a couple days, but if this was E.coli laced spinach or acetaminophen, it would have been off the shelves in hours. Tomorrow I will be checking another Wal-Mart.
I would hope to believe that they would be a lot quicker to remove tainted products. Seeing how they have dropped the ball at getting rid of Nazi swag, it makes me wonder how proactive they would be when it comes to removing product that could actually kill you such as E.coli laced spinach.
My problem with Wal-Mart is that they refuse to sell products that they deem to be offensive. They will not sell CD’s to adults that contain adult language. They canceled orders for the best-selling satire book America (The Book) by Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show because it dared to show phony naked pics of Supreme Court justices. They also refuse to sell magazines such as Maxim because they show woman wearing sexy clothing.
They then turn around and sell t-shirts adorned with the very same symbol worn by Nazi SS concentration camp guards at Auschwitz.
Imagine a situation where a someone buys this shirt at Wal-Mart not knowing the significance of the Totenkopf or even that it is a Totenkopf. He then wears this shirt in public and the wrong person sees it. How is he supposed to know that the shirt he purchased at his friendly local Wal-Mart features a Nazi symbol?
I think like most people, he expects Wal-Mart to be more responsible. The reality is that Wal-Mart won’t sell Maxim magazine to adults, but it will sell Nazi swag to kids.
Wal-Mart is still selling Nazi SS skull t-shirts
I was surprised at the level of response I got from yesterday’s post about Wal-Mart selling t-shirts with the Nazi SS “Death’s Head” logo on them. I knew some blogs got over 55,000 visits in a single day. I just never thought this blog would ever be one of them.
If I have learned anything over the last 24 hours its that people love a story involving Wal-Mart and Nazis. Go figure.
I was contacted yesterday by someone from a PR firm that represents Wal-Mart:
Rick:
Good morning. My name is Marshall Manson. I work for Edelman doing online public affairs for Wal-Mart. I noticed your post about the t-shirts that Wal-Mart is selling. I wanted to make sure you saw the company’s statement about this and knew that Wal-Mart is now removing the t-shirts from its stores. Obviously, with a company as big as Wal-Mart, that may take a day or two.
The statement is just below. If you would like to discuss anything, feel free to respond to this e-mail.
Statement from Wal-Mart:
We were not aware of the origins of the image until this morning when we learned about it through the blog Bent Corner.
We are deeply sorry that this happened, and we are in the process of pulling all of these t-shirts from our stores.
Respect for the individual is a core value of our company and we would never have placed this t-shirt on our shelves had we known the origin and significance of this emblem.
We are reviewing our product review process in an effort to ensure this never happens again.
Sincerely,
Marshall Manson
Edelman
If you would like a copy of the above correspondence sent directly to you by Marshall Manson, simply post something on a blog about Nazi’s and Wal-Mart and wait about 30 minutes. I doubt it will take even that long. The very same email sent to me was sent to just about every other blog that posted something about this. Word for word.
The New York Times published an article about Wal-Mart and bloggers. In it they mention Marshall Manson quite frequently. It’s an interesting read.
Marshall Manson asked me if I would post an update to my original post about Wal-Mart and the Nazi shirts. Something about how quickly they responded to the problem once they realized they were selling Nazi swag. I would have no problem doing that. If I felt they had indeed acted upon the information that they were selling Nazi clothing.
The problem is that they haven’t yet done anything about the Nazi shirts.
Yesterday afternoon I stopped at a Wal-Mart on my way home for work and found a stack of the same shirts still for sale in the men’s department. My wife also stopped at a different Wal-Mart on her way home from work yesterday. She too found a stack of these Nazi shirts still for sale.
In my opinion, quickly taking care of a problem involves actually taking care of the problem.
Instead of having someone from a PR firm contact bloggers, Wal-Mart should have concentrated on simply removing the shirts from their stores. They could have worried about contacting bloggers after their stores were free of Nazi clothing.
Marshall Manson claimed that because of the size of Wal-Mart, removing the shirts from all the stores might take a day or two. I don’t think so. Wal-Mart could have removed these shirts from every store in a matter of minutes if they actually wanted to. Would they be this lethargically slow if they found out they were selling child porn? I don’t think so.
I am more then a little pissed off that because of my post, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are now goose stepping to Wal-Mart to buy these shirts. For example, over at the Resistance Records official website, members of the forum linked to my post and wrote about going to Wal-Mart to buy these shirts. Resistance Records produces white supremacist and neo-Nazi music. It is the same record company behind Prussian Blue, the Nazi version of the Olsen twins. One member of that forum even posted a photo of herself wearing the shirt she bought at Wal-Mart. The shirt she didn’t even know existed until I posted about it on my blog.
I wish Wal-Mart had acted more responsibly and taken care of this situation as soon as it was brought to their attention. Instead they worried more about trying to control the blogosphere then stopping teenage wannabe Nazis from buying Nazi SS shirts in their stores.
The reality is these shirts are so ugly, I doubt anyone was even buying them. Until wannabe Nazis learned about them on my blog. Great.
Wal-Mart is selling Nazi SS skull t-shirts
I stopped in at Wal-Mart today after I got off work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men’s clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or “Death’s Head”.
I took a picture of it with my camera phone.
The Death’s Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Wal-Mart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It’s almost an exact copy.
Neo-Nazi’s sometimes use the Totenkopf image because it is not as easily identifiable as other Nazi symbols such as the swastika. You might see one of these tattooed on someone’s arm while standing in line at Burger King and think it’s just an poorly done pirate skull. It’s not.
Is Wal-Mart purposely trying to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it? I doubt it. They wont even sell CD’s with bad words on them. I doubt someone at Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas decided to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it.
Whoever designed this shirt had to know where the skull image came from. I have no idea what the date 1978 refers to.
Bush admits he lied
Proving once again that he is the President that brought integrity back to the White House, Bush admitted today that he was lying when he told reporters last week that Donald Rumsfeld was doing a fantastic job and that he fully supported him.
When pressed today about last week’s comment lie, Bush had this to say:
The only way to answer that question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer.
Brilliant. It’s a shame Bill Clinton didn’t use this same tactic when subpoenaed by Ken Starr and asked about Monica. Sure, Bush lied to subvert an election by giving voters false information before an election. Bill Clinton lied about extramarital S-E-X.
That is what I call a one-two punch
The unthinkable happened. Britney Spears has given K-Fed the heave-ho and filed for divorce. When I first heard the news yesterday, I was shocked. I could not believe that this young and vibrant couple had hit the skids. When Britney and K-Fed had married and decided to start a family, I was like a lot of Americans. I thought that I had finally found a celebrity couple that was for real.
How could I have been so wrong?
Just when I thought nothing could surprise me more then Britney divorcing K-Fed, I found out today that George W. Bush has given Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the boot. The man who made the Iraqi invasion and occupation the rousing success that it is will be replaced with some other guy that used to work for Bush’s daddy.
Go figure. Way to think outside the box.
First K-Fed and then Donald Rumsfeld. Will the madness ever end? America cannot afford to lose any more of it’s great men.
Election day 2006
We just got back from voting. Tonight was by far the least busiest election night I have see since voting in Maryland. It was raining. I don’t know if that contributed to the low turn out. Maybe it was because we live in a very Republican part of Maryland and most Republicans don’t have an awful lot to be happy about right now.
I know if I was a Republican, I wouldn’t be too happy right now.
Whatever the reason, there were more poll workers then voters. Something I don’t think I have ever seen before.
Speaking of seeing something I have never seen before. Yesterday I saw my first Rick Santorum yard sign. Three of them in fact. Though I live in Maryland, I work across the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania. I don’t think I had seen a Rick Santorum yard sign until yesterday. What was funny about these Rick Santorum signs is that they weren’t in anyone’s yard. They were along side the very busy Interstate 81. That means that whoever placed them had to stop along side the interstate and get out of their car to place the signs. They then had to get back in their car and somehow get back into traffic without causing a huge accident. Something that would be fairly hard to do. That is precisely why it’s illegal to stop on the interstate unless it’s an emergency.
I don’t think Santorum’s sliding poll numbers count as an emergency.
It felt good to cast my vote for Andrew Duck for Congress. Normally I simply vote against Roscoe Bartlett. Tonight I actually was voting for the person I wanted to represent me instead of voting against the person I didn’t want representing me. It felt good.
Saddam was found guilty!
What a surprise. Saddam was found guilty. I never saw this coming. I realize that the United States had total control over this trial. It’s just that everything else the Bush administration has tried to do in Iraq has been a total failure. Why should the show trial of Saddam be any different?
Saddam was charged with a crime that doesn’t even exist in the Iraqi law. That is why deposed leaders are tried in international courts governed by international law when they commit crimes against humanity. They are never tried in their own countries.
I’m sure things in Iraq will settle down now that their deposed leader has been sentenced to death. If not now, surely when they finally lynch Saddam from a tall tree. I wonder if senator George Allen still has that lynching rope he use to display in his office. I realize it was was only a racist prop. That doesn’t mean it cannot be used to help spread democracy.
I have not been this surprised with a verdict since OJ Simpson was found liable for the wrongful death of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown in civil court.
Iraqi tribunal sentences Saddam to hang [Yahoo News]
Leader of the National Association of Evangelicals kills two birds with one stone by buying methamphetamine from his gay prostitute
Ted Haggard, a gay marriage hating preacher-man that occasionally participated in White House conference calls, resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and head of his Colorado church following allegations he met monthly with a gay prostitute for three years.
Paster Haggard denies having sex with the man, but admits receiving a massage and buying methamphetamine.
This guy was a heavy hitter in the evangelical movement. When he wasn’t meeting secretly with his gay male prostitute taking methamphetamine, he was meeting with George W. Bush plotting their right-wing battle against gay rights.
Ted Haggard is a fake and a fraud. I’m sure there are many people in his mega-church that will refuse to believe that their gay hating paster is in fact a drug taking, homosexual hypocrite.
The all-volunteer military
President George W. Bush said something that I found interesting. He had this to say at a rally for one of his Republican stooges:
“The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots — and Senator Kerry owes them an apology.”
First he implied that our service members are in Iraq because they volunteered to go to Iraq. That’s simply not true. Just because they took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies doesn’t mean they volunteered to go off and make Iraq a democracy.
Bush also said that members in the military are serving because they are “patriots”. That is simply not true. Most join the military for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with patriotism. Whatever that word even means these days. Sometimes I think it has been turned into something to do with magnetic yellow ribbons and boycotting the Dixie Chicks. To listening to Sean Hannity and getting as many tax breaks as you possibly can.
A majority of the people that enlist in the military do so because of need. Some join for the job training. Some join for help paying for college. Some join for the medical benefits. Others join because they simply want a steady paycheck. Some join for all of these reasons.
If a kid has the means to go to college or to obtain a well paying job, he or she will be far less inclined to enlist in the military.
If anyone owes the troops an apology, it’s George W. Bush. He sent them to invade a country under false pretenses. Thousands of young men and women have been killed or permanently disfigured because of weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Whoops. The fact is that Bush sent our military to invade and occupy a country for false reasons. His huge whopping mistake he himself refuses to admit.
He has no business demanding Kerry apologize for anything. It’s embarrassing. I don’t know if he knows this, but John Kerry is not even running for re-election.
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