Michele is still live-blogging Idol if you care to join in the snarky fun. You’ve got about 5 minutes.
I do wish she’d go back to blogging. I miss her.
Pajamas Media’s WMD Files: There are new videos from this weekend’s Intelligence Summit featuring interviews with Richard Miniter, James Woolsey and Bill Tierney.
Presented without comment as I haven’t watched them yet.
Leading members of your own party are asking for more time and review.
Former President Jimmy Carter is all for it.
Whiskey.
Tango.
Foxtrot?
Channeling Lewis Black: I. Am. Confused.
I’ve finally finished Robert Ferrigno’s, Prayers for the Assassin.
I’m not a literary critic. I’ve got a relatively decent vocabulary and I can write in a way that usually gets my point across. I read a LOT. I read popular fiction and science fiction and, to the surprise of one of the guys in my office with a big ol’ brain, I read non-fiction on occasion. So if you’re looking for a scholarly review of this book, move on. I’m just an ol’ fart AF MSgt who’s going to do a couple more years and then go teach high school back home.
Before I say anything else, I want to thank Robert Ferrigno for sending advanced copies of his book to bloggers and giving us the opportunity to comment on his work. First of all, I LOVE free books. More importantly, I love it when someone asks a shmoe like me what I think.
Tom: “I don’t need no goddamn shotgun to give you a heart attack.”
Just what if there actually were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?
Why is this a bad thing?
How come we have to be wrong?
Why is it so important to you that it was all nothing but a lie?
Why isn’t your assurance with your country instead of against it?
I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. I don’t think I want to but I’m still asking.
Jeff Goldstein has got news that I haven’t heard anywhere else today, although to be honest, I haven’t listened to the news since about noon.
Last Tuesday, I wrote about the (potential) forthcoming release of 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that, as the New York Sun story I quoted put it, “may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction”. According to the Sun report, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was studying the tapes.
I’m not sayin’ nuthin’ until more comes out, but I’m making a list of my ol’ friends who have beat me up with, “There was NO WMD!” for the past three years…oh yes I am…
Since my last effort was deemed by the cartoon cricket that lives in my head to be too tasteless due to a silent heart attack, (wussy cricket) and also because the media is practically ignoring the fact that former VP Al Gore trashed our country for money over the weekend, I offer this as a humble substitue.
Winners Friday Morning.
Other Bloggy Caption Fun:
Hedline from CNN’s main page, 1500 Central.
Are you sure it was because of the cartoons and not because some hash-baked kid stopped listening to Islamo-trip-hop long enough to screech, “I’m sooooooooooo baked and this crap still tastes like…CRAP! The Colonel, the Clown and Pizza the Hut must DIE”?
Or maybe someone figured out there was no way in hell that stuff was halal.
Special Edition. Winners on Thursday.
Other Bloggy Caption Fun:
I’m suspending this one due to the minor heart attack suffered by Mr. Whittington (the gentleman VP Cheney accidently shot).
Fun’s fun, but this has turned a bit more serious than I expected so…come back Friday for our regular captioning fun.
1. DemoMan: “Oh, and ME? Um, haha, I’m wearing a tactical load bearing vest, a kevlar helmet, an M-4–wait, this won’t show up on my regular phone bill, right?”
2. Cpt Loggie: “yes dear, uh huh, yes dear, yes dear, no dear….yes dear, now thats one loaf of bread and one gallon of milk….yes dear……”
3. Seadog: “Can you hear me now?”
Honorable Mention because I never would have gone there:
Sgt Mom: “Lady, I want ya t’ believe me, when I tell ya this ain’t the $#&*@!! Victoria’s Secret!!!”
Subject: VP Cheney’s Hunting Accident
Look, you don’t want to know what the President knew and when he knew it, you want to know how come you all weren’t told right away.
I wasn’t even there and right off the top of my head my reaction is, “Oh I don’t know, perhaps folks were more concerned with the gentleman that was peppered with a 20 gauge than alerting the media.” I’m not a gun nut and even I know that while birdshot isn’t life threatening, it stings like a mother (hush my mouth).
Did the VP have a hunting license? Oh for-the-love-of-Mohammed-on-a-MoPed, who freaking cares?!
I can’t help but think that 20-30 years ago, this story would have been an interesting aside on the evening news at best.
Best thing I’ve heard so far: “I’d still rather go hunting with Vice President Cheney than go driving with Senator Kenedy.” Attributed to Rush Limbaugh…but still funny.
Note: I’ve stripped this and changed some of the details in order to ensure that OPSEC is maintained. I know one of the Presidents declassified most of this but old habits die hard. Shrug. Most of this happened the way I put it down here as best as memory serves.
So it’s in the late 80s and I’m part of a deployment “somewhere south of the Mexican border.” I’ve got all of two stripes and I’m mostly typing out message traffic on an old manual with OCR font built right onto the strikers when I’m not filling sandbags or rearranging rocks. No, I didn’t do anything wrong, that’s just what most of the support folks were doing. I’m mostly there to support the Lt Col who’s in charge of the base but he doesn’t have a lot to do either so we mostly kept as busy as we could to make the days go by. I don’t care if you’ve summered in Alabama; no place has ever been hotter or muggier than this place. It’s the kind of place where mosquitoes are rumored to have stolen small children right from their parent’s sides.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. James Bressendorff)
Paul’s made me chuckle: “Despite his heroic efforts, SSgt. Toynbee was unable to resuscitate the fallen sandbag. ”
DemoMan wins the Geeky Obscure Star Trek Reference Award (GOSTRA!) with: “Ugly bag of mostly water experiments with pre-warp era disrupter technology.”
Go say congrats and read how she turned a bad day into a good one for all.
Then read the rest of her blog.
I get a lump in my throat when I see what our young people are doing over there.
Via Blackfive.
Since this doesn’t apply to all who visit here, I’ll shove it below the line.
Looks like the ladies are getting some weird mixed messages from the board, but my biggest gripe is that we’re not going to be able to wear badges on the new utility uniforms that we earned while working with sister/joint services. I’m sorry, any zoomie that jumps out of perfectly good aircraft on purpose, they ought to wear their jump badge, just so we know they’re crazy.
Tigerhawk, whom I’m adding to our blogroll, has a good post on the Queen of Denmark’s opinions on Islam as expressed in her biography.
She said: “We are being challenged by Islam these years – globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.
“We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance.”
“And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.”
He’s also got some other good posts on the subject. Maybe start on the main page and scroll down.
Via Protein Wisdom
Well…this is about as exciting as the first half. And they’re singing the Windows Commercial.
People actually spend money to watch these guys?
From the, “Gosh, what a bad idea.” bin come this little tidbit.
AOL and Yahoo put price on e-mail
By Saul Hansell The New York Times
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2006Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers.
America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from a quarter of a cent to 1 cent each to have them delivered. The Internet companies say this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges of users of their services.
The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.
AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users’ main mailboxes and will not have to pass the gauntlet of spam filters that could divert them to a special bulk e-mail box or strip them of images and Web links.
Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable mode of communication even as it has become more important in people’s lives.
So the two of the leaders in internet service are basically telling us that they can’t provide reliable spam-and-scam-free service unless they charge even MORE for it. I realize I’m not a marketing genius, but I’m thinking that’s a BAD thing.
Call me weird.
Let’s see…
Hamas is now politically in charge of the Palestinians.
Iran is defiant and determined to have their nukes.
Mobs are rioting in the streets and killing Catholic Priests over 4 month old cartoons.
If I were more paranoid about fundamental islamic nutjobs, and more sure of their capability to coordinate, I might be wondering what they were trying to distract us from? From a strictly dramatic point of view, that’s a lot of increased tension in a short period of time.
Just sayin’…
Now, where’s my copy of Catcher in the Rye?
What a week huh? Hang on, I’m not sure which way this one is going yet.
A leading Islamic cleric called for an “international day of anger” today over publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, and a Danish activist predicted that deadly violence could break out in Europe “at any minute”.
As more European newspapers reprinted the cartoons, what started off as a row between Denmark’s press and its Muslim population grew into a full-blown “clash of civilisations”.
Anger boiled over in the Gaza Strip, where gunmen from Islamic Jihad occupied the office of the European Union. Europeans began to leave the Palestinian territories after threats from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Jihad al-Momani, the editor of the Jordanian newspaper al-Shihan, was sacked for trying to publish three of the 12 caricatures. He said that he was aiming “to show his readers “the extent of the Danish offence”.
A leading hard-line Muslim cleric, Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi, called for the day of anger to protest against the printing of the cartoons – first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September – in other European papers.
Emphasis Mine.
London Telegraph
Via Malkin.
The question that comes to my mind is, “And we’ll notice this because…?”
More »
(U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. James Bressendorff)
I’m going to stick with a military theme from here on out so if you see a good one, please send me a link.
Winners Monday.
More Bloggy Caption Fun:
Wizbang
Outside the Beltway
The VFW is sponsoring Operation Uplink. Help our troops call their loved ones this Valentine’s Day.
Click on the hearts to make a donation to help our deployed folks talk to their families.
Anyone who runs into Chris Muir, please buy him a beer for me…a good one, don’t be cheap.
That just goes so well with Mom’s post below.