Rest in peace, Carl Lazlo

Peter Boyle

1935-2006

Daily Poetry

Farmer Jones works in the field

With a tractor and a plow

And before his morning meal

He goes out and milks a cow

Farmer Jones has a hound

And it follows him around

Chases rabbits, squirrels and quail

And the man who brings the mail

Farmer Jones has a truck

And he drives it through the mire and the muck

And he pulls his neighbors out when they get stuck

Farmer Jones and his truck

Farmer Jones, Farmer Jones

He harvests all the corn that he's grown

And into town goes Farmer Jones

And buys his children ice cream cones

Farmer Jones has a brother

They help out one another

'Cause that's the way that they've always been shown,

The Brothers Jones

Farmer Jones has a wife

They'll live together all their life

And retire into a life of ease

Bouncing grandchildren on their knees

Farmer Jones, Farmer Jones

He works in all the fields that he owns

He'll give them to his children when they're grown

Farmer Jones, Farmer Jones

Farmer Jones, that Farmer Jones

"Farmer Jones," written by Scott Young of Red Meat

A Frivolous Lawsuit I Support

Here's one of those nonsensical leagal actions we at RDF can really get behind.

Evel Knievel has sued Kanye West, taking issue with a music video in which the rapper takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" and tries to jump a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon.

Pause for a second - did you notice the shit journalism from AP; there's no rocket-powered motorcycle in this video, not was there one at Snake River in '74.

Knievel, whose real name is Robert Craig Knievel, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tampa on Monday claiming infringement on his trademark name and likeness. He also claims the "vulgar and offensive" images depicted in the video damage his reputation. "That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I've ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public," the 68-year-old daredevil said Tuesday.

West was so disappointed at not winning best video for "Touch the Sky" at the MTV Europe Music Awards last month that he crashed the stage when it was presented to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends." In a tirade riddled with expletives, West said he should have won the prize because it "cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons."

Kanye West is a punk and an idiot, and he's way over his head in this limp portrayal of Evel Knievel, a real American hero.

What a Difference an Administration Makes

Just another glaring difference between W. and Bubba:

When the Bush Adminstrtion taps your phone without a warrant, it's because they think you might be a terrorist, rightly or wrongly.

When the Clinton Administration taps your phone without a warrant, it's becasue they think they might have the goods on a billionaire Republican who's funding non-government schools, rightly or wrongly.

After the existence of the Bush program was made public last December, some high-ranking veterans of the Clinton administration said they had not engaged in similar efforts to by-pass FISA. “Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton-Gore administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law,” former Vice President Al Gore said. The amendment to which Gore referred was an action by Congress that included physical break-ins under the FISA law, requiring the executive branch to seek a warrant before carrying out a break-in. Wiretaps were already covered by the law.

When Congress was considering the break-in measure, top Clinton administration officials argued that the president had the “inherent authority” to order such break-ins — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — on his own, without a warrant. Nevertheless, the law required that the administration seek a warrant if it intended to wiretap a U.S. person’s — in this case Forstmann’s — communications. The Clinton administration could have argued, as the Bush administration would later, that the president had the authority to do it on his own under certain circumstances, like the presence of a foreign enemy.

But it’s hard to see how Diana and Forstmann would have fit that description, and in any event that is something Al Gore and other Clinton veterans say they never did.

Industrial Arts

via PostSecret

Lefty Love

It's sure not to be confused with 'tough love.'

I'm afraid I'm going to be devoting a lot of space the real ways life is going to be different in St. Paul (and in Washington) now that the Democrats have the reigns. For instance, here in Minnesota, pretty soon you won't have to be responsible for yourself or the choices you make.

Even though you wilfully signed that purchase agreement to buy that car, Nanny Government doesn't want you burdened by the troubles of contract law. Why should you have your feet held to a fire of your own making?

Sen.-elect Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, says he's concerned that consumers can't return used cars. Latz says he's heard complaints from people who realized they couldn't afford car payments, but didn't realize it until they had already bought the car.

Latz says right now a consumer owns a car once he or she signs the purchase agreement and there isn't any legal recourse for a dealer to accept the car if a consumer wants to return it. Latz says he's talked to several consumers who bought cars, and later realized they couldn't afford them but couldn't return the car.

"Help me, Big Government; don't make me have to live with the decisions I make freely and by my actions alone."

"It's the state's role to protect consumers in a lot of ways and at least to make sure that the consumers can make informed decisions about what they're going to purchase, and yes, if they change their mind, that they have the right to return it," Latz says. "If you buy just about anything, you can return things, but a car. Why shouldn't you be able to return that too?"

There is no 'right to return.' I know that might break your great-big generous all-protecting Democratic heart, but it is absolutely NOT the state's role to mandate by law what is otherwise a voluntary service offered by retailers as an extension of customer service and good-will. This loser want to make car returns mandatory because it makes him feel warm and fuzzy.

The only thing more troubling that this hand-holding idiot are the truly stupid among us; those mutton heads out there who cannot wait to trade in one more bit of freedom for the alleged promise of a completely risk-free existence from the hand of government.

Wait - it only gets worse:

As the holiday shopping season cranks up, the North St. Paul Democrat Chuck Wiger and two colleagues promised legislation to ban expiration dates and fees on gift cards. They said too many consumers are being duped and never get their money's worth from the cards. "The goal here is just to make sure it is what people expect to purchase."

Republican Rep. Larry Howes said the proposal might not find enough support to pass. The state has bigger worries, he said, and retailers should be able to recoup something for the convenience of gift cards. "If you don't use it, you lose it," Howes said. "I don't see a problem with that." (Minnesota Retailers Association president) Buzz Anderson said most cards don't expire because consumers don't like expiration dates.

But he said the option is important for small independent stores that face an "accounting nightmare" if they have to carry the value of unredeemed cards on their books indefinitely. "If you don't like the terms on a card, don't buy the card," Anderson said. "Nobody's holding a gun to your head."

That last point is completely lost on the do-gooders that seek to wrap all us plebes in the safe glow or Big Government. You see, to a good and kind Democrat, life should not ever have any rules, regulations, obligations, responsibilities, binding agreements, hurt feelings, consequences or rainy days.

Vote Democrat kids, and every day can be filled with the thought-free bliss of predictable mediocrity and diminishing expectations.

Tilting at Imaginary Windmills

The whole tale begins here:

"Being president doesn't give one the prerogative to bend the facts to reach a prescribed reality," said Kenneth Stein, the first executive director of the Carter Center. The Emory University professor, who teaches Middle Eastern history and political science, said he picked up a copy of Carter's latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" last week. After reading it, he decided to resign.

"President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analysis; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments," Stein wrote. "Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book."

Then we get this:

"It appears that at least two maps that came out of the Carter book were or are very closely similar, or unusually similar, to maps that were produced and published in Dennis Ross' book 'The Missing Peace,' " Stein said. That book, published in 2004, is also about the search for peace in the Middle East. "This could be incredibly coincidental, or it could not," Stein said. "But it goes to the way history books should be written, and the way citations should be made when material is borrowed."

Now we've elevated the charade to flat-out lying.

CLIFT: You're obviously aware of your main critic, Mr. Stein, who used to be with the Carter Center.

CARTER: Thirteen years ago! He hasn't been associated with the Carter Center for 13 years.

When we were originally sent Professor Stein's letter explaining his resignation from the Carter Center last week, I looked Professor Stein up on the Carter Center's site. Professor Stein's Carter Center page is here, describing Professor Stein as the Carter Center fellow for Middle East affairs since 1983."

It's sad to see a Navy man going down with the ship.

Another Pelosi Moment

By virtue of more luck than management (or good sense) incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not have to explain how Rep. John "ABSCAM" Murtha was about to become House Majority Leader.

Then Pelosi was able to smell enough of the coffee and sidestep Rep. Alcee "Cap'n Crook" Hastings instead of appointing him as chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She tapped Rep. Silvestre Reyes for the position, but there's a fighting chance Reyes sees little difference between his ass and any other hole in the ground.

Now let's see how Pelosi deals with the latest embarrassing Democrat now that his idiotic constituency saw fit to return a sure-felon to Washington:

Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who gained notoriety after the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer, was elected Saturday to a ninth term in Congress.

Most political observers speculated that the anti-Jefferson forces would unite behind (Democratic state Rep. Karen) Carter, giving her an easy win. The congressman remains the target of a federal investigation for allegedly taking payoffs. Alleged co-conspirators have pleaded guilty, and Jefferson has said he expects to be indicted.

You remember William Jefferson; he was the one that, during the height of the post-Katrina evacuation, had the national guard personally drive him to his New Orleans pad to "collect a few items."

Joe Wilson - Call Your Office

There's that old adage about how many times a motorist breaks the speed limit before/until they actually get a speeding ticket. I thought about this and the stories about Iraq trying to acquire yellow cake from Nigeria and how those tales (real or not) were used as part of the reasoning to go remove Saddam Hussein.

Well call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, or just the one time the speeder got caught, but either way; this cannot be good news.

Iran is secretly searching for uranium in war-torn Somalia, according to a confidential United Nations report obtained by Pajamas Media. The report notes that two Iranians were “engaged on matters linked to the exploration of Uranium in exchange for arms” in Dusamareb, Somalia. The arms would be given to the Islamic Courts Union (the ICU), a Taliban-like movement that controls much of Somalia.

The UN report spends little time on this surprising development, perhaps because the report’s mandate is limited to monitoring violations of Somalia’s arms embargo.

There's that myopic, manipulative and impotent U. N. again.

Dusamareb is known to be rich in uranium. Abdiweli Ali, an assistant professor of economics at Niagara University and a supporter of Somalia’s transitional federal government (TFG), is originally from Dusamareb, where he received his primary school education. He reports that in the Galgadud region, where Dusamareb is located, uranium exploration has occurred since the 1940s. This exploration was put on hiatus after the fall of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 put the country under the rule of rival warlords.

Once or Twice; It's Good For Your Soul

That's a Danny Elfman quote, and it fits tonight. A good result in St. Paul, with local kid Mark Parrish getting the hat trick.

Wild 5, Blackhawks 4 (OT)

And across the pond, in the drivng rain, the Reds came out just dandy:

Liverpool 4 - 0 Fulham

This is No Drill

It was just before 8 in the morning.

Don't Be Told What You Want, Don't Be Told What You Need

God save the queen

We mean it man

We love our queen

God saves

Cook, Jones Matlock, Rotten

Europe is chiseled away a little bit every single day:

(T)his year, a veiled Muslim woman has been invited to deliver Channel Four's Alternative Christmas message. Her appearance on the channel's alternative to the Queen's own broadcast at 3pm on Christmas Day, which has been running since 1993, comes after a year in which there have been a series of controversies over women wearing the veil.

A spokesman for Channel Four said: "The right to wear religious symbols from niqabs to crucifixes, remarks made by the Pope about Islam and the publication of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed have all generated a debate about multiculturalism, secularism and integration, a debate in which British Muslims have played a key role and one that will shape the future of British society. "Therefore, we believed it was fitting this year the message should be given by a British Muslim woman."

I don't know what the queen says during her traditional Christmas message. It's probably some mix of the State of the Union Address and pulling the groundhog out on February 2nd. Whichever way it spins, I can't imagine what is so dradful, insulting or unfair about the whole affair that requires Islamic rebuttal.

I wonder what the chances are of ANYONE, regardless of religion, nationality or beer perference, giving the rebuttal to the remarks of an Islamic monarch on their government-run television.

Cavemen In the News

There's trouble among the devout:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who flaunts his ideological fervour, has been accused of undermining Iran's Islamic revolution after television footage appeared to show him watching a female song and dance show.

The ceremony featured Indian and Egyptian dancers and female vocalists. Many were not wearing veils. Women are forbidden to sing and dance before a male audience under Iran's Islamic legal code. Officials are expected to excuse themselves from such engagements when abroad but TV pictures showed Ahmadinejad sitting with President Bashar Assad of Syria and Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian Prime Minister, during last Friday's ceremony in Doha.

Men are forbidden to be in the presence of women signing and dancing - in what century are these nutcases living?

Stand By For the Future

It's coming around in weird and mysterious and exciting ways.

SAN FRANCISCO — Before long, "user-generated content" won't refer only to media, but to just about anything: user-generated jeans, user-generated sports cars, user-generated breakfast meats. This is because setting up a company that designs, makes and globally sells physical products could become almost as easy as starting a blog — and the repercussions would be earthshaking.

That's the future Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos hopes to set in motion with the company's new direction. If you tease out Bezos' plan, you get to a point where a high school cheerleader sitting at home with a laptop could theoretically harness computing power, design capabilities, manufacturing and distribution from around the world, and make and market a cute little pink hot rod that would compete against General Motors.

How tough can it be to beat General Motors at the car game these days? Anyway, wowzer -bring on the inventory-free global sourcing!

From What Dark Times Have We Emerged

For rolling this slag heap out the door with the Charger name on it Chrysler deserved to go out of business.

Holiday Spending Splurge

What could a guy get for hisself this time of year if he had $200? What if he had $20,000? How about $50,000?

What if a fella has £450m?

Liverpool, five-times European champions, have given DIC permission to carry out a complete study of the club's financial records ahead of a possible takeover bid. The proposed deal is expected to include £200m to build a new 60,000-capacity stadium.

DIC owns the Madame Tussauds Group and the Travelodge hotel chain as well as one third of the London Eye. The company is an investment arm of Dubai Holding, which is owned by Dubai Crown Prince and United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Easy Enough For Children to Grasp

Problem is - the house and the senate aren't filled with children, it's filled with Democrats:

(S)ix months later, Pohlad and Co. got their wish. The $2 billion that they saw as necessary for "real prosperity" appeared. Last week, Pawlenty announced a state budget surplus of $2.17 billion. And not one Minnesotan had to pay higher income tax rates.

The surplus sprang, in large part, from a strengthening economy, according to the state Finance Department and news reports. Corporate profits and tax collections have soared to their highest levels in decades.

For the Gang of 200, it's a teachable moment. These folks assumed that to get more money for government programs, you have to raise tax rates. In fact, to get higher revenues, you often need to lower tax rates and stimulate growth.

BCS BS

What a buch of elitist knotheads, filling out all those mean-nothing bowl games like that. Florida to play Ohio State? What a load of crap. Forget the Gators, there is another unbeaten Division 1 team you NCAA frauds.

There are now 32 bowl games, that means you need 64 teams, which means you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel for over-.500 teams.

Your Guiding Light

The Barber Doesn't Cut His Own Hair

But the hair still grow until it covers the eyes. Big media always tells us they uniquely qualified to report and pontificate, but sometimes they are not. In this instance, the Star Tribune can no longer play the "internal matter" games.

Editorial page editor Susan Albright said the writer, Steve Berg, would not write during the review. She cited two editorials, one from Nov. 10 and one from March 27, that contained phrases from or similarities to commentaries in the New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg.

Similarities between a Nov. 10 Star Tribune editorial and Hertzberg's Nov. 6 commentary were first brought to light in a Nov. 11 posting on the Twin Cities-based conservative blog Power Line, long critical of the Star Tribune for having what they say is a liberal bias.

Albright didn't identify Berg until her second editor's note. She said she had decided to identify him so other writers weren't the subject of speculation.

Albright and paper apologist Kate Parry have been trying to sweep this crap under the rug for a while now.