And The 2007 John Lott Men Of The Year Award Goes To....

CHAPARRAL, N.M. (AP) -- Getting a tattoo can be a painful proposition, but usually it's just the needle you have to worry about. Two men trying to trace a loaded .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo accidentally shot themselves, the Otero County Sheriff's Department said Monday.

Robert Glasser and Joey Acosta, both 22, were treated at a hospital in El Paso, Texas, after the shooting Thursday evening in nearby Chaparral.

Authorities said Glasser was struck in the hand when the gun accidentally went off, and Acosta was hit in the left arm. Their injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

I'm only surprised they missed the testicles.

The 2007 Roger Ailes Year In Review Quiz

Another year over, and one day closer to death, or something like that. But you can waste a little of the little time you've got left remembering the events of the previous twelve months that I somehow managed to remember as well.

Please use a number two pencil and show your work. There is no time limit, but I'll try to post the answers next Sunday.

From all of me at Roger Ailes, thank you for reading. I'll see you next year.

Part I -- Dr. Phil In The Blank

(One point for correctly completing the quote, one bonus point for identifying the speaker)

1. "I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of _________ since then. More than two times."

2. "_________, I want more iced tea."

3. "Rudy Giuliani, there's only three things he mentions in a sentence - a noun and a verb and _________ and I mean, there's nothing else."

4. "Well, Mandela's _________."

5. "I have neither the _________ nor _________ _________ to figure out who's right."

6. "I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, _________, etc."

7. "Positioned them, I don't know. I don't know at the time. I'm a fairly _________ guy."

8. "In Iran, we don't have _________, like in your country."

9. "I was under the impression that that was a picture of a tiny little _________, and I thought it was you."

10. "Don't __________ _________, __________!"

Part II -- Who Said It?

(One point for each correct answer)

Note: All quotes are from 2007 newsmakers, but the quotes are not all from 2007.

1. "No raise money, no get bonus."

2. "We have a gun in one of our homes. It's not owned by me,it's owned by my son, but I've always considered it sort of mine."

3. "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

4. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

5. "Brazil is a country, very eclectic in nature, you cannot look at anybody and say they are Brazilian. You have no idea."

6. "Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percentof the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

7. "I built that border fence in San Diego."

8. "Thank God George W. Bush is our President."

9. "Hitler and his supporters were Satanists and homosexuals. That's just a true statement."

10. "I wanted to be sure that the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action."

11. "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

Bonus quote about a 2007 newsmaker (1 point extra credit): "Oh, shit! That kid? He's dumb as hell."

Part III -- Grand Old Police Blotter: The Year in Republicrime

(One point for each correct answer)

Match the wingnut with the criminal charges/conviction against him or her. Some of the distinctions are fine ones, but there is only one correct answer for each malefactor.

As always, the fact that a Republican isn't on this list only means he or she hasn't been caught yet. (Yes, that means you, Abu Gonzales.)

1. Bob Allen

2. I. Lewis Libby

3. George Ryan

4. Thomas Ravenel

5. Conrad Black

6. Larry Craig

7. David H. Brooks

8. Michael Flory

9. Jeff Neilsen

10. Brent Wilkes

11. Italia Federici

12. J. Stephen Griles

13. Bernard Kerik

14. Glenn Murphy, Jnr.

15. Kyle "Dusty" Foggo

-o-0-o-

a. committing lewd acts on minors

b. money laundering, bribery, wire fraud

c. perjury, obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI

d. solicitation of undercover police officer for prostitution

e. fraud, conspiracy, money laundering

f. conspiracy to possess cocaine, intent to distribute cocaine

g. insider trading, fraud and tax evasion

h. obstruction of justice/Senate investigation

i. disorderly conduct

j. felony sexual battery

k. conspiracy, tax fraud, making false statements to White House

l. fraud, obstruction of justice

m. racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, lying to the FBI, obstructing the Internal Revenue Service and filing false tax returns

n. criminal deviate conduct

o. tax evasion, obstruction of justice

Part IV -- The Year In Right-Wing Sex

(One point for each correct answer)

Match the far right family man -- or Mickey Kaus -- with the object of his erection affection.

Allegedly.

1. Reverend Gary Aldridge

2. Senator David Vitter

3. Representative Richard Curtis

4. Reverend Ted Haggard

5. Blogger John Hinderaker

6. Senator Larry Craig

7. Billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife

8. State Senator Bob Allen

9. Blogger Mickey Kaus

10. Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias

-o-0-o-

a. Scary black men

b. Paid (female) escorts

c. Airport restrooms

d. Depends (on who you ask)

e. Meth, male prostitutes

f. Two wetsuits, rubberized male underwear, scuba diver's mask

g. He likes to watch

h. Corndogs

i. Adultery at Doug's Motel, $28 for three hours

j. Sex in pornographic bookstores while wearing red stockings and black sequined lingerie

Part V - Multiple Guess

(One point for each correct answer)

1. According to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated "I don't recall" or a variation thereof how many times when testilying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2007 regarding corrupt firings by the Justice Department?

a. 17
b. 34
c. 54
d. 64
e. I don't remember

2. Vice President Al Gore won win which award in 2007:

a. The Nobel Peace Prize
b. The Academy Award
c. The Grammy
d. The Emmy
e. (a) and (d)
f. All of the above

3. The convicted criminal who served the most jail time in 2007 was:

a. Conrad Black
b. Paris Hilton
c. Kiefer Sutherland
d. "Scooter" Libby
e. Nicole Richie

4. Which of the following is not a quote from Liberal Fascism: I Heart Hitler, by Jonah Goldberg:

a. "The Jew is the white male of liberal fascism."
b. "The Nazis took food very, very seriously."
c. "Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams write in The Pink Swastika that 'the National Socialist revolution and the Nazi party were animated and dominated by militaristic homosexuals, pederasts, pornographers, and sadomasochists.'
d. "[Fascism] takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure."
e. "For at some point, it is necessary to throw down the gauntlet, to draw a line in the sand, to set a boundary, to cry at long last, 'Enough is enough.'"

5. Which of the following did George W. Bush not say in 2007:

a. "I want to thank General Alberto Gonzales for his dedication and service to the White House, and to me, and, most of all, to his party."
b. "I think that the Vice President is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality."
c. "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."
d. "I would suggest moving back. I'm about to crank this sucker up."

6. Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz cited a blog with only one post as a "typical blog reaction" concerning which presidential candidate national politician, in order to call that candidate politician a bitch? (Note: As pointed out by the Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog, in comments, Howie's target was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. My post on this subject was the closest I came to "breaking" a story this year, and I can't even get it right. A free point for everyone, and 25 points for TGOJLD.)

a. Barack Obama
b. Hillary Clinton
c. Rudolph Giuliani
d. Fred Thompson
e. Ron Paul
f. Mike Gravel

7. Roger Ailes, the blogger, was linked to which public figure by the tabloids in 2007?

a. Rihanna
b. Nicolas Sarkozy
c. Kylie Minogue
d. Drew Peterson
e. Judith Nathan
f. None of the above.

8. Which of the following did Chris Matthews say in 2007?

a. Can you smell the English leather on [Fred Thompson], the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved?
b. "[Willard Romney] looks like a million bucks. Everything is perfect. Everything about him is perfect...."
c. "John McCain, who goes his own way and is very much the maverick, as we know."
d. "[Hillary Clinton]'s usually standing in front of the camera, and she's clapping, like she's Chinese."
e. "Could you get a little closer to the camera? .... No, you're beautiful. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You're a knockout."
f. All of the above.

9. Who said the following: "When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup."

a. John Derbyshire
b. Thomas Sowell
c. General David Petraeus
d. Pat Buchanan
e. Jonah Goldberg
f. Travis Bickle

10. According to conservative estimates, the cost of the Invasion of Iraq is:

a. More than 3,900 American soldiers killed
b. More than 28,000 American soldiers wounded
c. More than 80,000 Iraqi civilians killed
d. More than 474 billion dollars for American prosecution of the invasion
e. "A small price," according to Representative John Bohner (R-OH)
f. All of the above

Why anyone is surprised, let alone outraged, by The New York Times' hiring of William Kristol is beyond me.

Commentary has John Podhoretz tied up for the forseeable future, the L.A. Times has a contract with Doughy P., and they couldn't get liability insurance to cover Ann Althouse. Kristol was their default. This is the paper that gave space to Bill Safliar for decades (and still does on occassion, including, I suspect, next Monday), gave Sam Tannenhaus the book review, employed and defended Judy Miller, and still employs John Tierney. Bill Keller is as much a liberal as Pat Buchanan's right nut (maybe less so, if you count Iraq). The paper wastes space with no-weights like MoDo and Gail Collins and deadenders like Friedman and Nick Kristof, who will die in their spaces (of self-satisfaction) long after I'm to old, blind or dead to care.

Nondiscriminatory wedding announcements for the well-connected and hip-hop reviews don't make a paper the liberal media.

Update: Nor does this shit.

Republican Family Values: The Old Sodomy Defense Edition

By now, news of a law and order Republican family man who commits adultery with a subordinate is just another "Dog Licks Balls" story. Here's the latest:

The issue took on immediate political dimensions on Thursday when Mr. Rosenthal, a 61-year-old Republican who has announced he will run for a third term [as Harris County, Texas District Attorney] next year, attacked the disclosure of the messages as "bare-knuckle politics."

The messages, which had been turned over to lawyers in the course of a federal civil rights lawsuit that alleges misconduct involving Harris County sheriff's deputies, contained Mr. Rosenthal's professions of love and longing for the woman, Kerry Stevens, with whom he has acknowledged having an affair during his first marriage.

In one message dated Aug. 10, Mr. Rosenthal wrote, "The very next time I see you I want to kiss you behind your right ear."

A day earlier, he had sent Ms. Stevens an e-mail message saying, "You own my heart whether you want or not."

What a dumbass. But the interesting part of the story involves the skanky old goat's attempts to squelch public disclosure of a public office's e-mails:

In that brief filed on Dec. 19, the Ibarra brothers’ lawyer, Lloyd E. Kelley, claimed that Mr. Rosenthal had deleted at least 2,500 e-mail messages after they should have been turned over to the court in the process of legal discovery after Nov. 16.

In his court papers, Mr. Rosenthal has claimed that his e-mail messages came under "zones of privacy" involving personal conduct recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case in which the court overturned the state's anti-sodomy law.

I'll bet that's the first and last time that cracker ever cites a right to privacy in his office's legal filings.

But Mr. Kelley's brief says that it was Mr. Rosenthal who appeared before the court to argue for Texas.

Heh. Cracker better hope the second wife isn't as big a death penalty enthusiast as he is.

You'd think a reviewer describing a "deliciously amusing" book, ostensibly written by an author of "witty intelligence," would manage to quote one amusing or witty sentence from the book in his review.

You'd be wrong.

The Late Late Show

Coming next month: late night television programming will rival the output of Dennis Miller and Greg Gutfeld in terms of sheer crapitude. Not that Letterman and Conan are unfunny hacks (or right-wing hacks), but they'll be working without writers, won't be writing any material themselves and won't have much in the way of entertaining guests.

Despite going back to work amid a strike by the Writers Guild of America, the late-night hosts, all of whom are WGA members, have agreed to respect work rules set down by the union. That means, in essence, they can't write material that their striking writing staffs would have produced for them.

...

The shows are also likely to be missing another staple -- glamorous, big-name celebrities pushing their latest movies and TV shows. Members of the Screen Actors Guild have pledged solidarity with the writers and are likely to boycott the shows.

...

The best guess is that the shows will patch together guest lists comprising athletes, authors, pundits and the semi-famous. There will likely be more musical acts, and more talk than comedy.

The immediate future of late-night TV may be on display on the Carson Daly-hosted "Last Call" on NBC. Since returning Dec. 4, Daly, a non-WGA member, has booked reality-show contestants, NFL great Jerry Rice, mixed-martial arts fighter Jimmy Smith and model Karolina Kurkova on his half-hour program.

They could interview bloggers, I suppose, but the ones worth hearing from wouldn't cross the picket lines.

Not That Again

While cramming for the 2007 Roger Ailes Year-In-Review Quiz, take a break and enjoy the 2007 King William's College General Knowledge Paper (.pdf file). It doesn't have any Republicans shagging sheep, but it does reference "the corrupt, but charismatic Kurtz."

Happy Holidays From Your Pal, Roger

2000 miles
Is very far through the snow
I'll think of you
Wherever you go

He's gone
2000 miles
It's very far
The snow is falling down
Gets colder day by day
I miss you

I can hear people singing
It must be Christmastime
I hear people singing
It must be Christmastime

The Rich You Will Always Have With You

Various and sundry wingnuts are up in arms that a low-income victim of Hurricane Katrina has what they claim "appear[s]" to be an "absolutely enormous flat screen television" in her subsidized apartment. This woman and her teevee, it seems, retroactively vindicate the concept of welfare queens that Ronnie Reagan so courageously advanced back in the day.

To date, I have not located these wingnuts' posts trumpeting proof of the corrupt CEO and the war profiteer, as evidenced by this article:

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) -- The former head of the leading supplier of body armor to the U.S. military, facing federal charges in an alleged fraud scheme, may be freed after two months in jail but only under house arrest, a judge has ruled.

And instead of the usual bail posting, David H. Brooks must convince prosecutors that they have full control of his millions in assets so he cannot use them to flee, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert said Friday.

Prosecutors have accused the founder and former chief executive of DHB Industries Inc. of refusing to disclose the location of millions of dollars held overseas, including $4 million recently sent to spiritual leaders in the African nation of Senegal.

The spiritual leaders were paid to pray for Brooks' acquittal, according to testimony at a hearing Friday, but Assistant U.S. Attorney John Martin characterized the expenditures as "quasi-religious."

Brooks' attorney, Paul Shechtman, would say only that "no money was sent to Senegal to hide assets."

...

Prosecutors say he garnered more than $185 million by falsely inflating the value of the inventory of DHB's top product, a vest designed to withstand rifle fire and shrapnel, and then selling company stock after the doctored accounting boosted its price.

Imagine the big-ass teevee you could get for $185 million.

What sort of fellow is David "Non-Bobo" Brooks?

Brooks and Hatfield also are accused of failing to report more than $10 million in bonus payments to themselves and other DHB employees to the Internal Revenue Service.

Brooks also is accused of using DHB funds to buy or lease luxury vehicles for himself and family members, and to pay for vacations, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, country club bills and family celebrations.

Prosecutors say he threw lavish bar and bat mitzvahs for his children in which entertainers like Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the Eagles performed.

Brooks, who owns more than 100 horses and races them at harness tracks around the country, also used DHB funds for his private horse racing business, prosecutors said.

But that's not all!

Over the course of 2005, the Marines and Army recalled a total of 23,000 vests – all of them produced by DHB -- after an investigation by the Marine Corps Times revealed that the vests had failed ballistics tests for stopping 9 mm bullets. The exposé showed that Pentagon officials had dismissed repeated warnings by inspectors. In one instance, army ballistics expert James MacKiewicz alerted higher-ups of "major quality assurance deficiencies" by DHB and recommended rejecting certain lots of vests and "disciplinary action against the contractor."

The military maintains that the recall was merely to calm fears stoked by the Marine Corps Times exposé -- fears they claim are unfounded because subsequent tests on a sample of the vests found nothing wrong. And while there were rumors that the Pentagon Inspector General's office might conduct an investigation into the faulty vest affair, to date there is no sign that one is underway. Instead, the Defense Department is focusing on alleged financial wrongdoing at DHB -- a matter further from their own hands.

I'd feel confident in body armor that passed one out of two sampling tests -- nothing in life is guaranteed! And Brooks seems like the sort who'd never put his own interests before others.

I doubt this news will cause the wingnuts to sign on to John Edwards' Two Americas campaign. But perhaps the fact that the Senegalese spiritual leaders on the receiving end of Brooks' generosity are "Muslim holy men" will cause the nuts to wake up and soil themselves.

Grosse Pointe Blankety-Blank

Shouldn't the criticism of Willard be coming from the right? Why would they support a man who brags about his family's ties to, according to one of the wingnutosphere's most respected and successful journalists, the husband of a known communist?

I'll bet Willard never marched with Alan Keyes in the Bud Billiken Day Parade.

Tucker Faye Carlson finds employment after MSNBC, at an appropriate outlet.

Quote:

Tucker Carlson is an anchor on MSNBC.

Truer words never spoken.

Mitt Romney

He went varmint hunting with Medgar Evers.

He fought at Stonewall ... on the side of the N.Y.P.D.

He liberated the death camps with Ronald Reagan.

Mitt Romney, the Photoshop President.

Dumb Hucks

The geniuses at The Corner are wondering if the Reverend Huck is a Manchurian Candidate:

The reader was convinced that none other than Bill and Hill were Huckabee's ultimate backers. Given how divisive Huckabee is, how well they know know the passions of the Evangelical community (and deep anger there, if my inbox is any guide), and the magnitude of money in Bill's "library fund," well, it's as plausible an answer as any to "how the hell did this happen?"

It seems the doctors who performed all of Hillary's abortions and eradicated the distinguishing characteristic from the Clenis implanted a microchip in the Reverend when he went in for his latest round of liposuction.

Apparently, there's some sort of controversy brewing about unprotected teenage premarital sex resulting in conception.

I blame the G.O.P., for holding up Fred Thompson as a role model. At least Ron and Nancy Reagan waited until their 30s to engage in unprotected extramarital sex.

Libertarian Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Pat Buchanan To Ron Paul

The sources for this are Kevin McCullough, the Little Green Genociders and actual Nazis, one of the biggest collections of dipshits you'll find in these United States. So who knows.* But they're accusing Ro Paul and his staffers of consorting with white racist groups with ties to Pat Buchanan, the late Sam Francis and Joe Sobran (who is either dead or alive; I can't be bothered). If Paul was serious candidate, this would definitely merit scrutiny. Since he's not, it just makes his supporters' efforts raise 6 million sound creepy.

* To be fair to Paul, McCullough claims that the white supremacists' alleged meeting place, a Thai restaurant, comped Paul for some meals. ("Looks like the eatery even comped Ron Paul's lunch as a campaign contribution.") What his link actually shows is that Paul's campaign paid the restaurant $314. (Look up the words "payee" and "disbursements," dude.) You don't get much dumber than our Kev.