These guys too?
Alright, I've been slow on the uptake before. And I'll admit that I missed the live delivery of Zell Miller's speech at the RNC. I had read good reviews from the Republican side and bad from the rest, but that wasn't exactly a surprise.

Then I read Thomas Nephew and his cites of Ken Layne, Matt Welch and Matthew Yglesias and was astounded by the heat of the denunciations, such as 'The audience was so enthused by his frankly fascistic remarks that at any moment I thought the distinguished Senator might point up and say "see, there, right there is one of these unpatriotic liberal journalists busy abusing the freedoms our soldiers fight to protect -- he must be destroyed for the safety of the Republican" and that Matt Welch and I would need to fend for our lives against the onrushing hordes.'

Good grief, what kind of candyass do you have to be to fear a bunch of Republicans, anyway? And this after that human waste Michael Moore had escaped in one huge jiggling piece a couple nights before. What could Mr. Miller have said to deserve characterizations like "fascistic"?

I knew Yglesias had had too much Kool-Aid lately but until now I'd thought the others remained sane, so I read the speech myself.

Oh, that's it. He dared speak positively of the military, defending the flag, and fearing God. Horrors!

What happened to the left to send them so far off the deep end?
posted by J Bowen at 11:47 PM ~

Fake trees for cell phone towers
See them here.

Via Boing Boing, which continually offers proof that technical savvy and political sophistication don't always coincide.
posted by J Bowen at 11:44 PM ~

The ultimate weapon against terrorism?
I'm agnostic, but I admire faith and courage. And any man who'll build a Christian church in the heart of terrorist country has plenty of both:But that may be the weapon they fear most.
posted by J Bowen at 1:41 PM ~

If they *really* disapproved they'd call them Republicans
This should have happened: Guerrillas and fighters took over the New York Times today and swore vengeance if the Times ever again wrote "guerrillas" or "fighters" to describe people who obviously were "terrorists".

Alas, what really happened is described by Michelle Malkin here.

Note to jihadis - as long as you stick with shooting up kids in schools you needn't fear negative coverage by the NY Times. But heaven help you if you should touch an abortion clinic...
posted by J Bowen at 10:08 PM ~

Busted!
Erik catches a cartoonist making an ass of himself here.
posted by J Bowen at 9:32 PM ~

How to prevent or minimize violence in schools
Hint - it's obvious to anyone but a liberal.
posted by J Bowen at 1:29 PM ~

You can't make this stuff up
Well, maybe you could make it up. But you couldn't get people to actually believe it, could you?

Yes you can.
posted by J Bowen at 1:09 PM ~

Notice
I don't want to hear another peep about discrimination against Muslims unless it starts and ends with LOUD condemnations of all jihadis, like the fiends at the Russian school.

It's long past time to declare a side and stick with it. And IMO anyone who won't condemn the jihadis is on their side.

Any Muslim who isn't one of the radicals might as well start fighting against the radicals anyway. After all, to these killers' eyes you're an infidel too - perhaps even the worst kind. They'll get you sooner or later.

Maybe some are starting to catch on.
posted by J Bowen at 10:23 AM ~

Cocked hat bowling
Looking for a league? You'll probably have to go to St. Charles, MO, just outside St. Louis on I-70. For details check this out.
posted by J Bowen at 10:23 AM ~

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."
I'm thinking even Mary Poppins couldn't sell this. I suppose if you chill it and mix it with some "Old Milwaukee" you'd never know the difference.

The stuff is sterile, and I understand that certain drugs can be recycled via this means. Even so, I'm hoping it doesn't catch on.
posted by J Bowen at 7:02 AM ~

Negative campaigning!
Some people get an idea in their heads and it's bye-bye reason. One of the sillier ones is the idea that negative campaigning is bad. Women in particular seem susceptible to this.

No doubt it would be bad if all campaigning were done this way. But surely no one expects candidates to expose their own weaknesses. And if the people who are crying like babies over the Swift boat ads and the money they got from people connected from Republicans would kindly line up some Democrats to give to them instead, I'm sure the Swift boat veterans would be happy to take that money instead.

And of course George W. Bush is an incumbent. You can see what he has done as President, for good or ill, and the net score is positive. For John Kerry OTOH you have only the claims of a demonstrated flip-flopper who has shown the willingness to betray even his band of brothers on the Swift boats for his pathetic political career. Under those circumstances, why would anyone believe a thing he promises?

Beware of those who complain about negative campaigning. They have something to hide.
posted by J Bowen at 8:07 PM ~

Unfathomable mystery
Being male, I'm not much for clothes shopping. I do it as little as I can. But there is one thing I have noticed.

Large men wear larger sized clothes than smaller men. Are you with me so far?

Large men on average are taller than smaller men. Was that controversial?

Then why on earth are the large sizes always at the bottom of the stack, with the runt sizes on top? Isn't that exactly bass-ackwards?

Who is it in the fashion industry who forces this situation where buying clothes means we bigger men either bend over or get on our knees?

posted by J Bowen at 7:57 PM ~

Imagine what a success would be like
Glenn Reynolds linked to this graph from the Detroit News this weekend showing effects of the Bush tax cuts on the distribution of the tax burden among income groups.

At a flat rate for everyone of course people who make x% more money will pay x% more in taxes, so rich will always be paying more in taxes than poor. That's not good enough for lefties, however - they want a "progressive" tax system in which the next x% in income will cost more than x% in additional taxes. Fairness be damned - the intent is to cause the richer people, who presumably are more able to pay, to pay an even greater share of the tax burden.

No one has ever explained to me just how it is that a public work, welfare payment, missile or other public expenditure is somehow more valuable to the rich than the poor. One could argue that the opposite is true. But lefties figure that unevenly distributed income is somehow unjust, so they offer injustice in return by making people who have more pay more for the sole reason that they have more. Should we do that at grocery stores too? "Paper or plastic?" "What was your adjusted gross income last year?"

Anyway, the lefties screamed bloody murder at Bush's tax rate cuts for upper incomes. Knowing that their knee-jerk followers aren't too sharp mathematically, they equated lower tax rates with lower tax receipts. That's been known to be wrong for centuries, but lefties won't let lies stand in their way - it fits the lies they retail about Republicans so it became their story.

Well look at the charts and see what happened. Despite the lower rates, the rich paid more of the total income tax bill! A Republican extracted more money from the "rich".

One would think that lefties, who always want more money for govt, would take a lesson like this to heart - it's possible to increase receipts at a lower rate. Admittedly it doesn't always work (but the higher tax rates already are, the more likely it will).

But who says lefties want more govt revenue above all? There's another reason for them to keep taxes and other burdens higher than they should - it increases the value of their favors. Why else would a sane businessman give money to lefties?

No, the above isn't too rigorously presented. If you want that there are econobloggers out there who can do a better job - try the Carnival of the Capitalists. But they'll wind up reaching the same conclusions.

One last thing. Notice the headline of the linked article: "Bush fails to get deserved credit for tax cut benefits". What kind of wording is that? As long as he beats that undertaxed rich guy John Kerry, if Bush's "failure" is in getting credit for what he did, I can live with that.
posted by J Bowen at 6:51 AM ~

It beats accounting...
Carlos Barrios Orta is a "wastewater diver" in Mexico City.

....He loves his job. Two years ago, he gave up a career in accounting for this -- which, he noted, says something about accounting.....For this, Barrios earns about $480 a month. It's not much, certainly -- his diving helmet alone cost the city $3,500 -- but it's more than he ever made as an accountant....he's happy to know that while there are millions of divers in the oceans, only four have the privilege of diving in the Mexico City sewer system....

Ya gotta like his attitude.
posted by J Bowen at 6:26 AM ~

Kerry's goons
See this clip for an example.
posted by J Bowen at 10:47 PM ~

Calling John Edwards
"The woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, was horrified to learn that a lab worker who had drawn her blood in 1997 and 1999 had admitted reusing needles.
Several months later, she discovered she was HIV-positive."

If John Edwards wanted a case with some merits he'd be all over this one, instead of extorting millions driving North Carolina obstetricians out of business as he's been doing for years.

If you want to know how things turned out, look here.
posted by J Bowen at 9:59 PM ~

Denial?
Allegedly Laura Branigan had had headaches for a couple of weeks. Now she's dead of an aneurysm.

Maybe the doc wouldn't have caught it. Maybe it would have been inoperable.

Or maybe she'd still be alive if she'd had medical attention.
posted by J Bowen at 6:58 PM ~

Only 4 million
4 million what? Americans that jihadis are to kill. Any more than that would be immoral, according to this.

What kind of people do you think they are, anyway?
posted by J Bowen at 5:23 PM ~

Lunar power
The moon doesn't get enough credit. It gives us light at night when we need it, it doesn't burn anybody, and it even provides power as noted here.
posted by J Bowen at 10:15 PM ~

It comes in pints?
That's where you'll find this item about side effects of Viagra.

Oh, and read the comments and decide for yourself whether Ken Summers is being defensive...
posted by J Bowen at 7:25 PM ~

German Spiked Helmet Evolution
Being an engineer, I'm a form-follows-function kind of guy. Which means that things like the old fashioned spiked helmets once worn by Prussian soldiers were kind of a mystery. Why spend the money on some expensive ornament for the top of the helmet? And if it wasn't an ornament, just what good was it?

What am I rambling about? This - German Spiked Helmet Evolution.

Stolen from The Corner.
posted by J Bowen at 5:29 AM ~

Dump Dick Durbin
Once merely a lovely sentiment, now it's a blog.

Somebody throw this silly arch-partisan hack out of office. IMO the country would be better served if his seat were vacant.
posted by J Bowen at 6:06 AM ~

It's good for you
Yeah, yeah, few things are as annoying as an Objectivist who's had too much of the Kool-Aid. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't read Atlas Shrugged. IMO your education simply isn't complete until you've read it. If nothing else, you'll miss a lot of references to it in blogs, and few fates could be more ignominious than that.

It's a long book, and parts of it drag. But you can get an idea of what it's about starting here.
posted by J Bowen at 12:24 AM ~

I've gotta see this
I've seen or heard of amazing feats of elasticity, dexterity (involving dimes), power (usually involving ping-pong balls) and even musicianship, but now they can even vote?
posted by J Bowen at 11:38 PM ~

That'll teach her to open her mouth
To appreciate just how flip and tasteless that title is, read this.


posted by J Bowen at 11:05 PM ~

Where are all the terrorists?
On NRO
posted by J Bowen at 7:54 PM ~

Psst - wanna be a Webcam girl?
No? Then you'd better avoid this virus.
posted by J Bowen at 5:38 AM ~

Does he ever shut up?