2007 archive

How strange is this?

Everyone knows suspicious neighbors. But when a Penn student pumped a dozen pistol rounds into his neighbors’ apartment door – shooting off its lock and later telling police he thought they were Indian spies – he took neighborhood nosiness to extremes yesterday.

Police said the University of Pennsylvania law student, whom they declined to identify pending his arraignment on charges of aggravated assault and other offenses, lived in the same West Philadelphia building as the victims, two graduate students from India studying biomedical engineering at Drexel University.

“It’s a bizarre case. You have people who are all in higher education, and you would think they would be open-minded… and accepting of each other’s cultures. But something triggered in this guy’s mind that [the neighbors] were not here for the right reasons,” Lt. John Walker said.

Fire in the hole:

A man splashed lighter fluid on a stranger who fought him off with a metal cane, then used the lighter to set two women on fire, police and witnesses said.

Flames broke out on the women’s clothing and hair, but no serious injuries were reported. Paul Alexander Pearson, 50, was arrested for investigation of assault, police Officer Debra Brown said.

The assault in downtown Seattle apparently began when the attacker ran up behind Gus Jones, 82, and dumped lighter fluid down his back at lunchtime Wednesday.

Jones felt someone grab his shoulder, smelled the fumes and hollered. Then, “I had to rap them with my cane,” he told The Seattle Times. Jones, recovering from a broken hip, fell to the pavement but was not set afire.

The Wing Bowl has trouble going national:

With 25 contestants and 20,000 onlookers, Philadelphia’s annual bacchanal is among the biggest eating contests in the country, drawing bellyfuls of local advertisers, including Apple Vacations, Steven Singer Jewelers, and the Matt Blatt auto dealerships. But like similar events it struggles to attract national ad dollars.

The big boys, it seems, just don’t have an appetite for competitive eating.

My school had a laundry service.

They picked up the clothes once a week, removed the buttons, and returned the clothes, neatly wrapped in a brown-paper wrapper, a couple of days later.

Ding! Time to throw your drawers in the dryer. That’s the message University of Iowa students can now receive by e-mail. Thanks to software installed along with new high-efficiency washers last fall, the school’s dormitory residents can receive e-mail alerts when their laundry cycles have finished.

(Actually, I never lost a button, but they did starch everything. Everything.)

He’s a uniter, not a divider:

Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing – a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia.

Are you a realist?

Do you know the difference between truth and lies?

Do you believe that those who lay their lives on the line should do so for truth, not for lies?

Do you know what the Founders intended?

Have you read the Constitution of the United States of America and understand what it says?

Then click here.

Addendum:

It really doesn’t have anything to do with “Liberal” or “Conservative.”

Someone’s calling him- or herself a “Conservative” (or a “Liberal,” or whatever) does not give that someone a right to lie,

lie,

lie,

like a blankety-blank mattress.

I like number 28 best.

Kieth Olbermann exposes the lies: “You showed me the same baby twice and said it was twins.”

With a tip to Dan Froomkin.

Just got back from celebrating at Tangier. Second Son came down from Joisey to join us.

Drinking conservatively is not an option.

The highlight, though, was meeting another Slackware devote.

Via Dick Polman (emphasis added):

“The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.”

Wow! Check this out:

Phillybits.

Austin Cline on Bushism:

One of the most curious ideological contradictions to be produced (or perhaps merely revealed) by the Republican War in Iraq involves the expressed need to stifle liberty at home in order to spread liberty abroad. If you look around, you’ll find this contradiction arising time after time in a variety of situations. The failure of all other stated reasons for invading and occupying Iraq has generally forced Republicans to rely almost exclusively on “fighting terrorists” by spreading the values of liberty and democracy abroad. Many of these same Republicans, however, have never been good friends of liberty at home, and they see their war as a means for reinforcing their power over others’ liberties in America.

George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

And unlikely pair, but so argues Henry Porter in the Guardian:

There is a striking likeness in the expressions of George W Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran as they confront each other over the issues of uranium enrichment and dominance in the Middle East. It falls somewhere between the chastened and defiant playground bully.

This is unsurprising: though not political equivalents, the two are really quite similar. Both had little experience of government or international affairs before being carried to power on a tide of populist, religious conservatism. Neither travelled abroad much, but they both had certain views about the world and the destiny of their nations. They had all the answers, yet there was also a dangerous lack of seriousness in them which has now earned them both the scorn of their people and rebuffs from their elders.

A fascinating analysis of fanaticism and failure, well worth a read.

Garbage.

On the Media dissects it with the help of Bill Arkin.

Go their site or listen here.

I’ll link to the transcript when it becomes available.

Addendum, 1/31/2007

The transcript is here.

Nothing emphasizes the moral, spiritual, and intellectual bankruptcy of a certain segment of the right wing more than their quick resort to playground name-calling.

The Post calls them on it:

IT’S BECOME a fad among some conservatives to refer to the junior senator from Illinois by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

(snip)

Mr. Obama has never tried to hide his past or his family name: He has written about being educated at a predominantly Muslim school. His father, a non-practicing Muslim, was Barack Hussein Obama Sr. His grandmother is Sara Hussein Obama.

The senator, however, does not use his middle name. Those who take pains to insert it when referring to him are trying, none too subtly, to stir up scary images of menacing terrorists and evil dictators. They embarrass only themselves

But I don’t think the Post is quite accurate in claiming that “(t)hey embarrass only themselves.”

In order to suffer embarassment, persons must first have standards and be capable of shame.

Yeah.

Right.

Whatever.

. . . is for the pig snouts birds.

In the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a visit from Prince Charles is currently inflicted on the populace.

He is the first English royal visitor since Prince Edward, who couldn’t tell his Biddles from his scrapples:

The prince spoke of “eating biddle for breakfast and meeting so many citizens named Scrapple,” said the Daily Evening Bulletin.

(Once you Habbersett, you will never Rapa again.)

Phillybits has a sound that the younger generation has never heard.

Sonic booms.

. . . doesn’t go down well in Pennsylvania:

Dozens of domestic turkeys were staked to bales of straw and used as live targets at an archery contest, according to authorities who charged a sportsmen’s club with violating animal-cruelty laws.

The birds were secured at their feet but able to flap their wings as participants who paid $12 got three attempts to hit one with an arrow. Those who drew blood won the birds, said Christine Wilson, a Lancaster County assistant district attorney.

Here.