If You Drink Don’t Drive

...do the watermelon crawl...

Light posting for a while as I try to work out my back and shoulder problems.

Remembering Family Matters

I remember Family Matters fondly. It usually made me laugh hysterically, despite the fact that the end result was a predictable disaster, with Steve Urkel saying in his high nasally voice “Did I do that?” UrkelNet is devoted to the television show Family Matters, and the comedic icon found therein, specifically Steve Urkel, who was chosen as one of the top 100 television characters of all time. On this delightful website, you can find out everything you wanted to know about Urkel and the rest of the characters. Why you can even find the lyrics to the Urkel Dance (which apparently Bea Arthur parodied at The American Comedy awards)! What more could one ask for?

I already knew that the Urkel character was originally planned for one episode only, as a date for Laura Winslow (Kellie Shanygne Williams). I did not know that at the end of the episode the audience chanted “Urkel, Urkel, Urkel” and Steve became a regular part of the cast, launching Family Matters into the top 20. I fondly remember the preceding episode in which Laura sold a quilt that had been in the family for 200 years, not knowing its sentimental value. This was one of the most touching television episodes I have ever seen.

On a sadder note, I also learned that actress Michelle Thomas, who played Steve’s love interest Myra Monkhouse, passed away from cancer at age 29, just months after the last episode of Family Matters aired. Michelle (or Myra) was so full of energy and life on the show, whose enthusiasm for Polka dances and bagpipe recitals was memorable. Farewell, Michelle.

From the department of: I have too much time on my hands so I’m going to make a ridiculous website

The Presurfer points us to: Haggis Hunting for Beginners. This “learned treatise” informs us that “serious hunters therefore wear skirts (calling them ‘kilts’ fools no one lads) — and only skirts — in order to frighten the Haggis off.”

Karissa points us to: The Traffic Cone Preservation Society. Says Karissa, tongue-in-cheek (I think): “To think that we overlook these useful, contributing members of our ecosystem… What a shame. Please join me in honoring them by saluting the traffic cones in your neighborhood (just don’t get close enough to run them over…).”

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evidence

Summarizing Walter Pincus: during 2003, prior to the invasion of Iraq, the various United States intelligence agencies did not believe there was a case for war against Iraq, and every single piece of evidence put forth by the Bush Administration was believed by the intelligence agencies to be either incorrect or extremely doubtful.

Pictures!

Hungaro posted this very unusual photograph of some hydrants. I thought it was a very striking photo.

And then I remembered one I had taken which was somewhat similar.

It is the metalwork on the CSX Westshore Branch railroad bridge over the Genesee River in Chili, NY. Your comments are welcomed.

Perfect Game

Little Leaguer pitches perfect game. Not bad!

Strikes out all 18 batters! Wow!

And she’s a girl!

Sith!

I remember going to see the very first Star Wars movie way back in 1977. It was truly a fascinating movie, as director George Lucas created a whole new universe that the rest of humanity had never imagined. At that level, the movie was very creative and successful.

Sadly, the plot sucked. And that to me is the bottom line. If the plot sucks, I really can’t enjoy the movie. I couldn’t understand the huge popularity of the movie, and I could not relate to people who fanatically immersed themselves in the Star Wars mystique.

From that day in 1977 until now, I have ignored the huge phenomenon known as Star Wars. Tonight, Revenge of the Sith opens. I hope all of you waiting in line to see it will enjoy it as much as I disliked the original. But I won’t be there. I have not seen another Star Wars movie, and I have no interest in this one.

Iraq, Condi and Newsweek

River, a girl in Iraq, has some interesting comments.

Iraqis think Condoleezza Rice is a vampire. Says River: “At home, we fondly refer to her as The Vampire. She’s such a contrast to Bush — he simply looks stupid. She, on the other hand, looks utterly evil.”

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“The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations — bodies being found here and there. It’s somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. … It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.”

<...snip...>

“We’ve been watching the protests about the Newsweek article with interest. I’m not surprised at the turnout at these protests — the thousands of Muslims angry at the desecration of the Quran. What did surprise me was the collective shock that seems to have struck the Islamic world like a slap in the face. How is this shocking? It’s terrible and disturbing in the extreme — but how is it shocking? After what happened in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons how is this astonishing? American jailers in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown little respect for human life and dignity — why should they be expected to respect a holy book?

“Now Newsweek have retracted the story — obviously under pressure from the White House. Is it true? Probably? We’ve seen enough blatant disregard and disrespect for Islam in Iraq the last two years to make this story sound very plausible. On a daily basis, mosques are raided, clerics are dragged away with bags over their heads? Several months ago the world witnessed the execution of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque. Is this latest so very surprising?”

“Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it’s not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It’s about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That’s not to say that all troops disrespect Islam — some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.”

The Bush Plan For Social Insecurity

President Bush recently promoted the so-called “Pozen Plan” to fix destroy Social Security. What does the author, Robert Pozen, think? Some quotes:

“I would advise the president to say that carve-out accounts are no longer required.”

Talk of an “ownership society,” Pozen said Wednesday, is “a weak basis” for arguing for an overhaul.

Economist Brad DeLong also has some revealing comments about the Bush plan.

It is a clown show, an episode of stupidity of a jaw-dropping magnitude:

1. The administration’s Social Security gurus shove Bush out there with talking points saying that we need to act now to pass the Bush plan, because starting in 2017 Social Security will start taking resources away from the rest of the government and that’s a very bad thing — and then they roll out a plan in which Social Security starts taking resources away from the rest of the government in 2011.

2. The administration’s Social Security gurus shove Bush out there with talking points saying that passing the Bush plan is essential because if we don’t the Social Security trust fund balance will hit zero in 2041, and big benefit cuts will then be necessary — and then they roll out a plan in which the Social Security trust fund balance hits zero in 2030.

3. The administration’s Social Security gurus shove Bush out there with talking points about the importance of restoring actuarial balance to Social Security — and then they roll out a plan which closes less than a third of the 75-year funding gap (and refuse to specify the plan in sufficient detail to allow anyone to do a longer-run analysis).

Wind Up Your Radios!

The Doctor is IN! And thanks to the nutcase who runs TheDoctorDementoShow.com, you can listen to 1,300 different broadcasts of The Doctor Demento Show, dating back to 1972. That’s over 95% of all the Dr. Demento broadcasts!

Can’t find the good Doctor on your local radio station? No problemo! Just check TheDoctorDementoShow.com, where the latest broadcasts are placed online shortly after the broadcast.

Want to know more about your favorite demented artist, for example, Marvin the Paranoid Android, or know when his songs were played on the air? No problemo! Just check TheDoctorDementoShow.com!

Wnat to hear the first radio broadcast by a young man named Alfred Yankovic, later to be known as Weird Al? No problemo! Check TheDoctorDementoShow.com!

Bush Administration Fails To Support The Troops

Back from Iraq, Cpl. Richard Twohig is having a difficult time (link via TalkLeft).

Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.

“I don’t feel like a man anymore. I can’t do normal stuff,” Twohig said.

He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.

The Army has determined that Twohig is less than 30 percent disabled, so he gets no monthly pension from the Army and is eligible only for Veterans Administration health care, but no health care for his family. Had the Army determined that Twohig is more than 30 percent disabled, he would get a monthly disability check and health care for his family. Lawyers say this is a common strategy by the Army and the lawyers are reluctant to take on the case because they almost never win.

Why won’t the Bush Administration support the troops?

Birdcam 2005

Every year since 1998, a peregrine falcon named Mariah has returned to the nestbox at Kodak Office (Rochester, NY) to raise her brood. This year, five eyasses (baby falcons) have hatched, and we see Mariah here feeding them. Follow Mariah, Kaver (the father) and the five young eyasses as they grow up and learn to fly; pictures are updated every few minutes.

The Bush Social Insecurity Plan

President Bush’s latest irresponsible and extreme proposal for Social Insecurity is being portrayed by some as a plan to preserve the benefits for those who can least afford it. They don’t want you to know that it represents a massive cut in benefits for the majority of America’s worers. Publius, in an excellent post, points out many big problems with the way the Bush plan is portrayed, including the problem of hypocrisy:

A third objection I have is a more general one, but it’s related to one above. It’s this notion that Bush’s economic policies can be portrayed as populist, pro-working-families measures. Bush has – from day one – set out to shift the tax burden to the middle class. In John Edwards’ underused phrase, he’s shifting it from wealth to work. But it’s more than just taxes – he is shifting costs from wealth to work too. That’s the common thread that runs through the massive income tax cuts, the estate tax repeal, Social Security reform, the cuts in Medicaid and other services, the bankruptcy bill, and class action reform. These are all about shifting costs (taxes, health care costs, etc.) from those most able to pay them to those least able to pay them.

Kansas Kangaroo Kourt

How are things going in the Kansas Board of Education’s “show-trial” falsely pitting evolution against Intelligent Design Creationism? Not well, according to several posts at Panda’s Thumb.

In “The Dog Ate My Homework”, Reed Cartwright reports that several pro-IDC witnesses admitted that they have not read the proposed state regulations that they are testifying against.

In “Clueless Creationist Testifies for Kansas BoE”, Nick Matzke reports how a leader of the IDC movement doesn’t really know the issues:

During the hearing, Irigonegaray asked Thaxton whether he accepted the theory that humans and apes had a common ancestor.

“Personally, I do not,” Thaxton said. “I’m not an expert on this. I don’t study this.”

Matzke then includes numerous widely available pictures and graphs that support common ancestry, including graphs showing hominid skull sizes for the last several million years; hominid skull photos; comparison of human and chimpanzee genes; evidence from embryology; protein sequence similarities; similarity between human and ape genomes; human embryos with atavistic tails.

Matzke also reports on the brilliant 21st century science that Kansas students would learn if taught by the IDC proponents.

“Can you tell us, sir, how old you believe the Earth is?” the lawyer, Pedro Irigonegaray, asked William S. Harris, a chemist, who helped write the proposed changes to the state standards.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Harris replied. “I think it’s probably really old.”

Finally, to sum up the relative accomplishments of science and Intelligent Design, courtesy of Panda’s Thumb:

The Paris Hilton Tax Cut, Part III

Cartoon by Ann Telnaes. Link via The Sideshow.

Impeachment, One More Time

I’m glad to see I am not the only person calling for the impeachment of President Bush, now that memos have turned up in which Bush, in a closed meeting with the British, in which the British were told by Bush that “The intelligence and facts were being fixed…” Greg Palast also calls for impeachment, and reprints the entire “smoking gun” memo. He further wonders why the United States media refuses to cover this story. The source of the information is a formerly top-secret British government memo, one which is corroborated by the Blair administration and thus is an unimpeachable source of information. This is not some crazy conspiracy theory that the media should ignore, nor is it a conspiracy theory that more and more evidence seems to be supporting like the one how the Presidential election results in Ohio were rigged. I guess when an administration makes up facts to send this country to war, the media doesn’t care; when a White House intern gives oral sex to the President, that is front page news.

Evolution — It’s Not Just For Breakfast Any More

Updates

• Creationism bills rejected by Alabama legislature
• Cobb County loses appeal to allow anti-evolution stickers on textbooks
• Kansas Kangaroo Court convenes, legitimate scientists boycott this nonsense
  
• Ten shockingly misleading questions on evolution that are easily answered

Impeachment

In by-gone days, a President was impeached because he received oral sex from a White House intern, and then lied about it. Lying was certainly unacceptable behavior from a President of the United States, but removal from office seemed a rather severe penalty to many people, including a majority of the United States Senate, where the President would not be convicted of any of the articles of impeachment.

Today we find out that President Bush decided to manipulate the intelligence findings to support Bush’s plan to invade Iraq. In other words, war was inevitable, regardless of the facts. The Bush administration told Tony Blair it would lie if it had to in order to support its case for invading Iraq. So to sum up the pertinent details:

• Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, but the Bush administration repeatedly claimed that it did have such weapons, knowing full well that that evidence was made-up.
• Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda, but the Bush administration repeatedly claimed that it did have such weapons. In fact, the intelligence community did not believe there was a co-operative relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
  

The effect on the country’s fortunes when a President lied about having oral sex with an intern was nil. The effect on the country’s fortunes when President Bush and his administration lied and made up intelligence about Iraq is overwhelming.

• Over 1500 Americans killed.
• Over 10,000 Americans wounded, many of them maimed or suffering from incurable nervous system damage.
• Nearly $300 billion dollars spent or pledged to be spent on the war and post-war efforts
  
• Countless Iraqis killed or wounded
• A quagmire in Iraq that has cost the United States much of its good-will internationally

If ever there was a case for impeachment, this is it.