imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Saturday, April 30, 2005
POOP DECK
Why is any money being paid to environmental groups (that's plural)? Did the sewage get dumped on them? If that's the case, then the band deserves a medal.
Band settles waste lawsuit
The Dave Matthews Band has agreed to pay environmental groups $200,000 to settle a lawsuit after its tour bus emptied its septic tanks on an open sightseeing boat under a bridge in the Chicago River.
More than 100 people were on the boat when they were showered with waste last summer.
Driver Stefan Wohl was sentenced to probation and community service after he pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and discharging contaminates. He also was fired.
"Although the band members were not on the bus when the incident took place, we have always said that if it was our bus we would take responsibility," said band spokesman John Vlautin. "That is exactly what we're doing today."
The agreement with Attorney General Lisa Madigan does not settle several personal-injury lawsuits that have been filed.
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WHATABOUTERY
 | Stories from my basement: This shirt was a man's shirt and totally unknown to me. I wear a medium...this was a large. My shirts all have my logo on the chest..this one had one of those bumper flap women who are naked and silhouetted with their knees up in the air.Then it hit me. My wife is having an affair and she's also making me do his laundry. |
 | French "Workers": What A Bunch Of Lazy A$$ Bastards: French union workers are demanding to be paid for the extra 1 minute 52 seconds per day than management has asked them to work. [T]he money from that extra time [is] to be contributed to a "national solidarity fund" to help the elderly and handicapped. |
 | I was wrong about Democrats: It seems that they do have a plan for Social Security. |
And this report ...
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| Kerry Campaign: Initial Phases Going Smoothly: [I]n the 90 days since Kerry promised on national television to sign the form releasing his military records, the following milestones have been achieved:
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RUNAWAY BRIDE
Georgia bride-to-be fabricated abduction story
A Georgia woman, who was found in New Mexico early Saturday and who said she had been abducted, admitted today she had made up the story because she was nervous about her upcoming wedding, police said.
Thank, God, she's alive and well. That said ...
Why did she lie?
I wondered why anyone would abduct an adult woman without demanding ransom.
Why did the groom make demands on the 2nd polygraph?
Did the media make this worse?
FOURTEEN bridesmaids and SIX HUNDRED guests?!?
"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Why is that funny on tv but not in real life?
What must her family be thinking (besides relief that she's alive)?
What must the groom be thinking?
Why did I find the groom suspect (because I did)?
Will they ever get married?
Why do we even care?
Speaking of Abducted Brides!
She needs to at least pay a HEFTY fine ... if not do a little time.
This woman has tied up significant law enforcement resources in the metro Atlanta area -- resources needed to solve REAL crimes -- or (we can only hope) prevent a few.
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Friday, April 29, 2005
LIKE MY NEW LOOK?
I've been slowly blogging a book of short stories called Briefs And Other Unmentionables. Logging on is like opening a book to the table of contents with links to the stories. Periodically I post a link on the Net ... here'n'there ... to generate some traffic. Then the other day I got to wondering if people realized that it was a book? Do they realize those are links listed? I thought it was simple, but I decided that I didn't want to take any chances, so I decided to add "A book-in-progress of short stories" above the picture. I dove into the template and thought I had located just the right spot to insert that line, yet when I did I wiped out the yellow border! I spent a couple of hours re-doing the template and decided why not fiddle around with the border color, too. Then I thought why stop there; why not redecorate KittyLitter while I'm at it! I also figured out how and where to add my cat icon. I think a fresh coat of paint has brightened up the place, don't you? I never liked that green anyway.
But back to my book ... The first eight stories are fiction, but Thelma & Louise is an essay about the movie and my daughter, Gretta, whom you may know as Nurse G.
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STILL SPARKING CONTROVERSY
We laugh at enviro-wackos … tree huggers, patron saints of snail darters … yet their policies do more harm than good.
It's Fire Season Again
By Bill Croke
We're in the seventh year of drought in the Northern Rockies, with precipitation deficits running about 20% annually. At the same time poor management of the regional national forests has left them brush-choked and bark beetle-ravaged and susceptible to wildfire. The Bush Administration's 2003 "Healthy Forests Initiative" is designed to prevent these conflagrations by streamlining the bureaucratic "analysis paralysis" when processing timber sales. But the scope of the problem is such that these conditions will remain for years to come. In this year, the centenary of the United States Forest Service, the woods are a wreck. How did our national forests get into this predicament?
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Here [in the West], environmentalists for the past thirty years have manipulated the courts and relied on activist liberal judges to obstruct the "multiple-use" models on the national forests, such as logging. Say what you want about logging, but for years commercial timber harvest provided firebreaks that checked the spread of wildfire.
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THAT SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY
 | HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LUCIANNE! And what better way to send your birthday greetings than to contribute to the care of the always hungry bandwidth beast. |
 | Well, slap me silly, if it isn't Lucianne's birthday! |
 | Oh, God, she's the bane of my political existance! |
 | I wanted to wish you a happy birthday personally, but Hillary won't let me. |
 | I wrote the song Happy Birthday, y'know. |
 | I'll drink to that! |
Thursday, April 28, 2005
WHILE KITTY'S AWAY
Well, maybe not exactly away ... I've got some work to do today, but I had a few things to pass on to you. Chris has updated his LuckyDawdNews site. It's a bit NASCAR, a bit humor, and some social commentary thrown in for good measure. He photoshopped a FABulous picture for my article (below) on Bush, the poker player. There are no seperate links at LDN; just log on and scroll down.
Here's a story at LDN worth our attention:
Another brave American that has given up much needs our help
A Manhattan Marine is facing a possible death sentence after shooting two Iraqis fleeing a suspected terror hideout in the Sunni Triangle.
And then Chris talks about this: For Christ sakes, we don't handcuff 5 year old brats in America
Chris has posted the entire 3+ minute video of the incident, beginning in the classroom and ending in the principal's office. I don't find fault with any of the adults in the video if for no other reason than they had no other recourse. The mother did not come to get her child, which was why the police were called:
Dr. Braden: "We do require emergency numbers here for contact."
School officials in Florida say they did call the girl's mother, but she said she couldn't immediately come get her daughter because she was working. So after two hours of hitting screaming and just being disruptive, the princpal called the police. It's a move Dr. Braden wants to avoid at all costs.
My guess is that the cops handcuffed the little girl to ensure the child would not hurt herself, or the officers, while riding in the police car. Don't assume that a seat belt would have restrained this child. That was not the first time the police have been called in for this little girl. This is what public education has become: impotent teachers and administrators whose authority has been stripped by parents.
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
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Y'GOT T'KNOW WHEN TO HOLD UP
A classic article which I intend to recycle periodically as a reminder of just one of Bush's strengths.
GWB: HBS MBA
By Thomas Lifson
February 3rd, 2004
One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
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HOOD ORNAMENTS DO NOT LEAD
One of the reasons why Bill Clinton was not a leader is because he lived by polls. Polling determined everything in his life, right down to his vacation destiny. In essence, he was a hood ornament on the Democratic Party's vehicle: he may have been out front, but the voters' whims were steering his way. Bush, on the other hand, is a leader. I knew what he stood for when I first voted for him; he does not sculpt his principles according to what the voters desire at any given moment. Religion is no different.
My Kingdom for the Pill
By Abigail Palmer
Having faith does not mean making Christian morality (as it has been passed down to us from that first century) conform to one's urges. I sometimes want to eat multiple pints of double fudge brownie ice cream. Why should the Church inconvenience me by saying that this activity is gluttonous? Doesn't the Church realize that sometimes young women eat pints of ice cream at a time? Geez, so demanding. If one needs not possess sexual self-control [in] all its aspects, what other moral teachings can we jettison? I only ask because [there are] a few other aspects of morality that inconvenience me to some degree, so let me know when we decide to revolt against them, as well.Those who insist on granting "sexual freedom" to us shackled laity have absolutely no scriptural or doctrinal basis for doing so. Jesus didn't tell the woman at the well to go forth, be nice, and buy only fair trade coffee. He insisted that she sin no more, which for her, meant no more "husbands."
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“WE BOUGHT IT, WE OWN IT”
"[T]hey are reaching audiences that are disproportionately white, that are disproportionately affluent, that are disproportionately well-educated."
MOVEON, MOVIN' ON UP
Last month, another MoveOn rally in support of filibusters, held at a hotel near the Capitol, featured an appearance by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, along with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Schumer, Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy and others. The 87-year-old Byrd worked the crowd into an almost evangelical fervor, waving his copy of the Constitution and yelling, "Praise God!" and "Hallelujah!" as he denounced Republicans.
The turnout of top Democrats, the enthusiasm and the lineup of rallies today are all indicators of MoveOn's growing profile in national politics. That growth is likely to continue. For one thing MoveOn boasts nearly 3 million highly-motivated members who are generous with their contributions to its causes. For another, it has mastered the art of attention-getting political theater. Together, that equals political power.
It's no wonder that MoveOn's leaders have come to see themselves as Democratic leaders. "Now it's our party," Eli Pariser, head of MoveOn's political operations, wrote last December. "We bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back."
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[G]o to a MoveOn event or visit Web sites that display photographs from hundreds of MoveOn "house parties." You won't find much diversity.
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MoveOn was started by the husband-and-wife software entrepreneurs Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. In a conversation last fall, Blades told me it began one day in 1998 when she and Boyd were having lunch in a Chinese restaurant near Berkeley, Calif., where they live.
Blogmeister Pam wants to know: Why are we expected to "MoveOn" when Dems and other leftists keep looking for character flaws of Republicans that they themselves fall prey to?
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NYPD IS THE BEST
Pedophiles can not be rehabilitated. They should be locked up for life.
OFF-DUTY COP SAVES GIRL FROM PERV
DeViccaro saw the suspect pull the girl who was kicking and screaming for help into Herman A. MacNeil Park on the East River.
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While they were searching for Felton, who lives nearby, cops talked to two boys, 11 and 13, who said they had been attacked in a restroom in the same park on Monday, police said.
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He was paroled three months ago after serving a 13-year sentence for sexually assaulting a minor and robbery, the sources said.
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I WAS IN A MOVIE?
Does this mean I will have to join SAG and pay dues?
News - Bericht über eine Reise in eine strahlende Zukunft (1986) (TV)
Plot Outline: The wife of a reporter, who turned up missing while investigating reports of illegal toxic dumping, teams up with a photographer to find her husband.
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Monday, April 25, 2005
LET'S GO TO THE VIDEO!
YARD FITNESS:
[E]verybody needs a laugh and here's a good one. This is from a group out of California called "Yard Fitness" and a friend emailed it to me about a year ago, so it's not new, but does funny ever grow old? If anyone has a link to Yard Fitness, email me so I can link them.
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UPDATE: EARTH DAY
Earth Day: a day of action to save the earth from farmers, ranchers, mining, timber, oil, chemical companies, and anyone else who seeks to utilize the earth's resources to enhance, enrich, and extend the lives of Americans and others worldwide. Characterized by massive re-education campaign in progressive media and entertainment channels to (a) raise awareness about Americans being materialistic capitalist pigs who rape the earth, steal its riches, and are the cause of the world's environmental problems; (b) advocate greater government control of land, resources, and industries; and (c) raise white male guilt level even higher than it already is. Also a great way to politicize spring cleaning activities and provide ideological underpinning for the rebirth of nature.
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UPDATE: LIBERAL TOLERANCE
Left Illusions: While most kids his age were outside playing baseball, young Horowitz was attending Communist rallies and parades. During the '60s Horowitz stayed true to his radical roots, becoming a prominent leader of the New Left. But when a close friend was murdered by the Black Panthers, Horowitz sank into a pit of personal and political despair. After a 10-year exile from politics, he finally came to grips with what he now saw as the inhumanity of his radical life and committed what was considered the greatest betrayal (he has been called a Nazi and a "demented lunatic"): he became a conservative.
An Ill-Bred Professor, And A Bad Situation
By David Horowitz
This incident depressed me more than any pie or protest could. The insult which had been carefully planned by this Chairman and his department was not to me really, since I get insults every day and would be gone tomorrow -- but to Jamie and all the conservative students at the University of Hawaii who would be there when I was gone, and whose four years are spent as second class citizens in their own school.
I try to fathom what kind of teacher would do a thing this to his students? Who could be so petty, so deficient in human grace, as to inflict such an injury on a youngster who had come to him to learn, and for so trivial a triumph (if you could call it that)?
This is really what my academic freedom campaign is about. It is about professorial bullies, so pathetic in their self-esteem, as to carry on a daily war against students twenty and thirty and forty years their juniors and over whom they have immense institutional power. To behave like this they have to abandon every ethical principle that ought to govern them as teachers (and that in fact is written into their faculty handbooks and ignored).
Hat tip Pam!
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UPDATE: HER ROYAL C’s FUTURE?
2007: Democrats Stall Extremist Nominee to Supreme Court
The nomination of former Senator Clinton came as the Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees entered its 24th month, and was seen by some as a conciliatory measure by President Bush, whose Republican Party has been unable to break the filibuster despite a freshly-won 61-38-1 majority after the '06 debacle for the Democrats. However, with the help of maverick Republican Senators McCain, Hagel and Voinovich, the Democrats have maintained their effective veto over the process.
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UPDATE: BREAKUP BABE’S BOOK
BREAKUP BABE: With a little help from my editor, I've momentarily sidestepped my writer's block. I'm writing pure drivel, mind you, but I'm filling up pages. I do know, however, that writing drivel now is the first step to writing slightly-more-polished trash later, and then - halleleujah - brilliant prose!
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UPDATE: RIK’S VENICE PUB CRAWL
Battle on the Train!
Well, my plans to go to Piedmont on Saturday and stock up on Barolo were dashed by Wayne who had so much fun last week that he decided to plan another Venice Pub Crawl. This one turned out to be a success as well.
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And as it turned out, the train ride home was almost as eventful as the pub crawl itself.
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All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the guy breaks out into a rap. Something about my shoes or Wayne's hair, I don't remember. What he was rhyming about was not important. What WAS important was that we were obviously being challenged. And I just could not let it go unanswered. So no sooner did he finish than I launched into a rap of my own which I culled from my extensive musical library. I had to show this guy that he wasnt dealing with any average white boy here.
Hey, Rik! Was your rap anything like this?
MATZAH: The hip hop homage to the hebrew treat Matzah!
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