(But zipped it up only halfway. Typical.)

SpaceRef has a short article that says Bush I wore a bunny suit to board the Space Shuttle well before John F’in Kerry visited NASA. Here’s one of the pictures:

The big difference is that Bush I doesn’t look like an Oompa Loompa during the Mike TV sequence in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:

To: Providers of our Movie & TV Entertainment
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Lack of Spine and Relevant Movies

1. So here it has been nearly three years since 9/11, two years since the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a year since the thunder run from the Kuwait border to Baghdad, and all we get from you is a TV movie, a couple of episodes from those few TV serials that do touch on matters military, and a two-hour partisan hack job creatively edited together from other people’s footage. Ummm… thanks, ever so much. Three years worth of drama, tragedy, duty, honor, sacrifice, courage and accomplishment, and all we get is our very own Lumpy Riefenstahl being drooled over by the French. Where is the “Casablanca”, “So Proudly We hail”, “Wake Island”, “They Were Expendable”? My god, people, the dust had barely settled over the Bataan surrender, before the movie was in the theaters. You people live to tell stories— where are ours? What are we fighting for and why, who are our heroes and villains, our epics and victories?

2. And it’s not like other media people have been laying down on the job: writers, reporters, bloggers have been churning out stories by the cubic foot: the brave passengers taking back Flight 93, the stories of people who escaped the towers, and those who helped others escape, as well as those who ran in, the epic unbuilding of the Trade Center ruins. What about the exploits of the Special Forces in Afghanistan, on horseback in the mountains with a GPS, directing pinpoint raids on Taliban positions, the women who ran Afghanistans’ underground girls’ schools? What about Sgt Donald Walters, Lt. Brian Chontosh, the 3rd ID’s fight for the strong points at Larry, Curley and Moe and a dozen others. There’s enough materiel for the lighter side, too: Chief Wiggles, Major Pain’s pet turkey, the woman Marine who deployed pregnant and delivered her baby in a war zone, the various units who have managed to bring their adopted unit mascots back from the theater. (Do a google search, for heaven’s sake. If you can’t handle that, ask one of the interns to help.) The shelves at my local bookstore are pretty well stocked with current writings on the subject, memoirs, reports, thrillers and all. Some stories even have yet to be written; they are still ongoing, and even classified, but I note that did not stop the movie producers back then: they just consulted with experts and made something up, something inspiring and convincing.

3. Of course, actually dealing with a contemporary drama in the fight against Islamic fascism would mean you would have to actually come down out of Hollywood’s enchanted world, and actually, you know… speak to them. Ordinary people, ordinary, everyday people, who don’t have agents and personal trainers and nannies, and god help them, they don’t even vote for the right people, or take the correct political line. Some of them (gasp) are even military, and do for real what movies only pretend to do… and besides, they have hold to all these archaic ideals like honor, duty, and country. (Ohhh, cooties!)

4. And since even mentioning the Religion of Peace ™ in connection with things like terrorism, mass-murder, and international plots for a new caliphate is a guarantee to bring CAIR and other fellow travelers seething and whining in your outer office… ohh, best not. Drag out those old villainous standby Nazis, or South American drug lords, even the odd far-right survivalist for your theatrical punch-up, secure in the knowledge that even if you piss off what few remains of them, at least they won’t be unleashing a fatwa on your lazy ass, or sending a suicide bomber into Mortens’. Just ignore the three large smoking holes in the ground; cover your eyes and pretend it away. Never happened, religion of peace, all about oil, la-la-lah, fingers in my ears, I can’t hear you.

5.To make movies about it all, is to have to come to grips with certain concepts; among them being the fact that we are all potential targets for the forces of aggressive Islamo-fascism, that it is not anything in particular which we have done to draw such animus, and that we are in this all together, and that we must win, for the consequences of not winning are not only unbearable for us all… but they would be very likely to adversely affect you, too. I would expect an industry dependent on the moods and fashions amongst the public at large to have a better feel for what would sell… but I guess denial is more comfortable, familiar space, Sept. 10th is what you know best.

6. Still, if you could pass a word to Lumpy Riefenstahl, about getting signed releases, for footage, interviews and newsprint. It would be the courteous gesture towards all the little people for whom he professes to care, and save a bit of trouble in the long run.

Thanks
Sgt Mom

I was reading this article in the Guardian and did a double-take when I read this paragraph:

Increasing German pressure on the Poles for an admission of the wrongs done to Germans at the end of the war and for some form of material compensation are causing intense resentment and mistrust in Poland, where 6 million people died during the war and whose invasion by Hitler in 1939 triggered the outbreak of the conflict.

You’re shitting me, right? The Germans, who put Hitler in power. The Germans, who kept Hitler in power. The Germans, who loved Hitler. The Germans, who did nothing as Jews, gypsies and other “undesirables” were led away to the camps to be slaughtered and worked to death. The Germans, who were Hitler’s willing executioners, want compensation for discomfort suffered at the end of a war they started? A war that resulted in over 20 million dead? If they want to start talking compensation, then they need to take a number and stand behind about 500 million people who have a greater claim.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s this:

Some 12 million Germans were kicked out of central Europe, many of them killed, at the war’s end, when Europe’s borders were redrawn by the allies. Poland, in particular, was literally lifted from east to west and transplanted on to territory that for centuries had been peopled by Germans.

The rightwing Prussian Trust organisation, which represents the families of expropriated and resettled Germans, has been launching private lawsuits in Poland for the return of lost property, believing that Poland’s accession to the EU in May will make it easier for Germans to reclaim their former homes.

That is a box you really don’t want to open, especially when it comes to the Poles. For starters, let’s begin with the “Hey, You Don’t Exist Anymore!” partition, whereby Prussia, Russia, and Austria simply declared Poland to be theirs. Sorry, you don’t exist anymore. My ancestor who came over on the boat wasn’t listed as Polish, but as Prussian. He left because education was limited to the Germanic elite, he was prohibited from speaking both Polish and his tribal tongue of Kascubian, and because you guys were assholes.

If you really want to get into it, little Prussian Trust, the land that your squatter ancestors occupied for a time used to be called Pomerania. Before that, it was populated by several Slavic tribes, among them the Kascubians, from whom I am descended. My name was there long before the pagan Tuetons made you “Prussians”. And you know what –and I mean this from the bottom of my heart– I’m glad your country doesn’t exist anymore.

And to the Guardian: Poland was not “literally lifted from east to west and transplanted”. Its traditional eastern territories were carved-up to create Ukraine and Belarus. The Poles who were displaced from those territories settled onto Western lands generously donated by the Germans after their killing spree.

While Mr Schröder and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, have sought to distance themselves from any German claims on Poland, the lobby for the resettled Germans, led by the Christian Democrat MP Erika Steinbach, is pressing for compensation, and for a new museum in Berlin dedicated to Germany’s own “victims of ethnic cleansing.”

I’m sure that these people are merely oddballs whose absurd cause is given the slightest legitimacy because they occupy a seat in the legislature, but still, the question does require asking: Germany, do you need your pee-pee spanked again?

Wow, I can hardly believe it’s an election year! I simply can’t see Kerry not trying to make political hay over this in the farm belt:

GENEVA, July 30 - The United States yielded to pressure from developing countries on Friday and agreed to make a 20 percent cut in some of the $19 billion in subsidies it pays to American farmers each year, as members of the World Trade Organization met round the clock here to win approval for a new deal governing world trade.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen of John Kerry is that he would be a tool of the Europeans. People have said that he would, in effect, cave to European and International interests in exchange for “cooperation.”

Well, he’s not President and we just gave in to the French in exchange for “cooperation.” I guess this means French Fries are back on the menu! Oh yeah, there’s nothing like good ole’ French Fries and thick, rich Heinz ketchup to dip them in.

I suppose it’s for the best, because those Freedom Fries were taking too many liberties with my digestive system.

I’ve been out of pocket, out of touch, and close to out of my mind. But I’m feeling much better now… However, I now have to go to a dinner party.

Back to blogging in a bit!

Now I find we are making them our slaves.

I’ve been trying to find a video link. Minnie is really quite amazing, with an extensive list of behaviors she can perform, and able to lean new ones in only a couple of hours. We really should reform our exotic pet laws here in California to allow helper monkeys in with less red tape.

Ryan at Tasty Manatees has his nominations up for Worst of the Web:

Welcome to Tasty Manatees’ Worst of the Web, a collection of the absolute worst blogs the Internet has to offer. These blogs were nominated by readers like you through comments and email according to some simple nomination criteria providing points for certain “qualities”:

1. Inanity- For those sites packed with unending and uninteresting personal trivia. Extra points for anyone who talks about their sick cat.

2. Bad Design. If your link list is hidden in your source code and your page title can’t display because your picture of teddy bears and balloons blocks everything but one short post, you may be getting some points under this category. By the way, I thinkte is my nominee.

3. Stupidity. This is a delicate subject, I better be clear. I’m not talking about whether we agree with the content or not, simply whether its posting clearly demonstrates the website owner’s stupidity. For example, though I’m fairly certain that Atrios has the i.q. of a tire iron, the posts on his site are merely indicative of the thoughts on the hard left, not a unique expression of stupidity. No, for stupidity, we’re talking about stuff like this

4. Pretentiousness- For those who get in over their heads and don’t even realize it. Poseur poetry by high school kids gets extra points under this category.

5. Disturbingness- Yes, I’m talking about stuff like this. (I’m pretty sure that one was a joke, but you get the picture).

6. Other- You’ll know it when you see it.

Check out his nominees.

It’s

Here

! The book that SSDB readers have been asking for! “Our Grandpa Was an Alien”!
(Well, he was…British, and a resident legal alien for fifty years. He had this grudge about being turned down for military service by the US Army in World War I… it’s all in the book.)
Nothing really R-rated, and minimal celebrity content, avaliable through “www.booklocker.com”, and maybe at your local bookstore if you really, really pitch a fit.

In answer to the many readers who have asked about “The Book”— it will be available very soon, through www.booklocker.com. I have reviewed and approved it, and we will post links and ordering information, as soon as they are sent to us! “Our Grandpa Was an Alien” will be available in paperback, for $13.95— please order a copy, and tell all your friends about it, as I would like to be able to quit one of my day jobs, and live in luxury on my royalties!

And I can give you a little taste of an early chapter…..

This was the time of discovering things, beyond the boundaries of the White Cottages’ back yard. One afternoon, Mom and I sat on the concrete back steps, side by side, looking out at the back yard, with our playhouse and swing set, shoulder to shoulder between the two fat-leafed jade plants which grew on either side of the steps. Mom habitually emptied the used tea leaves under the one on the left, every morning when she made a fresh pot, and as a consequence of the tea-leaf mulch, it was nearly twice the size of the other.
“You and JP are going to have a baby brother or sister, soon.” Mom said, gravely. I looked sideways at her, and asked, with interest
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s growing inside me, and when it’s ready to be outside, I’ll go to the hospital, and Doctor Harris will take it out.”
”Oh,” I said, thoughtfully. I had noticed that Mom and been bulging quite obviously around the stomach, in the same way that Auntie Laura, my godmother, and one of Mom’s bridesmaids had been, and then suddenly her stomach was flat again, and she was carrying around a tiny, pink little baby. “Is that where babies come from, then? They grow inside their mothers?”
“Exactly, “Mom nodded. “It’s the same with cats and dogs… and all the other mammals. Mammals have red blood, and fur, and carry their babies inside… not like birds, or snakes, which lay eggs.”
“Does it hurt, when Doctor Harris takes out the baby?” I asked. Doctor Harris was an elderly, semi-retired family physician who had not only delivered all of us into the world, but Mom as well. He had begun practice in the early 1920ies and his office and consulting rooms constituted a perfect working medical museum, with glass-fronted wooden cabinets, metal-lidded glass jars, a heavy metal scale with moveable weights…. And the large, old-fashioned reusable syringes, which hurt like the dickens in delivering the necessary inoculations. Mom hesitated a little, before she said
“No… it’s just all rather tiring.”
I rather thought it did probably did hurt— most anything to do with a visit to Doctor Harris usually did, eventually— but it must be necessary, like the inoculations, which kept us from catching all sorts of diseases.
“Did they get their polio shots?” was Granny Jessie and Granny Dodo’s eternal worried question, for until the very year I was born, yearly polio epidemics had terrorized parents, killing and crippling children and teenagers. Every summer, a mysterious monster stalked the young and healthy, leaving behind survivors whose crippled legs needed years of therapy, or worse yet, confinement for life in a mechanical iron lung, unable to even breathe for themselves. There were still older children around with heavy braces on their legs, sometimes in small, child-sized wheelchairs, a reminder of the monsters’ rampage. Even in the kids’ books I read, ten at a time from the library, many of them written in the 1930ies and 40ies, polio and other diseases were occasional casual visitors. For TB— they lined us up at school for a chest X-ray, and the other plagues—, whooping cough, scarlet fever— all of these things had been very real, and were still a presence, held at bay with a couple of quick stabs from Doctor Harris’ medical museum syringes. And we were not allowed into the hospital, when Mom went to have Dr. Harris take our new sister out, although Dad pointed out where her window was, away on one of the upper floors, from where we waited in the Plymouth, for Granny Jessie to go up and visit, and then come back and stay with us while Dad went up. Dad passed the time by pointing out an enormous castor bean bush, growing at the end of the visitor parking lot, and explaining how the caster beans were deadly, deadly poisonous, and we should never, ever put one in our mouths.

Initially, we were rather disappointed in our new little sister; we had thought Pippy would be available as a playmate almost immediately, and were crushed to find out that babies were quite useless in that regard. They ate, and slept, and cried, and absorbed a lot of the attention that had previously been lavished upon us, and it didn’t improve much when she was old enough to be a playmate, for she was so much younger and smaller that she couldn’t keep up with us, and we had no interest in what she was able to do. As a toddler, she was fretful and desperately shy, prone to cling to Mom, which JP and I, who were more outgoing, scorned as babyish. But still, there she was, our sister, and with her, Mom and Dad felt the family was quite complete, thank you, and gave away the crib, stroller, and a bale of cloth diapers and baby clothes, as soon as Pippy outgrew them.

Stay tuned to this space, for more……

In a development sure to effect the lawsuits against it, a recent Vanderbilt University study has found that American Honda has charged higher auto loan interest rates to blacks. The average overcharge: $410 over the life of the loan.

Now, they’re diving.

I finally got the fifth and final season of Babylon 5 on DVD the other day, and noticed something interesting in the booklet that came with the set. In the booklet’s introduction, series creator J. Michael Stracynski talks about those who thought the series would never succeed or reach completion, but calls out only one doubter by name:

TV Guide critic Jeff Jarvis, weighing in on the odds of us making it to series, said simply, “fat chance”

Despite his respectable showing in a statewide poll, the California League of Women Voters is still excluding Libertarian Party senatorial candidate James P. Gray from it’s televised debate August 10th.

Update: The CLoWV is claiming that Judge Gray’s poll isn’t valid. For more, go here.

For my money, why not include a firebrand such as Judge Gray? Perhaps we will get some original discourse, and then perhaps people will tune-in? As we have seen with the major network’s large-scale rejection of most of the Democratic National Convention, the people are bored with the same yadda-yadda-yadda.

Organizers of the Democratic National Convention have forced Al-Jazeera to remove their banner:

Americans tuning into television coverage of this week’s Democratic convention will see signs for media outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS, but not Al-Jazeera after the Arab satellite channel was asked to remove its banner near the podium.

The 24-hour Qatar-based news outlet won over millions of Arab viewers before and during the US-led war on Afghanistan in 2001 after showing exclusive footage of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

During this week’s convention in Boston, where Senator John Kerry will be officially nominated to run for the White House, the TV channel had erected a colourful $US30,000 ($A42,411) banner that would have been seen by millions of television viewers as part of the convention backdrop.

But it was ordered to remove the sign by convention organisers, who said the decision was made for aesthetic reasons.

Not mentioned in most reports on Planned Parenthood’s “I had an abortion” T-Shirts is that it says in fine print below “and I’m proud of it.” I ask, is this really something a person should be ‘proud’ of? I mean should dentists be selling t-shirts saying “I had a root canal, and I’m proud of it”?

Verizon will be introducing fiber optic access in Huntington Beach. I wonder when they will get to Westminster?

Note that socialist propagandist Michael Moore will be on Fox News Bill O’Reilly show tomorrow.

On reading many letters to the editor on the subject of ‘gay marriage’, I sometimes think I am transported into some sort of bizarro world.

But then I think back to my many debates with my European friends, who commonly believe that governments are formed among men to create their rights.

This is not our tradition in America. Here, we believe out rights are intrinsic. And we form governments, surrendering to them certain of those rights, in order to secure the others, which are innumerable.

Among those is the right of contract, of which marriage is one. It is simply not the purview of government, as per our American tradition, to define the nature of the marriage contract. It is only the responsibility of government to enforce that contract once it is entered into.

I was amazed at tonight’s episode of The Casino on Fox. First, the owners made moralistic judgements only after some high roller hit it big at the tables (a double-fault; any seasoned gambler knows that, in the end, the house always wins). Second was the other other girl’s questioning of the ‘legal prostitute’ “what will you tell your children? That works on this assumed context we have in this nation that things like prostitution are, unquestionably, bad. An examination of sexual world history will shed great doubt on that assumption.