My better half just read this sequence of events being presented on someone’s FaceBook page. And I recognized the plagiarism immediately. Not the entire episode…just the thing with the tranquilizing dart and waiting for animal control to arrive.

The Frisky, hat tip to Linkiest.

I hope it doesn’t start a trend, because some abortions fail. Others are abandoned. Can you imagine watching your Mom say this stuff about you, your age plus eight months previous, on YouTube? Yeah maybe eight out of ten of us are “oopsies.” But look at her cavalier attitude. Tell me that wouldn’t make you look at life differently if you knew she was talking about that face you see in the mirror.

The contradictions are really disturbing, too. She doesn’t want approval or disapproval, she just wants other women to know it’s not that bad. So they will be more likely to do what she’s doing. Which she doesn’t really care about. But clearly, she’ll feel a whole lot better about doing it if there are other people doing the same thing, so she does care. Non-values-judgmentalism…all the way down the line…and then “have a great and godless day” thrown in at the end.

Having grown up in a college town, I consider myself perfectly qualified to sum this all up in one single bumper sticker slogan: “Let’s force people to leave others alone.” Want another? “Nobody has the right to force their value systems on others…except cool people, like me.”

…foreign royal figure, that is.

With thanks to Daphne.

The guys on the radio are talking about this, and they’ve made an excellent point.

Guy didn’t even show up for his own immigration hearing to avoid answering questions under oath about his ties to Islamic terror groups. From NBC-Dallas/Fort Worth:

An immigration judge in Dallas on Friday ordered an outspoken Islamic leader deported after the U.S. government alleged he had ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Nabil Sadoun, a Dallas resident and former board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, was deported to his native Jordan after he failed to appear at his immigration hearing. He entered the U.S. in August 1993.

Sadoun’s attorney, Kimberly Kinser, said he was already in Jordan and was unable to return to Texas because the government had taken his permanent resident card, or green card.

She denied he was tied to any terrorist groups.

The excellent point is, that when something bubbles to the surface of the stewpot that is The News, and the something is an item that CAIR wants to discuss — you can’t get away from ’em. Wait until a Muslim is arrested for something and we’re all breathlessly awaiting an anti-Muslim “backlash,” feeling all kinds of guilt for something that hasn’t even happened yet. Turn on the cable teevee, to any channel. There will be a CAIR representative on there talking about the backlash.

This tidbit, on the other hand, is an item CAIR just might not want to discuss: their ties to radical Islamic terror.

If you don’t live in D/FW, you have to go to someplace like My Pet Jawa to get the story. Which is not intended as a slight against the Jawa, but ideologically-leaning blogsites like ours are not supposed to be quite this important. Are we (they)? Aren’t we supposed to have some resources for getting ahold of the news that matters to us? By which I mean, both sides…not just the side certain overly-enthused advocacy groups want us to have.

There are stories that are easy to get, there are stories that are hard to get, and then there are news blackouts…and news blackouts sometimes border on the surreal. This is a little bit surreal. I would think a lot of people would want to know about this.

FrankJ says the reality is so comical and so poignant that you can’t make parody out of it.

I can certainly see where he’s going with that:

People are comparing Obama’s foreign policies to those of Jimmy Carter, and Carter is offended.

The best comment has to be the one from hwuu (#2):

Carter gave the panama canal back, gave mixed signals to the shah of Iran inciting a revolution.
Canceled the Olympics on the basis of Soviet Russia being too mean in their war with Afganistan, Gave the communists a toehold in El Salvador, and got Taiwan thrown out of the UN. And thats just off the top of my head without bringing in domestic agenda issues like the dept of education or Hyper-inflation.

All in all Carter was pretty effective at being a Bad president. He should be offended. It would be like comparing Timothy McVeigh to the Underwear Bomber. [emphasis mine]

Daniel Griswold:

The weight of evidence indicates that, for most firms in most sectors, unionization leaves companies less able to compete successfully. The core problem is that unions cause compensation to rise faster than productivity, eroding profits while at the same time reducing the ability of firms to remain price-competitive. The result over time is that unionized firms have tended to lose market share to nonunionized firms, in domestic as well as international markets.

After studying the effects of unions on company performance, Barry Hirsch of Georgia State University concluded that unions will typically raise labor costs to a firm by 15 percent to 20 percent, while delivering a negligible increase in productivity. As a result, “Unionization is associated with lower investment in physical and intangible capital and slower growth. The combination of a union tax and sluggish governance is proving debilitating in economic environments that are highly competitive and dynamic,” Mr. Hirsch wrote in a 2008 study.

He links to himself, and some other stuff, at Cato.

Hat tip to Boortz.

They should show this in tenth grade, just for the students to pick out the glaring misstatements about the original intent of the Founders. Why do we have a Senate? Why do we have two chambers? And which article/section/clause of the Constitution creates the filibuster? Anyone? Bueller?

Hat tip to Rick.

From here.

Klavan being a little bit silly.

Grateful hat tip to Westsound Modern.

The Hill:

Unions and liberal groups blast Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as ‘puny’

Unions and liberal groups have dismissed Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as “puny” while calling for larger stimulus measures.

More than two dozen organizations, including the AFL-CIO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and National Council of La Raza, warned Democratic leaders in Congress to avoid tackling the troubled economy through incremental action.

They urged the Senate to pass the $15 billion jobs measure, which features a hiring tax cut for small businesses, but called for much more legislation to bring down an unemployment rate the White House projects to average 10 percent this year, more than 9 percent next year and over 8 percent in 2012.

“If this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, on a conference call Friday.

You tax the money away from the businesses that created it, and “stimulate the economy” by siphoning it off onto the special-interest lefty groups. It doesn’t do a damn thing for the economy or for the employment rate, the public gets wise to it, but the liberal special-interest groups say you have to keep right on doing it and make it bigger bigger BIGGER!

It reminds me of that scene in Sideways where Miles insists that the bartender in the wine tasting room should pour him a bigger glass…something that simply isn’t done in wine tasting rooms. Then he insists that the guy leave the bottle, and then when all else fails he gulps out of the spit bucket.

Except Miles got thrown out. And, if memory serves, in his rage he offered to pay for the bottle…I think.

Republicans, if your brain-gears aren’t just spinning away coming up with campaign commercials to make out of this one…you really need a whole different line of work. Obama campaigned against the influence of “special interests,” and here he’s got a whole bar with drunks lined up at it, each one with the same demand: “Stimulus, single-malt, leave the damn bottle.”

The rest of us have to live within our means, and Obama’s pals just yammer away and complain until they get what they want, like spoiled little kids or rancorous drunks.

The Register. Killjoys won’t even wait for us to get to the questions about “So did Picard, Troi and Riker ever exist?” No, they want to go all the way back to Zefram Cochrane’s invention and shut down the party right there.

Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine explained to New Scientist that while interstellar space has just a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic centimetre, as the crew of the Enterprise hit the gas pedal, a compression effect would greatly increase the number of atoms hitting the spacecraft.

As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, “hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts”, which for the crew “would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam”.

This is a very bad thing, because humans in the path of this ray would receive a dose of ionising radiation of 10,000 sieverts, and as Bones McCoy would doubtless confirm, the lethal dose is 6 sieverts.

The result? Death in one second.

Basil at IMAO says the “Party Of No” label, if accurate, isn’t such a bad thing. And his argument makes some pretty good sense. He goes on to include this…

Missed this when it came out. Glad Neo-Neocon did a write-up about it.

Fox News:

Ron Paul has ended Mitt Romney’s three-year run as conservatives’ favorite for president, taking 31 percent of the vote in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll.

Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination.

Romney, former Massachusetts governor and also a 2008 GOP candidate, has won the last three presidential straw polls at the annual conference. This year, he came in second, with 22 percent.

Sarah Palin, who didn’t attend the conference, was a distant third in the straw poll, with 7 percent, followed by Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor, and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.

Thus ends any credibility of CPAC. They just put a crazy man on top. Good job, guys.

Holy crap, now if she’s serious that’s what I call “balls”.

Prediction: Barack Obama Will Choose Not To Run Again; Primary Race Will Be Hillary Clinton & Evan Bayh

I do have to ‘fess up, though, that — although I’m not seeing this as the most likely sequence of events — if things really do go this way I’m not going to be completely surprised. I can envision Robert Gibbs saying at a press conference, “the President views His achievements as so complete and so definitive that second term simply isn’t needed.” Things are just going swimmingly, and if you can’t understand that then you’re just stupid.

Then we’d have a big ol’ shouting match, from sea to shining sea, about whether or not there is in fact anything wrong with being a one-term President. The democrats would all line up to tell us in that bullying way they have, that Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, et al were some of our country’s very finest. We just haven’t been sufficiently sophisticated to understand it before now.

And of course that horse’s ass Carter. He had the courage to get his ass kicked! So let’s get started. Show what a GoodPerson^TM you are. Follow this superior example that’s been given us by Barack and Jimmah.

Yeah. I can definitely see it.

Update: According to my archives…we already have some indications that this type of hairpin-turn thinking is nothing new for them. Nothing new at all:

That is the purpose of education. Charlotte Iserbyt asks, somewhere around 6:20, “you thought it was readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic??”

You can download the full e-book here. And you can also read her summaries on how and why she became a whistleblower, and some of the things she’s seen personally:

There are many talented and respected researchers and activists who have carefully documented the “weird” activities which have taken place “in the name of education.” Any opposition to change agent activities in local schools has invariably been met with cries of “Prove your case, document your statements,” etc. “Resisters”-usually parents-have been called every name in the book. Parents have been told for over thirty years, “You’re the only parent who has ever complained.” The media has been convinced to join in the attack upon common sense views, effectively discrediting the perspective of well-informed citizens. Documentation, when presented, has been ignored and called incomplete. The classic response by the education establishment has been, “You’re taking that out of context!”-even when presented with an entire book which uses their own words to detail exactly what the “resisters” are claiming to be true.

Thirty-six points too high.

Socialism

Socialism had the lowest percentage positive rating and the highest negative rating of any term tested. Still, more than a third of Americans say they have a positive image of socialism.

Exactly how Americans define “socialism” or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans’ reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them — an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.

There are significant differences in reactions to “socialism” across ideological and partisan groups:

* A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.
* Sixty-one percent of liberals say their image of socialism is positive, compared to 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.

Capitalism

“Capitalism,” the word typically used to describe the United States’ prevailing economic system, generates positive ratings from a majority of Americans, with a third saying their reaction is negative.

As was the case with “socialism,” there are differences across population segments.

* Republicans are significantly more positive than Democrats in their reactions to “capitalism,” although majorities of both groups have favorable opinions.
* Opinions of the word by ideology are divided in an unusual, though modest, way. Conservatives have the highest positive image, followed by liberals. Moderates have somewhat lower positive ratings than either of these groups.

This nation, contrary to what’s being bullyingly implied in all walks of life, is actually about something and it isn’t just about the freedom to be an atheist. If that’s all the freedom you want, you can do that just about anywhere now.

It’s about having your own turf, and running it as you see fit so long as you abide by the laws and pay your bills. Being governed and not ruled.

This vision is not compatible with socialism, not even a little tiny bit.

Having 36% of us say socialism is okay, is no better than having 36% of us saying white supremacy is okay. It is every bit as alarming and every bit as much an offense to our founding principles. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You want socialism? There’s over a hundred other spots on the earth you can go. Keep it outta here.

Hat tip again to Miss C.

Obviously it’s an attention-getting ploy…so let’s accommodate her.

Without further comment.

Willa Ford, who starred in the Friday the Thirteenth remake. She’s appealing enough we decided to go ahead and rent it…

Xenia Seeberg, known as Xev Bellringer, half-lizard pleasure creature in the dark science fiction non-anthology Lexx.

Which one?

We-ell…tough choice. I would say Willa easily beats the later Xenia, with her her all cropped down. On another note, how come it is that actresses do that? They get a successful gig going, men start tuning in just to watch them — and then the hair gets chopped.

In fact, I would say with the longer locks, Xenia just b-a-r-e-l-y squeaks out ahead. Just barely. Photo finish.

True Crime Report:

When police in Navarre, Florida received a call for a noise complaint, they arrived to find a bleeding man running toward them along with his girlfriend. The man’s groin was dripping blood, and he was screaming that he’d been shot…

Amanda Kelly told a deputy that her dad, William Russell Kelly Jr., had shot her boyfriend Randall Carter at their home. The reason for dad’s ire, according to the younger Kelly: “He hates him, dude.”

William readily admitted to the shooting, but claims a different motive. He says he unloaded his .45 revolver, which he affectionately calls “The Judge,” because Carter was assaulting this daughter. “I shot him in the nuts with bird-shot because he was beating my daughter,” Kelly told police.

He’s been charged with aggravated battery. Carter, meanwhile, has already received his sentence for messing with an armed man’s daughter.

Newsbusters…

HOW JOURNALISTS VOTE

■ More than four-fifths of surveyed journalists voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election between 1964 and 1976.

■ More than three-fourths of “elite journalists” (76%) said they voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

■ 89% of Washington-based reporters said they voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Only seven percent voted for George Bush, with two percent choosing Ross Perot.

■ An informal survey of Washington-based journalists in the summer of 2004 found them backing John Kerry over George W. Bush by a 12-to-1 margin.

■ In 2008, 96% of staffers at the online Slate magazine said they were supporting Barack Obama for president.

Americans don’t trust them.

Since the news is waning in its value as a friendly liberal bastion, the liberals are retreating to the world of comedy:

Since it was shown on Sunday, an episode of the Fox animated comedy “Family Guy” has drawn the repeated condemnation of Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential nominee.

In the episode, the teenage character Chris dates a girl named Ellen, who has Down syndrome, and who tells him over dinner that her mother is “the former governor of Alaska.” Ms. Palin, whose son Trig also has Down syndrome, has said that the “Family Guy” show “really isn’t funny” and was the work of “cruel, cold-hearted people.” Ms. Palin’s daughter Bristol has written that the “Family Guy” writers were “mocking my brother and my family,” and called them “heartless jerks.”

One person who supports the “Family Guy” staff is Andrea Fay Friedman, the 39-year-old actor and public speaker who played Ellen in that episode. Like the character, Ms. Friedman also has Down syndrome.

In an e-mail message sent on Thursday to The New York Times, Ms. Friedman wrote:

I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm.”

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.

I don’t know what impresses me more: The borderline-rebellious reaction of the public on the news front, after generations of being told what to think; or the sycophants commenting under the story about Ms. Friedman’s quarrel with the Palin family. I know they’re New York Times readers, but still.

We’re told what to think about what’s going on, and after forty years or so we start to rebel. We’re told what’s funny…and mmmm, more, my compliments to the chef, om nom nom nom.

Look at it objectively: They want to show that the girl has Downs’, so she says “My Mom’s the former Governor of Alaska.” Yuk, yuk. Funny? I suppose some might think so, but what’s with the bullying attitude that everyone else has to do the obligatory guffawing? Does it work the same way if I make fun of Barbra Streisand’s big schnoz?

See, this is how I think it ties in with media bias. Hardcore left-wing liberals, going back quite aways, seem to insist each and every single time on the last word insofar as who’s decent, who’s a jerk, what’s funny and what’s not. So of course if I made fun of an ugly dress worn by one of Barack Obama’s daughters, no, I would not have the right or privilege to order people to laugh at my joke.

Make fun of a prominent Republican and her family, and our liberals, who pride themselves so much on their ability to “think for themselves,” consider us all to be obligated to laugh. You aren’t allowed to say “I don’t think it’s funny but I won’t begrudge someone else a chuckle or two.” Read those comments, that isn’t good enough for them. You have to find it funny or you are not a decent person.

The Media Bias Report shows what happens to this viewpoint when we leave that safe zone of comedy. We get tired of this. We get tired of these pre-canned instructions about who we’re supposed to support, or what we’re supposed to want to have done to our health care system.

But our liberals don’t see it. They give each other orders, and that is how they live their lives. Kind of like ants, really.

Hat tip to Viral Footage.

Rickety-Click:

“Stand Back! I’m Going To Try SCIENCE!”

Shit fire and give up matches, who’da guessed?

Secondary sexual characteristics convey information about reproductive potential. In the same way that facial symmetry and masculinity, and shoulder-to-hip ratio convey information about reproductive/genetic quality in males, waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR) is a phenotypic cue to fertility, fecundity, neurodevelopmental resources in offspring, and overall health, and is indicative of “good genes” in women. Here, using fMRI, we found that males show activation in brain reward centers in response to naked female bodies when surgically altered to express an optimal (~0.7) WHR with redistributed body fat, but relatively unaffected body mass index (BMI).

Jeez, women let themselves get cut on to make men happy? Holy crap. Who knew?

So the science guys are discovering that it pleases the gentlemen when the ladies cavort around in skimpy clothing showing off their WHR’s. (WHR’s…hmmm…is there a hidden meaning buried in this report I wonder?) Statements like “These findings suggest that an hourglass figure activates brain centers that drive appetitive sociality/attention toward females that represent the highest-quality reproductive partners” make me wonder, who funded this? I could probably find out with a little bit of searching and skimming, starting with “This work was supported by a faculty induction award from the University of Liverpool and a grant from the Pioneer Fund.” And then figger out where that takes me. But something tells me I don’t really want to know.

Also, how come it fell to me to fancy things up with a picture of a nice-looking lady in a swimsuit? They’ll pump out this dry language with words like “appetitive” and “phenotypic” but they won’t use any pleasing visual aids, on that one-out-of-a-thousand occasion on which it is directly related to the chosen topic.

I got a study for you. My study says when it comes to the written word, some people just aren’t trying.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Biden’s Timeline —”Dead, flat wrong”

1990: Biden votes against the first Gulf War and Bush I’s efforts to get Saddam out of Kuwait.

1998: Biden supports Bill Clinton’s call for regime change and “to dethrone Saddam Hussein over the long haul.”

2002: Biden asserts that Saddam has biological and chemical weapons and is seeking a nuclear arsenal, proclaiming, “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat.” He then votes in October for 23 writs authorizing President Bush to remove the dictator by force if need be.

2005: Joe Biden reassures the country that we must stay in Iraq: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out – equally a mistake.”

2006: Biden declares that a sovereign Iraq is not sustainable, calls for trisecting Iraq into three separate entities and demands that President Bush “must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008.”

It goes on and on.

Funny, isn’t it? The minute Joe Biden’s name comes up — suddenly, the Vice President does not have to be qualified to assume the responsibilities of the Presidency. He just has to be a “distinguished elder statesman.” And “distinguished elder statesman” seems to be some kind of fancy cliche for drunken Irishman.

Newsbusters:

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. on Monday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, noting that it was Presidents Day, host Joe Scarborough asked the day’s panel members who was their favorite President. After the first two guests named Abraham Lincoln, to which co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed, she then announced her admiration for Jimmy Carter’s post-presidential activities calling him her “favorite former President.” She went on to call him the “best former President we’ve ever had,” prompting Scarborough to quip, “You should be paid.”

After Willie Geist poked fun at Brzezinski by declaring that Jimmy Carter was the best President because of “his bravery against that killer rabbit in Plains, Georgia,” Brzezinski sulked: “Stop mocking him.”

It’s not really news, I’ve seen it all before. In fact, if you Google the words “best ex-president” you’ll see Carter’s name mentioned prominently. It’s a way of getting the word out about Habitat For Humanity, and his other post-1980 activities — that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his performance as our nation’s 39th president.

His activities that do have something to do with the presidency, after we got rid of him — they all concern his readiness, willingness and ability to be a clueless, classless loudmouth and a jerk.

The churlish command “stop mocking him” — that is part of the script too. What’s up with that? It’s offensive to someone’s religion or something? He’s St. James now? You’re eligible for canonization if you lick the boots of enough terrorists?

Jimmy Carter is our “best ex-President” the way political correctness is correct. You have to attach the modifier. It’s mandatory. Absolutely required. Or else all sane persons, of all ideological flavorings, would instantly see you shouldn’t be allowed to walk around with all the rights, privileges and perks of the competent. They’d come after you with a great big net.