When he’s right, he’s right: "March of the Penguins" raises this question: If an Intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins? The movie documents the 70-mile march of thousands of Antarctic penguins from the sea to an icy breeding place barren of nutrition. These perhaps intelligently but certainly oddly designed birds … Read More
Class Warfare
The average CEO makes 430 times as much as the average production worker. That’s data from 2004, presented here. In 2003, that ratio was 301-to-one. In 1990, it was 109-to-one. [Defense contractor CEOs, while not as rich as their brethren in real dollars, are really seeing a post-9/11 surge. Defense CEOs make 160 times more than army privates, up from … Read More
An Open Letter To Mr. Prager
Dear Mr. Prager: It’s kind of easy to win a debating point when you get to speak for *both* sides of the debate, as you’ve done in your latest piece. It allows you to misprepresent the position of your opponent, who is not there to correct you. (Do you now see why some liberals refer to the right wing media … Read More
The “You Graduated In A Crappy Year For Music” Meme
From Doghouse Riley, it goes something like this: you "list Top 100 Pop Hits for your graduating year; hilarity results". Doghouse struck out the songs he hated, bolded the songs he approved of, and added comments. Me, too. 1. Call Me – Blondie Not her best… 2. Another Brick In The Wall – Pink Floyd A … Read More
From An Iraq Veteran
Via The Green Knight: [T]he only way that we can maintain our way of life is to have a strong defense…. And we had that before we started this little adventure here. Now we’re beginning to eat it up….The equipment and the people are getting chewed up and spat out. And that’s not the right way to defend our country….. … Read More
Fox News Viewers Whine
After devoting so much time and energy bashing other countries, including our historical allies, Fox News viewers gripe: "Where is the international help for the United States? We are always one of the first to come to any aid when disasters strike around the world. Where is our help?? Now is the time for other nations to come to our … Read More
Stupid Neo-Con Logic
This is the mind-numbingly stupid thing that columnist Lorie Byrd actually wrote (apparently, in earnest), at Townhall: What is rarely, if ever, addressed by the opponents of President Bush and the current war is whether or not the decision he made was a correct one if everything we thought about the status of Saddam’s WMD capability had been correct. In … Read More
Bush’s AIDS/Africa Policy
Bush likes to talk about how he is helping fight AIDS in Africa by, among other things, "build[ing] the health system capacity" there. Yeah, right. Bush’s war against AIDS in Africa has a strong enemy: Bush himself. Like his approach to terrorism, Bush’s unreality-based views of the world are merely prolonging the problem he seeks to prevent: A senior United … Read More
“More Costly Than The War To End All Wars”
That’s what the Christian Science Monitor says about Iraq. And yes, that’s adjusted for inflation: Despite the relatively small number of American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (140,000), the war effort is rapidly shaping up to be the third-most expensive war in United States history. This conflict has already cost each American at least $850 in military and reconstruction … Read More
There’s No Place Like . . . Hey!
A pair of the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the "Wizard of Oz" were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids Saturday night. Few details were available on the theft Sunday evening. Grand Rapids Police Chief Leigh Serfling confirmed the theft of the slippers to the Herald-Review on Sunday, but declined to comment on any of … Read More
Space Movie
It’s only ten second long, but you need to check out this movie (mpeg format) taken from MESSENGER: The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a … Read More
Dodged A Bullet? Not So Much.
Looks like things are not going so well for New Orleans. A two-block section of the levee apparently gave way last night. Reports suggest that 80% of the city is flooded. Of course, I’m sure there’s plenty of Louisiana National Guardmen to help out, right? As southern Louisiana wades its way out of its terror and destruction, they will find … Read More
Just Check The Idiot
Atrios points to a Washington Post editorial, calling it "the stupidest thing I have *ever* read". We tend to agree. The opinion piece is about Intelligent Design, and it is written by Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for WaPo. That probably explains the strained sports analogies. It’s called "Just Check The ID", and it goes a little something like this: … Read More
“The Da Vinci Code” Movie
Conservative Christian blogger La Shawn Barber is up in arms about the upcoming release of the movie version of Dan Brown’s best-selling book, "The Da Vinci Code". She acknowledges that the book/movie is "fiction", but that’s hardly the point. In a world hostile to the faith,… What evidence is there that the world, or even the United States, is "hostile … Read More
Punishing Competence
What happens if you actually do your job, and the result is a potential embarrassment to the Bushies? You get demoted: A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance. The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military … Read More