There are increasing signs that Senator Kerry is starting to "get it."

Glenn Reynolds noted Kerry's statement that failure is "not an option" in Iraq.

And in a speech yesterday in Philadelphia, Kerry hinted that he might be re-thinking some of his earlier statements about Vietnam:

Thirty-five years ago, on a boat, in the Mekong Delta, I grew up with a band of brothers from all walks of life and every corner of America. We learned many things on that journey, but above all, we learned that we were never the kid from South Carolina, Iowa, Arkansas, California, or the kid from Massachusetts. Under the heat of fire and the fog of battle, our mission became crystal clear and color, religion, and background melted away to an understanding that we were all simply "Americans." All of us fighting under the same flag, praying to the same God.

Of course, the New York Times used the term "clear mission" in the context of an exit strategy in the Iraq War.

Not that there isn't a precedent for that.

It was called Vietnamization, and while the mission may have been clear enough, there were plenty of comments like this:

No one wants to be the last man to die for a mistake.

UPDATE: While the Inquirer did a good job of reporting Kerry's speech in Philadelphia yesterday, I noticed that there was nothing about the walkout by Senators Bob Kerrey and Lee Hamilton during the 9-11 Commission's meeting with Bush and Cheney, even though Bob Kerrey was called "one of the panel's most aggressive questioners." (Note, however, that the walkout is mentioned in an Inquirer-unpublished Knight-Ridder link by the same writers.)

Of course, it wouldn't be fair to fault the Inky for parroting the New York Times.

Parrots don't always talk!

Here are some heretical thoughts which occurred to me after I heard complaints about this group bombarding female college students (who did not seek them out but wanted to use the student lounge) with gruesome images like these. (Interview with the group's leader here.)

Barring a time, place, and manner argument, I think the right to shock people with gruesome images (whether of aborted fetuses or children being skinned alive is irrelevant) is morally at least as permissible as is the right to display pornography. Legally, of course, it's more so.

But legal analysis is not my purpose here. (I'd defend the sign wavers's rights as much as I would Nazis, Communists, or Klansmen.) The placard wavers intend to shock people into thinking.

So I'm just thinking. (I have stated my views on abortion previously. Activists on both sides accuse me of being on "the other side" -- as if they assume there are only two.)

I recognize that abortion must be a very painful procedure. That if it is to be allowed at all in the second trimester, it's a shameful thing to do to a fetus, because that fetus now has a brain most likely capable of feeling pain. Therefore, the least the doctors could do would be to anesthetize the fetus. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ireland is on record as recommending pre-abortion anesthesia.

But wait a minute! Isn't countenancing anesthesia an admission that the fetus feels pain? And doesn't that start us down a "slippery slope" towards condemnation of abortion?

Hey, how is that my problem? Since when did I sign an agreement either way on whether a fetus feels pain? Should politics dictate these things? I mean, if animals are anesthetized before surgery or medical experimentation, what makes a wannabe person inferior? Beats me.

In the course of researching this, I stumbled onto something else which I don't think too many people have thought about: the pain of birth.

Further, studies have found that in the early stages of labor, healthy in utero fetuses will often respond with FHR changes or movement of some kind in response to various noises and sounds produced outside the intra-uterine environment. But as the labor continues, this reaction will cease. While some have described this as an instance of fetal habituation, others state that it is rather the distraction of the overwhelming fetal pain associated with labor.

These days, they're starting to require anesthesia for circumcision, which occurs soon after birth. What's so special about the baby's pain after labor which isn't so special before?

Or are we still clinging to the ancient idea that pain builds character? Before readers laugh, I would remind them that during the Victorian era, when anesthesia was first coming into use, some doctors refused to countenance it, based on the sincere belief that it would harm their patients' character.

Is it heresy to ask whether the pain to the fetus of full-term labor is worse than the pain of abortion? I think it's a logical question, and I have to thank the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform.

They have failed, however, to persuade me a fertilized ovum is a human being. And I think their inflammatory approach, while constitutionally protected, is creating lifelong animosity towards their cause. The young women who had no choice but to view the huge placards (and read the signs claiming "genocide" and likening women who've had abortions to Adolf Hitler) are merely becoming desensitized. And angry at those trying to manipulate them.

I found myself thinking about these things when I read this news report about the peculiarly large numbers of college age women in Washington last week:

More college-age women showed up than usually attend abortion-rights rallies, which tend to be dominated by older women. If that translates into increased voting in November by young women - a group that usually does not vote in high numbers - it could help Democrats in a close election.

It's a free country, and I support free speech as much as anyone else. But illogical assaults on the senses are not the best way to win converts to your cause.

It's Friday, and I found some tests, even though the Quizilla site is under construction.

The first one -- "If You Were A Barbie, Which Messed Up Version Would You Be?" --is definitely in the top ten of the most idiotic tests I've featured here, but I guess idiocy as one way of taking one's mind off one's problems.

Barbie Got Back! Go you! You're the closest thing
ever to a true black Barbie. Shake that fat
ass of yours.


If You Were A Barbie, Which Messed Up Version Would You Be?
brought to you by Quizilla

___________________________________________

The next thing I discovered was that my inner Barbie is addicted to clean and sober living!

You're addicted to.....

Nothing!
Your addicted to nothing at all? Well..... ok I
guess thats a good thing but come on just think
of the possibilities!


What are you addicted to? (pics!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, it's either clean living or abject nihilism, but it strikes me that there's a fine line between being addicted to nothing and having nothing to live for.

______________________________________________

Is nothingness a unifying world theory?

Maybe so; the next test shows I desire Unity.

(Jeez, I hope it's not that Unity!)

Unity. You Turly Desire Unity. You wish that the
world was together as one, and world peace was
among us. You enjoy sitting in natures peaceful
spots to get away from war and hate.

PLEASE RATE


What Do You Truly Desire? *PICS*
brought to you by Quizilla

________________________________________

Next test, well, I don't have any idea what it was about, but I took it anyway.

Ice makes me melt or something.....

Kirune-ra feels much more strongly about you than
he ever did before. Driven by his dedication to
protect you, he will always be by your side,
even in death :X


would an angel, demon, or pure evil fall for you 9 (new pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

_____________________________________

The last test -- "Which old school Nickelodeon show are you?" -- once again subjected me to ridicule! I will have my readers know that I am not a rad chick with no fashion sense!

You are CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL. She is a rad
chick with absolutely no fashion sense. If you
are a guy and chose this... you are gay.


Which old school Nickelodeon show are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I protest! Too much!

A columnist for a student newspaper has (apparently) apologized to the family of Pat Tillman for his Ted-Rall-like remarks:

Rene Gonzalez had written a column for the campus paper saying the football player-turned-soldier who died in combat in Afghanistan wasn't a hero -- but a "G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."

Gonzalez said in an e-mail to a Boston TV station that he was trying to say Tillman's celebrity had factored into his being labeled a hero.

He admits he tried to prove his point in an "insensitive way" and that the article wasn't worth publishing.

While the "got what was coming to him" remark was standard leftist fare, the "wasn't worth publishing" remark reminds me of how Kos attempted to trivialize similar remarks. ("....wrote in some diary comments somewhere....")

The difference is that there wasn't any college president to make Kos apologize.

UPDATE: Just found out the writer is looking for love. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Rene calls himself a "courageous leftist" and calls the American government "fascistic and Hitlerian." He was born on the Fourth of July, is 4'8" tall, and says things like

My tongue is my sword.

No Jewesses please.

This absolutely cannot be satire, of course....

UPDATE: Here's the entire text that Gonzalez claims wasn't worth publishing. He makes it quite clear who's side he's on:

Their resistance is more legitimate than our invasion, regardless of the fact that our social values are probably more enlightened than theirs. For that, [Tillman] shouldn't be hailed as a hero, he should be used as a poster boy for the dangerous consequences of too much "America is #1," frat boy, propaganda bull.

....He did die in vain, because in the years to come, we will realize the irrationality of the War on Terror and the American reaction to Sept. 11....

MORE: Here's a real picture of Rene for anyone who might be interested....

Found the picture here.....

And confirmed it via Amazon.

>>>Better hurry, because Rene might decide the picture wasn't worth publishing! (Don't know about the Amazon reviews.)

UPDATE: A commenter just informed me the MarKamusic website has been altered since I posted the link. (While I can't blame them, here's the cached version of the above website.)

Why, they even took down the group photo!

MORE AND WORSE (4-3-04): Funny thing that I'd call Rene Gonzalez's remarks Ted Rall-like. It only took a couple of days for Rall to produce a cartoon mocking Tillman as a bigot, a cog, an idiot, and a sap. (Via Drudge, whose dry reporting was outdone by Michelle.)

Will Rall apologize?

YET MORE: Sheesh! From Glenn Reynolds, I just learned that MSNBC took down the Rall cartoon I linked above. It was there when I linked it, and frankly I am getting a little fatigued by now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tactics, but I guess that's the nature of the Internet. I never know what to expect. Anyway, here, via InstaPundit, is the image from Michelle, and here's the screenshot saved by Fred Schoenman.

What's with this "NEXT CARTOON PLEASE!" business, anyway? I doubt it's Rall's way of apologizing, and I wonder if he's even being asked not to do it again.

Dick Morris on UNSCAM:

At the start of the Oil-for-Food program, America and Britain proposed that the money flow only to accounts entirely controlled by the United Nations. Soon this standard was lowered to include accounts not actually controlled by the United Nations, but only monitored by it.

Then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, warned that "oil is fungible" and noted that once Iraq was allowed to pump and sell it, Saddam could sell all he wanted outside of officially sanctioned channels and nobody could tell which black liquid was legal and which not. But nobody imagined that there were actual bribes going to specific French, Russian and UN officials as part of the program.

Now it appears that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's sanctimonious posturing may have concealed oil bribes which reached high up in the ranks of the UN organization itself.

The defect of international coalitions is that they include the just and the unjust, the bribed and the honest, the democratic and the autocratic. And their members cannot be trusted equally. The group that stood up and backed the invasion of Iraq was nicknamed "the Coalition of the Willing." Now it appears it was also "the Coalition of the Honest."

Peace can be made very profitable.

Here's Kofi Annan on Saddam Hussein, 1998:

a man I can do business with....

And how!

Moblogging from special occasion dinner (at restaurant next to X-rated bookstore!) Tough to write here; hopefully more later.

Don't know whether this will post....

UPDATE: Would I lie?

After Susie saw my last post (in which I mentioned the Flea's "glimpse of self"), Susie put me to shame by running the test on herself (she's Juliette Binoche and Judy Garland).

This, of course, put the onus on me to see what who I look like. Being a naturally distrustful person, I thought I would sponsor an age progression on myself, so I ran the test twice, first with this picture of me taken in the early 1980s.

Early 80s result:

Pavel Bure, Gary Oldman, Freddie Mercury

Next I uploaded a recent picture of me:

Recent photo result:

Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Robbins, Pavel Bure

Samuel L. Jackson? Um, I think that anyone who would confuse me with Samuel L. Jackson should not be allowed to drive a car, and probably wouldn't be safe walking the streets. (Tim Robbins, however -- there's yet another similarity between me and the Flea!)

Pavel Bure intrigues me because it's a double hit -- on pictures twenty years apart. That has to reveal something.

I'm afraid to ask about this Pavel Bure's background, but I guess I have no choice since he's running around impersonating me.

Anyway, there's at least one book written about him. He's a Russian and a recluse and a Right Wing.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear right now: I AM NOT A RUSSIAN!

It's hard to tell whether I have a strong facial resemblance to Bure, but I don't think I'll be mistaken for him, nor him for me, so I am not worried.

Glad that ordeal is over!

Everyone, please take a moment to do two things.

Peruse the 84th Carnival of the Vanities, hosted by Trudy W. Schuett at WOLves. And don't miss the 43rd Bonfire of the Vanities, hosted by On the Fritz.

I'll highlight some of my favorites, starting with the Bonfire.

_______________________________

Now for some tidbits from the Carnival.

So I'll end by repeating what I said before....

Please GIVE!

Three stories -- all of which I found at InstaPundit -- have me thinking.

According to Kenneth Timmerman, WMDs have been found by the U.S. military, but the U.N. jumps through hoops to declare otherwise. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) There's a lot of evidence, and I am surprised it isn't getting more coverage. Surely the U.N. doesn't have that kind of power?

Then there's this (Via Jeff Jarvis):

When I heard about the decision of the coalition to get UN involved the in the process of authority handover, I grew really restless, and what made me more worried is that ‘all parts’ seem to agree on this; the coalition, the UN the GC and the whole world. Now wait a minute! Is that the same useless, half corrupted organization that supported Saddam, and still support his likes in the name of preserving the international wall? Is that the same organization that left Iraq and the Iraqi people after the 1st terrorist attack? I hope they are speaking of something other than that. Some people would say that this is what the Iraqi people want, but this (if it’s ever true) is not the question....

[T]here’s no possible way, with all this violence going, that the Iraqis can voice their real demands, or that significantly valid polls can be performed....
It’s my right and my duty as an Iraqi citizen and a human being to speak out and say that what Iraq needs is a firm alliance with the USA and the rest of the coalition, because these are the governments that have real interest in establishing a true democracy in Iraq and these are the people that I trust most. As for the UN, it can play a role in organizing humanitarian aids and can also play a minor role in the political future of Iraq.
(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

If WMDs have been found and that has been covered up by corrupt U.N. inspectors, the biggest question on my mind is: why isn't the White House telling the world?

After reading this analysis from Daniel Drezner (via Glenn Reynolds), I am tempted to conclude that there's no hurry.

UPDATE: Here's Senator Kerry in an interview with Chris Matthews on the WMD issue:

.... Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery, so the fact is that as you peel it away I think it comes down to this larger ideological and neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect to Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could, and because they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with.

Hmmmmm......

Well, here's what I got:

Ciotola of qu'ils the groups of l'issue to look like absents distant, when of the mass of the destruction and -- we can still do it, Chris that we find. It concerns itself, I I would wish to indicate
obvious: Who knows, if a month of inside then d'ora, found some groups. They can. But certain ritrovamento of didn't, where they had said that they were and you certain age didn't that in the amounts of qu'ils it meant the ritrovamento of qu'ils. And weren't that had found and j'ai, that one with some soldiers, that had emitted shutdowns the other way around, s'est would use them to satisfy to the improvements with the delivery d artillery, was this because l artillery he was the direction, had it, before the one of and c'était provided, that qu'elles of l'unico knew the direction that qu'elles he could provide. Hour we found n'avons of all, of that one the test of that one is that he is pleasant with the delivery, later is made to this, because l'épluchez, absent distant, of that the task, GONE, greater he stops low to the this ideological and the concept of neocon basic change of the scale and sapete, s'il d'autres of the reasons of such way how much Saddam Hussein has here, but the given form qu'elles of the thought of parce l'ont qu'elles could and méjugé of parce qu'elles exactly that would be the reaction and with this qu'elles could go.

I can't believe it, but my newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has finally mentioned the United Nations!

Kerry speech to spell out foreign policy

By James Kuhnhenn

Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - With Sen. John Kerry and President Bush sounding similar in their prescriptions for stability in Iraq, Kerry this week plans to call for a more defined U.N. role in the country and greater participation from Security Council members such as France and Germany, aides said yesterday.

...Kerry is expected to reiterate the formulation he has spelled out for Iraq before, including the need for greater U.N. participation.

Kerry has said he would seek a Security Council resolution to hand over nation-building duties to the United Nations under a U.N. "high commissioner."

Fortunately for Kerry, Philadelphia voters who get their news from the Inquirer are unaware of the UNSCAM scandal, unaware that Saddam Hussein's corrupt money was not only funding the UN for years, but funding terrorism. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Kerry's plan for greater UN participation is therefore a very good thing, and it must be reported!

Also reported on the same page was this story questioning Bush's service in the National Guard, which mentioned -- barely -- the Kerry medal flap:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Kerry had a "commendable record of service in the military" that no one was questioning, but the spokesman did not condemn criticism by Bush adviser Karen Hughes, who said Kerry misled Americans by "pretending" to throw his medals away when he returned from Vietnam.

There was an election today, and I voted. Big deal.

Moderate Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter faced a tough challenge from Pat Toomey, and I voted for Specter. (Luckily for me, I switched from Democrat to Republican last year so I can vote in the primary.)

This is not to say that I think Specter is innocent of some of the various charges against him. Conservatives call him a "RINO" and on some of the economic issues they have a point. But the thing that motivated me to support Specter is something I have discussed before in this blog, and that is the sour-grapes nature of this campaign, which focuses mostly on social issues. (I say "sour grapes" because Toomey's supporters don't seem to care that if Toomey wins the primary, the Democrats will have a much better chance of taking the seat.)

Normally, business-as-usual, finger-to-the-wind guys like Specter bore me. But my interest in this campaign was generated largely by the other side -- people who want to inject the Culture War into everything.

Dr. James Dobson campaigned hard for Toomey, and wrote a letter explaining why. The sneaky Federal Marriage Amendment is at the heart of it.

Here's a Toomey dig at Specter for being in the grip of the "Homosexual Lobby." (Google cache here.) The Toomey campaign accuses Specter of daring to show sympathy to a gay teen suicide by attending a screening of the film "Jim in Bold." The film, claims the Toomey site, "demonizes" "those opposed to the homosexual agenda."

I have not seen the film, but according to Bill and Kent's blog, among the "demonized" were Jim's fellow schoolmates "who had pulled him out of the shower and peed on him." Fred Phelps' God Hates Fags group now wants to place -- in the hometown of Jim's family -- a hateful monument stating that Jim defied God's law and is in Hell. Great folks, these people who scream they're being demonized for being "opposed to the homosexual agenda."

I better stop knocking Phelps and the thugs who beat and urinated on Jim, or else Toomey's supporters will say I too am engaging in "demonization."

Not to be outdone, Ann Coulter issued a broadside against Specter, blaming him for nearly everything she hates:

Thanks to Arlen Specter:

* States can't prohibit partial-birth abortion;
* Voluntary prayer is banned at high-school football games;
* Flag-burning is a constitutional right;
* The government is allowed to engage in race discrimination in college admissions;
* The nation has been forced into a public debate about gay marriage;
* We have to worry about whether the Supreme Court will allow "under God" to be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Coulter concludes:

Some Republicans seem to imagine that Specter has a better chance of winning the general election by appealing to Democrats – and thereby helping Bush – than Pat Toomey does. This is absurd. Just because Republicans hate Specter doesn't mean Democrats like him. It's no wonder Pennsylvania often votes Democratic. If Arlen Specter represented the Republican Party, I'd be a Democrat, too.

Toomey speaks for the moral ideologues who espouse vintage Culture War moral conservatism, and who want to "purify" the Republican Party to silence those who refuse to kowtow to their idea of a party line.

In my vote, I don't consider myself to have really voted for Specter, so much as against Culture War vitriol.

A libertarian Specter is not. But libertarians are increasingly unwelcome in the Republican Party because of the same ideologues (to say nothing of out-and-out bigots) who support guys like Toomey.

If the ideologues get their way, I guess I can always go back to being a Democrat.

Either way, I'll still feel politically homeless.

I don't know who won; I just hope it wasn't Toomey.

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: As of midnight tonight, the results from Harrisburg show a fifty-fifty split, as follows:

It looks like Toomey will take it, because Specter had a wider lead earlier (53% to 47%), and the remaining votes are in outlying rural areas.

Hey, this is a democracy.

Democrat Jim Hoeffel, a moderate who used to be my congressman, was unopposed in the Democratic primary, which means he saved his strength -- and more importantly, his money.

I wonder whether anyone is planning to form a "Republicans for Hoeffel" group....

God I hate politics.

And more than ever do I hate the Culture War.

(More later -- on my "dissent into madness.")

UPDATE: For some perspective on these numbers, bear in mind that Pennsylvania had (in 1996) roughly 9 million registered voters, out of which some 4.5 million voted.

How do those 4 million feel about the ideologues who harp about the "RINO" label?

While I can only speak for myself, I am sick to death of them. And their labels.

FINAL UPDATE: Specter finally won, 51% to 49%. Does that mean the Culture War is over? Or is it too early to break out the canned wine?

REALLY AND TRULY FINAL UPDATE: Dave Tepper weighs in on the side of Specter, in post titled "Why I Haven't Yet Given Up On Republicans":

As long as people like Specter are in the GOP, I'll have faith that the party can regain its bearings eventually.

(Actually, I'd love to see them take back the "liberal" label, as in "classical liberal". Sadly, they're a long way from that, but a boy can dream.)

Most Americans disagree with such thinking. Apparently, most Republicans do too in Pennsylvania -- even in a low-turnout primary election expected to favor activist ideologues.

Maybe there is hope.

Is Kerry finished as a serious candidate?

The question beginning to be asked by a growing number of bloggers.

Most of the mainstream media are taking Kerry's medal-toss contradictions pretty seriously too. Certainly, there has been no dearth of reporting nationwide since it sank in what an utter fool Kerry made of himself on yesterday's Good Morning America Show.

Here are a few examples:

Pretty important news, I'd say.

But here in backwater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where our newspaper pontificates about "the importance of an informed electorate in a democracy," there's not one word about the medal-tossing controversy and the serious damage Senator Kerry did to his credibility.

I'm not saying it was the story of the year. But I think it's fair to at least call it the story of the day.

Not in Philadelphia. Here it's not a story at all.

Instead, if you read today's paper, you'd think that Dick Cheney's the one in trouble. From today's front page story:

"It has been my view that Cheney adds nothing to the Bush ticket this time around," said Mickey Carroll, the director of the nonpartisan Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn. "He's a target for all sorts of criticism."

Democrats have other reasons to go after Cheney: Vice presidents typically are assigned the attack-dog role in presidential campaigns, but Cheney is particularly adept at it. Jano Cabrera, a Democratic Party spokesman, said the planned attacks on Cheney were intended to send a message that Democrats would "fight fire with fire."

Yesterday, the vice president ridiculed Kerry for once saying that foreign leaders want Bush to lose the November election. The Massachusetts senator has declined to name any of the foreign leaders who have expressed that sentiment, but when pressed on it recently, he noted that it was possible to encounter foreign leaders in New York restaurants.

"Maybe next time he'll narrow it down for us a little more. Maybe the name of the restaurant, or the leader," Cheney said to laughter from his audience at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. He also criticized Kerry for opposing at least 10 major weapons systems in the mid-1980s when the Cold War still prevailed, as well as "weapons systems vital to fighting and winning the war on terror."

Democrats responded to the Cheney attacks by producing a list of weapons the vice president opposed in the past.

Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe also questioned Cheney's standing to criticize Kerry.

"When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his words, he had 'other priorities than military service.' And he feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do whatever it takes to defend America?" McAuliffe told Democratic activists in a speech at the party's Washington headquarters. "He's the last guy who should be lecturing John Kerry about how to defend America and keep the faith with those who wear the uniform."

Until Kerry picks a running mate, McAuliffe, among others, is being asked to play the surrogate role that Cheney is fulfilling for Bush.

Any bets on whether it will be in tomorrow's Inquirer? Wanna lose some money?

After the complete refusal of the Inquirer to cover the UNSCAM story, I suppose I should just write this newspaper off as a lost cause. But what pisses me of is that it's the only major news source for people who have to live in this area. I know that Philadelphia isn't as cosmopolitan as New York, as important as Washington, as glamorous as Los Angeles, but having a hack newspaper keeping the "little people" in the dark doesn't help.

I find myself wondering whether the regional newspapers in other areas are giving important stories the same treatment.

Biased news is one thing. But the worst kind of bias is simply not telling people what's happening. Shame on the Inquirer.

But if this is a pattern, I would say Kerry will ride out the medal-throwing controversy, and more, in pretty good shape.

I mean if it isn't in the paper, obviously it did not happen! Cheney is finished. Not Kerry.

Ignorance is bliss.

Colby Cosh has just alerted me to a novel defense to a theft charge:

blatant theft can be an otherwise honest person's response to extreme stress

The accused thief is Svend Robinson, a primary backer of Bill C-250 (which I have discussed before -- recently, and back in September).

There's more:

Can the socialist poster boy bounce back? He faces a hard truth: People don't like thieves. He has always had strong support from gays and lesbians, Israel-haters, radical greens and others who have had his help in promoting pet causes. He also enjoys a certain trans-political cachet among those who admire his guts. But he has many enemies in his own party, and probably he has now alienated nearly everyone who has ever owned or managed a business or been a victim of larceny. Most of us know how crummy it feels to be ripped off. It leaves behind a proverbial, and justified, stamp of outrage. ("A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged," the old saying goes.)

Mr. Robinson's moment of madness jeopardizes what was to be his latest legislative legacy, and what still may end up being his last: Bill C-250, now awaiting third reading in the Senate, which would amend the Criminal Code to forbid the promotion of hatred on the basis of sexual orientation. Church groups say that such an amendment would criminalize traditionalist religious discourse and even the scriptures of some faiths, including the Old Testament. Proponents of Mr. Robinson's bill deny it, noting that the relevant section of the Code already contains a "good faith" defence for religious speech.

This is, of course, tommyrot. Canadian courts and human rights tribunals have shown small shame about disregarding statutory and common-law defences when it comes to hate law -- even the defence of truth. Moreover, anyone who has tried to import mildly controversial literary or cinematic material, and been baffled by customs agents' interpretations of hate and obscenity law, knows that even what the courts say doesn't matter much. When it comes to books, records and movies from abroad, what you're allowed to see is determined by donut-stuffed power-trippers possessing the collective mental subtlety of an Irish wolfhound. If C-250 passes, we are sure to see some religious literature in English detained or rejected at the border arbitrarily.

Here's Mr. Robinson's rather self-serving online statement.

I don't enjoy seeing people get in trouble or kicking them when they are down, as I've been there myself. But the fact is, in politics such things are jumped on by political opponents, and this guy has been a staunch advocate of criminalizing more hate speech. Unless he steps down, he's discrediting his rather questionable cause.

I'm not sympathetic to hate speech legislation, and I am glad we don't have it in this country. But if Robinson really believes in his cause, he should have the wisdom to distance himself from it by resigning ASAP.

What did he steal? A $10,000 ring for his Cuban boyfriend? Must have been under a lot of stress to go that far....

Meanwhile, Colby, no fan of C-250, is hoping he'll steal again.

This is very annoying:

"It's time for Dick Cheney to call off the Republican attack dogs. The American people have better things to do with their time than listen to more misleading attacks from a man who has been misleading them from the day he took office," McAuliffe said. (Via Travelling Shoes.)

Does that mean that anyone who asks legitimate questions about Kerry's medal-tossing is one of Cheney's attack dogs? Even ABC Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson -- a man Aubrey Turner has called a "socialist scumbag"?

How did Gibson become one of Cheney's attack dogs?

What really caught my attention though, was that just as the big media and the blogosphere were abuzz over the numerous contradictions in the medal-tossing extravaganza, Kerry suddenly started talking about shrapnel in his left leg. There's no reason to doubt this claim, or in any way belittle his proven courage under fire in Vietnam. But the timing.... Why is it that right now we're suddenly hearing about shrapnel in the leg? Unless his campaign is urging him to hold back, this would be the kind of thing he'd be expected to brag about. Often.

If there is a strategy of holding back the best for later, I wonder what goodies we'll hear as we get closer to November. There was that shoulder surgery not long ago; why aren't the paranoid conspiracy theorists speculating about what might have been removed? Or added?

(Don't look at me; I'm shouldering enough responsibility without biting off more than I can chew....)

Speaking of mystery legs, here's more on the mystery leg that had me up in arms recently.

Jordan conceded under defense questioning that someone else may have been killed because one left leg could not be matched with any of the 168 known bombing fatalities.

"That's possible," Jordan testified. "This is a mystery to which I don't have the answer."

Nichols, 49, contends executed bomber Timothy McVeigh had help from others -- not him. His attorneys may suggest during closing arguments the unmatched leg is all that is left of McVeigh's true accomplice.

Jordan testified his "gut feeling" was that medical examiners made a mistake and the leg belonged to a known victim. He told jurors, though, he and other experts studied X-rays and other evidence and couldn't figure out any mistake.

He said anthropologists concluded the shaven left leg likely belonged to a woman of mixed race who was 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6 inches tall. Prosecutors suggested Friday the leg could have belonged to a homeless person.

Outside the courthouse, Jordan told reporters: "I've always thought this had to be a mistake on our part. ... There were a lot of missing parts. ... But we have looked and looked and looked. Other pathologists have looked. Other anthropologists have looked. And we can't find it. ... Could it be another individual? I have to say, 'Could be. I don't know.' ... I do not know whose leg it is. That's the bottom line."

Leg had been placed in coffin The mystery leg had been mistakenly placed in the coffin of Tinker Airman 1st Class Lakesha Levy, who was killed while visiting the Social Security office.

Officials discovered the mistake when they identified a left leg found in the rubble on May 30, 1995, as Levy's leg. Officials made that identification from a footprint on Levy's birth records.

The mystery leg was studied after Levy's casket was removed in 1996 from an above- ground crypt in New Orleans.

I am simply not buying the story that a team of pathologists is unable to determine the sex of that leg. Identification of Y chromosomal DNA will determine the sex -- even of skeletal remains.

The fact that the left leg was shaved reveals there was plenty of flesh available for testing. Why hasn't that been done?

Does a shaven leg necessarily prove that the leg came from a woman?

I don't think so, because men shave their legs too!

Lest readers think I'm referring to drag queens, this report shows that there can be other reasons why a man might shave his legs:

investigators searching the luggage of suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta had found what appeared to be instructions for the suicide hijackers. Excerpts released by the Justice Department included this instruction: "The previous night, shave the extra hair from the body [and] pray."

All new readers should know that Jeff Soyer, blogger extraordinaire, happens to be my blogfather. Jeff is the author of two blogs, his own blog Alphecca, and Tarazet, a new blog he recently started for pets and pet related issues.

Jeff's Weekly Check On The Bias is a must-read for all aspirants to blog literacy. Not only that, it's a major service to the Second Amendment, as Jeff is a media watchdog on the gun issue, and he does it all on his own.

And he does it in style! Here's Jeff making an explosive analogy:

[T]he definition of "assault weapons" is totally based on cosmetics. Does the firearm have a pistol grip? What is the magazine capacity? In fact, what the legislation really does is just prohibit a gun from looking scary! My Ruger P-95 operates exactly the same as a TEC-9 but it's not on the list because it doesn't include the "appearence" features that the AWB sponsors were trying to ban with this feel-good law.

And by the way, Mr. Spencer, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were planning, originally, to blow the school apart with propane tanks. Should we be banning "assault barbecue gas-grills"?

Be sure to read Jeff's weekly report today.

And while you're at it, hit his tip jar.

Believe me, it's a good cause.

As I marvel over how much Linux has improved over the years, I still find myself appalled by what seems to be a genuine conspiracy against this rather excellent operating system.

Take Fritz Hollings' bill. Please. This could be interpreted as prohibiting Linux operating systems because someone might use them to copy DVDs:

The Hollings bill's vague language makes it difficult to predict specifically how any new legislation would affect open-source software. Even so, the fears of the movement's junkies reflect more than paranoia. Just look at the controversy surrounding the encryption that's already embedded in DVD players. Six years after DVD players were introduced, no legal, "pure" (free of proprietary components) Linux DVD player is on the market.

The reason: Each approved DVD manufacturer has to sign a licensing deal with the DVD Copy Control Assn. It requires that each player contain the Content Scrambling System (CSS), which prevents, say, a French citizen from watching a Hollywood movie before it has been released in France, as well as inhibiting unauthorized copying and distribution (see BW Online, 1/16/02, "The French Have a Word For It: Hacking").

Since the licensing goes against the most basic open-source ground rules, no company that used Linux signed the license. Thus, Linux users are unable to to watch DVDs on their computers. "Hollywood doesn't just make movies, it controls how consumers can watch the movie," complains Larry Rosen, a Silicon Valley attorney and executive director of the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting open-source software. "They make it impossible for a movie to be legally viewable on Linux -- or on any machine they don't approve of. Does that hurt Linux? It hurts everyone."

Or so I thought. Without my having about it, it turned out that instead of a CD ROM drive, the SuSE machine has a DVD drive. I assumed that because this was the latest and the greatest version of what many people consider to be the best Linux distribution going, that it would be a snap to get the DVD operational. So I popped in a DVD I own (The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart), and that built-in "xine" player stopped dead with a nasty-looking error code. Puzzled by this, I visited the SuSE website, where I learned that there's no legally available DVD codec for SuSE Linux.

Surfing around a bit, I found this discussion group which supplies detailed instructions lovingly supplied by geeks to non-geeks. I don't want to bore readers here (I'm tending towards excessive prattle about Linux these days), but in brief, you have to uninstall the xine player which ships with SuSE, then install a whole bunch of different files. Apparently some of the entertainment titans think some of the files are illegal, but what do I know? The law is probably as unreadable as the CSS code, and I can't knowingly break incomprehensible laws. Besides, at least one court of appeal has held that the First Amendment even applies to computer code. Imagine!

What bothers me is this: why can't I play a DVD that I bought and paid for? Or that I might choose to rent? If the CSS code doesn't function in Linux as the entertainment titans might like, well, who are they to demand that the code of millions of users -- which existed before their lousy CSS -- be made illegal?

It's outrageous.

And it's not my problem that someone might manage to manipulate his Linux system in such a way to copy DVDs! To copy a DVD is one thing; that's piracy, and properly punishable as such. But it's as manifestly unfair to criminalize software which might assist in copying it as it would be to criminalize copying machines because some people misuse them.

Once again, the national kindergarten reduces us all to a level of enforced stupidity.

Of course, the comparison to kindergarten ends at the prison gates. The CBDTPA (short for the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" -- a mouthful) provides prison sentences of 5 - 20 years.

If you don't like it, you don't have to just sit there and fume.

You can sign the petition.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the stuff I downloaded mades the DVD drive work perfectly. Fast forward or slow motion, in both audio and video, and more controls than I know what to do with. (And that's at the "beginner" level.)

When I was a little boy growing up around here, Philadelphians had a nickname for the Philadelphia Inquirer; they called it "The Inky."

Cute, isn't it? Anyway, I grew up respecting the paper, because they used to do really cool stuff like this:

Well, the times have changed, and the Inky has changed with the Times times. I have wasted countless hours of time this week searching in vain for the UNSCAM story. Nothing all week -- despite the fact that it is considered the biggest story this year, and without question the largest UN scandal for many years (perhaps ever -- because even the Kurt Waldheim Nazi scandal didn't contaminate the entire UN leadership, nor was the UN discovered to be funded by Nazi money).

I don't know how many times I have said this, but I'll say it again: THE STORY IS NOT BEING REPORTED. The Inquirer has not yet answered my calls or emails asking where the story is. Philadelphians do not know that the UN was running on Saddam Hussein money and the worst corruption, for years.

Well, OK, so my local paper appears to guilty of non-reporting the biggest news story of the year. Because I grew up here and knew some of the reporters in the old days, I'd like to bend over backwards and at least play devil's advocate.

Might the Inky be afraid the story is fake? Especially in light of the major news scandals this week, I can understand the reluctance to report stories before all the facts are in. Otherwise, you might look bad, and have to issue retractions, right?

This was all in the back of my mind I turned on my computer this morning and found yet another story of incredibly sloppy journalism: the misidentification of photographs of the Columbia crew's coffins as American war casualties from Iraq. NASA issued this press release to newspaper editors:

Columbia Crew Mistakenly Identified As Iraqi War Casualties

Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.

Editors are being asked to confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy.

An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts.

News organizations across the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the web site.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who notes,

Here's a partial list of outlets that were snookered. Apparently, they just picked these up from an antiwar website and didn't do any further checking.

Remember this when Old Media guys talk about how untrustworthy the Internet is. . . .

Surely the Inky wasn't involved, I thought. I hoped not, because I hate having to search through piles of old newspapers. So, first I went to the Inquirer's web site, where I found the story, which does complain of the government's "crackdown" but which did not feature any of the misidentified NASA pictures.

Not enough!

One of the drawbacks of being a slob is that you have no excuse for not raking through journalistic muck to look for answers. So I dug and I dug, and suddenly VOILA! Paydirt!

The photograph above is an exact match with this NASA shot. (More detail here.)

Well, but NASA asked the Inquirer's editors to confirm that these pictures in fact showed the Iraq dead. Did they?

Well, sort of. In a later article about sensitivity to families ("Bush stresses privacy in coffin-photo debate"), there's this:

The photos were taken at the Dover base, and most were of flag-draped caskets used by the military to transport remains. But Anderson said yesterday that the photos also included images of the remains of the shuttle Columbia astronauts arriving at Dover, as well as casualties from Afghanistan. A NASA spokesman said that at least 18 rows of photos on the site were of the Columbia astronauts.

The Inquirer and other media across the country published photos obtained by Kick. Two photos on the front page of yesterday's editions of The Inquirer, and another on Page A11, showed flag-draped coffins containing the remains of military personnel killed in the line of duty. However, a caption with a second photo on page A11 mistakenly said the photo depicted a hearse containing the remains of U.S. war dead. The hearse carried the remains of a Columbia astronaut.

According to his Web site, Kick, who has not returned phone calls or e-mail from the Associated Press, requested all Dover photos from Feb. 1, 2003, to the present. "He wasn't distinguishing between what he wanted," Anderson said. "He just wanted everything."

A caption for a photo showing an honor guard trailing a hearse in yesterday's editions of The Inquirer contained incorrect information. The hearse carried the remains of a shuttle Columbia astronaut.

What intrigues me the most about the retraction is the complaint that the guy who supplied the photos "has not returned phone calls or e-mail."

That's my complaint about the Inquirer!

Inky don't!

UPDATE ON "OLD" NEWS: Speaking of Nazi Kurt Waldheim and the UN, I found a real underreported gem from 1998:

By refusing to pay the UN "debt," Congress would not only put a stop to the improper if not illegal practice of misappropriating funds to the UN; it would also acquire additional leverage for forcing tough reforms on that body. The latest UN scandal, uncovered by the New Yorker magazine, is that in 1994 Secretary General Kofi Annan, then director of peacekeeping, ordered UN troops in Rwanda not to intervene to stop a planned genocide campaign that took half a million lives. Annan, a veteran UN bureaucrat, has reacted to the controversy over his role in the genocide by blaming the United States for not doing more to save lives. It appears that much of our "voluntary" assistance to the UN for peacekeeping missions has been wasted.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson insists that if Congress demands reimbursement or credit for all of this assistance, the UN might go bankrupt. In fact, the organization has accumulated a $15.5 billion pension fund; it even continues to pay a $102,000 annual pension to former secretary general Kurt Waldheim, who was exposed as a Nazi war criminal.

The United Nations won't go broke. Whether it should is another question.

I don't know, but I am not holding my breath in the hope of seeing the story in the Inky!

MORE: I don't know about the status of his pension, but according to this report, Kurt Waldheim is STILL ALIVE.

....Which is more than can be said for Waldheim's Chief of Staff, former Iraqi UN ambassador Ismat Kittani, a Kurd who defended Saddam Hussein's genocide against his own people. (I guess he learned a lot from his UN boss.)

UPDATE: A big hooray to Glenn Reynolds for linking this story! Maybe now the Inquirer will answer my emails. As a matter of fact, I just sent another one earlier:

NOTE: email addresses omitted as protection against SPAM.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Fwd: Missing news item]
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 13:57:58 -0400
From: Eric Scheie
To: advocate_AT_phillynews.com

Hi,

I am have been unable to find the hard copy of this story anywhere, and I am wondering if you can help me.

I have received no response to my email but I am more concerned that the story itself is being ignored.

Thank you!

Eric Scheie

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Missing news item
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 09:52:06 -0400
From: Eric Scheie
To: nwarwick rbarron

Dear Messrs Warwick and Barron:

You are listed respectively as the National/Foreign Editor and the Deputy Editor/Copy Chief of the National/Foreign Desk. I have a simple question which I hope you can answer.

I am trying to locate the hard copy of an article which appears at the Inquirer website:

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/8478139.htm

Title: Probe Opens on Iraq Oil-For-Food Program

By Dafna Linzer
(AP)

This is a very important story, but the problem is, I cannot find it in yesterday's paper, and I was hoping someone there could help me. I am thinking I must be missing something, and I just wondered if either one of you might be able to tell me whether (and where) it appears in the actual newspaper.

Thank you,

Eric Scheie

Anyway, a big welcome to all new readers here from InstaPundit!

UPDATE: Sometimes I think I am living in two separate worlds: the online world and the "real" world. In the online world I take it for granted that I can get the news, even if it means having to sort through various stories, looking past bias here or an inaccuracy there. In the online world I can read news stories saying that UNSCAM is:

the biggest scandal ever to engulf the organisation.

At least $1.1 billion was paid directly into UN coffers, supposedly to cover the cost of administering the $67 billion scheme, while Saddam Hussein diverted funds intended for the poor and sick of Iraq to bribe foreign governments and prominent overseas supporters of his regime. (Via Friends of Saddam. )

....57 percent of the 1,311 Americans questioned last month still believe that "before the war Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda." That is simply not so. Twenty percent believe Iraq had a direct connection to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Also not so. Thirty-eight percent believe prewar Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Many Americans cling to these beliefs, even as inspections and investigations have found no proof of them. Believers conceivably could still be proved right regarding WMD, but proof so far is shockingly lacking.

What these findings put at center stage is the importance of an informed electorate in a democracy.

The electorate is uninformed all right....

UPDATE: THE REAL WORLD REPLIES! I was amazed to receive the following reply this morning from Marlena Slowik at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Missing news item]
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:42:14 -0400
From: Slowik, Marlena
To: escheie

Dear Mr. Scheie: This story ran last Wednesday. Please contact our back issues dept at 215-854-4444 to obtain a hard copy.

Thanks.

Marlena

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Scheie
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 1:58 PM
To: advocate
Subject: [Fwd: Missing news item]

Hi,

I am have been unable to find the hard copy of this story anywhere, and I am wondering if you can help me.

I have received no response to my email but I am more concerned that the story itself is being ignored.

Thank you!

Eric Scheie

No luck. The story could not be found. So I replied to the email:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Missing news item]
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:40:36 -0400
From: Eric Scheie
To: Slowik, Marlena
References:

Marlena,

Thanks so much for replying. Could you just tell me what page it's on? I still have the paper, but I just can't find it. I have looked carefully through Sections A, B, C, D, and E (F is the Classified), but it just doesn't seem to be there.

Thanks again!

Eric

But then I got this:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Missing news item]
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:55:52 -0400
From: Slowik, Marlena
To: Eric Scheie

Hi Eric: I checked with our Online Editor who replies:

in double-checking, i see that it did not run in the inquirer. It's a story that Knight Ridder Digital posted in its national news box directly from AP. So he won't find the story in the newspaper.

So the story only ran online and not in the paper. I hope this answers your questions.

Thanks.
Marlena

Nor has it run since.

Philadelphians are not supposed to know about such things. That's because of the "importance of an informed electorate in a democracy."

In prison.

For trying to stop your own pain!

Stuff like this article by Jacob Sullum makes me sick beyond words. A guy who medicated himself, for pain, and who refused to plead guilty to being a drug dealer (which he wasn't) is now locked up where he can do society no harm:

[H]e sits in jail in his wheelchair, a subdermal pump delivers a steady, programmed dose of morphine to his spine.

....prosecutors have pursued Paey in three trials. The first ended in a mistrial; the second resulted in a conviction that the judge threw out because of a procedural error; and the third, which ended last month, produced guilty verdicts on 15 charges of drug trafficking, obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, and possession of a controlled substance.

Not a lone example. It's what passes for "justice" in America. Considering that the prosecutor in this case, Assistant State Attorney Michael Halkitis, wants to be a judge, my attempt at sarcasm (placing the word "justice" in quotes) is pretty lame.

That's why I said I was "sick beyond words," because they can't express my outrage.

I guess that's why I blog.

It's better than medicating my anger.

I am glad to see that some conservatives like Andrew Stuttaford can see the injustice as clearly as Glenn Reynolds.

Those who would imprison their fellow citizens for medicating their pain are without conscience, and it's scary. Those who hurt those for the "crime" of hurting themselves (if that's what medicating pain is), who put them in prison, are guiltier of far more heinous crimes.

They better hope there isn't a hell.

At least the Salem witch trial prosecutors imagined that they were doing the Lord's work.

UPDATE: Prosecutor Halkitis is against "medical necessity" as a drug defense -- even in marijuana cases -- as he believes it's "an excuse to abuse illegal drugs." It's high time voters are made aware of this sort of judicial terrorism, because I think the more Americans know about these mandatory sentences of 25 years to life, the harder it will be to convict anyone.

Not that this is new. Under British law well into Victorian times, criminal penalties were so severe that juries would look for almost any excuse to acquit. These evil laws should be abolished entirely, but until then I'll support any "excuse" that can be placed on the ballot. ("Evil" is a touchy, much-abused word these days, and I am not using it lightly or engaging in hyperbole. If 25-to-life for self-medication isn't evil, then what is?)

Or jury nullification:

The answer the legal establishment gives to charges that prosecutors might misbehave is basically: "trust us." But they don't trust juries, and they haven't given any very persuasive reasons why they're more trustworthy than juries are.

Interestingly enough, even those of a strict law-and-order mindset would do well to consider that severe punishments disincline juries to convict, and create legal chaos; as one legal scholar put it,

[A]s severity increases, certainty decreases.

OK, so it's not Friday!

To anyone who missed the online tests yesterday, I asked everyone to please donate to the Spirit of America. I have no way of knowing whether anyone did, so I am a bit conflicted over what to do. The usual pattern here has been to offer four tests, but I only found two "normal" tests -- both of which generated humiliating results! (The second one was so disturbing that I decided to verify the results, which I added for a total of four tests.)

The first test -- "Which Recurring Kevin Smith Character Are You?" -- said I was Hooper.

Which Recurring Kevin Smith Character Are You? Take the test here

I did love Chasing Amy, but I didn't particularly identify with Hooper, so I'm not sure about the soundness of this test.

(Via res gestae dionysii, who got to be Holden!)

______________________________________

The other test -- Who is Your Alter Poet? -- is puzzling, because I don't think of myself as a poet at all. But I guess if you have to be a poet, suicide would give some intensity to your work.

Eh, you got Plath. Sucks for you.


Who is Your Alter Poet?
brought to you by Quizilla

Also from res gestae dionysii -- who gets to be Kerouac. This stuff really is so unfair. I. Just. Can't. Take. It. Any. More.

Hmmmm.....

I smell gas.

Better go investigate!

AM I DONE?

Let me check....

___________________________________

Oh what the heck! Here are two more vital tests, for signs of death....

I bear no responsibility for the spelling, but here's the first result:

Your more dead than alive.

Are you Dead?
brought to you by Quizilla

________________________________________

What more proof do I need than that?

Well, how about this?

You will die of a mishap during AUTOEROTIC
ASPHYXIATION.

This is the technical term for your common practice
of masturbating with your head in a noose. As
you already know, the lack of oxygen from
hanging yourself greatly increases your orgasm.
What you don't know is that the key is to keep
a lemon segment in your mouth. That way, once
you start to pass out, your jaw will clamp
down, and the sour lemon taste will jolt you
into consciousness in time to avoid death by
hanging.

You will be the secret shame of your entire
extended family as well as subject of a
mass-forwarded email.

If only you had remembered the lemon. Tsk. Well, at
least you'll go out with a bang.


What death by freak accident will bring you worldwide infamy?
brought to you by Quizilla

What can I say? When you gotta come go, you gotta go?

What's that about the lemon segment in the mouth? I must have gotten distracted in the kitchen while playing silly Sylvia Plath games.

I think I'm about up to my neck with these online tests.....

Well, it's Online Testing Day at Classical Values, but right now I am so confused that I feel like creating my own test, along the lines of "Which Spirit of America Alliance Are You?" I mean, I can't keep track of which sides all these bloggers are on. I am, um, challenged.

There are several founders of the challenge movement, one being of course Michele, whose Victory Coalition has its own banner:
.
Michele is supported by Kevin and many others (including Fritz who has good graphics), but I can't be expected to list them all here.

Whoa! Michele has more graphics than I realized. Check this out:

According to the Spirit of America site, the Victory Coalition is mounting a spirited challenge to raise money for the Marines:

Our goal is to outgive the ALL other alliances (The Deaniacs and the Argghhh's, for example), and then rub their faces in it. All your alliance are belong to us!!!"

The Deaniacs? The Argghh's?

They must mean co-founder Dean Esmay, whose Liberty Alliance is here, and whose dog likes kitties.

Puff likes kitties, and so do I. If Puff could give, I know he'd go with Dean's Liberty Alliance. (Maybe he'll remind me later....)

By "The Arghh's" they're obviously referring to
Castle Argghhh!, which also features a kitty, as well as a logo of Uncle Sam wearing a medieval helmet, which I like. And there's some really cool stuff being auctioned off too.

Here's the Argghhh! logo:

Can't go wrong there either. I like auctions!

Here are the official results so far:

Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom $9759.5 Donate
The Victory Coalition $7223 Donate
Liberty Alliance $3154 Donate

Here is my deal: I donated $70.00 so far, but I didn't pay any attention to which "alliance" or "coalition" directed me to the Spirit of Liberty site. I guess that makes me unaligned, but I want to support the troops and the Iraqi kids any way I can. I love all of the bloggers who are doing this, and so I don't know how I would decide which alliance to support.

The only way I'd trouble myself to write an Online Test selecting the right alliance would be if I could require that readers pay in advance to take the test, and have the results direct the money to the appropriate alliance. I have no idea whether Quizilla can do such a thing and I doubt it. Plus, I doubt there's time; the challenge is over in a week.

So let me issue my own challenge. Regular readers know I don't have a kitty, and I have never asked for money for myself. Just think of how much money you have all saved! And now that you've saved it, I am asking you -- especially those of you who like this blog enough to read it regularly -- to please donate to Spirit of America. Either pick one of the above blogs, or just go directly to the Spirit of America, and help the Marines help Iraqis.

Then you can come back. And maybe I'll let you take the regular tests for today (if I can find the damned things....).

Seriously, please give. I can't think of a better cause.

I might not know which "side" I'm on in the blogosphere, but in this effort, there is no wrong side.

I take that back!

To not give at all is, I think, to be on the wrong side.

CATS AND DOGS UPDATE: In view of the fact that "Friday catblogging" is becoming an established tradition in the blogosphere, I would be remiss if I did not put a kitty where my mouth is. All the more so in light of my comments about Dean Esmay's kitty-and-doggie picture.

So, here it is; a rare, never-before-see