Cake Eater Chronicles

Allied naval bombardment and bombing

Allied naval bombardment and bombing raids on the German defenses at Omaha beach are a failure.

Guiding craft for the landing force at Utah is sunk; remaining ships head off course.

Go and check out the

Go and check out the trailers for Michael Moore Hates America.

Should be much fun to watch with a tub of buttered popcorn, no?*

Hmph. WASHINGTON - The State

Hmph.

WASHINGTON - The State Department welcomed on Monday a pledge by Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir to mobilize the Sudanese armed forces to disarm militias responsible for uprooting more than 1 million people in western Sudan. {...}State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said both the government and the rebels should abide by a cease fire that was signed on April 8. He said the United States has been helping facilitate the arrival of outside monitors to the area to monitor the cease fire. Because of the difficulties in sending assistance overland, the United States has been using aircraft, which is far more costly. The 15th U.S. relief flight arrived in recent days carrying food, Boucher said.

15th relief flight, eh? Good. Could be better, but it's a start. Especially considering the UN's still sitting on their hands trying to pass a resolution through the Security Council. Next question would be: when is the US going to get some credit for actually doing something? Or are we going to get grief for going "unilateral" again?

Or as honest as I

Or as honest as I can be, because we all know I'm really a pathological
liar, hence it just isn't in my makeup to be honest, right?
So long as that's settled...
1. Which political party do you typically agree with?
Republican, but it doesn't sit quite right with me. Particularly when
they spend like a Moscow prostitute who's just stolen a Platinum AMEX
or try to pass amendments to the Constitution outlawing same-sex
marriage to get the ultra-religious nutjobs out to the polls come
election day because
if they don't the nutjobs will think the Rapture is coming and they
won't bother voting at all because they'll be at home, praying and
waiting for the second coming, and there goes that key voting block...
It's crap. If the Libertarians were smart, they'd reorganize their
party into something that doesn't resemble a Montana Militia and they'd
find that they just might have have some takers. 2. Which political
party do you typically vote for?
See above. The least offensive of all options.
3. List the last five presidents that you voted for.
I've only voted for four and I only made the first one because my
eighteenth birthday was a few days before the election and I'd
preregistered (and was able to vote in the primaries at age seventeen
because of Nebraska state law). I'm relatively young that way. Bush,
Bush, Dole, Bush
4. Which party do you think is smarter about the economy?
Neither. Political parties don't have much to do with the economy, do
they? Unless it's an election year, and then 5.6% unemployment is bad
news for one president, when it was good news for another. Oops. I'm
confusing matters. That's the media.
Forgive me. 5. Which party do you think is smarter about domestic
affairs?
Republican. Two words: lower taxes.
6. Do you think we should keep our troops in Iraq or pull them out?
And what, exactly, would pulling them out achieve in the grand scheme
of things?
7. Who, or what country, do you think is most responsible for 9/11?
I think the nineteen assholes who hijacked the planes and slammed them
into the buildings and murdered almost three thousand people are, first
and foremost, responsible. Then there's Osama and his band of merry
financiers/propagandists/training camp operators/imams/sheep. Then
there's the guy in Germany who helped funnel the money. Then there's
the madrassas financed by/operated in Saudi Arabia who filled their
heads with incorrect garbage. I could go on all day. But nowhere on my
list are the names of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Condolezza Rice.
Or even Ted Kennedy, although it slays me to say so.
I still, however, would like to know why Tenet's fat ass hasn't been
booted out of CIA Headquarters. 8. Do you think we will find weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq?
As the husband's Kuwaiti friend said: they will be finding them for
years to come via people tripping over trapdoors in the desert. 9. Yes
or no, should the U.S. legalize marijuana?
Marijuana? Yes. And it's about bloody time, too.
Cocaine/Heroin/Crack/Crank? No. 10. Do you think the Republicans stole
the last presidental election?
No, I don't. GET. OVER. IT.
11. Do you think Bill Clinton should have been impeached because of
what he did with Monica Lewinski?
Bubba can have all the sex he wants. Even if it is out of wedlock.
That's his business, not mine. He just can't lie under oath about it,
so yes, I think he should have been impeached. And he was. He just
wasn't found guilty at the trial in the Senate.
But he should have been.
12. Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?
Shudder
13. Name a current Democrat who would make a great president.
There are Democrats who would make a good president? Well, knock me
over with a feather! Who knew?
14. Name a current Republican who would make a great president.
Condoleeza Rice. Good woman in a storm.
15. Do you think that women should have the right to have an abortion?
Tricky question. It's against my religion, and I do think it's murder.
So, part of me wants to call it a right and wrong issue and let that be
the end of that. But can I be the one to say that if a girl is raped
and subsequently becomes pregnant, that she should be forced to endure
nine months of what, undoubtedly, would be sheer and utter hell, the
reminder of what happened ever present? No, I can't. So, I suppose the
answer is yes. I just wish people wouldn't use abortion as a form of
birth control to take care of the inconvenience that an unprotected one
night stand will invariably bring about. There are other options
readily available. 16. What religion are you?
I follow the guy with the big pointy hat who lives in Rome. As much as
I possibly can, even though he and the dudes in the red hats try my
patience. I'm offering it up for all the poor souls in purgatory. Just
in case you were wondering.
17. Have you read the Bible all the way through?
From start to finish? Like it was a novel or something? No,
and who the hell would? I can say with confidence, however, that I'm
pretty darn sure we hit everything, from start to finish, although in
varying order, in school.
18. What’s your favorite book?
Tough one. There's lots. I see no reason to narrow it down to just one.
19. Who is your favorite band?
Jeez. How old are these questions? It's not like Led Zeppelin is still
playing gigs and putting out those really neat vinyl records, kids.
Although, "When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on
side one of Led Zeppelin IV." Music has moved on courtesy of file
sharing. Although I still love U2. 20. Who do you think you’ll vote
for president in the next election?
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that---ahem---WE HAVE A SECRET BALLOT FOR A REASON AND THE CAKE EATER CHRONICLES IS AN ELECTION FREE ZONE. You can probably figure it out if you can read.

21. What website did you see this on first?
Electric Venom

27 DD Swimming Tanks bound

27 DD Swimming Tanks bound for Omaha Beach sink upon launching in high seas.

DD Swimming Tank With Canvas

DD Swimming Tank With Canvas Shield Down

DD "Swimming" Tank

DD "Swimming" Tank

Don't you just love it

Don't you just love it when the day completely gets away from you?
Here's the recap:
1. Rise
2. Surf and drink coffee
3. Watch entire funeral
4. Make peanut butter cookies
5. Place peanut butter cookies to rest in fridge
6. Go for a walk with a slightly
batty-from-trying-to-find-venture-capital husband
7. Get home and bake cookies
8. Make Dinner
9. Slap on war paint and put on dress
10. Run to car in downpour
11. Drive to freakin' Burnsville for the niece's dance recital (she's three years old!)
12. Leave recital; drive to Eagan for pie. (Mmmmm. Pie. Lemon Meringue. Mmmmmm.)
13. Drive home.
14. Arrive home---after taking an small detour because Led Zeppelin's D'yer Ma'ker
was playing and the husband was really into percussing along with
Bonham. Ever seen a drummer pretend that his hands are his sticks, his
thighs (or whatever solid surface might be nearby) are the drums, etc.?
It's pretty damn funny. (Note to self: start pricing kits! Birthday!
Month and a half away! AIEEEE!)
I'll blog tomorrow. I promise.

Allied warships being shelling German

Allied warships being shelling German coastal fortifications.

US troops land boats on St. Marcouf, a German held island just off Utah beach.

St. Marcouf Proper

St.
Marcouf Proper

Now ladies and gents, If

Now ladies and gents,
If we were only talking about the actors who played Mr. Knightley and
Mr. Darcy in the movies based on these books, honestly speaking, whom
would you prefer?

Knightley

or

Darcy?

Now, I'm not saying Jeremy's not without his charms. He has many charms. I'm not denying this one little bit. I've loved him in just about everything else he was in (except for that Mimic piece of crap). I even had the notion that Sandra Bullock should have run off with him at the end of The Net, because that small bit of him wanting to kill her could be easily shoved aside because he was a charming creature.

But...damn...how
can he compare to Colin's Mr. Darcy? He can make ruffles look sexy. I
don't think you can say the same thing about Jeremy's Mr. Knightley.

Eastern Task Force (British and

Eastern Task Force (British and Canadian Troops) arrive and anchor for
assault.

I need to introduce you

I need to introduce you to one of my most favorite people in the world:
my nephew James.

Ain't
he a cutie? I have lots of pictures of James, but I think this one
captures his mischievious nature rather well. And he is mischievious.
He's also as stubborn as a rock---it comes part and parcel with the red
hair his mother gave him. And he's also funny and creative---he's quite
the talented artist, and it seems he's inherited more than just red
hair from his mom, who is a bridal gown/haute couture designer. He
loves to laugh and smile and tell jokes and play. He also gives
wonderful hugs and kisses, when he's not too busy rolling his eyes at
you to bother. One of the things I love about James is that he feels
its necessary to keep up his own relationship with his auntie and uncle
in Minnesota: he's taken that burden on for himself, rather than
shuttling it through his folks. He sends letters and drawings and calls
here on a regular basis and he's wonderfully conversant for a
five-year-old. For example this winter we were chatting about
snowstorms and as his father is a civil engineer, he's rather
well-versed in roadway snow removal and was talking excitedly about
snow plows and sand trucks. I told him that up here in Minnesota, they
not only put sand on the roads but salt as well, and he just couldn't
believe me on that one. "No," he said, his voice full of awed
disbelief. "Yep," I replied confidently, "because it's colder here than
it is in Omaha. We need it to melt the ice." "Wow," he gasped, and then
wondered aloud about the logistics of putting a really
big salt shaker on the back of the snow plows. He wanted to know how
that worked. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that they just added
the salt to the sand because I loved the visual his description
produced. About a month ago, he sent a batch of pictures he'd drawn for
us to hang on our fridge and in the envelope was this homemade card
from James, and it's the reason why I'm writing about him.

You see, James has Type I Diabetes. When he talks about "his walk," he
means JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes that his family, friends, teachers
and other assorted people in his life take part in every year in an
effort to help him out. To raise money to find a cure for his disease.
I don't think I'll ever forget when my mom called me and told me about
his diagnosis. It was about a week after his third birthday, fairly
early on a Saturday morning and my mom gently told me that Christi, my
sister and James' mom, had a bit too much on her plate and asked if I
could come down to help for a time. I didn't even have to think about
it: Christi would have done the same if it had been my kid and I was on
a plane the following Tuesday.
Now, to remember the pre-diagnosis James is to remember a completely
different kid. He was crabby. And I say this knowing and loving the
boy, but he was a crabapple most of the time---there just isn't any
getting around it. He loved his family, but he was very wary of anyone
outside the immediate circle. The husband and I would come for visits
and he would circle around us, as if he was trying to decide whether we
were worth his time or not. If he didn't want to be around you, he
wasn't going to tolerate your presence and he would simply strut away.
If you tried to help Christi in the usual Auntie-like way, James, eat your sandwich,
he'd just shoot you the evil eye or he'd sigh deeply and then would
chastise you in a very adult way that stung, even though you knew to
let it roll off your shoulders because it was a child talking. You
could feel the strength of his will, it was palpable. Coming from a
extraordinarily large family and seeing he wasn't going to lighten up,
we eventually chalked this up to individuality and left it at that.
Turns out, however, he wasn't really crabby at all. He just didn't feel
well.
No one knows how James got his diabetes. His pancreas just quit on him.
That very special yet overlooked organ wasn't producing the insulin he
needed to let glucose enter into his cells to provide the energy he
needed. But none of that really mattered as there were other priorities
staring his parents down: it was time to learn how to deal with James'
diabetes. This meant that suddenly my sister was counting carbs long
before it became fashionable, and was forcing James to eat his food,
and cutting him off forcefully when he went for something he couldn't
eat or drink, like candy or regular pop---and learning how to cope with
the resultant temper tantrums. This also meant my sister and
brother-in-law practically cleaned out Walgreens' buying the necessary
supplies. They had to learn how to test James' blood sugar, which
involves a finger prick of the sort you and I have at the doctor's
office once a year when we go in for our physical. The kind of prick
that makes us smart for a minute while we hold the cotton close to our
finger to staunch the flow of blood, remembering just how much we
dislike having that done, James has done anywhere between four and six
times a day---every day.
And of course, his folks also had to learn how to give James' his
shots. There were---and still are---very short, sleepless nights for
his parents when James had to be checked in the middle of the night
because he'd had a low count at bedtime. Once at midnight and once at
three a.m. It's a difficult balancing act. James' blood sugar can
neither be too high nor too low---and with careful management his
parents have done a spectacular job of picking up where his pancreas
left off. But the minute James went on insulin, his personality did a
complete one-eighty. I remember getting off the plane and driving
directly over to their house. I was somewhat stupefied when James said,
"Hi Aunt Kathy!" and smiled at me. That hadn't ever happened before and
I was stunned. Shortly after his diagnosis, my mother remembers coming
into my brother's kitchen, where all the kids were eating lunch, and
James demanded a hello kiss and hug from Grandma. While happy to
oblige, she couldn't remember that ever happening before where James
was concerned and it almost blew her socks right off. He's been a
completely different child since. The insulin, in its perverse way,
while making his life more difficult, has also allowed for us to get to
know the real James: the James who feels well and can do all the things
a kid his age does.

James
at the playground.
James lives the normal life of a five-year-old boy. He goes to school,
he plays, he gets in trouble (he's still as stubborn as a rock), he
does all of the things that a five-year-old should do---but with
limitations. Imagine Halloween and being allowed to go trick or
treating, but having to hand over your candy when you're done because
you can't eat any of it. Sure he gets a toy out of the bargain, but it
does make Halloween a wee bit different, doesn't it? Imagine birthday
parties where you couldn't have any cake. Or having to ignore the ice
cream man when he drives by. His parents may have picked up his
pancreas' slack and while this allows for normality, it also has its
drawbacks. James' lifespan has automatically, just by using insulin,
been cut back by about fifteen years. There's a risk of blindness and
amputation if he doesn't take care of himself. And then there's the
added fun of shots and finger pricks and trips to the doctor. But even
with all of this, like I said, James is one of my most favorite people.
Because while he does complain and whine and groan about the injustice
of it all, he bears this burden much better than people who are fifty
and sixty years older than him who have been diagnosed with Type II
Diabetes. He takes it in stride and two years after the fact, he
doesn't complain about the finger pricks or shots, and for the most
part, eats what he's told to and at the time he's told to do it. He's a
trooper. It's because of James that the husband and I want to help the
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation find a cure for Type I Diabetes.
We will be traveling to Omaha on the weekend of August 14th to join up
with James' Jaywalkers to find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. The theme
for this year's walk is "Magic---Making Diabetes Disappear" and I think
that sounds great: nothing would be better to wave a magic wand to make
James' diabetes diappear, like the proverbial rabbit in the hat.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. My sister has set an
ambitious fundraising goal of $3000. Now, while this may not sound like
a lot of money, you should know that 85% of it will go toward research,
not to pay for some fat cat administrator's limo service. JDRF is one
of the best foundations out there and they are making great strides toward finding a cure. All we need is to make the magic happen.

I know there are a lot of charitable causes out there, but if you're inspired to help James out by sponsoring his team go here
and donate what you can. All major credit cards are accepted. If you
would rather send a check, please hit the email link over on the left
hand side and I will send you the information you need. Either way,
it's tax deductible and is much appreciated. I will be posting later
about a T-shirt purchasing opportunity (they'll be daisy yellow with a
very cool design) just as soon as I have the details figured out. The
blogosphere is frequented by very generous people, and I would love
nothing better than to help James' Jaywalkers exceed their goal of
$3000 and with your help, I'm sure we can do it.

Snicker. In an hour-long address

Snicker.

In an hour-long address punctuated by polite laughter and applause, Gore also accused the Bush administration of working closely "with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops."'

This from the guy who invented the Internet?

(Confession: I blatantly stole this from the husband. Forgive me, my sweet.)

It's times like this when

It's times like this when I'm prone to quoting Bill The Cat and his
infamous "Aaack Thbbt!" and then going about my business, my disgust
for what I'm about to do resolved as being one of those human
compromises.
I hate "Now With Bill Moyers." It offends me that my tax
dollars are paying this partisan twit's salary all in the name of
cultural diversity. I do not like it and the minute that show goes off
the air, the happier I will be. PBS isn't getting dime one from me
during any of their guilt-a-thons until he's off the air---and I've
told them that. They don't care. It plays well here, or so they told
me. Sigh. Anyway, I was flipping past tonight and the word "Darfur" was
uttered in the three seconds before the channel changed and I wound up
flipping it back and paying attention. David Brancaccio was
interviewing Julie Flint, a reporter who's been on the ground in Darfur
recently for Human Rights Watch (yet another stellar organization). She
recently testified before Congress about the humanitarian crisis in
Darfur. Here are some excerpts from her interview. I've cut the twaddle
and left you with facts. You can find the whole thing here.

Aaack Thbbbt!

BRANCACCIO: You have been covering atrocities, war zones for 30 years. Where do you place Sudan, the current situation in the Darfur region in terms of the things you've seen in your career? FLINT: It's as bad as anything I've ever seen. There's no doubt about that. I expected it to be bad when I went there, because of the very sporadic, scattered reports we were getting. Information was still quite thin when I went in. But to my astonishment, I found a land which had no human life. It was completely empty. And that, in a way is as bad, it's a land which is full of blood and war, it was just an empty land. All human life had been removed. And I found that profoundly shocking. BRANCACCIO: How many villages did you see? FLINT: I probably saw about 17. But it's hard to move. I mean, I moved with a force of probably about 100 men. Some close to me. Some further out. Some in advance. It's a huge, Darfur — the size of Texas. It's very hard to know what's going on. And it's very hard to be blanket. Because I think not every area, the war will not be the exactly the same in every area. So, I basically selected a block. And I looked at the 60 square kilometer, 25 square mile block, which had 14 villages. And I visited all those villages but one. Eleven had been burned. And if there were huts remaining, it was a handful. All the others had gone. BRANCACCIO: Let's take a look at some of the video that you were able to record when you got into the Darfur region. What are we looking at here? FLINT: That's a village called Harewajip in the Masalit area of Darfur. And the Masalits are one of three African tribes that form the backbone of the rebels, the Sudan Liberation Army. And they're being systematically targeted by the government, and the pro-government militia fighting side by side, working hand in glove. I don't know how many people died in that village. But it was completely empty. The mosque had been burned. I was told that Korans had been torn up and defecated on. And everything that made life sustainable had been destroyed. There were a few huts, which were still standing, but food stores had been systematically broken, looted, destroyed. Even the little glasses they used for drinking tea had been smashed. It was impossible to go back to that place. BRANCACCIO: I see nobody there. FLINT: No. Everybody has gone. Everybody has gone. What shocked me was that I was basically going to do a human rights report inside Darfur. I had to keep on crossing the border back to Chad. Because there was no one to speak to in Darfur, apart from rebels. I was there, in and out for 25 days. BRANCACCIO: Everyone was either dead or driven out? FLINT: Yes. I was there for 25 days. I saw 12 civilians, who were going back to their village, to dig up food stores they buried. People began burying their food a few months ago, knowing that they would be attacked, and their food would be looted. And they decided it was better to risk death, by going back to dig up their food, than to go begging along the border in Chad. {...}BRANCACCIO: The Janjaweed, these are Arab raiders, often on horseback, sometimes on camel who are... FLINT: I wouldn't call them raiders anymore. BRANCACCIO: What would you call them? FLINT: Well, the word, "Janjaweed," has been used for a long time. And basically, it referred to a sort of a motley bunch of different groups, camel herders, encroaching on the farming lands of settled, African tribes. And it was largely economic conflict. But in the last few years, the Islamist government have harnessed these militias, who they know have pre-existing disputes with the settled, African farmers, and have used them, especially since the rebellion began, as counter insurgency militias. And what I found of which I'm absolutely certain is that the vast majority of these lethal attacks are done by government forces, and the so called Janjaweed forces, working together. These are no longer hit and run attacks by Arab nomads. They're systematic attacks by the government and the militia, often with air support. BRANCACCIO: So, you saw evidence, and from your interviews, that the government of the Sudan is working in concert with these Janjaweed? FLINT: Yes. That was the most striking thing. I interviewed scores and scores of people, civilians, as well as rebels of course, and documented 14 instances of large scale killings in a six month period. Those weren't the only instances of large scale killings. But they were the only ones I corroborated in the time I had. BRANCACCIO: How many people? FLINT: Almost 800 people died that I know of. There will be more. And in all but two of those instances, the Janjaweed and the government attacked together. And the civilians said, "They're partners now." And I said to the chief of one village, the headman, "Why do you say they're partners?" And he said, he looked surprised that I even asked. And said, "They arrived together. They fight together. And they leave together." BRANCACCIO: And you saw evidence in these villages of a systematic campaign, not just to wipe out the village, but really to prevent it, to make it impossible for people to ever return? FLINT: Yes. It was striking that even in villages where some huts had not been burned, all food stores had been destroyed. In all the villages I visited, I didn't find a single food store that hadn't been completely destroyed. You can rebuild a hut. But if there's no food, you can't go back. BRANCACCIO: And of course, in the spring, people plant. And then they eat that later in the year. FLINT: It's not possible. And now they're all displaced. And even if they're too late for next season planting at this stage as well. No, we're going to need a year and a half of emergency aid at best. BRANCACCIO: To make up for the harvest that will never come? FLINT: Yes. If you get them back to their homes. First of all, you have to get them back to their homes, in safety, and enable them to plant, and harvest in safety. And they can't do that while the Janjaweed are roaming about, hand in glove with the government. {...}BRANCACCIO: One term being used here is ethnic cleansing. From what you've seen, is that accurate? FLINT: Oh, definitely. The countryside is empty. There's nobody there. It has been ethnically cleansed. BRANCACCIO: What about the international community. You don't really see, for instance, the United Nations breathing fire everyday about this humanitarian crisis. FLINT: The United Nations initially led the way. They made some very strong statements. Kofi Annan, a while ago, on the tenth anniversary of Rwanda made some very strong statements suggesting that military intervention might be needed. There have been some excellent reports by the U.N. from teams that have gone into government controlled areas and have reported on ethnic cleansing, mass burning, mass killing, extra-judicial execution. Everything I have said from the rebel side, they have said from the government side. And one delegation said this: they had never seen such fear ever as the people of the African people of Darfur have of the Janjaweed. But certainly stronger United Nations' action is needed. {...}There are things that can be done, air drops, cross-border access, much greater pressure on the government of Sudan. We know who the war criminals are. {...}BRANCACCIO: Why is it not being done? That's the part I don't understand. You make a very good case. And it's happening before our eyes. What is slowing down the European response, the U.N. response, maybe the U.S. response. FLINT: There is a fear that excessive, unwelcome, emphasis on Darfur could still derail the north-south peace. {...}BRANCACCIO: The international community's worked really hard to try to establish some peace in the other Sudanese conflict. FLINT: Yes, absolutely, a lot of energy's been invested in the north-south peace. And whether it proves lasting or not it's a great respite for the people of the south. And many countries, especially in Europe, fear that this peace might fall apart if too much pressure is put on the government of Sudan. I think there are indications that the U.S. is no longer of that opinion and think it necessary to make peace in Darfur even if this jeopardizes peace in the south. But you can't have peace in the south on the backs of the people of Darfur. But there are other reasons, I think, for the lack of action. The press were very slow in getting onto this. And I think quicker and better reporting of Darfur might have prompted quicker action. As so often, it's only when you get to the stage of babies dying that the press are interested. When you have disaster pornography photos on television of dying people that the press gets involved. BRANCACCIO: You call it disaster pornography? FLINT: Yes, I mean, I've been writing about Darfur since August 2002. It was there. It was happening. It was possible to do. It wasn't reported on. So, the relative silence of the press and the emphasis of the international community on let's have a foreign policy success in southern Sudan conspired to cast a blanket of silence over Darfur. And of course, there's also coming back to the fact that it's very hard to get in there. The government simply doesn't let you view what's happening. So, you have to be quite inventive. BRANCACCIO: Well, I know some other very intrepid reporters who've tried. And there they are arrayed along the Chad border with the Sudan. They can't get in. You did? FLINT: You walk across a valley. It's easy. Sorry, it's really easy. I'd like to tell you I'm a heroine. It's not. It's easy. BRANCACCIO: And so many lives are at stake that these are perhaps risk the media should take? FLINT: Definitely yes, definitely, the attention is welcome now. But it's late.

Two minisubs drop off beach

Two minisubs drop off beach masters and equipment for signaling landing
craft.

who got to this site

who got to this site by typing in "Bert and Ernie Porno Pics"...ahem.

SEEK PSYCHIATRIC HELP NOW!
You're a sick, sick fuck!

Robert the Llamabutcher emailed

Robert the Llamabutcher emailed me earlier today, claiming he was
behind in his work and that the whole heatstroke thing had really set
him off his game last week. Could he have another day or two? he asked.
Because he wanted to make sure his essay was up to snuff.
Being the magnanimous sort that I am, I told him sure, no hassles and then
in true mercenary fashion, extracted a favor in the meantime. Since I
went for the quid pro quo in the whole deal, I don't think it would be
sporting for me to slam him for not sticking with the deadline. I'm a
fair that way. So, expect the JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH to take place sometime this week. Preferably Tuesday or somewhere around there. I'll let you know what's up.

Saint Mere Eglaise captured by

Saint Mere Eglaise captured by the 505th Regiment of the 82nd Airborne
Division. The Marcouf islets off the coast of Utah beach are occupied
by American forces.
The 9th Battallion of the 3rd Parachute Brigade (British 6th Airborne
Division) captures the Merville battery, a large German gun
installation behind Sword Beach, clearing the way for troops to land.

Merville Battery

Merville Battery

Father Quart is real! And

Father Quart is real!

And he's taken a turn for the worse!

"I could hear my heart beat in ecstasy before the beauty of the body offered before me. I smothered the body with the sweat of my skin,"

Yep. Other than the gay sex bit, and the promiscuity, this sounds just like the main character in The Seville Communion to me. What the hell! In case you haven't read his work before, Perez-Reverte's characters are fascinated with women's skin. Consistently. He spent most of The Nautical Chart counting of his female protagonist's freckles.

Sounds like him. hmmmm.
Perhaps Father Quart is real. Perhaps Arturo ran into him somewhere in
Spain while the old priest was there for a conference, wheedled his
story out of him over a few bottles of wine and then based Father Quart
on him???
{insert running to bookcase to look it up}
Ah, hell. Quart ended up in Bogota, not Buenos Aires. I'm consistently
confusing my South American capitols. Pardon moi.
See? This is why I write fiction. I'm good at making
things up out of nothing. My day isn't generally complete if I don't
(at the very least) think up something like this. Whether I write it up
is another story entirely. (Just in case you were wondering, Arturo
Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite authors. He's a wonderful writer,
but he kills me because he only writes in Spanish and I have to wait
years for the translations because I'm an idiot who can't read Spanish.
Check him out if you get the chance.)

Um, I hate to ask,

Um, I hate to ask, but could you send the jet stream back up to Canada?
Paul Douglas---yeah, the weatherman on WCCO who looks like Pee Wee
Herman. You know who I'm talking about? Yes. {nods head} It's bad isn't
it? The makeup lady needs to cut back on his blush. ME TOO!
I swear to God, I keep waiting to hear stories of him being arrested at
some skanky movie theater, the resemblance is so strong.----just said
that it was going to get down to 45 degrees tonight.
Now, I don't mean to nitpick or anything, but hell-ooooooo?

FORTY-FIVE-FRICKIN'-DEGREES DURING THE LAST FULL WEEK IN JUNE?

You want to explain that one to me? Because, as sure as I'll be pissed off at some point tomorrow, I am not turning the furnace back on.

Did you hear me? I'm not turning the furnace back on. I'll shiver under the duvet if I have to, but I'm not going to do it. It's summer.
Which means hot weather, suntans, sticky ice-cream coated fingers, the
smell of sunscreen---are you getting the gist, Momma Nature? It's not
supposed to be this cold in June. {Insert lightning bolt crashing down
here, smothering me with ozone and electricity} Ahem. Sorry. I do have
a suggestion, though? Send the cold weather back up to Alaska---where
it's ninety-some odd degrees right now---they're probably dropping like
flies from heat exhaustion. They don't have central air there. I,
however, do have central air and I'm willing to take one for the team.
Yep. Give me some of that old-fashioned, Midwestern summah-weathah! I
can take it! I'll leave you be now. Thanks for hearing me out. I
appreciate it.

Allow me to repeat myself.

Allow me to repeat myself. Good.
One can only hope the Saudi security services who found and killed this
bastard made sure he wasn't going to attain martyr status.
I'm currently reading this
and I have to admit, I enjoy Clancy's cleverness. Without spoiling it
for everyone, let's just say there are some Muslim men who want to
become martyrs. They've prepared themselves, according to their
religion, and after doing the deed that will gain them entrance into
paradise and the requisite seventy-two virgins, one of their number's
hopes for paradise is derailed when one of the heroes puts a football
in the dying martyr's hands. "Pigskin," he says, as he watches the
guy's eyes go wide with fear right before he dies.
Rather satisfying, if I don't say so myself.

Again. I know. I'm a

Again. I know. I'm a demanding wench. Sue me.

The second part of INDC Journal's
Memorial Day Weekend is up.
And it's lovely.
Go Read.

Fausta's proud to be dumb.

Fausta's proud to be dumb.

To quote the instadude: INDEED.

(And I am SO there on the Forrest Gump business. I hate that frickin' movie. UGH!)

The EU Constitution has been

The EU Constitution has been saved...for the time being.

The constitution will give the bloc stronger leadership with a long-term president of the European Council and a foreign minister to represent it on the world stage, more powers for the European Parliament and more decisions taken by majority vote. Britain fought a successful rearguard battle to preserve national vetoes on key policy areas such as taxation, social security, foreign and defence policy and criminal law. France, Germany and the Netherlands found a last-minute compromise on how much-flouted EU budget deficit rules should be policed. But Poland and other Roman Catholic countries failed to secure a reference to Europe's Christian heritage. Simmering acrimony among the key players flared earlier when Prime Minister Tony Blair fired a broadside at the leaders of France and Germany, telling them they did not run Europe alone or with some inner circle. "We are operating in a Europe of 25...not six or two or one," Blair's official spokesman told reporters.

So, basically Blaque Jacques got what he wanted as far as the Constitution is concerned. The primary concern of both France and Germany---whose economies are in the toilet right now---is for them to be able have their cake and eat it too. Heavy social spending means they're in hock. The single currency better known as the Euro could be dragged down by their borrowing. This relaxation of the policing rules means that France and Germany can allow their deficits to exceed 3% of their GDP and they won't have to pay any fines that the EU is supposed to levy in such a circumstance. But Blacque Jacques is having issues getting his way with the EU Presidency, which is still up for grabs:

Several delegations voiced anger at Chirac's insistence the successful contender should come from a country with long EU experience that was in all the main European policy initiatives, notably the euro single currency and Schengen open-border area. That would rule out anyone from Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and the 10 mainly East European states which joined on May 1, reuniting Europe after its Cold War division.

Let's see all of the countries that does include. Germany, Spain, Italy, Lichtenstein, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and of course FRANCE! Jacques' and Gerhard's boy is Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. He fits. Blair's boy is Chris Patten, who, if memory serves is a current EU Commissioner, and was previously the Governor of Hong Kong (and a rather brave one at that)back when it still belonged to the UK. But reportedly he doesn't speak French well enough for Blacque Jacques' taste. (And no, I'm not kidding.) Gah! I do believe if the monarchy was still around, Jacques would throw a coup, usurp the King and take over for himself. Then he wouldn't have to deal with any charges of corruption, there wouldn't be a parliament to give him grief and he could wage war whenever he damn well pleased. He could then rub his hands together, chuckle evilly, while staring at a map of Europe and saying,"Yes, Gerhard, you will be mine. I shall have you! And you will no longer swill Budweiser!" Yep. Blacque Jacques would have been a guy who would have thought it was good to be King. How much you wanna bet he'll bitch about democracy when a single country's referendum strikes this bloated mass of paperwork down?

Bashir is trying to pull

Bashir is trying to pull a fast one on Annan and Powell.

ABU SHOUK, Sudan, June 27 -- The Sudanese villagers in this western region of Darfur were bombed. They were raped. Their huts were burned and their grain pillaged. Now, those who fled the chaos say they are being silenced. The Sudanese government dispatched 500 men last week to this sweltering camp of 40,000 near El Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, the refugees and aid workers said. The men, some dressed in civilian clothes, others in military uniforms, warned the refugees to keep quiet about their experiences when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan visit the region next week. {...}"They kicked us and said, 'Stop talking,' " said Malki Ali Abduallah, 25, who fled the fighting six months ago with six children and a cooking pot. "I said, 'No, no, no. I am angry. I am tired. I don't want to be quiet. "You already stole my life. What else can you take?" she recounted saying, sweating in the 115 degree midday heat as 40 people gathered around her in support, many telling similar stories. Near the crowd, however, stern-faced men wearing safari outfits, pilot sunglasses and leopard-skin slippers listened in and made calls on cell phones. The villagers and the aid workers said the men were among those dispatched by the government. The men also told the villagers that they would impersonate victims when the U.S. and U.N. delegations arrived and tell them that the government had done nothing wrong and that rebels operating against the government in the region were to blame, the villagers and aid workers said.

And yet, somehow, the UN thinks by having the Secretary-General and the Secretary of State visit, Bashir is suddenly going to follow the straight and narrow path to redemption and the resumption of US trade relations. Sigh. There is a difference between what is said and one is done. Bashir will say one thing and do another and he will still be in power when all is said and done and the people in Darfur will still be suffering.

You know, I knew this

You know, I knew this was coming up, but it almost slipped past me.

But it didn't...courtesy of Wizbang.

Ten years ago today, the husband gave me this:

Engagement
Ring (sorry for the quality---couldn't quite get it right.)
The husband, some months before OJ did his slow speed chase, had
proposed at a rest stop along Interstate 680 in western Iowa. We were
traveling back to Des Moines from Omaha and it hadn't been a smooth
visit. I'm not going to go into details, but the man pulled over to the
side of the road, cut the loop off his yo-yo and proposed, using the
loop as my "ring." I said yes.
One of his friends told me later that this meant the husband was really
devoted to me because to do such a thing---cutting the loop off a
favorite yo-yo---was not something one did lightly. And he was
completely serious when he said this. Granted he was also drunk, but he
really did mean it.
Fast forward six months, and we're on the road between Des Moines and
Omaha again. This time we're going to Omaha to do wedding things over
the weekend. It's a Friday night and we're getting married in two
months. Whenever we're on the road, it's a running joke that whenever
we pass a rest stop, whomever is driving asks, "Gotta pee?" It probably
doesn't sound all that funny, but it is for us. It's a long
story that I'm not going to tell on a blog. Anyway, we're almost to
Omaha. It's a perfect Midwestern summer night. Warm, starry, a slight
breeze to carry your mind away. The perfect relaxer. I'm driving and I
see the sign up ahead. I ask the usual question. The husband,
surprisingly, replies in the affirmative: he can always hold it---he's
a man that way. I pull over and he goes inside. I stay put. When he
returns, he pulls the ring out of his pocket and asks me to marry him
again. I say "yes." We drive on, we arrive and walk into my parent's
house. The TV was on, per usual, and They were showing the white Bronco
again. I figured it was a recap, until my Dad tells me that OJ was
still driving it. He'd been driving the Bronco when we'd left Des
Moines. He was still driving around when we got to Omaha. It's a two
hour drive. I couldn't help thinking how different the world was and
how varied the people in it were. Here I was a very happy girl who
couldn't stop staring at her left hand, and OJ, well...
Then, in the fashion of most self-absorbed twenty-three-year-olds, I
ran to my Mom to show her my ring. And OJ was forgotten.

Yep. We're changing things. What?

Yep. We're changing things.

What? You thought we'd be looking to Robert's Rules of Order
to establish the parameters for this grudge match? I think not. For two
reasons:
1. I had enough of Parliamentary Procedure when I took minutes for the
Government of the Student Body at Iowa State University. All I can say
about that is thank the ever lovin' Lord I was paid for that. Toads are
better behaved than student senators. They talk less, too. it's two-thirty in the freakin' morning. I've got a class at eight. Call the freakin' question already!
2. Why on Earth would I subject myself to a set of rules that share the
same name as my competitor? Pfft. Again, I think not. I'm not a
conspiracy theorist by any means, but damn, that's just going to far
toward X-Files territory for my tastes. So, here's how it's going to
go:
We posted our essays yesterday...you can read them here and here.
Tomorrow we'll be posting our rebuttals. And when you all get back to
your computers on Tuesday after having struggled through a long holiday
weekend soaked in beer and illuminated by the fiery forces of
gunpowder, what shall await you but a Bonus Round of two hundred and fifty words devoted to throwing a chair against Emma's head. Er. I suppose one of us will be devoted to putting Elizabeth in a head lock, but I really don't feel the need to mention it because it's not like it really matters all that much because obviously
Emma's going to lose. So, I'll be posting an additional two hundred and
fifty words about Elizabeth. Robert (who feels he's going to lose if he
doesn't get an extra shot at redeeming Emma because this was his idea)
will be posting about Emma and then it will be time for you to decide
which heroine is the champion of your hearts, your minds and (ahem) YOUR SENSE.

Havin' some fun with Bubba!

Havin' some fun with Bubba!

UPDATE: link fixed

Michelle Malkin lobs a softball

Michelle Malkin lobs a softball at P.J. O'Rourke today. And not in a nice, underhanded, slow-pitch way.

P.J. O'Rourke's snarky article in The Atlantic attacking Rush and conservative talk radio. I adored O'Rourke in my 20s. Now, I find him so very 9/10 and out-of-touch. And there are tons of bloggers who are so much funnier.

The article she's referring to is this one,
wherein Peej makes the claim that conservative talk radio shows, like
Rush Limbaugh, are the equivalent of preaching to the choir.

Me. I am a little to the right of ... Why is the Attila
comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire
were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of
economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I
am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I
approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex
couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays
want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be
advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican. I
suppose I should be arguing with my fellow right-wingers about that,
and drugs, and many other things. But I won't be. Arguing, in the sense
of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with
conservatives. The formats of their radio and television programs allow
for little measured debate, and to the extent that evidence is
marshaled to support conservative ideas, the tone is less trial of
Socrates than Johnnie Cochran summation to the O.J. jury. Except the
jury—with a clever marketing strategy—has been rigged. I wonder,
when was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind? This is
an argument I have with my father-in-law, an avid fan of such programs.
Although again, I don't actually argue, because I usually agree with my
father-in-law. Also, he's a retired FBI agent, and at seventy-eight is
still a licensed private investigator with a concealed-weapon permit.
But I say to him, "What do you get out of these shows? You already
agree with everything they say."
"They bring up some good points," he says.
"That you're going to use on whom? Do some of your retired-FBI-agent
golf buddies feel shocked by the absence of WMDs in Iraq and want to
give Saddam Hussein a mulligan and let him take his tee shot over?"
And he looks at me with an FBI-agent look, and I shut up. But the
number and popularity of conservative talk shows have grown apace since
the Reagan Administration. The effect, as best I can measure it, is
nil. In 1988 George Bush won the presidency with 53.4 percent of the
popular vote. In 2000 Bush's arguably more conservative son won the
presidency with a Supreme Court ruling. A generation ago there wasn't
much conservatism on the airwaves. For the most part it was lonely Bill
Buckley moderating Firing Line. But from 1964 to 1980 we went from
Barry Goldwater's defeat with 38.5 percent of the popular vote to
Ronald Reagan's victory with 50.8 percent of the popular vote. Perhaps
there was something efficacious in Buckley's—if he'll pardon the
word—moderation.

I'm with Peej on this one. Mainly because I'm a P.J. suckup, but also because I think he's correct. I, too, want debate.
I want arguments to be presented that will change people's minds. I
don't, however, want to listen to Rush blather on about how "right" he
is on the issues. Have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh? And I mean
really listened to him? It's the sound of one hand clapping.
His calls tend to go something like this: someone will call in, they
will say how much they love his show and how pleased they are to have
gone on the air, they'll make their point, and instead of Rush
commenting on their point, he will say that it agrees with his
overall point and will blather on about that. As best as I can
ascertain, he doesn't really want to talk to the people who call in: he
wants them to set him up so he can blather on about what he thinks.

It's so highly annoying. I know what Rush thinks. How can you not know what Rush thinks? For three hours a day, every Monday though Friday, you hear what he thinks. And not a whole hell of a lot more. I want to hear new and interesting points brought up and then I want to hear him discuss those new and interesting points on their merits,
not about how nicely they dovetail with his views. Rush is a very smart
man. I do respect his opinion and his way of wording things, but he has
this massive opportunity to push the debate further and he ignores it.
Granted, Rush sells and that's why he's on the air. Fine and dandy. No
hassles here, but what's the point of having callers, then? I've always
wondered this, since the very first time the husband made me listen to
Rush. Why doesn't he just devote his show to a three hour monologue,
where he blathers on about whatever he so chooses? People would still
listen in and it would be a much more intellectually honest broadcast,
in my view. After all, why do you need feedback from your listeners if
you're not going to pay attention to it? As of now, there's no
intellectual honesty on Rush's broadcast because there's no dissent: it
all the dissent gets weeded out at the switchboard. And it's too damn
bad because Rush, as I wrote earlier, is an intelligent, well-spoken
guy. This is the same format that has found its way onto every
conservative talk radio show that I've ever listened to. And I've
listened to more than a few. Actual debate is frowned upon; agreement
with the host will bring you manna from heaven. What Rush and the other
talk show hosts are better at is reinforcing the ideas and letting
listeners know that they're not alone. That's fine. I don't have issues
with that. If you need to tune into Rush or some other like-minded
alternative to hear that you're not alone in your worldview, that's
fine. Been there, done that. But Rush and his compadres are not pushing
the Grand Debate of Conservative Thought further because there is no debate.
They're not interested in bringing people over to the conservative
point of view because they apparently don't see the need for it. They're right
after all, and when you're "right," everyone else is automatically
wrong. Conservative talk radio, for the most part, is all vinegar and
no honey and Peej nailed that one squarely on the head.
Of course, however, none of this really matters because Malkin lays her
frustration with Tom Harkin's resolution on P.J.'s doorstep, as if he
was the one to blame for Harkin's idiotic amendment.

So O'Rourke opines that "the number and popularity of
conservative talk shows have grown apace since the Reagan
Administration. The effect, as best I can measure it, is nil." Perhaps
he should ask the soldiers abroad who voted overwhelmingly to put Rush
on their airwaves what the impact of his show is. Or maybe he should
head to Sean Hannity's Freedom Concert on July 8, which raises millions
of dollars for military families. Or maybe he should meet Hugh Hewitt.
Or maybe O'Rourke should use some of his frequent flyer miles and do
some traveling to major metropolitan U.S. cities, where conservative
talk radio offers rare relief from liberal orthodoxy--and where talk
show hosts have spearheaded effective activism. KSFO in San Francisco
led the Gray Davis recall brigade. KVI in Seattle was instrumental in
launching the successful fight against Hillarycare and in support of an
initiative abolishing government racial preferences.

Malkin conveniently neglects the plain and simple truth of the matter
that, hey, Peej was talking about long-term conservative electoral
gains, not whatever show Sean Hannity is hosting to support military
families. Yet she's ticked off enough at Tom Harkin (and honestly who
can blame her...ignorant ass that he is)that instead of railing on
Harkin or his amendment, she fires both barrels at Peej---who most
assuredly doesn't deserve it for pointing out an inescapable truth
about conservative talk radio. Peej isn't "out-of-it." Nor is he
"9/10." He just keeps a wide eye on all
of the conservative movement and on the opposition. Nor does he do a
chicken little song and dance every time some liberal gets their
panties in a wad. He writes on the absurdity of DC and politics in
general and he's been doing this for quite some time. Why does Malkin
claim he's "out-of-it"? What? Because he finally got married and
reproduced, he's not witty enough anymore? Or is it like I suspect and
he's not "conservative" enough for Malkin's taste and that is what's
really got her bothered? Peej's and her brands of conservatism, after
all, don't necesarily mesh. The problem here is that Malkin thinks that
this new brand of conservatism---the one bandied about by hundreds of
talk radio show hosts who don't allow for dissent, who are always
"right"---is the wave of the future. Peej, takes the long view,
and disagrees. I, personally, think it will take conservatism down
because it's so rigid, but that's neither here nor there. Before Malkin
lobs off anymore softballs at anyone in the conservative movement, she
needs to take a good look at herself. After all, calling P.J. O'Rourke,
of all people, a "cocooned Beltway conservative snob" smacks to me of
throwing the first stone when she herself isn't without sin.

Somebody at Yellowstone has some

Somebody at Yellowstone has some seriously fat fingers.

MIAMI - A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge Friday, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine. Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had been required to pay the $50 fine before she could leave Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food. Customs agents meet all cruise ships arriving from foreign ports and run random checks of passenger lists, and a warrant claiming Clarke had not paid the fine was found in the federal law enforcement database. Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Outerbridge conceded there were some "discrepancies," but suggested to the judge that Clarke appear in court again to clear up the warrant. U.S. Magistrate Judge John O'Sullivan, who had a copy of a citation indicating the fine had been paid, apologized to Clarke, who spent nearly nine hours in detention, and demanded that the U.S. attorney's office determine what went wrong.

And people wonder why I have absolutely no frickin' faith in databases as the magic tool which will prevent another 9/11.

This would only be possible

This would only be possible if the UN actually meant to follow its
charter. Which I don't think it means to. How can I say this? Well,
Sudan is still on the Human Rights Commission. Even though they're allowing this to happen.

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland criticized the Sudanese government Monday for blocking aid workers, food and equipment from reaching the Darfur region, where 2 million people desperately need humanitarian aid. Calling Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, Egeland told the U.N. Security Council that relief agencies are trying to get food, water, sanitation equipment and tents to the western Sudanese region before the rainy season. "We've been working for many, many weeks in a race against the clock, and we see that the government which should do its utmost to help us is still not helping," he said. "Some ministers are helping us, but some of their subordinates are sabotaging us."

Rant ahead. Beware. What the fuck is your problem, people? You're the ones who allowed the Sudanese to stay on the Human Rights Commission in what I can only think is some misguided attempt to keep them in the UN fold. Right? This was your feebleminded attempt to make sure that you didn't ostracize Sudan. We wouldn't want them to feel as if the International Community was picking on them, would we? Can't have that. How would we ever get them to cooperate if they felt ostracized? Wake up and smell the coffee, eh? They're using your actions against you. Peace accord in the south. Is that ringing a bell? They're using the peace accord in the south to keep donor nations from coughing up. But noooooo. You're about as sophisticated as a six-month-old thumbsucker. This is all about the moral high ground and how you ain't got it no more. Don't whine to the media. They can't do a fucking thing. They don't even have bureaus in Africa. Don't whine to the Security Council. They don't care. Don't plead to the Secretary-General to get it done, because he's already got a few genocides on his hands---it's hard to get him to care anymore. Quit your bitching and GET. IT. DONE. eeeeeeeeeeeeeediots!

GOD! People are dying by the thousands and more will die by the end of the summer if you don't STOP WAITING FOR FUCKING VISAS TO BE APPROVED BEFORE YOU DO SOMETHING!
Think outside of the box, would you? Can you do that? Would it be
possible for you to let your mind wander away from UN approved thought
patterns so, you know, the beleaguered people in Darfur can get what
they need? You're all reportedly smart people, you should be able to
think of something that will get around the "host" (some fucking host
the Sudanese are) nation and help the people that need helping.
Give a good goddamn.

...that on blogs the term

...that on blogs the term "meme" generally can be easily interchanged with the phrase "email chain survey"?

Screw it. It's still fun.

Go here and read through all of it.

Here's my list of favorite characters from fiction (movies, tv, or books)

(In no particular order)

1. L.B. Jeffries
2. James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser (Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon)
3. Fr. Lorenzo Quart
4. Jack Ryan
5. Elizabeth Bennett
6. Fitzwilliam Darcy
7. Eleanor Anne Arroway
8. Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes)
9. Jonathan Pine
10. Trinity
11. Sabrina Duncan
12. Ian Pearse
13. Flavia di Stefano
14. Indiana Jones
15. The Bishop
16. Hans Gruber
17. Joe Bradley
18. Jeff Goldstein. Oh, wait. It's got to be fictional. Well, if I can't have Jeff, I suppose I'll have to have Bond. James Bond.
19. Eleanor of Aquitaine
20. Bridget Jones (and this is Bridget of the book, not the incessantly idiotic Bridget of the movie)

That should do it for now.

(Oh, and Robert el Llama Butchers---we're going to have it out about Emma vs. Elizabeth one day.)

British paratroopers begin attack on

British paratroopers begin attack on the village of Ranville.

Ranville

Ranville

Haven't had a good silly

Haven't had a good silly German story in a while. This one should make up for the lack.

BERLIN (Reuters) - An 81-year-old German man whose defense to charges of multiple rape was that he could not get an erection won a victory on Tuesday when the country's highest court ruled he could not be forced to have his potency tested. The Federal Constitutional Court argued that the man's human rights had been violated by lower court rulings that he be ordered to undergo hospital ultrasound and nocturnal checks on his penis.

Come and live in Germany! Where your penis has human rights, too!

...will undoubtedly get their knickers

...will undoubtedly get their knickers in a twist over this one, so go quickly and read it before they force Jeff to take it down.

I swear on the lives of the children I don't have yet that you'll laugh your ass off. Or if you're Michael Moore, you'll sue Jeff for libel, and
you'll work off about three and a half calories in the process. Just
before you crammed another eclair down your oversized gullet. Which
makes it all for naught, right?

I told you not to

I told
you not to open the Dom.

German naval observers confirm presence

German naval observers confirm presence of Allied invasion fleet off the coast of Normandy.

...That the Saudis have finally

...That the Saudis have finally gotten with the program?

This seems to indicate, that yes, they have.

"We will not allow a corrupt group led by deviant thought to violate the security and stability of this land," King Fahd, Saudi's ailing ruler, told the opening of the Saudi consultative Shura Council on Sunday in comments on official agency SPA. "The real Muslim has nothing to do with these actions and has no sympathy for those who carry them out," he added. Late on Saturday, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah warned the militants: "We tell this deviant group and others that if they do not return to the right path, they will meet the same fate (as Muqrin) or worse." State television showed the militants' corpses and blamed them for a wave of violence against foreigners in the Gulf state, a key U.S. ally and the world's biggest oil exporter.

Note that this was said on Saudi State Television, aka the Propaganda Channel, which, it was reported last week, ran reports that the Zionists were responsible for attacks on westerners. So, there's hope, until you read this article.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The al-Qaida group responsible for beheading an American engineer said sympathizers in the Saudi security forces provided police uniforms and cars used during the victim's kidnapping, according to an Islamic extremist Web site Sunday. The account of the abduction of Paul M. Johnson Jr., who was later decapitated, highlighted the fears expressed by some diplomats and Westerners in the kingdom that militants have infiltrated Saudi security forces — a possibility Saudi officials have denied. The article recounting the abduction appeared in Sawt al-Jihad, or Voice of the Holy War, a semimonthly Internet periodical posted by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — the group that claimed responsibility for killing Johnson. According to the account, militants wearing police uniforms and using police cars set up a fake checkpoint June 12 on al-Khadma Road, leading to the airport, near Imam Mohammed bin Saud University. "A number of the cooperators who are sincere to their religion in the security apparatus donated those clothes and the police cars. We ask God to reward them and that they use their energy to serve Islam and the mujahedeen," the article read. When Johnson's car approached the checkpoint, the militants stopped it, detained him, anesthetized him and carried him to another car, the article said. Earlier Saudi newspaper reports said Johnson was drugged during the kidnapping.

Just because Al-Qaeda says it's true is no reason to believe it, but it's hauntingly plausible to think that they've infiltrated the security services. What's ironic here, is that the western companies have the power here to make the House of Saud stand up and take notice. If they evacuate all of their workers, the already shitty Saudi infrastructure will collapse entirely. Western workers are the load bearing wall that props up the Saudi economy. You pull that wall down and the economy will come crashing down. But can the US afford to let the House of Saud fall just yet? The answer, unfortunately, is no. The oil will keep the companies and their workers there. Not to mention the defense contractors.

But will Westerner business persons ultimately be driven out? Afshin Molavi, a fellow at the New America Foundation, said, "It's almost unthinkable that the U.S. would withdraw entirely. I could see many workers leaving the kingdom, but it's such a rich relationship for so many defense contractors and oil companies that they'll do whatever they can to stay in." He added, "I think what's important to remember about Saudi Arabia is that they really are the oil price setters. They are the central backbone of oil production, and they've usually used this ability -- because they're the only ones with significant spare capacity -- and they can raise the prices of oil if they cut back production, or lower it if they increase production." He added that the reason the world has seen high oil prices has been a fear premium based on fears of instability, and because of an increase in Chinese demand. Most OPEC producers are producing at or near capacity. Only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have surpluses. "When you think of Saudi Arabia, you have to think of oil prices. They have a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves. We could probably survive $70- to $80-dollar barrels for a little while, but the poorest countries wouldn't be able to survive," Molavi said. "Will defense contractors lose money? Yeah. Will oil companies lose some money if they leave Saudi Arabia? Yeah. But the real danger is the price on oil. "I could see engineers leaving, I could see companies leaving. ... I would think that unless it got much worse, some of these companies would still try to keep a bare-bones staff. ... There are American companies there even beyond the defense and oil. There are something like 71 McDonalds, there's Starbucks. American cars sell very well in Saudi Arabia. You have these trading relationships that I think will go on unabated."

Ultimately we have a situation where western workers are being used as tools to pry apart the House of Saud. But their companies can't protect them more than they already have; they cannot say "enough is enough" and pull them without risking a complete and utter downfall of a corrupt government, which while it has its serious downsides, is still better than an Islamic fundamentalist government like Iran's. Iran doesn't play ball; Saudi Arabia does. And while I'm not a big fan of Saudi Arabia, it's obvious they're not as bad as they could be. It could be worse, to our point of view, and that's precisely what Al-Qaeda wants us to know. We're stuck dancing with the guy who brung us, even if he's going to get some of our number killed in the meantime, because ditching him isn't an option. A rather clever plan, don't you think, if you look at it objectively? It may sound cold-hearted but it is fairly clever. They're forcing the Saudis to act, and they have acted. But it could be argued that by cracking down, they've only given more power to the terrorists and further increased an ulready unstable political system possessed of a highly disenfranchised and unhappy populace. The answer to the situation would be for the Saudis to let their people have what they want---democracy---which would effectively disenfranchise the terrorists. But it would also disenfranchise the House of Saud, and that's not something anyone in the ruling family would like to happen anytime in the near future. What's my point with all of this? Hell if I know. I'm frightened that more guest workers in Saudi will be killed just like Paul Johnson was killed. I'm also frightened that US companies like Lockheed Martin will eventually pull the plug on their operations in Saudi Arabia and that country will be thrown into chaos. Which is not something we can afford right now. And right now is the optimal phrase there. Iraq's not steady enough on its feet to be our best friend in the region. And make no mistake about it: Iraq was liberated, in part, to give the Saudis a big warning. But, of course, this situation, in the future, will have it's own particular brand of 9/11 hindsight attached to it, and it will be wondered why we did business with these people for such a long period of time. Well, there's no easy answer, unfortunately, and hindsight is always about the easy answer. This situation is the proverbial space between the rock and the hard place, and no one's getting out of this one unbruised.

German radar detects Allied invasion

German radar detects Allied invasion fleet. Admiral Krancke orders shore batteries to prepare for invasion.

Admiral Krancke

Admiral Krancke

Just wacky, I tell ya.

Just wacky, I tell ya.

Last month, an attack on contractors at the Saudi oil facility in Yanbu killed six Westerners, two of them Americans. Senior Saudi officials told the world al-Qaida terrorists were to blame and al-Qaida claimed responsibility. But tape obtained by NBC News reveals that, inside Saudi Arabia, on Saudi television, Crown Prince Abdullah told a strikingly different story about who was to blame. NBC News translated Abdullah's remarks from Arabic: “Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don’t say, I mean... It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened.” {...}Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister said, “Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism.”

Desperation. Reeking.

To say that Zionists,
you know, those crazy Jews who think they're entitled to Israel, are
behind the murder of westerners is a bit beyond the pale. I've said
before the Saudi TV is the biggest propaganda machine since Goebbels
did his thing for Hitler, but damn. This shoots even beyond that.
Does the House of Saud actually think it's citzenry is going to buy
that? Everyone knows it's Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda even claimed
responsibility for it. But no, it's the Grand Cabal bullshit all over
again. Rather than rein in the Islamic fundies, they're claiming it was
the Jews. I think not.
El House of Saud had better get control of this situation and soon. And
a part of that is looking honestly at the problem and creating
solutions based in reality, rather than la-la-land. They're hiding
under their dishdashas. A few more attacks like this, and the western
companies will pull their employees entirely. All of them. Then there
will be nobody to run the Kingdom, because we all know how postively
worker-bee-ish rich Saudis are. Then there's really going to be a problem.

Western Task Force Allied warships

Western Task Force Allied warships (US troops) arrive at assigned positions for the assault.

More glider troops land to reinforce Airborne troops, carrying jeeps and anti-tank guns.

Go read Rich and then

Go read Rich and then check out the Dallas Morning News' multimedia presentation about their story.

Will revisit in the future.

Fausta's got the big scoop

Fausta's got the big scoop on Blaque Jacques internal political problems and some interesting tidbits about the EU flag.

Fausta has a great handle on all things European and political. Go and read her!

Troops from the US 1st

Troops from the US 1st Infantry Division start to board landing craft. They are bound for Omaha Beach.

It's a Bloom County Night

It's a Bloom County Night (Click on the photo for the convenient jumbo size)

Soldiers Aboard Higgins Boat

Soldiers
Aboard Higgins Boat

Stone Cold Agrees: Knightly's a

Stone Cold Agrees: Knightly's a WUSS!

Well, not really. Robert fired

Well, not really. Robert fired his first salvo on Friday, but what with the instalanche and me feeling incredibly lazy this weekend I hadn't gotten around to replying.

Then I saw this.Robert's not feeling well.
He went and did manly things yesterday and wound up with a case of
heatstroke. Poor guy. So, I will hold off on talking trash to get a
rise out of an ill man. Methinks that's just not fair. It sounds like
something Lady Catherine DeBurgh would do and I just can't get behind
that sort of malevolence. (You know, because I don't think Steve's
going to assume the persona of Mr. Collins and boost his ego, either.)
But anyway...striking a man when he's down...well, that's just not
right. It's not sporting. So, the trash talk will ensue when Robert's
rehydrated.
For more information on the JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH go here and here.

So, here's a question for

So, here's a question for all you moonbats. What's so hard to understand about this?

Al Qaeda justified kidnapping Johnson, saying "the gunfire of Apache helicopters was killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Palestine." "The blood of Muslims is being spilled all over the globe and by the will of God, the blood of this parasite will flow in the rivers of blood of Crusaders that will run this blessed year," the statement said. "Muslims in the East and the West, we took a vow upon our selves to make you victorious and we will not fail. God has unleashed the mujahideen upon the Crusaders, and they love death as much as you (Westerners) love life," it added.

Straight from the horse's mouth. Not Bush's. Not Blair's. Al-Qaeda's.

Learn who your enemy is. It's not George W. Bush. It's not Tony Blair. It's the guys who would use the word sacrifice
to describe your murder to the world press. You're just a sheep to
them. A sheep worth slaughtering. No amount of moral equivocation will
get you around the fact that they want to kill you and understanding them isn't going to keep them from beheading you with a rusty knife.

Jesus. Are you really so stupid?

ARRRRRRGH!

Yes, yes. I know. I shouldn't even bother trying. They just won't see it. I had to try.

{Insert drumroll here}

{Insert drumroll here}

That is all.

That is all.

...is another man's bandoliered camoflauge.

...is another man's bandoliered camoflauge.

Colonial imperialism, after all, is just so nineteenth century.

Shudder. Am I the only

Shudder.

Am I the only one who would like Mark Burnett to be set aflame via one of those stupid Survivor torches?

I didn't think so.

Though, I do think I'm probably the only one who'd dump a can of gasoline on him first.

No words are needed.

No words are needed.

No, really. I'm serious. UNSCAM

No, really. I'm serious. UNSCAM made the Newshour with Jim Lehrer tonight.

Kofi Annan:

We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling. There was a maritime task force that was supposed to do that. They were driving the trucks through northern Iraq to Turkey. The U.S. and the British had planes in the air. We were not there. Why is all this being dumped on the U.N.?

Gee, Kofi, I don't know. Maybe because the Oil For Food Program was your bright idea in the first place? Hmmmm. Could that have something to do with it? I wonder... Go read the whole thing.

First bombers take off from

First bombers take off from bases in England to attack targets around
the beachhead.

The main body of the

The main body of the British 6th Airborne Division lands east of the
River Orne.

Most definitely deserves another. And

Most definitely deserves another.
And as an added bonus, I shall do my best impersonation of my mother
and whip out the Catholic Guilt Trip and start swinging:
{Ahem}
Bloggers you should really give seldom sober a bed to sleep on. I mean,
honestly, how could you not do this? Have you no compassion? All he's
asking for is a bed between Detroit and New York. Even a sofa or an air
mattress will do. He's not asking for a night at the Ritz-Carlton.
Simple shelter will do and you'll even get a t-shirt out of the deal.
{insert windy sigh of disappointment here} Honestly, you should try
harder. I know you have plenty on your plates right now, but I'm not
coming to visit, Rich
is coming to visit. You'll actually have fun. One night isn't that much
to ask for, is it? I really don't think it is. And you should be
ashamed of yourself for not offering sooner. Somebody give the poor boy a bed to sleep on between Detroit and NYC.

UPDATE: 06/01/2004 Rich would also like a bed somewhere in between the vast
wasteland of Tucson and Colorado Springs. Oops. My bad for leaving that
one out. /guilt trip.

...from Rich over at seldom

...from Rich over at seldom sober for the next person who chips in $50 towards James' walk.

So we have two---count 'em TWO---Gmail accounts to give away...all we need is the moolah, folks!

Read about James here. To get straight to the giving go here.
And in the words of Bartles and James, I thank you for your support.
(It was Bartles and James, wasn't it? Wine coolers, right? God, that
was just like so eighties.)

US 101st Airborne Division lands

US 101st Airborne Division lands by parachute near Utah Beach. Their
objective was to secure the exits from Utah, which they manage to do
despite being dropped all over the peninsula due to heavy anti-aircraft
fire and inclement weather conditions.

Auntie Em' has a few

Auntie Em' has a few for you.And
they're freakin' hilarious.

If there was ever

If there was ever a photo that begged for a caption contest, I think this would be the one.

That's Gerhard Schroeder looking askance at Blacque Jacques Shellac at the D-Day Anniversary yesterday.

Go to it.

(Which, of course, no one will, because no one reads this $%%^Y^ blog!)

First reports of American airborne

First reports of American airborne assault reach headquarters of the
German 84th Army Corps at Saint Lo, located at the base of the
peninsula.

Today was a wash. I

Today was a wash. I didn't get much done in terms of blogging but I
wanted to let you know how James' Jaywalkers were doing! At least
that's one area that's not a wash!
We've brought in $50!
WOOHOO and thank you to our oh-so-wonderful contributor! Every bit
helps.
I also want to thank these very special bloggers for helping to get the
word out. Go and visit them because they're all fabulous people and
they deserve any slight rise in their stats that I have the potential
to make happen. Miss Apropos, seldom sober, My partner in defiling the memory of Jane Austen and his partner in photoshopping at The Llama Butchers , Fausta at the Bad Hair Blog
have all graciously offered their linking help. Two other bloggers whom
I don't know have also linked and I'm grateful for their support. Go
and visit Uptown Girl and Always Victoria. Go and check them out---you never know, you might find someone new to read.

Now, kids. I don't want to have to invoke the spirit of Michele and have to start reaming people because you're not contributing. I don't want to do that. Please
don't make me do that. But there is a reason why Michele makes so much
money for the causes that she chooses: she doesn't let up until she
gets what she wants. She will yell, she will cajole, she will bribe. I
haven't any bribes as of the present time...although I suppose I could
figure out how to give my Gmail account offer to someone who wanted to
contribute a few bucks....does that work for you? It does? Ok. Here
goes. ONE GMAIL ACCOUNT TO THE NEXT PERSON WHO CONTRIBUTES!

It's a little early in the game to start bribing people, but what the hell.

To read about James' fight against Type I Diabetes go here . To throw cash in the kitty you can go here---they take all sorts of credit cards.

82nd Airborne lands west of

82nd Airborne lands west of Saint Mere Eglaise. First Navy hands
ordered to man battle stations. Landing craft begin to be lowered into
the water.

Thousands of men, women and

Thousands of men, women and children who were supposed to be protected by UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica in 1995 were instead slaughtered, raped and tortured. Reportedly, the peacekeepers didn't fire a shot.

But in Kinshasha, in 2004, when their base is overrun by protestors who
are angry that the UN peacekeepers didn't do enough to keep Bukavu from
falling into rebel hands, they don't have any issues with shooting and
killing people.

NAIROBI Angry demonstrators targeted United Nations
facilities across Congo on Thursday, protesting the failure of UN
peacekeepers to prevent the eastern town of Bukavu from falling to
rebels. The most violent protests took place in the capital, Kinshasa,
where thousands of people broke down the door of a UN logistics base
and stormed the building.
In response, UN forces fired at the protesters, killing two and
wounding a third, said a spokesman for the UN, Hamadoun Toure, who
called the shootings "legitimate self defense." "Our security people
were overwhelmed," he said in an interview by telephone from Kinshasa.
"They had to open fire to calm down the situation."
Elsewhere in the capital, a large group of demonstrators converged on
the headquarters of the UN mission. Similar demonstrations broke out in
the central town of Kindu, in the southern town of Lubumbashi and in
the city of Kisangani, officials said. The popular outrage at the
10,800-strong UN peacekeeping force came after two renegade military
commanders launched an attack on Bukavu on Wednesday, seizing control
of the strategic town from Congo's military.

If you follow the logic this would mean that the UN and their peacekeepers are only in it for themselves.

Could this possibly be right?

/sarcasm

I'm wiped out. Hence I

I'm wiped out. Hence I won't be blogging this evening, but rather
watching DVD's.
See ya tomorrow.

I do not feel well,

I do not feel well, but I can't lay about in bed any longer and there's
nothing good on TV.
Waaaaaah.
Sorry, kids. The husband had a meeting. He's not here to listen to me
whine. So I suppose I'll complain to my blog instead. The only
downside? The blog won't give me a cuddle and a backrub when I'm done
whining.
The main symptom? I'm nauseous. I know what you're thinking, but no,
I'm not preggers. It's a stomach thing.
My main problems are threefold at the moment:
1. Illness
2. Our very nice Pakistani doctor couple who live in the lower half of
the house have Grandma visiting to look after their little boy. Despite
her refusal to never empty the dryer's lint filter (What? Are there no
dryers in Lahore? I simply refuse to believe that! She knows how to
adjust the settings for knits and permanent press---why doesn't she
empty the damn filter? Explain this one to me!), and her inability to
speak English (She just smiles at you with this uncomprehending look on
her face when you talk to her. Never mind that everytime the husband
says hello, she pulls the whole pious Muslim woman act and basically
runs away from him.) she's a nice lady. And wow, can she cook up a
storm. The Cake Eater Apartment smells like a really upscale curry
house everyday from the hours of three to eight. On a daily basis we
get five hours of what are usually glorious smells wafting in through
the windows and the oven venting. I usually don't mind this. It
generally pushes me to create something really tasty for dinner, but
today it's just making me want to throw-up. There is no remedy for this
other than to let the smells die out in the normal way. (What would I
to say to them? "Could you stop with the saffron already? Could you
have some bland food just for tonight? Thanks, I appreciate it." Yeah.
Like that's going to work.) The smells will die out in about an hour. I
just have to keep myself from vomiting in the meantime.
3. There's one of those magazine sales guys roaming the block. He knows
someone's here as it's gloomy outside and I have the lights on. He's
already rung the doorbell a few times, and is still roaming up and down
the block. He will stop by again. I know he will and I don't want to
have to deal with the guilt of not answering the door. I already feel
bad for not answering the first time he came by. I don't think I could
take it a second time. Of course he knows this. And he will take
advantage of it, of course, because that's what door to door
salespeople do. You know the drill, right? A ringing doorbell or phone
or whatever and you feel compelled to answer, even though there's no
social contract that you've signed in blood under the light of the full
moon that says you are legally obligated to do so. Especially when you
feel like crap. But you can't really help yourself even though you know
you're going to be pitched subscriptions for fine, outstanding
publications like Tennis Weekly.
I am one of these people. I've finally learned how to let the phone go
to voice mail, but I haven't gotten to the completely remorseless, I
don't give a crap stage with the doorbell yet.
Thanks for the vent, blog. You're still lacking in the cuddle/back rub
department, though.

...they want their governments to

...they want their governments to solve every problem for them.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Swedish woman, tired of the noise made by her amorous neighbors in the apartment above, took her quest for some peace and quiet to an official environmental health committee. Jon Persson, who works with the local health committee in Simrishamn, some 382 miles south of the capital, Stockholm, said Thursday that the woman said she was "distressed, angry and tense all over" because her neighbors make love loudly almost nightly. He said it was the first time he can recall such a complaint ever being filed in the Scandinavian country. Typically, most disputes get settled between neighbors and don't require government intervention. The woman, who was not identified, complained that the lovemaking usually starts around 10 p.m. and lasts well past midnight, sometimes to 1 a.m., Persson said.According to a copy of her complaint, she said the lovers' efforts have left her with tense headaches, cramps and heartburn. "You are my last hope, please help me," the woman wrote in the complaint, according to Persson.

Sounds to me like she could use some of what the neighbors have going on.

British commandos take control of

British commandos take control of the bridges over the Orne Canal and
River. It takes them fifteen minutes to accomplish this task.

Go and take a nap

Go and take a nap on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and when you wake up, you find that you've been instalanched.

Hmph.

To all those who are stopping by courtesy of the biggest of the big dogs, welcome and I hope you like what you see.

Hmmmm. Is Robert trying

Hmmmm.

Is Robert trying to psych me out, or should I take him at his word?

Hmmmm.

Either way, Emma's going down.

Courtesy of Bill from INDC

Courtesy of Bill from INDC Journal.

I haven't invested myself in this whole brouhaha mainly because it touches upon my ELECTION FREE ZONE rule, but I will say this much: I think Sullivan wasn't being purposefully disingenous, as in I'm
going to say one thing to the gay media, and another thing entirely to
the readers of the Dish because I'm clever that way and they'll never
figure it out. He writes for different audiences all the time. Lileks does the same damn thing. If you only read Lileks' Backfence column in the Strib,
you'd never suspect he also wrote his very political Newshouse column.
It's called being a professional writer. Different magazines look for
different things from their contributors. What Sullivan writes for Time is different from what he writes for The London Times, which is most assuredly different from what he writes for The Advocate.
It's all Sully, but it puts different facets of his brain on display.
Magazines, after all, do have to sell copies. They don't hire people to
spout off simply because they've got a blog. They hire writers for
commentaries because they have something valuable to say, and
they're professional enough to tailor that message so it fits in with
the overall theme of the magazine. You don't hire Safire to write for Mother Jones, in other words. If blogging is, as Sullivan says, "thinking out loud," then which outlet is getting what Sully really
thinks? I think is simply a case of misguided perceptions: he didn't
realize how it would look. I don't think there's some grand conspiracy
here to mislead his readers. And I certainly don't think he's a shill
for Kerry, as some have suggested.
This doesn't mean he hasn't damaged himself. I believe he has. Time
will tell as to how badly he wounded himself with this whole thing. Now
would be as good a time as any for him to clarify just what he's
writing The Dish for, other than just to "think out loud." He's said
before he doesn't need to write The Dish, but he does because he has
serious respect for the medium of blogging. He needs to get his
priorities straight because no one in the blogosphere will take him
seriously if he doesn't resolve the issue between what he's contracted
to write as opposed to what he just lets fly from the top of his head.
It's the same with what he writes for the mainstream media: it's a
credibility issue. And it's one he has to solve as soon as possible.
Just blowing it off isn't going to fix the problem.

Don't mind me. I'm just

Don't mind me. I'm just trying to come up with a name for Paris Hilton's new perfume.

We could always go the French route and call it putain. Clever, no?

Hmmmm.

Much thought is required.

UPDATE: 06/01/2004 I suppose I should give credit where credit is due. Sigh. Hat tip to Gawker. They have some interesting, but yet somehow too flowery, suggestions for the name as well.

British Commandos under the command

British Commandos under the command of Major Howard arrive by glider
and begin attacks on Pegasus and other bridges over the River Orne that
would need to be seized intact so that the landing supplies brought
ashore from the beaches would be able to be moved inland. More on Glider Operations Here

I wish that whomever is

I wish that whomever is leaking
all of the stuff about Abu Ghraib would get it over with already. It
seems to me that a few people are dishing this stuff out to the media,
one document at a time, as they arise or are made availabe to said
leakers. I don't know who these people are, I can assume a whole hell
of a lot about their motivations, but that doesn't mean I'm correct in
those assumptions.
Let me just point out a few things to whomever's leaking like a sieve:
1. If you're a republican who's frustrated with all of the neocons in
the Pentagon and wants Wolfowitz fired, etc. learn that if Bush hasn't
axed Wolfie or Rummy by now, it's not going to happen.
2. If you're a democrat who's looking to make sure this scandal stays
on the front page as long as it possibly can, you're performing a
self-defeating act. The longer it stays on the front page, the more
people are going to get bored with it and will start to blow it off. In
other words, you've had your fifteen minutes and the law of diminishing
returns has already kicked in terms of the general electorate.
3. If you're a republican who's leaking this crap in the misguided
effort to "control" the story---you ain't got control, baby. You never
had control. Give it up.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Get it over with,
already, eh? I want the whole story, not just the tasty tidbits that
you're dribbling out. When we have the whole story we can fix what's
wrong and make motions toward getting over it.

Allied air forces begin bombing

Allied air forces begin bombing the coastal batteries between Le Havre
and Cherbourg. Over a thousand RAF planes---Avro Lancasters and
Halfiaxes--- targeted the coastal batteries along the peninsula to
prevent the Germans from firing on the gathering invasion fleet.

RAF Lancaster

RAF Lancaster

Halifax RAF Bomber

Halifax RAF Bomber

And so ends my D-Day

And so ends my D-Day coverage. I need to go and fix dinner now, but
before I do, I need to give credit where credit is due. This timeline
is a compilation drawn from many different sources of information about
the landings. Other people did all the real work here: I just culled
what I needed. There are some fabulous sources of information about
D-Day on the web. If you're at all interested in learning more, I would
recommend checking these sources out.
dday.co.uk
Military History Online
National D-Day Museum
Royal Air Force
The World At War
BBC
WWII British War Reenactor
US Army Center of Military
History
British D-Day Museum
Imperial War Museum
Normandie44
Encyclopedia BritannicaIf
I've forgotten to list anyone here, and you stumble across this site
and are livid that you're not credited, please email me and I'll add
your site. I culled a lot of information from a great many
sources---and, of course, some pages I moved away from and forgot to
bookmark in my enthusiasm. The blogosphere has been busy for the past
week on this subject. Go here and enjoy the rich, bloggy goodness.

UPDATE: Fausta has a link to President Reagan's speech given twenty years ago today at Pointe du Hoc.

It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea

Go and check it out. She called me "brilliant." Which, I must admit, is quite nice after all that work.

Nine Allied Divisions are ashore---a

Nine Allied Divisions are ashore---a total of 133,000 troops have landed in Normandy.

By the numbers:
7000 ships and landing crafts brought the majority of the invasion force to France
195,000 naval personnel attended those ships and landing crafts
eight Allied countries provided the naval personnel
1200 airplanes were used to drop airborne troops
700 gliders
over 1000 bombers completed raids on the beachhead and other strategic locations in Normandy and along the French coastline.
nearly 30,000 vehicles of all sorts---and yes that includes tanks and other armored cavalry---were transported to France on this day.

But the most important number of all is that over 10,000soldiers
had been killed or were wounded---almost eight percent of the soldiers
who had landed---at Normandy. Success, it seems, always has a cost
attached to it. By the end of June:
- Over 850,000 men
- 148,000 vehicles
- 586,000
tons of supplies had landed at Normandy.
Operation Overlord was an astoundingly simple plan. An enormous
undertaking yes, but the overall plan was simple. Drop the Airborne and
have the gliders come in first to secure vital bridges, take out German
defenses and to cover the flanks. Assemble the ships in the Channel.
Send the ships out to their respective beaches. Load the landing
crafts. Land the tanks. Land the men. Move everything inland. Push the
Germans back. It's often said that the only difference between genius
and insanity is if the idea is successful: it's genius if it works;
insanity if it doesn't. The details involved with all that simplicity
are mindboggling. So much so that the genius/insanity rule kicks in. By
all rights Operation Overlord should have fallen apart. Its success
hinged on so many factors coming together correctly, that it should have fallen apart as the laws of probability seemed to demand that it would.

Yet it didn’t.

It worked.

Hence it was genius, and not madness.

By the end of D-Day, while the hold on the Cotenin peninsula and the Beaches was tenuous, it was still a hold.
The Allies were there. A third front had been established in Fortress
Europa. Within a year, Hitler and his Third Reich would be brought to
their knees, courtesy of this three pronged attack, of which the
landings in Normandy were the final nail into the war in Europe's
coffin. On paper or a sand table it seems an overwhelmingly simple
plan, but it wasn’t. And it couldn’t have been simple for the men
on the ground, either. The absolute humilty of D-Day vets has always
struck me. They knew they were taking part in something so much greater
than they were, but they never got illusions of grandeur, which is odd,
given what they achieved. They knew they were just one small part in
the big war, to steal a line from Bill Guarnere. They were there to do
their job. Thousands and thousands of men who had had tasks assigned to
them. Some failed; some were successful; some lived while many died,
but they did their jobs nonetheless and the combined result meant that
the war would end---sometime soon. They didn't know when it would end;
all they knew at that point in time was that they'd made progress
toward that goal. One small part in the great big war. Amazing, isn’t it, what
all those small parts on June 6, 1944 achieved?
Thank you.

Planes carrying the 101st and

Planes carrying the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions encounter heavy
anti-aircraft fire, further scattering the group. Pilots take evasive
maneuvers, increasing their speed and altitude. These manuevers, while
necessary, will also create hazardous conditions for the paratroopers
who would subsequently overshoot or undershoot their drop zones, some
by as much as twenty miles, if they survived the jump at all. The 82nd
and the 101st will be dropped over the Cotenin peninsula to cover the
right flank on Utah and Omaha Beaches. The British 6th will be dropped
near Caen to cover the left flank of Sword Beach.

I will not be watching

I will not be watching and/or blogging about Bubba's 60 Minutes
interview. It's supposed to start in about three minutes and I
positively refuse to have anything to do with that delusegomaniac.
It's been a perfectly good Sunday on the whole. Coffee with friends, a
newspaper, a nap...and now dinner. I'm not going to let that
philandering-can't-keep-it-in-his-pants-lying-sack-of-shit idiot ruin
that. It's all about self-preservation, baby. And I'm self-preserving.

No.

No.

So, Robert's dissing my posse

So, Robert's dissing my posse and then further compounds this mistake by calling Elizabeth "little miss goody two shoes" which the Pious Agnostic vehemently (in a 19th Century sort of way) disagrees with.

Shall we count all the mistakes Robert has made in the midst of trash talking? Yes lets. {insert Mr. Burns-ish rubbing of hands here}

1. He says Seldom Sober is cheaply bought. HA. I think not.
Seldom Sober is probably going to cost me more to host than when my
sister, her husband and three kids show up in a few weeks. The bar has
been set high and I plan to set it even higher. 2. Elizabeth's a
"little miss goody two shoes"? I think not. After all, if you were a
poor, but gentrified girl in the early 19th Century and your mother
told you to marry that bore of a preacher, Mr. Collins, and
you were a goody two shoes, you would have married him. You wouldn't
have refused him and you would have spent the rest of your life praying
for Mr. Collins to drop the hell dead. Lizzie was a rebel in an empire
style dress and ballet slippers, Robbo, and don't you forget it. And
she has "fine eyes" so that's gotta count for something. 3. Then he says that Emma was a "player." That she's out
there, making moves, stirring the pot, adding spice to everyone's bland
lives. That's a laugh. I have yet to see a character more lacking in
self-awareness than Emma. She's clueless.(That's why the movie based on Emma is called that. Like, duh.)
So bound and determined to have things her way, to puff up her already
dubious character, she effectively blinds herself to the truth of the
situation: that no one cares what she thinks. Well, except for
Knightly, but he's a wuss, so who cares what he thinks. And I'm pretty
sure there was a land grab in that deal so all of his
motivations are suspect from the beginning.
You're going to have to do better than this, Robert, if you want to
weaken my resolve. Because that's what trash talk is supposed to do,
right? It's supposed to weaken your opponent's resolve to fight the
good fight? Robert hasn't even made a door ding in my resolve.

Planes carrying the American paratroopers

Planes carrying the American paratroopers encounter a large cloudbank
off the coast of France, dispersing their number.

Following the tradition established by

Following the tradition established by all the haus fraus who came
before me, I pretty much pick out all of the husband's dress clothes.
This is not to say the husband doesn't have good taste. He does. It's
just that most of the time he has better things to do than shop for
shirts and the like. Now, this is no easy task. The husband is an
entrepreneur: I can't go to Saks and slam down a charge card and buy
five grand worth of suits, ties, shirts and shoes on a whim---the
budget just doesn't allow for it. I must bargain hunt. To further
complicate the matter, given the clientele the husband hangs out
with/tries to attract, this means he must not only be dressed well,
he must be dressed better than ninety-percent of the men out there,
hence I must be choosy about the bargains I find. Thankfully this is a
task for which my mother trained me well. I resort to consignment
stores (best consignment store buy: one Canali suit, one Armani suit,
and one suit from a local chi-chi tailor---all in great condition, all
originally purchased for a man who, it seems, is the husband's body
double, and all for a piddly $267!). I go to "Off-Fifth" regularly to
see if they have anything good there. I shop online ($225 for black
100% cashmere topcoat at Jos. A. Banks.). I will go to the clearance
rack at Fields---or any other store---before I check out the regularly
priced stuff. I check out outlets when we're on the road, even though
they've gotten pricier over the years, occasionally you can find a good
buy. It was at this last option that I found the FIND OF THE CENTURY!
(Ahem. So far.)
The husband likes shirts with French Cuffs because he thinks they look
good. I like them as well, but for an entirely different reason: they
fit his arms. My mother, the professional seamstress, described him
this way: "he's built like a brick shithouse." This is not the most
charitable description but, unfortunately, it's also the one that works
the best. He's got shoulders like a tank, but his arms don't match:
they're short. For a while there, he had a 17" neck, which is im-freaking-possible
to find on a shirt that would also fit his 30" arms. He's whittled down
his neck over the years and now can fit into a 16", but it's still a
bitch trying to find sleeves that fit---they seem to think that all men
who have a 16" neck need 32" sleeves. Tailoring was never an option,
because it would have added $10 a shirt to the total cost. The
discovery of French Cuff shirts solved all of my problems. I can get
him a 16/32 with French Cuffs and it fits his arms perfectly. It's
wonderful...but you want to know what's even better?
These shirts.
Last year, I bought one of the French Cuff Non-Iron shirts (blue)at the
Brooks Brother's outlet in Destin. THEY'RE BRILLIANT! It comes out of
the dryer and it looks like it's been dry-cleaned. Honestly, it's the
first non-iron shirt that he's owned that didn't require even a little
bit of ironing! Muy fabulouso! They're reasonably priced---while
they're not the cheapest thing I've ever bought him, they're totally
worth it. I can pop that bad-boy right on the hanger and not have to
iron it! WOOHOO!
I love these shirts. If you're looking for a nice dress shirt that you
don't have to iron or dry clean, this is the shirt for you!

More than one thousand planes

More than one thousand planes begin taking off from bases all over
southern England carrying paratroopers from the US 101st and 82nd
Airborne Divisions and the British 6th Airborne Division. Seventeen
thousand men all told. The flight to France will take a little over an
hour. The planes carrying the 101st and the 82nd Airborne Divisions
will take a southwesterly route over the English Channel. From there,
the planes will take a sharp turn to the southeast, bringing them into
their drop zones on the Cotenin Peninsula behind Omaha and Utah
beaches, where the amphibious landings will take place in six hours.
The British 6th Airborne division will follow a different flight plan.
Taking a southeasterly route over the Channel from their base, they
will be dropped near Caen, far away from the American paratroopers.

Assault Routes for Operation Overlord

Assault Routes for Operation Overlord

Paratrooper Climbing Into Plane

Paratrooper Climbing Into Plane

I'm going to go all

I'm going to go all haus frau-ey for a minute and give you my Peanut
Butter Cookie recipie. Try not to drool all over the place, eh, Homer?
(Makes 4-5 dozen cookies)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup margarine or butter
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder.
Mix sugars, peanut butter, shortening, margarine and eggs, until
blended. Then add flour, soda and powder. When it's all mixed, crack
open a beer, take the bowl off the mixer, cover it with saran wrap,
then rearrange the contents of the refridgerator so that you can find
space for the bowl. Place bowl in refridgerator.
Walk away.
Drink a few more beers, then when you're good and drunk (after about
three hours or so), preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and pull the bowl
o' dough out of the fridge. Take off the saran wrap and get a few
cookie sheets out of the cupboard. You don't need to grease them. Shape
the dough into 1 1/4 inch balls and place them about three inches apart
on the cookie sheet. Get a fork out of the silverware drawer and try
not to poke out your eye in the process. Squish each and every ball
twice---once one way, once another---to form a crisscross pattern. When
all the balls have been flattened, slam that bad-boy into your oven for
about nine to ten minutes. I shouldn't have to tell you what to do
next, but I will because I got you drunk and I generally feel pity for
drunk people so here's what you do: put about five paper towels on the
counter. Get a metal spatula and a hot pad. Take the cookies out of the
oven, MAKING SURE NOT TO BURN YOURSELF and, using the spatula, transfer
the cookies from the cookie sheet onto the paper towel for cooling.
As far as tips, well, I can't emphasize enough how important it is for
you to let the dough rest. The beer helps with this. Trust me. I know
you're impatient for the cookies, but you've got to let the dough take
a nap before you can bake it. Think of it this way: after your second
or third beer, you'll forget you have cookie dough in the fridge and
you'll be able to pleasantly surprise yourself. And honestly, who
doesn't like to surprise themselves with chilled cookie dough? No one
that I know. It's one of life's great pleasures. So, enjoy your cookies
and don't blame the hangover on me!

Yeah, like this is going

Yeah, like this is going to work.

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia offered Islamic militants a limited amnesty Wednesday, saying their lives would be spared if they surrendered but they would face the "full might" of state wrath if they did not. The ultimatum, issued in the name of King Fahd, called on militants to turn themselves in within a month — suggesting the kingdom was paving the way for a stepped up campaign against al-Qaida-linked fighters who have shaken the country with a series of deadly attacks. At the same time, the Saudi foreign minister denounced calls by militant clergy for Saudis to travel to Iraq to join insurgents battling the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies. Some have said that at least one of the guerrillas who killed and beheaded a South Korean hostage in Iraq this week may be Saudi, since the guerrilla spoke Arabic in what seemed to be a Saudi dialect. The ultimatum was read by Crown Prince Abdullah, the king's half brother and the country's de facto ruler, using some of the fiercest language yet against militants. Abdullah said the offer was open to anyone who has not yet been "arrested for carrying out terrorist acts." "We are opening the door of amnesty ... to everyone who deviated from the path of right and committed a crime in the name of religion," the crown prince said. "We swear by God that nothing will prevent us from striking with our full might, which we derive from relying on God," Abdullah said.

{emphasis mine} Let me see if I've got this straight. What we have here are two separate groups of Muslims, each claiming that God supports their cause. One doesn't like the other because they're a wee bit repressive in what God allows their people to have, namely democracy. One says stop in the name of God but the other doesn't believe they're a legitimate source for God's works and deeds. They're not going to stop and they will probably have a good laugh over this amnesty offer. And all of this---on both sides---is all done in the name of Allah. Got irony?

Sunset.

Sunset.

Go and read this. {Hat

Go and read this.

{Hat Tip: Vodkapundit)

I just happened to check

I just happened to check the referral logs on this site and guess what?
As with Nick Berg's beheading, there seem to be an awful lot of people
who are looking for information on Paul Johnson's beheading. Why does
this happen? Why is it happening again?
I would have to say it's because the mainstream media isn't giving the
public the information they would like to have. So, they Google and
find other sources. I, for some unknown reason, seem to be a "source."
All of this, of course, is making the massive assumption that the
media, in its newscasts tonight, won't show the pictures of this
horrible act, choosing to err on the side of caution, but I don't know
if they will or won't. We'll have to see. One can make the argument
that they're biased as hell because they've been running 24/7 coverage
of Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, but they won't show beheading photos. I
tend toward this argument, but I don't run a national network, either,
and I don't know that I'd want to have to answer the phones after
airing beheading photos. I will say this much: they need to pick which
side of the fence they're going to stand on and show some consistency.
Either they show all
the visuals, no matter how gory, or they don't show any of them at all.
It's up to them and I would sincerely hope, if they truly realize that
if a picture is worth a thousand words, they will allot the same
word-length to each and every subject they cover when it comes to the
war. I know. I'm not holding my breath, either, and my sincerest
condolences go out to the Johnson family. I'm so sorry for your loss.
But as a source of information I will provide access to the pictures.
The information wants to be free; I'm just allowing for it. If you've
found your way here please read the following before hitting the links.
I'm assuming you have the best of intentions about wanting to see these
photos, meaning you're not searching them out because you're a sick
fuck who gets their jollies by watching innocent people be beheaded for
no good reason whatsoever. If you are a sick fuck, SEEK HELP NOW. I'll
also give you the warning that, of course, these photos ARE GRAPHIC. Be prepared. They made me want to throw up. I'm assuming you'll have the same reaction.

UPDATE The husband has taken care of matters. Go here, here, here and here.

You can also find them at Drudge if you so choose.

UPDATE II: Michele thinks any blogger who's linking/hosting these photos is traffic seeking whore and a "snuff vendor." She says:

There is no reason to post these pictures or host them. Wasn't Nick Berg enough? I almost understood then, that people needed to see the capability of evil. Great, we saw it then. It's no different now. I cannot fathom any reason for hosting these pictures except for the rise in stats. It is ghoulish. What difference will a picture of another dead American do? What purpose does it serve? None that I can see. From Drudge on down, you all are all snuff vendors. Enough already

I respectfully disagree. And I'm having a hard time keeping it respectful, but I will do so because I do respect Michele's opinion. I just happen to think she's wrong. I'm not looking for extra traffic---these people are finding me. Not the other way around. Anyone who knows me knows I want this blog to be read for its content, not because I sent out a pack of self-promoting emails to big dog bloggers and produced an avalanche of links. Those readers will pretty much all disappear the minute the big dog stopped paying attention. That's no way to get your message across. I've been blogging for almost a year now, and I've built my readership up to almost fifty people a day. Fifty. That ain't much compared to Michele's ten thousand hits per day. She's been at this longer. I love A Small Victory. I think it's a great blog and Michele is truly a talented writer, but ten thousand hits per day doesn't automatically make her right, either. People find their way here via the search engines and my referral logs tell me they're looking to the blogosphere for what the mainstream media isn't giving them. Who, exactly, are we as bloggers if we pull the same shit the media does, and back away because we find it distasteful or that we think it's overkill and might turn people against the war? That makes us just as bad as the mainstream media as far as wanting to manipulate people's views by selectively editing what content we think they should have. The information wants to be free. I'm simply allowing for access to it. That's it. I'm not forcing anyone to go and look at them. If they choose to, however, they should be able to find them. And if that makes me a "whore" and a "snuff vendor" so be it.

Rommel returns to his headquarters

Rommel returns to his headquarters from his visit to Germany.

I haven't spent too much

I haven't spent too much time on President Reagan's passing because I
knew other people would say the things I wanted to say, only they would
do it better.
Peggy Noonan is one of those people I knew I could count on to get it
right.
She wrote two pieces for the Wall Street Journal and you can find them here and here.

If you haven't read this yet, get thee to the library or a bookstore.

...for Mugabe to just die

...for Mugabe to just die already?
It sounds horrible, I know, but dear God, it's the only thing that's
going to bring Zimbabwe back from the brink. Particularly after this
debacle:

HARARE, Zimbabwe - In its latest crackdown on democratic
freedoms, the government announced Tuesday that all farmland will be
nationalized and private land ownership abolished. All land, including
more than 5,000 former white-owned farms handed over to blacks, will
become state-owned and subject to state-issued leases, Land Reform
Minister John Nkomo said. Title deeds of farm properties will be
scrapped and replaced by 99-year leases with rent payable to government
the state Herald newspaper reported. "There shall be no such thing as
private land," Nkomo said. Since the farm seizures began in 2000, about
200,000 black families have been allocated former white-owned land.
About a quarter were given larger properties for commercial rather than
small scale farming. Hundreds of black farmers also bought commercial
farms on the property market which will now be nationalized. Nkomo
asked land owners or occupiers to come forward for vetting to qualify
for state leases. He did not indicate when the nationalization program
would be completed. The government did not intend to "waste time and
money" in disputes on seizures of individual farms whose owners held
title deeds and other legal documents, he said. "Ultimately all land
shall be resettled as state property," he said.

{Insert sound of head slamming against desk. Repeatedly.}

I'm effing speechless. Can Mugabe possibly do more
to ruin his country? I think this will finally be the straw that breaks
the camel's back. You think it was bad when the black farmers squatted
on white-owned land to get said owners to bug out? That was nothing.
Those men, for all their numerous faults, were encouraged by Mugabe and
company to make land reform happen. Now, Mugabe's going to charge them
for that land? And then adds that they're not going to take time to
settle claims?
Wow. Expect outright revolt in Zimbabwe soon.

And this would be it.

And this would be it.

DES MOINES, Iowa - A man who claimed he didn't get the taco he paid for has been charged with assault for allegedly pelting a Taco Bell clerk in the face with a chalupa. Nancy Harrison told police she was working the drive-through Thursday night when Christopher Lame, 24, ordered some food. He later came into the store, complaining he didn't get the taco he had ordered, police records say. Harrison said that when she asked for a receipt, he went back to his car and brought back the bag. Harrison said she told him the store was closing, and as she turned away, a chalupa hit her in the face near her right eye.

Ah, well. A chalupa's gotta be better than a flaming hot cocoa that one my employees had winged at them once.

Get a degree and get the hell out of customer service, honey. It's just not worth the effort.

Ahem. Today we have a

Ahem. Today we have a story of doggie lederhosen.

Presented without commentary because I'm laughing too damn hard.

Ray Charles has passed away.

Ray Charles has passed away.

-I dreamed about Ray Charles last night and he could see just fine...

I dreamed about Ray Charles last night.
And he could see just fine, you know.
I asked him for a lullaby. He said,
"Honey, I don't sing no more."
No more, no more, no more, Ray don't sing no more.

He said, "Since I got my eyesight back, my voice has just deserted me.
No 'Georgia On My Mind' no more. I stay in bed with M.T.V."
Then Ray took his glasses off and I could look inside his head.
Flashing like a thunderstorm, I saw a shining spider web.

Spider web, spider web, spider web in Ray Charles' head.

I dreamed about Ray Charles last night.
He took me flying in the air. Showed me my own spider web; Said,
"Honey, you had best take care. The world is made of spider webs.
the threads are stuck to me and you. Careful what you're wishing for,
'cause when you gain, you just might lose."

You just might lose your spider web, spider web, spider web Ray Charles said.

When you're feeling lonely, when you're hiding in your bed,
don't forget your string of pearls, don't forget your spider web.
When I go to sleep tonight, don't let me dream of brother Ray.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he sees.
Just like him best the other way.

Spider web, spider web, spider web Ray Charles said.
Spider web, spider web, spider web Ray Charles' head.

All I got's my spider web, keepin' me alive.
All I got's my spider web, keepin' me alive.

- come on Ray...

---Joan Osborne, Spiderwebs.

Bashing Jacques always seems

Bashing Jacques always seems to brighten my day, for whatever reason.

Bring on the smackdown! The

Bring on the smackdown! The JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH is on!

Robert the Llama Butcher and
I have agreed to battle it out to have one of our favorite Jane Austen
characters named numero uno by the blogosphere. I'm arguing for that
paragon of virtue, Elizabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice. He's arguing for that spoiled brat Emma Woodhouse from Emma,
who, for reasons soon to be pithily explained, he thinks is the better
of the two characters. Here are the rules:
1. One 500 word essay will be posted on both sites a week from Monday
(we're hoping). No outside sources will be allowed.
2. One rebuttal each will be allowed
3. YOU will be the judge of who wins! Steve-o, of course, is having a
hard time resisting from photoshopping the hell out of this match, so
that should provide some entertainment value. I believe the Bronte
sisters will be in my corner (and I'm looking forward to seeing the
visual of it). I don't know which literary figures would support Emma's
claim to the throne, but hell, there's gotta be at least one
out there, right? If you're a blogger, some gratuitous linkage would
probably help those who might be interested to find our little
smackdown. Any traffic you can send our way would be greatly
appreciated by both of us. If you need to bone up on your Jane Austen,
and don't want to actually buy the books, there is an online resource
available! Project Gutenberg
has both novels available for downloading and it won't cost you a cent.
Go and read them. They're enjoyable. And, if nothing else, Mrs. Bennett
will make you grateful for your mom. I guarantee it.
Of course, the trash talking begins now, so I would just like to wish Robert the very best of luck in his utterly hopeless effort to see that Emma gets her due.

Tisn't going to happen. But he can give it his best shot. He deserves that much, don't you think?

There doesn't appear to be

There doesn't appear to be much of that in Darfur right about now.

NOT a single Sudanese child refugee under the age of five will be alive in six months unless there is immediate and dramatic international intervention, a senior United Nations official warned yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured over the border from Sudan into Chad in the past few months, driven out by a genocidal campaign against black African inhabitants of the Darfur region. Many are living in makeshift shelters, unable to get into established refugee camps, facing the constant threat of attack from the government-backed Janjaweed militias that have burned villages, killed thousands of people, raped women and girls and taken young children as slaves. The UN has described the situation in Darfur - where something in the region of a million people have been driven from their homes and estimates have placed the potential death toll at 300,000 - as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the imminent arrival of the rainy season threatens to trigger a fresh catastrophe among the refugees who have sought shelter in Chad. Aid experts estimated that around a quarter of the refugees in Chad would die before the end of the year unless aid could be put in place before the imminent rains begin in earnest. That figure includes 38,600 children under the age of five and 10,000 other vulnerable people, including pregnant women. It's believed 25,000 would suffer severe malnutrition. Yesterday, the deputy director of the UN World Food Programme in Chad, Jean-Charles Dei, warned that the rains would make roads impassable for aid lorries bringing in food, leading to malnutrition and ultimately starvation for thousands of the refugees. He said the rains would also bring inevitable outbreaks of disease, including cholera and measles. "There will be a tragedy if nothing happens," Mr Dei said. "I don't think any of the children under the age of five will make it, and the pregnant women too. For those who are under five there is no chance. They will die from starvation." The UN has appealed, so far unsuccessfully, for more than $30 million before the end of this year to prevent a catastrophe. UNICEF, which alone says it needs $1.6 million to tackle the immediate crisis, has warned that with the rainy season about to start in earnest, the situation is now critical. Aid agencies working with refugees along the border say that about 200,000 people have crossed into Chad, driven from their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan by the murderous onslaught of the Janjaweed militia, backed by Sudanese government forces, including jets and helicopters, which have bombed villages. The influx has overwhelmed the existing resources and appeals for fresh financial assistance to buy food and medicines have been unsuccessful

(my emphasis} Granted, it is possible that Mr. Dei is overstating things in the hope of getting people to act, but God, if it's true... There are times when I really wonder about human beings and what causes us to act and our rationalizations for taking the path we've chosen. Our humanity. That is what I wonder about. What makes us human beings; what we find deserving of our empathy and what falls short; and ultimately our utter cruelty, because human beings are not kind unless it's in our best interests to be so. We look out only for ourselves. We make sure we're the ones who reach the top of the heap and damn everyone to hell who tries to stop us. It's the overwhelming big picture that frightens me as a human being and makes me not so very proud to be one at times. Particularly when it comes to a place like Sudan. Why does Sudan interest me so much when most people can't find it on map, let alone care what is going on there? Mainly because this country is central to the plot of my most recent manuscript. I've done a lot of research on the civil war between the South and the North and, more than anything, I've come to realize that while religion may have caused the spark that blew the powderkeg, this civil war is about nothing more than the natural resources that will enable the victor to live in prosperity. And that's it. But different people will tell you different things about this civil war in an attempt to sway your opinion about how best to stop it. Christian activists will tell you it's about the forced adoption of Shari'a Law on the peoples of the south, who are not Muslim, but mainly follow Christian and Animist religions. Anti-Slavery activists and human rights organizations will tell you that you should care because southerners are forced by circumstances or by the barrel of a gun into slavery by those in the north. The United States government will tell you that, for all the multitude reasons the war is raging, only one thing is important: if the war rages on, it will further exclude the recognized Sudanese government from the International Community and the north will still be a safe harbor for terrorist organizations. The SPLA (The Sudanese People's Liberation Army---the main opposition group in the south) will tell you that the north wants to oppress them; to shove a set of beliefs that the south doesn't share down their gullets. The north, well, they won't tell you anything at all, just that they need to put down the uprisings. All of these groups try to inveigle you into their arguments, knowing that your humanity will further help them in their goals. Whatever the reasons, though, it's the one that's rarely mentioned that should be given the most credit: the natural resources. It's all about that particular part of land and what lies beneath it and what can be grown out of it, in other words. The northern part of Sudan is being swallowed up into the Sahara and Nubian deserts---two deserts which used to have distinct boundaries but now do not. It's called desertification and it's been happening for years. The north does not have a great abundance of natural resources. They cannot grow their own food because their land is not arable for the most part. The south, however, has all that they do not, and due to the idiocy of Colonial Cartography, the boundaries were shaped a hundred years ago to form one homogenous country called Sudan. The only problem is that Sudan is not homogenous. The peoples are wildly different. They believe different things. They act differently and they want to live under a different set of laws. The British bugged out in the mid-1950's and were it not for a ten year breather in the 1970's it would be easy to say that this civil war has been raging on for almost fifty years. The people may be different, the official reasons given may be different, but when you whittle it all down the reasoning for the earlier civil war and this one is exactly the same: it's the natural resources---namely oil. But Darfur doesn't have any natural resources. Bupkiss. It's has nothing. It's a wasteland for the most part. Why is there a war raging in that province? Particularly when it's hell and gone from the south? (Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It's bigger than Texas---it would be as if there was a war between Austin and Houston and the people in El Paso decided to start flaring up.) If this is truly a separate humanitarian crisis, why isn't the world acting? Why aren't they doing their utmost to help, particularly because it cause problems with the newfound peace between the south and the north? Mr. Dei is partially right about the fact there's no oil or diamonds in the region that would cause donor nations to get involved. However, he doesn't pay enough attention to the fact that this is all about oil that's under the ground in another region in Sudan. That this is what's making donor nations leery of getting involved. The northern government just signed a peace accord with the SPLA. According to the deal, there is a proportional power sharing arrangement. In the north, displaced southerners will have a 30% stake in local governments, while the north holds the majority stake. Reverse it for the southern provinces. And in six years, God willing, there will be a referendum in the south and if it is successful it will allow for the south to secede entirely. In my opinion, there are two things that will prevent this from ever taking place: one, the SPLA has little to no practical experience with running a representative government (they're not an entirely homogenous group, either---as many people in the south have been murdered by the north as have been murdered by various SPLA factions) and two, the north has no conceivable interest to keep the peace and allow the vote: they'd be cut out of everything they've worked so hard to gain. The southerners would overwhelmingly vote to keep them the hell out of it. It would be almost as if you'd asked the Palestinians, after six years of power sharing with the Israelis, if they wanted to actually work with them, instead of kicking them the hell out. Do you think that would happen? Given their acrimonious history? Do you honestly think that there would be a chance for that to work? I don't either. But who do you think the various oil companies that have courted Sudanese oil over the years have inked deals with? The SPLA or the northern government? There is but one recognized government of Sudan, after all, and it isn't the SPLA. It's in their best interests right now to keep the north happy. If a cease fire is finally agreed to, that would allow the western oil companies to get back into southern Sudan. The north hasn't been idle during the war. They've built a pipleline and have been pumping oil---just not at a level that will allow them to pay off all their debt and really get moving. So, it's everyone's interest to stop the civil war. And they're making strides towards that, but no one (other than the United States government---who has pledged millions of dollars in aid) seems to want to stop what's going on in Darfur. Not the French. Not the Germans. Not the Russians---who, in fact, did some manuevering to keep Sudan on the Human Rights council at the UN. No one on the Security Council other than the US apparently gives a damn. It still doesn't make any sense, does it? There is one thing that pulls it all together and the answer is a very simple one: the rebels that are doing all the slaughtering in Darfur are backed by the northern government. Reportedly they've even received air support from the government, and God only knows how many guns and other armaments the government has supplied them with. It's only a matter of time before Sudanese troops actively get involved. Knowing this crucial bit of information, you don't have to be Henry Kissinger to connect the dots: now that's there's a possibility of peace in the south, to play an active part in stopping the government backed rebels in Darfur, let alone helping the people they're killing, could potentially futz up said peace---and all the oil that could potentially flow as a result. Quid pro quo, in other words. You scratch my back, baby, and I'll scratch yours. And millions of people are going to die for this. The problem for me, in a strictly personal sense, is that I can see both sides of it. I can see the big picture, the national interests that lead countries to do what they will and I can see the smaller, more personal picture. I can see the people starving. I can see the women fleeing to try and avoid a fate worse than death. I can see the babies crying for lack of food. And it bothers me that I can see and understand both points of view, and to know that, whatever the relative merits of their arguments might be, that it might be the right thing to do to stay the hell out of Darfur; that the "greater good" might be served by staying the hell out of it. It should never be right to stand by and watch people be murdered. It just shouldn't be. My conscience is giving me trouble. I am a human being. I live by the Golden Rule: I do unto others what I would want them to do unto me. I wouldn't want to starve or be raped or threatened into a refugee camp, so it offends me as a human being that very little is being done about this problem. We should be better than this. We can do better than this. It's within the realm of what is possible. But I also know there are limitations to what we can do. We can ship aid, and this we should be doing. But what can we do about the rest of it? Can we jeopardize other things, namely the peace in the south---just on principle? People over here are dying. We have to let you suffer through more war because of it. Sorry, that's just the way things go. It's not a black and white situation when it should be a black and white situation. Unfortunately, the truth is that, when it comes to world affairs, that life and death isn't black and white. And we're all the worse for it as human beings.

Gliders carrying reinforcements land both

Gliders carrying reinforcements land both behind Utah and east of the
Orne River. The glider landings east of the Orne (on the left flank)
deterred the German counterattack between Juno and Sword Beaches.
Arromanches is captured by British troops from Gold Beach.

British Glider

British Glider

I don't like the phrase

I don't like the phrase "conflict diamonds." It's a bit too politically
correct for me. You can smell the manuevers the diamond companies made
to change the usage: it stinks of a PR campaign from hell. Ultimately,
it's an obvious effort to ensure that all those trophy wives don't stop
lusting after the stones that keep De Beers in the monopoly business.
Women wouldn't want blood diamonds, after all. They'd want pigeon-blood
rubies, yes, but where their diamonds are concerned, they want them to
be nice and sparkly and blood would ruin the effect.
Blood diamonds are just one more underworld financing scheme that keeps
dirty money out of banks, where it might be tracked, and in the hands
of the people who could use it for nefarious purposes. The US has paid
attention to this problem, but it hasn't done much about it---because
its hands are tied: a lawsuit was filed against De Beers back in the
1960's claiming flagrant violations of the anti-trust statutes. Because
of this lawsuit, De Beers have no formal presence in the United States
other than consistently swamping the airwaves with their cheesy
commercials that invariably make women look like the greedy little
bitches we are when it comes to jewelry. (It's in the blood---we can't
do a damn thing about it. It's like men and breasts: you can't stop
yourself from looking and wanting, either.) No executive from DeBeers
has stepped foot on US soil in all that time because they're afraid
they're going to be served with the papers. I'm completely serious,
too. This isn't an exaggeration or a joke. Everyone goes to them, but
not so much anymore. I read somewhere that because of newfound Russian
competition, that DeBeers is looking into settling the anti-trust suit.
If the Justice Department is wise, they will settle it so they can get
a grasp on the tiger's tail when it comes to stories like this one.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Al-Qaida suspects in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies took shelter in West Africa in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, converting terror cash into untraceable diamonds, according to findings of a U.N.-backed court obtained by The Associated Press. The allegations came as part of the Sierra Leone war crimes court's investigation of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, alleged have been a middleman between al-Qaida and West Africa's multimillion-dollar diamond trade. "We have in the process of investigating Charles Taylor ... clearly uncovered that he harbored al-Qaida operatives in Monrovia (the Liberian capital) as late as the summer of 2001," said David Crane, the court's lead prosecutor. "The central thread is blood diamonds." Other international investigators told the AP the three suspects are Mohammed Atef of Egypt, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed of Comoros and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan of Kenya. Fazul and Swedan are believed in East Africa; Atef was killed in fighting in Afghanistan {...}Crane, in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown, said he had "documentary" and "direct evidence" of al-Qaida's West Africa dealings. The international investigation findings obtained in part by the AP concluded that flight records and some undisclosed evidence in Europe appeared to support the accounts of pre-Sept. 11 al-Qaida diamond business in Liberia. Crane said he gave the information that his own team uncovered to the United States, European and other North American countries. "Now, what other countries, and it's not just the United States, choose to do with that is clearly up to them," Crane said.

DeBeers is a big conduit for those diamonds, whether they'll admit to it or not. They have to be. The laws of probabilities demand it. They have a monopoly on the world's diamond market, and while their choke hold is lessening, they still are the big dog: some of those diamonds are going to find their way into De Beers' hands. If the US is willing to cut them some slack on the anti-trust suit, there is a huge opportunity to have inside cooperation in tracing these diamonds---and the terrorism they fund. In return, De Beers will finally have direct access to the largest market of diamond buyers in a world that's suddenly doesn't work in its favor anymore. Too many people have been pissed off by De Beers' "take it or leave it" tactics and have started mining and marketing their own diamonds, short circuiting De Beers' access. Currently, however, because of the anti-trust suit, we don't have access to this company nor do we have any means to make them cooperate with us. That would change if that suit were settled. However, if the Justice Department decides they still want to make De Beers suffer, well, that's just one more terrorist financing outlet we won't ever have any access to, will we? Limited, informed access is better than none at all.

And just after I bitched

And just after I bitched about it too. How's this for instant gratification, eh?

WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet, buffeted by controversies over intelligence lapses about suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has resigned. President Bush said Thursday that Tenet was leaving for personal reasons and "I will miss him." Tenet, 51, came to the White House to inform Bush about his decision Wednesday night. "He told me he was resigning for personal reasons. I told him I'm sorry he's leaving. He's done a superb job on behalf of the American people," the president said.

I suppose it's a testament to Tenet's political skills that he managed to hold on this long, but I would be highly surprised if Tenet is actually leaving for "personal reasons" as he claimed. Let's look at all the things that happened on his watch: the Embassy bombings in Africa; the failed retaliation in Khartoum and in Afghanistan for those attacks; the mistaken bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo action (remember how those faulty maps reportedly came from the CIA?);the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen; 9/11;WMD---I could go on. Of course we don't know how many CIA operations were successful, and we might never know how many times we were saved from a horrible fate, but you have to wonder. If these were the failures, well, how good could the saves have possibly have been? All of these events could have been prevented or---at the very least---been turned to our advantage if there had been good intelligence. A grasp on the operations of Al-Qaeda and their state sponsors was there for the taking in each one. Yet, we continue to still have massive intelligence failures where people die as a result. It is reportedly the DCI's job to provide good intelligence to the President and the Armed Services. Yet, good intelligence hasn't been presented. Instead, faulty intelligence, poor management and a bureaucratic attitude at the CIA have meant people died. Anyone else would have been sacked after the Embassy Bombings (you know, provided the Embassy that had been bombed was in Paris rather than in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam. It would have been a bigger deal if it had been in Europe, where the media could cover it more easily. I am convinced that Tenet was saved because the Embassies were in Africa, where the western media does not have a great coverage. Same deal with the Cole in Yemen and the fact the 2000 election was coming down to the wire at the same time). Yet Tenet survived not only those events, he survived 9/11. I have to think Chalabi was the proverbial straw. It says something that, even though Chalabi was the Pentagon's guy, that Rummy is still there and Tenet's out, particularly after Abu Ghraib. Of course this is all rampant speculation, but it seems plausible to say that Bush very quietly asked for Tenet's resignation and Tenet gave it. The "personal reasons" is a face-saving maneuver for Tenet. He'll publish his memoirs and Bush can only hope that the fact he let Tenet go on the quiet will help Tenet give him a good recommendation, rather than a scathing one, later on. As much as I would like to, I can't let Tenet slide simply because he was handed the CIA in 1997 after it had been gutted by Congress. I just can't use that as an excuse. Yes, he was handed a nightmare. I can completely understand that and sympathize. But if Tenet's supposedly so crafty, he should have been able to work around the insular, bureaucratic mindset of the CIA worker bees. If it was obvious to me---an informed watcher---that the CIA needed to rely less on satellites and more on humint (human intelligence---spies on the ground)then it should have been obvious to Tenet by 1997. He should have made that option work. Anything's possible, after all. I can only give someone so much credit for working with what they've got when it's patently obvious that they didn't do anything differently to procure a different outcome. Tenet worked with what he had in an established way and did not bother to think outside of the box when it came to gathering intelligence. I do not want political people who are going to sit in their office, wondering how best to consolidate their position so that when the hits invariably come they'll survive the aftermath. I have to think that's what Tenet did. There's just not much there to point me in another direction, is there? Particularly not after all of the spectacular failures of the agency he had been tapped to lead. It has always been clear, to me at least, that satellites were not going to protect us from the threats we faced. Listening to phone calls of Minster of Porta Potties in Oman courtesy of Echelon isn't going to tell us what we need to know about how terrorism works, how it's financed, and where the threats are coming from. It just isn't. The World Trade Center bombings in 1993 should have been a big-ass wake-up call to anyone in the intelligence community. But they weren't. They were seen as a random event, instead of as a harbinger of what was to come due to the destabilization factors that the fall of the USSR brought about. It was patently apparent that after the collapse of the Soviet Union (a coup which took the CIA completely by surprise, I might add)that the world was going to become a much more dangerous place, rather than a safer one. I still don't know how people could have logically come to the conclusion they did come to, which was that since the Soviet Union had fallen, the CIA could now become a line on the budget where savings were to be found. It makes absolutely no sense. The paradigm had shifted. If your eyes are starting to glaze over just by my use of the word paradigm, think of it this way: we had two dodgeball teams: the US and the USSR. Countries chose teams, or were forcibly picked, for the massive game of dodgeball that played out since the end of WWII. These two massive superpowers played a stabilizing role: they kept it to two teams, and while, invariably, some of the players would get hit, they would still be on the team that they had chosen or had been chosen for them. The minute that one of the teams collapsed, it should have been obvious that the players, tired of incessantly being hit, would try to form their own teams when the time came. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, instead of having two teams playing dodgeball you now had many trying to play against each other, aligning with each other to play the one big team---who had also suddenly become the playground monitor as well as being a competitor in the newly reorganized dodgeball tournament. Things had changed. The geopolitics of choosing up sides had changed. To continue with the dodgeball analogy, it should have been obvious that better information was needed to see who was going to stay on the US's team or who, if anyone, was going to try and form their own team and what kind of hits with the big rubber ball the US was going to take. It's pretty simple stuff. If I can figure it out, it should be hugely surprising that the CIA and its funders up on the Hill couldn't. The world had been destabilized by the breakup of the USSR. Yet the new Balkanization that sprung up a year later took the CIA by surprise. Apparently they hadn't realized Yugoslavia was, in reality, a bunch of small teams banded together under the guiding influence of the USSR, yet who wanted to get the hell away from people who they thought had the cooties. Hot spots in Africa flared up and it took the CIA by surprise. (Of course, though, they had their eye on Cuba, which is still in the steady, yet meglomaniacal hands of Castro) I could go on, but I think you get the point. It almost seems to me that the CIA was in willful denial of the fact that the world had changed, like someone who refuses to believe that a loved one has died because they just couldn't deal with the ramifications if that turned out to be true. The CIA needed to put people on the ground in places they'd never been before to keep track of what was going on, but they refused to do this because they'd been bottle-fed with the amazing capabilities of our satellites for too damn long to make it a palatable proposition. Tenet had the ability to change this. He did. He saw the threat, but he didn't make the changes happen that were necessary to play the game well. Why? My guess is that he was dazzled by the current technological capabilities of the agency, decided to let it rest there, and that he felt he was too hamstrung by the budgetary requirements to make things different. I think with Tenet you had a guy who saw the big picture, but didn't think there was anything he could do to make a change. Then 9/11 happened. In my opinion he should have overhauled the agency right there and then: he had the mandate to do so. But he didn't. Perhaps he just wasn't creative enough a thinker. I don't know, but now that he's gone we have the opportunity to really get something done. In an ideal world, we would get a serious hawk into the top spot of agency. Someone who will work with Congressional oversight, but who knows how to get things done and can overhaul the agency, and damn the consequences of firing high ranking analysts. I don't want a James Jesus Angleton in there; nor do I want an Allen Dulles. I don't want more wily operators. I want someone like the founder of the OSS, "Wild" Bill Donovan. Donovan was a man who got things done. He managed to found the OSS, and make it a worthwhile organization, despite huge isolationist pressure---and he did this before WWII. We were positioned well for the war when Pearl Harbor meant that it was time for direct involvment because of Donovan's powers of persuasion, and his inability to give a damn when Congress screamed bloody murder. He was a guy who got the job done. It is time for the CIA to get down to brass tacks. We need someone in that agency who is going to make sure that human intelligence is taken seriously and is funded appropriately. I should also think we need someone who will be able to explain to Congress that intelligence gathering is a dirty business and that, however distasteful it might be to the people footing the bill, domestic sensibilities should not hamper the work of the agents on the ground. This is a huge opportunity for the Bush administration to get it right once and for all---to do what they said they were going to do after 9/11 when they formed the Department of Homeland Security: that agencies would work together and that the endless maze of bureaucratic crap would stop dead in its tracks. Tenet is the one who's been hampering things. Now that he's gone, I sincerely hope they will take this opportunity for what it's worth: a chance to get the war on terrorism on the right footing. If they place the right person in Tenet's position, someone who will make that agency work if it kills them in the process, good things will come out of it.

Beeeeyoootiful!

Beeeeyoootiful!

I couldn't find a name

I couldn't find a name for this rose, but it was the only lavender rose in the garden.

I love this thing! I

I
love this thing! I don't know what you'd call it, but it mows up all
the weeds from the bottom of the lake. We have a big problem with
milfoil here and it chokes the natural lake vegetation, so they have to
mow. This thing makes it around to all the lakes. Once they've got one
done, they haul it to the next. Harriet will be mowed three or four
times this summer.

Regatta!

Regatta!

Bumblebee

Bumblebee

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE Soldiers, Sailors
and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark
upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.
The eyes of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company
with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other Fronts, you will
bring about the destruction of the German war machine, elimination of
Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for
ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your
enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight
savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi
triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans
great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has
seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage
war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming
superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal
great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free
men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full
confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We
will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us
beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble
undertaking.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Order of the Day
June 6, 1944

British Soldier Reading Eisenhower's Order

British Soldier Reading Eisenhower's Order of the Day

"Bride's Delight" A gentleman who

"Bride's
Delight" A gentleman who was biking by stopped and chatted with us
about this rose. He loved it and had some in his yard. This hybrid is
pest resistant and the bushes apparently can grow to about four or five
feet high.

...is more than just that.

...is more than just that. It's a freedom enabler.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Kendry Morales, considered Cuba's most promising young baseball player, has defected to the United States to pursue his dream of playing in the major leagues, his family said on Wednesday. The 20-year-old switch-hitting slugger had been suspended earlier this year by Cuba's National Baseball Commission after several foiled attempts to leave the island. "On Friday he left home with some friends and never came back," said his stepfather, Henry Nunez, at their home in Las Guasimas on the outskirts of Havana. "He called yesterday from Miami to say he arrived fine. His dream is to play in the big leagues and now the doors will open for him," Nunez said. Miami's Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald reported on Wednesday that Morales crossed the Florida Straits on Saturday night on a boat with 18 other Cubans, including former baseball coach Orlando Chinea. {...}In the 2003 Cuban baseball season, Morales batted .391 with nine home runs and 42 runs batted in for national champion Industriales.

The boy's got talent. The boy's got switch-hitting skills. The boy's got guts. The boy has dreams and now that he's made the crossing and is safe on American soil he can make those dreams come true. Would that have happened in Fidel's Cuba? Is Fidel's Cuba a place where dreams come true---or a place where you can at least have a shot at making them come true? I think not. Communism is not only bad for the pocketbook, the body and the mind---it's bad for the soul.

I think this was the

I think this was the Karen Blixen breed

First of a lot of

First of a lot of rose pictures (click to make huge!)

Rose Garden

Rose Garden

Words to Live By

Words to Live By

Rich crossed the Rubicon. An

Rich crossed the Rubicon.

An unusual subject, I admit. We are all pigs. We operate on the most basic of animal levels. I have never seen so many men hit on a sixteen year old as I have this weekend. And why? A short dress, that's why. Is this how we operate? A lamp just took out several crystal wine glasses behind me. A sign of our times? Our gender? perhaps.

Dude, it may be true, but just like women are never supposed to admit that we're shoe whores or that we really do think there's a right answer to the question, "Does my ass look huge in this?", men are never supposed to admit that they're pigs. It's simply not done, my friend. Recommended course of action now that the cat is out of the bag? DENY EVERYTHING! SHRED THE EVIDENCE! CLAIM THAT IT WAS THE GHOST OF RICHARD NIXON WHO GOT YOU DRUNK! But for the love of all that is good and holy, take it back!

A Lady and Her Harp

A
Lady and Her Harp

Question is, what does "taking

Question is, what does "taking something at face value" mean to General Omar el-Bashir?

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Sudan's president, under international pressure to end killings of civilians in the western Darfur region, said the armed forces will disarm the Arab militias blamed for what the United Nations (news - web sites) has called a humanitarian crisis. President Omar el-Bashir said in a statement Saturday said he was ordering a "complete mobilization" of all Sudanese army and security forces to disarm all Darfur's warring parties, including the janjaweed — nomadic Arab militia that the government has been accused of supporting. Fighting between Arab militias and the black African population has killed thousands of people and forced more than 1 million to flee their homes. International rights groups say the government has backed the Arab militia in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the African villagers. The government has strongly denied the accusations, saying the conflict was a result of tribal conflicts over land and water resources.

What the hell does this mean? And by that I mean what does it mean in reality, because Bashir is supporting the militias right now. How can he switch sides now and more importantly, why would he want to? What interest does it serve? He's caving to international pressure? I don't think so. This guy has waged war for twenty years in the south and only caved to international pressure after the US lobbed a few cruise missles into Khartoum which demolished an aspirin factory, and President Bush gave a short speech on the evening of 9/11 declaring that we would go after the state sponsors of terrorism. Those moves told Bashir we meant business and he replied appropriately and got his butt to the bargaining table.

In other words, this move isn't because Kofi told him he had to protect the people under fire in Darfur.

What's scared him into acting, or at least declaring he's going to act? Furthermore, can we take him at his word? (Which I don't think we can.)

I'll be damned if I know what it means other than the obvious at this moment in time.

{Insert much head scratching here}

Benon Sevan has the reason

Benon Sevan has the reason why all that moolah found its way into his others' pockets.

In
his e-mail message, Mr. Sevan said he was the victim of an "intense
smear campaign." He defended the oil-for-food program as having made "a
real difference in the daily lives of the average Iraqi people." As
long as economic sanctions were in place, he added, "there was no
alternative to the program." But, he continued, "it could have been
better administered had we been allowed by the member states to do so."
Mr. Sevan did not explain in his e-mail message how the Security
Council had hampered him from effectively administering the sprawling
program. But diplomats and United Nations officials said it was what
one called "common knowledge" that member states were ignoring the
widespread complaints about kickbacks and payoffs by Saddam Hussein's
government so that their companies could continue being part of the
lucrative program.

Typical UN tactics. It's never their fault.
First he pulls the "I'm being smeared" line and then he puts the blame
on members of the Security Council because, of course, that's where the
problem was. It was the member states, stupid. They were getting kickbacks and they didn't want anyone goofing with that.

Man, is anyone responsible for anything
at the UN, or is it always someone else's fault? What about the
janitors? If they don't take the trash out, do they blame it on someone
else? Forgive me, Sevon, but weren't you in charge of administering
this program? Weren't you charged with the task of making sure that the
money made from the sale of oil went for food to keep the Iraqi public
from the brink of starvation? Wasn't that YOUR job? Or was it just good enough that they were on the brink of starving
and not actually starving. Because there is a difference and I'm sure,
of all people, Benon, you know this. Was it your goal, Benon, to make
sure just enough food got to the people so that no one noticed all the
money that lined your pockets? Was that your plan to keep yourself in
the clear? God, if it was, I can see where you'd be so cheesed off that
you're suddenly being investigated and "smeared." After all, you were
just keeping everyone---and by that I mean the French and the
Russians---happy, weren't you? So, basically the message Sevon
unwittingly is delivering is that:
a. He's incompetent
b. The UN is a bloated bureaucratic nightmare because even he, the most
gifted and skilled of operators, couldn't navigate its unwiedly
labyrinth of corruption. He's confirmed this for us by placing the
blame on the Security Council.
If it hasn't already happened, wait for Sevon to take advantage of the
"fruit of the poisoned tree" defense in regard to Ahmad Chalabi. It
would go something like this: Chalabi was on the Governing Council.
Chalabi wanted KPMG to investigate the kickbacks. Bremer wanted Ernst
and Young to do the math---and he won. After this little catfight,
Chalabi lost favor with the US by having chatted with Iran, and
Chalabi's reputation is currently in tatters. Look for Sevon to point
the finger at Chalabi and henceforth deny any of the accusations
because they came from the Governing Council of which Chalabi plays a
very big role in guiding.

The husband and I went

The husband and I went for yet another walk over at Lake Harriet this
afternoon. While we have more than a few lakes to choose from---three
to be precise--we prefer to walk around Lake Harriet. Calhoun doesn't
have as much foliage and isn't as pretty, in my opinion. Its location
is closer to Uptown, which also means it's a meat market, as well. I'm
not pretty enough to hang out there. Or I am, I just don't see the need
to get all glammed up for a walk around a lake. Lake of the Isles is
nearby as well, but it's kind of far away compared to Harriet. Harriet
also has the advantage of the rose garden, which was in full bloom
today. Gorgeous. Of course, I dragged the camera with and took some
pictures for your enjoyment.
Today, there was also a lady playing a harp at the lake. It wasn't
anything orchestrated---she'd apparently hauled her harp over to the
south side of the lake and just wanted to play while looking out over
the lake. As the husband said: why would anyone want to move to the
outer suburbs? You just don't get this sort of stuff out there.
He's right.
Pictures forthcoming.

I was all prepared to

I was all prepared to unleash my flaming sword of righteousness upon this article but Robert at The Llama Butchers beat me to it.

On the Lewinsky Coverup Impeachment: "The whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate." Stain? Interesting choice of words. I'm glad he didn't use the term "bad taste". On Meany Republicans: "When the Berlin wall fell, the perpetual right in America, which always needs an enemy, didn't have an enemy any more, so I had to serve as the next best thing," Clinton said. Another interesting choice. Let me see if I have this straight: Ronald Reagan conservatives took on the worst totalitarian empire the world has ever seen, one responsible for literally hundreds of millions of deaths and unquantifiable misery, sacrificing God only knows how much in terms of (pardon the cliche) blood, sweat and tears, dragging along a bunch of obstinate, whiney and sometimes outright hostile allies at home and abroad, and eventually crushing this Evil - all because we needed an enemy? And after it was defeated - Bubba was the next one in line? Think about the implications behind Clinton's pop-psychology: If Conservative actions are based on nothing more than an internal need to kick someone or something in the ass, then whoever's ass is being kicked is simply a victim. Communists, fascists, Bubba, whoever. Doesn't matter if they're good, bad or indifferent, they're just victims. Gorbachov, Castro, Saddam - just minding their own business when they were suddenly cold-cocked by testosterone-crazed Conservative whack jobs looking for a fight. And let's not even get into the egomaniacal implications of comparing oneself, even if one is the President, with a seventy-year old global-scale system of tyranny. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable is right. And I think Robert's on to something here. Now, I try not to waste my time with Bubba. Ultimately, bitching about the Clintons is an exercise in frustration that will finally cause me to succumb to the family disease (hypertension) and honestly, I don't think either one of them is worth a spike in my blood pressure. After all, he could hardly begrudge me for this, right? It's self-preservation, and we know that Bubba's all about self-preservation. He never fears to invoke that clause from the Human Handbook, but I can't really help myself today. What an ass. I never voted for the guy, so my conscience is clear on that front. The fall of 1992 was my first semester of senior year. I'd moved into a room in our sorority house with two very close friends of mine, who as it happened, both wound up voting for Bubba. I refused to discuss the election with either one of them. Not so much because I didn't want to discuss the issues: I did, but their reasoning for voting for this man was, and I quote: "Bill has textured hair and Al Gore is a babe." The first time they both said this, my jaw dropped and I walked from our room in a stupor. Because I knew they both believed it. That was their actual reasoning. And no, I'm not joking. Their complaints seemed to revolved aroud the fact that they were pissed off that America had been run by fuddy-duddies for years and here was this cool guy with textured hair, who'd gone on Arsenio and played his saxophone and they were going to vote for him because of this. That was their reasoning for voting for Clinton. Not the economy, not foreign policy, not anything remotely involved with running the government; they wanted someone cool in the White House; someone with charisma. And boy did Clinton ever have loads of charisma. No matter what else repulses you about the guy, you have to give him points for charisma. For better or worse, he's got it. I remember watching his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention that year, and the phrase if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is kept wandering around in my head. I was a political science major in college. I felt I had to watch it to see what the guy was saying. That didn't stop my brother from coming into the TV room and yelling his fool head off. My brother Dave is a golf nut. At the time, one of his favorite places to practice his swing was in the family room. High ceilings, lots of swinging space, and CNN. He kept a driver, his seven-iron and a putter under the sofa and he'd swing away while watching TV. I remember him walking over to the sofa, pulling his driver out, and then noticing what was on the boober. His jaw dropped and he suddenly became enraged, so much so that I kept thinking he was going to swing his driver straight into the old RCA. He kept saying, "How can you believe a word this guy says? I lived in Arkansas when he was governor! It was a shit place. It still is a shit place! He's corrupt as hell! And so on and so forth. I told him to shut up. That I couldn't effectively judge for myself if I couldn't hear what the guy had to say. Dave left the room in a huff, his three-wood clasped righteously in his hand, and I listened on. And that was the last time I really listened to Bubba because, like my brother, I didn't buy a fucking word the guy said. He was a fibber. A stretcher of the truth. Someone who claimed credit for other people's work. He was, to put it another way, the proverbial used-car salesman. Someone whose ego was so strong and so unbreakable that he refused to see what everyone else could. The husband thinks Bubba is delusional. I personally think the guy fits the definition of meglomaniacal. If you added up Robert's, the husband's and my diagnoses he would be a delusegomeglomaniac. (phew!) Whatever the psychological condition's name is, it's pretty obvious he's afflicted with it. The man's brain isn't wired correctly. It just isn't. His mom turned tricks for a living---which is not a nice way to put it, but it's true. I can't remember if his father disappeared or if he died, and it doesn't really matter. His brother dealt coke. Little Bubba learned that certain unacceptabe behavior, if you couched it just right, would be overlooked and he took this lesson all the way to the White house. He's not well. Really and honestly he's not. That he didn't think lying under oath was wrong, that screwing around with an intern "just because he could" wasn't wrong, that he was victimized by the Republicans just because they needed a punching bag is further proof that this guy is legally insane. But he's got textured hair, so that apparently makes it all right.

In my tireless slog to

In my tireless slog to bring my readers fresh, bloggy goodness, there are a few new links on the left.

We have The Llama Butchers, Fausta at The Bad Hair Blog and seldom sober.
Check them out. They take the discussion to new and interesting places
and are well worth your time. I've been meaning to do this for quite
some time, alas, however the Blogger Template kept goofing on me and I
needed the husband to fix it. I should probably explain my policy on
blogrolling. It's probably obvious by the size of it that I don't
blogroll the way most bloggers do. A lot of bloggers have a boatload of
links up on their sites, and that's great. It provides a lot of
recognition to up and coming bloggers and opens new doors for them. I
will admit that every time the Cake Eater Chronicles makes a blogroll,
I'm thrilled to pieces. I'm not knocking the way the majority of
bloggers do this. I'm just choosing to do it differently. If I link to
a blog under the "Daily Reads" section, it means that I'm putting my
money where my mouth is: those are
my daily reads. I check them out on a daily basis, unless I'm out of
the country, sans laptop, sitting on a beach, drinking a pina colada
and earning twenty percent on the non-negotiable bearer bonds I just
stole out of the vault at Nakatomi Plaza... Anyway, while my blogroll
might be smaller than most, at least you know I'm not gratuitously
linking to people whom I never read.

Sides are being chosen in

Sides are being chosen in the cage match. People are in my corner.

Take this,
Robert!
How many people do you have supporting you, Robert? Besides Steve, that
is? And the Llamas you have in the pen outside your office? We can't
forget the llamas. Even though they are about to be slaughtered,
because after all, you are a butcher. What do you have to say to that,
eh? Who's in your corner?

To quote yourself: you've been served!

UPDATE: Even more support. HA!

I think I've mentioned before

I think I've mentioned before that, when it comes to the Internet, the
husband is like a little boy on summer vacation. You send him out the
door first thing in the morning and when he comes home he's filthy with
a toad hanging out of his pocket---and you really don't want to know
where his activities over the course of the day have taken him. The
husband spends a lot of time surfing the web. Mostly he does this for
work, but he does have a tendency to come across some interesting
things. Like anything, this has its ups and downs, but for the most
part the Internet is a glorious thing and if you want something
researched, he's your dude.
I have no idea what led him to this
but I have to say, it's pretty damn cool.
And, as a former shortwave radio junkie, I know what this is all about,
because I've heard a number station in the past.
If you've never listened to a shortwave radio, or even just goofed
around with one, this must be pretty confusing, so I'll try to explain.
I bought my shortwave radio for one main reason: to rid myself of
having to listen to OJOJOJ!
all the damn time. This being the time before broadband and RealOne
player, it was a great alternative to the American media. I got to
listen to the BBC World Service, Deutche Welle's English language
broadcasts, Radio Netherlands. A whole new world of media had opened up
for me, but as any shortwave listener can tell you, there are
challenges to shortwave operation. Since shortwave signals can carry
across the globe, they don't travel at the same atmospheric height as
an FM or AM band would: they travel through the ionosphere, which if
you'll remember grade school science class, is way the heck up there in
the sky. As a result, due to line of sight and all sorts of other
interesting scientific conundrums you only can listen to certain
stations at certain times of day, depending upon if there's a
transmitter in your hemisphere. (Just as an example, I used to pick the
BBC World Service up off of one of their transmitters in the
Caribbean.) You also have a problem with reception if there's a massive
wave of solar flares. This alters the chemistry of the ionosphere and
makes for listening issues, although, depending upon the severity of
the flares, it can also help with reception---you never know. In my
experience, it hurt more than it helped, but it might be different for
other people. I had no idea that when the husband gave me my radio that
I was going to have to become knowledgeable in this sort of thing, but
I did and I figured it out in my limited way and was able to listen to
the BBC World Service every day when I was cooking dinner. I loved it.
The one thing that bugged me, however, was that due to all those
atmospheric requirements, the frequencies changed often. Just as I was
used to finding the BBC at 5pm at 6200MHz, because of the seasons and
the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun, it would switch all the
way up the dial to 15500MHz---and so on and so forth. You could rarely
find the same broadcast at the same position on the dial unless you
were a daily listener. This, of course, says nothing about the annoying
fact that the Beeb would switch transmitters at six p.m. and then you'd
have to find the rest of the broadcast on a different band. But, to a
certain extent, all of this was part of the challenge and being forced
to switch frequencies wasn't necessarily a bad thing as you might find
something new in the process. This was how I found Deutche Welle and
Radio Netherlands. Well, long story short, it was during one of these
switchoffs that I found one of these number stations. If you're
monolingual like me, the sound of English on shortwave catches you
instantly, because most shortwave stations are in Spanish, Chinese or
other languages. English makes you stop rolling the dial and forces you
to listen. I stood there and listened to an automated female voice,
which sounded like eerily like the Time and Temperature service when I
was growing up, read off a series of numbers. I didn't know what it was
for and I moved on when I realized it was of no help in fulfilling my
news jones, but it was interesting in a I wonder what that's for
sort of way.
Well, now I know. How it works is this: a spy will tune in on a certain
frequency (they're usually utility bands in between regular
bands---most shortwave users will not be able to pick these up,
although I have no idea how I found it: my radio isn't digital and by
all rights I shouldn't have been able to find it, let alone hear
it--must've been a solar flare.)and will listen for a series of
numbers. These numbers are then written down by the spy. The spy will
then use a code pad and will translate these seemingly random numbers
into a series of directives from the home office. Spies have used this
for years, and they're still using this system of communication. Why do
they do this when there's encrypted email, secure satellite phones and
more advanced technological equipment available nowadays? Well, mainly
because it's shrouded in simplicity: shortwave signals have been used
to transmit intelligence findings by spies since WWI. The habit is long
established, and unless you're a codebreaker and know a. the source of
the broadcast (it has never been fully documented as to who owns what
transmitter and who is sending the material---people have only made
educated guesses) and b. what the code source material is, you're
clueless. It's simple and cheap and still in use today. If it interests
you, poke around on this site and follow some of the links. Fascinating
stuff. Some of the links are mired in technical shortwave jargon, but
you'll get the gist of it.

The SPLA (The Sudanese People's

The SPLA (The
Sudanese People's Liberation Army), the main opposition group in
southern Sudan's civil war is apparently thinking of getting involved
in Darfur to a greater extent than they already are. This is not a good thing.

Sudanese rebel leaders say they are continuing to observe the ceasefire in Darfur despite the repeated provocation. But yesterday Bahar Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army said that patience was wearing thin and the rebels would not stand by while the Sudanese government continued to wipe out the black African population of the region. "The humanitarian situation is terrible so we are observing the ceasefire for our people to get help but there is a point where we can't keep folding our arms and seeing things going from bad to worse," he said. He said that the Janjaweed, whom he described as "the Sudanese government by proxy", was continuing to attack villages in Darfur, with gunmen killing nine people in Kobe last week before burning down the village. He said more than a million people, displaced from their villages, remained inside Sudan, many in camps around the larger towns, too frightened to leave despite the appalling conditions. "Malnutrition is rampant among the children but there is a fear that if they go out they will be attacked or the women raped and the children kidnapped. The children are really suffering," he said. "Two weeks ago a large Janjaweed army came and attacked villages and people around Djabal Moune and some of the people ran to the mountain and some ran to the border. Some of the Janjaweed followed across the border," he said. "The Sudanese air force came and gave air support. They were bombing with aircraft and they had helicopter gunships. Maybe 200 people died. "Unless the ceasefire holds the situation will deteriorate and there will be no alternative but to go and to defend the villages. We are appealing to the international community to put in place the mechanisms to have peace in Darfur."

Uh-oh. I was wondering when this was going to happen, or that at least that we'd get some confirmation of the SPLA coming in on the side of the refugees. Hell. Handbasket. Arriving shortly at gate three.

I lied. I didn't blog

I lied.

I didn't blog yesterday.

I woke late, I hosed down the front porch and sidewalk. I gritted my teeth at the teenagers yodeling the phrase, "CAR WASH!"
to passing motorists from the church across the street. I cleaned the
bathroom and washed out the window wells. I took a walk with the
husband. I fried chicken for dinner, and I spent most of the evening
rereading some Clancy novels and placing timelines and following the
development of certain characters across the books. (The best part
about having read all of Clancy's novels is that when you reread them,
you can pick and choose what you read. Executive Orders is
particularly fun on a reread: you can skip all the gooey Ebola-creating
business and get to the part where Jack Ryan pukes in the Oval Office's
bathroom because he's having a crisis of conscience over closing down
all interstate travel to prevent further spread of said virus.) Anyway,
I shouldn't make promises that I'm not going to keep, and furthermore
have absolutely no crisis of conscience over not keeping. It makes me
sound disingenous. Not like I care all that much, but hell, I suppose I
should. I'm responsible that way, she says with a nonchalant shrug of
her shoulders.
Don't expect anything further from me today. It's nice here. I've got
other things to do. Like sit on the lawn and take a nap. I need a
break. This seven days a week blogging is all well and good, but there
are times when the gray matter needs a rest and this, apparently, is
one of them.
Ciao bella and enjoy your Sunday.

21st Panzer Division reaches the

21st Panzer Division reaches the coast between Juno and Sword beaches.

Coleville-sur-Med secured by Allies.

Allied patrols reach outskirts of Bayeux.

Canadian troops advance to Villons les Buissons, seven miles inland.

This is Nellie. She

This is Nellie.

She sure as hell doesn't look like much, does she? And to be sure, her looks were not
Nellie's strongest asset. Her talents were in other areas. Nellie was
never the girl you ogled. Nellie was the girl you married and who gave
birth to your kids.
And after four years of utter faithfulness in the holy bond between car
and owner, the poor girl, as I write this, should be on her way to the
junkyard.
Nellie was never supposed to have lasted this long. We paid $800 for
her in January, 2000 and she was meant to be just temporary car;
something to get us from point a to point b until we could afford
something nicer. But life has a funny way of interfering with grand
plans devised by humans who have an atrocious track record with cars.
We did get something nicer, but thanks to a zealous Hennepin County
prosecutor and a felony DWI conviction, that car is no longer with us,
either. Fortunately, however, we're not car-less for the time being,
due to family members who have a spare and have loaned it to us. Unlike
other times when we've been told that a car needed to be junked,
neither of us is all that upset. Honestly, we're not, and it's a bit
surprising. The inconvenience is outweighed by the relief that the
worst finally
happened. And it's really not the worst, either. We're both of the
opinion that the poor girl deserved a rest and it's for the best. When
we bought her, a friend of mine said the body would fall off before the
engine died and, as you can see from the picture, he wasn't far off.
But she blew a timing chain last week and it was going to cost close to
five hundred bucks to fix her. The husband and I had decided that while
she was a great car, it was time to let her go; that it wasn't worth it
to fix her, particularly when so many other things on her were on the
verge of happening. The rear struts were rusted and on the brink of
collapsing. There was a hole in the fill neck (?) to the gas tank,
which meant, since last summer, we could never fill her with a full
tank of gas or it would leak (and it was dicey taking a cloverleaf that
put the car on an angle where the driver's side was on the bottom---you
could smell the gas leaking---not good)and it was just a matter of time
until the hole got bigger and more deadly. Her body was rusted and she
was bouncy and squeaky in the extreme, and she had a tendency to take
you to the brink of overheating, although she never did. She got us
around, and as long as we kept her in town and off clogged freeways,
she did all right. For all her faults, the only time, and I mean the only
time, she didn't turn over was when she crashed and burned last week.
And about ninety-seven percent of the time she turned over on the first
try. She was reliable in the extreme. And considering that we kept
asking her to deliver long past the point where she should have been
put to pasture, it's surprising that she kept delivering.
Particularly since she had close to 250,000 miles on her.
But she's gone. To junkyard heaven where, because of her age, she will
be squished rather than stripped for parts. She'll then be sold for
scrap. We will miss her. Nellie's taught me a few things: functionality
is more important than aesthetics; that you should never assume that
because something's old that it won't work or last; but most
importantly, she's taught me that...ahem...I will never buy another American-made car as long as I live.
Detroit-schmoit. I've had it with those ignorant asses. I want a car to
be reliable. I don't want to spend half-my life in the shop, waiting
for the stupid thing to be fixed because some nimrod at one of the Big
Three automakers thought it would be a good idea to make shitty parts
so they could increase their profits when they broke down---because
they would break down; it was a part of the gig. I'm done with
it. D.O.N.E. If a 1983 Camry with over 200,000 miles can last for four
years with minimal maintenence, I'm never spending time in a
Ford/GM/Chrysler dealership waiting for a newer, American-made, car to
be fixed. I'm just not going to. I've got better things to do. Now, one
of my brothers, when he reads this, is going to flip. He will scream,
"No! She can't say that!" Sure I can, but he still won't be pleased
with his baby sister's opinion. You see, he's co-owner of the largest
chain of dealerships in Montana---and with the exception of his Subaru
dealership---the others are all American. (Although, now that I think
about it, I think he's got a Daewoo or a Hyundai dealership? Honestly,
given his position as the Donald Trump of the Montana car scene, it's
hard to keep track.) He's a big believer in American cars. Not because
he has to be, but simply because he is. It's a genuine thing on his
part, and honestly, how many car dealers can you say that
about? Not many. But that's his opinion and that's fine. To each their
own and all that, but Stevie-baby, no offense or anything, I ain't never buying American again.
How many times do I have to get hit upside the head with the rather
simple observation that American cars blow? I've learned my lesson on
this one. It's going to be difficult, however, in the meantime. The
husband, along with my brother, is also a big American-made car
aficianado. His dad headed up the first American factory that was
allowed to import car parts to Japan, for use in Japanese cars. He also
has good reason to buy American. But we've owned so many American-made
cars and they've all been crap that you'd think he'd see it too by now.
But he doesn't. The next car we get, no doubt, he will want to be
American. And he will push hard for it to be American. Well, I'm tired
of it. It's rather simple in my mind: Japanese=reliable, American=too
much fucking time spent getting them fixed. I'm just not going to do
it. I SWEAR!
So, anyway, fare thee well, Nellie. Enjoy the squishing and may your
reincarnation as a piece of rebar or whatever be a pleasant experience.

The Operation---An Overview

The Operation---An Overview

Dang! What a Friday for

Dang! What a Friday for you, my devoted Cake Eater readers! Two---count
'em---two Silly German stories in one day!

Woohoo.

Courtesy of Mr. H.

GET BUSY!
See, I think the best thing to help with this one would be for the
radio stations to start playing Barry White songs from the hours of
9-11 every evening. That should help, don't you think?

Let Freedom Reign

Let Freedom Reign

For a few reasons. One,

For a few reasons.
One, it's freaking gorgeous outside and second,I have other things to
do, namely prepare my posts for tomorrow night and Sunday. I will be
setting up camp on the lawn shortly. It's too nice here to stay inside.
Particularly after we just emerged from twenty straight days of rain.
Tomorrow night, starting at 5pm CDT, I will be live-blogging the D-Day
invasion. I've been doing my research and have been gathering my facts,
and if knowing what happened on that fateful day sixty-years ago and
precisely when
it happened interests you, you might want to check it out. It's always
been a fascination to me how this whole endeavor was planned, and now
that I've researched it, I'm amazed at how well it was planned.
It wasn't just a bunch of soldiers storming the beaches. It was an
amazing feat of logistical accuracy meant to do one thing: land nine
divisions in a twenty-four hour period into a secure Norman peninsula.
It's incredible what they achieved that day, not just in securing a
third front in Fortress Europa, but the logistics of landing that many
men and the materiel they would need to do their jobs is positively
mindboggling. There is a problem with my ambitions for tomorrow night,
though. The very much loved daughter of a very good friend of ours has
just graduated, with honors, from Notre Dame. She will be heading off
to Stanford law school in the fall and we're all very proud of her.
However, pride aside, her graduation party is tomorrow night. I don't
know why this always happens. I don't have a social life for months and
then the minute I plan something, something else also happens to pop up
at the exact same time, on the exact same day. Anyway, the solution to
this problem at the present is to adjust the time on the Blogger clock
(which you can do with this new software) and post a flurry of
information early and then pick up the liveblogging when we get back
from the party, which should be around midnight or so, if past parties
with this particular group of people is any indicator. I really don't
want to do this. If I'm live blogging
something, well, I should be blogging it live, shouldn't I? This smacks
of cheating to me. But I simply can't skip this party or take my laptop
with me and keep running away to post things. That would be rude beyond
belief. If anyone has any bright ideas on how to avoid this, or would
like to volunteer for about six hours worth of posting on the Cake
Eater's behalf, you can either leave a comment below or email me.
Thanks!

Ever notice that when a

Ever notice that when a word has an Arabic origin, the English-speaking
media is never on the same page as how to spell the same words?
A few examples that I've seen...
Al-Qaeda/Al-Qaida/Al-Quida/Quaida/Quaeda
Ghaddafi/Ghadaffi/Qadaffi (and on a completely unrelated aside, I still
want to know why---if this guy is the supreme ruler of Libya----is he
only a Colonel.
Shouldn't he be a general or a marshal or something like that?)
Mouqtada al Sadr/Muntada Al-Sadr
I could go on, but I think you get the gist. What's the deal here? Why
can't they get on the same page about the spelling? Highly annoying.
With everyone coming up with their own versions, that undoubtedly
sprung from the desire to be multicultural in extremis, it's hard to
know which one is right. This inconsistency drives the 7th Grade
Spelling Bee Champ in me NUTS!
Anyway this is just another example, my devoted Cake Eater readers, of
what it's like to be inside my brain.

We all might as well

We all might as well make some money guessing on how long this
is going to last. After all, there's no sense in speculating on this
sort of thing for free, not when there's practically a golden guarantee
that it won't last.
My guess is that they'll last about ten months. April 2005 and Marc
will be back in the Dominican Republic filing for a quickie divorce.
Any takers?
UPDATE: The bookies are calling it at 3-1 for a divorce by the end of the year.

Fausta's got the scoop on

Fausta's got the scoop on Blaque Jacques'internal political woes.
And she's also got one seriously funny picture of Blacque Jacques up
there that I think I'm going to have to work into my Blaque Jacques
Shellac "Wanted" poster.

Go here and follow the

Go here and follow the links.

To be French about it: Le Ugh.

The battle for control of

The battle for control of the TV taken to a whole new level.

Powell and Annan are getting

Powell and Annan are getting the runaround in Sudan....already.

EL FASHER, Sudan (Reuters) - The Sudanese government has disappointed Secretary of State Colin Powell in talks on the crisis in the troubled western region of Darfur, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. Powell, on the second day of a visit to Sudan, arrived in Darfur Wednesday for a first-hand look at some of the million people displaced by marauding Arab militias in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. He has threatened unspecified U.N. Security Council action if Khartoum does not crack down on the militias, known locally as the Janjaweed, and streamline relief work in the region. But a senior U.S. official said that in Powell's initial talks the Sudanese did not realize the gravity of the crisis. "They are in a state of denial. They are in a state of avoidance. They are trying to obfuscate and avoid any consequences," said the official, who asked not to be named. To add to the international pressure, the United States plans to share the draft of a U.N. Security Council resolution on Darfur with other members in New York Wednesday, he added.

In the meantime, the UN Security Council is doing it's usual strong language thing:

UNITED NATIONS - The United States wants the United Nations (news - web sites) to impose an arms embargo and travel ban on Arab militias blamed for a humanitarian crisis in Sudan's western Darfur region, where more than 1 million people have fled their homes. The proposed U.N. resolution, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, does not call for any action against the Sudanese government, which the United States and humanitarian groups accuse of backing the militias, known as the Janjaweed. But the U.S. draft would put the U.N. Security Council on record expressing "its determination to do everything possible to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, including by taking further action if required." Philippines U.N. Ambassador Lauro Baja, the current Security Council president, said the resolution should send "a strong signal to the government" that it needs to take action. The release of the resolution was timed to the visit Wednesday to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Baja said.

Forgive me for questioning the intelligence of the members of the Security Council, but wtf? An arms and travel embargo directed at the Arab militias?
Woooh. I know my knees are knocking! The militias must be absolutely
terrified at the thought of having their guns and travel cut off by the
UN! What a horrifying prospect! /sarcasm.
The one word that could do a world of difference in this matter is the
one word that no one---particularly not at the UN---wants to say. That
word is "genocide" and we're back to the same old "is it or isn't it"
quibbling that happened with Rwanda. How many people have to die before
the UN does more than introducing "strongly worded" resolutions to the
Security Council? Food aid and humanitarian crises aside for a moment,
the real problem here is that people are being killed for no more than
the color of their skin. They are being raped and pillaged and
terrorized. What's more, my friends, is that the raping and pillaging
is being supported by the legally recognized government of Sudan.
These would be the same people that Kofi and Colin are chatting with.
These are the same people who apparently don't see the problem in the
same light that we do. This situation is reminiscent of the mammoth
pink elephant who's plopped himself down in the middle of the living
room and everyone is determined to ignore his presence, even though
they can't see or talk around him.

The proposed resolution calls on the Sudanese government
"to cease all military attacks in Darfur, disarm and neutralize the
Janjaweed militias ... protect civilians ... cooperate fully with all
humanitarian relief organizations and provide them unrestricted and
sustained access for the provision of humanitarian relief." The draft
endorses the deployment of international monitors from the African
Union to Darfur and asks Annan to send U.N. human rights monitors as
well and "to consider what other measures may be needed to avoid a
humanitarian catastrophe." It would authorize an arms embargo on the
Janjaweed as well as a ban on military training. It would also impose a
travel ban on Janjaweed militia members whose names are on a list that
would be compiled by a new Security Council committee to monitor the
sanctions. Baja said the draft has not yet been introduced to the
Security Council, though some members have been given copies.

What's surprising me is that this is a US written resolution. Quite frankly, I'm seriously disappointed. We can do better. We must
do better. The US government has promised we will not have peace in
southern Sudan on the backs of those in Darfur, but the fact they
didn't go farther here by at least mentioning what the
government is doing tells me that they're trying not to step on too
many toes. It's a rough situation to be in, no doubt. We've blown a lot
of capital at the UN with Iraq. It had to be done, don't get me wrong,
but it's hampering us right now, and we're stuck with strongly worded
resolutions that don't do a thing about the people who are supplying
the guns and the air support, but say a whole lot about a group of
people we have no hopes of regulating. It's meaningless in real terms.
The fact the words are being written in the first place is important, I
know. That's not slipping past me. But it doesn't mean a damn thing in
the real world. It may open doors, but are they the right doors? Are
they doors we need to open? Are they doors that by opening them the
problem will be solved? The real question here is not if the people of
the south are going to have peace on the backs of those in Darfur: it's
if the people of Iraq are having a chance at peace and prosperity on
the backs of those in Darfur.
I sincerely hope there's some grand strategy here that I'm missing, but
if this is it, well, I'm not too impressed. Superman has never been
more naked than he is right now.

Or at least the husband

Or at least the husband does. Apparently I don't count.

Letter Page One (click on the photo so you don't have to put your readers on)

Bush Letter 2

Picture
Suitable For Framing
There's absolutely nothing of particular concern for me in this letter.
It's the same 'ol, same 'ol as far as I can tell, although with less of
an alarming tone than of campaigns past. What I find interesting,
however, is that the husband and I are directly next to each other on
the voting roster. I've seen the book when we've gone to vote in the
past. I'm listed directly above him (alphabetical order. K comes before
M). We're both registered Republicans and yet he gets the solicitation letters and I don't.

Why is that, do you think?

It's not like I want
to be on the mailing list, but it makes me wonder about the grand
strategy attached to fundraising. I've tried to find a logical reason
for this. I thought perhaps the database was screwed up. Nope. Every
place we've registered to vote---in Des Moines and two different
precincts here in the Cities---said registration has resulted in phone
calls and mailings, but always to the husband, and never to me. I
thought perhaps they knew that I had registered as an independent in my
youth and had banned me for that association, but now that I know how
bad databases are in actuality, it's patently obvious that no one has
done that much work or even cares. This has been a peculiarity for the
nearly ten years that we've been married. Particularly when we lived in
Des Moines in 1996. The letters and phone calls wouldn't stop coming,
but when they came, they were always and forever for the husband. Never
for me. I've come to the conclusion that good Republican men are---in
the experience of the RNC---the ones who sign the checks that keep the
ads on the air. Do women not bother contributing money? Are we some
sort of demographic that the Republicans need not bother with, even
though we've declared that we're on their side? That cannot possibly be true. Either it's patriarchial or its demographical, but either way it's sexist as hell. Like I said above, it's not like I want
to be included on the mass mailers, but jeez people, how many potential
donors are you missing out on because you seemingly only send these
things to the person at the address with a Mr. in front of their name?
I can understand not wanting to waste money on mass-mailings to groups
of people who traditionally don't bother. That's understandable, but
come on! When you've got two people in the house who are registered
under the same party and over a ten year span one consistently gets
mail and the other doesn't, how many potential donors are you missing
out on? There have got to be more than a few. Of course all of this
makes the assumption that I'm not the only one this has happened to. I
don't know for sure. But I can't think that with the consistency of all
this that I am. It is odd, though. *(Election-Free Zone Rule is OFF for this post. Skip on by if you so choose.)

I have an announcement to

I have an announcement to make:

Seldom Sober will
be staying at the Cake Eater Apartment on his trek across this great
land in September.
Of course, this came as somewhat of a surprise to the husband this
morning when I told him about SS's RSVP to my offer. (He'd tuned out
when I told him that I'd made the offer the other night)
Should be good fun. Now I'm going to go and lie down.

Dude, I know working at

Dude, I know working at the mall can be boring at times, but you have Orange Julius' to console yourself.

Next time the urge to set fire to a spider overcomes you, walk down to the food court and make your mouth happy, ok?

But not in a "Michael

But not in a "Michael Moore is fat" or a "Teddy Kennedy Drunk at
Chappaquiddick" sort of way. Go over and pass along your best "get well soon" wishes.

And then say a few Hail Mary's for the dude. He's trying his best not to freak out.

...there's nothing more satisfying than

...there's nothing more satisfying than finding a metaphor you can run with.

Claudia Rosett runs with a family metaphor in today's Opinion Journal
and it's well worth reading.

The husband can be a

The husband can be a cheeky bugger at times. Particularly when it comes
to signing up to be on mailing lists. The fact that we're on a budget
doesn't play any part in his decision to sign up for something that
will land him on a mailing list. Need an example? The bugger signed up
to receive "more information" from NetJets'.
It's not like we'll ever qualify for fractional jet ownership---he
wants to see what it's all about. Not only do we get loads of mail from
Netjets, they've, of course, sold off his name to other companies.
Normally I shred most of it, but a brochure came in the mail today from
this company and all I can really say is, "damn, I wish I had some money!"

Expeditions via private jets. Very cool. Expensive as hell, but if you've got $35K+ per person
to blow on travel, by all means go for it. No one will begrudge you.
The trip I liked wasn't on the website just yet. It's called "Hidden
Treasures of the Old World." You start off in London, from there you
travel to the Dordogne Valley in France to see the Lascaux cave
paintings. Next stop is Marrakech. Then it's off to Tunisia to visit
the ruins of Carthage and Dougga; Valetta and M'dina in Malta; Luxor in
Egypt, and then you get to visit the Lost City of Petra (think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
From there you will be whisked away to scenic Dubrovnik, Croatia,
which, according to the brochures, still looks like like it did in
medieval times, and overlooks the Adriatic. St. Petersburg is the final
stop of the tour, with all of the glories of the Hermitage available to
your wandering eye.
That sounds SO damn cool. And they've apparently gone to great pains to
resist the tour bus urge, which makes it even better. Four star hotels
and a private Boeing 757 so you don't have to deal with the hassle of
commerical airports. Mmmmmm. Sounds loverly. Go and piddle around on
the site. The trip to India looks awesome as well. COME ON, POWERBALL!

Ahhhhhhh What---exactly---it is about Minnesota

Ahhhhhhh

What---exactly---it is about Minnesota that within a two-week span you can contemplate turning the furnace back on and be forced to turn the AC on because it's suddenly ninety degrees outside?

On second though, don't answer that. I already know the answer.

Thank God for Honeywell thermostats, though. If they didn't exist, I'd have no sense of control whatsoever.

I so don't feel like

I so don't feel like blogging today. Not only is it raining (@#$%^&
AGAIN!), but I'm not feeling well, so I will leave you with a few links
to keep you from resorting to all those porn sites. Consider this your
methadone to keep you from falling back on your former addictions.
Go and read this. The husband says it's interesting.

Jeff is wondering about silk robes and how you tuck them into a pair of Birks. Read the original article. Very interesting.

Fascinating excerpts from an interview with the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

This was playing in the Cake Eater Office a little while ago. It always gives me a chuckle.

I am now going to go and lie down.

Sigh. It's finally happening. By

Sigh.

It's finally
happening. By the end of the week, light rail cars will soon be rolling
through a Twin Cities neighborhood hell and gone from where you live.
Or where I live. And, technically speaking, it's not that far away from
where I live. About five miles or so. I'd just have to drive to the
station, and in the process hop over a freeway to get to the closest
one. Now, the idea of light rail here in the Twin Cities doesn't bother
me. At all. I think mass transportation is a good idea, and I
particularly like the idea of trains. I love Chicago, and one of my
reasons for loving it is the El. Life is easier when you can pop on a
train that runs 24/7 and you can get around faster than you could if
you were on the freeway. Mass transport is supposed to simplify your
life. Take the bus. Have a cup of joe and read the paper while we whisk you to work.
Except that doesn't happen with the buses for the most part. Your life
isn't made more convenient. It's made into a living hell unless there's
a bus stop right outside your door. And it's a main line, too. They're
inconvenient. They cost a great deal to ride, particularly during rush
hour when it's $1.75 a pop. They don't go to the suburbs more than a
few times a day if they service them at all. They take longer, etc. I
could go on. I live on a bus route: it's convenient for me to hop a bus
to the mall or to downtown or Uptown. But if I want to go someplace
else, well, expect it to take more than an hour and you're forced to
stick to the most circuitous route possible with at least one transfer.
If they advertise that bussing it to work is supposed to be convenient,
well, it should be convenient. The Met Council, which is the intra-city
organization which takes care of the transit problems here in the
Cities, decided almost ten years ago to start up with light rail, to
make mass transport more convenient. Huh? Aren't the buses supposed to be convenient?
Apparently they came to the same conclusion that everyone who rides the
buses came to: it's not convenient. So the issue of light rail was
raised, and it took off for a few reasons, the main ones being the Mall
of Gomorrah (pardon moi, the Mall of America) and the airport which are
near to each other in Bloomington. By running it from MOA to downtown
with a stop at the airport, they could get mucho federal funding. And
Congressman Sabo came through for the Met Council on this one. Big, big
bucks. Added up with state funds, the grand total came close to $70
million dollars. How long is the line? you ask.
11.5 miles.

Light Rail---Hiawatha Line (click for obnoxiously large size)

Then take a look at the Cities' geography.
Then do the math.
So, not only is this thing a big ass waste of money, it's also nowhere
near the majority of the residents of the Twin Cities. Sure it goes
from Bloomington all the way downtown, but most people don't live in
Minneapolis proper. Why? Because it's too bloomin' expensive. The taxes
are outrageous. The schools suck. The house prices are through the
roof. It's expensive to live in Minneapolis. But if you move to the
outer burbs, you can afford a house. You can afford two cars, which is
a good thing because you're going to need them because you're going to
be driving all hours of the day and night to get places. The Hiawatha
Line isn't all that controversial because it's going into a
neighborhood of people who want mass transit, and moreover who can
afford to foot the bill for it. People who think it's neat
and that it will add to the cache of the Twin Cities. The Hiawatha line
isn't going to help the struggling families in the outer burbs who
would love to be able to take a train or a bus to work because it would
cut down on their commute time and they'd be able to spend more time
with their families. This isn't going to help low-income single parents
because, for the most part, they've been forced out to the suburbs,
too. Mass transportation is supposed to be a cheap way to get
around---it's supposed to be designed to serve the masses and I
just don't see how a line from Bloomington to downtown Minneapolis,
which is already serviced by three freeways and many buses (MOA is a
bus hub), is going to achieve what needs to be achieved in terms of
reducing congestion. It's mainly for the tourists. Not the people who
live here. Now, I'm not against light rail, per se. Like I wrote above,
I think trains would be a great idea here in the Cities. I just think
those transportation dollars could have been better spent servicing the
people in the suburbs, where there is little to no mass transportation
and where all the freeway congestion is. This line does nothing to
allieviate the woes it was supposed to. Sure it's a big leap forward as
far as thinking differently, but they weren't smart about it. And now
the idea of light rail to any of the other burbs hinges on its
success, as you can tell from the article above. If this doesn't work,
well, they're not going to spend any more money on trains. They've set
themselves up for failure by picking this location. Sure, it was the
easiest way to get the federal government to pick up the tab, but
they've hamstrung themselves when it comes to future issues because
they chose the path of least resistance for the trial run.
The waste involved is sickening.

US 1st Infantry Division commander,

US 1st Infantry Division commander, General Huebner, sets up command post on Omaha Beach.

Why don't you, erm, do

Why don't you, erm, do what he said.

And stop trying to stick your tongue down Gerhard's throat!

(See? I told
you the Llama Butchers were totally worth a daily visit!)

General Huebner

General Huebner

The JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH

The JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH is on!

Robert has finally sent me his essay. I've sent him mine---both will be posted here and at The Llamabutchers . Just to refresh your memory, the rules are as follows:

1. A 500 word essay
2. One rebuttal each
3. You vote to see who wins.

Without further ado, here is Robert's essay.

There is a certain “pitchforks and torches” character to most criticism of Emma. This often takes the form of facile dismissal – Emma is a rich, selfish, thoughtless bitch: why should we care? More’s the pity, because in fact Emma is one of the most emotionally conducive figures in literature. First of all, there are the charms that bind us to Emma in the opening chapters. Among these are her innate goodness, as illustrated by her happiness for the Westons’ marriage, her exertions to ensure her father’s comfort, and other smaller episodes. Indeed, it is critical to remember that in taking Harriet Smith under her wing, Emma genuinely believes – however wrongly – that she is doing a good thing. Emma also is undoubtedly intelligent. Indeed, Mr. Knightly believes that her natural cleverness at an early age is a factor in her spoiled condition. But Emma’s intelligence is manifested in more than mere cleverness or competence. For example, her declamation to Harriet on why she (Emma) plans never to marry, despite containing a certain amount of posturing vanity, demonstrates a very clear understanding of the politics of marriage in her world. Second, I do not believe that Emma has a sudden epiphany about herself after the Box Hill incident. Rather, she is aware of her own shortcomings at a subconscious level from the very beginning, as illustrated by her constant attachment to Mr. Knightly despite the fact that he is the only character in the story who criticizes her - She seeks out his opinion because she knows this is good for her. It is these qualities in Emma, together with her charm and beauty, that make us love her – and make us all the more emotionally involved in the fallout from her shortcomings, chief among which, of course, is her self-blinding vanity. We cringe on Emma’s behalf when she so cruelly dismisses poor Farmer Martin and nearly destroys Harriet. We wish to flash warning signals at her as she idly muses about Jane Fairfax and Mr. Dixon and dallies with the shadowy Frank Churchill. We howl with laughter at her surprised indignation over Mr. Elton’s feverish proposal in the carriage. We genuinely weep with her over her Box Hill disgrace. Finally, we feel Emma’s distress at the sudden horrid thought of losing Mr. Knightly and her painfully humbling realization that such loss would, indeed, be entirely her own fault. And here, really, is why I enjoy Emma more than Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennett is a paragon of virtues. But she comes pre-packaged. Elizabeth’s struggle is with the world around her. Emma’s struggle is within herself and we, the readers, are made an intimate part of it. We are not treated to an omniscient third-person view of Highbury. Rather, we see what Emma sees and what Emma ought to see. The pattern of growth in her character is mapped by the eventual merger of these two viewpoints in her eyes. The true joy of the novel is watching Emma’s progress and arrival

And here is mine.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

And so begins Pride and Prejudice,
a novel that has enthralled readers for almost two hundred years. The
plot could be summarized thusly: how to bag a rich husband when you
yourself are not rich. Women all over the world are still enslaved to
this task. However, our young heroine Miss Elizabeth Bennet has a
heavier load to bear than just trying to inveigle a man into buying her
a beach house: she wants to be in love with her husband, and if the man
just happens to be rich, well all the better, but it’s not really
necessary. The odds are not in her favor, yet Lizzie succeeds. She bags
Mr. Darcy and he loves her. Why? Because Lizzie has character. She has
strength. She knows what she wants. She’s not Wonder Woman, but she
could be. And what a spectacular superheroine she’d be. There
wouldn’t be any Peter Parker-ish quibbling over the heaviness of her
burdens; there wouldn’t be any Batman-like whining about
loneliness---although Alfred would undoubtedly hector her over the
state of the Batmobile, just because he’s Alfred. She may not be able
or fly above the skies of Metropolis, but Lex Luthor is a chump
compared to Lady Catherine De Bourgh. You have to admit, on a super
heroine level, Lizzie would make the League of Justice blush for all
the whining they’ve done over the years. And she’s just looking for
a husband---she’s not out to save the frickin’ world.
Yet, while our Lizzie possesses admirable qualities, the people she
encounters are not charmed. They think her coarse and opinionated; that
she does not know her station. While they plot against her, she never
willfully blinds herself to their intentions, hence she is able to
retaliate on her own terms. Lizzie chooses to be different: not simply to be contrary, but because she trusts her own heart and mind---and that makes
her different. Whatever issues she may wrestle with, she is confident
in her own abilities to suss out the situation in a rational manner.
She is a woman of sense, not silliness. Lizzie is admirable because she
chooses a challenging path; Emma chooses to make her life more
interesting by meddling in the affairs of others. There’s honestly no
comparison between their virtues: Lizzie is far superior and is much
more interesting to read about because the world conspires against her
goal: to find a husband she loves and respects. Emma has nothing to
lose and her blunders are of her own making, while Lizzie, by following
her path, deliberately places herself in a precarious situation where
to make a mistake would be to sabotage her entire future. Who would you
rather read about? A character who is naïve in the extreme? Or someone
who knows the world is against her yet has the courage to follow
through?

Why stoners should never attempt

Why stoners should never attempt robbery.

I suppose he had to take consolation in the fact that a chocolate bar will at least help with the munchies.

Paul Johnson has a few

Paul Johnson has a few in his most recent Forbes column. (registration required)

In economic activities the greatest of virtues is tolerance. All societies flourish mightily when tolerance is the norm, and our age furnishes many examples of this. China began its astounding commercial and industrial takeoff only when Mao Zedong's odiously intolerant form of communism was scrapped in favor of what might be called totalitarian laissez-faire. {...}In the last fiscal year India's GDP grew an estimated 8%, and in the third quarter, 10%. India's economy for the first time is expanding faster than China's. For years India was the tortoise, China the hare. The race is on, and my money's on India, because freedom--of movement, speech, the media--is always an economic asset. {...}The contrast between China and India--both moving steadily to join the advanced countries of the world--and those countries where Islam is dominant is marked. Whatever its merits may be, Islam is not famed for tolerance. Indeed, of the major world religions it is the least broad-minded and open to argument. With the rise of a new form of fundamentalism in recent decades, its intolerance has been growing--as has the concomitant poverty. {...}The more I study history, the more I deplore the existence of those--be they clerics, bureaucrats or politicians--who think they know what's best for ordinary people and impose it on them. We have a pungent example of this know-all mentality in the EU. The bureaucrats of Brussels have created yet another brand of intolerance that determines by law everything from the shape of bananas to the number of seats in a bus, from apple growing to house plumbing. As a result the German economy is contracting and the French economy is stagnant. There are now more unemployed people in single-currency EU Europe than there have been at any other time since the worst of the 1930s, and many of them will never work again.

Go register and read the whole thing. While I don't agree with Johnson's over-simplification of the economic downfall of certain countries, namely Iran, as he seems to paint the players in black and white with no shades of gray, he's got a point. A very serious, yet a very simple point.

Today's Opinion Journal contains, as

Today's Opinion Journal contains, as it usually does, an article on faith. Today's article, written by Jonathan Last is on the movie Saved!.

Much has been made about how touchy a subject Evangelical Christianity is, and Saved!
has, apparently (I haven't seen it)parodied it rather well, without
being heavy-handed or overly disapproving. Last disagrees with this
premise and argues that the acclaim heaped upon this movie by the
critics proves his point.

With "Saved!" having gone wide last week, the rest of
America now has a chance to see Brian Dannelly's satire of life at an
evangelical high school. Or, as the film's producer, Michael Stipe, put
it: "Saved!" is "like those monster vampire high school kind of movies,
only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers."
{...}That anyone could believe such a movie to have "Christian appeal"
is one measure of how out of touch Hollywood is. The irreverence of
"Saved!" consists of portraying most Christians as dim, many as
malevolent and all as hypocritical. Wisdom and good faith do make an
appearance in "Saved!," but they are displayed by explicitly
antireligious characters.
{...}David Denby, in The New Yorker, solemnly nodded, adding that
although "Saved!" was not an attack on Christianity, "to make it at all
took courage."
Actually, it took no courage, since the movie plays straight into
Hollywood's smug stereotypes about religion, especially the
non-Buddhist variety. And besides, the Christian community did not rise
up to smite the makers of "Saved!" The movie was given respectful--one
might say gentle--treatment in places such as Christianity Today. The
lone voice raised against it was Jerry Falwell's. Talking about this
condemnation, Mr. Dannelly admitted that "it doesn't exactly hurt."
{...}Mr. Stipe has recently said that "anyone of faith who is secure in
that faith probably has a sense of humor about it and would like the
movie." Perhaps so. And "Saved!" is not without likable qualities, as
Joe Morgenstern noted in this newspaper. But there are all sorts of
faith. Those who believe in abortion found it easy enough to be
bothered by "Saved!" Those who believe in the evil of American
Christians found much to recommend it.

Now, I've already said that I haven't seen this movie. But I do want to
see it. I may be completely wrong about it, and if so I'll post a big
takeback if necessary. So, take my defense of it with a grain of salt,
ok?
Last appears to take the tack that any movie about Evangelical
Christianity is a bad movie. Particularly if a. it's made by people in
Hollywood and b. the critics think it's a well made movie. These two
factors make this movie a bad thing
in Last's book. He's, however, got to do better than that if he really
wants to make the claim that Evangelical Christians---and their
beliefs---are being slammed by this movie. First off, we should be
clear just whom this movie and Last are referencing when they say
"Evangelical Christians." A couple of years ago, at mass, Father asked
my fellow attendees if they thought of themselves as "evangelical" and
asked those who did to raise their hands. One lone man in the front of
the church did. No one else thought of themselves as "evangelical,"
because after all, evangelical, in today's society, means "Born Again."
That if you're evangelical, you're a Bible thumper. A member of the God
Squad. Someone who goes to Bible study; someone who uses the Good Book
as the road, and not as a map. But most of all, it meant someone who
felt it was their duty to actively go out and show people the truth of
Jesus' words and to get them to accept Him as their personal savior.
Now, most Catholics don't do that; we leave it to the missionaries and
the priests. We'll help someone if they ask us to explain it to them,
but for the most part, prostelytizing is not a big part of the average
Catholic's daily routine. Father's point was to make us look at the
situation differently; to challenge our preconceived notions; he wanted
us all to be forthright with our beliefs and to share them with
nonbelievers. Because, technically speaking, Catholics are supposed to
do that. We just don't follow through.
But Born Again's do do that. They spread the word. And, over
the years, this has brought out a bit of righteousness in them, I
believe. They're new to the party, speaking strictly in terms of how
old Christianity is, and they want to show off to make sure people
notice them. That's fine, and I don't have an issue with it. I do,
however, take issue when they tell me I'm going to hell because I
haven't accepted their version of Christianity. And they don't
have any problem with doing this. They don't see that they might offend
someone with their words because, honestly, they believe they're saving someone
and that's worth any offense they might cause.
Back when I managed the coffee shop, I had one kid working for me who
needed two weeks off to go to Saipan with his youth group from church.
I worked it and he went. He was changed by this trip. Where before he
was just an average follower, that youth group was a good place to meet
girls, this trip flipped a switch in him and he became an ardent
believer. The trip was a youth conference in the tropics and part of
that trip was bringing the Good News to the youth of Saipan. He told me
a story about "exorcising" a young native man in a hotel room with
other members of his youth group. He actually used the term
"exorcising"; they were "bringing out the demons that posssessed this
kid." And he believed it, hook, line and sinker. He said the boy wasn't
a Christian; he was of Japanese descent; and before he had practiced
the traditional Animist religion of his forefathers. They had wheedled
the boy into their hotel room, and the exorcism proceeded from there.
What Brian described as the "demons coming out" sounded to me like the
kid was physically resisting being "exorcised." Much writhing on the
floor, the kid being forcibly held down by six American kids, and then
finally succumbing because it was the only way that he'd get these
people off of him. If that kid ever practiced Christianity, I'd be
really surprised, but Brian was sure
that he'd been exorcised and that he'd accepted Jesus and would be
faithful for the rest of his life. I just stood there as he told me
this, jaw hanging wide open, shocked as all hell. Brian didn't even
notice my dismay. He thought it was great! I wonder, and still wonder,
how normal this type of behavior is among the evangelicals. If it's
considered rote, well...there's a problem there. Even the Catholics
didn't have too much luck with forced conversions. Evangelical
Christianity is forthright. It is out there,
right in your face, and some of its most ardent believers are
teenagers. There's a reason why most ideological groups, whether they
be political or religious in nature, try to get the young on board as
soon as possible and it's because kids simply do not have the
life-experience to help them judge the merits of the arguments
presented. Look at communism, particularly the Soviet and Chinese
models---they got the kids while they were young, and furthermore asked
for proof of these kids' "faith" by having them turn in people who
weren't "believers." Look at the preponderance of youth groups attached
to churches. Look at the Catholic School System. If you get them while
they're young, odds are they will stick with it their whole life. I
know. I'm a prime example of this. I went to Catholic School for twelve
years. First grade through senior year in high school. I got the whole
kit and caboodle when it came to Catholicism. The habit of Evangelical
Christianity however encourages zealotry when it comes right down to
it. I don't mean to slam anyone's beliefs, but to the rest of us, it's
a bit offputting that the Armies of Evangelical Christianity are being
formed when the kids don't have enough life experience to know that
maybe, just maybe, other people choose to believe differently.
The difference that scares me is that action is involved with
Evangelical Christianity. Deeds are commanded to be brought forth as
proof. Go forth and save! people. For Evangelical Christians, it's a
moral imperative to save people from the fires of hell. Kids don't have
enough reasoning under their belts, or nuance in their systems, to know
that peer pressure (or holding someone down until they accept what you
have to say) is not the best way to win an argument.
It's not the faith Saved! parodies, it's the behavior attached
to the faith. Last doesn't get this point...at all. I haven't even seen
the movie and I get that. Why doesn't Last? He makes the assumption
that if you parody the behavior, you're parodying the faith, and this
is confirmed for him by the fact that people in Hollywood who have
always been anti-Christian and reviewers are for this movie. What utter
crap. Get an argument, will ya? If I, as a Catholic, who admittedly has
problems with the behavior attached to Evangelical Christianity, can
see the difference, why can't he?

Where's Mulder when you need

Where's Mulder when you need him?

(hat tip: the husband)

According to this article, yep.

According to this article, yep. That seems to be the case.

And it indeed seems as if the situation is worse than previously thought.

UNITED NATIONS - NASA (news - web sites) photos of the Darfur region of western Sudan show destruction in nearly 400 villages, and there have been reports of fighting or threatened attacks in every camp for displaced people, the U.S. aid chief said Wednesday. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the Agency for International Development, warned that time is running out to help 2 million Sudanese in desperate need of aid in Darfur. He said his agency's estimate that 350,000 could die of disease and malnutrition over the next nine months "is conservative." {...}We've now analyzed 576 villages, 300 of which are completely destroyed, 76 of which are substantially destroyed," he said. "When we checked them on the ground, we confirmed what we found. We are going to watch them, using aerial photography for the duration to track what's happening."

Contrast that with the Human Rights Watch report's numbers reported in this post:

BRANCACCIO: How many villages did you see? FLINT: I probably saw about 17. But it's hard to move. I mean, I moved with a force of probably about 100 men. Some close to me. Some further out. Some in advance. It's a huge, Darfur — the size of Texas. It's very hard to know what's going on. And it's very hard to be blanket. Because I think not every area, the war will not be the exactly the same in every area. So, I basically selected a block. And I looked at the 60 square kilometer, 25 square mile block, which had 14 villages. And I visited all those villages but one. Eleven had been burned. And if there were huts remaining, it was a handful. All the others had gone.

While Flint chose a block of land because of her limited time and resources, who knew that the actual number of villages that would show damage is tallied at almost four hundred? FOUR HUNDRED. Let that number sink in. All I can say is that since the mainstream American media seems intent on ignoring this story as too inconvenient to cover, and we apparently are forced to rely upon aid workers for intelligence, let's hope that NASA keeps a satellite or two tasked on Darfur so we at least have some information as to the width and breadth of this genocide.

Natsios said the U.S. government has spent $116 million on the relief effort in Sudan — more than all other donors combined — "and we pledged $188 million between now and the end of next year." The United States is moving "with a maximum sense of urgency to try to save lives," said Ranneberger, who accompanied Natsios. "We don't have time to sit around also and decide, is this ethnic cleansing or is this genocide, or what is it." Natsios said President Bush (news - web sites) has made clear to Bashir that U.S.-Sudanese relations will not be normalized "until these atrocities are stopped and until all impediments to the relief effort are ended." "They badly want the normalization of relations" after an agreement ending a 21-year civil war between government forces and rebels in southern Sudan. "You cannot have peace in the south and a new civil war in the west," Natsios said. "It's just not going to happen."

Finally! Someone said it. Question is, when is the UN going to say the same? Or even do the same?

UPDATE: 06/01/2004 Courtesy of the Enlightened Cynic a link to the International Crisis Group's recommendations for action in Darfur.

The Sudan government has effectively played on fears that its peace talks with the SPLA in Naivasha (the regional, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, process) might unravel as a means to continue its brutal strategy while shielding itself from criticism. Western governments have played directly into that strategy. They have given total priority to Naivasha while only quietly engaging Khartoum about Darfur in an effort to secure incremental improvements in humanitarian access. They have refrained from directly challenging it there even while attacks continue and access is continually impeded. But a failure to resolve the catastrophic Darfur situation will undermine not only the last stages of negotiation in Naivasha but also the prospects for implementing whatever agreement is ultimately reached there. Urgent action is required on several fronts if "Darfur 2004" is not to join "Rwanda 1994" as shorthand for international shame.

Go read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: political scientist and fellow blogger Daniel Geffen chimes in with a post
about a CARE breakfast---with Darfur as its main focus---that he
attended this morning. Nick Kristof, one of a very few western
journalists who has actually been writing about Darfur, spoke.
Interesting observations all around.

I feel like being snarky

I feel like being snarky for a bit, but am too lazy to come up with my own bit of snarkiness.

Here's a bit from Anthony Bourdain's book A Cook's Tour
that should please everyone but the idiots at PETA. Bourdain is a rare
breed: a professional chef who also happens to write more than
cookbooks. Yes. This also happens to be the same guy who warned you
never to order fish at a restaurant on a Monday. A Cook's Tour
is a fascinating read. The premise behind the book is that he wanted to
travel the world to find "the perfect meal." In the process he got
drunk with a pack of Basque women, he ate the still-beating heart of a
cobra in Vietnam, and the bastard got to go eat at The French Laundry.
His publisher thought this a great idea and to cross-market the book,
the publisher got the Food Channel to follow him around on his
journeys. This was a cross to bear for Bourdain, a chain smoking,
loud-mouthed, booze drinking, cholesterol lovin' gourmand who did not
relish the thought of being followed around by a TV crew. The passage
you're about to read comes from his chapter on his visit to Northern
California, which, in my humble opinion, is the best chapter in an
outstanding book. Enjoy.
A Cook's Tour, Chapter: West Coast. Copyright 2001 by Anthony Bourdain. All Rights Reserved

Reasons Why You Don't Want to Be on Television: Number Five in a Series."C'mon,
Tony! You've been to Cambodia, for chrissakes! How bad can it be?" said
the television producer. "We can't do a whole show on one restaurant!
This will be funny! They're looking forward to cooking for you!" What
he'd arranged, what he had in mind, was for me to venture in to the
real heart of darkness, deep, deep into enemy territory, to Berkeley,
and a vegan potluck dinner.
I've said some pretty hateful things about vegetarians, I know. In
spite of this, many of them have been very nice to me over the past
year. Though I think I have at various times referred to them as
"Hezbollah-like" and as "the enemy of everything good and decent in the
human spirit," they come to my readings, write me nice letters. My
publicist in England, whom I adore, is a veg (though I've forced her at
gunpoint to eat fish a few times), as are a couple of the shooters I've
worked with. They've shown remarkable good humor, considering how I
feel about their predilections. There have been lots of vegheads who've
been very kind and generous these last few months, in spite of the fact
that they know that at the first opportunity, when they're drunk or
vulnerable, I'm getting a bacon cheeseburger down their throats. That
doesn't mean I wanted to sit in some hilltop A-frame eating lentils out
of pot with a bunch of Nader supporters and hairy-legged earth mothers
in caftans. I certainly didn't want to visit "them" on their home turf.
If nothing else, I was reasonably certain that smoking would be a
problem.
I'm going to try---really try---to be nice here.
I went along with the producer's scheme. Fair is fair. The opposition
should be given every chance to prove the righteousness of their
cause---or at least the merits of their case. The people coming to
dinner, the folks who'd be cooking for me, were all serious vegans.
Cookbook authors. Vegan cookery teachers. People who spent lots of time
going to seminars, classes, corresponding with others of their
ilk---on-line, in chat rooms, and at conventions and informal
gatherings. Maybe it was possible to make something good without meat,
or stock, or butter, or cheese, or dairy products of any kind. Who was
I to sneer? The world, I had recently found out, was a big, strange,
and wonderful place. I'd eaten tree grubs and worms and sheep's
testicles. How bad could it be?
Bad.
The vegans I visited did not live in a converted ashram on a hilltop,
tending to their crops in bare feet or Birkenstocks. No one was named
Rainbow or Sunflower. Only one person wore a sari. My hosts lived in a
kept modern luxury home in an exclusive area of the suburbs, surrounded
by green lawns and shiny new BMW's and SUV's. They were, all of them,
affluent-looking professionals and executives. Ranging in age from late
thirties to early fifties, they were well dressed, unfailingly nice,
eager to show me the other side of the argument. And not one of them
could cook a fucking vegetable. Fergus Henderson, the grand master of
blood and guts cookery, shows more respect for the simple side of
sauteed baby spinach on some of his plates than any of these deluded
vegans showed me in ten elaborate courses. Green salads were dressed
hours before being served, ensuring that they had wilted into
nutrition-free sludge. The knife work---even from the cooking teachers
present---was clumsy and inept, resembling the lesser efforts of
younger members of the Barney Rubble clan. The vegetables---every
time---were uniformly overcooked, underseasoned, nearly colorless, and
abused, any flavor, texture and lingering vitamin content leeched out.
Painstaking re-creations of 'cheese', 'yogurt', and 'cream' made from
various unearthly soy products tasted, invariably, like caulking
compound, and my hosts, though good humored and friendly to the hostile
stranger in their midst, seemed terrified, even angry, about something
nebulous in their pasts. Every time I asked one of them how and when
they had decided to forgo all animal products, the answer always seemed
to involve a personal tragedy or disappointment unrelated to food.
'I got a divorce,' began one. 'I lost my job,' said another. 'Heart
attack,' offered another. 'I broke up with my...' 'When I decided to
move out of LA, I started thinking about things...'
In every case, it appeared to me (in my jaundiced way of thinking
anyway) that something had soured them on the world they'd once
embraced---and that they'd sought new rules to live by, another
orthodoxy, something else to believe in. 'Did you read about the PCB's
in striped bass?' one whispered urgently, as if comforted by the news.
'I saw on-line where they're pumping steroids into cattle,' said
another breathlessly, every snippet of bad news from the health front a
victory for their cause. They seemed to spend an awful lot of time
confirming their fears and suspicions of the world outside their own,
combing the Internet for stories of radioactive dairy products,
genetically altered beets, polluted fish, carcinogenic sausages,
spongiform-ridden meat, and hideous Grand Guignol chamber of horror
abattoirs and slaughterhouses.
They also seemed curiously oblivious to the fact that much of the world
goes to bed hungry every night, that our basic design features as
humans, from the beginning of our evolution, developed around the very
real need to hunt down slower, stupider animals, kill them and eat
them. 'Don't you ever wake up in the middle of the night craving
bacon?' I asked. 'No. Never,' replied every single one of them. 'I've
never felt so healthy in my life.'
It was difficult for me to be polite (though I was outnumbered). I'd
recently returned from Cambodia, where a chicken can be the difference
between life and death. These people in their comfortable suburban digs
were carping about cruelty to animals but suggesting that everyone in
the world, from suburban Yuppie to starving Cambodian cyclo-driver,
start buying organic vegetables and expensive soy substitutes. To look
down on entire cultures that've based everything on the gathering of
fish and rice seemed arrogant in the extreme to me. (I've heard of
vegans feeding their dogs vegetarian meals. Now that's cruelty to
animals.) And the hypocrisy of it all pissed me off. Just being able to
talk about this issue in reasonably grammatical language is a
privilege, subsidized in a yin/yang sort of way, somewhere, by somebody
taking it in the neck. Being able to read these words, no matter how
stupid, offensive, or wrongheaded, is a privilege, your reading skills
the end product of an education most of the world will never enjoy. Our
whole lives--our homes, the shoes we wear, the cars we drive, the food
we eat---all built on a mountain of skulls. Meat, say the PETA folks,
is 'murder.' And yes, the wide world of meat eating can seem like a
panorama of cruelty at times. But is meat 'murder'? Fuck no.
Murder, as one of Khmer pals might tell you, is what his next-door
neighbor did to his whole family back in the seventies. Murder is what
happens in Cambodia, in parts of Africa, Central and South America, and
in former Soviet republics when the police chief's son decided he wants
to turn your daughter into a whore and you don't like the idea. Murder
is what Hutus do to Tutsis, Serbs to Croats, Russians to Uzbeks, Crips
to Bloods. And vice versa. It's black Chevy Suburbans (which, more than
likely, US taxpayers paid for) pulling up outside your house at three
in the morning and dragging away your suspiciously unpatriotic and
overopinionated son. Murder is what that man sitting across from you in
Phnom Penh does for a living---so he can afford a satellite dish for
his roof, so he can watch our Airwolf
reruns, MTV Asia, and Pam Anderson running in slow motion down a
Southern California beach.
Hide in your homes and eat vegetables, I was thinking. Put a Greenpeace
bumper sticker on your Beemer if it makes you feel better (so you can
drive your kids to an all-white school). Save the rainforest---by all
means---so maybe you can visit it someday, on an ecotour, wearing,
comfortable shoes made by twelve-year-olds in forced labor. Save a
whale while millions are still sold into slavery, starved, fucked to
death, shot, tortured, forgotten. When you see cute little kids crying
in the rubble next to Sally Struthers somewhere, be sure to send a few
dollars.
Damn! I was going to try and be nice!{...}

St. Laurent, behind Omaha Beach,

St. Laurent, behind Omaha Beach, is captured.

British advance on Caen is halted.

Canadian 9th Brigade reaches Beny.

Jesus, Mary and freakin' Joseph.

Jesus, Mary and freakin' Joseph.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he was planning to travel to strife-torn Sudan, adding that the UN was pressing the Khartoum government to allow humanitarian workers freer access to Darfur. "I myself expect to visit Sudan soon," Annan told reporters at UN headquarters in New York. He called on the Sudanese government to protect its own civilians, saying: "It is the responsibility of the government to protect the population, and we need to encourage it and must insist it does it."

{emphasis mine}

What the hell?

Crikeys, Kofi, it's the government of Sudan that's providing air support to the Janjaweed militias. They're in on the action.
It's pretty darn clear to me. Why isn't it clear to you? Be logical: do
you honestly think that the militias, which predominantly use horses
as their main source of transportation, have access to bombers and
helicopters? That they just use the horses because they choose to? Like
its a matter of personal preference? No, I don't want to drive around in a jeep! I much prefer my trusty Arabian steed to get me to the killing!
Horsemen have access to helicopters? Maybe in the movies, because it
makes for a compelling graphical rendition, but in reality? I think
not. Do you honestly think the legally recognized government in
Khartoum gives a flaming rat's ass that people are being killed in
Darfur? No. The legally recognized government of Sudan, the one headed
up by General Omar Bashir, the same one you think should be protecting
the average black muslim in Darfur, wants these people gone and they're
willing to help the Janjaweed militia do just that. Furthermore, do you
think that your arrival on the scene will actually do
anything? Obviously, you do because you're delusional. They'll provide
you with a fine place to stay. They'll set up a room at the Khartoum
Hilton for talks. They'll make sure there are children with flowers to
greet you so you don't think they're complete barbarians. But when you
actually sit down to talk with them, they'll nod politely, they'll
pretend that what you say actually matters, they'll reply in a
concerned, yet respectful voice by saying, "we understand your
concerns," and then they'll kick your ass out the damn door, Kofi,
because it's not in their interest to follow the dictates of
international law, nor do they think it's necessary to follow
the dictates of international law. They just don't care, Kofi, and you
just don't get that, do you? They don't care about your diplomacy, your
definition of human rights, your worldview---none of it means a damn
thing to them. They don't recognize anything that you care about. When
are you going to learn this?

Ok, I'm bleary eyed, but

Ok, I'm bleary eyed, but I'm back.

Yesterday was filled with stupid household stuff. Cleaning the toilet, the shower, dusting, vacuuming, etc. Real
exciting stuff which nonetheless needed to be done. I also did laundry
yesterday. Five loads in as many hours. Sounds like a lot to be hauling
up and down three flights of stairs in between cleaning fits, doesn't
it? Well, it was, particularly when you take into account that I was running
up and down those three flights of stairs. Why was I in such a rush?
Well, the highlight of the day was an epic battle between the Pakistani
Grandma who lives downstairs and myself for sole control of the washer
and dryer which we share.
The couple who shares the Cake Eater House with us (it's a duplex, only
they live below us, not next to us)are both doctors. Busy
doctors. The husband just finished up with his residency; the wife has
passed her boards and is working on her internship. They also have a
darling two-year-old boy who's the sweetest thing since lollipops were
invented. He's a darling. Mom and son spent most of the winter in
Pakistan visiting family, avoiding the Minnesota cold and snow, and had
serious trouble getting out of the country because of the big terrorist
scare that happened. Part of this trip, also was to visit extended
family. But when they finally arrived back here in Cake Eater Country,
Grandma came with them. This was their child care solution: they were
tired of little boy going to daycare and always becoming ill, so
Grandma watches him during the day and also does all of the houshold
chores, too.
Apparently, she loves washing clothes. And drapes. And sofa covers. And
rugs. She loves
washing rugs, so much so that there's always little bits of rubber
backing in the lint filter (which she NEVER empties! Yesterday's
emptying of the lint filter produced three inches (three inches!)
worth of lint. YUCK! The house is either going to burn to the ground or
I'm going to spontaneously combust from always having to empty that
damn thing---either way flames will be involved.). Anyway, since she
moved here, the washer and dryer are always in use. Now, I don't ask for much, but a little time to complete the washing that's necessary for my
household to run doesn't seem like too much. Considering our lease
gives us that right. And I want that time during the day, not in the
middle of the night, when I'll fall down the stairs because I'm tired.
But that's about the only time Grandma would allot me if I let her,
despite the concessions I've already granted them. I used to do laundry
once a week. Then I decided that wasn't really necessary because a. we
had enough underwear to take us through to two weeks and b. they had
more clothes with a small kid, they're both doctors with busy
schedules, and I ultimately decided I should leave them extra time and
space to help them out. I will admit, this has inconvenienced me at
times. But it hasn't been a big deal until Grandma came to visit. She's
taken advantage of the situation and I've had it. No more will I be the
one who bends in this contest of wills. Well, Grandma doesn't see it
this way. She thinks I should be the one who bends. Apparently, even
one day every two weeks is too much to ask for. Yesterday I was forced
into demanding it. Utilizing my "I will not bend" philosophy, I braced
myself and took my first load of whites downstairs. Of course, I had to
move their stuff out of both the washer and dryer to get access
(something I hate doing; it makes me feel like I'm violating their
privacy). Then I started my load, hoping I was in the clear for the
day. And I even conveniently let them use my basket because I didn't
want to put their clean, dry clothes on top of the dryer, lest they
fall off onto the filthy basement floor (which Tweedledumb, the
manager, is responsible for cleaning, but has yet to do). A
humanitarian, am I not? I'm a good person. Well, I was not in the
clear. Grandma promptly shot a cannonball across my bow by placing a
BIG basket full of sheets on top of the washer, claiming her space in
line.
Screw that. I fired back, although I tried to be as nonconfrontational
about it as possible.
I snuck in my five loads, running up and down the stairs every hour at
twenty past the hour, just so she didn't get ideas, and her big basket
full of sheets sat there, mocking me, the whole time. I even ran into
her on the stairs outside of their apartment and she smiled at me, and
I chatted with the little boy while he showed me his 3-D glasses and
everything was nice and friendly, but you could see the annoyance in
her eyes as she heard the washer switch from fill to agitate. I just
smiled sweetly. She doesn't have enough English to complain; I didn't
say anything because a. she wouldn't have understood it and b. I hate
confrontations. The conflict was there: we just didn't verbalize it.
(Although, I'm pretty sure that if I spoke either Arabic or Urdu she
would have gone off on me.) I think she'd finally had it when I washed
my duvet cover (last load of the day) and when I went down to put it in
the dryer, it was already tumbling. I wasn't surprised. I'd gotten
sidetracked and was a few minutes late making the switchoff. Guess what
was also there? THREE
baskets full of washable items. The sheets that had been mocking me all
day long were in the washer, but there were drapes, towels, and clothes
lined up neatly, all waiting their turn in the washer. I swear to God
she went through the house and started throwing stuff into baskets. You
name it, it was next to the washer, just waiting to be agitated into
cleanliness. I chuckled and went back upstairs: her primacy, her
position as the Napoleon of the Laundry Room, was fully restored, but I
didn't care all that much as my laundry was done. This will not be the
case in two weeks. Another battle will be fought. Wounds will be
sustained, yet we will both survive to fight another day. This was just
the first battle in what I forsee to be a long war. Who will win?
That's anybody's best guess, but I'm going to do my damndest to make
sure I don't lose. I know, this is really thrilling stuff that's
keeping you on the edge of your seat, no? Heh. But this is my life. As
soon as I get jacked back into the web, I'll start blogging about stuff
that really matters.

Is that all you got,

Is that all you got, bitch?

UPDATE Outer Life has a fiver on Lizzie.

Seldom Sober has his Blogs

Seldom Sober has his Blogs Across America itinerary up.
I think this is a fabulous idea. If you're going to roadtrip, why not
meet some new people along the way? Particularly if you're a blogger,
because it's not like there's any shortage of verbose people who wield
their keyboard like a sword, are there? Given the massive numbers of
bloggers out there, hell, SS could conceivably be stopping every five
miles or so. So, this is a great idea and this is why I volunteered to
host him for a night. Besides, I would like to meet him. It could be a
life-enriching experience, no? And there's a good chance booze will be
involved and I always like that. But I also want to go and figure out
where Lileks lives, and I figure it would be best if I had company with
me for that. Cuts down on the psycho factor. (At least I hope it does.)
And SS is completely up for it. The only problem I have with this whole
scenario right now is that the pressure for me to be the hostess with
the mostest is on. You see, SS's last stop before hitting the Cake Eater Pad is in Colorado Springs where Martini Boy and his lovely wife live. Then he comes here.

HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO LIVE UP TO THAT?
Vodkapundit's house is gourmand central. There will be erudite
conversation over a five course meal, replete with cocktails (martinis,
of course), a few bottles of good wine, and some sort of flaming
dessert. After which, there will be more good conversation and more
booze ingested. It will probably be the night of SS's life. And I'm the
one who has to follow that. I'm going to be the rebound blogger
hostesss after Martini Boy dumps him and changes the locks. This is
what I will have to live up to. He will set the bar high and everyone
who comes after him on the itinerary will, henceforth, probably suck in
the hosting department no matter how hard we try. The pressure is on.

Teh Funny

Teh Funny

I realize work is boring

I realize work is boring and you'll try and do anything to allieviate
said boredom, but honestly, I have other things to do today rather than
entertain you people with my wit and wisdom (ha! that's a laugh!). I am
reverting to haus frau mode today. The house must be cleaned. The
clothes must be washed, etc. so on and so forth. Blogging will be
sporadic if non-existent until this evening.
But, like a good mother, I will give you a virtual coloring book and
some nice fat crayolas to keep you out of my hair while I get things
done around the house.
Go read Hitchens. It's
nice and long and juicy enough that should keep you occupied and out of
trouble. Be good. And if you're still bored after reading Hitch, well,
there are links on the left hand side of the blog. Go forth in search
of bloggy goodness.

I've been meaning to post

I've been meaning to post a link to Me and Ophelia,
a fabulous blog written by the very clever and very attentive Ingrid
Jones.
She's been singularly focusing on Darfur for quite some time and has
been doing a fantastic job with it. I've been remiss in not sending you
over there sooner, so go over in droves and give her a
Cakeeaterlanche---if such a thing is possible. She deserves it. Go over
and read what she has to say. It's well worth your time.

...or put your fat fingers

...or put your fat fingers to the keyboard in my case. Who knew that
I'd ever get an email from someone who writes for the Weekly Standard?

Yesterday, I kinda blasted Jonathan Last about his Opinion Journal piece about Saved!

Much to my surprise, I received this email from him in response:

Dear Kathleen,

Go see Saved! and I think you will indeed want to do a take back. I'm a
Catholic (and not an evangelical one, either ), so I have no dog
in this fight. And I love good dark satires, like Election. But what
Saved! does is only use dark satire against one particular set of
characters (the fundamentalists) while being quite sentimental about
another group (those who don't believe in God). Which, in my book,
turns it from a dark satire to a pretty mean-spirited tract.

Have good weekend; love the blog.

Best,
JVL

Here I thought I was spouting off to only a select few. Hmmph. Behold the Power of Search Engines! Ok, I am going to go and see it sometime soon and if necessary, I will indeed post a big takeback.

Just for the record, I did resist the urge to ask him if Bill Kristol is really as uptight as he seems on TV.

INDC Journal spent his Memorial

INDC Journal
spent his Memorial Day weekend at the dedication of the new WWII
Memorial, chatting with vets, listening to their stories and taking
photos. He did a marvelous job. Go.Read.It.

Hmmph. To which I reply:

Hmmph.

To which I reply: "How's that stoma treating you, Ned?"

(Don't Forget and spread the word---Jane Austen Cage Match next week.)

Fishy. Sounds a wee bit

Fishy.

Sounds a wee bit familiar,
doesn't it?
Yes, they focused more on WMD, but the fact we both invoked the name of
Wild Bill Dononvan is odd. That they also said it's an opportunity is
odd. That we both talked about Tenet's savviness and his inability to
think outside the box. Hmmmm.

Chrenkoff has a good roundup

Chrenkoff has a good roundup of articles related to Kofi's decision to take Colin Powell with him to Khartoum.

The government-backed irregular ethnic cleansers will be bombarded into submission with Colin Powell, Kofi Annan and the foreign ministers of France, Italy and Switzerland. In case the diplomatic heavy guns would prove insufficient, you can always try more aid. In fact, as Fox reports, "Powell to Ask Sudan's Leaders to Allow Aid". It would only be a slight exaggeration to compare the current scenario to the Allies asking the Nazis to allow food parcels into Auschwitz.

He's completely correct. The inmates are running the asylum and asking them to take their medication, as opposed to ramming it down their throats, simply isn't going to work in this situation. The absurdity of it all is just astounding. I suppose one could say that this is one of the bad side-effects of going unilateral, says she with the sarcasm dripping, on Iraq: I---and many others---just don't have patience for the UN anymore. They want to talk everything to death, and when more talk means people dying in Sudan, I fail to see how that talk is purposeful. Particularly when the UN and the US are asking for access to people whom their own government is helping to annihilate.

21st Panzer Division attacks Sword

21st Panzer Division attacks Sword Beachhead

British tanks from Gold Beach

British tanks from Gold Beach arrive in Arromanches; the 231st Brigade will arrive shortly.

Le Hamel is finally captured by British troops from Gold Beach.

The British 69th Infantry Bridgade from Gold Beach and Germans clash between Villers-le-Sac and Bazenville.

US tanks begin moving inland from Omaha Beach.

12th SS Panzer division released from reserve.

12th SS Panzer division falls

12th SS Panzer division falls into position south of Caen.

21st Panzer division launches a

21st Panzer division launches a counterattack toward the coast.

Fighting on ridge overlooking Sword

Fighting on ridge overlooking Sword Beach.

Whole of the Canadian 3rd Division is ashore at Juno.

Hitler holds his first meeting about the Allied landings.

German 352nd Division is reported

German 352nd Division is reported to have thrown enemy back into the sea at Omaha.

Troops on Omaha Beach move

Troops on Omaha Beach move inland

US 4th Infantry Division from

US 4th Infantry Division from Utah Beach links up with the 101st Airborne Division at Pouppeville

British 185th Brigade moves inland

British 185th Brigade moves inland from Sword.

German tanks reported north of

German tanks reported north of Caen

British 1st Special Service Commandos

British 1st Special Service Commandos link up with 6th British Airborne troops at Orne bridges.

Winston Churchill reports on the

Winston Churchill reports on the landings in a speech to the House of Commons

Langrune is captured by the Canadians.

Read Churchill's speech here.

Tailleville, Banville and St. Croix

Tailleville, Banville and St. Croix all captured by the Canadians.

St. Aubin falls to the

St. Aubin falls to the Canadians

St. Aubin

St. Aubin

US Soldiers from the 1st

US Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division enter Vierville.

Vierville

Vierville

Reserve brigades begin to land

Reserve brigades begin to land on Gold Beach and seven beach exits have been cleared.

Five beach exits off Juno

Five beach exits off Juno have been cleared.

German 21st Panzer Division ordered

German 21st Panzer Division ordered to attack between Caen and Bayeux.

Panzer

Panzer

German Counterattack Path Highlighted in

German
Counterattack Path Highlighted in Orange

Rommel learns that the Allies

Rommel learns that the Allies have invaded and rushes back to France
from Bavaria, where he had been visiting to celebrate his wife’s
birthday.

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel

US troops reach cliff tops

US troops reach cliff tops overlooking Omaha Beach.

Breakout From Omaha

Breakout
From Omaha

British troops from Gold Beach

British troops from Gold Beach meet stiff resistance at Le Hamel.
Commandos landed at Gold head for Port En Besin to link with American
Forces.

Utah Beach is cleared of

Utah Beach is cleared of all enemy forces.

The Casino building at Riva

The Casino building at Riva Bella is liberated by Free French commandos
led by Commandant Kieffer.
British troops capture Hermanville behind Sword Beach.
Canadian 8th Brigade takes Bernieres.
Les Roquettes is captured by British troops coming from Gold Beach.

After scaling 80-100 foot cliffs

After scaling 80-100 foot cliffs at Point du Hoc near Omaha Beach, the
Rangers find the battery empty, but discover guns further inland from
the cliffs and destroy them.

General Bradley, fearing it may

General Bradley, fearing it may become necessary to abandon Omaha
Beach, calls for reinforcements.

General Omar Bradley

General Omar Bradley

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

General Eisenhower announces release of

General Eisenhower announces release of communiqué announcing the commencement of the invasion.

German 84th Army Corps informed of seaborne landings.

Listen to the announcement of the invasion from the BBC Home Service.

Three beach exits have been

Three beach exits have been cleared at Gold

Three exits from Sword Beach

Three exits from Sword Beach have been cleared.

Rangers and 116th Infantry reach

Rangers and 116th Infantry reach the tops of the cliffs at Les Moulins
after landing at Omaha.
No. 48 Royal Marine Commandos land at St. Aubin, on Juno, and head
east.

Follow-up battalions and the No.

Follow-up battalions and the No. 47 Royal Marines land at Gold Beach.

Tanks and Funnies land late

Tanks and Funnies land late on Juno due to bad weather. Little beach
clearance takes place due to rising tides.

US Troops on Omaha begin

US Troops on Omaha begin ascending bluffs.

Free French Commandos, 4th and

Free French Commandos, 4th and 10th Brigades, land on Sword Beach.

US Troops advance inland from

US Troops advance inland from Utah Beach

Go to Enlightened Cynic and

Go to Enlightened Cynic and read. Follow the links and read. IT'S MANDATORY. Then throw-up and then read some more, if you can stomach it.

From the Omaha World Herald:

WASHINGTON - More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon where Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Rev. Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." Details of the ceremony - first reported by Salon.com writer John Gorenfeld - have prompted several lawmakers to say they were misled or duped by organizers. Their complaints prompted a Moon-affiliated Web site to remove a video of the "Crown of Peace" ceremony two days ago, but other Web sites have preserved photos. Moon, 85, has been controversial. Renowned for officiating at mass weddings, he received an 18-month prison sentence in 1982 for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Among the more than 300 people who attended all or part of the ceremony was Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who now says he was honoring a constituent receiving a peace award and did not know Moon would be there. "We fell victim to it, we were duped," Dayton spokeswoman Chris Lisi said Tuesday. Other lawmakers who attended or were listed as hosts felt the same, she said. "Everyone I talked to was furious," she said.

AHEM.

We don't crown people in this country. I don't care if they're religious leaders, politicians, or scions of political dynasties. WE DON'T HOLD CORONATIONS FOR ANYONE IN A SENATE OFFICE BUILDING.
Congressmen from Illinois are not pages in the Reverend Moon's court.
They do not carry crowns for coronations. He is supposed to be an
elected representative of the people who live in his district. He is not
supposed to be a crown-carrying lackey for a religious nutjob. Most
importantly, however, we do not do these things because The United
States of America is a Republic. Millions of men and women have given
their lives so that we will never have to bow down and be beholden to a
king or someone who is trying to pass themselves off as one. Remember
the "Divine Right of Kings" from grade school history class? That's the
theory that says that God put some random king on some random throne
and that action was the source of his moral authority to lead his
people. We fought a war to tell England that we weren't going to be
beholden to their king any longer. It was called The Revolution and it
was indeed revolutionary for its time. It was the result of this big
idea: that all men are created equal and are capable of governing
themselves. They don't need a king to do it for them. Men and women
died for this ideal. They gave their lives for freedom. And these
congresspeople don't seem to care that this ideal was trampled on. They
just don't care about it. Sure they're "furious." Of course they're
"livid." Of course they feel as if they were "duped." But the simple
fact that not one of them stopped
this coronation from taking place speaks volumes about how little they
think of this ideal upon which our country was founded. It's too far
removed from their petty little squabbles over pork for them to care.
Has Congress no shame? How could they allow something like this to
happen on government property? Property that I paid for. Property that
you paid for. Property that we all paid for. Not only with money, but
with blood. How could they allow something like this to happen in our
country, let alone in A SENATE OFFICE BUILDING? Let me write it again
just in case you didn't get it the first few times I wrote it: WE DO
NOT CROWN ANYONE IN THIS COUNTRY
Oh, I am just livid. Senator Dayton is getting a phone call from this
constituent today. Guaran-fucking-teed.

H-Hour on Juno Beach. 3rd

H-Hour on Juno Beach.
3rd Canadian Infantry Division lands on Juno. Hindered by the current,
the landing is late.

Do I Have to Kiss

Do I Have to Kiss the Ring Now?

The second wave of troops

The second wave of troops lands on Omaha Beach, adding to the
overcrowding and confusion.

H-Hour on Gold and Sword

H-Hour on Gold and Sword Beaches.
The 50th British Infantry Division land at Gold Beach. At Sword Beach
the 3rd British Infantry division land. Rather than utilizing their
capacity to "swim" inland, DD tanks and Funnies are landed directly
onto the beach at Gold because of delays due to bad weather.
Read more about Hobart’s Funnies.

Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches

Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches

US Army 2nd Ranger Battalion

US Army 2nd Ranger Battalion begins assault on Pointe-du-Hoc

Aerial Photo of Pointe-du-Hoc

Aerial Photo of Pointe-du-Hoc

German radio broadcasts initial report

German radio broadcasts initial report of the landing.

First landing wave pinned down on Omaha beach.

Almost all DD Swimming tanks

Almost all DD Swimming tanks land successfully at Utah.

H-Hour on Utah and Omaha

H-Hour on Utah and Omaha Beaches.

The 4th and 29th US Infantry Divisions will land at Utah; at Omaha, the 1st US Infantry Division and the 2nd Rangers.

Utah will be taken with relative ease. The troops landing at Omaha will encounter heavy German resistance.

Higgins Boat Landing

Higgins Boat Landing

Beachhead Landing (beach unknown)

Beachhead Landing (beach unknown)

Utah Beach

Utah Beach

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

Sunrise. Aerial bombardment of German

Sunrise.

Aerial bombardment of German fortifications along Utah and Omaha beaches continues, but is not successful.

German 7th Army Headquarters informed of heavy Allied bombardment.