In "Ach! My retirement grease!"

Actually, I'd look for more thefts like these. Bio-diesel is becoming a much more common fuel. You can get a diesel engine, or a turbine for that matter, to run on peanut oil if it trips your trigger. I have a friend in Texas whose been making his own biodiesel for his F350 Cummins for over a year now. Hmmmm...need to see if he's been making any midnight runs to Oklahoma.

In "Are you a neocon? "

Go figure, Coot the Realist!

In "The Magic Kingdom of Oceania declares Michael Moore a 'nonperson'"

Oh right like anyone would use the unbiased media for their own ends. You're a cynical man Coot. I prefer to think of it as astute realism pete_best. Just like homo sapiens, the aberrant subspecies, turdus hyperbolicus, spans the gamut of the American political landscape. Good Morning to the quidnunc kid.

MM's latest Crockumentary will be distributed, it just won't be distributed by Disney's Buena Vista arm. Since Moore's agent knew about Disney's stance on this over a year ago, I can only presume that this is actually part of Moore's publicity plan. "Hey, look at me, Disney's trying to silence me...blah blah blah."

In ""

" I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures." Rene Gonzalez should ask for her money back from UMass, as she is an abject failure at obtaining an education.

In "Bin Laden offers truce - to Europe."

Classic Sun Tzu. Separate the most powerful from its allies. Or in the words of the unflappable Condi Rice, Osama's using carrots and sticks.

In "Tetris in one dimension."

I feel your pain de Carabas...though I don't get that same satisfaction when, out of concern for her wrists, I pull my granddaughter off her Mac and tell her that I remember when I had to mow lawns for 3 months to buy my first transistor pocket radio (with a whopping 2 transistors) and with an earpiece, so I could sneak it into school in my jacket pocket to listen to the first Mercury launches. :-)

In "Tom Waits Live."

You're a thoughtful monky sciurus. Thanks!!!

In "Is Current insurgency Iraq's Tet Offensive?"

Languagehat, I'm pointing out that during the Tet Offensive, the NVA and the VC flat peppered our asses. Tactically, it was initially a big hit. We lost a lot of guys in that. Admittedly, I didn't arrive in country until '69, but when Tet rolled around two years later, everyone was real jittery. This rebellion doesn't have the immediate intensity that Tet did and when it's done, I think we'll see that the insurgents lack the resolve and the guttiness of the NVA. I have a hard time seeing this rebellion being at all protracted.

The analogy is simply silly. The whole current insurgency is a result of a monumental tactical blunder...a blunder that was committed not by Tommy Franks, but by Rumsfeld and Co. Their prize was Baghdad and Saddam. They didn't bother to clear all of the towns and villages that the Iraqi army went to ground in. They left a substantial portion of those guys still armed and unmolested. I missed the Tet Offensive by two years, but I do know that what's currently going on in Iraq isn't even a pimple on the butt of the Tet Offensive. Is it rough? Yep. Are people dying? Yep. Am I concerned about it? Yep. I have a nephew there with the 1st Marines. The point is, is that it's completely assinine to try and make this comparison. The current round of American dead is on the Neocon's heads for gross mismanagement at the front end of the conflict. Even at that, this is going to be a mop up operation. It will probably last a few weeks and then the handwringing subsides and the ill informed pundits crawl back under whatever rock that spawned them.

In "Intifada Snapshot"

Thanks, but I'm really trying to keep the tripe out of my diet.

In "Taking Heroin Out Of The Head"

This is rich, the Chinese import a machine from the U.S., whose sole purpose is trepination. I'm still laughing. "Geez Curly, I don't know...how big a hole do we need to drill in his head to let all the bad spirits out?"

In "Don't have a C-section, go to jail."

I haven't been following the Mefi thread, but I will offer up my answer to your objection. In this instance, the only thing that separated the deceased infant from being an actual citizen, vs. being a potential citizen is the action not taken by this woman. Mental problems do not constitute incompetency under the law. The only thing that satisfies mental incompetency under the law is the inability to distinguish right from wrong; ie, legal insanity. People are sent to jail every day for crimes they commit. I would posit that most criminals are not healthy and well adjusted individuals. That alone does not relieve their culpability for their actions. In this case, I do not see how the diminished capacity of this woman rises to the legal criteria. There are already people having no small number of conniptions over the implications of the Scott Peterson case and what charging him for the murder of his unborn child might do to their agendas. This is just more of the same...gawd forbid that any rights at all be extended to the unborn...even one who dies at the moment of its birth, less it 'diminish' a woman's right to choose. I'm with Nostrildamus on this...the end of the first trimester seems to be the appropriate place to say that it's no longer just a lump of cells.

Nice dodge Alnedra...who protects the baby that died? There must be consequences to actions. Not everyone who has mental illness, drug addiction or alcholism is incapable of knowing right from wrong. You're right, she should be sterilized and have her children taken from her. She should also be punished for abrogating her responsibilities as a human being. This has squat to do with government telling a person what they can or cannot do with their bodies...it has everything to do with people excercising a humane level of responsibility as our technology evolves and sets the bar of humanity higher. She clearly and willfully failed that; ie, she knew right from wrong and chose some self serving path and now wants to be absolved of responsibility for her actions.

In "Gym teacher from Hell:"

There is way too little information to understand the whole story. To me it appears to have been written for the shock value. (Local news stooping to that level? Heaven forfend!) That no lawyer will take the case is a red flag. Is this story by the kid believable, Katahdin? They did not offer any corroboration. Bingo, give this monkey a kewpie doll

In "The Last Written Words of Albert Einstein."

I can't read it, but if you scroll about 2/3 of the way down this page, you'll find a reference to an unfinished work by Einstein. Einstein's last, unfinished, document was the draft of a speech to mark Israel's Independence Day. His opening remarks commented on long-term conflict between Israel and Egypt. 'You may think this is a small and insignificant problem and that there are more serious things to worry about. But this is not true. In matters of truth and justice there can be no distinction between big problems and small...Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs....' Albert Einstein died in his sleep at Princeton Hospital on April 18 1955.

In "Martha Stewart Guilty"

While I think it's good that she was convicted, if she was guilty, all this does for me is highlight the incredible inequity between her situation and Enron Execs. Where are their convictions? Stewart does a little insider trading and gets bitch slapped, while these MEN who wreaked havoc on the economy and thousands of people's lives are sitting in their penthouses waiting for the unpleasantness to blow over? That's a pretty uninformed statement. The Enron case is infinitely more complex than a simple insider trading situation like Mahtha's. There have been indictments, trials, plea bargains starting down below the Enron executives. It's taken plea deals in exchange for light sentences in several cases just to get the goods on Skilling and he's going down. They'll take a few years off his sentence to get the rest of the goods on Lay and then he's gone. It's patentedly absurd to suggest that the Enron boys are getting away with anything.

In "Where is Salam Pax?"

Salam just posted, dated March 6th.

In ""Separate but equal" to reign again in US classrooms."

I probably would have done better in school, but it sure woulda sucked.

In "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004"

Big surprise, Lindsay Graham is co-sponsor of the Senate version. Reading that tripe just created herpes lesions on my eyes. Excuse me while I go sue...there's still time isn't there?

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