Are You Kidding Me

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Jurors and others in Judge Donald Thompson's courtroom kept hearing a strange whooshing noise, like a bicycle pump or maybe a blood pressure cuff.

During one trial, Thompson seemed so distracted some jurors thought he was playing a hand-held video game or tying fly-fishing lures behind the bench. The explanation, investigators said, is even stranger than some imagined: the judge had a habit of masturbating with a penis pump under his robe during trials.

This guy should go to JAIL without passing GO!

Letting the Fox in The Hen House

VANCOUVER (AFP) - Despite harsh US protests, a government clinic will doll out free heroin to hard-core addicts after it opens on Wednesday, a stone's throw from the US border.

The clinic in Vancouver will test, for the first in North America, whether prescribing heroin can cut overdoses, HIV (news - web sites) and hepatitis infections, and reduce hard-core junkies' dependence on crime to obtain the drug.

Several European countries have run similar studies, but the clinic's proximity, 37 kilometres (23 miles) to the United States, has made Canada's trial especially controversial.

Slavery

Thomas Sowell takes a good look at the battle against slavery; some highlights:

The anti-slavery movement was spearheaded by people who would today be called "the religious right" and its organization was created by conservative businessmen. Moreover, what destroyed slavery in the non-Western world was Western imperialism.

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.

Read the entire article here.

This is Simply Sad

More and more we are hearing of parents -- mothers no less -- killing there children... I want go deep into my beliefs why these things happen; simply say that we have done a great job devaluing human life especially the children. Oh there will be outrage at this today, but tomorrow you will see story where children are used as pawns to make a point -- yes pawns you know like objects -- not to mention how we have devalued life by executing the living yet unborn children -- really think about if you can erase a problem (a child) with an abortion why is it a stretch to think some less then stable would believe you could………………

ROSELLE PARK, N.J. - Police charged a woman Monday with fatally bludgeoning her 14-year-old daughter with a hammer and shovel as the girl slept.

Dems Hate to See This

WASHINGTON — Americans give President Bush his highest job-approval rating in more than a year and show cautious optimism about Iraq in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken shortly after historic Iraqi elections.

Microsoft Does it Again

Well it is tax time and as usual I cash in on all the rebates offered by many software companies - this is the time of year I get my new finical programs, Anti virus program, Adware blockers, etc…

Well this year Money was a real pain - it would probably be great for a "new customer" but upgrading years of data and changing the way we get updates really caused me head aches. It assigns a new account for your online accounts that you are then suppose to "merge" into the one account. For example, by the time I set up my updates from bill payment services, banking services, and had my actual accounts in the MY file I had up to three accounts - now you merge.

Well it duplicated transaction over the last six or so months - not to mention that my bill pay service put pretty much every "check" I had written over twelve months. After the merge - I could have claimed bankruptcy. So I deleted the duplicate transactions; OOPS, the ones in the money file actually had categories assigned - the ones from the bank and bill m payment service didn't, causing the inability to track spending past yesterday….

Fixed this problem - but there is another - the bill payment service continued to update past "checks" unless the transaction I left in the "money file" had it's (bill payment services) link (actually this is not a bad thing since you want to be able to track the payment)…

Basically a real headache and I did voice my concern to support -to the point I wanted to know how to revert my file back to the older version. But being interested in "growing" I stuck with it and now believe I have it working properly! Send me an e-mail before you upgrade because what appears to be "an easy" fix ain't and the support has no clue what we are talking about with duplicate transactions which is the results of turning off online updates, which is required to establish new accounts, and turning them back on.

The set up was a pain - I will let you know how the program actually works!

Clinton on Peronal Accounts

From a Bill Clinton speech to the Democratic Leadership Council in 2002. [read it here]

Well one thing you could do is to give people one or two percent of the payroll tax, with the same options that Federal employees have with their retirement accounts; where you have three mutual funds that almost always perform as well or better than the market and a fourth option to buy government bonds, so you get the guaranteed social security return and a hundred percent safety just like you have with Social Security.

Interesting that democrats believe it such a bad idea now - huh, don't they know the one of their current demigods, supported the idea. Notice I said support -- this idea was out there well before Bill Clinton mentioned it and if it happens, I am sure the democrats who hate it now will try to take credit for it then. (Hat tip: QandO Blog)

Best Super Bowl Ad

Many are against "Beer Commercials", but they have great commercials -- and this is yet another winner...[here]

Men and Women are Different - Go Figure!

John Leo has an article that discusses "evidence" men and women are different -- amazing, isn't it -- more amazing is that this is news, that men and women of academia refuse to admit this. Even more amazing is there have actually been studies to determine this -- all they had to do is ask my wife, my parents, my grandparents, my grandparents, etc.

Could the recent flap over comments by Harvard President Lawrence Summers about women and science have ended differently? Oh, yes. Summers is bold enough to speak unfashionable truths now and then, but, alas, he is not inclined to stick to his guns very long. When the opposition howled, he buckled quickly and issued regrets and apologies. But suppose Summers had been the owner of a sturdier spine. He might have made a serious contribution. He could have said something like this:

Yesterday I spoke bluntly at a closed academic conference and offered some possible explanations of why women are less represented than men in the upper reaches of math and science. In addition to the cost of the time women spend in bearing and raising children, I said that innate sexual differences may be playing a role.

"This was a politically incorrect thing to say, but I believe it is true. An enormous literature on sexual differences has been piling up for 30 years or more. Everybody knows about this work, but it is one of the large elephants in the academic living room that nobody is supposed to notice. It is officially invisible. Careers can end if you see it.

"The literature points to one conclusion: The sexes are different. Males and females have different aptitudes, and they make choices based on those aptitudes. Males tend to outperform females on mathematical reasoning, mechanical comprehension and spatial ability, while females tend to outperform males in such areas as language use, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, verbal memory, spelling and mathematical calculations. On many verbal tasks, women as a group are decisively better than men and remain so all their lives.

"In addition, there is a persistent finding that men tend to prefer to work with 'things,' while women, more than men, prefer to work with people. This may sound like a stereotype to you. It is certainly true that when the doors to high-paying professions were closed to women, females gravitated, by necessity, to valuable but lower-paying 'people' fields like nursing and teaching. But now that the barriers are finally coming down, women are still opting in great numbers for 'people' fields. We have seen a great surge of women into law and medicine but far less female interest in engineering, math and the hard sciences.

Read the entire article here.

Isurgents Loosing

BAGHDAD, Feb. 6 - With a hero who gave his life for the elections, a revived national anthem blaring from car stereos and a greater willingness to help police, the public mood appears to be moving more clearly against the insurgency in Iraq, political and security officials say.

In the week since national elections, police and Iraqi National Guardsmen say that they have received more tips from the public, resulting in more arrests and greater effectiveness in their efforts to weaken the violent insurgency rocking the country.

This news and the story about Iraq "Fighting Fire with Fire" render Teddy's rant for more Iraqi support useless. Not that Kennedy's rant wasn't just an idiotic attack on Bush and the US Military to begin with or to imply that the Iraqi's were not already striving or motivated to provided a greater portion of the security, simply proves their ongoing dedicated and have been; to bad Teddy missed this.

This story indicates signs of the Iraqi population as a whole being dedicated to stopping the insurgents, ending the strife, and driving for their freedom… Good signs, all in all!

Super Sunday Prediction - Update

Well it was a good game and I thought for a moment my 10 point prediction was going to be accurate - by at least I got the winning team correct. Now what to do for a football fix until August/September?

Super Sunday Prediction

Well it is about thirty minutes before kick-off -- have watched the highlights of almost all the last 38 Superbowls; pizza is in the oven, and am ready for the "commercials" so I thought I would make my prediction... Although none of my "favorite" teams made it to the "big show", being a Cowboy fan I simply cannot go for the Eagles so I say Patriots by 10. Even without the Cowboy factor, I would still say Patriots. I feel the Indianapolis/New England game determined the champions and I pulled for Indianapolis...

Eason Jordan Update II

I decided to say a little about the idiotic comments made by Eason Jordon yesterday here, but now an entire blog dedicated to this man and his deplorable claims.



Easongate

Vietnam vs. Iraq

Congressman Steve Pearce explains how ridiculous it is to compare Iraq to Vietnam. Some highlights:

Unlike the decade-long Vietnam War, the present fighting is the chaotic aftermath of a three-week victory that toppled Saddam's ruling government. Iraq is not a divided country, but rather contains pockets of diehards surrounded by unsympathetic Kurds and Shiites, who, for the most part, support the U.S. effort to subdue the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime. The enemy relies on a finite supply of stockpiled weaponry and cash, not daily infusions through a port like Haiphong or a steady stream of trucks rolling in supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
[...]
America's longest war taught us another fact: Wars should be fought by military commanders in the battlefield and not from the White House and Congressional lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

This war is different because President Bush has shown leadership in allowing the military commanders to handle the fighting and achieving the battlefield objectives in Iraq in order for America to remain secure. A majority of Democratic Senators, including John Kerry and John Edwards, voted for the resolution authorizing the President to use force against Iraq.

Read the article here.

Maybe Adding to the Message

ANKARA (Reuters) - Russia must do more to show it is committed to "the basics of democracy" if it wants deeper relations with the West, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Saturday.

The former Soviet specialist, on her first trip abroad as the top U.S. diplomat, arrived from Warsaw in Ankara, where she will pay a call on a key ally in the Muslim world and meet her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

"Obviously we have concerns ... it is important that Russia make clear to the world that it is intent on strengthening the rule of law, strengthening the role of an independent judiciary, permitting a free and independent press," Rice told a news conference in Warsaw, during a stopover en route to Turkey.

"These are all the basics of democracy."

I don't know; this story just kind of jump out at me after blogging Surprise Guest -- maybe there was an intent to send a message. What do you think?

Another Scary Resemblance

With all the attention my Scary Kerry post has been getting I thought many might be interested in another resempbance noticed by Quid Nimis -- click on the picture to go the site.

Kristof to Democrats "Mistake"

Nicholas D. Kristof -- Liberals are making a historic mistake by lining up so adamantly against Social Security reform.

It's impolite to say so in a blue state, but President Bush has a point: there is a genuine problem with paying for Social Security, even if it isn't as dire as Mr. Bush suggests.

As Bill Clinton declared in 1998 about Social Security reform: "We all know a demographic crisis is looming. ... If we act now it will be easier and less painful than if we wait until later." Mr. Clinton then made Social Security reform a central theme of his 1999 State of the Union address, saying, "Above all, we must save Social Security for the 21st century."

Not that I agree totally with Mr. Kristof but he makes a valid point, Democrats should listen and offer alternatives if need be -- instead of out right denying the problem and simply being obstructionist... But, why change now -- unless, maybe wanting a chance in 2006.

Surprise Guest

Appears there were some surprise guest at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, February 3; Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, two partners of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Russia has been searching the world for these two men after getting on "Vladimir Putin's bad side".

The two partners, Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, were allowed into the United States -- and the president's company -- despite Interpol notices filed at the request of the Russians.
The fugitive moguls' breakfast with the American president attracted the notice of the Russian press, which interpreted it as a slap against Putin on the day after Bush delivered a State of the Union address that renewed his vow to stand up for freedom around the world. In fact, Brudno and Dubov were just two of thousands of guests who packed the Washington Hilton Hotel ballroom at the invitation of the event's independent organizers, and Bush may not have even known they were there.
[…]
The Khodorkovsky case is viewed in both Washington and Moscow as a Kremlin political attack on a rival. As Russia's richest man and head of its biggest oil company, Khodorkovsky had angered the Kremlin by financing opposition parties and advancing his own policy ideas. He was arrested in October 2003 and remains on trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion, while his Yukos Oil Co. was dismantled in December, with its most valuable assets effectively renationalized.
The case has soured relations between Moscow and Washington. Putin delivered a testy lecture to Bush when the American president raised the issue of Russian democracy during a lunch in Santiago, Chile, in November, and the two then did not speak again until this week when they talked briefly by telephone about the Iraqi elections. Bush will meet with Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Feb. 24, in what advisers see as the first test of the president's inaugural vision of confronting "every ruler and every nation" about domestic repression. [read the article here]

I just found this story interesting especially with a meeting scheduled this month between Putin and President Bush. Before some simply jump to the conclusion that the President is irritating the world, you might pay very close attention to Democratic representative's comments in the article.

Rep. Tom Lantos (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, invited the two to an hour-long meeting Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "The proceedings against Khodorkovsky were outrageous," said Bob King, the committee's Democratic staff director. "By American legal standards, this is something that could never happen in the United States."

Masochist Child Abusers Caught

MIAMI (Reuters) - A fugitive Florida couple accused of beating and chaining five children, pulling out their toenails with pliers and starving them, were caught in Utah, a sheriff's deputy said on Saturday.
Doctors alerted investigators two weeks ago when the couple's 16-year-old boy, who weighed just 60 pounds, was treated at a hospital for head and neck injuries.

I am glad they were caught and will not share with you how I believe they should be treated.

More on North Korea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has compelling evidence North Korea has a uranium-based nuclear weapons program and ending this activity is essential to resolving the nuclear dispute with Pyongyang, according to two key former U.S. officials.

Mitchell Reiss, until recently a senior Bush administration political appointee at the State Department, and Democrat Robert Gallucci, the Clinton's administration's top negotiator with North Korea, make their case in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. A copy of the influential journal was made available to Reuters.

I have blogged about the US and South Korea trying to "jump start" the six-party talks, here. There is more information about the state of North Korea here.