I saw picutres of these morons on the news last night, and it started me on a rant that Kathy unfortunately had to endure. (We trade off ranting whenever the news is on...this is our past time.)

Thousands of winemakers have staged protests in the streets of France to demand government help over falling exports and a slump in domestic sales.

They blame over-production, shrinking exports and a government campaign against alcohol abuse for what union leaders call a "crisis" in winemaking.

Idiots. You take money out of the hands of people who engage in marketable activity (via taxes) to facilitate more production than the market will bear and - NO SHIT - you're going to get the very over-production you're bitching about now! When the hell are you going to figure out that MARKET FORCES WORK!!

Of course, what does the collective economic genius of the French farmer come up with as a solution?

The unions want the government to provide money for farmers wishing to move from vines to other crops and greater compensation for uprooting unprofitable vineyards.

That's almost as rich as this stupid statement of the week: 'The focus by the world's richest countries on debt relief is misplaced and donors should instead concentrate onincreasing aid flows to poor countries' so says the IMF's chief economist, Raghuram Rajan.

Where'd you get your economics degree buddy? How in the hell do people get to these positions in powerful international organizations without knowing the first thing about how things work in the real world?

These are the kinds of things that make me hope against hope that the U.S. congress pulls it's collective head out of it's ass and approves Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. Forget sharp elbows, the U.N., the World Bank and the IMF need to have a flame thrower taken to them.

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at 08:07 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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It seems I pissed someone off. And not even the person I was intending to.

But wait, there's more....I even got threats of physical violence, too!

wOOt!

I'VE HIT THE BIG TIME, BABY!

You see, I've been waiting almost two years for this to happen. I've toiled in obscurity for so damn long, just begging for someone to declare the desire to whack me on the shins with a seven iron! I prayed to God. I wondered when my time in the spotlight would come. I worked hard, hoping that it could, but gosh, I will admit, I was beginning to lose faith. I didn't think it could ever happen to me! I really didn't! Geez, I'm so surprised. It's like winning an Oscar or even a Golden Globe!

I feel like I should have a speech prepared. First, I'd like to thank the Academy...

Hot damn! I am so frickin' excited I can't hardly believe it!

And all this on a post that a. wasn't directed at Learned Foot and b. he didn't bother to read. Does it get better than that? Oh, it just might!

The phrase "ad hominem attacks" was used! Tee frickin' hee!

I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, does it get any better than that? I don't think so.

Oh man! It's like Christmas came on my birthday or something! It's just too much to ask for!

Shit. I think I need to break out the whisky to celebrate this one.

UPDATE: Someone over at Kool Aid Report deleted my trackback! And after I went to all that trouble to manually ping them, too.

Classy stuff, that.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Why am I not surprised at this outcome?

It'll be interesting to see what he's sentenced to.

Anyone want to wager that hard labor in Siberia's an option?

Posted by: Kathy at 09:05 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I have to say that I enjoyed this article immensely.

The other 364 days out of the year, politicians in Washington act like they've never heard the word "constituency," let alone have realized that they are, indeed, in hock to the voters of their respective districts for their jobs.

This one day, however, when their jobs are on the line because they didn't have enugh clout to keep their local bases off the base closing list, well, they're scrambling around like a half dozen eggs thrown into a pan of hot bacon grease.

I just love it. It's so enjoyable watching them squirm for a change.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I have to say it anyway.

You can't drive with a Blood Alcohol Content of more than .08 in Minnesota.

But if you're a cop, apparently you can be out there policing---with a loaded sidearm---with a BAC of .20---more than twice the legal limit.

Which of course doesn't count the fact that Sgt. Vick got into his car and was in the process of driving home when he was murdered.

According to this paper:

Two thirds of drivers in alcohol related fatal accidents have a BAC of .14 or higher. The average BAC involved in fatal accidents is .17

Think about that one for a minute, eh?

I'm sure Sgt. Vick was a good guy and a good cop, and he most certainly didn't deserve what happned to him. I'm not trying to smear the guy. Really, I'm not. He was out doing his job, which meant he was working undercover. In bars. Where you have to drink to fit in. I think he probably had one too many and that's that.

While I am concerned about the fact that I'm pretty damn sure the St.Paul police, had he lived, would have done nothing more than slapped him on the wrist for this behavior---that he would have in no way, shape or form, ever been prosecuted for this behavior, unlike the general population---this isn't really what interests me. What I find curious are Sgt. Vick's defenders.

His defenders say "he made a mistake" and his life and death shouldn't be judged by that one mistake. The Mayor of St. Paul said it was important that no one should "revictimize the family." If Sgt. Vick simply "made a mistake" and no one should be "revictimizing" his family for said mistake, why are people jumping to his defense left and right, instead of saying, "yeah, it happens" and moving along? Doesn't that action say something rather spectacular about how we treat those who have had too much to drink in this day and age? Doesn't that action say something rather spectacular about how we look at alcohol in this country nowadays?

Being drunk every once and a while never used to be anything to be ashamed about. Maybe you forgot to eat before you went out. Maybe you just had one too many. It never used to signal that you were a problem person because you tied one on and never was the reputation you worked hard over a lifetime to establish on the line because of a night of drinking. Not so anymore, it seems. As far as society is concerned, if you have a BAC as high as Sgt. Vick's, you're a bad person. Unless, of course, you happen to be Sgt. Vick. Then you're not a bad person. You just made a mistake. That by releasing this information, and then commenting on it, we're all speaking ill of the dead.

Ummm, I don't think so. I think this controversy points directly toward the fact that in this country we are moving toward a new age of prohibition. One where excessive regulation will act in place of a new Eighteenth Amendment. Outlawing alcohol outright didn't make the problems associated with those who drink---drunk driving, fighting, excessive screwing---disappear, so now the conventional wisdom is to not only make buying and consuming alcohol a nanny-state, regulatory nightmare, but it's to also shame people into line. The bar goes lower and lower every year in regards to what is acceptable behavior where alcohol is concerned. If something doesn't happen sometime soon, pretty soon you'll have a wine box in the fridge that will have a breathalyzer attached to it and it won't dispense any more wine if you blow above the legal limit.

I don't think Sergeant Vick was a bad guy because he had a BAC of .20, even if I don't think he should have been out policing with that much liquor in his system. But how many people do think Sgt. Vick was a bad guy simply because he had that much liquor in his system? That's the question that matters. How many have made assumptions precisely about what type of person he was strictly because of his BAC level? After all, if no one had made this assumption, he wouldn't need any defenders, would he? It would all be taken in stride.

Think about that for a minute and then try and tell me this country hasn't gotten out of line with its attitude toward alcohol.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:22 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Oy vey. He's wondering if WWII was really worth it because the vile governmental system that was Communism wasn't destroyed at the same time Fascism was.

Some fascinating, out-of-this-frickin'-world money quotes would include:

{...}As FDR and Churchill consigned these peoples to a Stalinist hell run by a monster they alternately and affectionately called "Uncle Joe" and "Old Bear," why are they not in the history books alongside Neville Chamberlain, who sold out the Czechs at Munich by handing the Sudetenland over to Germany? At least the Sudeten Germans wanted to be with Germany. No Christian peoples of Europe ever embraced their Soviet captors or Stalinist quislings. {...}

But wait. In true Ron Popeil fashion, there's more:

{...}Other questions arise. If Britain endured six years of war and hundreds of thousands of dead in a war she declared to defend Polish freedom, and Polish freedom was lost to communism, how can we say Britain won the war?

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war? {...}

{...}True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany – on behalf of Poland.

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?{...}

This, to put it mildly, is one of the biggest chunks of bullshit that Bucky's ever produced and that's saying quite a bit, given how much bullshit Bucky produces on a daily basis just by opening his big fat mouth to order a coffee at the local deli.

I honestly don't know where to start. The blatant revisionist history? The overall wrongness of his conclusions? The fact his Lindbergh-esque isolationist bias is showing? Good God, my mind is a jumble.

Thankfully this is not a problem, because Martini Boy has done an excellent job of fisking this puppy. Go and read.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Interesting piece today in the Opinion Journal about Columbia University's refusal to bring ROTC back to campus.

{...}Yet Columbia remains a holdout, not least because of Mr. Bollinger's dismal leadership. It certainly didn't have to be this way. The 1994 Solomon Amendment forbids universities that exclude ROTC from their campuses from receiving Pentagon funding--reason enough, we would think, for a university president to bring his school into compliance with the law. In April 2003, Columbia held a student referendum on ROTC. Two-thirds voted to bring it back. This led the university senate to appoint a 10-member panel to examine the subject; it split down the middle on the question of readmitting ROTC "as soon as is practicable."{...}

See, this is where the Opinon Journal missed a big opportunity to take a big, fat whack at Columbia's politically correct, lefty ponfitications.

ROTC, along with being an armed forces training/recruitment device, is also a huge scholarship program. You see, if you join up with the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, you get money to pay for school, and while you are required to serve for a specified period of time after you graduate, it's no different than the Americorps program, which I don't believe Columbia has an issue with.

Columbia, with its hoity-toity attitude is depriving its students of the potential of financial aid. You know, getting the government to pay for education, which is something I believe is something the lefty professors and adminstrators would advocate. This policy, one could also suppose if one were so inclined, discriminates against those who perhaps don't qualify for a large financial aid package, who haven't received scholarships ad infinitum, and need yet another way to pay for school without taking out a small fortune in student loans.

How much is tuition at Columbia again?

Too bad the Opinion Journal missed that one.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Proof that some leaps of the imagination can be baffling.

DEATHS from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer - but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths.

The trouble is that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active, which could be a problem in many countries.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.{...}

{empahsis mine}

Let's see if we can follow the logic the FRC is using here. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. They believe sex before marriage is bad. Hence if you're vaccinated against HPV, you are, from there on in, going to be ruled by your hormones, because, obviously any lessons you've received over the course of a lifetime about abstaining from sex before marriage will fly right out of your head the minute the vaccine hits your bloodstream. It's apparently tricky that way. It gives women "a license to engage in premarital sex."

But Kath, you say, how could this affect other women?

Well, I'm glad you asked. Let's follow that one down the line, shall we?

What about married women? What does that mean about them if they get vaccinated against HPV? Hmmm. Could that mean they're going to go right out and cheat on their husbands? Why would they need it if they're in a committed, monogamous relationship? Hmmmm? Furthermore, I suspect these wicked married women are just giving their husbands a free pass to go out and get laid in the back of their local Perkins if they get vaccinated, because why would they need to protect themselves with the vaccine if it were otherwise?

What about rape victims? Does this mean that if a woman was vaccinated against HPV that they were asking for it? That this, like a woman asking for her rapist to use a condom, means she consented? Well, then, she wasn't really raped, was she?

I could go on, but I think you get the gist.

For an organization that promotes issues of faith, well, it sure would be nice if the FRC had some in women.

{Hat Tip: Andy}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One can only suppose that Dementee might feel a wee bit different about pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for moral reasons when someone tries to deny him his hypertension medication one day with the excuse that hypertension is a gift from God, a reminder of how fragile we human beings really are, that perhaps he should cut back on the pork rinds instead of resorting to Mother Pharmaceutical to solve his problems. After all, he can just hightail it down the street and find another pharmacy, can't he? Well, that would suppose that Dementee lives in a large metropolitan area, instead of a rural one, where there's only one pharmacy within a few hundred square miles.

Methinks Dementee might also feel differently when another pharmacist decides to hold his prescription hostage because not only is said pharmacist not morally obliged to fill Dementee's prescription, he's in a position where he could shove his morals down Dementee's throat---who may or may not agree with them. And we all realize what a tempting option that is, don't we kids? Mmmhmmmm. Good stuff there, the opportunity to proselytize from the back of a Walgreens! There's no power to be had at the back of a Walgreens, is there? Nope. None at all. After all, there's no state license required to dish out drugs...anyone can do it!

Perhaps, until then, Dementee should realize that this is a slippery slope he's advocating and perhaps, just perhaps, it requires a more nuanced answer than simply assuming that the pharmacist has the right to do whatever they damn well please. The Establishment Clause isn't going to shield a pharmacist from a lawsuit when someone dies because of their refusal to dish out drugs they might have problems with.

I suppose if Dementee's got a problem with all of that, perhaps he can go and fuck himself, no?

Posted by: Kathy at 04:37 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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And that thing you should be concerned about is the Real ID Act of 2005.

{...}The Real ID Act, which was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday and likely will clear the Senate next week, would require most license applicants to show a photo ID, a birth certificate, proof of their Social Security number and a document showing their full name and address. All of the documents then would have to be checked against federal databases.{...}

I'm not concerned so much with added scrutiny in regards to granting driver's licenses. What concerns me---and many geeks---is the last sentence of that paragraph: "All of the documents then would have to be checked against federal databases." The problem here being that with this bit of language it will be much easier for a hacker to steal your identity should this be signed into law.

{...}The bill dictates that all states collect, at a minimum, personal information from citizens in order to obtain a driver's license, including name, date of birth, gender, driver's license or identification card number, digital photograph, address and signature.

Whereas collection of this particular information is not new, the linkage of states' databases is. The bill specifies that states link what are at present discrete databases, creating, in effect, one nationwide database with personal information pertaining to all citizens. {...}

Right now, a hacker would have to attack the databases of all the DMV's in all fifty states to get the information that, should this bill pass the senate and be signed into law, would be available in one place. This would create one big ass bullseye instead of fifty bullseyes.

Data convergence is all well and good until the Federal Government gets its grubby paws on the data. Given that Lexis-Nexis had the information on 310,000 of its customers stolen recently, and the same happened to Time Warner employees, do you really think the Federal Government will be able to keep your data safe from hackers?

I don't.

Call or email your senator today. They're trying to slip this one in under the wire to please those who watch the Lou Dobbs Xenophobe Hour of Power by attaching it to an Appropriations Bill, with no debate or hearings allowed. This is what the focus on illegal immigration has wrought. Pat yourselves on the back, big boys. You should be proud of what you've accomplished! Way to put everyone in jeopardy! THANKS!

{Hat Tip: Mike at Techdirt}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Interesting.

The part, however, that had me flipping my head in manner reminiscent of Gary Coleman and saying, What you talkin' about Willis? was this bit:

May 8, 1945 - a day to remember for Germans and their WWII opponents. There is a remarkable uneasiness among German elites how to commemorate this day: defeat for Germany or liberation from Nazi suppression?

May 8, 1945 as the day the Germans were liberated from Nazi suppression?

Ummm. No, I don't think so. You don't get to spin the defeat of Nazi Germany that way. You just don't get to do that. Nope.

While I do not doubt there were many Germans who did not belong to the National Socialist/Nazi Party and who weren't wild about what they stood for and what they ultimately did, there were plenty of Germans who were pretty darned happy they were in charge of the country. They were the majority, party membership notwithstanding. There were people who did disagree. I do not doubt this one iota. It was, however, this minority which most Germans claimed to be a part of when the war ended. These claims were taken with a knowing nod after the war, in an effort to get beyond it, but are we honestly to believe that the Germans of today have actually bought into that lie? So much so that these so-called German Elites of today were actually thinking of spinning the defeat of Germany in WWII into a liberation?

Again. No. I don't think so. They don't get to do that.

The average, ordinary German of today is no more responsible for the War and what occurred during it than I am responsible for my government's policy in regards to the Native American population. The sins of the father should not be visited upon the son, I believe is how the saying goes.

That does not, however, mean that the sons get to spin the actions of their fathers into something that is virtually unrecognizable from the truth of the matter in attempt to make it look better.

You just don't get to do that.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As with all of my news flashes, this one is late.

My glaring faults with timeliness aside, Michelle Malkin's outraged, OUTRAGED, I tell 'ya, about Laura Bush's comedy success at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on Saturday night. She even got some time on O'Reilly last night, which I didn't bother watching because I had to see what happened to Locke on Lost.

From her blog:

{...}Most of Mrs. Bush's humor at the correspondents' dinner was just right: Edgy but not over the edge. But I think the stripper and horse jokes were totally beneath her.

Just put it to the other-shoe test: If it were Teresa Heinz Kerry standing up on the dais telling the same jokes, the conservative commentariat would be buzzing for the rest of the year about what a tasteless skank she is.

"Lighten up?" How about cleaning up? The First Lady resorting to cheap horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. Unlike many Beltway and Manhattan commentators, I do not think the Wonkette-ization of the White House is a good thing. {...}

From her column:

{...}The First Lady resorting to horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. It was wholly unnecessary.

Self-censorship is a conservative value. In a brilliant commencement speech at Hillsdale College last year Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner called on his audience to resist the coarsened rhetoric of our time: "If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity."

Lighten up, you say? No thanks. I'd rather be a G-rated conservative who can only make my kids giggle than a South Park/Desperate Housewives conservative whose goal is getting Richard Gere and Jane Fonda to snicker. Giving the Hollyweird Left the last laugh is not my idea of success.

Yeah, I'll say lighten up, but first off, I tell Ms. Malkin, to get a freakin' clue.

First off, it wasn't a horse masturbation joke: it was a joke that honed directly at the fact that W. didn't grow up on a farm, despite his "Ranch Owner" props, hence, didn't he know which animal to milk. Any horse masturbation that *might* have occurred was strictly accidental, hence the joke. Hahahahaha. That's funny, right? Not according to Ms. Malkin, who seems to think Mrs. Bush's comedy routine is now on par with the regular ass-f***ing commentary at Wonkette.

But, just in case this hyperbole didn't push you into the Downward Facing Dog position, Malkin decides to make some sort of wild leap into the "what this all means for Conservatives" realm. She claims that "self-censorship is a conservative value." To back up this point, she quotes from a speech the president of the Heritage Foundation gave at Hillsdale College. Yeah. That's right. Hillsdale. That bastion of Cutting-Edge Conservative Thought (TM) where the founder had a nineteen-year long adulterous affair with his daughter-in-law, who then committed suicide. You see, if I was Malkin, I could easily make the leap that because Feulner was speaking at Hillsdale his declaration that we must keep our tongues and pens in check was a way of saying that the scandale at Hillsdale never happened. Furthermore we can extrapolate from Feulner's commentary that this scandale means NOTHING about the state of Conservatism in America, let alone taint all the good work they've done at Hillsdale. That "self-censorship" and keeping it civil means to sweep the non-conservative actions of the president of a conservative college---actions some might be justified in lumping into the hypocrisy category---under the carpet and simply hoping the lump under said carpet doesn't become too noticeable.

Hmmm?

I find I must resort to the linguistic follies of the Wayan Brothers to respond to both---Malkin's and mine---leaps of the imagination.

Ahem.

Homey don't play that.

But then again, "In Living Color" wasn't G-Rated so she probably won't get that.

I digress, but it's obvious that Malkin just doesn't get is that "self-censorship" should, indeed, be a thing unto oneself. As in, if someone's language offends you, you should probably go elsewhere, not moan and caterwaul about what it means for Conservatism that a Conservative First Lady cracked a joke about going to Chippendales. When it comes to language and the topics it is employed to describe, you can be broad minded and skip over what you find offensive because someone else might find it funny. There is a choice involved, in other words. And that choice resides with the listener, not the speaker. It does not mean you should censor yourself to the point where you don't offend even the most purehearted of listeners. Furthermore, to blindly dictate that "self-censorship" is such an important part of Conservatism smacks of the politically correct movement of the left.

To quote protein wisdom himself:

{...}let me just note that the measure of one’s conservatism is NOT tied to one’s vocabulary so much as it is to one’s political philosophy. And in many ways social conservatism—with its desire to dictate “proper” or “decorous” speech—is simply dressing the PC-sensibilities of the left in the starched, high-collared clothing of neo-Victorian morality.{...}

To claim that "self-censorship is a Conservative value" offends me. Malkin, will, undoubtedly, blow my offense off because, of course, her offense is greater than mine and, of course, has more serious ramifications attached to it, or so I suspect she would argue. Where exactly is the fairness in that action, I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers? Is not my offense at her puritanical attitude worth the same in this marketplace of ideas? Am I not worth as much as Malkin is, intellectually speaking, because I drop the occasional f-bomb into my writings? Well, golly gosh! I'm mightily ticked off! I might just have to write a post about it...

Posted by: Kathy at 01:05 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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