Please watch this outstanding video on our troops in Afghanistan. Hat tip hats off to Weaselzippers

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:17 AM | Comments (46)
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Merry Vague, Secular, Non-Threatening Winter Something-or-other to you all! HereÂ’s a little something to get you into the holiday mood:

In the the mood for slitting your wrists that is. I feel bad for the lighting system there. How did it not have a nervous breakdown?

More holiday magic below the fold, if you dare to lookÂ…. more...

Posted by: Genghis at 05:30 PM | Comments (524)
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Things got a little weird in the NY State Senate over the last year, even by the standards of NY politics. With a judge certifying a Long Island based race, it looks like the GOP has regained the majority they held for decades after losing it in 2008.

The final vote tally gave Republican Jack Martins a narrow win over Democratic Sen. Craig Johnson in the 7th Senate District in Nassau County.

Democrats went into the November elections with a 32-30 majority in the chamber.

They have controlled the Senate for two tumultuous years.

Justice Ira Warshawsky (war-SHAW-skee) finished the re-count Saturday morning.

Big deal, NY is a lost cause you might say. Well yes, that's the case on the statewide level for the foreseeable future. Right now Democrats control all statewide offices....both Senate seats, the Governor's Mansion, and the Attorney General and State Comptroller's offices. However, despite no support from the top of the ticket (remember crazy Carl Paladino?) the GOP managed to go from 2 seats to 8 and possibly 9 (NY-1 is still undecided).

Control of the state Senate means Republicans will have a seat at the redistricting table. With NY set to lose at least one and possibly two seats, drawing the new district lines is a big deal. If Democrats controlled the process entirely, you can be sure some of these new GOP Representatives would find themselves out in the cold and maybe fighting each other in newly created districts. Yes, those seats will go south and west to more reliably conservative areas but it still important that we have as many seats as possible and more importantly...maybe take out a reliably Democratic seat along the way.

Now, if the newly returned GOP majority can actually stand up to some of the Democrats more asinine proposals on the state level (I'm not holding my breath for that), that would just be gravy.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:16 PM | Comments (128)
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And OverAfternoon Open Thread if youÂ’d like.

So youÂ’re sitting around, waiting for your particular football game to start, bored, and needing a thread with some red meat. Something to get you fired up, maybe? HereÂ’s some low-hanging fruit fer ya.Â’ The article reads like parody, but the radio interview linked below it is comedy gold (well, except for the fact that this professor is drawing a public salary):

From Linda Thomas at MyNorthwest.com:

A Seattle woman, who fought allowing military recruiters in local high schools, is the lead author of a report that compares the behaviors of recruiters with the behaviors of sexual predators.

Amy Hagopian, assistant professor with the University of Washington's Department of Global Health concludes military recruiters are a "threat to the health of adolescents."

Hagopian says, "A review of the medical literature suggests military service is associated with disproportionately poor health for young people. The youngest recruits have the greatest number of mental disorders in the U.S. military, including alcohol abuse, anxiety syndromes, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder."

This isnÂ’t the first time that the esteemed Professor has been in the news concerning the issue. She made national headlines back in 2005 as a PTSA member leading an effort to boot recruiters out of local high schools, though failing to do so. I think we actually had a post on it at the time but I'd have to check the archives. As soon as we get around to getting that whole search function thingy going. (And note that the link goes to something called the "Post-Intelligencer." Some kinda' newspaper I think. Wonder whatever happened to the old gal?)

Anyway...

"Grooming behavior is defined as the process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child's confidence and trust," Hagopian says."

The Army? Not so amused:

"The Army calls the professor's claim that military recruiters act like child predators "outrageous and offensive."

"To say that a military recruiter has the same way of approaching young people that a twisted sexual predator does, is highly offensive and blatantly wrong," says Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky."

Now hereÂ’s your reward for slogging through all that above. What say we listen to the Professor explain things in her own words as she was a guest on the local Dori Monson radio show this past Thursday afternoon?

Remember Janitor in a Drum? This is Batshit Crazy in a Drum.

Now if we can just arrange a meeting between her and Curtis' mom, in a locked room with an open mic....

Posted by: Genghis at 11:00 AM | Comments (105)
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No, really, I had a dream this morning where I was part of one of two competing groups trying to set policies and priorities for the US Government. Our solution, which we all thought was fair and clever, was to race four different colored mice around a semi-oval race track. They represented four major areas of spending -- something like defense, discretionary spending, entitlements, and foreign policy -- and the order in which they finished determined the relative priority and spending for each.

I chuckled when I woke up, but then read this article and wondered if my approach might not work better:

In a lame-duck congressional session jam-packed with competing priorities critical to Democrats and their political base, President Barack Obama is putting much of his political muscle into an all-out push to ratify an arms control treaty with Russia that has no significant domestic constituency and has barely been part of the political debate over the past year.

Some, particular advocates of causes struggling for oxygen in the dwindling days of the lame-duck Congress such as those seeking repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning openly gay members of the military, are asking about the START treaty: What’s the hurry?

Someone many years ago described DC as "forty square miles surrounded by reality." Having lived there myself, I can attest to the accuracy of that quote. ..fritz..

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:03 AM | Comments (238)
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Mornin you fargin iceholes. December football is championship game football. Oklahoma and Nebraska, Auburn and South Carolina, Virginia Tech and Florida State, and the UMHB Crusaders against Wesley College (granted, that's a quarterfinal). Go Baptists.

It's sunny and nice here, probably cold and miserable wherever you are. Sorry. Here, have some cheer.

Have a great weekend morons. Only 20 shopping days left till Christmas.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:46 AM | Comments (278)
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So genghis is out sick and none of the other blogger-types would fill in so I had to throw this ONT together at the last minute out of the scraps of lesser ONTs. You're damn right I'm grumpy. Maybe banning someone would cheer me up - any suggestions?

Zero to Ten in 90 Seconds

One little girl grows up in front of you in daily pictures taken over ten years.

And if you liked that you'll probably like Dan Hanna's time lapse video of his head taken over 17 years.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:25 PM | Comments (650)
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Meat Loaf is a conservative. Apparently this is old news, since it's said twice in this clip as if it it's just something everyone knows.

I didn't.

Anyway.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (315)
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Thanks to AmishDude. This is actually old-ish news by now but maybe it was missed in the Thanksgiving holiday.

Governor-Elect Branstadt wants to un-ink the quickly-inked payoff, but I'm not sure there's a legal way to do that.

“The president is now asking that the federal employees accept a freeze. I guess my feeling would be to ask the union to reopen negotiations and consider doing
something similar. I think it’s only fair,” Branstad said in an interview this morning.

“We believe in the Obama plan,” added David Roederer, who will head Branstad’s Department of Management.

Branstad is still upset that Gov. Chet Culver accepted the contract with the American Association of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, without consulting the incoming governor.

“This is unprecedented. I mean, there was no negotiations. Since we’ve had collective bargaining, there’s always been negotiations. You don’t just accept the union’s first demand,” Branstad said. “We were just dumbfounded that he would do this.”

"A rare move:"

In a rare move Governor Culver accepted AFSCME's contract proposal as submitted and with no negotiation.

Cost to Iowa: $103.5 million in the first year of raises alone.

The incoming, new speaker of the Iowa House has a way to avoid such costs: layoffs.

Oh, and I'm sure this is perfectly irrelevant: the union endorsed Culver.

Posted by: Ace at 01:54 PM | Comments (66)
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Why was he out of prison? That's the first question. He raped a child (or tried to) in 2003.

I don't think he'll be getting a lenient treatment this time.

A registered sex offender is being held on suspicion of rape after police said he sexually assaulted a 2-year-old girl in a Dollar Tree store on Decoto Road on Wednesday afternoon.

Eugene Ramos, 36, of Union City, was arrested and booked on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, sexual acts with a child and false imprisonment.

The incident began when a man grabbed the girl as she returned a ribbon to a Christmas aisle in the store, momentarily leaving the sight of her grandmother and aunt, who were with her, police said.

The man had the child pinned down in the aisle and was sexually assaulting her when he was spotted by the grandmother, police said.

That's the beginning of the story; hit the link for the rest. The aunt and grandmother chased the man through the stores, eventually getting the attention of two other men who gave chase and tackled him down. One of the guys is said to be a "solicitor," which I think might be a nice way of saying "panhandler."

But he handled this guy well enough.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (94)
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