Rush transcript. "Rush transcript" means that all typographical and factual errors appear in the original, and aren't my damn fault. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (20)
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With all due apologies to Ali and Foreman, tomorrow will be the true Rumble in the Jungle.

I confess to being a fan of Christopher Hitchens. No, I don't agree with everything he says. But he is truly someone you can still respect while disagreeing with him. Plus, anyone with the cojones to take on both Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa, has got to be worth a look.

That is why I am really looking forward to tomorrow night. He will be debating a true degenerate subhuman, George Galloway. Needless to say, Hitchens and I agree on the necessity of ousting a genocidal dictator with a proven history of WMD and starting wars. If you can't be there listen in. I'm also betting that C-SPAN will either have it live or taped.

Take my word for it, you won't be sorry!

Posted by: Tanker at 08:32 AM | Comments (26)
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I hear it's fun stuff.

Senatrix Feinstein decided to invoke the Holcaust yesterday in her prepared opening remarks, for no good reason I can divine:

It is important to remember and learn from history. For centuries people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. During the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and even today, millions of innocent people have been killed and tortured because of their religious beliefs.

I recently traveled to Europe where I saw monuments enshrining the tragedies that have occurred in the name of religion. In Budapest along the River Danube there are 60 pairs of shoes covered in copper: women's, men's, small children's.

During World War II, Hungarian fascist and Nazi soldiers forced thousands of Jews including men, women and small children to remove their shoes, as a final humiliation, before shooting them and letting their bodies fall and drift down the river. These shoes represent a powerful symbol of man's inhumanity.

You know what else represents a powerful symbol of man's humanity?

Actually shooting these people, that's what.

And I submit this idiotic preening opening statement represents a powerful symbol of man's stupidity.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (41)
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Our most trusted institutions and professionals continue to shock us with their lack of integrity:

The woman had told a relative that every time she entered her car an “unseen spirit” would disturb her.

At 10.15pm on Thursday the relative brought the 32-year-old woman to the bomohÂ’s [witch-doctor's] house in Permatang Badak, near here, to seek a cure.

After relating her problem to the bomoh, he asked her to lie down.

He then took an egg and rolled it over her body, purportedly to sap out the spirit that was dwelling in her.

He then allegedly fondled and sucked her breasts.

Stunned, she immediately got up and demanded an explanation from the bomoh, to which he replied that she was “unclean” and he wanted to remove the bad spirits from her body.

The woman was quoted as saying, "I was fine when the the witch-doctor rolled an egg all over my naked body to 'call forth the unclean spirits,' but then it just got all weird and shit."

Thanks to cutaway again, who's really showing me something.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 PM | Comments (31)
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Obviously, this be a shock to the parent (but to no one else) if the parent were the father. It happens. Not exactly a medical mystery what may have happened.

But in this case, the parent was the mother. Who had become pregnant, carried all her children to to term, and then gave birth to them naturally. No implanted embryos or in vitro fertilizatin or other such medical intervention was involved.

Karen Keegan developed kidney problems and needed a transplant. Naturally, they checked her children for a genetic match. They found something that shocked her: her children's DNA did not match hers. She was not not their natural mother.

It turns out the woman was a "chimera;" she had two separate DNA profiles. One in her blood, another in her reproductive system. Chimerism occurs in the embryo as one is devoloping -- two fraternal twins embryos grow, but then one absorbs the other, incorporating the other's DNA into different tissues and organs of its body.

Most of her body had one set of DNA, but she had a Trojan set of DNA inside of her. And it was actually her embryonic twin sister which contributed her DNA to her children.

I first heard of this rare (?) condition on a real stumper of a CSI in which the obvious culprit of a rape did not match the DNA he left in his victim. Turns out he was a chimera; the DNA the lab tested from his blood and saliva was simply different from the DNA in his semen.

When Grissom finally got wise and figured out he might have a chimera on his hands, he got a court order for a semen sample, and then he finally got that long-anticipated genetic match.

A couple of months ago a bicyclist accused of "blood doping" (filling one's veins with other's blood to gain a competitive advantage) claimed that the reason he had two different blood types in his body was that he was chimera; the other blood type in his veins was due to his absorbing his twin in utero. He wasn't believed, but it is possible.

And chimerism may not be that rare-- some believe that there are many pregnancies that begin as twins, and most of these result in one embryo absorbing the other. If the twins are fraternal, chimerism may result.

If the twins are of different sexes-- hermaphroditism may result.

And the fact that chimerism is so infrequently checked for means that there might be a lot of false-negative paternity tests, and false-netative DNA criminological tests, too.

Lydia Fairchild's children were ordered taken from her by a judge because tests consistently showed her children were not a genetic match to her. She was pregnant with a third child, and when that child was born (under court supervision), it showed that that child too was also not a match. State prosecutors stumbled across the term "chimerism" in a medical journal and tipped her lawyer. Ultimately it was proven she was a chimera -- and that her kids were in fact her own.

I mention this because Discovery Health is currently running a documentary about chimerism, called "I Am My Own Twin," about the same woman profiled in that (yes, Dave) old NPR report.

It also tells the story of the woman whose children were almost taken from her. The medical report the prosecutors stumbled across was about none other than Karen Keegan.

Did Karen Keegan ever get her kidney transplant? Yes she did. Her children were not close enough to her genetically to donate a kidney, but, oddly enough, her non-blood-kin husband was.

Funny old world.

Chimeras and The Innocence Project: I'm a supporter of Barry Schect's Innocence Project -- using DNA testing to prove convicted criminals are actually innocent -- but I hope the possibility of chimerism is being examined in cases where there's a lot of non-DNA evidence that an accused is guilty of the crime charged.

The thing is it's very hard to prove chimerism. Lydia Fairchild's chimerism was only demonstrated to the court by showing that while her children didn't match her DNA, they did match a mix of her father's and mother's DNA. The kids had the family's DNA-- just not her version of it.

So it's not as if there's a simple test for this. The secondary DNA just lurks in different parts of the body, and isn't easy to find, even if you're specifically looking for it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 PM | Comments (39)
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Then use them like this.

In the context of the US-led "war on terror", the draft explicitly warns that any attempt by a hostile power to hand over weapons of mass destruction to militant groups to enable them to strike a devastating blow against the United States will likely trigger a US nuclear response against the culprit.

Aaaah. Sweet relief.
Cigarette, anyone? Don't mind if I do.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:06 PM | Comments (173)
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Where was FEMA with the child porn videotapes that could have satisfied this thug's urges?

Deputies say Dorsett is just 18 years old, but already has a long criminal history, including illegal use of weapons, criminal trespass, and possession of drugs.

What a shock.

And where exactly was Michael Brown when Dorsett was on his juvenile crime-spree, I'd like to know.

Thanks to Jerry.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 PM | Comments (8)
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Dhimmitude -- Catch the Fever!

Advisers appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair are proposing that Britain get rid of Holocaust Memorial Day because Muslims find it offensive, the British Sunday Times reported.

The draft proposals - which provoked a backlash from British Jewish leaders - want to replace Holocaust Memorial Day with a Genocide Day that would include recognition of Muslim deaths in the West Bank and Gaza, Chechnya and Bosnia, the Times said.

A Home Office spokesman said it would consider the proposals but said it regarded the Holocaust as a "defining tragedy in European history," according to the report.

"The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims," a member of one of the committees was quoted as saying. "It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others. It's a grievance that extremists are able to exploit."

I can't take it anymore. I just. Can't. Take it.

I try to be understanding, but I am having difficulty maintining much of an interest in what Muslims are "offended" by.

Seriously, what the hell aren't they "offended," "humiliated," or "outraged" by?

Given that parts of the Muslim world sided with Adolf Hitler in WWII, and Mein Kampff remains popular bedtime reading in the Muslim world ("the feel-good genocide manifesto of the summer!" raves Sheik Ahmad al-Rachman), perhaps the Brits ought to stop celebrating their victory in WWII, too.

Thanks to cutaway.

Posted by: Ace at 05:06 PM | Comments (21)
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Check out how she keeps saying the buses couldn't have evacuated people, because, as the photo shows, they were underwater, and how Bush only spent more than Clinton on Gulf-area flood control because Bush had these big surpluses.

Also, it's cute how she excuses Mayor Nagin for not getting a few of his thousands of bus drivers to ferry people out of the city because Mayor Nagin has trouble getting his people to work "even on a sunny day," nevermind during a hurricane.

She also says that the Bush Administration doesn't "believe in mass transit," which is why NO's mass transit system couldn't run in the run-up to the storm's landfall.

Remind me again: Which branch of the federal government has an emergency cadre of disaster-condition bus-drivers on its payroll, ready for 24 hour deployment?

Do they parachute in, I wonder, and immediately doff their smart-looking Federal Emergency Bus Driver caps?

Well This Explains It! Mayor Nagin was formerly an executive in the cable television industry.

Apparently the poor citizens of NO were told to be home "from Sunday to Friday" to wait for their prompt emergency-evacuation, plus Cinemax On-Demand for an extra $4.88 per month. Nothing relieves the stress of a disaster like watching The Red Shoes Diaries or Busty Cops.

Okay, I Admit It, This Looks Bad: Bush really shouldn't have posed for this picture.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (92)
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From a Meet the Press transcript, caught by FreeRepublicans:

MAYOR NAGIN: My biggest mistake is having a fundamental assumption that in the state of Louisiana, with an $18 billion budget, in the country of the United States that can move whole fleets of aircraft carriers across the globe in 24 hours, that my fundamental assumption was get as many people to safety as possible, and that the cavalry would be coming within two to three days, and they didn't come.

We truly live in an age of miracles and wonders, my friends.

Russert goes on to punch up Nagin a bit:

MR. RUSSERT: Many people point, Mr. Mayor, that on Friday before the hurricane, President Bush declared an impending disaster. And The Houston Chronicle wrote it this way. "[Mayor Nagin's] mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out. City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan." And we've all see this photograph of these submerged school buses. Why did you not declare, order, a mandatory evacuation on Friday, when the president declared an emergency, and have utilized those buses to get people out?

MAYOR NAGIN: You know, Tim, that's one of the things that will be debated. There has never been a catastrophe in the history of New Orleans like this. There has never been any Category 5 storm of this magnitude that has hit New Orleans directly. We did the things that we thought were best based upon the information that we had. Sure, here was lots of buses out there. But guess what? You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren't available.

Note that when pressed on his own failings as a leader, he resorts to the defense that we've never seen such a powerful storm, and who could plan for such a thing or safely protect against it?

And yet, when the topic changes to Bush, Bush is expected to have been able to deal with it.

Seems Nagin's excuses apply only to Nagin.

Crafty. That's probably why the CIA wants to kill him.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Mayor, if you read the city of New Orleans' comprehensive emergency plan-- and I've read it and I'll show it to you and our viewers--it says very clearly, "Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the mayor of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed. Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation."

It was your responsibility. Where was the planning? Where was the preparation? Where was the execution?

MAYOR NAGIN: The planning was always in getting people to higher ground, getting them to safety. That's what we meant by evacuation. Get them out of their homes, which--most people are under sea level. Get them to a higher ground and then depending upon our state and federal officials to move them out of harm's way after the storm has hit.

MR. RUSSERT: But in July of this year, one month before the hurricane, you cut a public service announcement which said, in effect, "You are on your own." And you have said repeatedly that you never thought an evacuation plan would work. Which is true: whether you would exercise your obligation and duty as mayor or that--and evacuate people, or you believe people were on their own?

MAYOR NAGIN: Well, Tim, you know, we basically wove this incredible tightrope as it is. We were in a position of trying to encourage as many people as possible to leave because we weren't comfortable that we had the resources to move them out of our city. Keep in mind: normal evacuations, we get about 60 percent of the people out of the city of New Orleans. This time we got 80 percent out. We encouraged people to buddy up, churches to take senior citizens and move them to safety, and a lot of them did. And then we would deal with the remaining people that couldn't or wouldn't leave and try and get them to higher ground until safety came.

A mandatory evacuation calls for "encouraging" people to leave. Interesting.

He also asks him about the Amtrak train offered to ferry people out.

Also, Chris Wallace beat holy hell out of Mary Landrieu yesterday, and she came off as an idiot. (Sorry, Megan, she did.)

When asked about the fact that Bush's spending on Gulf-area flood control was slightly higher than Clinton's, she answered, I shit you not, that that was because Bush had a "surplus" whereas Clinton was dealing with the deficits of the Reagan and Bush I years.

Ummmm... Bush never had a surplus, except possibly a small one his first year in office. And this has been a Democratic talking point repeatedly endlessly for the last five years-- Clinton gave us a surplus, Bush gave us deficits "as far as the eye can see."

And yet, when convenient, Landrieu suddenly rewrites history so that it's Bush who's awash in free money and Clinton who's struggling with massive deficits.

Wallace didn't call her on this, but to be fair, the segment was ending and he didn't have enough time.

I'd like to think someone in the LLMSM would follow-up with Mary "Mathematical Genius" Landrieu's odd accounting.

I'd also like to think I can flap my arms and fly to the moon.

Oh-- and when asked about those buses that never ferried the poor out of NO, she just kept repeating that they were "underwater."

Wallace kept reminding her they weren't "underwater" before the storm hit -- you know, when you'd evacuate people in *advance* of a storm, if you could imagine such a thing -- and she kept pretending she didn't get what he was saying and noting that they were "underwater" and thus could not be used.

She either pretended, or she's as big an idiot as I'm starting to suspect.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (47)
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