Sure, I know they are raking in the dough with oil over $70 a barrel. But I'm not switching passports anytime soon!

About 1% of the population is infected with HIV

Abortions exceed births

Shortest life expectancy in Europe and decreasing

Population decreasing by nearly 800,000 a year

Yikes, I think Putin is making Stalin look good!

Posted by: Tanker at 11:32 AM | Comments (28)
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First two items at Taranto, especially the second.

The bias is appalling.

The NYT continues to headline stories that the government is "eavesdropping" on calls, despite no such eavesdropping is taking place under the program discussed in the article-- it's about dialed numbers, not the content of calls.

And the USAToday poll, in its question, "forgot" to mention this.

The previous ABCNews/WaPo poll-- showing a substantial majority (68% or so) of the public approving the program -- did specifically mention that the government was collecting records of dialed numbers, not eavesdropping on actual calls.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (13)
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Catch and release cat and mouse continues apace:

Beefed-up enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border since Sept. 11, 2001, has substantially increased the number of arrests of illegal immigrants, but tens of thousands of captured non-Mexicans continue to be released into the United States because there is no place to hold them, according to experts and immigration officials.

The vast majority simply slip away inside the country after being issued "Notices to Appear" for a deportation hearing - documents known to Border Patrol agents as "Notices to Disappear." The success of border crossers who stay in the United States through this "catch-and-release" process has encouraged others who hope to enter the country the same way.

In a dozen speeches since October, President Bush has vowed to replace catch-and-release with the "catch-and-return" of 160,000 "other than Mexican" immigrants arrested each year. The goal is to deny court hearings to all but asylum-seekers, speed deportations and make the most of limited detention space in jails, prisons and immigration centers.

...

"What Congress has built is one of the most expensive revolving doors in the world," said Victor Cerda, former chief of staff of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Without broader changes, he said, "You're going to be here in 10 years, with another 20 million aliens."

Annoying: A WaPo editorial by a Duke professor and recent immigrant tells us all to just shut up and start learning Spanish.

I don't know about you, but I for one love it when I invite people over and then they immediately begin rearranging the furniture to their liking.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (13)
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Gee, I've always wondered what Phil Helmuth was packing "down there."

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (6)
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Fake? I don't know. But either horrible or hilarious, depending on who's side you're on.

I think, in the interests of fair play, if a bull manages to score a critical hit on a guy's man-sac it should be allowed to live, and live in luxury.

Thanks to Dorkafork.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (4)
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More fun, happy news. Yayyyy.

If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.

Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.

"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.

Patients get lesions that never heal.

"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.

Patients say that's the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.

"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.

While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.

"It really has the makings of a horror movie in every way," Savely said.

While Savely sees this as a legitimate disease, there are many doctors who simply refuse to acknowledge it exists, because of the bizarre symptoms patients are diagnosed as delusional.

"Believe me, if I just randomly saw one of these patients in my office, I would think they were crazy too," Savely said. "But after you've heard the story of over 100 (patients) and they're all — down to the most minute detail — saying the exact same thing, that becomes quite impressive."

On one hand, the world seems to be getting crueler, deadlier, and weirder.

On the other hand, it's giving me great ideas for that Call of Cthulhu game I've been meaning to get going since ninth grade.

More News You Can Use In An RPG: Hepetologists stop looking for herpes and instead hunt for 18-foot-long python.

Alas, they found nothing but large snake stools. Trying to salvage something of their big giant waste of time, they insist that the stools smelled "fresh," so they know they were right on the snake's enormous tail.

Why is someone reporting a story where people looked for a big snake but didn't find one? Oh, well. Still-- it mentions a giant python. A story with a mention of an (unseen) giant python is still better than most stories, that don't mention giant pythons at all.

Thanks to Darwin's Moustache, which is believed to be smaller, more agile descendant of the giant carnivorous John Bolton's Moustache.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (31)
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No, really taking it.

It's not as bad as it looks. It was their third date, so, you know, anything goes.

It's a moments like that you really wish you'd just gotten that medical-technician certification your mother never shuts up about.

Thanks to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (8)
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I hope someone on their jury has the courage to refuse to make martyrs of them.

Jonathan Wayne Goodrum, 19, and Kristina Louise Sawyer, 18, are charged with raping their 1-day-old girl before she was taken home from McKenzie Regional Hospital about six weeks ago, said McKenzie Police Lt. Tim Nanney.

While both parents have been charged, Sawyer's bond was reduced because police still are investigating what role, if any, she played in the possible rape of her child, Nanney said. She was charged because "I could not exclude her from being part of it, so I had to charge her also," he said. "I could not exclude her at the time from being a participant of it."

Nanney said hospital officials notified police of the possible rape after noticing injuries to the child's rear during a routine examination given before newborns are released from the hospital.

"There were some skin tears in and around the private (back) area of the child," he said.

Well, the mother, probably, is innocent. Mothers tend to nap a lot, being on sedation, after a birth.

The father... couldn't even wait to get the baby home to rape it. He raped it in the hospital.

Or so it seems.

It's possible that there is some innocent explanation for the baby's skin-tears; let's hope for that.

Or perhaps a nurse was a little too eager to find the signs of rape when other explanations were equally or more likely.

Let's hope.

Otherwise we're confronted with the idea of a father eagerly awaiting the birth of his daughter so that he can immediately violate her the moment she's out of the incubator.

Thanks, I guess, to Old Coot.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (24)
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Brown Line writes:

This whining amuses me. I write telephone routing applications for a living. For many of our customers, we hit a commercially available database with every call; for a few cents, the database company translates the caller's phone number into his name, address, number of adults in his household, number of minor children, credit cards held, cars owned, median income of his neighborhood, ethnic breakdown of his neighborhood - and much, much more. Companies use these data to gauge the effectiveness of their marketing; and no doubt for other reasons as well. Does that bother you? Then don't use the phone, because it's perfectly legal and it's done all the time.

Related: The Wardrobe Door has begun a blog to thank Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South for speaking truth to the power of terrorism.

Also Related: USAToday cooks a poll showing Americans oppose the NSA program, 51-43. I guess they just chose the dates of the poll -- May 12-13 -- completely randomly.

Friday night and Saturday night, of course. Weekend polling-- a period which famously skews liberal in its sampling. And USAToday did not bother to inquire into the partisan or ideological leanings of its respondants (or at least they don't publish that information).

It's not like this was a snap-poll conducted the day after the news broke. They had a week and a half to do this poll. Are we supposed to believe they just picked Friday and Saturday nights out of a hat, when they had ample opportunity to pick any other weekday nights?

They really think you're stupid.

The Poll Makes No Sense Anyway: That's the conlcusion of Riehl World View, who was actually polled by USAToday.

Q 7 is another real peach over which I'm concerned.

7. If you knew that the federal government had your telephone records, how concerned would you be -- very concerned, somewhat concerned, not too concerned, or not concerned at all?

Very concerned 22%

Somewhat concerned 13%

Not too concerned 20%

Not concerned at all 44%

No opinion 1

Wait a minute! How can this be? We just learned that 51% disapprove of this program - that 52% feel it either may or does violate the law, perhaps even crushes our civil liberties - now it seems 65% couldn't care less, and only 22% even seem to care at all??

Contradictory results like this would seem to indicate the big number they're reporting -- 51% disapprove -- is just wrong. "Disapprove" would not to seem to be interpreted as USAToday would like you think it's being interpreted. Yes, they "disapprove," but they also don't seem to care.

Perhaps they disapprove of the need for the intrusion, and yet understand it's necessary.

USAToday also doesn't emphasize another finding --49% of the public (of adults, not voters, and mostly liberal adults at that) wants the media to stop reporting on the methods the government uses to track and stop terrorists.

Hey, if USAToday isn't going to heed the wise counsel of the American people, why should the NSA?

Correction: Thanks to Hubris.

USAToday hasn't had "a week and half" to do this poll. Jeeze, it sure felt like this was an old story (and, pretty much, it is), but in fact USAToday's big scoop came out just before Wednesday midnight.

So they didn't really have their choice of any weekday nights to do the poll.

But they sure could have done a poll Thursday night. Or Thursday/Friday night -- at least getting in one weekday night, rather than two weekend nights.

Or they could have done it Sunday-Monday.

I don't think they minded very much their poll was skewing liberal.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (12)
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Hip teenagers wearing t-shirts showing planes flying into the WTC. And not in a "Never Forget" way.

Check out the caption: "World Trade is a Death Machine." So they seem to be on the side of the jihadists.

Well, if they're in favor of violence to make a political point, I suggest they wear their shirts to a firehouse or police station in lower Manhattan. They'll get all the sweet political violence they could want.

Posted by: Ace at 08:34 AM | Comments (28)
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