I don't like to blame the media for everything, but I hope John Hughes realizes The Breakfast Club now has a bodycount.

79-year-old man shot himself in the mouth with a flare gun Thursday morning, in an incident that Town of Tonawanda police are calling an apparent suicide.

...he died about an hour and a half later.

...

The 12-gauge flare gun was the type commonly used to call for help by stranded boaters. While lacking the force of a traditional gun, the flare packs a high-intensity heat capable of doing major damage, authorities said.

Updating that How You'll Die list:

Firing a 12-Gauge Flare Gun Into Your Mouth

Very "burney." Those who have survived attempted suicides via flare gun say "You know that painful burning sensation you get from going down on Courtney Love? It's almost that bad. But at least your breath doesn't wind up smelling like a mixture of Haldol and the roadies from Queensryche."

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 02:45 PM | Comments (25)
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Aw, shucks. I was really hoping for that whole "suspend the constitution/impose martial law/create an official American Emperorship" I've heard so very much about.

Gallup says his average favorability is second-worse of all two-termers, with only Truman fairing more poorly.

In related news, Larry Sabato rates Harry S. Truman as also having "little to no hope" of capturing the White House in '08.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (18)
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I've got Waylon Jennings as "The Balladeer" in my head: Supportin' the troops... the only way they know how... That's just a little bit more than decency will allow.

Correction: I got this jagoff confused with David Crosby, and wrote in the headline that Stark had said that the troops' job was to kill innocents. He didn't actually say that, though he did say that Bush blows things up in Iraq for his "amusement," and thus the troops are the evil clowns responsible for providing him with belly-laughs.

Un-Correction: Nope, I had it right the first time. I thought I remembered him saying it:

"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark accused Republicans. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (18)
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Update: This is old, even for me. It's a 1998 list.

Good Lord, I am a douche.

...

Ehhh... my kneejerk reaction is to doubt the board really even slogged their way through either of the two James Joyce novels they put in the top three, let alone particularly liked them, and then champion the wisdom of the unpretentious masses over such turgid abortions.

But then I look at the reader's list. And, um, whatever.

PS, Sons and Lovers and Women In Love by DH Lawrence sucked. At least that was my conclusion in high school, and I have no desire to revisit it now.

Unless I'm missing something, Moby Dick is not on the list, nor anything by Mark Twain, nor anything by Dickens. Changing tastes? It's by the Modern Library but I don't note a qualifier like "Best Novels of the Last Century" or anything.

PPS, Slaughterhouse-Five is a Young Adult sci-fi book which continues to garner far more respect and praise than it warrants because we all read it in eighth grade and were blown away to be reading a book with the word "fuck" in it as well as sex with a pornstar named Montana Wildhack. The book is an easy-reader special, which I have no problems with, but it's also the most fulsome effort at Nazi apologism and Soviet propaganda this side of, I don't know, how about David Irving, the Holocaust denier whose actual bullshit figures and "facts" on the Dresden bombings were used by Vonnegut as "real history" (and, in fact, I believe a character in the novel is actually reading David Irving's now-thoroughly-discredited Nazi apologia in a hospital scene).

It's a childish book, which doesn't make it bad, but it is childish, and could easily have been the subject of a copyright infringement suit for ripping off Catch 22 (infinitely better, and not so much Nazi apologism or Soviet propaganda) so shamelessly, right down to the "unstuck in time" conceit.

So, fuck Kurt Vonnegut, and, while I'm sure many of you have fond memories of this book, bear in mind you read it as children. It's a piece of crap, as is all of his fiction.

Thanks to 5 Cats.

Cite: Oliver Kamm writes about the Vonnegut-Irving lie.

VonnegutÂ’s philosophy and history are simplistic. Dresden was hellish � but there were not 135,000 deaths. The true figure was probably no more than a fifth of that. VonnegutÂ’s number came directly from the now discredited work of the Holocaust denier David Irving. (In Slaughterhouse-Five, Irving is cited by name, and a long passage, by a retired air marshal, from the foreword to IrvingÂ’s book The Destruction of Dresden is reproduced.) To a PoW digging up cadavers, accurate numbers will ever after seem pedantic. But the issue is important to historical truth and also to the ideas that Vonnegut dramatised.

Dresden, whose beauty Vonnegut likened to Oz, became a sacrificial myth in a litany of Western crimes, unrelated to its industrial and political importance to the Nazis. In arguing in 2003 that “people are lying all the time as to what a murderous nation we are”, Vonnegut cited Nagasaki as “the most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery”. Yet, as an outstanding new book, Hiroshima in History, demonstrates, contemporary Japanese government records and memoirs confirm that the dropping of both A-bombs, Nagasaki as well as Hiroshima, was crucial to Japan’s decision to surrender.

Vonnegut, of course, never apologized for the citation of the Holocaust denier's made-up figures and claims, even after he was made quite aware that they were lies put forward by a Nazi apologist.

And so it goes, as he says.

Whatever one thinks about his politics, hey, try reading Catch 22. You will experience a profound feeling of deja vu as you read a fractured-timeline story of WWII cynicism and gallows humor -- even the titles are similar. Of course, it wasn't deja vu at all; it was just a hack wannabe sci-fi writer ripping off a critically acclaimed book that had been written shortly before.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (82)
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From his chair position in the RNC.

The end of pandermania?

I doubt it. But I'd certainly welcome it.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:49 PM | Comments (24)
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Halfway interesting/halfway obvious report by "experts" on what it's like to die by various means.

Seems to reinforce my belief that drowning is sort of the worst way to go.

Drowning:
Victims first panic and try to hold their breath, typically for 30 to 90 seconds. Survivors have reported a "tearing and burning" sensation as water enters the lungs - but it is quickly followed by a feeling of calmness and tranquility. Oxygen deprivation results in loss of consciousness, the heart stopping and brain death.

...

Fall from a height:
Survivors of great falls often report the sensation of time slowing down. A study of 100 suicide jumps from San Francisco's 246-ft-high Golden Gate Bridge found numerous cases of instantaneous death involving collapsed lungs, exploded hearts or damage to organs from broken ribs.

...

Decapitation:
Beheading can be swift and painless but consciousness is believed to continue for a short time after the spinal cord is severed. Experts have calculated that the brain might remain functioning for seven seconds. Reports from guillotine executions in France cited cases where movements of the eyes and mouth were seen for up to 30 seconds.

If you have to die -- and I imagine most of you will face that at some point -- I cannot recommend death by cobra venom highly enough.

Death due to the bite of cobra poison is a. singularly, easy and pleasant one, as deaths go. Only the nerves are attacked, practically, and the victim has no pain-- one of the great dangers of this very, poison is in fact in not knowing when the effect has worn off! Steadily the nerves are soothed to numbness, the victim feeling that he is recovering, for the nerves are being put to sleep. At:the very time when the unfortunate feels that he is out of all danger he sinks into sleep, and into death, so slowly and gradually that [those observing him often cannot tell he has died at all.]

That's from a badly fubared cached version on an article, by the way, so I had to make some guesses as to what the actual article said.

If it was good enough for Cleopatra, it's good enough for me.

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (37)
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As far as the presidency, I've always continued to think we held the advantage, though polling and fundraising would suggest otherwise. (Apparently Chinese busboys are going for the Hillster in a big way.) Of course, I wrote Congress off more or less entirely, hoping, at least, to have at least forty decent Republicans to filibuster when needed, and little more.

But Patrick Ruffini says dawn is breaking for the GOP after our long political nightmare. There is some hope we might gain seats, even.

A big more about the surprisingly close special election in MA-5.

Running against the current Congress, with its 11% approval rating, apparently works.

Oh, and Kaus, naturally, suggests that the Republican's anti-amnesty stance helped him too, even in Bright Blue Massachusetts.

Michael Barone disagrees, stating that the Republican long-shot's strong performance was due to both immigration and taxes.

How Mary Katharine Ham Got Her Groove Back: Awakened from the dark 2006 funk by a spirit-surging vision in gold.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (42)
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Cuffy Meigs sends this, saying it's pretty clear he's doing exactly what the rush transcript says he's doing. He's actually suggesting that he approached Rush, presumably, with the idea of scamming up a controversy... for the children.

And Rush was nice enough to go along with Harry Reid's idea.

What. A. Douche.

Hey, Harry, why don't you kick in a million from those corrupt land-deals you used the power of your office to make profitable? That might be nice.

Since you care so much about the children and all.

Here's Rush announcing the winning bidder, Betty Casey.

Although I have to say I don't like how he takes credit for the donation himself.

Oh wait -- he actually is matching the bid dollar for dollar, so he's kicking in over $2.1 million, plus, of course, he thought of this and started it.

So I guess he has sightly more right to claim credit than Harry Reid.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (47)
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The LAT, to its credit, is reporting this, though, of course, the NYT will continue to pretend it's not news and devote no reporters to it whatsoever.

Just like with Al Gore's vow-of-poverty Buddhist nuns donating huge sums to his campaign, we once again have poor Chinese folks, many of whom seem to be either nonexistent, too poor to donate such funds, or not eligible to donate at all kicking in big bucks to a Democratic candidate.

Where is the money coming from, exactly? Are big Democratic machers simply tapping into the Chinese underworld to launder their donations through poor folks living in the nation's various Chinatowns, or is there some more interesting reason why Chinese-born seem to be the preferred straw donors in this massive illegality?

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into ClintonÂ’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from ChinatownÂ…

...

The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.

One bit I deleted was that in some cases apparently the donors claim to be legitimate donors, donating their own money, who felt "pressured" to give.

Pressured? By whom? Allow my imagination to run a bit, but when I hear of an immigrant community feeling vague "pressure" to do something my mind springs to those holding power illegally, i.e., gangsters.

And why? Why the pressure, exactly?

In some cases, these poor people seem to be donating in hopes of promises Hillary can never deliver on:

Lin and his wife, who also works in the restaurant, said through an interpreter that they believe Clinton, if elected president, will reunite their family. The Lins' two teenage children remain in Fujian, a mountainous coastal province in southeastern China opposite Taiwan.

"If she gets to be the president, we want our children to come home," Chang Jian Lin said.

... the Lins appeared to have an exaggerated impression of a president's ability to change such things as immigration laws single-handedly.

Kwong thinks Clinton may be "exploiting the vulnerabilities of recent immigrants."

Nonetheless, Lin is planning to attend another Clinton fundraiser, a birthday bash next week. He said his support rested on more than his hope for reuniting his family. "Besides the immigration issue with my kids, the overall standard of living will improve for the Chinese people" living in the U.S., he said.

...

Coming up with the money was hard, Lin acknowledged, adding: "The restaurant is really small."

But it's the Clintons' standard operating practice to abuse their supporters, and it's not actually illegal. Just nasty. On the other hand, there are many donors who seem to simply not exist at all:

The tenement at 44 Henry St. was listed in Clinton's campaign reports as the home of Shu Fang Li, who reportedly gave $1,000.

In a recent visit, a man, apparently drunk, was asleep near the entrance to the neighboring beauty parlor, the Nice Hair Salon.

A tenant living in the apartment listed as Li's address said through a translator that she had not heard of him, although she had lived there for the last 10 years.

A man named Liang Zheng was listed as having contributed $1,000. The address given was a large apartment building on East 194th Street in the Bronx, but no one by that name could be located there.

Census figures for 2000 show the median family income for the area was less than $21,000. About 45% of the population was living below the poverty line, more than double the city average.

In the busy heart of East Broadway, beneath the Manhattan Bridge, is a building that is listed as the home of Sang Cheung Lee, also reported to have given $1,000. Trash was piled in the dimly lighted entrance hall. Neighbors said they knew of no one with Lee's name there; they knocked on one another's doors in a futile effort to find him.

Salespeople at a store on Canal Street were similarly baffled when asked about Shih Kan Chang, listed as working there and having given $1,000. The store sells purses, jewelry and novelty Buddha statues. Employees said they had not heard of Chang.

Another listed donor, Yi Min Liu, said he did not make the $1,000 contribution in April that was reported in his name. He said he attended a banquet for Clinton but did not give her money.

Clinton "has done a lot for the Chinese community," he said.

One New York man who said he enthusiastically donated $2,500 to Clinton doesn't appear to be eligible to do so under federal election law. He said he came to the United States from China about two years ago and didn't have a green card.

That's at least two cases of documented illegality, and the likelihood of a massive pile of corruption waiting to be discovered... rather easily.

Can we open a file on this woman now?

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (20)
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Not quite exactly, but he does seem to be trumpeting his part in getting money for the kids of slain Marines and cops.

He also urges people to bid on the letter... but does not note that Limbaugh himself is matching the bid out of his own pocket, nor suggest that he or any other Democratic Senator should do likewise.

As usual, and empty gesture and a dishonest one to boot from a Democrat.

Pardon the all-caps, this is apparently how the raw transcript comes. [I fixed the caps thing in Word; there may be some uncapitalized names, though. -- Gabe]

Reid: ...this week, Rush Limbaugh put the original copy of that letter up for auction on e-bay. Mr. President, we didn't have time, or we could have gotten every senator to sign that letter. But he put the letter up for auction on e-bay and i think very, very constructively, left the proceeds of that it go to the marine corps law enforcements foundation. That provides scholarship assistance to marines and federal law enforcement personnel whose parents fall in the line of duty.

What could be a more worthwhile cause?

I think it's really good that this money on e-bay is going to be raised for this purpose. When i spoke to mark may he and i thought this probably wouldn't make much money, a letter written by democratic senators complaining about something. This morning, the bid is more than $2 million for this. We have watched it during the week. It keeps going up-and-up and up. There's only a little bit of time left on it. But it certainly is going to be more than $2 million. Never did we think that this letter would bring money of this nature. And, for the cause, madam president, it is extremely good.

Now, everyone knows that Rush Limbaugh and i don't agree on everything in life and maybe that is kind of an understatement. But without qualification mark may, the owner of the network that has Rush Limbaugh and Rush Limbaugh should know that this letter that they're auctioning is going to be something that raises money for a worthwhile cause. I don't know what we could do more important than helping to ensure that children of our fallen soldiers and police officers who have fallen in the line of duty have the opportunity for their children to have a good education. Think of this, more than $2 million — that will really help. That's, again, an understatement. There's only a little bit of time left so i would ask those that are wanting to do more, that they can go to harry reid letter and it will come up on e-bay. I encourage anyone interested with the means to consider contributing to this worthwhile cause. I strongly believe when we can put our differences aside, even harry reid and rush limbaugh, we should do that and try to accomplish good things for the american people. This does that, madam president. More than $2 million for a letter signed by this senator and my friends.

"Never did we think" the letter would fetch so much money? Is this cocksucker implying it was his plan to raise money for kids by writing the letter in the first place?

He wants Rush to know the money is going for a good cause? Once again the insinuation that Rush is a bystander in this, but Reid wants to assure him that his [Reid's] letter is going to do some kids some good.

And of course:

I strongly believe when we can put our differences aside, even Harry Reid and Rush Limbaugh, we should do that and try to accomplish good things for the American people.

Again, he's implying that this is a Rush-Reid team-up, that they're both equal authors in this munificence.

How else is there to read this?

Unless Harry Reid is working in some high level irony -- something he's not known for; the man doesn't joke at all -- this rotten shitheel seems to be attempting to grab credit for another man's charity and goodheartedness.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (54)
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