A post I threw up and then immediately deleted won't disappear off the old moronblog.

Maybe a new one will push it off.

So, here's Sophia Loren and dirty feet.
Enjoy.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:02 AM | Comments (57)
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I wanted to celebrate the fourth of July by posting a video of the national anthem.  After a search of YouTube, I have come to agree with Ken Levine - it's hard to find a good version of that song. (Clarifying update: a good version with lyrics)  The best version I found was played by the British at Buckingham Palace after September 11, 2001.  How's that for irony?  The problem I had with most of the versions available on YouTube was that far too many people try to over-sing or put their own stamp on the anthem.  

Levine's thoughts on the national anthem are also posted at the Huffington Post, which had some interesting comments.  I tend to agree that the "Star Spangled Banner" is a rather unwieldy and hard to sing anthem.  Still, I prefer it to "America the Beautiful," a song that has been suggested as a replacement.  While "America" contains some beautiful imagery, I don't think the first stanza lyrics adequately capture the sense of sacrifice central to this country's founding history.

Still, "America the Beautiful" would make a much better anthem than another song suggested - "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie.  I've never understood the appeal of that insipid little tune - if we're going to go for the simplistic kindergarten-level message, we might as well make "Yankee Doodle" our anthem.

Of course, I may not be the best judge of such things since I believe one of the most majestic national anthems is that of the former Soviet Union. 

Posted by: Slublog at 11:45 PM | Comments (78)
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And to think, I feared that things would be less fun after the primaries were over. This went out on the Wire Service That Must Not Be Named about an hour ago. Allah caught it.

Obama moved a little to the right on abortion---while talking to a Christian magazine, of course. Gotta tailor the message for the audience.

In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."

Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."

NARAL, the pro-abortion group that upset Democratic feminists in May by choosing to endorse Obama instead of Clinton, must be feeling a little used. That doesn't stop it from asking for more:

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family."

[...]

"Sen. Obama has consistently said he supports the tenets set forth by Roe, and has made strong statements against President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban, which does not have an exception to protect a woman's health," the organization's statement said.

Allah thinks Obama's only talking about late-term abortions. Click over to read his unnecessary slam at Professor Doug Kmiec and to answer his exit question: what must Clinton think now?

Update: Allah responds in the comments, writing:

Kmiec's apologias for Obama on abortion have been beyond embarrassing. If he wants to support the guy because he's against the war, fine, but he should lay off trying to paint him as though he's some kind of social con. It's Sullivan-esque.

Okay, so maybe I was the one making an unnecessary slam. Sorry. Just didn't like dragging Kmiec back onto the stage. Per Hollowpoint's update, I see that Kmiec's still putting himself there.

Incidentally, I don't think his Obama support is about the war. I think it's about McCain Derangement Syndrome. A man of Kmiec's intelligence can't just live with the cognitive dissonance. He has to attempt to reconcile his desire to vote against McCain with his conservative principles. The result is this weird support for Obama where all his explanations and excuses seem to ring false.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:02 PM | Comments (48)
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Its about damn time. I was a little too young to get any of that free love, and drugs never made it to my town until after I'd graduated high school. Then along came AIDS and that pretty much squelched the free love notion completely in the 80's onward. Now I'm too old to get in on any of this recent hot student/teacher action. It really sucked being a "tweener" on the late ass end of the baby boom. Thank god for internet porn.

...Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:37 PM | Comments (49)
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"England can suck my old-man balls."

Thanks to Elliot.

Posted by: Ace at 04:15 PM | Comments (76)
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The writer of the article, in an update, says he understands the high degree of skepticism that it could possibly be that "Co-Ed Magazine," and a college student reporter, could have this story first.

But he claims he stands by it. He says it comes from someone "closely connected" to the McCain campaign, which is so vague as to mean almost nothing.

Eh.

Doubtful.

It's not impossible this kid is politically connected, maybe through a dad, and was told this. But, still, I have no idea what "closely connected" means. Could mean just a donor who thinks he knows something but really doesn't.

Posted by: Ace at 02:56 PM | Comments (47)
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A home run in new medicine? Perhaps not, but certainly she's gotten to third base.

So Dr. Romanzi developed her own concept of “pelvic fitness” for healthy women. She said that Phit (www.theperfectphit.com) will help women get “in shape from the inside out.”

The spa is essentially a gussied-up examination room down the hall from Dr. Romanzi’s medical practice. At the spa, the signature treatment will be a $150 gynecological exam — in which a client contracts her pelvic muscles around Dr. Romanzi’s fingers — to determine by feel whether muscle tone is "strong," "moderate," "weak," or "help me find my car keys and we'll drive out." [The end of this sentence may have been rewritten for accuracy -- ed.]

Dr. Romanzi likes to call the vaginal workouts she prescribes “personal training.” Clients could also use an in-office electrostimulation machine to improve pelvic muscle tone or buy a device for home use. Dr. Romanzi said that such treatments are intended to improve bladder control; she said pelvic training may also lead to more intense orgasms.

Well, obviously. Oh, she means for the women.

Dr. Romanzi, Country Practitioner

It's a juicy idea. I hope she doesn't muff it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (56)
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Here's a story. Human traffickers -- in women, I guess -- made an example of one the little girls they had intended to repeatedly rape into whoredom. She resisted. So they beheaded her -- in front of their other sexual slaves. Then left the body and head in a room with the other girls, just to let them know that sometimes rape isn't the worst thing in the world.

The story is obviously cable-news nirvana. Let me be crass and note that it's a potential ratings barnburner. Sex, forced prostitution, slavery, a woman heroically resisting her abusers, and being tragically beheaded by these monsters for her courage. (I note this just to underscore the odd reluctance of cable news, or crime-magazine shows on the networks, to touch it.)

Not only is it luridly compelling, but it actually underscores a greater problem -- what used to be called white slavery; I have no idea what we're supposed to call it now -- and thus is also an "important" story.

I note the latter because media-critic liberal chin-strokers are forever castigating cable news for running sensationalistic stories about missing and abducted girls and men who kill their wives, always branding such stories -- without contemplating their import -- as "unimportant." They really do use the word "unimportant" when discussing a story about a murdered woman, as if she doesn't rate.

What they mean, and really should be less "inartful" about expressing (as Obama would have it), is that such stories have no broader implications and are, therefore, "mere" murder stories without a greater public-policy angle to them. The latter, of course, would rescue such stories from the "unimportant" category.

Liberals can't conceive of a story as being important unless, of course, it can be used to animate the public in favor of government action and new legislation.

But in this case, that criterion is well-satisfied.

So why is the story not being covered?

Take a wild fucking guess.

The perpetrators are Mexicans, transporting women (apparently also Mexican) to Florida to rape them into sexual slavery. And when that doesn't work -- cut off a head or two.

Sometimes crusading journalists, who are all about informing the public and righting evils, have to consider more important crusades they're on, such as pushing for amnesty and open borders.

Open borders, as a cause, trumps any niggling concerns over entrepreneurial rape.

Inside the Mind of Geraldo Rivera: TV's pre-eminent merchant of sleaze and sensationalism, and the man who would "spit on" Michelle Malkin for her anti-amnesty views, must be terribly vexed right about now.

Ah, he'll manage it. His angle? How anti-amnesty racism dooms Mexican girls to being abducted, raped, and beheaded, and how this story is, in a way, an indictment of all of us who insist on secure borders.

It's an even easier call for him if he can get his thuggish hands on pictures of the decapitated girl. Score.

Update: Freedom Folks is trying to verify this. At the moment, while the Florida AG spokesman repeated the story as read from a local newspaper, there was actually no verification of that report originally -- it was a story told to the paper by a community activist.

So far, no one official is verifying there's anything to this.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (55)
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Monkey Tennis Centre discovers a curious choice by the BBC: Reporting on a vicious terrorist attack using a heavy bulldozer to kill three and wound dozens, the BBC avoids mentioning the deaths at all until the third paragraph, and studiously refuses to give any details about them until very deep into the article. After, of course, suggesting the terrorist was driven to this act of multiple murder by Israelis.

The BBC has now updated the article to change this-- and bury the details of the victims even deeper into the article.

Meanwhile, of course, details are always provided front and center regarding Palestinians killed by Israel anti-terrorist strikes; it's the details that humanize the victim, of course, and make him more than digital cipher. No Palestinian dies or is even injured without poignant details of his family, his hopes, his dreams; but Jews are different, basically the nameless mooks in an action movie, and no one should pay much heed to them as the Palestinian Action Heroes cut them down in bloody swaths.

This is of course completely deliberate.

For the BBC, "Never again" is a trite and politically incorrect motto. They prefer the more nuanced, modern version of it: "How about next Thursday?"

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (18)
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Neat vid, with another Batman commercial, so what the hell. Click on it.

The man who convinced a museum to actually build the thing claims no deviations were needed from Babbage's plans; it worked as designed.

He says Babbage was famous for two things: Inventing the computer, and failing to actually build the thing. Woody Allen said 90% of success is just showing up; I guess the other 10% is follow-through.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (19)
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