My pics of the implosion are up. There's also a bit of video of the implosion itself.

Just got back from the Cinergy Field/Riverfront Stadium implosion. Was just like 2 blocks away and it was quite possibly the coolest thing ever. Might have pics up later.

On the downside Brian Griffin seems to think that by pointing out that Senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd made an unfortunate political decision by appearing in a movie as a Confederate General I'm saying this is morally equivalent to Trent Lott somehow.

Quite frankly, I never said they were in any way equivalent. I know Byrd was a racist back in the WWII era, but I do believe it's possible to change. Besides the fact that every third thing in West Virginia is named after the guy I really don't know him well enough to make a judgment on his present day racial views.

Secondly, I've never claimed that Lott was mistreated in any way by the media. He got what he deserved plain and simple. There are racist Republicans, and there are racist Democrats. That however doesn't change the fact that doing something that will remind people of your former racist beliefs in a time when you're much more likely to get called on the matter isn't the best thing to be doing, even if it does mean that the Wheeling public library will get to be the repository of "The Robert C. Byrd Copy of Gods and Generals". (The last part there of course being a joke.)

Osama Got Run Over By A Reindeer.

Funny stuff.

THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE BUNGLES

Every year they suck, but every year they manage to win the last 2 or 3 games and can convince themselves that they're turning things around. *sigh* They'll never win until management realizes things aren't getting better.

Hope the waiting to open presents tomorrow isn't too hard, unless you're like me and are lucky enough to open them tonight.

Isn't downing a US plane something you'd want to deny, considering that if you're stupid enough to let this escalate to war you're going to get your asses handed to you on a silver platter?

Nothing serves to downplay your role as a former KKK member during a racial crisis quite like appearing in a movie as a Confederate general.

Bill Deore has a nice comic on the argument that missile defense is a waste of money.

The Media Research Center Has a good section up giving out awards for the worst/most biased reporting of the past year. They give out awards like the Fourth Reich Award (for Portraying John Ashcroft as a Fascist), the General Phil “Cheap Shot” Donahue Award (for Swipes at the War on Terrorism) and the Begala & Carville War Room Award for Bush Bashing.

Check it out.

Lott stepping down as majority leader.

If not you may want to .take a moment and tell them what you think they should do with Trent Lott.

Mike Binder, creator and star of ["The Mind of the Married Man"], had set his home TiVo to record his 1999 movie, "The Sex Monster," about a man whose wife becomes bisexual. After that, Mr. Binder's TiVo assumed he would enjoy a steady stream of gay programming. Unnerved, he counteracted the onslaught by recording the Playboy Channel and MTV's spring break bikini coverage. It worked, he says. "My TiVo doesn't look at me funny anymore."

His wife, however, was taken aback when she saw all the half-naked women he was ordering through TiVo. He told her those women meant nothing to him: "I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay." She was unamused. The incident inspired an episode of his show.

Rod Dreher has a good piece on the relevance of The Two Towers in today's world, though I think he's a bit light on the presence of evil in the world angle.

The Two Towers just plain rocked. Don't know if he's eligible for it, but Andy Serkis/Smeagol/Gollum deserves the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Kind of anyway.

For the life of me I can't find anything that really strikes my blogging fancy. Oh well, off to see The Two Towers in an hour.

STATE OF THE PARTY [Jim Robbins] Another thing to consider with respect to Trent Lott is that if he goes down over something as inconsequential as an off-the-cuff remark, it will be a big win for the Dems. Regardless of all the reasons conservatives may have for wanting to replace the senator, using this event as the catalyst only shows the other team how easy it is to bring down Republican leaders. Note that Clinton did many worse things, but he survived because the Dems closed ranks, plain and simple. The GOP is hardly strong enough electorally to indulge infighting on this scale.

--The Corner

I think Robbins is wrong here. Kicking Lott out doesn't show that we're weak, it shows that we're strong and principled. Republicans aren't afraid to get rid of their Senate leader on the grounds of idiocy because they know that their ranks are deep enough to fill in for him. This isn't the Dems forcing him out here, it the Republicans and I think it shows backbone and that Republicans won't stand for crap like what Clinton put the Dems through.

Republicans shouldn't aspire to be able to close ranks and blindly support somebody who's wrong. They should aspire to stand on principles, and getting rid of Lott as Majority Leader is a perfect example of that. Robbins seems to be arguing here that if Clinton had been a Republican then Republicans should have closed ranks and supported his purjury and THAT is what the Republicans can't afford to indulge in.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: WE HAVE YOUR BABY JESUS. IF YOU EVER WANNA SEE YOUR BABY JESUS AGAIN, LEAVE 800 DOLLARS IN SMALL BILLS, NOT TRACEABLE, IN THE MAILBOX OF... WE WILL CONTACT YOU LATER WITH FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

YOURS TRULY,

Me, him and the other kid who was really scared and didn't want to take your baby Jesus and the whole time all he did was say stuff like you're going to hell, this isn't right, stop.

You start to realize you might be hanging out in the wrong circles online when you're confronted with a reasoned proof that Yoda could kick Gandalf's ass.

Limited Missile Defense by 2004. The 2 big arguments against this have always struck me as particularly ridiculous.

The first says that if we have a shield other countries will be forced to build more missiles. How are we any worse off with the shield then without it? Without it they can kill millions with one bomb. With it they can kill millions with hundreds of bombs. It won't protect us absolutely, but it will protect us from the one or two held by those who, because they are small or have no actual country, cannot be deterred by the threat of retaliation. A nation big enough to have thousands of nukes is also big enough to be worried about retaliation. It's the small people who don't give a damn that you need to worry about, and that's what this protects against.

The second argument against it is that chances are if we're hit by a nuke it won't be a missile, but a suitcase type nuke. So what? Protecting against the one doesn't preclude protecting against the other. This argument just seems to totally ignore the fact that though the suitcase type is more likely there is still the threat of missiles and to protect against the one and not the other is just short-sighted and likely merely a rationalization for somebody who believes in the first reason.

I feel that I may have ignored my duty to make a pun out of Trent Lott's name, so let's just pretend that I've used one of the standard lines, like "Lott of trouble" or "Thanks a Lott".

You might want to put on your makeup before you get on the Interstate.

In the same way we weren't trying to oust the Taliban either of course.

Stupid North Carolinians! Always trying to steal Ohio's rightful place as the Birthplace of Aviation.

Lileks has a funny piece on his difficulty in ordering from Pizza Hut.

Nickles is calling for a vote on kicking Lott out.

All that talk about maybe running for President was all just a publicity stunt for his hosting SNL, wasn't it?

The name "Bernard" is pronounced "Bernard", not "Bernerd". All of a sudden the newscasters have taken to calling the former Cardinal of Boston Bernerd Law. And with my last name I figure I have a vested interest in this issue.

You're away from work for 2 days and pages just seem to start breaking themselves. Stupid work pages.

I'd like to take a moment here to come out as one of the few people who doesn't think Senator Lott should step down from his leadership position. I think it would be much more advantageous for the Republicans if he stuck to his guns and they simply stood up and voted him out of the leadership position.

Tacitus has a great response to Herbie's screed in the NY Times today.

One must feel sorrow for [Herbie's] predicament, and pity at his impasse. For if Trent Lott represents a dying past, so too does Bob Herbert. They grapple, two old men and their old ideologies, dragging one another down into history and secretly (or not so secretly) hating those who will not join in their struggle. And America, the country they both earnestly want to save from itself, increasingly ignores them and, in its younger generation, increasingly does what it should have done all along about race: shrug, miscegenate, and not care.

The good news: Iraq got rid of some VX gas.
The bad news: They gave it to Al-Qaeda.

I regret that I was unable to work the terms "reprehensible", "ill-informed", or "hate mongering" into the below blog.

For those who now think the Democratic Party is not racist enough, the answer is the G.O.P. And there are precious few voices anywhere in the G.O.P. willing to step up and say that this is wrong. --Bob Herbert - NY Times op-ed page

What complete and utter bull$&#@.

I defy "Mr" Herbert to find one major Republican willing to support Senator Lott's statement.

He goes on to say, as his big proof that Republicans are racist, that Ronald Reagan once said in Mississippi "I believe in states' rights."

Just how much crack is this guy smoking? Whoops, I suppose Herbie would think me a racist for saying that since I'm sure crack smoking probably falls into a racial stereotype somewhere.

Let's just call him a bleeping idiot and leave it at that.

Personally I have no problem with North Korea having fewer scuds.

Here's a pretty amazing windows media video of an AC-130 in Afghanistan. Thanks to Boortz for the link.

The radio industry isn't particularly happy with Tom Petty's latest album. Here's a pretty amusing try to refute Petty's "rock radio is a lifeless shell of what it once was" argument. Of course Petty's right so it's not a very effective refutation, but still...

Uhoh, the celebrities don't seem to like the possibility of a war with Iraq. They're sending a letter to President Bush stating their displeasure with a possible war.

Personally I'm getting rather tired of all the anti-war sentiment out there that seems simply to be for the sake of opposing those for the war, regardless of whether war is actually called for. They all seem to totally ignore the arguments for a justified war and focus instead on how innocent people might get killed. Well I've got news for them, it's war. People die in war. People will die in this war. But it's not our fault. We are not the aggressors here. Saddam is the one who has flaunted the rules of civilization at every turn and it will be his fault if this comes to war.

I realize exactly how much an on-line petition is worth, but I've taken the liberty of forming a petition to show support for a justified Iraqi war in hopes of at least partially counteracting the rabid anti-war, pro-Saddam sentiments out there.

Selig (or as I prefer to call him, Satan) has finally gotten around to meeting with Pete Rose about his possible reinstatement. I've been arguing for quite some time that whether you think he deserves to be in the Hall or not, not even acting on his request has been a great disservice.

How are the Republicans supposed to slaughter Hillary when she runs for Pres when not even the Democrats like her.

They actually think we'll be LESS likely to bomb Iraq if we know crazy Canadian anti-war/pro-Saddam protestors might get killed too? Riiiiiiight...

The "if it can't be learned in the 6 hours before an exam it's probably not worth knowing" plan hit a snag upon discovery of the 5 page paper that hadn't even been started 30 minutes before the final.

Luckily the prof is quite understanding.

A hilarious piece over at OpinionJournal about messing with the anti-war protesters.

The Students are taking to the streets in Iran.

More than 10,000 people defied riot police to gather outside Teheran university in a show of support for reformist students and a sign of a wider dissatisfaction with the regime.

This was by far the largest coming together of ordinary people in Teheran since student protests began a month ago, although in these difficult times it had to be a demonstration pretending not to demonstrate as police kept people moving along the pavements.

When groups began chanting slogans such as "Political prisoners must be freed" the riot police would draw their batons, forcing protesters to scatter down side streets.

...

Among the crowd were many plain-clothes security agents who bundled dozens of people into police cars and videotaped faces in the crowd. At one point a security agent was surrounded by a catcalling crowd and defended himself with a can of pepper spray.

As he hurried down the street followed by jeers, the crowd began to chant, "Thank you, police!" to the regular police, who stood by and did not overtly harass people. The officers smiled back. One of them helped an injured old man out of the fray.

Throughout the afternoon men and women beaten by riot police could be seen limping away, supported by friends.

One old woman wearing a chador said that she had tried to help a man who had been beaten and got sprayed with pepper spray as a result. "I had a son in the war," she said. "He is disabled now. These fascists should be ashamed of themselves! They cannot win with force!"

Myth one is the abuse of Daschle. ... Myth two: Clinton insisted that Republicans have a "destruction team" but Democrats don't. ... Myth three: The media is right-wing dominated. ... Myth four: Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a Vietnam war veteran confined to a wheelchair, lost because his GOP foe, Saxby Chambliss, insinuated he was unpatriotic in opposing Bush on the homeland security bill. ... Myth five: Bush concocted the Iraq regime-change issue to help Republicans in the fall campaign. ... Myth six: Karl Rove, Bush's senior political adviser, is running everything at the White House.

All you need to do to dispell myth 5 is read the new Woodward book. It's fairly obvious in there that they planned on going after Iraq from the very beginning. They almost did it at the same time as they went after Afghanistan.

Bungles lose again. And the worst part is that Mike Brown thinks the problem is he hasn't been involved enough. Cincinnati can seemingly get a protest over just about anything, why can't we work up an effective Bengals Resistance Effort? Something with catchy slogans and signs and such. :(

Nice to see that somebody doesn't consider us racist bigots. Or at least appreciates the effort going into solving the problem.

Rich Lowry has a great column on the most effective way for African countries to prevent AIDS.

Iraq has lied about it's weapons program. They realize we found chemical weapons there last week, right?

Now I need to go out and replace all my old Paul O'Neill dollars.

The Mayor-elect of Berkeley is (quite literally) trashing the Daily Cal.

Raines has backed down and the NY Times will run the censored pro-Augusta National columns.

The Ninth Circuit claims that there is no right for citizens to bear arms given in the 2nd amendment. I'm not anything close to a lawyer so I don't feel like wading through it too much to pick out particular instances of insanity because if I did I'm sure my head would explode. Let's just say that they believe that the only people allowed to have guns are members of a state armed force, that they consider the second amendment as a "relatively obscure constitutional provision."

This of course is all such poppycock. Our founders won our freedom from Britain by way of the arms of individual citizens. The second amendment wasn't meant simply to allow 18th century hunters to feed their families, it was meant to protect the individual citizens from imposition of a tyrannical government. This is all common sense. The Constitution is not a list of the powers of the federal government, it is a restraint on those powers. To read the second amendment as the Ninth Circuit does you would need to believe that the founders actually intended that it be interpreted as allowing only the state to control arms. This would be absurd. The founders depended on the arms of the everyday citizen to overthrow the British government, and they wouldn't have denied the same ability to their descendents.

And aside from the MSNBC stuff, it's interesting to note that the highest rated CNN show (Larry King) had 30% lower ratings than the lowest rated FOX News show (Greta).

Jonah Goldberg has a good column calling for the mainstream Muslims to step up and prove they're peace-loving.

Last time I checked the Klan weren't exactly fans of the Jews either, not that that would stop a group of black anti-semites from protesting.

They've found mustard gas in Iraq.

Isn't it a little redundant to announce a national branch of an already international terrorist organization?

Is it wrong to not have much sympathy for somebody not bright enough to not confess to a crime they didn't commit? Watching a story on CNN about some guys convicted of a rape that they didn't commit, but confessed to and I'm having trouble working up much sympathy.

Man steals computer to pay for theft rehab.

What kind of world are we living in when monkey-skull ashtrays have lost their shock value?

The NY Times is apparently stifling dissent within it's columnists. Nothing says journalistic integrity like not letting your columnists disagree with you.

Thomas Friedman points out that what is going on in Iran today "is a combination of Martin Luther and Tiananmen Square"

To put it another way, what's going on in Iran today is precisely the war of ideas within Islam that is the most important war of all. We can kill Osama bin Laden and all his acolytes, but others will spring up in their place. The only ones who can delegitimize and root out these forces in any sustained way are Muslim societies themselves. And that will happen only when more Muslim societies undergo, from within, their own struggle for democracy and religious reform. Only the disenchanted citizens of the Soviet bloc could kill Marx; only Muslims fed up that their faith is being dominated by anti-modernists can kill bin Ladenism and its offshoots.

Said Aghajari:

"Just as people at the dawn of Islam conversed with the Prophet, we have the right to do this today," he said. "Just as they interpreted what was conveyed [to them] at historical junctures, we must do the same. We cannot say: `Because this is the past we must accept it without question.' . . . This is not logical. For years, young people were afraid to open a Koran. They said, `We must go ask the mullahs what the Koran says.' Then came Shariati, and he told the young people that those ideas were bankrupt. [He said] you could understand the Koran using your own methods. . . . The religious leaders taught that if you understand the Koran on your own, you have committed a crime. They feared that their racket would cease to exist if young people learned [the Koran] on their own."

Too rich for my blood.

Dick LeBeau might not be gone next year. A quick list of things the Bengals need to do to win.
1. Get rid of Mike Brown.
2. Get a GM.
3. Get a real quarterback.
4. Get rid of Mike Brown.
5. Get an entirely new coaching staff.
6. Get rid of Mike Brown.
7. Get rid of Bud Selig.

Well, maybe that last one wouldn't help them, but it needs doing anyway.

Man shot dead at anti-gun march. Then of course they go on to use it as an urgent reason for the British to get tough on guns, never mind that they already have horribly draconian gun laws.

News today on Saddam's torture tactics, which include rape, torture, and killings.

The supreme court looks to take on the issue of affirmative action and racial preferences.

Good.

Cal Thomas has a piece on how moderate Muslim leaders need to step up and police their own ranks.

The theological battle must be taken to the Muslim world.

The president should consider calling for "moderate" Muslims to clean up their own house. Such demands are being made by Roman Catholic laity on their hierarchy in the wake of priests alleged to have sexually abused children. The president should ask Muslim political and theological leaders to go after their own, if they are, indeed, misrepresenting "true" Islam. We should not have to clean up after the mess they have made.