Random Thoughts

First, a tribute to a journalistic hero in Mexico. This guy had 15 pound balls.

Yes, it's more problems for the bumblers in the White House in the Middle East as the Turbo Bush crowd massages America's hunger problem. I guess any problem can be cured with a new euphemism. Let them eat cottonseed, I guess.

Vampire Bob Novak dropped a big brown steamer on Bush's Thanksgiving dinner table. Now you know that the White House has become a lame duck pond when a true believer such as Novak, who should be in jail for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, jumps ship.

The American Legion supported Texas Representative Chet Edwards, a Democrat and non-veteran, over an Iraq War vet running for the GOP because, unlike the Republicans in general, Edwards has been an outstanding advocate for those who who go put a big ass whippin' on our enemies.

A Democrat priority should be fixing our broken Veterans Administration. It is obscene the crap that vets who emerge with medical problems due to serving us overseas have to endure from the VA, which basically treats them as nuisances rather than good folks with real needs. Get it done Democrats. Now!

You gotta love the marketing weasels at Microsoft and how they handled the launch of their new X Box. But since when do Republicans care about consumers?

But you actually really do have to admire scientist who continue to advance stem cell research, including one where it turns out they can extract stem cells without hurting human embryos. This further undermines the hosanna hut contingent that wants to impede the use of embryonic stem cells.

And there is even more intriguing stem cell related news here.

Can somebody rationally explain to me why there is resistance to a new regulation that requires every American traveling outside our borders and anyone entering the U.S. to have a passport? As someone who has lived in foreign countries myself it is unbelievable that this hasn't always been a rule. Wah wah wah, I got to spend $90 to get a passport. Poor baby. Give me a fucking break!

Canadian ISPs have joined the fight against child porn. What the fuck took them so long? Shouldn't they have done that in the late 1990's?

What are the British going to do about Vladimir Putin? Kinda tough to try to extradite the frontman of a nuclear power for murder, especially a particularly xenophobic one. The Russians did something like this before in Britain during the Soviet era when a KGB agent poked a target with an umbrella tipped with ricin at a bus stop, iirc.

France should be added to the axis of evil (which sounds like something Marvel Comics would have dreamed up, such is the manner in which the Bush Administration has dumbed down how we discuss foreign policy). Everything they have touched, be it Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, turns to shit and creates tremendous international diplomatic and security issues. Now with revelations increasing of French culpability in the Rwandan Genocide, the froggies are moving to create legal diversions to obfuscate that fact.

My condolences to the family of former Baltimore pitcher Pat Dobson at age 64 of leukemia. The interesting note about Pat was that he didn't pitch a no hitter in the big leagues, but he did toss one against a Japanese all star team when the O's did a tour of Japan back in their glory days, when he was part of a rotation that included Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Dave McNally, all four men winning 20 games in 1971.