Mississippi outlaws sex toys

There’s a lot I could say, but…well…my mother reads this blog!

You’d think Mississipi could find better things to worry about – like the fact that its people are the fattest in the land. Like the fact that there are still people and businesses trying to recover from the devastation of Katrina. Like that it ranks near the top in number of children living in poverty.

Like the fact that Trent Lott’s porch hasn’t been rebuilt, for Pete’s sake!!

But no. Rather than worry about any of that, Mississippi is worried about Mississippians and ‘three-dimensional devices…useful primarily for the stimulation of human genitals…’

Seems a bit rude – especially when those BOBs might be the only exercise folks in Mississippi are getting.

Read more at Dan Abrams blog.

*Actually, re-reading it, I realize that Mississippi has outlawed the ‘distribution’ of the sex toys. So…selling is bad, but using is still okay?

Vietnam Redux

In case anyone out there still believed that the Brainless Nightmare…Captain Insanity…the President was going to bring our troops home soon, we finally have an answer.

Q: Will there come a day, and I’m not asking you when -I’m not asking for a timetable. Will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?”

BUSH: That, of course is an objective, and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

So, in other words, don’t expect the troops home on his watch.

Anyone want to bet that soon after the November elections, we’re going to start hearing the word ‘draft’ bandied around DC and the media?

I’m serious. It is common knowledge that our troops cannot physically or emotionally continue as they have been. Deaths, polytrauma injuries, mental fatigue, equipment fatigue – it’s all adding up.

The military, no matter how many troops it pulls from other service branches, no matter what incentives they offer new recruits, simply cannot get the bodies it needs to fulfill its quotas. Which means, it cannot keep enough ‘boots on ground’.

Short of having our troops barricade themselves behind the walls and razor wire of their bases, the options for continuing this war are limited. And what happens when state governments start ordering their troops home, which is within their rights as sovereign states?

The longer this mess goes on, the higher the probability that a draft will be required to maintain troop strength.

Pat Robertson Plunges Over the Deep End…again

One of our favorite clerics, the great Mullah himself, Marion ‘Pat’ Robertson, is spending a great deal of time proving that losing one’s mind on television is not a pretty sight.

Today, he was compelled to speak on the greatest horror facing Americans today. No, not escalating debt. No, it’s not the 1000+ deaths in Iraq over the past month. Nor is it the suffering of those in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana as they struggle to rebuild their lives. No, it’s not the unemployed or the homeless.

The greatest threat today is….college professors.

Here’s the great One’s latest pronouncement…raving:

ROBERTSON: Ladies and gentleman this is a fascinating book. If you want to, you’d better take your blood pressure medicine before you read it, but it’s “The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America” and that’s just a short list of the 30-40,000 of them, they’re like termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it’s appalling. This is available at CBN.com and book stores everywhere, and you really ought to read it and be informed.

TERRI: It’s interesting that so many conservatives haven’t seen this because decades ago we were told that infiltrating education was the way to take over the country, we should have been on alert.

ROBERTSON: They gamed it, these guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, you know some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order and they don’t want anybody else except them. That’s why Regent University for example is so terrifically important and why we’re setting up an undergraduate program that hopefully will see shortly 10,000 students, and then from there 250,000 because you don’t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don’t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission. Ahhh! “The Professors”, read it.

That’s right! You heard it here. The great Mullah doesn’t want your child brainwashed by radicals. Gracious! The next thing you know, those nasty radicals will be telling us what God to worship, and what Biblical laws we have to follow and– oh. Right.

He’s not talking about those radicals.

Crooks and Liars has the video.

*Confidential to ‘Marion in VA’:
Marion – Jesus was a liberal, communist, hippie freak. What Book Would Jesus Buy?

Iraq – it’s going, um…well?

While Le Cauchemar Bête…the President is telling us to look on the bright side, and the V-P is telling us that, yes, he really does believe the insurgency is in its last throes (again) here’s a little reality:

From the Associated Press:

At least 51 people were killed by insurgents and shadowy sectarian gangs, police reported — continuing the wave of violence that has left more than 1,000 Iraqis dead since the bombing last month of a Shiite Muslim shrine.

As the Iraq war entered its fourth year, police found the bodies of at least 15 more people — including that of a 13-year-old girl — dumped in and near Baghdad. The discoveries marked the latest in a string of execution-style killings that have become an almost daily event as Sunni and Shiite extremists settle scores.

Sectarian killings have swept across Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra. An Associated Press tally, including deaths reported Monday and Tuesday, put the toll at 1,044 since the golden dome atop the Askariya shrine was left in rubble by two bombers, who are believed to remain at large.

From Reuters:

The U.S. military said on Tuesday it was investigating Iraqi police allegations that its soldiers shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week.

The probe comes a day after a magazine published allegations that U.S. Marines killed civilians in another town in November. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week.

Time magazine said a patrol went on a rampage after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha, west of Baghdad. It published detailed accounts by townspeople.

More on that from Time:

[…] According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.

[snip]

According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the ncis [sic] does not mean that a crime occurred.

[snip]

But the military’s own reconstruction of events and the accounts of town residents interviewed by Time—including six whose family members were killed that day—paint a picture of a devastatingly violent response by a group of U.S. troops who had lost one of their own to a deadly insurgent attack and believed they were under fire. Time obtained a videotape that purports to show the aftermath of the Marines’ assault and provides graphic documentation of its human toll. What happened in Haditha is a reminder of the horrors faced by civilians caught in the middle of war—and what war can do to the people who fight it.

Gov’t Too Poor to Give FBI Agents email?

Wow – just when we’re being told how strong America is, how wonderful, how filled with hope and joy and $30,000 debt for every man, woman, and child in the country – we get some more…um…good news.

From CNN:

Budget constraints are forcing some FBI agents to operate without e-mail accounts, according to the agency’s top official in New York.

‘As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,’ Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.

[snip]

FBI officials in Washington denied that cost-cutting was putting agents at a disadvantage.

Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau’s 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.

Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the agency’s New York City office, also said that 100 city agents have been given Internet-ready phones such as BlackBerry devices.

[snip]

Senator Charles Schumer called for better access to technology for agents.

‘The FBI should have the tools it needs to fight terrorism and crime in the 21st century, most of all in New York City, and one of the most effective means of communications is e-mail and the Internet,’ he said.

‘FBI agents not having e-mail or Internet access is much too much a pre-9/11 mentality.’

Kudos to Sen. Schumer for the excellent snark. One has to wonder about a government that raises its debt ceiling again, but can’t afford email accounts. Maybe the FBI should go directly to China instead and ask if that country would be willing to cover the bill in exchange for some FBI-IOUs?

Heck, go ahead! I give the FBI my permission to add another million or two to the current debt being incurred in the name of the next generation.

*Sci-Fi fan side note: Agents with Blackberries?! Can you imagine Fox Mulder getting his tips and inside info….on a Blackberry? Calling Scully…on his Blackberry? *shudder*

Fair and Balanced??

Crooks and Liars has a great screen grab:

Faux News – all the news that’s fit to twist.