Last Call

And I leave you tonight with the best thing all weekend, right here.

Geeky Christmas

This spiffy video has some awesome ideas for your beloved geek.  Geeks are often misunderstood, so this will give you some options and ideas.  And if you are just stuck, a gift certificate to thinkgeek.com would be a good second idea.

But seriously, let the awesomeness begin.  I think every one of these would be on my short list.

Iran Up And Hit 'Em In Da Grill

Iran is dropping the pretense on why the West won't touch them on oil sanctions: they promise an era of $250 a barrel crude as a result.

"As soon as such an issue is raised seriously the oil price would soar to above $250 a barrel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in a newspaper interview.

The comments come as Iran strives to contain international reaction to the storming of the British embassy last week, a move which drew immediate condemnation from around the world and may galvanize support for tougher action against Tehran.

One would think that the game of "who keeps blowing up Iran's nuclear facilities" was obvious, but then again denial isn't just a rive in Egypt, as they say.

The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank -- which takes payment for the 2.6 million barrels Iran exports a day. The European Union is considering a ban -- already in place in the United States -- on Iranian oil imports.

So far neither Washington nor Brussels has finalized its move against the oil trade or the central bank amid fears of the possible impact on the global economy of restricting oil flows from the world's fifth biggest exporter.

Yeah, this is a card that will not be played anytime soon, everyone knows it, Iran is simply pointing it out.  Especially with the eurozone on verge of economic breakdown and the US economy not in too much better shape, serious oil sanctions on Tehran simply isn't an option.

So, we all go back to pretending Tehran's scientific nuclear labs are blowing up due to mysterious circumstances along with spontaneous student flash mobs closing the British Embassy there.

Such an odd little war.

Iran's military said on Sunday it had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, a military source told state television.

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying.

Iran also announcing that  it will shoot down drones in neighboring airspace. Cooler heads prevailing and all.

We hope.

Do You Want Fries With That? Round 2

New York (CNN) -- A fast-food worker whose run-in with two unruly customers was captured on cell phone video last month will not be indicted on assault charges, prosecutors said Saturday.

A grand jury voted against indicting Rayon McIntosh, who was seen allegedly swinging a metal object against two patrons at a McDonald's restaurant in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

He had been charged with felony assault, according to Joan Vollero, spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office.

The incident occurred at the restaurant on West 3rd Street in the early morning of October 12, and seemed to begin when the cashier questioned a $50 bill the women gave him, according to the video.

The two women responded by hurling obscenities at McIntosh. One of them then appeared to reach over the counter and slap his face, the video showed.

From there, one woman was seen climbing over the counter, sending the cashier running toward the kitchen area. The other woman is then seen walking around to join her friend.

The cashier reappears with what police described as a metal object and repeatedly takes swings at the women.

What the hell? Is the customer always so right that they get to break the law? If I'm reading it right, one of the women was the first to commit assault when she slapped him in the face. They went behind the counter after him. Maybe I'm sympathetic because I'd do the same thing in light of those facts. We are looking at assault on a man performing his duties at work, and then they intrude on his space, threatening him after already physically assaulting him. Hell yes he grabbed a metal bar and defended himself. Who wouldn't? And here is one more bit of enlightenment for anyone considering doing the same thing: self-defense classes teach you how to get an enemy down and keep them there. I would have given them a few extra knocks as a reminder and recommendation to stay down.

I was angry when I covered this the day after it happened, and I'm angrier now.

The lesson to be learned here is that you can't get away with anything you want when it comes to public employees. People who are following company rules and regulations are cussed, smacked, insulted, and they have to wear a smile and be respectful the whole time. Wake up, world. The worker in the company uniform wasn't put on this world to be your scratching post. If you act like an asshole and a bully, someone is eventually going to have enough and put you in your place. In this case, at least in my book, the bullies are two women who deserved every smack they got.  When you attack someone and intrude on their space, you get what you get and you can't complain.

A Thing Of Beauty, Appreciated Properly

Since I'm partially responsible for its genesis, I thought I'd mention that today's Tom Levenson piece deconstructing, demolishing, and disintegrating Megan McArdle's latest $1500 food processor-based "Let them eat cake" idiocy is a comfort to me, like apple cider on a rainy winter morning.  Dig him up and shake his hand, appreciate the man.

Oh, snap!  It’s a measure of McArdle’s particular qualities that she manages to transform whatever publication chooses to admit her to its space into that privileged corner of the school steps where the Mean Girls live.

I mean, seriously:  working at jobs we like for money less than that the 1 % can command so warps the character as to turn us unfortunate journalists and professors into hypocritical scolds.  Damn.  I’m short on my month’s quota of vituperation and visible displays of hair-shirt couture.

Of course, this is (a) simple pre-emption:  “I’m not a culinary snob, wielding cash to distract as I chase the lives of my betters.  You’re the snob!  So there!”

And (b) it’s nonsense.  Professors and journalists are not badly paid by any reasonable standard. Roberts himself is a professor of marketing at Baylor, and as of the 2009 mean salary for such faculty was $138,000.   That’s not Prada and hot and cold running Dom rich, but it’s not bad coin by anyone’s standards, and applied to the cost of living in Robert’s Waco, Texas, that’s a sum that will set you up very nicely indeed.

All this is crushing flies with a jack-hammer, I know, but the point is, I think, pretty damn obvious:  McArdle hasn’t or won’t do the work to test the question on the table: whether or not money buys you happiness.  So she throws monkey faeces at the wall instead.

I am not ashamed to admit that I aspire to someday deftly wield a snarkblade in such a manner, sharp enough to pare the truth from the offal with but a subtle flick of the wrist.  Tom then cleans his blade of McMegan's remaining dignity with an offhand motion before sheathing it directly in her own ego.

So one last thought, really an explanation about why it is McArdle so gets under my skin.

That would be because she so diminishes the craft I have spent decades learning and now teach:  how to write about matters of fact; how to be a journalist.  I’ve detailed some, (by no means all) of the kinds of errors of argument and interpretation in this one little fish-wrap piece that make a mockery of the notion of a bargain of honesty with one’s readers.  But I’ve left till now the tic that McArdle displays over and over again that tells you that she simply can’t be trusted.  And that would be her near-constant invocation of strangely generic sources.

Do read the entire piece, as it will be his last McMeganing for a while.  As Jack Nicholson famously said in Batman, if you gotta go, go with a smile.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 11

What makes Maureen Dowd so frustrating is that she's capable of completely sussing out what makes someone like Newt Gingrich tick, but is completely unable to find the time to figure out say, President Obama.

His mind is a jumble, an amateurish mess lacking impulse control. He plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas. He ejaculates concepts, notions and theories that are as inconsistent as his behavior.

He didn’t get whiplash being a serial adulterer while impeaching another serial adulterer, a lobbyist for Freddie Mac while attacking Freddie Mac, a self-professed fiscal conservative with a whopping Tiffany’s credit line, and an anti-Communist Army brat who supported the Vietnam War but dodged it.


“Part of the question I had to ask myself,” he said in a 1985 Wall Street Journal piece about war wimps, “was what difference I would have made.”

Newt swims easily in a sea of duality and byzantine ideas that don’t add up. As The Washington Post reported on Friday, an America under President Gingrich would have two Social Security systems — “one old, one new, running side by side” — two tax systems and two versions of Medicare.

Of course, Newt's not that hard to figure out. The only reason he's now being considered an "ideas guy" for the GOP is that his intellectual competition is Michele Bachmann.  Newt's single largest contribution to the American political process was breeding absolute contempt for the American political process itself.

Mr. Gingrich did everything in his power to dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw it. When he became speaker in 1995, Mr. Gingrich moved quickly to slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories.

Of course, when party control in Congress changes, many of those employed by the previous majority party expect to lose their jobs. But the Democratic committee staff members that Mr. Gingrich fired in 1995 weren’t replaced by Republicans. In essence, the positions were simply abolished, permanently crippling the committee system and depriving members of Congress of competent and informed advice on issues that they are responsible for overseeing.

What makes this man such an odious little pile is the fact he gave the GOP the best and most effective weapon they've ever known:  how to make a government that can't work.  Now, 17 years later, we have a political party running on a platform that government has never worked and that a vast majority of it needs to be abolished in order to directly give power to "the people", which in this case means the super-wealthy.

All that has proceeded to such a marvelous extent that Gingrich is considered a viable candidate again in the "era of no government", so much so that he's now leading in Iowa and gaining significantly in New Hampshire with a month to go.

So yes, please nominate this little troll.  I'd love an Obama second term.

Everything Old And Unexploded Is New Again

Climate change may be a harsh mistress, but history is an even worse one as the people of Koblenz, Germany have discovered this weekend.

Life has come to a standstill in the western German city of Koblenz, where 45,000 people -- nearly half of the city´s population -- have been evacuated after the discovery of several dangerous World War II bombs.


"It´s the largest German evacuation since the end of the war," fire brigade spokesman Ronald Eppelsheim said Sunday.

For 65 years, the Rhine River hid three bombs that were dropped by American and British warplanes in the last years of the war. When water levels dropped to record lows last week, the bombs were finally found.

"While time passed by, and Koblenz was rebuild(ing), the bombs got even more dangerous", bomb-disposal squad member Jurgen Wagner said Sunday.

The largest of the explosives is a 1.8-ton British air bomb that has the potential to destroy the city´s center, according to the fire brigade.

But the focus of attention isn't on the largest bomb -- it's on the much smaller, 125-kilogram (275-pound) American high-explosive bomb. "This one has been transformed on impact of the earth. We might have some serious problems deactivating the detonator," Wagner said.

That's not a good thing, or course.  One has to wonder just how many more unexploded bombs are out there in areas of Europe now suffering from drought, where rivers like the Rhine and the Danube are near all-time recorded low levels this fall.

I'm sure if we yell SOLYNDRA loud enough, the problem will go away, right?

Last Call

And if you haven't heard yet, and that's because Bon is modest, her first contribution to the world of published literature is now in print in a collection of horror short stories called Frightmares: A Fistful Of Flash Fiction Horror available at Amazon.





Scare yourself up a copy this holiday season.

A Study Of Known Unknowns

John Hinderaker, whether on purpose or by complete accident, hits upon the major problem for Republicans going forward right now without Mr. 9-9-9 (emphasis mine):

What happened to Herman Cain is what the Democrats intend to do to whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. They know they can’t win a debate on the economy or on President Obama’s record, so they will do everything they can to distract the voters’ attention from those matters, which should be decisive, and instead turn the focus to the GOP candidate and his or her alleged foibles. If Republican voters allow that to happen by nominating a candidate with baggage that permits the Democrats to turn him into the next Herman Cain, it is all too likely that President Obama will be re-elected, with consequences that can hardly be overestimated.

And exactly which candidate meets that criteria?  One Percent Huntsman?  Second Chance Palin?  Whatever position Mitt Romney is taking this week?  If there is a candidate that actually fits that description, Hinderaker doesn't mention who they are.

Perhaps that's because precisely none of the remaining contestants on "So You Think You Can Run The Country" here are anything more than the sums totals of their foibles and baggage, defined so completely as aggregate concretions of varying densities of suck.

If there was a Republican who could truly take on President Obama and win easily, would they be having essentially a completely open primary with the first House Speaker to face admonition for ethics violations as their current "top guy"?

I'm honestly curious as to whom Hinderaker is referring to, because I don't think they exist.

[UPDATE] What BooMan said: 

None of these candidates can unite the Republican Party. In fact, all of them will divide it in more or less devastating ways.

President Obama will win a second term precisely because of that.

Would You Like Fries With That?

HuffPo had this little piece highlighting two different fast food stupidities:

In Goshen, Ct., John Traonetta, 35, was charged with second-degree harassment after ordering takeout and requesting to perform a sex act on a teenaged female employee at the Zoar Drive-In. Traonetta has agreed to write an apology to the woman.

Moving down the East Coast, Shawn Porter, 32, of Deltona, Fl. got himself arrested after asking for "a blunt and some herbs" at a Burger King drive-through. The cashier could smell marijuana coming from his car and a store manager called 911. The manager acknowledged that the incident was more of a nuisance than a major emergency. The police ran Porter's tags, located his car and discovered about 28 grams of pot -- hundreds of dollars worth of the drug. He is being held on a $1,000 bond.

Cain Unable, Part The Last

And he's done.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain effectively ended his White House bid on Saturday under the weight of accusations of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

Cain told supporters at an event in Atlanta that the charges hurled at him over the weeks are "false and unproved" but said they have taken a toll on him and his wife, Gloria, who appeared with him on stage.

"I am suspending my campaign," Cain said.

We have a photo from the event...




Good night, sweet comedy prince.  May flights of angels with nice racks and low self-esteem sing thy campaign to rest.

Cute Puppies Save Law Students. Yup, You Read That Right.

Law students are under a tremendous amount of stress as part of preparation for the work. However, for young people who are still learning how to deal with stress and insane competition, it's easy to get lost and forget that we need goodness and light in our lives.

Insert the best idea I've heard in a long time. Puppies were brought in to lighten up law students, some of which stayed at school to study over Thanksgiving break. It's a lesson in balance and a reminder that loving an animal is good for the soul.

“Especially this time of the year, law school seems to ruin your life,” said Allison Tisdale, 24, a third-year from Texas who didn’t go home for Thanksgiving because she had to study. Holding a squirming puppy, she said, “you get to be human again.”

After the Yale Law Library added a “therapy dog” named Monty to its collection in the spring, a number of other law schools have used the gentle yapping of puppies to break the stifling pressure that blankets their campuses. Thursday was the second time Mason’s law school, in Arlington County, partnered with a Chantilly-based rescue group for “Puppy Day.”

Studies have found that the legal profession has higher-than-average rates of depression and problems with substance abuse. Many law schools now teach students how to balance the stress of late-night legal research, tort outlines and case summaries with healthy habits: running marathons, volunteering or hanging out with a pet.

“If people don’t learn how to balance their lives in law school, and then, if they go to a big firm, chances are they won’t balance their lives there, either,” said James E. Leffler, executive director of Lawyers Helping Lawyers, a Virginia nonprofit organization that offers assistance with substance abuse and mental-health issues. “They need to learn to take care of themselves and to also look out for their colleagues.”

And maybe, when animal causes need their help, they will donate a little time to help animals in need. Puppy love is the best kind, after all.

Auto-Neurotic In Alabama

One has to wonder what Alabama cops have against foreign car executives anyway.  Oh wait: they have no choice but to ask for papers, please.

The Guardian reports that Honda manager Ichiro Yada was arrested earlier this week at a checkpoint in Leeds, Alabama, despite being able to show police his passport, US work permit, and international driver’s license. He was not taken into custody, however, but was ticketed and released on a signature bond.

Yada’s international license was apparently not sufficient to satisfy the letter of the law, which required him to carry either an Alabama license or one issued by Japan. The charges were dismissed only when his attorney faxed a copy of his Japanese driver’s license to the judge.

The mayor of the city of Leeds defended his officers, saying, “The police are instructed to follow the law as written. People are trying to use this to make the law look bad. That’s not our problem. We’re going to enforce the laws of state of Alabama.” 

And you know, when laws against interracial marriage (which by the way technically existed as part of Alabama's state constitution until 2000 long after the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967) and Jim Crow laws were in place in Alabama, they used the exact same excuse.  Here's a tip, man:  it's the law itself that makes Alabama look bad, not the stringent efforts to enforce it.

And yes.  It is your problem as an elected official in the state.  It's a law forcing you to be a racist, reactionary douche bag.  Saying "that's the law, it's not our problem" immediately makes it your problem.

I'm guessing at some point, these automakers and other foreign companies are just going to stop doing business with the state.  Alabama's already lost major agriculture business due to the law.  It really is an example of "job-killing regulations".

But it doesn't matter.  Gotta rid the state of the unclean and the impure.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 10

Newt's baaaaaaack, and stomping hard on all the 90's era dog whistles:

So more Americans now get food stamps therefore and we now give it away as cash,” Gingrich said of President Obama. “You don’t get food stamps. You get a credit card and the credit card can be used for anything. We’ve had people take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii.” 

Only one problem, Newtie.  You're lying out your ass.

Each of Gingrich’s claims about food stamps is so ridiculous -- especially for a self-styled policy wonk -- that we wondered whether he was really intending to be serious. (By publication time, we did not receive answers to several queries made to his press staff.) But the transcript makes it sound like he wasn’t joking, so we’ll assume he wasn’t. For being so ridiculously wrong in so many ways, we rate his statement Pants on Fire.

But you know what?  Republicans don't care about truth.  They just hate President Obama (and anyone who looks like him).  And that includes portraying "poor people" as the singular cause of all our economic woes.

"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works," the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. "So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."

Gingrich lately has been unspooling an urban policy, beginning with his comments at Harvard University last month when he discussed child labor laws. "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods," Gingrich said then, "entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid."

Children in poor neighborhoods, he said, should be allowed to serve as janitors in their schools to earn money and develop a connection to the school.

Really? Newt Gingrich, the first Speaker of the House to be brought up on ethics charges before the full House of Representatives, who faced 84 ethics violations, and was made to pay a $300,000 fine?  This is the man lecturing anyone on "work ethics"?  I love it.  Newt Gingrich's full title is "Disgraced Former Speaker" for a reason.

Please let this billowing blowhard win the nomination.  I'd love to see Barack Obama win Kentucky...and every other state out there.

Last Call

And we have now reached the absolute bottom of American political significance.

Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump will play the role of moderator at a Republican debate in Des Moines, Iowa on Dec. 27, according to reports published Friday.

The debate, being staged by conservative magazine Newsmax, will be the first ever in presidential-level politics to be run by a reality TV show host, whom President Barack Obama not long ago referred to as a “carnival barker.”

“Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump,” Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, told The New York Times. “They may not agree with him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment.” 

Donald Trump.  Moderating a GOP debate.  Sponsored by Newsmax.   Entirely new branches of mathematics will have to be discovered in order to quantify just how sad, awful, and pathetic this is.  It's like The Joker moderating a supervillain debate sponsored by LexCorp, only that would be far more amusing and would have more realistic job creation and foreign policy plans as they discuss enslaving humanity.

Does anyone else hear the carnival music at this point?  I'll go ahead and call the winner of this debate right now:  President Obama.