perfidy

Here's a couple hundred dick jokes:

• My dick is so big, there's still snow on it in the summertime.
• My dick is so big, I went to The Viper Room and my dick got right in. I had to stand and argue with the doorman.
• My dick is so big, I have to call it Mr. Dick in front of company.
• My dick is so big, it won't return Spielberg's calls.
• My dick is so big, it graduated a year ahead of me from high school.
• My dick has an elevator and a lobby.
• My dick has better credit than I do.
• My dick is so big, clowns climb out of it when I cum.
• My dick is so big, it was overthrown by a military coup. It's now known as the People’s Democratic Republic of My Dick.
• My dick is so big, it has casters.
• My dick is so big, I'm already fucking a girl tomorrow.
• My dick is so big, ships use it to find their way into the harbor.
• My dick is so big, there was once a movie called Godzilla vs. My Dick.
• My dick is so big, it lives next door.
• My dick is so big, I entered it in a big-dick contest and it came in first, second, and third.
• My dick is so big, it votes.
• My dick is a better dresser than I am.
• My dick is so big, it has a three-picture deal.
• My dick is so big that the head of it has only seen my balls in pictures.
• My dick is so big, Henry Aaron used it to hit his 750th home run.
• My dick runs the 440 in 15 seconds
• My dick is the Walrus, koo koo ga joob.
• No matter where I go, my dick always gets there first.
• My dick takes longer lunches than I do.
• My dick contributed fifty thousand dollars to the Democratic National Committee.
• My dick was once the ambassador to China.
• My dick is so big, it's gone condo.
• My dick hit .370 in the minors before it hurt its knee.
• My dick was almost drafted by the Cleveland Browns, but Art Modell didn't want a bigger dick than he was on the team.

• My dick is so big, I use the Eiffel Tower as a French tickler.
• My dick is so big, I could wear it as a tie if I wasn't so afraid of getting a hard-on and killing myself.
• My dick is so big, I have to use an elastic zipper.
• My dick is so big, it has feet.
• My dick is so big, a homeless family lives underneath it.
• My dick is so big, it takes four fat women and a team of Clydesdales to jack me off.
• My dick is so big, my mother was in labor for three extra days.
• My dick is so big, they use the bullet train to test my condoms.
• My dick is so big, it has investors.
• My dick is so big, it seats six.
• My dick is so big, I use a hula hoop as a cock ring.
• My dick is so big, we use it at parties as a limbo pole.
• My dick is so big, King Kong is going to climb up it in the next remake.
• My dick is so big, it has an opening act.
• My dick is so big, I can fuck an elevator shaft.
• My dick is so big, it has its own Wheaties box.
• My dick is so big, I have to cook it breakfast in the mornings.
• My dick is so big, the city had to carve a hole in the middle of it so cars could get through.
• My dick is so big, every time I get hard I cause a solar eclipse.
• My dick is so big, it only plays arenas.
• If you cut my dick in two, you can tell how old I am.
• My dick was once set on fire for a Dino DiLaurentis movie.
• My dick is so big, it needs an airplane warning light.
• My dick is so big, Trump owns it.
• My dick is so big that we're all a part of it, and it's all a part of us.
• My dick is so big, I can never sit in the front row.
• My dick is so big, that it has its own dick. And even my dick's dick is bigger than your dick.
• My dick is so big, you can't blow me without a ladder.
• My dick is so big, it only does one show a night.
• My dick is so big, you can ski down it.
• My dick is so big, it has an elbow.
• My dick is so big, I have to check it as luggage when I fly.
• My dick is so big, it has a personal trainer.
• My dick is so big, that right now it's in the other room fixing us drinks.
• My dick is so big, it has a retractable dome.
• My dick is so big, it has stairs up the center like the Statue of Liberty.
• My dick is so big, there's a sneaker named "Air My Dick"
• My dick is so big, I'm it's bitch.
• My dick is so big, it's against the law to fuck me without protective headgear.
• My dick is so big, I could fuck a tuba.
• My dick is so big, Stephen Hawking has a theory about it.
• My dick is so big, it has its own gravity
• NASA once launched a space probe to search for the tip of my dick.
• My dick is so big, it's impossible to see all of it without a satellite.
• The inside of my dick contains billions and billions of stars.
• My dick is so big, it has a spine.
• My dick is so big, it has a basement.
• My dick is so big, movie theaters now serve popcorn in small, medium, large, and My Dick.
• My dick is more muscular than I am.
• My dick is so big, it has cable.
• My dick is so big, it violates seventeen zoning laws.
• My dick is so big, it has its own page in the Sierra Club calendar.
• My dick is so big, it has a fifty-yard line.
• My dick is so big, I was once in Ohio and got a blow job in Tennessee.
• My dick is so big, Las Vegas casinos fly it into town for free.
• My dick is so big, I can braid it.
• My dick is so big, that when it's Eastern Standard Time at the tip, it's Central Mountain Time at my balls.
• My dick is so big, I painted the foreskin red, white, and blue and used it as a flag.
• My dick is so big, I can sit on it.
• My dick is so big, it can chew gum.
• My dick is so big, it only tips with hundreds.
• My dick is so big, the Carnegie Deli named a sandwich after it. Actually, two sandwiches.
• My dick is so big, the city was going to build a statue of it but they ran out of cement.
• My dick is so big, Michael Jackson wants to build an amusement park on it.
• My dick is so big, when I get hard my eyebrows get pulled down to my neck.
• My dick is so big, you're standing on it.
• My dick is so big, it only comes into work when it feels like it.
• My dick is so big, it plays golf with the president.
• My dick is so big, it charges money for its autograph.
• My dick is so big, it has an agent. My dick's people will call your people. Let's have lunch with my dick.
• My dick is so big, it's right behind you.
• My dick is so big, when I broke my leg, they didn't put a cast on it, they just strapped it to my dick.
• My dick is so big, when I was in a porno, they had to release it on a 4 disc DVD box set.
• My dick is so big, it thinks the Grand Canyon is a virgin.
• My dick is so big, they named the invasion of Normandy after it. (Usually just known as D day)
• My dick is so big, interplanetary distances are measured in light years and my dick years.
• My dick is so big, it bought Microsoft from petty cash.
• My dick is so big, FedEx won't insure it.
• My dick is so big, it has a horizon.
• My dick is so big, it has tonsils.
• My dick is so big, it's known as Doctor Pecker.
• My dick is so big, I run three-legged races by myself.
• My dick is so big, that when I fly, it has to take the train.
• My dick is so big, it posts big dick jokes.
• My dick is so big, that it can think of far more big dick jokes than I can.
• My dick is so big, they refuse to put me in prison.
• My dick is so big, I can shoot for the Moon and hit it.
• My dick is so big, its a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
• My dick is so big, when I fall down, I fuck everyone in China.
• My dick is so big, it urinates by telepathy.
• My dick is so big, I left it at home.
• My dick is so big, it don't have veins, it has pipes.
• My dick is so big, sometimes it jerks me off.
• My dick is so big it was impeached by Congress.
• My dick is so big, Florida had to measure it twice.
• My dick is so big, it killed its ex-wife and got away with it.
• My dick is so big, it's not just famous, it's Infamous.
• My dick is so big, it has a stunt double.
• My dick is so big, compasses do not function properly if they get too close.
• My dick is so big, the Pope has blessed it.
• My dick is so big, Al Gore invented it
• My dick is so big, black holes fall into it.
• My dick is so big, premature ejaculation takes ninety minutes.
• My dick is so big, it's wanted in nine states, and Canada.
• My dick is so big, when I get aroused, the Earth develops an elliptical orbit.
• My dick is so big, it's in a boy band with four other big dicks.
• My dick is so big, it's a government scapegoat.
• My dick is so big, it has its own seat in Congress.
• My dick is so big, it's worshipped as a Pagan God.
• My dick is so big, I can change channels without the remote.
• My dick is so big, I use it to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border.
• My dick is so big, I have to stand in the hall when I take a piss.
• My dick is so big, it gives me an allowance.
• My dick is so big Alan Greenspan uses it to raise interest rates.
• My dick is so big, if I didn't sleep on my side, planes would crash into it at night.
• My dick is so big, I have to use a complex irrigation system just to take a piss.
• My dick is so big, it has it's own time zone - central dick time.
• My dick is so big, it could feed Ethiopia for a month.
• My dick is so big, Frodo carried the Ring to it.
• My dick is so big, Osama bin Laden tried to fly a 747 into it.
• My dick is so big, it has its own moon.
• My dick is so big, it has its own wing at the Louvre.
• My dick is so big, Jimmy Hoffa is still hiding below it.
• My dick is so big, it has its own telethon.

[wik] I should note that most of these are from Drew Carey's book, and from some site I can't remember.

I meant to post this days ago, but the annual grueling Independence Day trek to Ohio and preparations therefor intervened. I was shocked, shocked to discover that Michael Barone of US News and World Report very nearly stole our thunder. In the beginning of his RealClearPolitics piece on the NYT's treasonous article, he is just one word away from trademark infringement:

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

While its no longer as timely as it might have been if I had posted this last week, its still a good article. Go ahead, read it. You know you want to.

When Margarete Barthel walked into the museum at the Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1999, she told the docent who she was. She was the first guard ever to admit to returning to the place as a visitor.

A Washington Post story about a German woman who was once a guard at Ravensbruck, the only concentration camp solely dedicated to the penning and slaughter of women, is full of jarring dissonances between beauty and horror, idyllic youth and authoritarian coercion. As with most such stories, the notion of free will is complicated by the workings of the system and the strong instinct of people for self-preservation. It is even more complicated in retrospect, as an old woman searches for an absolution she must surely know she does not deserve. Not a pleasant read, but a most fascinating one.

h/t Gary Farber.

Those of you who are married... what would happen to you if you came home from a long day in the word-mines, hung your nice grey fedora on the peg by the door and said, "Woman.... Fix me a plate!" And what would happen if, after an evening of Ed Sullivan and a desultory game of bridge with the neighbors, you said to your wife, "Woman, it is time to service me! You will get in the bedroom and strip, now!"

Would you even do that? Even in jest? And what would you expect to happen afterwards? In the experience of every married couple I am friends with, joking about this would be like juggling with live grenades, and saying something like this in seriousness would be... well... unhealthy.

Well, how about writing your authority to do so in your pre-nup? Meet Travis Frey, an Iowa man currently up on charges for kidnapping his own wife and for child pornography. The Smoking Gun has a copy of his insane pre-nup draft, unsigned, that his wife submitted as evidence of his crazy-man insanitude, after the break.

Excerpts after the cut:

Hygiene & Self Care: You will shave every third day which includes underarms, chest, legs and pubic area (navel to anus), all areas are to be completely clean shaven. Above your vagina you may have a patch of pubic hair in any shape, that must be centered above your vaginal slit. It will measure no greater than 2.0” x 1.0’ and will maintain a length of less than 1/3”.

Sleepware: I will select all your sleepware for you, and you will find it under your pillow if there is none then you are to be naked. You are to have your sleepware on within 20 minutes of the kids being in bed.

Clothes & Other Apparel: You will wear only thigh highs & garters and only thong panties. The only exception will be during your menstrual cycle at which time you could wear either or both. Half of your shoe purchases will be high heels, 2’ or more. You will wear these high heels more often.

You will give me all non-thong panties and all panty hose, all tights, all knee-high and/ or ankle high nylons. You be able to keep 5 pairs of non-thong panties of your choice for use during your menstrual cycle.

My Time: When we are at home and alone as a family from when you are to be naked until 12:00am or for three hours, whichever is later, will be MY TIME. This time will be time you will devote solely to me, whereas you will be in my service to do Anything and Everything I want, which may or may not be sexual in manner.

Good Behavior: Since there will be no trading, negotiations, or concilations of any kind you are given chances to earn Good Behavior Days (GBDs). TO receive GBD's you are to be totally compliant with everything requested or expected of you, and perform everything with complete and total enthusiasm. In addition GBD's will be given when you do things from the descriptions below when not expected. If you try to perform something not expected and I tell you no you will recieve half GBD's. Specfic GBD info is listed at the bottom right of each description.

I'm not even going to get into the detailed parts about "noncompliance" and "misbehavior" or the lists of do's and don'ts (No complaining to or about me; No whining, crying, sobbing our pouting; Do be loving and devoted at all times). It is very important to read all four pages of this incredible document.

[wik]According to the commentors at Demure Thoughts, Frey sprung this contract on his wife well after they were married, which makes this into a pathetic airing of petty grievances. Somehow that's even sadder, like Hitler in his bunker giving orders to phantom armies as the Russians burn Berlin.

I considered getting this as a Christmas gift for Johno,

but considering what I got him for his birthday, his wife would probably drive down from Massachusetts and kill me.

British rocker Gary Glitter has been charged with child molestation in Vietnam. This follows being banned from Cambodia after child rights activists put his name on an entry blacklist, a brief stay in Cuba, and leaving Britain after convicted of possessing over 4000 pornographic images of children on his computer.

Kinda sad when even third world countries with a penchant for brutality won't put up with your antics.

A tiny, tiny little burg in Texas has officially changed its name to "DISH." In return, the greedy yet unambitious residents will get free satellite TV for ten years. DISH Network will get some publicity at essentially no cost, and the residents will have sold their dignity for a mess of media.

This is but the latest incarnation of the commodification of place names. The first wave was selling naming rights to arenas and other venues for corporate sponsorship dollars. The PSINet stadium in Baltimore. The Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater in the National Air and Space Museum. And countless other examples. Now, whole towns are giving it up for corporate bucks. A while back, Halfway, Oregon changed its name to half.com for a year.

I have no brief against corporations doing their thing and making money. In recent years, the best entertainment on television has often been the commercials; which are more innovative short for cinema than they are crass advertisements. But this trend is somehow across the blurry and ill-defined line between healthy self-advocacy and stunningly bad taste.

Not long ago, the FBI uncovered an enormous bribery scam in the South Carolina legislature. Delegates were blatantly selling votes for money. A sizable fraction of the SC Senate was convicted of bribery. The thing that stuck with me was a quote from the lead investigator, something on the order of, "What surprised was not that the Senators were selling votes. What suprised us was how cheaply they were selling them for." Some votes were bought for as little as a hundred dollars.

This is how the town of Clark, Texas became the town of DISH, Texas. If you're going to sell your soul, don't sell it for a lollypop and a soda.

• Noodle, Tx could become Cup-A-Noodle for a year's supply of soup for each resident.
• Telephone, Tx could become AT&T, Tx for a year a free long distance calling. (If they're smart, they could start a bidding war...)
• Dime Box, Tx could change its name to Dime Bag for free Anthrax concerts.
• Birthright, Tx could get some promotional consideration from manufacturers of the pill by changing to Birth Control, Tx.
• Cash, TX could become the launch pad for the movie, I Walk the Line without even changing its name.
• Ding Dong, Tx is another town that wouldn't even need to change its name.

I just hope we never see a Viagra, in any state. At least we'd know where not to go.

The sex industry would have a field day offering promotions in Pennsylvania, many towns there wouldn't even need to change their names: Porkey, Blue Ball, Intercourse, Pleasant Union, and Climax. Apparently, Blue Ball is very near to Intercourse. Cross promotion! And if none of those products work, there's always Panic.

Outside of Pennsylvania, the possibilities are endless. Just imagine what could be done in these towns:

• Goodfood, Mississippi
• Hot Coffee, Mississippi
• Footville, Wisconsin
• Fort Dick, California
• Hicksville, Ohio
• Number Nine, Massachusetts
• Superior Bottom, West Virginia
• Disco, Tennessee
• Hooker, Arkansas
• Roachtown, Illinois
• Smackover, Arkansas
• Bumpass, Virginia
• Glasscock, Texas

It turns out that Newfoundland would be a marketer's paradise. Look at these names:

• Dildo
• Conception Bay
• Blow Me Down
• Come By Chance
• Pothead
• Whitless Bay
• Cow's Head
• Cupid
• Bacon Cove
• Happy Adventure
• Heart's Desire
• Heart's Content
• Heart's Delight
• Bareneed

The head of the Orlando NAACP has announced that he's switched parties, and is now a white, upper class Republican.

OK folks, I need a ruling on something.

As my fellow Ministers and a few readers are aware, I have a second regular job at night at a certain armed courier company. Let's call it "ArmCo". I work with a few young men who are smart, funny, and have much more on the ball than a pitiless, soulless career at ArmCo might suggest. They know it too, but are still a little too unseasoned to understand how little time they have left before they're out of better job options and ArmCo is the best of the bad ones. We have alot of laughs though, and get along great.

At night we usually get everything done early, and have alot of time to gab. Despite whatever meandering twists and turns the conversations might take, astute observers will realize there are really only two topics: chicks, and zombies.

So.

Until last night, those two themes were separated by a vast and yawning gulf. Until last night, they were safely kept far apart. Until last night, there was absolutely no consideration of the unholy and just deeply weird repercussions that might arise from carnal relations with the undead. Until last night, when sort of mostly out of the blue, Dan asked,

"Say I'm tappin' a zombie chick, right? A chick who used to be hot and maybe still looked mostly normal. And say she doesn't bite me or anything. Would I then become a zombie?"

...

Huh.

...

Huh.

...

Here's my reasoning thus far (accept the premise as is. Dan is a former Marine who was wounded and medically discharged. He doesn't have a plate in his head or anything, but he sometimes lets you think he does. Just roll with it):

One the one hand, it would seem that fluid exchange is the essence (to reference both comically brilliant mathematician John Nash AND comically brilliant fictional character General Jack T. Ripper) of zombie creation. That is, some fluid from an existing zombie enters the body of normal human, typically by way of open wound, and presto-changeo the human becomes a zombie in some certain time.

But upon reflection, I'm not sure we ever clearly understand which fluid is the medium for infection: saliva? Blood? Bile? Um, other..? To be sure it depends on the zombies we're talking about: Romero zombies are pretty unambiguously bite/saliva driven, as 28 Days Later zombies (arguably not zombies, but leave it alone for now) were clearly the blood-spewing-and-sharing variety.

As Dan didn't specify which universe his hot zombie chick came from, I focused instead on what I was given: one female zombie. No open wounds. No blood. No other possibility for fluid exchange outside the naughty bits. Would Dan then become an undead Dan? What about with a condom?

I went round and round with this, but just couldn't come down definitively on one side or the other.

Alert readers will have noted that the countdown timer to your right is now counting up. I ordered Civilization IV from Amazon on the understanding that I would recieve the game yesterday. Five minutes ago, I logged into Amazon to find out, as they say, "Where's my stuff?"

Amazon is still under the impression that I will receive my package on the 25th:

Corksucking Iceholes. I want my civ, dammit!

[wik] Farging Bastiches! I just checked my account and the picture is exactly the same as the one above. Those fucktards are still guessing that I'll get my game on the 25th.

Quick: Is this Pat Robertson quotation parody or the real thing? It's so hard to tell these days.

“Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Sunday. “Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?”

Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony.

“This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards,” Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.”

If you said "parody"... you're right! For once, Robertson did not say this shockingly stupid thing. If you said "the real thing," well... there's always next time, and with Patty R, there will always be a next time.

I think Ellen Degeneres should change her name to Lesbian Ellen Degeneres.

[wik] But let's also not forget that Robertson is not only a funny clown capering for our enjoyment. Robertson's "charity," Operation Blessing (given a beeeeg boost a few weeks back by FEMA) is also doing its part to actively advance the cause of evil in the world, funneling money to shady African diamond cartels. I can't wait for all that hurricane relief money to end up buying AKs for some diamond "merchants" in Sierra Leone.

As I type this, NPR's All Things Considered has just finished delivering a story, entitled "A Dilemma Over Sheltering Sex Offenders".

All Things Considered, August 19, 2005 · Public concern over sex offenders has led Florida to open its 59 prisons as hurricane shelters and require registered sex offenders on probation to report there if they don't have anywhere else to go. Registered sex offenders can't go to a public shelter because their probation bars them from being around children. Some sex offenders on probation say the requirement is being punished twice for their crime. Judith Smelser of member station WMFE reports.

Now, I consider myself to be of at least average intelligence, and I try very hard not to read too much into the presentation of any given news story, whether from NPR, Fox, or any of the other standard media outlets. This makes it possible for me to enjoy them all, at various times.

But if any reader could be so kind to give the story a listen, via the "Listen" button at the link above, I'd appreciate an opinion on the thrust of the story. Net: Sex offenders on probation or under state supervision aren't allowed to go to hurricane shelters in Florida, and instead, if they live in an area that's been forcibly evacuated and they have no safe place to go, they have to present themselves to their neighborhood prison, where they're treated like guests rather than prisoners. They have to wear name tags, they can't smoke, and if they leave and go somewhere other than home, they're at risk of violating probation/parole, but they're provided safe refuge.

Here's the thing - I'd swear NPR was trying to make me feel sorry for the sex offenders, and I'd like to hear someone tell me I'm just imagining this.

I recognize that there is a class of registered sex offenders who don't fit into the standard mold, such as 19 year olds with 17 year old partners, rather than, say, a Boston Diocese priest in recent memory. We're talking two completely different "transgression levels", in other words, and I haven't a clue what transgression got the two fellows who spoke their minds in the NPR story onto the list of registered offenders.

However, in order to wring a tear from me after hearing this story, if applied to some disgusting pervert who just wants to be treated like he's not a disgusting pervert because, you know, he's done his time and all that, it would take a ball peen hammer to the grapes.

Lego corp, that evil capitalist monstrosity, has released for sale a lego version of the second Death Star:

Those bastards couldn't make all these wonderful toys back when Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back were around, could they? Noooo, not when I was a kid. My two favorite toys when I was a lad were legos and star wars action figures. But the two sets of toys were mostly incompatible. How I yearned for Star Wars Legos. I wrote them a letter. Bastards! Now I'm too old and my son's too young. Crap!

@#!?%!

Perhaps oddly for a guy with a temporary disdain for political commentary, my first short note at the new home so graciously provided by my friends here at the Ministry has a political tinge. It's occasioned by Buckethead's posting about the proposed changes to Senate rules, now made moot by the agreement reported this evening.

As that matter's already well covered at the link and comments above, my take's a bit macro. Harry Reid, in the tradition of folks from both sides of the political aisle, has engaged in a long-running game of pissing on peoples' shoes while claiming it's raining. Similarly to the theatrics of Trent Lott, who originated the phrase "nuclear option", and Bill Frist, among others repeatedly use it, the game involves sleight of hand, repeated ad nauseam until the hoped-for moment when everyone forgets their legs are being pulled, with vigor.

As evidence for Sen. Reid's success, the Washington Post makes reference to the proposed rule changes as "an arcane constitutional question", when it's neither arcane nor even a constitutional question at all. Mr. Reid regularly refers to it as a (capital C) "Constitutional matter", intentionally confusing the actual requirement for "advice and consent" with his desire to let the minority outvote the majority. Frist, Lott, and the rest haven't helped by talking about the "nuclear option" as though a change to the Senate rules was utterly unprecedented and disgusting, sort of like wiping out a couple cities in Japan.

Yeesh. You can't get a straight story out of either, and it's become a battle of drooling retard sound bites, none of which accurately reflects the position of its dispenser. In my admittedly non-existent perfect world, Reid would make a case to the public at large that those "extreme" judges such as Owen and Brown are actually extreme, rather than, say, not holding the political views that he thinks they should hold as females, African Americans, or in one case, both. Claiming to disagree with their views isn't the same as convincing the rest of the Senate or the American public you're right. Just ask Tom Daschle, if you can find him. But it's easier to cast it as a constitutional infringement, or the trampling of the rights of a group who, ahem, didn't carry the majority in either house of Congress.

And the Republicans? Sure, it's easy to change the rules, far easier than making your case and doing what Senators do - trading horses. There's not much room for give and take on a yes/no vote for a judicial appointment, particularly in a case when so much testosterone's already been spilt. Gilding the proposed rule change under the previously chosen name, "nuclear option" (until Karl Rove dictated other nomenclature) was a great way to further inflame prostates all 'round, but not good for much else, like an actual resolution to the matter.

And so now we've got a compromise. Since I believe 80% of Americans are clustered within a standard deviation of dead center, I'm drawn to the conclusion that roughly 80% of the populace is, like me, happy that some form of resolution's been reached. (Yes, I just made that 80% up. Twice. Out of whole cloth)

Complete happiness, however, remains elusive. I'd enjoy the ability, for once, to deactivate the bullshit filter when listening to my elected representatives as they troll for dupes.

From an ABC news piece on an audit of Medicaid in New York State:

[New York State Comptroller Alan] Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter Sunday to "take immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers."

What? Yes, that's right...

Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday. Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said.

Gaaaaaaah. One thing you can count on... whenever a story like this breaks, the politicians will descend like ants to lap up the publicity. Senator Chuck Schumer: come on down!

"While I believe that HHS did not do this intentionally, when the government pays for Viagra for sex offenders, it could well hurt many innocent people..."

Thanks, Chuck. That really clarifies the issue for me. I though it was about cutting government waste: I'm relieved that you've twigged to the notion that giving boners to babytouchers is not in anyone's best interest. Although I do have to wonder: why is the government subsidizing Viagra for anyone? What sense does that make. (Well... as much sense as requiring soldiers to surrender their nail clippers to TSS, but letting them hold on to their M-16s and bayonets, but I digress.)

Hat tip to Reason's Julian Sanchez, who goes where I dare not in his choice of headline.

"We're trying to get a permit from the city," he says. "Because you know, you can't secede from the union without getting a permit from the city."

I ardently wish this weren't a joke, but we're all perfectly safe regardless.

Late last spring, Boston Globe editor Martin Baron ran a page 1 pic that purported to show American soldiers caught in the act of raping Iraqi girls. It pissed off alot of people, not the least of whom were citizens confused about why such a graphic photo was in the paper at all, let alone the front page. It was also cause for kookier elements of the state government to parade around with the pics, decrying the acts, the American military, yanqui imperialists, whitey, and The Man.

Only problem was that the pics were fake. Not only were they not pictures of a heinous act, the men in question were not soldiers. It was all staged by...ahem...models, in costumes, and posted on a porn site for kinkos who dig rape scenes.

The story of the real source of the pics came from the semi-strange World Net Daily, and after a brief round of blaming the messenger, the Globe sort of apologised for printing graphic pics but not for running fake ones, or for smearing American soldiery.

In recognition of this deed, and characteristic of what befalls such men in this part of the world, Baron is being rewarded. He's been named George Beveridge Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Among the criteria for the award is imagination. He certainly demonstrated his imagination with that little photo caper: at first, by imagining he had the scoop of the year; and later for his fantastic powers of denial, suggesting a robust imagination indeed.

In an ABC report on the CBS document pooch screwery, the officer's wife and son also doubt that the memos in question could have come from Killian. At the end of the piece is a very droll understatement:

Many Democrats are worried that if they are found to be forgeries, it will be a setback for Sen. John Kerry's campaign to defeat Bush in November.

I guess worrying about the professional integrity of a major news outlet, concurrant slander on a sitting president, and the fact that some of your allies are incompetant scumbags rate pretty far down the list.

So, sell some -ahem- water filtration products online and you go to prison a la Tommy Chong.

Get busted actually smoking actual crack in your car and you get probation and community service, a la George Clinton.

Am I wrong because I'm confused?

The archdiocese of Portland, OR is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the weight of $160M in lawsuits over child molestation by priests.

Bad idea, I think. Back at the height of its own scandal, the Boston AD considered doing the same, but chose not to for two good reasons: 1) everyone gets to see your private records, and 2) just how is it gonna look when plaintiffs in child abuse suits have to go to the back of the line of creditors? Will that make you seem more, or less concerned with the well-being of your congregation and Church?

Ugly, ugly, ugly.