Memnison Journal

The guy who took the picture of Scalia doing his flick routine (which, if you saw the picture in my posts yesterday, he did right into the lens of the camera) worked as a freelancer for the last 10 years for the Boston Archdiocese. They fired him yesterday for passing the picture on to the Boston Herald.

The *reason* he did that was that when the Herald went forward with the story, the Archdiocese, which is bankrupt from protecting child molester priests from their victims, and was unwilling to do anything on that subject internally, proclaimed that the story was nonsense, and nobody had any proof that Scalia had done anything of the sort. So when the Archdiocese and Scalia were revealed as lying on the subject by the photos, they fired the photographer.

Nice that there’s such a thing as honesty, truth and spiritual honor, n’est ce pas?

The Bush Administration now says that the levees in the New Orleans area will not be restored to even pre-Katrina levels; some areas are too rural or poor to bother with. Part of the expense is caused by that darn wetlands reduction that the folks said didn’t happen; with no wetlands to cut the fury of storms, etc., flooding and disasters are more likely. Need better levees, but gosh, can’t afford ‘em. Better rebuild 30 feet above sea level if you can. Can’t do that? Whoops.

I’m not sure this ad will sell this SUV.

But this is the best Juggling video I’ve EVER seen. Wow.

First three from Froomkin:

• ‘Here’s how I’ve been getting ready for the press corps,’ said Cheney, as a slide appeared showing him aiming what looked like a high-powered rifle with a scope.”
• With his vision of Iraq belied not only by an insurgency that he didn’t anticipate, but also by sectarian rivalries that he disregarded before the invasion, President Bush has come up with a new rhetorical line of attack: It’s not my fault, it’s Saddam’s.
• It’s clear that while Bush is indeed taking more unscreened questions than ever before, he’s not really that interested in answering them. Most of the time, he uses them as launching pads for long, rambling amalgamations of familiar talking points that are only generally related to what he was asked.
• Add in these items on blaming everyone by Billy the Goat by the Bushies, and there’s also Forbes Magazine pointing out that East Asian banks are noting that the free lunch of borrowing cash from them for the dollar is about to end, the Senate finding out that local, State and Federal disaster / things-go-boom plans for the DC area are worthless or undone and that the Homeland Security people can’t do much if something hits Washington DC, and that with the rise in interest rates, the adjustable rates are starting to crush all those people in those overvalued houses, the bottom dropping out of the economy sure looks near.

…in Tennessee prisons, at any rate. You know the old saw about smuggling things into prison in cakes? Well, now it’s jars of peanut butter. And street clothes, phones and guns.

When I first saw this, I thought it would be over peanut allergies. I’m too naive to imagine a pair of pants hiding in a jar of peanut butter.

Bush knew all along that the Niger claims on yellowcake were bogus, along with other Iraq-WMD evidence, long before he made them in the SOTU in 2003. Made them anyway as a big part of the case for war with Iraq (Saddam was getting nuke material, yadda yadda), and Karl Rove realize that James Wilson’s claims that it was bogus would sink the re-election of Bush. So that’s the fuel for Plamegate, and the resulting stuff. Swat Wilson and deny the President knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

“Presidential knowledge was the ball game,” says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. “The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn’t in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn’t do that with the tubes.” A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: “This was about getting past the election.”

Read it all. And oh, yeah, the guys that put forward the bogus stuff on Iraq in the Pentagon’s intelligence group were promoted for it.

More stuff from the Boston Herald on Scalia doing stuff in church…the photo of him making his hand gesture (which isn’t obscene, it’s a ‘bug off, I don’t care about you’ flick of the hand under the chin) in response to critics:

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship. “The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said. The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”

Another commenter more familiar with the phrase gives a deeper and more specific meaning. Woo, such language in church.

Remember the chopstick deforestation story I ran a few days ago? Check this out…

“We are now down to the Final Four — not college basketball, but the number of people who still think President Bush is doing a good job.”

RIchard Cohen: Whatever Bush’s specific reason or reasons, the one thing that’s so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted war. He just didn’t want the war he got.

Tennesee legislator who is against gays adopting explains the gay would-be-parents’ real motivation: they need children to molest.

Needless to say, adoption experts have a different view on this.

One of the elements in American life that has proved to be a Great Leveller of folks is the TV - from the standpoint of learning a common American Pronunciation of English. It’s far from perfect, but it’s had more of an impact than you think, and China’s internal dialects are much more mutually greek-to-me. The Beijing accent and pronunciation is supposed to be a standard, but there’s a lot of people who can’t deal with it. Lots of Chinese programs have a subtitling of characters, because Auntie Hong can’t understand what they’re saying.

So you know that things are kicking the Internet into high gear in China when you discover thatonline language instruction to clean up your Chinese is going gangbusters.

A frequent complaint I’ve heard from close family is that nowadays, clerks / cashies haven’t a clue about how to do a good job with the money they handle - can’t actually count back change, screw up register stuff, and so on. Here’s a story about a guy who goes to a local burger drive-thru and orders $4.33 worth of stuff, and gets charged $4334.33, which eats his bank account alive, screws his mortgage, etc. And the burger joint doesn’t have a way to easily get it back to him…

As created by Dan Savage. Read the definition at the preceding link before advancing to this page; it’s a tad vulgar in the title. But if you’ve Had Enough, you may well agree with the sentiment.

More news:

• Rep WH Clay of Missouri asked Dubya in a speech: “If you really believe that the war that you started in Iraq is a fight to defeat terrorism and to defend our freedoms, why haven’t your girls enlisted?” Clay said that during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt’s sons enlisted and added: “That is a perfect example of the difference between a truly courageous wartime president and an incompetent chickenhawk who prefers to risk the lives of other American’s children.”
• The RNC to GOP leaders: Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop. We are now brand W. Republicans. …………. Uh, huh.
• And at the same time, party ID is shifting from the GOP to independents. Dogs don’t like it, I guess!

…from Bobby Kennedy to J. Edgar Hoover in TIMEQUEST, an alternate history movie about a POD where a time traveller comes into JFK’s hotel room the morning before the trip to Dealey Plaza, and Tells All. Much changing results.

The problem is, this movie could have been a whole lot better, but the writing generally sucked terribly. There’s a whole lot of gratuitous stuff thrown in that didn’t make sense or was totally stupid, like a Oliver Stone-esque director/producer trying to do a sexed-up expose of Bobby Kennedy in the alternate present day, and some horrifically maudlin stuff about the time traveller’s worship of Jackie, and so on. Or LBJ demanding that JFK get into Vietnam because the military - industrial complex is salivating for it, so we better do it. Puhlease. The Hoover bit I mention above and the Clintonesque releation on TV that JFK was a horndog - by JFK - were interesting, and the concept was interesting. But so sloppily done that when they have to name a Russian Cosmonaut, it’s Nikita Brezhnev.

Not Recommended. Even if you’re a AH fan. 2 out of ten stars, and have the fast-forward button ready.

MOTHER’S DAY
Front: ”When I think of you, Mom, I swell with pride.”
Inside: ”At least I hope it’s pride. Otherwise, I’m pregnant again.”