Pinging stuff I care about.
The news channels are sure making it sound real and urgent, but we’ve seen a lot of supposed plots foiled which turned out to be meaningless hype.
Just like all the “discoveries of WMDs” turned out not to be real.
Boy oh boy is the hype machine on overdrive today. “Mass Murder on an Unimaginable Scale.” “Biggest threat since 9/11.”
It does seem rather early for an October Surprise. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Illinois, you rock. You had a governor who reacted to the revelation that innocent people were frequently executed on Death Row by simply banning the death penalty until that could be addressed. Now you have a governor who thinks that a good way to reduce crime is to give criminals the choice of learning how to survive as law-abiding citizens.
Apparently the Governator wants to do the same thing in California, which is great, but people who know the Illinois system say that this sort of thing can’t be rushed into existence by executive fiat. (It sounds similar to CEOs who push one quality-enhancing program after another onto the employees, not realizing that they require culture change and culture change is not something that can be forced on people from above.)
This is all from, like, BoingBoingwhatever.
Start with the simple but comically powerful Darth Vader, Smartass. It’s simple, it’s stupid, and it never gets old for me.
Moving along, we have Darth’s brother —
Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager, part 1
I really dig the mellow guitar Imperial March.
And there’s Part 2. “Dammit Chad, I told you to stop spying on me with your hand!”
These come from Channel 101.  Hmm, there was something about that “Clint” guy that seemed familiar… Oh yeah! He was Judge McCourt!
“Davis heated a pair of scissors on a stove in August 2004 and held it to her 6-year-old son’s neck before cutting off a piece of his tongue as punishment for talking back, authorities said. Her estranged husband, Toby Davis reported the injuries to police and she was arrested.” (link)
Sounds like somebody’s been extrapolating from Lisa “Blair from the Facts of Life” Welchel’s encyclopedia of ways to cause your children pain and humiliation, Creative Correction.
Spare the heated scissors and spoil the child, don’t ya know.
“Henry County prosecutors had recommended that Davis serve five years in prison. But the boy’s father testified Tuesday that he did not want her to go to prison.
“‘He told the judge she is a good woman, and he doesn’t feel his son is unsafe around her,’ Davis’ lawyer, Rickey L. Richardson, said.”
I have nothing to add.
The Hiroshima Myth by John V. Denson
Everyone knows that dropping the bomb on Japan was the only moral thing to do; while it killed or horribly maimed thousands of innocents, it did stop the war, and therefore probably actually saved lives, right?
Maybe not.