Tuesday, December 06, 2005

What A Dope

"This is about our children and grandchildren," he said. "We have to get the word out - 'Buy American.' This is a matter of our allegiance to our own communities, our belief in each other, our commitment to each other."

While Ohio has about 16,000 workers building Honda automobiles, engines and transmissions, Kucinich later said he defined "American" as being made by a union. The UAW has failed in its effort to organize the Honda plants.

A Stat Even New York Should Be Ashamed Of

In 1970, New York passed the most permissive abortion law in America, one that defined the state as the country’s abortion refuge. Overnight, a new industry materialized in New York City, promoting itself to women across the country. The pitches were often blunt. A newspaper ad from the time inquired, “Want to be un-pregnant?”

Thirty-five years later, New York has the highest abortion rate in America. In 2000, the last year for which good data are available, 39 out of every 1,000 women in the state ended a pregnancy, for a total of 164,000 abortions that year. In America, one of every ten abortions occurs in New York, and in New York, seven of every ten abortions are performed in New York City. In absolute terms, there are more abortions performed on minors, more repeat abortions, and more late abortions (over 21 weeks) in New York City than anywhere else in the country. In parts of the city, the ratio of abortions to births is one to one.

This Is Sad, Bizarre, and Infuriating

22 year old dies...sad. Shot himself in the head with a pen gun...bizarre. Mom now wants pen guns banned because son was foolish enough to put up to head and pull trigger...infuriating.

ST. PARIS, Ohio - Steven Zorn had put the pen gun to his head and clicked before, apparently thinking it was jammed and would not work. But on the third try, the tiny silver pistol went off as the 22-year- old budding rap artist was drinking to celebrate an impending record deal. He died at a hospital.

The Nov. 18 shooting at Zorn's home in this rural village of 2,000, about 50 miles northeast of Dayton, is believed to have been accidental, according to family, friends and law enforcement officials.

"Steven had a career and his dreams all ahead of him," said Zorn's mother, Lisa McCoy-Horn. She said she wants lawmakers to outlaw pen guns, which are small-caliber, single-shot weapons that resemble pens.

Zorn had taught himself to play the keyboard and record tracts using inexpensive software on his home computer. He tracked down rap artist Miracle in Georgia and urged the crunk artist to listen to a CD of his original recordings.

"The lyrical content was awesome," Miracle said. "He had a lot of skill. I took a liking to him, took him under my wing."

The Almost Short-Lived Charlie Brown Christmas

When CBS bigwigs saw a rough cut of A Charlie Brown Christmas in November 1965, they hated it.

"They said it was slow," executive producer Lee Mendelson remembers with a laugh. There were concerns that the show was almost defiantly different: There was no laugh track, real children provided the voices, and there was a swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez fretted about the insistence by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz that his first-ever TV spinoff end with a reading of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke by a lisping little boy named Linus.

"We told Schulz, 'Look, you can't read from the Bible on network television,' " Mendelson says. "When we finished the show and watched it, Melendez and I looked at each other and I said, 'We've ruined Charlie Brown.' "

Good grief, were they wrong. The first broadcast was watched by almost 50% of the nation's viewers. "When I started reading the reviews, I was absolutely shocked," says Melendez, 89. "They actually liked it!"

What I Want For Christmas





We all need a holographic TV.

The End of Satire

Satire is impossible with people like this running around:

Montreal (CNSNews.com) - The debate over climate change evolved into a battle of the sexes Monday at the 11th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal. The spokesman for a feminist-based environmental group accused men of being the biggest contributors to human-caused "global warming" and lamented that women are bearing the brunt of the negative climate consequences created by men.

"Women and men are differently affected by climate change and they contribute differently to climate change," said Ulrike Rohr, director of the German-based group called "Genanet-Focal point gender, Environment, Sustainability."

Rohr, who is demanding "climate gender justice," left no doubt as to which gender she believes was the chief culprit in emitting greenhouse gasses.

"To give you an example from Germany, it is mostly men who are going by car. Women are going by public transport mostly," Rohr told Cybercast News Service. Rohr was standing in front of her booth, which featured a banner calling for "creative gender strategies" from "rural households to global scientific bodies."

"In most parts of the world, women are contributing less [to greenhouse gasses]," Rohr continued. But it is the women of the world who will feel the most heat from catastrophic global warming, she said.

"At least in the developing countries, it is women who are more affected because they are more vulnerable, so they don't have access to money to go outside the country or go somewhere else to earn money and they have to care for their families," she said. "What we are calling for is to take into account more of the social aspects of climate change," Rohr added.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Howard Dean in words: Howard Dean in pictures.

Recent events make it clear that a pitched battle for control of the Democratic Party is now underway between the far-left "peacenik" contingent symbolized by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, and the DLC or "Clinton wing" of the party which sees only electoral defeat in the rabid antiwar sloganeering of the increasingly leftist DNC. Those of us who were around to see the rise of George McGovern have seen this movie before. It ends with a wildly cheering base nominating a candidate who proceeds to lose 49 states, and in the process tars the Democrats for a generation as a party of left wing moonbats.

PBS Is A Waste

Here's an interesting tidbit about a PBS documentary titled "Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories" which first aired on October 20:

According to PBS statistics, the program has been aired by 235 stations, about 69% of all PBS stations, some 387 times between its Oct. 20 debut and Nov. 20. That group of stations is available to 77% of all U.S. TV households, but the number of people having viewed that actual program would be only a tiny fraction of those households, perhaps less than 1%, according to fragmentary data.

Now that's a considerable bang for the buck...and all at taxpayer's expense. PBS occassionaly hits the mark with worthwhile programming, but for the most part it's a playground for the wealthy and elitist to view programs covering their pet issues. Enough is enough.

Blitzing When The Score's 70-3

Coach Gary Barnett and several Colorado players were asked if they thought Texas should have been blitzing with the game well in hand. Quarterback Joel Klatt was hospitalized with a concussion following a hit by Texas linebacker Drew Kelson on a blitz with the Longhorns leading 70-3 late in the third quarter. Barnett seemed particularly upset." That's hard question for me right now," Barnett said. "I would just as soon go on to another question." -- Denver Post

Monday, December 05, 2005

All Together Now

Whhhhhhhoooooooo Deeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!

Was This Study Really Necessary?

For three weeks, researchers at Cornell University and the University of Illinois-Champaign gave 40 women several dozen chocolate Hershey Kisses in clear or opaque candy jars either on their desks or six feet away. They refilled the candy jars each day and tracked how much the women ate.

They found that women ate nearly twice as many Hershey Kisses when the candy was in clear containers on their office desks (7.7 pieces per day) than when the candy was in opaque jars (4.6 pieces per day).

Distance also played a role. On average, women ate 5.6 Kisses a day when the candy was visible in clear containers placed six feet away from their desks compared with 3.1 chocolates a day when the candy was in a non-translucent jar.