


Correlation is not causation, but it can be awfully suggestive. (Francis Porretto, Bastion of Liberty)
This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services world-wide. They think they're being scrupulous--the man hasn't been convicted of being a gunman yet!--when in fact they're just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn't just silly, it's dangerous.Call a spade a spade - and an armed terrorist just that.

Ropes tattooed around your arms and legs so when you crossed your arms or legs it would appear as if you were suggesting bondage.The rest of the suggested tattoos are even stranger.
Robot parts tattooed on working segments of your body.
Open eyes tattooed on your eyelids.
A mustache tattooed with glow-in-dark ink, just for fun.
Jagged backhoe bucket teeth tattooed around your mouth.
Mucus tattooed draining from your nose.
Police have not doubt about how Laufer died: Dorantes slammed into the rear of his Harley at a tremendous rate of speed. As the arrest warrant noted, Dorantes' SUV left no skid marks. The reason is because he never braked -- either before or after the collision.But, hey, that driver's rights were preserved. And, after all, it was only a privileged Anglo that was killed.
Instead, he kept going, pressing the accelerator pedal toward the floor. No matter that -- right in front of him -- a motorcycle was struck upright to his SUV's grill. And for a few seconds, he even could see Laufer's body on the motorcycle and SUV's hood, before it flew onto the highway 317 feet after impact. By then, Laufer was dead. According to the medial examiner, the horrific impact ripped his heart from its arteries and veins; his brain was severed from its spinal attachments.
The riderless Harley's rear tire left a single skid mark as Dorantes roared down the highway -- a shower of sparks and burning rubber right in front of him. "I don't think there is any way he (Dorantes) could not have known that the motorcycle was attached to his SUV for over a mile," Det. Francois told a local news outlet. "Between the sparks and the smell and the bike being feet in front of his face, after an impact there's no way he could have not known.”
A witness told of seeing a SUV race down an exit ramp at 80-85 mph -- a motorcycle attached to its front end. The Harley broke loose not far away, sliding onto a traffic island. Its rear tire was pulverized, its rear rim structurally destroyed.
Near the point of impact, the skid mark from the Harley's tire zigzagged along the highway, suggesting to Laufer's friends who visited the site that Dorantes was swerving violently to dislodge the motorcycle.
My old friend Ake (’awke’) Larsson was in St. Petersberg when he received my letter this week, as usual tinged with news about the curious desperation and isolation of Life in America.Read the rest - it's a provocative treasure.
He wrote about the boozy St. Petersberg tables where they were celebrating some colleague’s PhD, and it sounded like something out of Milan Kundera–just that, the idea of people at a table, the same table, for a long night in which an event is consecrated and celebrated, between people, friends, who went out of their way, in this case traveled from Sweden to Russia, to celebrate.
How often do any of us have that anymore?
These damn machines.
I fear the erosion and extinction of corporeal time, corporeal friendship, bodies together in time and space, more than I fear any other loss including the first amendment or polar ice caps. I sit at miserable piece of white plastic each night and I type forth, trying to connect and be less alone. The Internet. Soundless, it starves us very slowly. It is like a very tiny straw through which we are permitted survival breath. My father’s voice–I rarely hear it anymore. Friends voices, I never hear them. We email each other about getting together and then we cancel and send more email. Like ash flakes falling on a dying world, these emails.
Eh.I have bigger things to worry about - a Senator (Graham) who is anxious to give away the store to Democrats - even before the Dems became our Ubermasters. An economy that may well sweep away any hope of a comfortable retirement. A job that is taking more of my time and energy than I reasonably have - without leading to a feeling of accomplishment. A house that needs to be swept out, straightened up, and battened down for winter.
Rob Malley, a Middle East policy adviser to likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, resigned after news surfaced that he had been meeting with Hamas -- something Obama pledged he himself would never do.Well, that's good. Obama found himself an adviser who displayed poor judgment and an unsavory affiliation with Hamas, and got rid of him.
The issue of whether to have dealings with Hamas is a particularly sensitive matter for Obama, who needs to persuade skeptical Jewish voters that he is a strong supporter of Israel. Last week, presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) highlighted a Hamas leader's statement that he hoped Obama would win the White House. Asked about McCain's suggestion that Obama is "favored by Hamas," Obama said McCain was "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination."Well, that settles that. No wonder 80% of American Jews voted for Obama - they could trust him to keep his word.
Last month, as former President Jimmy Carter was set to meet with Hamas leaders, Obama told a group of Jewish activists and clergy in Philadelphia that he would not sit down with Hamas.
within hours after Obama’s election victory, Malley was back as a key player in the president-elect’s team of advisors—on his way to Syria. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, received a most friendly communication from Hamas, congratulating him on his “historic victory.”You watch - between the leftist Jews that run Israel right now, and the American Jews with a death wish for Israel, that tiny democracy in the totalitarian Mideast will be gone within a decade.
John Perazzo is the Managing Editor of DiscoverTheNetworks and is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations. For more information on his book, click here. E-mail him at wsbooks25@hotmail.com
Even dry McCain became far more energetic and has sounded like a different person, as if he had passion, as time went on after Palin joined the ticket. While no one else will comment on this, it is something I’ve noticed as I have gotten older how a woman can draw out a man. Palin seems to be creating that effect from the men around her.
When I ask people, “Why do you like Palin?” they respond, “Because she is normal.” They see her family as normal, her way of talking as normal, and her personality as their personality. More intriguing, people I have asked seem to really want to watch Palin’s family for the next four years. They did not respond the same to McCain’s family, or Obama and Biden’s.
The polls are way, way off this election cycle. Pollsters have admitted that this election has the highest ‘refusal to respond’ number. The ‘undecideds’ are people who don’t want to declare their choice. Why would they do that? If you belong to a Union, and they tell you to vote for Obama or ‘else’, you will not answer a pollster for it could be a union boss checking up on its members. PUMAs have declared their intention to lie to pollsters and they are organized. And there are many people who don’t want to declare ‘McCain’ because of being percieved as a ‘racist’.Yeah. Some of those who refuse to answer polls are like me (like my ornery father, I refuse to talk to pollsters, even friendly ones. I agree with his position - it's nobody's D&&N business who I vote for.) Before today, I never considered that his refusal might have something to do with union pressure.
Look, days away from the election and there are like 11% undecideds? No! This is not normal. The Bradley Effect is occuring with the undecideds.
Unless you live somewhere really, really special, you have to know one or more persons who will vote for Obama on November 4. That is, you have to know one or more persons whose ethical standards and character judgment are so poor that they'll use their franchise to affirm the elevation of a lying Chicago thug to the most powerful office on Earth.
Have you asked yourself how anyone could be that stupid? If so, congratulations: you're a conservative. The giveaway is that you didn't assume those folks are villains; conservatives are reluctant to pronounce that verdict while a shred of doubt remains.
You see, your Curmudgeon has been contemplating lines: lines that run straight from the Democrats' embrace of felonious campaigning to the behavior we can expect of them if they're granted, or succeed in stealing, federal hegemony.
No human action is divorced from all other things. Every human action expresses a conviction of some sort. The conviction expressed by the theft of an election -- electoral politics being the process that obviates violent revolution as the transition mechanism between governments -- is this one: The cause is superior to any and all ethical standards.
There's a logical straight line that runs from unquestioning devotion to a cause through the willingness to steal an election to the willingness to abrogate all guarantees of rights. That line has been sketched almost to its terminus by Barack Obama's predecessors; he and his supporters are trying to complete it. Rest assured: if he gains the White House, they most certainly will.
Cults of personality, such as the one upon which Obama has risen so far, are dangerous precisely because of the crowd's tendency to free the Maximum Leader and his lieutenants from all constraints. Few of the original constraints that were supposed to safeguard our constitutional republic remain unshredded. Even freedom of expression has taken some blows. But should Obama attain the Oval Office, you can kiss what we have left --including freedom of expression, which "liberals" once hailed as the guarantor of "democracy" -- goodbye. The man is simply uninterested in your rights; if you're not one of his supporters, you deserve to be silenced. You could even be stripped of your franchise, or have it rendered insignificant by the enfranchisement of millions of illegal...whoops, excuse your Curmudgeon, undocumented immigrants.

I'm 10 days out from my knee surgery. It's generally been a easier recovery than the first. I decided to use the skilled nursing re...