Would it kill Circuit City to just come out and say what the countdown is for? It’s kind of silly that we can’t find one mention of the word “CHRISTMAS” on Circuit City’s website but we’re politely reminded by the “Holiday Countdown” that there are only seven days left to get free shipping.
I’m told there’s no war on Christmas but the very word is being avoided like the plague.
Al Gore, you’re In great company:
MADRID, Spain (AP) – Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were “not that terrible” when compared to attacks by the IRA in Britain.
“September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn’t that terrible,” the Nobel Literature Prize winner told the leading Spanish daily El Pais.
“Some Americans will think I’m crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They’re a very naive people, or they pretend to be,” she said in an interview published Sunday.
Not extraordinary? Muslim extremism that marked true evil and ignited a treacherous war isn’t extraordinary? They sure know how to pick Nobel Prize winners.
If your 11-year-old needs to be prescribed birth control at her middle school to prevent pregnancy you have failed as a parent. Miserably.
The rationale behind the Portland School Committee’s decision (by a vote of 7-2) to turn three middle school clinics into pharmacies for the promiscuous is because of the supposed “outbreak” of pregnancies among middle school girls.
While the figures are certainly troubling, I don’t think 17 pregnancies from three schools over a four-year period is that much of an epidemic. Certainly the thousands of other girls not getting knocked up are doing something right. And they didn’t need their school nurse to put them on birth control to do it either.
Despite schools being a favorite target of mass-murders, one teacher’s fight to take her gun to school appears to be a loosing battle:
MEDFORD, Ore. – High school English teacher Shirley Katz insists she needs to take her pistol with her to work because she fears her ex-husband could show up and try to harm her. She’s also worried about a Columbine-style attack.
But Katz’s district has barred teachers from bringing guns to school, so she is challenging the ban as unlawful, since Oregon is among states that allow people with a permit to carry concealed weapons into public buildings.
“This is primarily about my Second Amendment right and Oregon law and the simple fact that I know it is my right to carry that gun,” said Katz, 44, sitting at the kitchen table of her home outside this city of 74,000.
“I have that (concealed weapons) permit. I refuse to let my ex-husband bully me. And I am not going to let the school board bully me, either.”
In an eerily similar fashion to what Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said about students being able to feel safe on their “gun-free campus” a year before it became the theater for the worst school-shooting massacre in U.S. history, Superintendent Phil Long insisted employees and students are safer without guns on campus at South Medford High School, where Katz teaches. The district plans to make that argument when the case comes before a judge on Thursday.
Katz won’t say whether she has ever taken her 9 mm Glock pistol to school, but she practices with it regularly and has thought about what she would do if she had to confront a gunman. She would be sure students were locked in nearby offices out of the line of fire, and she would be ready with her pistol.
“Our safety plan at our school now is that if somebody threatening comes in, you try to avoid eye contact, and do whatever they say, and that is not acceptable anymore,” she said. Shootings at Virginia Tech University and the one-room Amish school in Pennsylvania, “reinforced my belief we have to take action, we can’t just acquiesce as we have been taught to do.”
But the school board and superintendents are unlikely to respond to such rationalism and will instead allow everyone at the high school to remain lambs waiting for the slaughter.
UPDATE: Hopefully this story will get a lot of attention. Michelle Malkin just posed her comments on the case.
In an incredibly asinine decision by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to censor the part of comedian Kathy Griffin’s acceptance speech last Saturday dissing Jesus is giving her exactly what she wants: publicity:
Griffin made the provocative comment on Saturday night as she took the stage of the Shrine Auditorium to collect her Emmy for best reality program for her Bravo channel show “My Life on the D-List.”
“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.”
Asked about her speech backstage a short time later, an unrepentant Griffin added, “I hope I offended some people. I didn’t want to win the Emmy for nothing.”
Comedians by nature are supposed to say something funny upon receiving the meaningless statue at whatever awards show they’re being honored at on that particular evening. Sometimes it can be construed as offensive, but for me that’s a lot better than some routine boring oration about how “hard” they worked to achieve this moment.
And yes, even the props-to-Jesus gets old. This time Griffin does something a little different and all of sudden the Academy pretends to be sensitive about a religion routinely defiled by the industry it celebrates.
But as ridiculous as it was to censor Griffin for saying something negative about Jesus, it doesn’t come close to the audacity of the schools that do the same to valedictorians who praise the lord during their graduation speeches.
President Bush isn’t alone in his disdain for black people. According to obnoxious rapper Kanye West, MTV is all about the “White Power” too:
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (September 9, 2007) Kanye West has lashed out at Britney Spears’ upcoming performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards.
“I can’t believe she would perform,” he told the Associated Press. “She hasn’t had a hit record in years.”
According to MTV.com, West is scheduled to perform his track, “I Wonder,” on the broadcast. The Associated Press reported that West was apparently upset that he was not invited to open the event.
“Maybe my money’s not right. Maybe my skin’s not right,” he said.
According to viewers and critics alike who watched the MTV Video Music Awards, Spears bombed miserably. The consensus appears to be that she’s still out of shape and even has trouble lip-synching.
Enter Kanye West who believes he should have been the opening act but was passed over because of his skin color. It’s a shame too, because I find his new single, “Stronger” rather enjoyable.
He says he’s not gay. I couldn’t care less. The police report is highly uneventful and hardly worth the media fanfare covering the minor charges of “interference with privacy” and “disorderly conduct,” but he pleaded guilty anyway, and now regrets admitting guilt. With good reason too, as the available evidence would probably not have held up in court had Craig fought the charges.
But is he a hypocrite, as many have suggested, for being a conservative Republican while living a liberal social life? Hardly. Gays don’t have to support the legislation pushed by the homosexual lobby. You can be gay and oppose same-sex marriage at the same time. Blacks don’t have to support affirmative action. Women don’t have to support abortion. Christians don’t have to support prayer in schools.
Let’s not be so quick to accuse everyone of being a self-hater because they live a life that supposedly doesn’t fit their voting record. Let’s especially not use this incident to encourage Senator Craig to shed his conservative ideology and come out as the next gay-rights crusader.
So I like blue not because my father beat out of me any preference for a less patriarchal color and got to me before Mattel did? I don’t think the pink-rejecting feminists will get a kick out of this:
LONDON (Reuters) – Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn’t much anybody can do about it, researchers said on Monday in one of the first studies to show scientifically that there are gender-based color preferences.
Researchers said these differences may have a basis in evolution in which females developed a preference for reddish colors associated with riper fruit and healthier faces.
Recent studies have suggested there is a universal preference for “blue,” and there has not been much previous evidence to support the idea of sex differences when picking colors, said Anya Hurlbert, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University who led the study.
In the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1,000 pairs of colored rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best as quickly as possible.
Afterwards, Hurlbert and colleagues plotted the results along the color spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum.
For men, thinking about colors was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it, Hurlbert said.
Was a line from tonight’s Simpsons episode. And now a quote from a professor at my alma matter:
HOUSTON – In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now William Lewis says his baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.
“I’ve got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby,” said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. “It doesn’t take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall.”
From the story it appears the security guard in question is a Houston police officer who was moonlighting off-duty at the facility which means he has some kind of formal training that goes beyond the requirements to be a security guard. What was going through his head at the time will hopefully be explained in further detail if he cares to justify his actions.
I didn’t hear it when he said it, so I don’t know the context, but politicians have to be keenly aware that everything they say on the campaign trail can and will be broken down into perfectly honed sound byte weapons.
On Thursday in Cincinnati Rudy Giuliani apparently opined that he was at ground zero “as often, if not more, than most of the workers.”
Ouch. Yeah, that was probably not the wisest comment to make, even if he didn’t mean to say that he’s more of a hero than the police officers, firefighters, and crewmembers who labored tirelessly at ground zero.
“I think I could have said it better,” he told radio host Mike Gallagher in the biggest understatement of the day.
Yep, I’d say you could have, but like all the candidates you’ll continually say stupid things as long as you’re running. It’s what presidential candidates do when they’re not keeping their mouths busy by kissing babies.
