Cartoon of the Day

Officially Anti-PETA

I do not believe in cruelty towards animals. The idea of killing an elephant just to get its tusks will always be appalling to me. My non-cruelty sentiment, however, was never strong enough to join PETA. I have usually been ambivalent about PETA in the past until I came across a site that promotes anti-PETA doctrine. I was a little skeptical about the claims they made about PETA doctrine (PETA being against seeing eye dogs, for example), so I went on the PETA site myself to investigate. The anti-PETA site was actually a little generous. PETA openly supports the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which uses arson as a means of getting their word out. Quote:

"ALF 'raids' have given us proof of horrific cruelty that would not have otherwise been discovered or believed and have resulted in criminal charges’ being filed against laboratories for violations of the Animal Welfare Act."

That, however, is not what sent me down the path of anti-PETAness. PETA has taken it upon themselves to compare the plight of animal rights to the abolition of slavery, child abuse and even rape. And in their effort to vilify fur-wearing celebs, mocked their alleged eating disorders.

Check out their FAQ if you don't believe me.

And then there is this doozy from their FAQ section on the question of the humaneness of eating plants:

"Rather than eating animals, such as cows, who must consume 16 pounds of vegetation in order to convert them into 1 pound of flesh, you can save many more plants’ lives (and destroy less land) by eating vegetables directly."

Thank you, PETA, for clarifying yourself. I have made it my new mission in life to send a framed, poster-sized, autographed photo of myself eating a giant hamburger with no bun and steak fries (made from real steak) while wearing a full-length sable with a sable hat as I sit on a leather couch with a built-in wine glass holder made of deer antlers to the PETA HQ.

By the by, the anti-seeing eye dog claim is true.

War on Semantics

I was just watching MSNBC a bit ago and an analyst (at least I think she was one) was chastising the media for calling the violence in Iraq a "civil war." She went on to say that the media had "an agenda" and was deliberately "misleading the public" for their own gain.

Well, until someone else admits to it, I will refer to the violence as "civil strife."

Update: I have a link to the story now.

USDA ends War on Hunger?

The USDA has omitted the word "hunger" out of their vocabulary and has substituted it with "low food security." I heard about this a bit ago, and I was praying that it was a joke.

Army's $200 Million "Solution" to Poor Recruitment

Instead of investing that money into better enlistment benefits, or - here's an idea - body armor for their troops, the Army has committed $200 million a year to an ad campaign that features their new slogan, "Army Strong."

How many times have they changed their slogan in the past 6 years? First of all, "Be All That You Can Be" is as good as it gets as far as their attempts, and secondly...do they actually expect that a slogan change and some new commercials will change the idea that not too many people are willing to enlist now for obvious reasons?

I guess they do what they must, still, I think that most of that money would have been better served by putting it to use to aid the soldiers that have already committed themselves.

Common Decency Prevails

O.J. has been canned...the Fox News interview and the book.

There is hope for our country after all.

Midterm's Greatest Hits

This is just hilarious.

Give Bush a Brain Game

Very entertaining!

Cartoon of the Day

  

UCLA cops assault student

UCLA is the first place I would expect a student to "stand up to" authority, so I would normally pity their police department. However, the video I just watched cannot be justified. MSNBC's account sugarcoats the incident and on CNN tonight, editor of the UCLA's student paper the Daily Bruin, Sara Taylor, gave a robotic interview that did not shed any light on the assault of the student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, unlike her article.

I saw the footage and the claims that the student was repeatedly tasered while he screamed, "I'm not fighting you; I said I'll leave" are true. The officers in the video claimed that the reason they continued to use tasers on Tabatabainejad was because he refused to stand up. A little common sense, people: the whole point of a taser is to incapacitate a person and excessive use can lead to death. By my personal count, this kid was tased at least 5 times.

One of the officers threatened to use a taser on a student that demanded their bag numbers.

Ouch - Murtha Gets the Smackdown

It isn't surprising that Hoyer won over Murtha. Murtha never had the numbers to compete with Hoyer in the first place. Hoyer, who appears to be popular with the freshman House members, beat him by almost double.

The risk Pelosi took with Murtha bothered the hell out of me. I get that she wanted to be loyal, but surely our president has served as evidence that loyalty-based decisions, although honorable, do not work in politics. She had better have a brilliant plan to try to bring unity back to the party.

All of this stuff is going to give me an ulcer. The Democrats have been handed a great gift by the American people and just cannot afford to screw this up. I have been tooting my confidence in their ability to "repair" our country on both the domestic and international fields, but the truth is I am walking around with my fingers crossed...maybe I should drag out my Rosary, too.

Cartoon of the Day

  

O.J. Simpson's Quasi-Confession

O.J. Simpson has written a confession, um, I mean story of him killing his wife, Nicole Simpson, and her companion (which he has termed as being "hypothetical") entitled O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. Mr. Wife-killer has paid $3.5 million by ReaganBooks and Fox is supposed to broadcast interviews done with Simpson in two one-hour segments.

Even if Simpson does not list the book as being fiction, the law of double jeopardy protects him from prosecution. Simpson has allegedly bragged about how he has come up with a plan to keep the profits from the book from going to paying the court-ordered restitution to the victims of this tragedy by "spending it quickly."

I suddenly feel the need to shower.

Cartoon of the Day

  

President Guiliani?

So Guiliani has come clean about harboring any presidential ambitions by forming a presidential exploratory committee. The WP listed him as the No. 3 most likely choice to be the Republican frontman, and while Guiliani has the potential to clean house in his homestate, the other states of the Union will be a bit more difficult to come by. There is the general prejudice against anyone that resides above the Mason-Dixon line that he will have to face. Then there are the more obvious issues he would undoubtedly be confronted with, namely his more liberal stance on abortion and gay marriage, topics that tend to not be open for discussion here in Evangelicaland.

And another thing: leaping from Congress to the White House is difficult to do; I may be wrong, but I don't think that anyone ever went from being a mayor to president. The fact that he is not a current mayor makes it that much worse.

Words that irritate the hell out of me

Congratulate

This word irritates the hell out of me because its cousin words (graduate, graduation) use the letter d. I hate the inconsistancy; congratulate should be spelled congradulate.

Tomorrow

I don't know why, it just does.

And I've never been to Pennsylvania...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Midland
The Inland North
The South
The Northeast
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

H/T - PoliBlog

I've never been to New Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington, either.

Pelosi Endorses Murtha

I didn't see that one coming. I was really looking forward to seeing how the House would act with Pelosi as Majority Leader, but I must confess that having Murtha in her stead promises to be very interesting.

Sellouts!

I knew that Blogger was selling out to Google, and given the price tag I probably would have done the same thing. However, I am still disgusted to see that another online passtime of mine has gone the way of being sucked into another corporate giant. Let's see how long Blogger will sustain it's appeal before the monkeys in Google marketing come up with "hipper" ideas and screw it up.

DEMS TAKE SENATE!

Image of the Day

Courtesy of Alabama-Democrat

Hindsight

Actually, this isn't hindsight; I was asking these questions before the election. I will add more when my memory decides to work:

One of the last-minute things that I thought the Republicans would push to get support at the polls:

1.) Increase of mininum wage
I can see why they didn't do it, but given their fragile status on entering the election season, it would have been a great way to distract the masses from the scandals. I was sitting at home waiting for them to announce that they were discussing the minimum wage, which is why I was not 100% confident about the Democrats having such a sweeping victory. The first time I have heard the minimum wage issue being mentioned is by Nancy Pelosi (D-California) yesterday.

Future of the Senate Looks Dem(ocrat)

However, even thought the Virginia election is pretty much over, after living through the 2000 election fiasco, I am not going to acknowledge either side as winning until the official vote is in or (hopefully) Allen concedes.

What Happened with Rove?

I have heard the media repeatedly question why Karl Rove could not save the House and the Senate, and whether or not this meant the end of his career. I greatly admire Rove, like it or not, when it comes to political analyses he is a freaking genius. Although he was shown on television expressing confidence about the elections, his demeanor suggested otherwise. I suspect that Rove has made some suggestions prior to the election that were ignored. I really don't believe that someone with his keenness did not have something up his sleeve. If you listen to past Bush speeches and watch his actions, you can actually tell when Rove was involved and when he was not. Whenever I have seen Bush do (or say) something that seemed really off-script, the first thing I wondered was if Rove was on vacation.

Bush should have fired Rumsfeld a long time ago, but he is very loyal to his friends, so the fact that he did so yesterday was a surprise. Rove, however, deserves a medal; I will be eternally in awe of the political machine he built during the last elections.

Is It My Birthday?

The Democrats have the House and Rumsfield is gone! My family can finally stop worrying about if the Secret Service is going to hunt me down because of the comments I have made about the Bush administration!

DEMS TAKE THE HOUSE!!!!

Hussein to Hang

I am not sure what to say about this. Part of me is not surprised that they are going to hang Hussein, and another part of me can't shake the feeling that hell is really about to break loose.