What keeps my skin so young-looking?

Well, not mine, personally, since I keep mine looking wrinkle-free by filling it internally with another double-chocolate doughnut and a scoop of frozen custard... but, if this particular piece is true, then some folks are making their skins all pretty in a truly disturbing fashion:

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere.

The very idea that somebody took fetal tissue to turn it into a cosmetic treatment is seriously abhorrent. I can hear the justifications, already, though: "The thing was already dead, so what's the big deal? It would have gone to waste, otherwise."

Well, the thing is, the thing was a human being. It did not die a natural death, but was taken untimely. And now it's being used not to save lives, but to make somebody feel pretty. It's not entirely unlike like putting grandma out of our misery because her medical care is inconvenient to us, and then saying, "As long as she's not using them, can I have her teeth for a necklace and matching earrings?"

Granted, the article says the tissue sample from the aborted fetus was (a) donated willingly and (b) very small, and granted, most of the stuff (the "human growth factor") used in the cosmetic product is grown in a laboratory from said small sample. And, I'm sure people have built great medicines from small samples of stuff I don't really want to know about. I acknowledge that wonders come from unlikely and unseemly sources. Bread mold, pond scum, bee stings, snake bites -- who knows what unsavory thing will help cure the next big disease? Still, it seems to me this is an ugly little foot in the door to much more sinister possibilities -- and no, I don't necessarily mean "Soylent Green." Once we have a marketable product to be made from something only grown from aborted babies, how do we restrict the trafficking of the unborn for such a business? How do we prevent poor young girls from virtually reducing themselves to slaves of a new, modern sex trade? What other "unwanted" lives do we throw away to satisfy the unending hungers of hedonists?

Where is the line drawn on the value of life? What dollar amount marks the end of humanity?

Oh, yeah. Just what we all need

More geriatric mommies. As if we didn't have enough trouble with the middle-aged mommies who can't keep up with their brats, now they're trying to make it possible for women to remain baby factories well into their dotage.

I am not Joe -- but I'd like to be, someday

Not really.

I'm one of the people Joe has already helped out. I'm the person who, not so long ago, had to break down and ask the taxpayers to help me make ends meet. I didn't ask for everything they told me, at the office, I was qualified to receive. I only got the minimum, and felt like crap for having to ask it.

I would like to think that someday soon, I will be able to rise above my peculiarities and disabilities, and draw a genuinely healthy paycheck. I'd like to believe that, when I do, I will not be subject to the kind of treatment proffered this other private citizen. At least, one should hope this will be the last time this happens to a simple voter with an honest question. Especially when he was invited to ask a question, in his own front yard, in the first place. The only reason they're going after him today is that their sainted candidate of choice slipped up and gave away his true intentions in answering this plumber, Joe. Anybody who is not appalled and frightened by this reaction by the press and the Obamists is clearly not thinking ahead, and/or has no concept of history.

Someday, Joe Wurzelbacher will be that business-owner he dreams of becoming. And, someday, I, and you, too (by the grace of angels), will be Joe. And you all ought to hope we don't get this same treatment. In fact, you ought to hope the people who are perpetrating this offense today will face deeper scrutiny, and be removed from positions of authority, anywhere they are.

A video to make a history buff's skin crawl

This is all over the interwebs today:

Now, I don't know about everybody else, but my first reaction was to recoil in horror and dread. Put this alongside the Obamists' threats against free speech, and it feels like it's all part and parcel with events in my grandparents' day:

About the only real difference I can sense, so far, is that Obama isn't remotely nationalist, and neither are his followers.

Jonah Goldberg has a good argument against those who fantasize there is an equivalent in more current times, closer to home.

How do you tell an old friend you're worried about him?

I haven't spoken to this man in long years. We used to be pretty good chums in the days when we both schlepped heavy boxes around and dealt daily with the public. But, in the years since I moved away from that neighborhood, I've seen indications that his angry and depressed nature (much angrier than my manic states ever got, but not too much deeper than my depressions) has darkened.

I haven't learned this from family and friends near him, but from what he writes.

No, we don't correspond much, any more. Our common ground seems to have eroded to a slim thread of history only. I read his blogs, though. I sneak in, from time to time, skim his pages, and leave feeling as though I've been an anthropologist peering in on a completely alien culture, where rage is celebrated and refined and to the purest flame imaginable and turned into a religion.

He's gone back to playing with the ilk of the nastier Kos kidz and DU, those who think that Christians are the only people to blame for all mankind's faults and failings, who think that the Bush administration is to blame for the collapse of civilization, who think that, after the election, the conservative base will mobilize and take over the streets, and all who disagree with the conservatives will be slain and served up as sandwiches, or some such stuff and nonsense.

For some reason, he's allowed himself to be led by the nose into believing that a person who owns a gun, for example, must automatically intend to use it on humans who disagree with his world view. He's come to believe that virtually every person who believes that Jesus is planning a comeback tour is going to guarantee it happens tomorrow, by causing Armageddon today. He's come to believe that all our nation's military might is used only to bully people into... I'm not sure. Something to do with the apocalypse, I think. He can't seem to imagine a soldier being sent to defend the innocent against tyrants and their savagery. He can't imagine using force to create freedom. He can't allow himself to believe that the people of Iraq might actually be better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein's sadistic reign.

He is waiting for the end days, with dread, expecting my neighbors with the five children and the pleasant garden to suddenly take up their crosses and plunge them into the hearts of the rest of us sinners. He is waiting for me to rise from reading the hypnotic, serpentine words of Victor Davis Hansen and Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh, and mindlessly burn down the cathedral of academe, the local college -- and all those leftists and their acolytes within it.


I'd ask him if he projects much, but I think he really wouldn't see my point.

Once upon a time, when the world was light and full of faeries, I had a reasonable conversation with him, in which I asked him to swap out a few labels, and see if, just maybe, he was showing himself to be a little on the prejudiced side. Where he talked of Christian conspiracy, I suggested he try "Jewish conspiracy," and ask how his in-laws would take that (oy!). Where he raged against Christian fanaticism, I asked him to try Jewish fanaticism, or black fanaticism, or any other group ostensibly oppressed in America. He might find, I said, that the language was ugly and hateful, no matter what name you inserted. I asked him if he really believed the people he worked with would rise, en masse, to destroy their friends, simply for the sake of a political ideal. Because, you know, those Lutherans really have it in for the rest of us, for not eating lime jello salads at Sundy dinnur.

For a while, he seemed chastened, subdued, rational.

That is gone, now. His rage has returned, it seems, tenfold. I can only hope that he is writing these fevered dreams only as a lark, as a way to boost the number of visits to his website. The thought that he has come so far unhinged in reality... well, that kind of illness is too much for me to bear to think about, especially as his birthday has just rolled around, again, (if memory serves, and if I haven't rotated his with another friend's natal anniversary). I wish him happiness, peace, but I worry he will not accept such gifts.

I also worry that there are too many like him, but different in that they act upon their rage, as they have tried and done at the national conventions. It is not healthy.

If a train crashes...

If an Amtrak train crashes into a freight train at the same time somebody is holding Hillary's NH Campaign HQ hostage, does it make a headline?

The news of the crash didn't even cause WGN to interrupt its rerun of some 1980s sitcom. Maybe it's just because nobody died... fortunately, the worst injuries required, according to the Sun-Times, only overnight hospitalization, then release. It just wasn't big enough news to interrupt that all-important laugh track at the time.

I suppose WGN must have covered it during the regular news hour, later in the evening. They've mentioned it on their website, after all (with video of the broadcast, I gather, although, with slow internet connex, I can't download, so I can't be sure). Probably all the Chgo tv stations opened their local news broadcasts with it -- I don't know, since I'm outside of their broadcast zone -- and then followed with the hostage thing. The news of the crash only made the crawl on Fox News, while Mom was watching. All their cameras were on the waiting-to-happen scene in New Hampshire. (O'course, I might have missed it on the networks, since I was busy last night with friends, all the way through prime time. Did it get respectable coverage? So far, not much mention comes up in the blogosphere. Politics. P'tui.)

The investigation is under way -- my brother-in-law is already on the scene, with others from the NTSB, sifting and weighing evidence.

For those who hadn't heard about the accident before now, keep the injured passengers and crew in your thoughts/prayers.

Edwards nuttier than bridge mix

What scares me is that so many people still take this man seriously as a political contender. John Edwards came out today and spoke in favor of mandatory health care.

That's not to say he thinks simply that it should be required that it be available to everybody, but that shirking your national duty to have an annual pelvic exam, mammogram, and whatever other poking and prodding and do-good treatment your barely-passed-his-med-school "expert" says you need to do, could get you "corrective actions" of an institutional sort.

So, suppose I were to continue to follow the advice of the first doctor to treat me for my "mood disorder." I'd have taken happy pills until I hanged myself. "Just give it a little more time," got me a blackout and an apparent attempt to drown myself in the icy waters of a tributary to the Chicago River in January (it was a long time ago, granted, but cutting out the antidepressants and working with non-chemical, alternative options has probably saved my life all these years). Needless to say, I now avoid certain types of doctors until I've done a lot of homework. Guess Edwards will have me locked up, huh?

My mother was given birth control pills in her younger years. She now has to take mega-doses of thyroid meds and blood pressure meds and anti-nausea pills (because the thyroid and bp meds "may cause dizziness," which nobody figured out before Mom got desperately sick with dizziness at the beginning of this past summer).

My sister-in-law used government doctors to deal with her upper chest pains. "GERD," they said. You should take those little purple antacids, and try to find a career less stressful than ambulance driving. Otherwise, you'll just have to live with acid reflux.

Until she passed the mother of all gallstones. Ooops!


Just what is it about these leftwits that makes them think the big, bureaucratic government half a continent away knows more about what I need for my personal, small-scale well-being than I do? What makes them so smug they think they can tell the educated, free population -- some of whom were, granted, only educated to the standards set by the leftwits themselves --
how to run their private lives?

Whatever happened to "right to privacy" and "keep your hands off my [body parts]"? Do these only come into play when we're talking about their moralities, and not for anybody else? Only gays and abortion proponents will now have any right to privacy, in Edwards' New World Order. The rest of us, if we object, will be "treated" for our mental problems before they deal with our physical weaknesses.

This kind of attitude, I think, is giving me coprolalia. I have to go before it becomes coprographia.

RAF jets scrambled to intercept Russian bombers

According to the Telegraph, two RAF jets Tuesday were sent post-haste to meet some oncoming Russian Tu95 "Bear" bombers on their way toward the UK from the arctic circle. Putin's people said the flight was part of a training flight, and this incursion into the queen's air space is not at all related to heightened tensions arising from the Russian assassination attempts on British soil....

And people say we Americans are clumsy, crude and rough! Howzabout that Vlad "Tony Soprano" Putin? Where's his nuance?

NYT gets one 66.6% correct -- maybe

AS several bloggers have pointed out over the past 48 hours, the New York Times described the individuals arrested after the latest spate of attempted bombings in the UK as from the "disenfranchised South Asian population."

Mark Steyn answers the first part of that description:

Tim Blair provides a fine example of why The New York Times is an unreliable guide to the ways of the world:

In July 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on London’s transit system, and another set of attacks failed two weeks later, bringing home to Britain fears of homegrown terrorist attacks among its disenfranchised South Asian population. Witnesses said the two men in the Glasgow attack were South Asian.

My dictionary defines "disenfranchised" as:

to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote

The "South Asian population" are British subjects with as much right to vote as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. If the Times is merely using the word to mean more generally "deprived", the July 7th bombers didn't exactly hail from the ghetto: Shehzad Tanweer rode around in his dad's Mercedes. Omar Sheikh, who's supposed to have plotted the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, was an English "public" (ie, private) schoolboy and a London School of Economics alumnus. The four would-be suicide bombers who attempted a follow-up Tube carnage on July 21st 2005 were discovered to have "more than £500,000 in benefits payments" from the bountiful British welfare state in their bank accounts.

So the next editor of Webster's might like to include a new New York Times definition of "disenfranchised": "complacent liberal assumption designed to reassure readers that they can fit this story into all the old cliches about the usual root causes"

At the time of that publication, those arrested had been recent immigrants, with real property (they had money enough for nice cars), education (several of them were physicians or medical students), and were from Jordan and Iraq... not exactly "South Asian." So, wrong on two counts about these guys' backgrounds (and many of the 7/7/05 bombers were even voters, having been born or naturalized as British subjects).

Well, now we learn that at least one of this recent spate of deadly doctors came from India and another from Pakistan, and, without citizenship, they're temporarily disenfranchised until or unless they apply for and receive citizenship in UK. So that's 2/3 accurate. But wait! Is either qualified to vote back home in their respective countries? Maybe this brings them back down to just being "South Asian," a score of 33.3% accurate.

Still, not bad, for the NYT.

But the Times is not the only journal to miss a few facts: somehow, according to the WaPo, the only tie they all seem to have is that they're "foreign physicians." Funny how they all have names like Mohammed and Abdulla, and, yet, have no common ground except their having become doctors without boundaries.
(HT: CQ)

Update: Christopher Hitchens has an observation about a further subject not accurately dealt with, in MSM coverage of the London car bombs: the target was women.

California & Bolivia: Separated at Birth?

Or on the same downward spiral?

As I wandered through the closely-groomed pathways that are Instapundit posts, I tripped over this piece by Christian Probasco, at New West, on the disturbing trend California has, of exporting their nanny-state assaults on liberty:

Hollywood has molded the image and the myths of the Rocky Mountain West for the entire world. Much of the technology that went into the computer on which you’re reading this article was developed in Silicon Valley. Much of the food in your refrigerator probably comes from the Central Valley. Much of the new population of the interior West’s cities emigrated from California.

California is a trendsetter state. Much like the weather, every Californian fad eventually makes its way over the Sierras and diffuses into the intermountain West. That’s wonderful, and it’s frightening, because there are some pretty disturbing things going on in the Golden State right now.

And, via Gateway Pundit, José Brechner has this to say about Bolivia:

For unknown reasons, this Andean country has a disproportionate influence on its neighbors' political conduct. Indeed even though it behaves in a totally unhinged manner, its geographical location in the center of the continent irradiates its energy to its surrounding nations. When it comes to liberty – or libertinism, which is more common in South America – Bolivia is number one. Everyone does what they want, when and where they want. But liberty is like water. If you do not put it into a vessel, it slips through your fingers until it is gone.

Either way, the tendency of each -- away from freedom and individual responsibility -- is troublesome, especially for the influence they seem to have on their neighbors and friends.

The threat from (or to) China

Via Instapundit: More really bad news about Chinese import items -- several people in Chicago became ill after eating "monkfish" from China.

This on top of the news of the toxic toothpaste in Australia and Panama and the pet food terror.

It's hard to keep myself from seeing a conspiracy in the recent spate of woes -- please, somebody show me this isn't some sort of internal sabotage to screw up the capitalist, internationalist bent developing in this newcomer to industrialization. It would be so very simple for a handful of "true believers" to completely undo any modernization and outreach, simply by making international trade impossible and forcing them inward, to become a militaristic slave society again.

I genuinely hope it's just half-assedness, and not malice. At least dipsticks who can't tell the difference between glycerin and diethylene glycol can be replaced fairly easily in a growing economy. Scary would-be international and political murderers are tougher to clean out, especially if they're super-scary and in positions of power.

Bomb threat causes Amtrak to evacuate train

Last night, the California Zephyr -- the train which runs from San Francisco to Chicago via Denver, Burlington IA, and my neck of the woods, the train I have often had occasion to ride from Galesburg to the Big City (and one round trip from Denver to Galesburg) -- was stopped just after it left Denver on its way east. Some passengers expressed concerns over one man whose behavior was troubling, so the train held up in Arvada to be evacuated while the Arvada PD did a bomb search.

The individual who had caused the worries did not have an explosive, but he was carrying both a big-ass knife and a supply of crystal meth.

Wow. This isn't the first scare of the sort, either. When my folks were returning from their vacation last month, Mom related the story of their ride out of Flagstaff:

When we came back from having had supper in the dining car, we were pulling out of Trinidad [Colorado] and there was this guy sitting alone in our car, and he mumbled something at us. I didn't understand what he said, so I asked him to repeat himself. "All the way to the back. Go all the way to the back."

I quietly and firmly said, "No, these are our seats," and your dad and I sat back down in our regular seats. A couple of other passengers arrived back, as well, and then, a little bit later, one of the younger car attendants, who asked the man, "Is this your seat?" and, "Where's your seat? Where's your ticket?"

The man seemed quiet, calm, (it was really spooky) as he pronounced, "There's a bomb on this train." He told the attendant he had heard a couple of guys up in the observation car talking about blowing up the train, and they had a duffel bag with a bomb. They had already gotten off the train at the last stop, but they were going to blow up the train. When asked, he indicated he'd had a little to drink, but he didn't seem to be really drunk, just weird.

The attendant said, "Come on up to the observation car and show me what you saw."

The man refused. The attendant got more senior staff to help question the man, who continued to refuse to accompany them to the observation car. When the man was informed that he would either come with them to look for the bag or he would be removed from the train at the next stop, La Junta (his ticket was for the whole ride, all the way to Chicago). Without hesitation, the man said, "I'd love get off at La Junta."

Almost immediately, a crowd of passengers started arriving in the coach car, having been cleared out of the observation car. They were all aflutter, wondering what was going on, chattering and asking questions and such, but indicated that the conductor and attendants had simply said there was a little problem, and that they should take their regular seats.

I don't know how, but we arrived in La Junta forty-five minutes early. The city police were waiting at the station. After several minutes standing and talking with the police, the strange man shook hands with every member of the train staff still standing at the platform, shook hands with police officers, and was escorted to one of the police cars.

The cabin attendant came up to us and told us nothing was found, and asked your father and me if we were okay. We told him we were fine. Which we were.

The train waited at the station until its regular departure time, and then went on its way toward Denver, undisturbed by further incident.

I can't help but wonder why that one didn't get any news coverage... Friday, 20 April of this year... the week of VA Tech shootings.

21 32 dead in Virginia Tech shootings

I came to it a little late, but I've just spent the past hour and change watching the news on television. It's enough to have made this agnostic invoke a deity. Several times.

I don't know any more about the VA Tech shootings than anybody else does, which is to day I know nothing, really. Nobody has released the name of the shooter, nobody knows his motive (and it will likely be some time before anybody does). Nobody has answers, yet. We hear nothing.

Unfortunately, what's been going through my head has been the old Boomtown Rats' song, I Don't Like Mondays.

I remember.

It's worse, I think, when you grow up thinking that a school campus is your second home. As a child of a professor, with nearly all my friends being teachers' kids, I want to think that the schools and colleges are safe -- safer than my house. It just isn't so. Aside from the everyday savagery that kids develop and dish out, the large, lethal scale is not a one-time thing. And it isn't just Brenda Ann Spencer, or the boys at Columbine. It has happened repeatedly, over the years, and nothing we can do will prevent it from happening again someday. No matter what we do to try to protect the students and teachers, there is risk in everyday living.

I grieve for every life taken.

There are no more journalistic ethics

At least, they haven't been taught to Gavin King, reporter for Aussie paper Cairns Post. This low-life-with-a-press-pass contacted blogger Sheik Yer'mami (who contributes heavily to the anti-jihad site Winds of Jihad) for comments on a proposal for building a local mosque, promising Sheik that his anonymity would not be broken. King subsequently not only published the actual name of the blogger, but his home address and telephone number, among other private data. From the letter (posted at Dhimmi Watch) Sheik sent to the Australian press council in complaint (with emphasis added by me):

Islamic terrorism is a scourge on humanity. Gavin King, the Cairns Post reporter who focused his article on me, ad hominem, my family, age, business, even listing my property holdings including where I live, is totally out of line. My identity was never a matter for the public record. Because of death-threats to anyone who opposes the spread of Islam I certainly see myself and anyone else in that regard entitled to anonymity. That should be common sense.

It would seem that common sense still isn't terribly common. At least among the news people.

(Full confession: I write a weekly column for a small-town paper. I even took a few courses in journalism in my feckless youth. But I do not want to be associated with those sorts of people who risk the lives of private individuals for their own agendas.)

King has not only endangered the blogsite by labeling it a "hate site" sight unseen, but he has endangered the lives of Sheik and his entire family, plus anybody else who is seen publicly as his friend and supporter.

As one commenter pointed out, this isn't the first time a journalist has endangered the life/lives of private citizens for no good reason. Earlier this month, a Virginia newspaper published the names and addresses of all its local citizens who had concealed carry gun permits -- without regard for the possibility that some of those people were (a) hiding from violent exes or (b) not actually carrying guns, only carrying permits, and (c) perfectly within their legal rights to own and carry guns for their own protection. The paper essentially printed a shopping plan for gun thieves.

And another case is cited of a paper which published the address of a battered women's shelter. Nice.

I hope Sheik and his family can find some satisfaction from the Cairns Post. I hope King gets his hindquarters tossed to the wolves in much the same way he has tried to do to Sheik. Not that I think anybody but the jihadis are likely to do anybody any physical harm. It's just that, when violence arises (and it will. There is jihad in this world, and people are really dying because they choose to think and live freely) I'd just like to see it come to the right people: the ones who would call it down innocents.

Winter sports, my style

Taking sports safety to an extreme: "Yes, you can go out on your sled, but always ride it with a grown-up, and never on slippery snow."

It looks as if Rick Moran of RWNH has been taking lessons from me in the "how to respond to winter" department. My rule of thumb is, if you don't have to go out into the icy misery, just don't do it. Every time I attempt icy sidewalks, I end up studying the treetops from a recumbent position. I count myself lucky -- this past winter, I fell a total of four times, and really only injured myself once (I dislocated my shoulder a tad. I didn't even realize it was more than a slight sprain until it popped itself back in, about a week later, accompanied by a collection of those seven words commonly used by the sinestrosphere). Rick says he is sore in a bunch of places... I hope he's planning to see a doctor, especially about his crunched elbow.

Injuries are no fun, no matter what your age. Still, we recover from this sort of thing fairly rapidly when we're kids, but once we're out of school, falls are much more dangerous.

Eleven years ago (give or take a few months), I fell on the pavement, and I'm only just this past year or so able to walk long distances without leaning upon a cane. Some of the damage to one knee is permanent. The harm to my psyche is... well, my psyche was already damaged, but it added a phobia of running after buses. I'd rather walk twenty miles than race to the bus stop, today.

And don't get me going on icy sidewalks!

The sooner the final thaw gets here, the happier I will be (until allergies kick in).

And the faster Rick recovers, the better for those of us who enjoy reading his blogs. Who knows how the pain will affect his perspective on Jack Bauer, after all?

Dammit, we ordered legs!

A couple in Michigan opened up a package delivered to their home this week to find a human liver and part of a head. They had been expecting the parts to a table they had ordered, but instead found bubble-wrapped pieces of persons, intended for research:

"My husband started to unwrap one and said, 'This is strange, it looks like a liver,' " Ludivine Larmande said. "He started the second one, but stopped as soon as we saw the ear."

Now, that's the kind of delivery system I've grown to know and love.

Kent County sheriff's deputies determined the preserved body parts were for medical research. Authorities think 28 more bubble-wrapped human organs and body parts could be dispersed across the country.

I can't wait to see what I'm getting, instead of my birthday books (hint hint)...

Gratuitous postcard: winter driving hazards

"I don't think we're allowed to park on this street on snow days..."

I'm led to believe we didn't receive the worst part of the winter weather passing through the Midwest, this weekend, and that we won't be getting the worst of the next wave, either. Most of the truly nasty stuff seems to be passing by to the north, and, especially, to the south of us -- hitting St. Louis and Springfield like Thor's hammer, and just giving us a pretty, shiny coating of glitter.

Unfortunately, that glitter makes for interesting travel. I fell twice, this morning, just stepping out my front door, onto my astroturfed front porch -- I was within inches of the container of rock salt set aside for occasions just like today, and I lay there, on the slick sidewalk, muttering nasty words while counting my body parts to see if they were all still intact.

I'd cracked the back of my head on the step, as well. All I can say is, thank God for astroturf and squishy floorboards! I have a slight headache and a lot of stiff muscles, now. I count myself very lucky -- the last time I fell, it took months of physical therapy to get me on my feet again. This time, it's just a mild case of whiplash.

When I took Rizzo out for his morning walk, and he tried to tug against me on the leash as he usually does, he spun around a couple of times before he could regain control of his movements. He didn't want to go all the way around the block. Who'd a thunk? Mom and I are still laughing over the image of his shocked expression (Mom has a fairly good imagination, and Boston Terriers... well, they look shocked most of the time, anyway, don't they, now?).

Still, I have worries for today. My bestest friend is due to return from her vacation in Sunny Florida, this evening. Not only will she be expected to fly into Peoria just about the time the next wave of ice is due, but then she may think she can drive home in the midst of it all... that's fifty-some miles on really slick highways. I told her son that, when he talks to her on the phone, he should tell her that I ordered her to stay put in Peoria, by jingo. I'm taking care of her critters, and I can certainly do that for an extra day or two, until the roads are safe for travel. We want her back intact, not merely on time.

And that goes for everybody else, as well. If you don't have to be on the roads today, stay indoors, for crying out loud! I've gone through twenty pounds of salt and then twice as much cat litter, making sidewalks safe, and it's still not nearly enough. Plus, I got dirty looks from bunches of cats, for making the sidewalks smell like their toilet...

Such is the hazard of living in a temperate climate, I suppose.

A cause for worry: no prosecution of leakers

I've always had faith in our Constitutional system, that it applies to all citizens of this great country. Today, I'm facing a serious crisis of that faith.

As reported (via Power Line) by New York Sun's Josh Gerstein, the people who broke a multitude of laws in their partisan efforts to undermine the elected government and influence policy are not going to be prosecuted, because the investigations were blocked by those under investigation.

Guys like Sandy Burglar and half the sniggering would-be puppet masters can walk because there is no cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, and thus some people are apparently above the law.

The problem I have with the whole thing is that they labeled the CIA "the victim agency". Yes, the leaks were ostensibly CIA information, i.e., property stolen from the agency, but the victims here, it seems to me, are the general public, who have had their freedom, their elected government undermined by a handful of creeps who fancy themselves to be policymakers ahead of those who were actually officially hired by the public to do the job.

Sorry about the run-on sentences, but, by damn, I'm too angry to be concise.

These anal apertures think they can run our country! Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't vote them into the White House, and neither did any other loyal, true Americans. If they're planning their little coups, they can damned well be brought up on trial like any others who would make such an attempt, overtly or covertly.

I am sick and tired of the privileged few walking away laughing at the rest of us peons. It is time the Department of Justice got its act together and started living up to its name.

And, any agency which interferes in the honest seeking of justice ought to see itself defunded. Start with the CIA and whichever office(s) in the State Department has been playing footsie with the NY Times.


Update, 11 Jan: more from Scott Johnson at Power Line, well worth reading.

Jihadi arrested in Illinois

It's reported at lgf. Some Islamosumbitch was planning to toss a few grenades into a mall in my state. Or, barring that, he hoped to stab a few jews to death, for fun and prophet.

Of course, the regular media geeeeniuses call him simply an "Illinois man", leaving out the part where he says he's planning to "commit violent acts of jihad" against the locals. It took several hours before any of the press included any indication of his ties to Islamofascism*. Even now, they have yet to publish whatever connections he has -- the FBI supposedly describes him as a "lone operator".

But, speaking as one who used to have to work in malls, and, considering some of my friends are still working there, I'm grateful that the FBI was on top of this thing. If this guy really wanted to do something dramatic in the name of Islam, we could arrange to martyr him by putting him in a room full of 14-year-old girls and telling them that he was planning to blow up their shopping hangout. He wouldn't last ten seconds.


Update: one of the commenters at lgf suggests concealed carry weapons (CCW) as the solution. That would be all very nice and good, if only Blagojevich hadn't vetoed the last 2 bills passed by the state legislature of IL. The nitwit even blocked standardization of state laws concerning the transportation of hunting weapons -- so hunters still don't know when they're going to cross from one county in to the next and find themselves in a whole new world of legal nightmares, for something that's wholly legal just a mile down the road. I'm no gun enthusiast, but if this keeps up, I'll become one.


*MSNBC has finally come around to opening with the descriptive "A Muslim convert". Yeeeehah! Maybe they're getting a clue. Or am I reading too much into their admission that it's not a "disgruntled youth" like they have in la Fwance?

Books, jealous of tv, kill Florida woman

Ace has the report:

The body of a missing US woman has been found by her family, wedged upside down behind a bookcase in her room.

Mariesa Weber, 38, is believed to have fallen over and become trapped as she tried to reach behind the bookcase to adjust the plug for a TV set.

She was apparently suffocated when the shelves moved slightly and pinned her in place.

Remind me to anchor my shelves to the foundations of my house, and put the electrical outlets somewhere more accessible -- like, say, in front of the shelves. And not let the shelves know when I want to watch "Heroes" instead of reading The Baltic Crusade or some such substantial work.