Rangel, Kerry singing from same hymnal

I blogged yesterday about Charlie Rangel's swipe at my neighbor, the great State of Mississippi. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) has demanded an apology and voiced what's on many Southerners' minds:

"I hope his remarks are not the kind of insults, slander and defamation that Mississippians will come to expect from the Democrat leadership in Washington, D.C.," he said.

Don't get your hopes up, Chip.

Rangel came back with this Kerry-esque response: "I certainly don't mean to offend anyone. I just love New York so much that I can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to live here."

Reminds me of Ray Nagin's insistence that "chocolate" meant "a drink made with white milk and dark chocolate."

This "I meant the exact opposite of what I said" act is getting old, but I don't think it's fooling many people. Personally, I say, keep handing them the microphones. Let's have the whole country hear more about what bigots they are. Yes, I said bigots. Smearing the troops or Southerners is just as bigoted as smearing African-Americans or homosexuals.

Dang, I'm getting cranky. Time for the weekend and some time out with Rich.

He never shoulda been there in the first place

Note to Shakira: Would you like to write a check to Adrienne Shelly's widower and child to help compensate them after her brutal murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant?

Would you, by any chance, like to amend your statement at the Latin Grammys in support of "the recognition [illegals] deserve from the government"? I'm sorry ... exactly what sort of recognition did this piece of crap deserve?

Just asking.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

He ain't whistlin' Dixie

Charlie Rangel takes a swipe at the South. From the New York Times (big surprise):

“It’s not just committees — our influence within the House Democratic caucus will grow enormously,” Mr. Rangel said in an interview. To that end, he sketched out an expansive federal agenda: Teaming up with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on gun control, passing new tax incentives for urban job programs, and redirecting federal money to New York in return for the outsize tax collections that the federal government makes here.

“Mississippi gets more than their fair share back in federal money, but who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?” Mr. Rangel said.

I thought the Dems were all about helping poor people, and there are more poor people in Mississippi than in New York, right? So, why the griping, Charlie?

But I, frankly, am glad that Mr. Rangel doesn't live in Mississippi or anywhere else near me. He's a doofus. Ted Nugent nailed him on Hannity & Colmes a few years ago on the subject of gun control. Nugent pointedly asked what he'd do if someone were breaking into his house and threatening his family. Rangel said, "Call 911." Nugent laughed and said, "Good luck."

Yeah, that's the problem with you gun-control nuts: By the time you have to call 911, it's often too late.

For example, on 9/11.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

OMG

Y'all, I am so bummed.

Terrorism. Illegal immigration. John Kerry's frightening mug. It's all just trivia now because of the horrors of Brit and K-Fred breaking up.

Who could have seen this one coming? I mean, what a great couple. Just the perfect couple. And Brit is the one doing the leaving. Is she crazy? What's not to love about this guy?

I'll be okay, y'all. Just give me a little while.

::: sniff :::

Aw ... say it isn't so

I like Shakira. I really, really like Shakira. As one of the few contemporary singers I bother to keep up with on occasion, she saves me from being a complete old-timer permanently stuck in Retroville.

And now she's done it. Dangit. According to Fox News:

"She threw her support to those trying to become citizens as they work without documentation. 'I hope soon they will receive they recognition they deserve from the government,' the Colombian superstar said."

Shakira, girlfriend, please ... "the recognition they deserve"? They deserve??

By the way, I don't know where this "trying to become citizens" business comes from. Between the Mechistas claiming that the southwestern U.S. belongs to them anyway and the revolving door at the border, I don't see a whole lot of investment in the idea of U.S. citizenship.

First George, and now Shakira. Oh, this makes my head hurt.

Reason #376 why I like living in Alabama

Okay ... we're certainly not the only state in the Union with deciduous trees, but check out these photographs at one of my favorite weather sites:

ABC 33/40 Weather Blog: Fayette County, Alabama

Scenes like these almost make me weep. I'm not joking. And they're everywhere in the richly forested central and northern Alabama. A gift from the Almighty, if you ask me.

South Park disses Darwin

BWWAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

Before you click -- this is definitely PG-13. (Hat tip: Hot Air)

QotD

"Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93."


-- Mark Steyn in America Alone

John Kerry takes another wrong turn into Cluelessville

Did ya hear the one about John Kerry making a fool of himself? I know, I know ... which one?

Michelle Malkin has an excellent roundup of Kerry's smearing the troops as dumb and uneducated. I won't repeat here. Read it and breathe a sigh of relief that he is not the commander in chief.

UPDATE: Kerry should have ordered some cheese with this whine.

MY PREDICTION: Watch for Hillary to distance herself and maybe even outright criticize Kerry in order to position herself as being more pro-military than she actually is.

UPDATE II: Ha!! What did I tell you. (Granted, a little tepid, but I knew she wouldn't defend him.)

Now I have seen it all

For the gadget geek who has (almost) everything, Halloween costumes for your iPod.

And if you get a chance, head on over to my sweetie's blog, Brain Squeezings, and wish Rich good luck as he begins NaNoWriMo tomorrow.

Thursday roundup

Screamingly funny.

Nuke threats mean South Koreans are enjoying a little more sumthin-sumthin. I approve.

The idea of Madonna adopting anyone scares the freak outta me.

High school sez "no" to Professor Poopypants costumes

Mariah Carey's Hong Kong concert canceled due to low sales and high diva-ness. Aw.

Speaking of divas: When Supermodels Attack

Y'all have a great day!

Oh, no ... does this make me a liberal?

The latest post on the excellent Babalu Blog is titled "Why liberals (really) piss me off (Part 3)." Naturally, it caught my attention.

George Moneo is ranting about silly PC speech codes that are supposed to protect feminine ears from "sexist" language. But I gotta take issue with ya, George. You said, to your female coworker, "Love, I'll say what I damn well please!" And I say, "Mind your manners, sir."

Yeah, I think we've gone too far with banning words such as "manpower," but don't call me "dear" or "love" unless you're (A) my fiance or (B) a male relative who is at least my age.

It's not a matter of sexism -- it's a matter of propriety. It is improper to call someone by a pet name in a business setting. Common sense should tell you that. (I mean, would you really want your wife's male boss calling her "honey?") And for that matter, I don't appreciate women calling me pet names in a business setting, either.

In our resistance against political correctness, we can't chuck simple manners. Used to be, society had elegant rules about how to address people. First names were inappropriate outside of family and close friendships, much less pet names. I really would like us to return to more decorum and away from calling people what "we damn well please."

Please. Sir.

Colmes out to lunch on North Korea

My, my, my! Lots going on in this big, nutty world since I blogged a week ago. I will say that Rich and I had a fabuloso weekend. Read about it on his blog here.

Meanwhile, I got a profoundly sobering e-mail yesterday from The Voice of the Martyrs regarding the treatment of Christians -- and anyone else who won't lick the boots of Nutcase in Chief Kim Jong Il -- in North Korea.

If you're even remotely thinking that we should have a sit-down with Kim, please read this. And this. If you're short on time, I'll summarize: North Korea employs hundreds of exotic ways to torture and murder its own citizens for crimes such as believing in God or attempting to cross the border. If you're lucky, you'll just get a bullet. Doesn't matter if you're an 80-year-old grandmother or a toddler, crimes against the "Great Leader" are not tolerated. Oh and, by the way, at least 10 percent of the population has died of starvation in recent years.

How could we begin to trust that Kim would do ANYTHING with peaceful intent?

Apparently, Alan Colmes does. He recently said that providing the Norks with "energy" (I assume he meant nuclear energy capability) would help raise them out of devastating poverty and starvation. News flash, Alan: Kim Jong Il doesn't care squat about people's welfare. North Korea's GDP is lower than the spare change I have in a coffee mug on my desk. How do you think he affords his own lavish lifestyle (including a reputed wine cellar stocked with 10,000 bottles of France's finest)?

I'll let you ponder that for a moment.

In the meanwhile -- for those of us who truly care about North Koreans (including, I hope, Mr. Colmes) -- please visit sites such as Voice of the Martyrs (link above) and consider donating to a truly worthy cause. The people of North Korea are mostly voiceless in our media culture. We can work to change that.

GGB Must-see TV

The pronouncement has come from the gods of South Park: 9/11 conspiracy theorists are retards.

Watch it!

Odds 'n' ends

Rich is now famous. His blog entry on Moleskines has been quoted and linked at Moleskinerie.com. What the heck is a Moleskine? Here ya go.

Yes, I do own a pair of Brain Squeezings thong underwear. Proudly.

It looks like Mountain Dew will not be reincarnating Pitch Black soda for the 2006 Halloween season. And I am sad.

I have consumed an inordinate amount of Mountain Dew over the past two days. I have worked past 7 p.m. the past two days. Coincidence?

Word of the Day, from a commenter at LGF:
Hollowcaust: An inconsequential, trivial matter made to appear important out of proportion to its worth through comparing it with the Holocaust. Its usage usually indicates that the speaker is an a$$hat.

There are 200 days left until my wedding. Feels like 2,000.

There are four days left until my engagement party, and my house is still a Superfund cleanup site.

Did I mention I'd been working late?

I'm craving pizza.

A 'page' from my own history

The Mark Foley scandal just gets uglier and uglier.

I have no illusions that our elected officials are saints, but you'd like to think that a member of Congress would have better things to do than to fantasize about the private parts of the page corps.

But I know better.

I was a page in the Alabama State Senate during the summer of 1983 at the tender age of 13. Thank god, no one tried to get in my pantyhose. Nevertheless, there was a member of the Senate who was still single at the time and enjoyed a reputation as Montgomery's most eligible bachelor. Late one evening, the Senate was in fillibuster and I was parked in the chamber near the podium, keeping an eye out for a senator I'd been told to fetch. Senator Bachelor came striding down the aisle behind me. I caught his eye and said, "Senator Bachelor, have you seen Senator So-and-So?"

Senator Bachelor bent down next to my ear, and with the smell of alcohol on his breath, kissed my cheek and said, "No, honey, I haven't seen him."

I freaked.

I went to my uncle, who at the time held a high position in the administration. "Senator Bachelor kissed me!" He laughed it off and reassured me that the senator was a harmless flirt.

Perhaps, but in retrospect, I think my 13-year-old Spidey sense was correct: Grown men have no business planting their lips on teenagers.

Actually, the Senatorial Smooch was the least disillusioning moment during my two weeks in the Capitol. Mostly, I saw a bunch of supposed leaders indulging in a complete waste of time. Work? Ppplllpppttt. No one was working. Milling around, talking, enjoying martinis with dinner, oh yeah. But working? Nah. Hardly.

At this point, I'm pretty disgusted with the lot of 'em, the Dems and the GOP. The fact that Mark Foley is a wanker and a perv is hardly surprising.

My guess is, they don't have enough to keep them busy.

Oh, you whippersnappers

Columbia University students promoted the free market of ideas yesterday by storming a stage where the founder of the Minutemen was speaking.

Ah, college days.

I remember trying to be a liberal then, too ... as liberal as I could be at a Baptist university, which meant I was still well to the right of the most conservative undergrad at Dartmouth or Harvard.

Liberal ideas such as "No one is ever illegal" (as displayed on a protestor's sign) are nice and cozy ... as long as you don't have to live with the results of your ideas.

I'm comforted with the fact that most of these goofballs will have a change of heart within the next decade as they get out into the world, get married, start a family, get a job, pay taxes and generally interact with the greater society. Until then, I stick to my mantra that college students should generally be ignored.

Dang, I missed my calling

Writer Eve Ensler, of The Vagina Monologues fame, has penned an ode to Dubya's posterior:

"Fire His Ass"

And to think, I've been slaving for 15 years in Corporate America, convincing my superiors of the benefits of finely turned phrases and unforgettable bon mots, when all this time I could have been writing garbage like this and getting famous.

And in case anyone didn't notice, this is decidedly not a poem. It's a poorly constructed prose rant that isn't particularly entertaining, intelligent or thought-provoking. It could be extolling the virtues of kittens and daffodils, and I'd still think it was garbage.

Gurlz with gunz

There's a TV commercial for Brinks Home Security that makes me want to hurl.

A woman is home alone with her children. An intruder breaks the glass on the back door. The security alarm screams. The intruder high-tails it, woman and children scurry upstairs and receive a comforting phone call from Brinks that "help is on the way." She sputters, "Oh, thank you!" and then -- presumably -- grabs a fresh pair of undies.

In my fantasies, the woman drops her dish rag for a double-barreled rifle and puts a one-way tunnel through the dope's forehead. When Brinks calls, she says, "Yeah. We got it taken care of. But you might want to dispatch someone to clean the sidewalk."

Mary Katherine Ham (TownHall.com) has rounded up some real-life stories about gun-packin' chicks cleaning up the gene pool. You go, gurlz.

Crickets

I'm still waiting for an American Christian leader to stand up to condemn threats against the Pope and defend Benedict's remarks.

::: crickets :::

The GGB is reviewing major Christian Web sites to see if I've missed anything, but so far nothing has shown up in the major press.

::: crickets :::

Franklin Graham? Rick Warren? James Dobson? Anyone? Anyone?

::: crickets :::

UPDATE: Finally, someone's speaking up. And he's a Brit. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)