MoDo. NYT. Hattip: Drudge.

It is really All About Me:

At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?

And the few occasions that it is not All About Me, it is All About Us, The New York Times:

John Schwartz of The New York Times made the trend official in 2004 when he reported: "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame." A study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent.

Emphasis mine.

When did the Drudge Report die as an interesting source of news? I mean, Matt Drudge hit the ultimate double secret, grand slam, walk-off home run of all time with Monica's blue dress but the only thing that I can remember finding there first since that time was the John Kerry Intern Affair story that was a big swing and a miss. /Lame Baseball Analogies

And look at today's blaring headline at the Drudge Report:

"Libby Could Face Thirty Years in Prison"

Reading the article you will find the headline technically true.

But should that really be the headline when you couldn't find a guy on the planet (even in the office of the Special Prosecutor) that thinks Libby would even get 30 months, even if convicted? The answer is obviously no.

Drudge used to be a sensation. He has since turned his site over to people who confuse that with just being sensational.

That said, I am glad Libby re-signed. He should. And if convicted of false statements he should be punished. I am glad that the laws forbidding lying to a Grand Jury have been put back on the books even if it took a Republican administration official violating them to make it happen.

The investigation is not over, either, but has anyone read anything anywhere that would suggest somehow that Mr. Libby (much less Darth Rover) treated Valerie Plame's "covert" status any more lightly than it was treated by Plame herself and her husband Joe Wilson?

Joe Wilson has to be given credit so far, though. He, unlike Libby, knows that telling outright lies is to be saved for books and speaking engagements to the party faithful and is not something best done before a grand jury.

A Bonus: As overreaching and strained as Al Franken's "Execution Tour" was this past week it looks totally ridiculous now. And to think all that was the product of a Haaaahvaaahd education.

I. Love. These. Things.

Make your own Einstein Sign here.

Go here for the one that started it all: The Church Sign Generator.

(Hat Tip: The Commissar)

Two thousand dead U.S. soldiers?

PAR-TAY!

And for you people smiling in the pictures, feel free to go here and download your feel-good desktop wallpaper of the day!

Winning the War of Ideas, one protest babe at a time.

Wow.

"Police are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits."

Traditions and habits? When did they change the term from cycle of violence? Or even Assault and Battery?

And the article gets even better (or worse). Check out these other fine guidlelines put forth by the, what else, Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau:

• The guide also advises officers not to hold interviews with Aboriginal suspects or set court hearings during Aboriginal ceremonies involving "initiation, birth, death, burials, mourning periods, women's meetings and cultural ceremonies in general".




• They are told to interview Baha'i suspects only after sunset in the fasting month.
• And they are cautioned that when a Sikh is reading the Sikh Holy Script -- a process that normally takes 50 hours -- "he should not be disturbed".
• The 50,000 handbooks instruct police to take shoes off before entering Buddhist and Hindu houses and mosques, and remove hats before entering or searching churches.
• They are warned that taking photos or samples from Aboriginal suspects could raise fears they could be used for sorcery and spiritual mischief.

From the article:

Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau head Gerard Daniells, who created the 82-page full-colour handbook, said common sense would prevail over the guide in an emergency.

Oh, really? Mr. Daniells managed to conjure up zero common sense in the time it takes to conceive, write, lay out, print, and distribute 50,000 copies of this 82-page, Three Hundred-thousand dollar compendium of spineless multi-culti nonsense and police officers are supposed to do it on the scene?

"Mr Daniells said the next edition would include Maori spiritual beliefs and practices. "

Let us not leave out the Druids, Mr. Daniels (God, what a wanker!), we don't want to have officers happening on to a scene of human sacrifice and not show the proper sensitivities.

Miers is out.

Trent Lott will never read a blog.

I have to ask Senator Lott, "What is the difference between a blog based in your state and constituent mail and do you ignore constituent mail also?

Commercial radio programs done for commercial gain? Unpossible!

Why can't Rush be less interested in selling himself and his radio show like Howard Stern Sean Hannity Dave Ramesy Dr. Dean Edell Al Franken Robert Hallmark.....er....well....you know what I mean....somebody who (admittedly) is selling themselves and their radio program but who has opinions more like my own?

More here.

Yo, Verio dudes, maybe a part of the country subject to storms that can destroy infrastructure for hundreds of miles just isn't the best place for a data center.

From Michael Yon, a must read:

"We left, drove here and there, and landed at a different unit: the 170th MPs from Fort Lewis. This unit was responsible for supporting twenty polling stations. SFC Dilbert French mentioned some minor SIGACTS that were not worth jotting down. "Is it like this all over Iraq?" I asked. I could hardly believe it. Where are the mortars? The IEDs? The homicide bombers and car bombs? No snipers? Surely the ground must be shaking in Falluja or Ramadi, and what about Mosul, Baquba, and Basra? What about Tal Afar? SFC French checked the secure computer for all of Iraq. The whole country looked quiet. "The media is going to be very disappointed," chuckled one soldier [emphasis mine], and I laughed along with him."

It breaks my heart that so much of the mainstream press (and virtually all of the Democratic party) are willing to ignore, downplay, or even sometimes denigrate these soldiers in Iraq and the Iraqi people themselves to score political points. Read the whole thing and see if you can match it up with what the networks and the All-Too-Gray-Now Lady are telling you the story is in Iraq.

Another topic you won't see covered in the MSM. Rapidly dropping gasoline prices.

The folks working on the Gulf Coast refineries are doing heroic stuff in difficult circumstances, bringing the products back into the pipelines as fast as possible. In addition, demand for gasoline is down from 2 to 5% over the past month and except for spot shortages of premium* gas, I haven't read of anyone not being able to buy what they have needed. The market works.

And prices should continue to fall, if we avoid any further damage to Gulf Coast production and refining. You're probably not going to see $1.50 gas again, but we may be near $2 per gallon by year end.

*you can make more regular out of a barrel of oil than you can premium, so if you're really short, you make regular...

Bush Derangement Syndrome reaches the sports desk at the Chicago Sun-Times:

Mrs. Bush and former President George H.W. Bush are seated just to the third base side of the plate during the Astros' home playoff games, close enough that you can see her unmistakable white hair in the lower right corner of the television frame from the center field camera. There's no getting away from her. She's always there.

Although the former president is usually out of camera shot, you can't see her without thinking about him sitting there, too, and even worse, you are reminded of their son, which makes you flash on Iraq and Supreme Court justices and all sorts of things that you don't want to mix with baseball.

For all the Republicans who I've just offended, how would you feel if that were the Clintons sitting back there?

See what I mean? It's irritating. It detracts from the game."

For the Barbara Bush to get and use great seats to watch a sport to which her only connections seem to be 1) Her husband actually played the sport, 2) Her son used to be the General Manager of a MLB franchise, and 3) Houston actually is her home town?

Unthinkable.

The Clinton analogy doesn't work, either. They aren't fans of the sport and their presence at a game would just set off a flurry of "getting to first base" jokes.

Just an observation from a decidedly pro-Bush blog located in the home town of same: The White House seems to be losing the argument over Harriet Miers.

Don't believe it. Bush is not meeting with Bono to discuss his vast knowledge of poverty and it's cure. Bush knows that Harriet Miers nomination is in trouble and he plans to dump her and nominate Bono. Not a citizen you say? Well, that's why he is scheduled later in the day to meet with the National Security Adviser. They will fill out a double secret citizenship application, and by noon tomorrow, Bono will be a citizen and the new nominee to the Supreme Court. Remember, you heard it here first.

Big Kudos to the Midland city street/traffic department!

Their publicized (sorry: can't find a link to last week's M-RT article) re-timing of traffic signals has apparently been completed. I have made the run between Midland Drive and Wall Street on Andrews Highway four times in a row without hitting a red light. Pretty amazing. Wadley seems to be working the same efficient way.

The savings in time, frustration and gasoline is a boon for Midland's drivers! In addition, you can look at it as a reward for driving the speed limit. If you go too far above or too far below, you'll hit the lights all red. Vindication for smooth driving and punishment for speeders and those who dart through the traffic to try to make the next light: used to work, now it doesn't. And I won't do the obligatory question of why it wasn't done before. I am very thankful that it has been done now.

Best. Article. Ever. On. The. Sports. Complex.

The article has it all. Colin Guy has turned in a great piece with this one. The stadium has its supporters (hey, it passed, didn't it?) but Mr. Guy has provided the numbers to show that the stadium complex is not the engine for economic development that it was purported to be, rather it is just another expensive luxury that 60% of the voters have placed upon themselves and 100% of everyone else.

Another great issue that was touched on was the big time end-run by some of the city Fathers that pushed the creation of the stadium complex ahead of the referendums for the improvement of the secondary schools in Midland. Feelings were much harder than were portrayed in the article, but just the mention of it shows how well researched and honest this article was.

I am not sure what to make of this statement:

Former Mayor Bobby Burns, however, said he does not think the sports complex vote had anything to do with the defeated school bond, which he said was already full of problems. On the contrary, Burns said construction of the sports complex helped Midland schools by saving them the cost of having to build a new football stadium on their own.

I can not imagine how placing a $38 million dollar debt load on the taxpayers would not affect subsequent bond proposals, but there it is. And perhaps the school bond proposal "was already full of problems", but shouldn't the problems on the bond proposal that affects the lives of every secondary and high school level student in Midland be worked out before we build a big shrine to the fifty or so from each high school who play ball and subsidize a privately held baseball club? And what difference does it make to the taxpayer which taxing authority it is that docks them to pay for the new stadium?

If there is anything that is missing in this article it is the numbers behind the numbers. For instance:

"According to RockHounds General Manager Monty Hoppel, ticket sales for RockHounds games have increased heavily since the team moved to the sports complex. In their first year at Citibank, the RockHounds sold 276,380 tickets, compared to the 148,292 tickets sold during their last season at Christensen Stadium. Over the four years the team has been playing at Citibank, they have sold more than 1 million tickets, an increase of more than 300,000 (54 percent) compared to the team's last four years at Christensen."

We have made light of "Blue T-Shirt Night" at Rockhounds games before on this blog, but we didn't invent the term. We overheard two park employees joking about it "being Blue T-Shirt night again". (For the unfamiliar, "Blue T-Shirt Night" is really a term for the attendance being so light that all you see when you look into the stands is blue....the color of the seat backs.)

But this forces the question: Okay, we know what tickets sales are, but what is the actual attendance? The actual number of people through the turnstiles? They announce the ticket sales from the P.A. every night. Not counting special nights (fireworks, etc.), how many times has this count matched up with your lying eyes? Why is the actual attendance important? Because increased ticket sales are not increased development even by loose ED-Think standards. Attendance is. And I would bet that actual attendance is a much, much lower number than ticket sales.

Sure, this sounds like way-after-the fact nit-picking. We can't unbuild the stadium. At this point, we can't even unbuild the not-yet-built Midland Horseshoe. We keep bringing it up because, even here in the home of legions of self-professed fiscally conservative elected officials and community leaders, for every dollar in your pocket there is a Grand Idea to advance the greater good.

The next Grand Idea is an expanded convention center. It, too, will be needed to "advance local economic development". And a few years after it is built, the goalposts like-wise will be moved to the more achievable and arguable "better quaility of life" standard that is put forth by the Sunday Editorial in regards to the sports complex:

"In the beginning, the sports complex was touted as another tool for the city in its need for economic development. There is no question the facilities at the complex have generated a boon to local businesses.

But we always maintained that the sports complex should be developed because the need existed for our community. For us it was more of a quality of life issue for the community than a cure-all for economic development."

Sentence Number 1: True.

Sentence Number 2: Article of faith. Perhaps it should be questioned. The greatest thing about Mr. Guy's article was that he didn't take local chamber-speak as the gospel. Sunday's Editorial is totally drinking the Kool-Aid.

Sentence Number 3: Did you see the goal posts move? It happened somewhere in between Sentence Number 1 and Sentence Number 3.

Sentence Number 4: So now you know: Already built Grand Ideas are not cure-alls for economic development. It is always the next Grand Idea that is.

Update: Sometime this month, EZ Rider will should make available the numbers for a second full year of operations. By numbers we mean not just ridership but full financial statements including income statements and balance sheets. I hope Mr. Guy gets this assignment and reports on it as extensively as he did on the article discussed above. But whomever it is that gets the assignment, please call the authorities in advance and ask for the full financials. Like we have said before, if the cost figures are not important then the ridership numbers are not important. And they are always handy with the ridership figures.

Remember all of the media coverage of the student who blew himself up near an OU home game recently? Me neither. It seems that the MSM is sweeping the whole story under the rug in order to play down a possible Islamic terrorism connection.

Michele Malkin is all over the story here with a link filled post. She takes particular aim at the Wall Street Journal who interviewed her for a story on the story. More MSM coverage of MSM coverage rather than investigation. And, surprise, surprise, blogs and bloggers come in for a little bashing. Rumor mongers, we are. If the MSM, who actually get paid to do stuff like this, did their job, the blogs would have much less to report and fewer "rumors" to monger.

Read Malkin's post, the WSJ article and follow some of Michele's links. My opinion: there is more to this story than meets the eye. It is clear to me that OU would like to diminish the story to keep from spooking students and parents. If I progress past this reasonable assumption, I might be accused of rumor mongering, too. Take in the data that is out there and draw your own conclusion.

BTW, as a long-time subscriber to the dead tree version of the Wall Street Journal and currently a subscriber to the WSJ Online too, I am quite disappointed in this weak coverage of a troubling and potentially very important story.

Your required reading for Monday: Mr. Steyn's column from yesterday on our enemy that the media will not name.

What happened in Russia on Thursday was serious business, not just in the death toll but in the number of key government installations that the alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology managed to seize with relative ease.

Read the whole thing.

No surprise here. Something that is happening more and more often and is uncovered by the blogosphere every time.

More made up news. NBC manages to completely trivialize some real news while (hopefully, probably) ending the career of newsbabe Kosinski. More here. Emmy award nominations for the two guys in waders. More fine work from our friends, the "faked but still true" MSM stalwarts.

Hat tips: Drudge, Michele Malkin, LGF and Newsbusters.

A great round-up of horror stories from Hurricane Katrina.

Horror stories that didn't actually happen.

The question now percolating among those not just out to get Michael Brown, FEMA, and Chimpy McHitlerburton: How much did these news reports slow rescue efforts?

Intelligence operatives uncover key slides from Al Qaeda big-wig al-Zawahiri's Power Point presentation that outlines the strategery against the West. Some key goals include:

• Develop Skill-Set Synergies For Expelling Crusaders From Mesopotamia
• Achieve Buy-In For Scalable "Bleeding Edge" Regional Amirate Platform
• Implement Adaptive "Win-Win" Map To Break Down Intra-Regional Jihad Silos
• Champion Mission-Critical Processes For Dis-Implementing Zionist Pigs
• Pareto-ize Alpha Office for Stakeholder-Focused Global Sharia Capabilities

More here.

Maybe it is because I am not a lawyer...and, granted, the topic at hand is certainly more important than who to play in your fantasy football league this coming weekend, but......

But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't point out that all of the people discussing the Harriet Miers nomination sound exactly like the people who call in to ESPN Radio to discuss their fantasy picks.

Because they do.

Jessica's Well: We get results!

The average age of newspaper readers is now 55.

h/t Roger L. Simon

At an Octoberfest celebration in Southlake, a man was arrested for taking "inappropriate pictures" of women and children.

It seems Texas State Law says that "You're committing an offense if, a) you're taking a picture of a person who hasn't given you consent to do so, and b) that picture is for the sexual gratification of any person."

Which, oddly, is exactly that which is required to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Quotes from Al Gore while in Sweden:

"We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us."

"We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media."

"We would not be routinely torturing people."

This is Planet Gore signing off again. Over.

Reminders appear daily of the war we are fighting, if you are looking:

The letter of instructions and requests outlines a four-stage plan, according to officials: First, expel American forces from Iraq. Second, establish a caliphate over as much of Iraq as possible. Third, extend the jihad to neighboring countries, with specific reference to Egypt and the Levant -- a term that describes Syria and Lebanon. And finally, war against Israel.

This from an article in the (surprise!) Washington Post. It is analyzed with his usual clarity by Wretchard at Belmont Club:

Perhaps the downside of the insurgency's 'media-combined arms' campaign was that it not only fooled some of the public, but it misled themselves as well.

Our wonderful, soldier-loving-but-America-hating-yet-still-patriotic, accuracy-challenged, self-absorbed media, enabling and supporting the insurgents, and outsmarting themselves! Ironic, no?

Read the whole thing(s): both the article and post are not going to be anything you will likely read anywhere else.

OH NO! It is the Return of the Digital Brownshirts! Hide your women and Krugmans!

(Originally here.)

UPDATE: And check out this little nugget also found in Al Gore's speech:

"As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House [emphasis mine] - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

Got that? Dan Rather was forced out after angering the White House.

This is Planet Gore signing off.......over.

May I ever so gently suggest that whomever it was that matched this picture with this headline be flogged?

Jimmy Patterson has an interesting post called "What if Jesus called Rush?"

There is more to the post than I will touch on here, but it does confirm one thing that I have suspected for some time now: Even those possesed of the ability to be all places at all times doing all things don't listen to Air America.

The Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council [in England] has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Mark Steyn asks:

"Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh...how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?"

They obvious answer is that they cannot.

My warning to you is that they do not plan to.

Do you think this is isolated? Think again.

"Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross [on the banner of St. George] was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades."

Doyle went on to say "that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is “not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with.”

Say, Chris, how about you find an entire new culture and religion which is not so associated with such a bloody present?

Given the choice between these two headlines:

"Craddick Not Indicted"

and

"Craddick Avoids Indictment"

Which one do you think the newsies are going to pick 99% of the time?

Plus, these articles always contain this kind of "explanation" for how the Republicans got power in Texas:

"Craddick worked quietly for years to help move the GOP into power. Republicans ultimately took control of all statewide elected offices and the state Senate in the 1990s, then seized control in the House in 2003."

Seized control! Yup, they ran their big-business-financed gas-guzzling SUV's right through the doors of the House chamber coming to rest upon the body of universally loved and totally bi-partisan former Speaker Pete Laney. And then they shot two House interns just to show how serious they were about power seizing! Minority interns! But I didn't need to tell you that. After all, these are Republicans we are talking about!

Some say they got power by winning a bunch of elections over the years....but I know better.

UPDATE: I have managed to locate one of Dave McNeely's columns on this deal. The whole column is written in the tone of a man in total anguish over the knowledge that when it comes time to...you know...actually prove the case, his side will lose.

Check out these great sentences:

"Ronnie Earle has put in a lot of time and effort over the past three years, trying to hold to account people and organizations he and several grand jurors think broke Texas law."

Maybe so. But Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison can enlighten Mr. McNeely about how much time he spends on people who, apparently, did not. And what is with the phrase "several grand jurors"? I guess that "several grand jurors" sounds much more damning than "a grand jury, finally."

"Back in the early 20th Century progressive era, Texas led the way in outlawing corporate and union money in political campaigns."

You know...back when honest Democrats like Lyndon Johnson and George Parr ran the state.

"A more recent law was aimed at keeping the selection of a House speaker with the members of the House."

As opposed to what? Turning the selection over to the high school delegates at Boy's State? This is Mr. McNeely's way of hinting to you that Craddick wouldn't be Speaker if the all but two House members that voted for him had voted the way they really wanted.

"But U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and now-Speaker Tom Craddick in the Texas House, aided by another old buddy, Bill Hammond, in 2002 oversaw the dumping of a truck full of corporate money on selected legislative campaigns. They insist it was completely within the law."

Democrats don't have buddies. Not even young ones. And the millions of dollars that they bring in for their campaigns certainly don't come in dump trucks. They come $5 at a time. In hand addressed stamped envelopes. From puppies who love Jesus.

"They insist it was completely within the law."

Maybe that is because they believe it to be within the law. Mr. Earle has finally convinced an Austin-based grand jury that his ham sandwich has some meat. Let us see what an actual trial (you know, where both sides of an argument get presented) reveals before we dance on any graves, Dave.

"For Earle, the state's chief ethics enforcer for almost 30 years, the main reason he ran for re-election in 2004 was because he thought the Legislature in which he once served was being corrupted."

The same chief ethics enforcer who discusses grand jury business at Democratic fund raisers.

"Roy Minton, the go-to attorney for politicians and political organizations in trouble..."

See? They have to be guilty! They hired a good attorney. If these Rethuglicans really thought they had a case at all they could have hired a low-priced nobody to defend them against this guy Earle who, incidently, has only the power of the freakin' government behind him.

"Perhaps ironically, the circumstances of the TAB and TRMPAC takeover of the Legislature in 2002 may wind up adjudged the biggest Texas legislative scandal since the Sharpstown stock fraud and banking scandal that erupted in the early 1970s."

Or it could go the way of the great crusade against Senator Hutchison. Meanwhile, Ol' Dave will have to get his shots in while he can just in case it does.

Porkbusters is an offshoot of the blogosphere that was created for the purpose of finding out which of our representatives would be willing to actually forego some of the pork some federal spending scheduled for their respective districts in order to help pay for hurricane relief and projects related to same.

The idea was first put forth at Instapundit:

"How are we going to mobilize the blogosphere in support of cuts in wasteful spending to support Katrina relief? Here's the plan.

Identify some wasteful spending in your state or (even better) Congressional District. Put up a blog post on it. Go to N.Z. Bear's new PorkBusters page and list the pork, and add a link to your post.

Then call your Senators and Representative and ask them if they're willing to support having that program cut or -- failing that -- what else they're willing to cut in order to fund Katrina relief. (Be polite, identify yourself as a local blogger and let them know you're going to post the response on your blog). Post the results. Then go back to NZ Bear's page and post a link to your followup blog post."

As of this posting neither Congressman Conaway or Congressman Neugebauer has committed to any cuts of spending from their districts....or if they have, it has not been logged into the Porkbusters database.

How can one find a list of Pork Barrel Spending slated for the district? In the case of Congressman Neugebauer it is trumpeted with great fanfare on his website. Check out wild-eyed fiscal conservatism at its most spartan:

• Neugebauer Announces $1.2 Million Grant for Andrews Development
• Neugebauer Votes for Republican Budget After Securing Leadership Commitments of No Reductions to Farm Programs
• Neugebauer Secures $16 Million for Big Spring Reliever Route
• Neugebauer Secures Funding for Permian Basin Transportation Projects
• NEUGEBAUER SECURES FUNDING FOR TEXAS TECH AND TEXAS FARMERS
• Despite Budget Constraints, Neugebauer Secures Funding For TTU Projects
• Neugebauer Praises DOD Bill That Includes Funding for Texas Tech
• Neugebauer Secures More Than $19 Million for Lubbock, Big Spring
• Neugebauer Works for More Than $11 Million Funding for Abilene, Dyess

You would think that they wouldn't advertise their ability to spend like this. But this is money coming into the district, don't you see? It isn't spending. It is investing!

Spending or investing, I am going to go ahead and log this stuff into the database over at Porkbusters.

Photo of Joel Henry Hinrichs III, 21, the alleged bomber in Norman, Oklahoma, near the playing of the OU-KSU Football Game.

Today starts Texas-OU Week.

I will make a prediction: Texas will beat OU. Badly.

Whether or not this is a bold prediction I don't know. Given the strength of the team's showings this year it is not so bold. Given Texas' performance over the past 5 years....well...it looks bolder.

I think Texas became a fundamentally changed team last year beginning with the start of the third quarter against Oklahoma State. A confidence arrived during the last two quarters of that game that finally matched up with the talent level.

And there is one more thing....

When I think back across the big, certainly talented but overly-hyped and distracting (I think), "STAR PLAYERS!" like Ricky "Heisman" Williams, Roy "The Legend" Willams, Chris "Insert Joke Here" Simms, and most recently El Ced....I am not sure that this year's Texas team isn't better precisely because it lacks The Big Names. Vince Young is much talked about, to be sure, but nothing like Chris Simms was for a while.

Before last year's OSU game Texas was a great talent pool. Now they may be a great team.

But I could be wrong. Saturday afternoons in October have a way of sorting these things out.

UPDATE: Whoa! This will put everyone on edge in Dallas. A possible suicide bomber in Norman during the OU-KSU game.

UPDATE: More on the bombing from Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE: The bomber has been identified as Joel Henry Henrichs III, 21, of Colorado Springs, CO. Question now is: "American Taliban" or showy suicide...or.....or...or the bomber was secretly in the hire of Karl Rove and was headed for one of the fragile New Orleans levees when his bomb went off prematurely......

....but upon further consideration it would probably be a good idea to adhere to the 48-Hour Rule (A self-imposed ban on speculation...on the bombing, not the Texas-OU outcome) that, BTW, the blogosphere sticks to better than the MSM. At pay rate, anyway.

Countrywide Mortgage has already pocketed $20 million of your dollars through state coffers and is trying to find out how much more they can get through local coffers somewhere before deciding where to locate one of their....what exactly?

Another call center?

How great would it be if we could land the company that makes the phones and cubicles for a change?

Toward the end of the article is a paragraph that makes you go "Hmmmmm...".:

"When asked if Midland's statewide low unemployment rate of 3.9 percent would hamper Countrywide, James said it would attract applicants from the entire Permian Basin, including Odessa, whose unemployment is higher than 5 percent."

Ya gotta know that that last percent-and-a-half of the unemployed is just chock full of the mortgage-lending-gifted.

The self congratulation of the mainstream media on their performance during Hurricane Katrina enters its fourth week. One can only imagine how much more congratulations would be in order had they actually gotten the major parts of the story correct.

Remember all of those brutal murders, and brutal rapes, and brutal murder/rapes?

Throw them on the pile with the brutal Afghan winter.

"The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.

Most of the media are still in Dan mode, sucking up their guts and congratulating themselves about what a swell job they did during Katrina. CNN producers were advising their guests to "be angry," and there was so much to get angry about, not least the fact that no matter how angry you got on air Anderson Cooper was always much better at it. And Mayor Nagin as well. To show he was angry, he said "frickin'" all the frickin' time so that by the end of a typical Nagin soundbite you felt as if you'd been gang-fricked. "That frickin' Superdome," he raged. "Five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

But nobody got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities. As Ben Stein put it, it was the media that rioted. They grabbed every lurid rumor and took it for a wild joyride across prime time. There was a real story in there -- big hurricane, people dead -- but it wasn't enough, and certainly not for damaging President Bush.

Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?"

Mark Steyn on a roll is a good way to start the day.