Not Mayberry. Near Mayberry, but definitely not Mayberry.

I am glad that Gerald Ford lived long enough to see Chevy Chase become a pathetic has-been.

Of course, President Ford would have lived to see that even if he had died in 1987.

My apologies if you have seen one of your comments deleted in the last week or so. Even with the comment spam filters I still need to delete a hundred or so comments per day and when I go a few days without do this there are so many that a few comments have become collateral damage.

So if you were wondering what you said that got your comment deleted, don't. It was mistakenly left selected for deletion in a batch deletion process.

After the first of the year I will look into some more robust spam filters.

Waking this morning, halfway way through my year-end trip, and at the splendid Adolphus, I turned on the goggle box and found that Saddam Hussein is now an object of particular interest and fascination in the infernal regions. What a zip that gives to morning coffee.

Actually I do not believe that there are post-death places, there being no evidence for them and they don't pass the test of Occam's razor, but in this one case I would be willing myself to risk the fires just to know that Saddam had his own personal devil, say Helen Thomas. Oh. I'm jumping the gun.

One monster down, a billion to go. Or I shouldn't say to go, for people who want us dead but don't have the stroke to do it oughtn't be meted out death until they seem likely to be able to pull it off. That doesn't mean we shouldn't watch them carefully, though.

As is my custom, I like to see how our fair Bus System is performing using the data published by the Federal Transit Administration (the folks who dole out the Federal Money to EZ Rider). The data is almost useless for decision making, since it is for the year ended December 31, 2005.

Yes that's right, local transit authorities are required to submit detailed reports MONTHLY to the FTA via the Internet and all annual reporting must be done no later than April 30 of each year. Revisions are allowed up until July 2 and then everything is closed out. We the public don't get to see any of this data in an easy to access format until a formal report is shoved out the door in late November or December. This bureaucratic sloth is appalling. Try operating a public company and telling the SEC you'll state your financials about a year after after the fact, or even submitting your tax return to the IRS that late!

Anyway, here we are at the close of 2006 and we can now see how EZ Rider (and all the other transit authorities) did in 2005.

I was sitting here in Wichita, in the excellent but expensive Hyatt Regency, where the air is a la carte and your Gold Passport allows you to a free quart of tap water, and I turned to the news and saw Mrs. Clinton making face time with a camera, talking at length, as usual, about what she would do to us, as usual.

At the stroke of midnight she shut up.

Don't the mute beasts talk at the stroke of midnight?

For no reason other than I'd never been here before, I'm in Wichita, Kansas now. It's pleasant here at the Hyatt; the hotel nice, the rooms clean, and it's virtually vacant. Evidently a business hotel.

Addicted to abusing people with my Mac--let's be immodest: the 17" MacBook Pro which taunts lesser computers from the redoubt of its Targa case as I schlep it inside caravanserais--I choose places to stay by high-speed internet. And this one has T-Mobile.

Or T-Mobile has it. This hotel is not cheap and I would have thought that a few amenities would have come with it, but evidently only a newspaper, which looks quite unreadable, being obsessed with sports scores (sports isn't in the blood), is included and no doubt it's paid for by advertisements for body paint for people to take off their clothes and revert to naked savagery, painted in primary colors, in the freezing weather while making noises like a tribe of monkeys before a space monolith.

To wifi. I opened the Macbook and was asked if I'd like to join the T-Mobile network as my trusted one couldn't be found. Yes, I said, and was joined to a thin thread of a signal, wavering down to death every second or so. To get on I had to launch the obligatory browser page, and set up an account, typing plastic into the ether.

A tone of careless informality prevails; a cacaphonous miasma of perfunctory langorous bellicosity; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; cascading, tremulous arpeggios of useless prosaicity; complexity and complication are eschewed; directivity and candor and perspicacity belied; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence, which, when one thinks about it, is in itself ironic, creating an infinite, unintended laff-riot loop of ironic non-irony; arguments are totally solipsistic; their obviously drunk and/or crack-addled writers traffic only in pronouncement, and are loathe to employ professional-grade opinion tools like Roget's Thesaurus, or the dramatic sentence-ending ellipsis...

I think he's got us figured out. But is it Rago or Iowahawk?

This is just all kinds of frightening...

The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen - the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq - are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost...

big hat tip: Little Green Footballs.

Oh, and in the good news column, another one bites the dust.

Pssst! Jimmy!

Have you read this?

Earlier post.

AP's 'tude: Credibility-schmedibility...we're the biggest source of news in the world. So what if we make some of it up?

What you see above is the coolest plush toy ever. Eh-ver.

Max the Dog is outright the funniest cartoon dog in history. If you don't love Max you have no feeling, no heart, no pulse....and you darn sure don't know funny. As cool as a plush "Opus" from Bloom County used to be....a plush Max beats that by two orders of magnitude. Such is the coolness of Max. Opus was famous for his fifteen minutes. Max is forever.

Theoretically, you can get Max as part of Kohl's Care for Kids Program wherein the net profits of the purchase go to health and educational services for kids.

But just try.

There are no Max's to be found. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

They also sell Grinches...which is okay, I guess. And they sell a "Sam I Am" plush toy...but who cares? And some blue walrus looking thing from "One Fish, Two Fish...". Yawn. And a Sneetch. Bigger yawn.

Max is the real deal. And whomever it was at Kohl's that totally ruined my Christmas by under ordering the great Max deserves to have violence visited upon his body.

Merry Christmas, dammit.

UPDATE: I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. Max found on eBay. Keep in mind that Max sells for $5 in the store.

According to reports:

Al Gore plans to start a grass-roots political movement next month to seek a "freeze" on carbon emissions that scientists say are to blame for global warming.

He was so excited with his new idea that he immediately initiated a Gulfstream to Gulfstream communique with Laurie David to tell her all about it.

That anile old fool, George McGovern, has risen from his coffin and has thrown up another bull giving us his insight--and reminding us just why we preferred even Richard Milhous Nixon to him.

This was sent me by my priest friend Ed, who makes me wonder as I write. There is much to criticize in Mr. McGovern's writing. First, that he was not smothered in his crib. Second, that he was not put to work at five cleaning out cesspools instead of filling others'. Third, that he does it. Fourth, that it does not go into the byte bucket, assuming that he writes on a computer instead of on papyrus with an eagle's quill. And fifth, that there are people who are willing not only to read this twaddle, but that there are people either cynical enough to publish it or stupid enough to think it sane.

It would take more words than I've inflicted on people in these pages to ridicule the fatuity of this prized peace is asininity, so a few things will have to suffice before I lose my appetite for supper.

[W]e think that the Iraqi government would be wise to request the temporary services of an international stabilization force to police the country during and immediately after the period of American withdrawal. Such a force should itself have a firm date fixed for its removal.

The French are so freakin' weird.

This morning while cruising around the web I saw several times a headline similar to "Time's Person of the Year: You!"

Before actually clicking on one of the links, I did not realize that Time had actually picked all of us as their "Person of the Year", rather I thought that it was just an online gimmick that Time had come up with where you could upload your photo to their site and it would use web magic to place it on a Time "Person of the Year" cover and that you could copy that and e-mail it to all of your friends for a laugh.

Which, frankly, would be a lot more interesting and useful to us than Time Magazine telling us who they think is important this year.

UPDATE: If the idiots at Time Magazine ever begin to wonder why 90% of the people who read their magazine are in a dentist's office at the time they can begin with this.

Midland has a new blog and blogger...er....blogress....er....whatever.

Welcome Janie of Sounding Forth.

With the new site design we have employed Blogrolling as our new blogroll maintainer, so changes to the local blogroll are much quicker. If we are missing anyone, please let us know.

Back when we started this whole blogging business Stephen Green's Vodkapundit was one of the first on our blogroll and was also one of the ones nice enough to include us on his blogroll.

He has not posted for a good while and I had been wondering why that was. Was he tired of blogging? Or was it something....well....worse?

Here is the story.

Now....can someone tell me what has become of Rachel Lucas? She is another early blogger who is greatly missed.

Senator Tim Johnson is beginning to open his eyes a bit after surgery. This is good news and we hope for a speedy recovery.

It does prompt the question, though: If you woke up from very complicated brain surgery and your first sight was that of Tom Daschle and Harry Reid standing over your bed, wouldn't your first thought be that you must not have survived the procedure?

We didn't make Tom DeLay's blogroll.

UPDATE: What was I expecting? We haven't even made Mike Conaway's blogroll.

"Six guns found in home of Bears DT" blares the headline on MSN.com.

The article itself goes on to say that, "Chicago Bears' defensive tackle Terry "Tank" Johnson was charged Thursday with six counts of possession of a firearm without a gun owner identification card after police said they found six guns at his Gurnee home."

I am not sure I know anyone in Midland that owns less than six guns.

But Johnson has done two things that government bureacrats hate. One, he had the temerity to own guns in the first place. Worse still, he didn't fill out the proper paperwork.

Who does he think he is? Rosie O'Donnell's bodyguard?

Is a hike into Santa Elena Canyon too much for an 82 year-old?

Hardly.

A great story from Jimmy Patterson at Sticky Doorknobs.

I have written about the difficulty of interpreting one culture to another, and I was set to thinking about this by an article on the Incan civilization. Bob posted a reply that we may be in again for more confusing times as we go from the modern mind-set to the post-modern one, and he has a point; daily I see commercials which I do not understand, and I'm currently watching Six Feet Under and the kids in high school talk a language I understand but it's all in a code which is utterly impenetrable to me.

But what is understanding? Is it appreciation, as one can appreciate Bach without playing it? Nothing wrong with that, and indeed it widens one's views. Is it altogether more utilitarian, as one ought to understand a car enough to buy one? Or is it forgiveness? I was taught, when a child, that to understand all is to forgive all. I think that's wrong. We do not understand the Muslims, only wonder why they do the things that they do, and wanting to be liked, we allow them a leeway they do not allow us. They do not understand us to forgive or appreciate, but they understand our weaknesses, and exploit them. Theirs is a utilitarian view of us. The calls made to us to understand are to understand to forgive. Not to understand to act.

The new site facelift is pretty much done. Every eighteen months I get bored with the 'old' look...whatever it happens to be...and try out a new look. In the process I realize how much I have forgotten about what not to do in Movable Type and consequently I blow something up. More than once, usually.

By request (no, really) I have placed the Amazon Tip Jar back on to the site so those of you who would like to help us out with the bandwidth charges can do so.

Although having a tip jar here makes me think of the adage, "If you have ever bought anything from the Sharper Image catalog, you could be giving more to charity."

This is what happens when we fail to teach human beings basic mathematics. It would be a really funny bit of audio if it weren't so scary:

Sounds like Verizon is getting their minimum-wage's worth.

Yes. I have blown up the archives. But I will fix them. Tomorrow.

Well....later today, I mean.

Reports indicate that the Clinton Administration was conducting a surveillance of Princess Diana.....including...gasp...electronic eavesdropping!

It is okay! Don't panic! No suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in this country were inadvertantly bugged. That would be wrong!

Paging Jimmy Patterson!

I have an idea that may work for your linkage between the MR-T and the blogosphere: report on the controversy surrounding the Associated Press in the blog world.

I do read the paper and can't help noticing all of the AP stories that the MR-T carries. The paper would be pretty much ads and local news and sports without the stories bought from AP. Michelle Malkin has pretty well covered the story on the AP "fauxtography" scandal and more interest is ramping up on the "Who is Jamail Hussein?" story.

AP is a huge purveyor of "it looks like a news story but it is really full of the writer's opinion" kind of writing. I read the AP articles, but more for amusement than information. The latest that caused me a guffaw was on yesterday's front page. An article on the latest Republican tax bill discussed the bill's extending existing tax reductions. In typical liberal rhetorical mode, paragraph six reads, in its entireity, "All told, the tax cuts would cost $38 billion over 5 years." I laughed out loud. Of course, nowhere is mentioned the alternate view that keeping the existing reductions allows (assuming the math is right; quite an assumption) taxpayers to keep $38 billion of their hard earned money.

Back to the current topic, I am accustomed to the liberal bent of the press, but the creation and modification of the news (or better, "news") is beyond the pale. Please consider a story on the blogosphere discussions of AP's veracity. For now I will skim the articles, laugh at the bias and get my real news from the internet. My reaction to reading an AP story is to ask myself: what if that could be true? I wonder what the other side of the argument might be? And I wonder where AP's "journalists" come from?

Saturday I went to Midland to visit a good friend and afterward, I drove the buggy to the HEB to buy things to throw down my neck for the upcoming week. After an hour or two of pleasant shopping, not even minding the crush and press of the throng, I checked out and pushed the cart to the buggy and loaded up the trunk, thinking how good the sushi would be that night. (And it was.)

But I tried to get into my car, and could not. Even though there is seventy pounds less of me than there was this time last year, I could not get in. Even a supermodel (an oxymoronic term for morons, I think), couldn't have made it through the crack. The door was blocked by a blue Expedition.

A great, Must Read article by Andrew McCarthy on the naive twaddle that is the report of the Iraq Study Group:

ISG Chairman James Baker, a foolish man, looked Congress in the eye on Thursday and explained his master plan. Did it seem foolish to propose negotiations with Iran, our relentless enemy? Sure. But, the "realist" doyen puttered, if we invite them to negotiate about Iraq's future, and they demur, why, we'll expose their intransigence for all the world to see.

Right. They slaughter and abet the slaughter of our marines, our airmen, our sailors, William Buckley, Robert Stethem, William Higgins, and countless others. They tell us their defining goal is a world without America, a world in which our allies are wiped from the face of the earth. But, at long last, we'll know who they really are...if they don't show up for a meeting.

Emphasis mine. Go read the whole thing at NRO.

I'm not a hugger, but I hugged my four-year-old son as I wrote this. We abdicate now. We turn a blind eye as our implacable, insatiable enemies pick off our best and our bravest. We shrink from the duty a quarter century of mayhem imposes. We don't have the will.

God, help us.

UPDATE: OK, so it could also be "Insane Strategy Guesswork," or a report by the "Iraq Surrender Grandpas." Go read Mark Steyn on the subject, already.

"White Britons, alarmed at immigration, are fleeing the capital and even the country in record numbers in a "white flight" that mirrors South Africa's exodus.

And this week a controversial new book which seeks to explain their flight, encouraged young British-born families to leave in the face of unchecked immigration.

A report by Britain's chief immigration think-tank, Migrationwatch, said more than 100,000 British-born Londoners have left the UK capital this year as immigrants stream into the city.

Meanwhile, another report by private analysts predicts that the white exodus is set to accelerate further, and that London's immigrant population will jump from 40% to 60% i n just 12 years."

Read the whole thing here.

You gotta love the creativity behind this solution to a deadly problem for our troops:

String Theory: A New Jersey woman wants to send an unusual care package to her son in Iraq: can after can of Silly String. When Marcelle Shriver learned that U.S. soldiers have been using the popular party favor to detect trip wires around bombs, she started a drive to send thousands of cans of the fluorescent goop to the troops. Soldiers spray the noodly glop, which jets roughly 10 to 12 feet out of the can, into a room, and if hangs in the air, they know they are contending with a trap. "If I turn on the TV and see a soldier with a can of this on his vest, that would make this all worth it," Ms. Shriver told the Associated Press. Ms. Shriver said since the string comes in an aerosol can, the Postal Service won't ship it by air, but a private pilot has agreed to fly the cargo to Kuwait early next year.

From wsj.com

All you need to know about the Lying Flying Imams....

Some very worthwhile reading on our battle for Western Civilization:

It is impossible to meet with toleration the demands of those who reject the principles upon which the Western value of tolerance is based; attempts at doing so are nothing more than the appeasement of aggressors.

Raymond Ibrahim at NRO.

Union-printed Hillary for President buttons are being sold now. I'd rather wear a pink triangle. I'd get more respect--at least while shaving.

I have found the perfect toilet book: Scorn with Extra Bile, by Matthew Parris. Mr. Parris was one of the young Tories swept into power under Margaret Thatcher, and is now a Parliamentary sketchwriter in The London Times. He, although young, is sufficiently respected, or feared, its cousin, that disagreements are made with much apologies instead of with insult, derision, and hauteur, the common English manner.

A serious man, with unexpected views, at times he indulges in malice for the joy of it, like compiling the above book.

It's published by Penguin in England it is a typical British book. They publish everything, for a short while, and it's a race to determine whether the pages will fall out, crumble, or turn brown first. Some pages are switch hitters.

The most interesting jabs in Scorn are the literary, artistic and musical feuds. I would never have known that the painter Whistler was as witty as he was: A young lady: "I only paint what I see." Whistler: "Maybe my dear, but the shock will come to you when you see what you paint." Then there is the common, but worth repeating remark of Twain's about Wagner's (dreadful, clangorous) "music": "It's better than it sounds." That's better by far that what I could do; all I could do was use sneer quotes.

How many people's worldview would be upset upon learning that the person who may have saved more lives than anyone else in history is....wait for it.....an Aggie?

I was talking to several people this morning who work across the hall at another business in my building, and they were incensed because of a comment they claimed had been made by talk station KWEL's wheels-off morning host, Craig Anderson. Anderson's show played in the background on a desktop radio as we conversed.

According to my friends, Anderson made comments to the effect of, "Don't do drugs and don't engage in homosexual activities and you won't get AIDS." Apparently, today is some sort of worldwide AIDS awareness day, and Craig must not've liked the idea.

I welcome Craig or a representative of KWEL to leave a comment and explain what he did or did not say on the air this morning. I'd also be interested in hearing from any other listeners who may've heard the alleged comments. I personally don't listen to his show because it gives me a severe case of Tired Head within five minutes of tuning in, but the story I was told does not sound atypical of Anderson's other diatribes. Craig has arguably been engaging in this kind of neanderthal radio for years, but a comment like the one described to me would signify graduation to a whole new level of irresponsibility.

And just in case anyone was wondering, straight, drug-free people are just as capable of contracting HIV/AIDS as any other group of human beings. In fact, young heterosexuals are currently one of the most at-risk demographics in the UK, and are facing a potential crisis due to lack of education, according to this story.