Let’s make it completely irrelevant and add my voice to the chorus announcing the promotion of a penguin to the position of Colonel in Chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard. (Via Fark)

As a Linux user, I, for one, welcome our penguin overlords, and eagerly look forward to the eventual promotion of Tux to Supreme Flipperlord. All heil Tux!

Dubai World, a company that gained some small measure of infamy when one of their subsidiaries, Dubai Ports World, attempted to buy management of some large US ports, is increasing their stake in the MGM Grand. Clearly, this means that we can expect less security against terrorists in MGM Grand-owned properties since Dubai World is an Arab company, because, as everyone knows, Arabs live in a hive-like society, in which they all accept instruction from the Queen Bee.

(Sarcasm. Learn it, live it, love it.)

From the BBC: Bush ‘to veto’ troop funding bill

US President George W Bush is to veto the Defence Policy Bill, a White House spokesman has said.

The veto is in response to a section of the bill that could leave the Iraqi government liable for compensation claims from Saddam Hussein’s victims.

[…]

The bill would have exposed Iraq to “massive liability in lawsuits concerning the misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein regime,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

“The new democratic government of Iraq, during this crucial period of reconstruction, cannot afford to have its funds entangled in such lawsuits in the United States,” he said.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s victims could have had the Iraqi government’s US-based assets frozen pending the outcome of their cases, the White House said.

I’m happy to see that the Democratic Congress is still working hard to find new and creative ways to “fund the troops” while openly sabotaging our efforts in Iraq. Considering how the new Iraqi government is at least nominally democratic, and, consequently, mostly not Sunni, and considering how Saddam’s government was a fascist Sunni dictatorship, I’m wondering how that idea even made it far enough for Bush to veto it.

A coworker of mine shot me this link, which he got via Fazed. I’ll just quote the description - it’s pretty much dead on:

The Westboro Baptist Church (that “God Hates Fags” crew from the heart of Jesusland USA) presents their cover “We Are the World,” rewritten and retitled as “God Hates the World.” The following spectacle managed to be both surreal and fleshcrawlingly creepy at the same time. I’m fairly sure all the people on screen are related to each other. If you can stomach it, the last twenty seconds are as close to pure evil as I’ve seen today.

Go ahead and watch the video - it’s a good way to remind yourself that crazy “religious” wingnuts come in all shapes and sizes. I will point out one thing, though: Who are the people that are really getting into the singing? Seems like a fair number of older women. I’m willing to bet, especially based on those final 20 seconds (this video isn’t worth a spoiler alert, sorry), that many of them are mothers. But, as we all know, if mothers ruled the world, it’d be a better place, right?

(Hey, quoting Rachel got me Instalanched last time - couldn’t hurt to try it twice!)

Via Instapundit, there was this wonderful gem in the Baltimore Chronicle detailing how “Global Warming Will Save America From The Right“:

Sat., 12/22/2007 - 19:21—Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.

Look at a map of the US.

The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal flooding, its geography is such that that aside from a few projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod, the land rises fairly quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The West Coast too tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most places. Only down in Southern California towards the San Diego area is the ground closer to sea level.

So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.

[…]

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.

There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents—human and non-human—survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.

It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”

Sounds good. I’ve been itching to do just that to all the Bay Area lowlanders that keep moving into Reno.

(As an aside, conservatives are aware that it would take one hell of a lot of melting ice cubes to drown Florida, especially since much of it is currently well above 50 feet from sea level, to say nothing of the rest of the South. Real conservatives also know that Baltimore would eat salt water long before Arkansas would. I live in Nevada, have never been east of Nebraska, and even I know that much. Egads.)

Ah - Christmas. It came and went, and for that, I am thankful. I won’t gush into what Christmas means to me; I’m an atheist, so there’s no deep religious undertones for me anyways. I will, however, cover what Christmas means to retail - money. The story is somewhat mixed, too. BusinessWeek reports that numbers are up slightly, though people are being much more cost-conscious this year. Instapundit, meanwhile, has a host of links to various reports on the Christmas shopping season, some of them more positive than others. The biggest problem is that sales aren’t keeping up with inflation anymore, which is understandable - inflation is currently being driven by higher commodity prices, and, since the housing market is finally correcting itself, we’re beginning to see some effects from them.

Then again, there are some anecdotal reports that much of what’s hurting the retail numbers this year is that women’s fashion was just way off. That’s alluded to here and is also expounded on quite eloquently by Rachel Lucas here. My girlfriend feels the same way, and she actually IS a “starving” 5′10″ woman. Heck, we actually laughed at some of the offerings in JC Penney a few weeks back, marveling at the bright fake satin vests. The lady there claimed they were “very popular”. To this day, I’ve yet to see anyone wearing one.

Either way, if you’re looking for some good bargains, now is the time… heck, I have a couple of people I didn’t get presents for that I might try to scrounge something up for now. *grin*

EDIT: Welcome, Instalanchers! Feel free to visit, look around, and maybe stop by and leave a comment or two. I’m relatively new at this, so I’m always open to suggestions. Also, on the off and rare chance that you’re a University of Nevada football fan (Go Wolf Pack!), feel free to check out my other blog at FireChrisAult.com. Thanks again!

Yep - still don’t feel like punditizing on anything specific. So, let’s let loose some more scatter shot, eh?

- Say no to rolling luggage!. I’m more of a duffel bag man, myself. They’re easier to carry, they hold about as much stuff as I’m ever going to want to carry, and I can even pack a week’s worth of clothes into one without much trouble or issue.

- I need traffic here, so I’m going to agree with Megan McArdle and her stance on the gold standard. Seriously, it’s a really bad idea. There’s a reason we moved away from it. Our current system encourages investors to bet on the performance of the economy behind the currency. The other artificially pegs the currency to the supply and demand of a particular precious metal that, perversely enough, behaves contrary to how we want currencies to operate. When the economy is poor, people bump their money in gold, meaning that our currency would be worth more, making exports that much harder. When the economy is good, people pull their money from gold (which is considered safe) and pump it into stocks, bonds, and the like. This, if the gold standard were followed, would cause currency values to drop, which would make domestic goods look less enticing and imports more attractive in the domestic market. That’s pretty much backwards from what we actually want - when the domestic economy is poor, we want people buying our stuff so our economy will get better, which means we want to devalue our currency (precisely what’s happening now, actually). Meanwhile, when the economy is good and people in America have tons of disposable income, we want people to spend it on domestic goods, which means we’ll want a strong dollar to strangle the imported goods. How would the gold standard give us that, again?

- Safeway may not be the safest way to buy beef. Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun there.

- Apples for the Army, anyone? Apparently, they’re just as tired of Windows as I am. I am mildly surprised that they’re going with Apple instead of something like Red Hat or some other Linux distribution, though.

- I wish I could be the RIAA. Seriously, how much fun would it be to just give the news what I want them to say and have them actually do it with minimal investigation?

That’s all for now.

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted something here. That said, I’m really not in the mood to write anything terribly thought out, mainly because it’s the holidays and I have enough on my mind without ranting about some big issue in the world. So…

- According to TIME, mild exercise may counter dementia. Since I don’t get even that much, expect me to become completely insane by 30. That’s only three years from now!

- A 6.6 earthquake strikes New Zealand. Impressively, “there were no reports of serious injury or death from the quake near the coastal city of Gisborne.” I lived in Ventura during the Northridge quake, which was about the same magnitude, and it was extremely scary, destructive, and dangerous. That the New Zealand quake hasn’t led to injury or death is nothing short of miraculous.

- The credit industry continues its implosion, this time with Bear Stearns reporting severe losses. This means credit is going to continue to tighten up and interest rates are almost certainly going to go up as banks attempt to minimize their risks and maximize their returns. This won’t just affect the housing market; a lot of businesses borrow to increase capital, too, and it’s going to be much harder to do that now for the next couple of years while the bankers get their balance sheets back on track. Don’t be surprised if the economy cools off for a while as this settles itself; if it cools fast enough, it could make the upcoming election very interesting.

- If you let someone else repair your computer, don’t be surprised if, in the course of repairing it, they find things they shouldn’t. Also, don’t be surprised if what they find is allowed to be used in a criminal investigation. In other news, if you take your car to a mechanic and there’s a dead body in the trunk, don’t be surprised if you go to jail if the mechanic notices an odd odor from the back.

- Hollywood, having thoroughly bastardized and soiled every good idea in entertainment, is now beginning to feed on the festering feces of previous fallacious fantasies. All I have to say about it is that, if you’re going to succeed a Firebird, can you at least choose something like a Camaro or some other car that, I don’t know, is made by the same manufacturer as your original lead character?! In other news, the Michael Knight character will be played by Beyonce.

That’s all for now. Once things settle down, I will post more. Mark my words.

I know it’s been a while. I’ve been busy blogging over on FireChrisAult.com, which, to be brutally honest, has far more readers than this blog has. However, I started this one first, and I would like to develop this thing into something halfway decent some day, so let’s get to it…

I’m going to touch on the British Teacher in Sudan that was sent to jail for naming a teddy bear “Muhammad”, which led to cries from some Sudanese that her sentence wasn’t lenient enough, calling for the death penalty.

First, some good news: Moderate Muslims are speaking out, stating that the Sudanese view is not the view of a majority of Muslims. That’s good, and we need more of this if people are going to be convinced that Islam is a religion of peace when staring at incidents like this that fly in the face of such a concept.

Secondly, this right here is easily the funniest response to the Sudanese situation that I’ve seen yet. From the posting:

Following the news that in the highly progressive tyrannical genocidal regime of Sudan, a British teacher has been charged with blasphemy for allowing kids in her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed, it’s pretty clear that Sudan is not happy with the idea of a Teddy Bear named Mohammed. That makes sense since there are no bears in the Quran, there are pigs though and so I generously give the people of Sudan their prophet in plush pig form.

That’s right, it’s Mohammed the Stuffed Pig PBUH (Plush Be Upon Him), a respectful tribute to Islam’s greatest homicidal fake prophet. In many ways Prophet Mohammed Stuffed Pig Edition is a major improvement on the real thing.

While he is made out of plush and will be adored by children, he won’t respond by trying to marry your 6 year old daughters because “Allah Told Him To”. This makes him child-friendly, unlike the real Mohammed, who was the whole other kind of “Child Friendly” that you don’t want around your kids.

It goes on like that.