1288 : Scotland established this day as one when a woman could propose marriage to a man. In the event that he refused the proposal he was required to pay a fine.

1692: The Salem witch trials begin
…and they’ve been going ever since…

1960: The first Playboy Club, featuring waitresses clad in bunny outfits, opened in Chicago.

1956: An Islamic Republic was proclaimed in Pakistan.

1969: Jim Morrison arrested for exposing himself during Doors performance in Miami, Florida

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Filed under: Uncategorized

A nice way to start the weekend:

Via instapundit.com

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Pop! Goes the Culture

Ah, the language police have struck again:

ALTOONA, Pa. - A convenience store chain’s billboard advertising its fried chicken sandwich is ruffling the feathers of some residents.

Sheetz Inc. unveiled the “Crispy Frickin’ Chicken” billboards at the beginning of February.

…

“There was a lady who left an angry voice mail,” code enforcement officer Fran Calarco said. “And a man called and said he had small children and didn’t think they should be exposed to that type of language. I told him I completely understood and agreed.”

What the frick, dude?

Via Fark.

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Filed under: Consumerism Rulez

Forecasting global warming, apparently, isn’t an exact science:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Look. I don’t pretend to know what the hell is going on with the environment. (Last summer seemed pretty damned hot to me!) But it seems that before we start calling for all kinds of government intrusion into the affairs of business (banning light bulbs? really?), we had better be damned sure what’s going on is as dire as Al Gore thinks it is.

A movie with a politician giving a glorified PowerPoint presentation is not a legitimate reason to react as if the sky is falling.

Just a thought.

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Filed under: Daily Rant

I can’t make this stuff up.

The GOP felt they needed to conduct a survey to see how much trash-talk McCain can use in the upcoming general election campaign:

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved.

Normally, the general standard I tell white people is this: You know what not to say in front of black people in conversation– or women, homosexuals, etc. as the case may be. If you have a question about whether or not to say it, DON’T.

The fact that they hired phone banks and pollsters to figure this ditty out only points to the complete disconnect between the GOP hierarchy and those people not old, rich, male and white.

And those who want to point fingers at the GOP only should read further down in the story:

[The GOP] could simply have asked Joe Biden, John Edwards, Bill Clinton or any number of Democratic politicians who stung over their choice of words in this campaign already.

Foot-in-mouth disease, it seems, is not only a Republican problem.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Mock the Vote

Literally:

Kyeisha Fuller, 23, is accused of stabbing a 26-year-old man after he made a disparaging comment about her appearance on Tuesday while visiting her apartment in Yonkers, N.Y.

“The dispute turned physical after the victim called the suspect ‘ugly’ and she then stabbed the victim with a kitchen knife in the shoulder.”

What we need is a ban on kitchen knives, but those damned “knife rights” advocates make our streets and kitchens war zones unsafe for our children.

SPORKS FOR EVERYONE!!

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Daily Rant

I heard this on the radio on my way home from the District last night. It’s been in my head ever since, so now it’s in yours.

If you’re between the ages of 27 and 42, you may not be able to help yourself from dancing in your office chair and/or singing along. It’s okay. He used to be, at least, plausibly normal.

Moral of the song: At least pick a man who is ostensibly heterosexual before you file frivolous tort claims for child support.

Bonus clip: Filipino prisoners get down with the Afternoon Dance Party in spite of their deprivation of freedom and shit:

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Filed under: Afternoon Dance Party

[Utah State] Sen. Chris Buttars was a no-show Tuesday for a meeting with leaders of the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP…after saying of a bill he opposed, “This baby is black. . . . It’s a dark, ugly thing”

Open mouth, insert foot. Better yet, just swallow your whole damned leg:

The organization also blasted Buttars for telling The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday that he has become a target of a “hate lynch mob” because of e-mails he has received condemning his remarks.

“The man knows nothing about what a lynch mob is,” said Edward Lewis Jr., the former regional president of the NAACP, holding an article about a lynching in 1925 in Price. “It’s an insult for the man to say he’s being lynched when we know what real lynchings are.”

Buttars was baffled by the reaction.

“Lynch mob is a Western term. You wouldn’t find one person in 10,000 in Utah that thinks that’s a racist term,” Buttars said in a phone interview Tuesday evening. “That’s not a racial term in my opinion. How do I know what words I’m supposed to use in front of those people?”

Emphasis added. Jackassery abundantly supplied.

I’m fully against government censorship — but the rebuke this nitwit is catching is actually an example of the political market at work. People are really pissed because this guy can’t learn when to grab his can of “shutthefuckup” and apologize.

But don’t you fret, there is plenty of stupid to go around:

Lewis, holding a picture of his grandson, Edward Lewis IV, said he was disappointed that Buttars didn’t show up, “because I wanted to deal with him face-to-face.”

“There is a gap between what you perceive your children are versus our children. . . . I dare Senator Buttars to refer to my black grandson as something ugly,” said Lewis. “He wouldn’t have said it if I had been standing there. He wouldn’t have said this is a black, ugly baby.”

Well, while I too doubt the fair-skinned Senator from magic underpants land had the cojones to tell Mr. Lewis that his grandson is ugly, just because the kid is black does not mean he’s beautiful, empirically speaking.

When will people learn that to end racism, we have to see ugly babies for what they are, regardless of the color of their skin or the content of their diapers. I contend that Mr. Lewis’ grand-baby could be just as ugly as any white baby in the nation.

To say otherwise is just plain racist.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Profiles in Governance, Mock the Vote, Daily Rant

Because otherwise, I may burn down the building.

Better than coffee.

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Filed under: Afternoon Dance Party

Whatever one thought of the Teri Schiavo debacle, there were two facets of that case that American patients should take comfort in:

1. That there was a real and legitimate debate about what Mrs. Schiavo’s real wishes would have been, with different sets of loved ones presenting the courts with differing evidence that supported differing conclusions and
2. that, if it could be determined definitively what those intentions were, it would have made a difference.

Our neighbors to the north are currently engaged in a controversy of their own that papers are calling “the Canadian Schiavo case,” but there are some stark differences that illustrate some of the unforseen dangers of the single-payer health care system. There, despite the fact that the family of Salvation Army Grace General Hospital patient Samuel Golubchuk are united in wanting to keep their father alive, and despite the fact that his being a strictly observant Orthodox Jew would seem to leave little question as to what his thoughts on the matter would be:

Golubchuk’s doctors informed his children that their 84-year-old father is “in the process of dying” and that they intended to hasten the process by removing his ventilation, and if that proved insufficient to kill him quickly, to also remove his feeding tube. In the event that the patient showed discomfort during these procedures, the chief of the hospital’s ICU unit stated in his affidavit that he would administer morphine.

The difference, of course, is that in Canada, the state is both payor and provider of all health care, and even if Golubchuk’s family had the means to pay for their father’s continued hospitalization, it would be illegal for them to do so. When opponents of socialized medicine complain of “rationing,” this is specifically what they mean — he who pays the piper calls the tune, and once all health care costs become public, so too, do all health care decisions:

the director of the ICU informed Golubchuk’s children that neither their father’s wishes nor their own are relevant, and he would do whatever he decided was appropriate. Bill Olson, counsel for the ICU director, told the Canadian Broadcasting Company that physicians have the sole right to make decisions about treatment — even if it goes against a patient’s religious beliefs — and that “there is no right to a continuation of treatment.”

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Filed under: Behind Every Law..., Consumerism Rulez, Profiles in Governance