Getting the money could be difficult
A U.S. judge has fined Iran $2.65 billion for the 1983 Beirut bombings.
Good luck collecting that one. My, my, look how Ahmadinejad is laughing.
“Just like two aspirin, parks can be very beneficial.”
So declares the American Land Rights Association (ALRA), who thinks we have too many parks.
But the reason they’re getting any attention at all is they’re going to boycott Minneapolis’ airport and Northwest Airlines. Why? Because that airport is where Senator Craig got caught soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom.
(Note: it takes more people than what ALRA’s got for an effective boycott. They can’t be all that big, considering they apparently have a staff of two.)
They believe that “by ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis St Paul Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West.” Any organization that can declare that with a straight face probably has a leadership consisting solely of inbred white folk.
An open letter
Dear Stephanos, Argyros, Titos, Angelos, Romanos, Leontios, Valerios, Ambrosios, Chrysostomos, Panicos, Photios, Efstratios, Marios, Marinos, Valerios, Romanos, Arsenios, Ignatios, Konstandinos, Giorgos, Stylianos, and Nektarios:
Your comment spam is not getting through. When your comment consists of exactly one word (”nice”, “cool”, or “interesting”) followed by a ton of links, it’s not hard for the spam filter to figure it out.
The sole exception is Konstandinos, whose one word was “Sorry :(” followed by the link dump. Your apology is accepted, and I expect the rest of you to follow his lead in the future.
Sincerely, etc.
The race card was not a trump here
When trying to return from Houston last Sunday, things looked to be smooth sailing a couple hours before takeoff: I checked with my co-worker on the status of an earlier flight than I’d planned (3:47), and even though I was a standby passenger, there were plenty of empty seats left. Unfortunately, the 1:10 flight was delayed by 5 hours, and a bunch of connecting passengers were protected on the 3:47, leaving little room for standbys.
One of these standbys was a black man, and he was the next to be assigned a seat…the final seat remaining. About 10 seconds before he would have gotten his boarding pass, a white connecting passenger dashed to the gate, and took the last seat.
The black standby guy, who’d apparently been in the airport for a while, started sputtering and demanded an explanation as to why the seat he was so close to getting was taken away. As the agent explained that the confirmed connector had priority, he spat out “This is RACISM!”
If the agent at the counter weren’t also black, maybe he would have believed his own words. As it was, only my sympathy for his plight prevented me from generating some sort of noticeable guffawing sound.
Humans < Bears
Based on the following events, Liquid Egg Product can recommend unequivocally that humans should not place themselves in the same cage as a bear:
And they wonder why people don’t vote
Usually, I don’t like getting political, as there are hundreds of thousands of other blogs that deal with that stuff (Expat Yank can be interesting). Except maybe for taking the occasional jab at Bush the Lesser or “JFK” Kerry, undoubtedly two of the worst presidential candidates in my short time on this Earth. (I wonder how Perot would have done had he run in 2004 instead of 1992? He probably would have won a few states.)
Dahlia Lithwick wonders in this article why the Democrats don’t stick it to the shady Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. The best she can figure is spinelessness and/or political expediency.
So here’s my idea: make sure more and more Americans hear this stuff and get sick of our current state of affairs. Every few months, I’ll post a poll asking America if they want me to rule the country by fiat instead. Eventually (if Alex Chiu’s rings really work–it may take a while), at least 51% of the people will say, “Aye.”
Loading …(I already gave myself one vote for “No”.)
Not an effective line of reasoning
I didn’t know you could get a hotline to the Taliban:
Amnesty International said it appealed for the release of 21 South Korea hostages during a phone conversation with the Taliban, warning the militants that holding and killing captives was a war crime.
That’s like warning a carjacker not to rob a bank because he might go to jail. Maybe Amnesty International hasn’t noticed, but the Taliban is already a pariah and has already committed war crimes. The Taliban will give up the hostages when it figures out there’s nothing to gain.
