Touch of blase

The past couple of days I have been infected with high apathy. Plus I had a large rush project at work. Maybe that's how I got the don't-give-a-craps. Haven't even wanted to look at the news. It's always the same any more anyway. Your president is an idiot. He is tossing anyone who has a lickspittle of brains or integrity and gathering about himself a world-classless group of buffoons and dolts to lead the rotting corpse of America over the cliffs of insanity into the depths of absurdity. Maybe it's time to just get out that ol' fiddle.


Irv. Somewhere near 92 years. And that ain't tea.

So, here's all I got for ya for today:

Speaking of gathering lickspittles, the Shameless Pigwart dumped chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry, and signed on Uncle Tom.

[T]he president chose [Gerald] Reynolds, a fellow conservative who once described affirmative action as a "big lie," as chairman of the 47-year-old advisory panel with a storied history of pushing the government to combat discrimination.

Ms. Berry, 66, made a reputation in her 25 years on the commission for haranguing presidents for not doing enough to recognize what she considered the persistent vestiges of discrimination. She fired off a 166-page report last week as a parting shot that criticized the Bush administration for fomenting a divided nation.

[...]

[Reynolds] is a big fan of the No Child Left Behind law and ardently backs Mr. Bush's belief that a "soft bigotry of low expectations" - far more than discrimination - is what is keeping black and Hispanic students behind whites and Asians.

[...]

"I just assume somewhere in my life some knucklehead has looked at me and my brown self and said that they have given me less or denied me an opportunity. But the bottom line is, and my wife will attest to this, I am so insensitive that I probably didn't notice."

And, staying with the pattern...

The man who has issued many critical reports about the mismanagement and security flaws at the Department of Homeland Security was told Wednesday night that he was out of a job.

Clark Ervin made himself very unpopular by issuing a series of stinging reports on security programs that he said had failed, officials he called inept, and fraud that he suspected. His year-end report, out today, alleges that millions of dollars have been wasted or are unaccounted for by the department.

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(No, it doesn't get any better. And I wouldn't hold out for a miracle if I were you, but hey...do what you want...you will anyway.)

Remember Marine Cpl. Wassef Hassoun? The guy who disappeared near Falluja last summer and was beheaded, but then...wait...he's alive and in Lebanon after escaping from his captors? Well, it wasn't quite like that either.

A U.S. marine who claimed he was abducted by anti-coalition forces after he went missing from his unit in Iraq has been charged with desertion.

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I assume you've been hearing about the soldier who confronted Rumsfiend with the lack of vehicle armor and Rumsfiend's ridiculous response and then the brouhaha over the fact that a reporter coached the soldier on the questioning. Carl Luna's got a good analysis:

Seems Spc. Wilson had been “coached” on his question by an embedded reporter from Chattanooga. Ipso facto, Limbaugh and crew declare, the question is null and void – the tainted fruit of the tree of the treacherous liberal media, the evil serpent in the garden of conservative paradise. Therefore the question can be disregarded, as can Rumsfeld’s stumbling response. Poor Donny was ambushed, you see, by an unfair question. Set up. A sitting duck, like an armorless Humvee sent down the Baghdad airport road. Blame it on the press.

Horse feathers.

Such mindless chatter is simply another example of the bait and switch approach so often used by the nattering nabobs of talk radio to distract people from the real issue at hand.

[...]

It doesn’t matter if the question concerning lack of adequate armor had been written on a hairball hocked up by a cat at Rumfeld’s feet. What matters is the validity of the claim that such armor protection is lacking and the quality of Rumsfeld’s response.

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And, finally, men, your laptop is killing your sperm. (By the same reasoning, so will crossing your legs while you're seated, so don't sit like a girl, 'kay?) Actually, I think it's just one more cog in the wheel toward human extinction, and not a minute too soon. So keep those testicles toasty. You shouldn't be bringing children into this madhouse anyway.

Using 29 volunteers aged 21 to 35, the researchers, led by Yefim Sheynkin, found that when men sat with their thighs together to balance a laptop, scrotal temperatures rose by 21.Celsius (C). But once the laptop was in use, average temperatures rose by 2.6C on the left of the scrotum and 2.8C on the right.

So maybe if you absolutely have to hold that computer on your lap, you could tuck over to the left? Hey, I have a great idea for a money-maker: a sturdy but light wire frame that clamps to your laptop and folds out like hinged table leaves, so you can spread those thighs. And the deluxe model has a little fan to cool you. Oh boy, I'm on my way to financial independence. And a good thing, too. Blogging doesn't pay the rent.

Cheers.