“If he thinks that the U.S. is so bad, he’s welcome to trade places with us…since he’s so forgiving of brutal Middle Eastern dictators!”

This is from an article on Iranian citizens reactions to viewing Micheal (who are you calling haystack?) Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

A senior Italian politician says he believes that a ransom of $1m or more was paid for the release of two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Iraq.

Well this sounds good if it's accurate. Of course it would not be the first time that a report such has this hasn't been true.

UPDATE: Looks like it's false

SPRING GREEN, Wis. - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told voters in America's Dairyland on Monday that President Bush had a secret plan that would hurt milk producers after the election.

I did a quick search on this program and I found this article on the plan in question.

Legislators initially estimated the milk program would cost taxpayers $1.3 billion before it expired in September 2005. As of June 13, the program had spent $1.5 billion, said Wayne Schwartz, of the Farm Service Agency's Wisconsin office. That higher tab is because milk prices have dropped further than anyone expected, he said.

Seems to me that there is an expiration date clearly listed in the law. From reading the one article it seems that this law seems to be propping up some marginal farms and creating more problems than it is supposed to fix. While I can sympathize with those who need the assistance I wonder if it is only prolonging the inevitable.

Arriving home late after a boy's night out, and confronted by his wife with a broom, he still had the nerve to ask, "Are you still cleaning, or are you flying somewhere?"

I found this Interesting article over at the Newhouse News Service The writer covers the topic of how Portion size is probably a major factor in the obesity epidemic.

"Portion sizes have increased and there's good evidence that if you give someone a larger portion they will eat more. What's shocking and a little scary is not only do they eat more, they won't report being any more full."

Farley cited a Penn State University study concluding that people have a difficult time eating a normal serving when presented with extra food. In the controlled study, volunteers on average ate 30 percent more from a five-cup portion of macaroni and cheese than from a serving one-half its size. Besides not feeling any fuller, few participants even noticed that the portions had grown.

I have noticed this myself, most recently at a dinner at a seafood restaurant. My wife and I split a meal and we were both stuffed afterwards. I mentioned the fact that I don’t know how a single person could ever finish a platter by themselves. I was also thinking of how these super sized platters might be contributing to some of the fresh seafood shortages. It seems to me that there must be a fair amount of waste involved with dinners that large. And as the article notes even if there is nothing left on the plate does a person really need that much at a single sitting?
I remember reading on why McDonalds came out with the supersize. They discovered that people would be hesitant to order 2 sides of fries but would have no problem ordering a supersized single order and we went right ahead and pproved them right.

For that special someone who has everything

Jen has a post up on Childhood TV Memories and it got me to thinking about a lot of the crap that is on TV these days. One show that is getting a lot of advertising here in NY is Growing up Gotti. I guess that they are trying to catch a ride on the Sopranos’ bandwagon but it seems a bit strange to me that TV should be showcasing the real life escapades of the family of a convicted murderer and drug dealer. But the ratings would probably be a lot worse if they covered those families who suffered at the hands of the Gotti’s other “family”.

In 1986 I remember the baseball playoffs between the Mets and Astros. There was a pitcher for the Astros, Mike Scott, who was able to so unnerve the Met batters that all kinds of theories were advanced on how he was able to shut them down so thoroughly. He was scuffing the balls, he was doing this or that but they could never catch him. The 6th game of the playoffs was agony for any Met fan because a loss would have meant facing Scott in the 7th game. I think that the dems have built Karl Rove up in the same manner. After reading some of the sites from the left side of the fence I am convinced that Karl must be a Jedi master or something. I guess it comes from it being easier to blame someone else for your own failings. There is no doubt that Rove is good at what he does, but there is no way that he is responsible for everything that is credited to him and until the Dems face up to the fact that they have a deeply flawed candidate with no message they will continue to lose.

Minn. Trooper Writes 205 Mph Ticket .

I love this part

Kathy Swanson of the state Office of Traffic Safety said unless Tilley was wearing the kind of protective gear professional motorcycle racers wear, he was courting death at 200 mph.

"I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."

Would there be much left to clean up, or would it be a matter of hosing down the road to get the stains off the pavement? If there these riders are anything like the majority of superbike riders here in NY they were probably wearing shorts and tee shirts.

From the screwed up world view department is the belief at CBS that the memos, while fake, accurately depict the thoughts of a man who has been dead for 20 years. Never mind the fact that authentic documents paint a totally different picture. Ignore the fact that the man’s wife and son say that he did not feel that way. Skip over the part the Commander mentioned in said memos states that he did not exert any pressure, and had been retired for 18 months. The memos MUST be accurate because they fit in with Dan Ra ther’s the world view. It would be interesting to see how far forged documents from Vince Foster implicating Hillary Clinton would make it at CBS.

From the SCO-IBM lawsuit

SCO hasn't provided evidence because, "simply put, it has none," he said.

How can a company sue another for billions of dollars and not have any evidence?

Apparently the people who were arrested while protesting the RNC in New York are upset about the treatment they received while in custody. So they are planning a protest this Saturday. Maybe they think that the police department will treat them better the second time around.

The NY Post has an interesting Op Ed column today on a Lawsuit that is being filed by Cantor Fitzgerald against al Qaeda and Saidi Arabia.

Cantor is, of course, suing al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The firm's 60-page complaint strips the Muslim veil from al Qaeda, exposing it for what it is — a "highly organized" racketeering network headed by global criminal masterminds who toil in service of a clear, common goal. In al Qaeda's own words: "To kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."

More important: Cantor is suing Saudi Arabia itself — along with dozens of prominent Saudi charities, banks and bankers. The complaint is thus a concise tutorial on Saudi finance.

It will be interesting to see if this case can bring to light the financial ties between the members of the Saudi Monarchy and al Qaeda.

Well this sucks. my prayers to Chris' family.

I used to enjoy reading Andrew Sullivan but lately I wonder what has come over him. Maybe he is grumpy that Kerry has fallen so badly after jumping on his bandwagon over the summer. For instance today he trashes Bush’s handling of the reconstruction in Iraq. As if Bush can wave a magic wand and make everything better. He chastises the Bush camp for being more focused on what happened 30 years ago with regards to his National Guard service records than to the current situation. But he fails to mention the fact that the Bush camp is not the ones who decided to base the campaign on what happened in the past. The Kerry camp started this whole nonsense by trying to portray Kerry as a Vietnam era war hero who would do a better job than Bush. Of course the fact that neither Kerry nor Sullivan has any kind of plan for Iraq shouldn’t matter. The only thing they both know that Bush is screwing it up somehow. I am not sure if it was Sullivan who mentioned that Bush has a better plan for his reelection that he did for post war Iraq. Of course he has a better plan for his reelection due to the fact that he has a lot more control over various aspects of it. Bush needs to focus on the short term problem of getting reelected before being able to worry about the longer term issues in Iraq.

"The reputation and integrity of the entire news division is at stake, if we are in error, it will be corrected," a top CBS source explained late Thursday.

I think it's a case of too little, too late. It will be interesting to see if Dan Rather comes out and apologizes if these documents prove to be false.

It's too bad this guy got off with just being shot in the hand.

A question for CBS news and Dan Rather regarding the "documents" that were recently "discovered", have you no shame?

In their eagerness to get Kerry in the White House they are doing irreversible damage to their credibility. It is amazing that they didn't seem to bother to do any checking on the validity of these documents before airing them.

It's too bad that it is so dark here this morning or I would be able to get a picture of the lake that is forming down in the pit at ground zero. If this is just the leading edge of Francsis I can't imagine what Florida must be like right now.

London - An Italian prisoner who was given home leave for good behaviour asked to go back to his cell after spending less than a day with his wife.

The 40-year-old was given a 72 hour pass by the governor at Vigevano prison, near Pavia in northern Italy.

But within minutes of meeting his wife they had an argument and he called the prison asking to be taken back inside.

As I was channel surfing over the weekend I came across the “one hit wonders” show on VH1. They were showing a clip of Twisted Sister’s video and talking about the band and it brought back all kinds of memories. . I remember going to bars in the NYC area when I was younger to see Twisted Sister play. Of course no mention of Twisted Sister would be complete without mentioning that wacky bunch from the Parents Music Resource Center. Anyone remember the congressional hearings from the Mid 90’s? Brought to us at the tax payers expense simply because Al Gore’s wife was a member. Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver were all called to give testimony on the evils of their lyrics. I forget how long that circus ran, but I do remember that it was a total waste of time as congress couldn’t really do anything about it.

I heard a snippet of John Kerry’s comments from the other day. He was talking about how he would have had a plan for winning the peace in Iraq. Naturally he didn’t provide any details of his plan but that’s to be expected. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it’s really easy to say we should have done this or that. What stuck me is that he doesn’t seem to remember the one of the basic facts of war. That fact is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, that’s why they are called the enemy. Being the decorated combat vet that he claims to be he should have that fact seared, seared into his memory. I am sure that the Pentagon and White House had all sorts of plans in place for different scenarios in Post war Iraq and most of them got tossed out the window once the invasion started. The saying that I used in the title comes from the Marines, “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.” I believe it’s what Americans do best. We understand that no plan can cover anything and we adapt. That’s what we are doing In Iraq on a daily basis. If Kerry has a better plan I would be interested to hear it. I would also be interested in hearing how he would react when that plan went out the window.

As every one who doesn’t live in a cave knows that with the GOP convention in town there have been a lot of arrests of the some of the more off the wall protestors. Yesterday the NY news stations were talking about the fact that it was taking over 30 hours to process them after they had been arrested. According to the NYPD a lot of the delay is due to the fact that they are giving false names or refusing to provide any type of information. There were interviews of these poor souls who had been so traumatized by the fact that they had been held for so long and in such poor conditions. One guy compared it to Guantánamo bay. These people are so divorced from reality at times it is comical, they were looking to get arrested and that's exactly what happened to them. I’d place large sums of money that the majority of the protestors will have the charges against them dropped in a couple of months. Outside of the initial arrest there is almost no penalty for civil disobedience these days. So what the hell are they complaining about? If Ashcroft was any bit as bad as they make him out to be they would be in jail for a hell of a lot longer and there would be a significant price to pay. Since they are so hell bent on fighting against the War in Iraq they should ask their good friend Saddam about his methods of dealing with those who disagreed with him.

From the stupid criminal tricks file comes a story of the 39 year old Police Commissioner from Little Ferry NJ who is also a city councilmen. He was arrested for sending naked pictures of himself to someone he thought was a 14 year old girl that he met in a chat room. But like all of the 14 year old girls on the internet she turned out to be an undercover cop. This budding brain surgeon didn’t even bother to use an alias. You have to wonder how his wife and 2 children feel about this development. You would think that the police commissioner would have some clue about the counter child-molestation things in place. On a related note think of the cops that have to pull that type of duty. I’ll give them a lot of credit, spending all that time hanging out in those chat rooms, pretending to be underage girls.