Socialism For Laughs

Good News from UK

2010-05-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Despite the overwhelming media support and love he inspired in the public...

Prime Minister Brown has gracefully decided to step down...

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, you commie prick!

Abuse of Power Summarized

2010-04-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

There's so much in this article it's hard to know where to start, but it provides a wonderful capsule summary of how power is abused.

The resignation of the conservative Bishop of Augsburg – accused of thrashing orphans with a carpet beater – has given a powerful boost to reformers in the German Catholic Church who are trying to stop the mass desertion of believers

" I beg forgiveness from all those to whom I may have been unfair, from all those to whom I have caused anxiety, " the bishop said.

I can see how being walloped with a carpet beater might tend to make you anxious...

A special investigator and a Munich lawyer are now investigating the claims against him. He has also been accused of using church funds to buy artworks.

"The money was just Resting in my account!" - Father Ted.

Conservative clergy have been trying to maintain a strict boundary between church and state – and thus resist the meddling of state prosecutors in the abuse scandals.

For them church power still rests on its ability to keep its secrets and thus its authority over believers

Prosecutors are annoying like that, how they meddle in cases like theft, murder and buggery. Much better left to be swept under the rug. And as for secrecy... secrecy is power. Without the secrecy and rituals a priest is just a man wearing a frock after all.

Bishop Mixa was for many younger Catholics a symbol of what was wrong.

He seemed to enjoy high-level protection and certainly seemed free to make outspoken comments about society in and out of the pulpit

The religion business sure was good to him! Until now.

Times Are Tough

2010-04-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

... even the religion business is suffering. Consider the "Ebenezer AME Church" (wonder if that's anything to do with AMC cinemas?)

The congregation, one of America's largest, has been scrambling to raise funds to save the arena-sized sanctuary from potential foreclosure

Have they appealed to the Holy Trinity for deliverance? Not exactly

it has enlisted national leaders, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Harvard Law School's Charles Ogletree, who was President Barack Obama's law professor.

2 out of three ain't bad.

At times like these I'd advise the faithful at the Ebeneezer to turn to the book of Jereboth, in the appendix to the Apocrypha. For 'tis written:

There's a guy in the place
He's got a bittersweet face
And he goes by the name of Ebeneezer Goode
His friends call him Eezer and he is the main geezer
And he'll vibe about the place
Like no other man could
He's refined, sublime, he makes you feel fine
Though very much maligned and misunderstood
But if you know Eezer he's a real crowd pleaser
He's ever so good, he's Ebeneezer Goode
You can see that he's mysterious,
Mischievious and devious
As he circulates amongst the people in the place
But once you know he's fun
And something of a genius
He gives a grin that grows around
From face to face to face
Backwards and then forwards,
Forwards and then backwards
Eezer is the geezer who loves to muscle in
That's about the time the crowd
All shout the name of Eezer
As he's kotcheled in the corner,
Laughing by the bass bin

iPad Insanity

2010-04-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the tale of a woman who's sitting in the street for 24 hours to be first in line to buy one of those new Apple iPads.

It's amazing to me how people suspend all reason when an Apple product is involved.

Eight hundred bucks gets you a single-tasking portable computer, so locked down you can't even change the damn battery, or install anything except Apple-authorized programs on it. Is this progress?

Steve Jobs' next product: the iTurd. One of Jobs' actual jobbies, sealed in a glass case, with a little Apple logo on it. $500 at your local retailer. Don't miss this unique chance to get hold of the Jobsian DNA!

Furlough

2010-04-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

I've worked a lot with Government as a contractor. Anyone coming from the private sector cannot but be astonished at the culture in Government offices.

Because they get early retirement and decent pensions, unlike the rest of us, from the day they are hired, government workers have a single goal: to stay in post until they collect their pension. This means as long as they don't upset anybody they're sure of a well-funded retirement. The best way to avoid upsetting anybody is to never do anything. And that's what they do. As little as possible. Day after day. Month in and month out. Until retirement.

If you've come from a private company with customers who can take their business elsewhere, the atmosphere in government is a real shock. The pace of change isn't glacial, because glaciers do move. Imagine working in a place where nothing happens, year after year. Go back five years later and everything's the same (except a few more people will have joined the ranks of the long-term sick and are now doing nothing at home on full pay).

Former Chicago Fire Chief James Joyce had it right when he heard on his vehicle radio about the fire at 69 West Washington. "It's Friday afternoon in a government building - it's gonna be almost empty".

So it comes as no surprise that in bankrupt states like California they have started letting staff take Fridays as unpaid furlough days. So now staff are getting paid for doing nothing for 4 days a week instead of 5.

Why not just sack the lot of them and move them to the welfare rolls? They'd cost a lot less, while still sucking at the tit of the productive members of society.

Seen While Shopping

2010-03-06T16:04:00.001-08:00

Here's a title to conjure with.

"Take one downed US Airman. Marinade in a pit full of pigshit for three weeks. Remove, bind to tree and gently poach in sun for 3 days. Behead and serve!"

Great New Announcement from Microsoft

2010-03-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

Sharepoint 2010 is coming out

Strapline: "2010 times the Frustration! 2010 times the hassle!"

In summary:

* More Bugs

* More Bloated

* Even slower

* No backwards compatibility

* 90% of features now officially undocumented - huge new opportunities for bloggers to fill the gap

* Write a custom workflow action in C# in as little as 1,000,000 lines of code

* Minimum system requirement: the computers Tom Cruise used in Minority Report. Should be available around 2020

All you corporate guys, enjoy!

How dumb can you be and still get a job on a national newspaper?

2010-03-02T16:46:00.001-08:00

As far as I can see, if it's the LA Times, the answer is pretty f***ing dumb!

The justices don't make *anything* a right.

Our rights as American Citizens come from God.

The US constitution lists what the government is allowed to do. (Unlike constitutions in places like the USSR and the EU where they list what the government allows people to do.)

The purpose of the justices is to interpret the constitution. I'm sure the justices realize that even if the LA Times doesn't. I'm a bloody immigrant and even I know it!

The most fundamental right of any human being is self-defense.

Corrupt tinpot dictators like Chicago's Mayor Daley are happy to subcontract their defense out to a team of heavily armed bully-boys provided round the clock at the taxpayers' expense.

As for the rest of us, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Despite this, Chicago, probably the most corrupt city in the US, has denied its citizens this basic right since 1982.

And now the justices are about to tell Daley to stuff his ban where the sun don't shine.

God Bless America.

Judicial Misconduct

2010-02-22T14:33:00.001-08:00

It's not April 1st.
It's not "The Onion".

It's about a guy on Death Row.

But still...

Can you get a fair trial if the judge is/was sleeping with the prosecutor

Here are some quotes which are destined to be cited by legal clerks for decades

“I had a truck that everybody recognized,”
She was “was tired of laying over,” she said, and “getting licked without any input.”

And the conclusion?

Campaign spending may undermine the integrity of the judicial system. The same goes for a gag gift of confectionary genitalia. But a love affair between the judge and prosecutor in a death penalty case is, in Texas, at least, another matter.

How the fuck do you repair a lake?

2010-02-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

A car ? I can see that
A TV ? If it's new and expensive enough
A washing machine ? Maybe

But a lake?

The caring sharing Obama administration is going to spend $2,200,000,000 of your and my money on Repairing the Great Lakes

It's a business

2010-02-17T17:44:00.001-08:00

More from the NY Times in the section "Studies on the bloody obvious"

This one says 60% of Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students.

As news this has to rank with revelations like "17 year old boys like porn".

Of course education is a business. How did people think colleges paid for all the staff and buildings?

Everything's a business - some very lucrative

Showbusiness
The religion business
The criminal justice business
The politics business
The warfare business
The Security business
The intelligence business

etc. etc.

Scare People And Get Rich

2010-01-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

- The Church started doing it 2,000 years ago

- The IT Industry did it with with Y2K

- The Military/Industrial Complex did it with its "Reds under the bed"

- Bush did it with the scary brown bearded folks in his "War On Terror"

- The Drug Companies did it with SARS and H1N1

- And the Climate Change Industry has been doing it for 20 years - setting up a carbon trading scheme to benefit the likes of Goldman Sachs, putting big "green" taxes on gasoline, to benefit the political class, etc., etc.

And like all the other scares you know it's a crock of shit when an article calling it out for what it is appears on the BBC of all places

Latest from the UK

2010-01-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

From Maidstone in Kent an answer to the question: what do British schoolkids do all day? Well if they were in class they'd be learning peace studies in Urdu or all about climate change. That's why a good number of them prefer playing truant and hanging around shopping centres swigging cider, smoking and robbing passersby.

This lad, however, is more of a throwback to his forebears 100 years ago who at age 16 would likely be navigating a battleship or working down a mine.

Predictably there are howls of outrage all around the web from people who say he could have been killed. Well that's a matter for him isn't it? He's obviously got a lot of bottle - and in his case, unlike most of his classmates, it doesn't contain White Lightning

The American People Have Spoken

2010-01-20T04:47:00.000-08:00

They said: We don't want a National Health Service

A typical British Hospital

Climategate

2010-01-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

It's long been known that the best way to get money out of people is to scare them. Advertisers do it by making people feel they won't be "hip" without the latest sweater. More seriously, the Church has been doing it for 2,000 years. Bush did it with his 'axis of evil', and the climate change mafia have been doing it for the last 20 years.

When watching a politician on TV you may find it helpful to turn down the volume, and mentally add a subtitle "I am a lying corrupt scumbag, I loathe average working guys like you, but me and my cronies need your cash", and leave it there as a useful aide-memoire while he's talking.

Have you heard about "irregular verbs"? For example:

"I give off the record press briefings"
"You leak"
"He is being charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act"

Now thanks to the Times we have another one

"I misled the world"
"You did not tell the whole truth"
"He is a lying scumbag"

So it turns out that the Himalayan Glaciers are not going to melt after all because all the data was made up

Big surprise there to anybody not born yesterday!

Agents Provocateurs?

2010-01-15T10:23:00.001-08:00

There's an excellent article over at Salon by Glenn Greenwald. It's about some flunky of Obama's with a plan for the U.S. Government (i.e. taxpayer) to employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.

This is nothing new in the UK. The overwhelming majority in the UK want to pull out of the European Union, which has destroyed millions of jobs and indeed entire industries, such as fishing, while swamping what little business remains with red tape. If they don't in fact want to pull out, most people in the UK would prefer the EU to be what it was originally sold as - a common trading bloc - and not the de facto government of the country, which is what it has become.

But the three leading political parties are all pro-EU. The one party which represents the majority view of the British people - the UK Independence Party - is constantly defeated at the polls. One reason of course is that the UK establishment is firmly behind the three main parties (which are so similar you can barely tell them apart) so they always get plenty of airtime on the media. And the other reason is that UKIP has never been able to stop internal fighting and get its act together. Many people, including me, believe that UKIP was set up deliberately to be useless and to soak up the resources of the Anti-EU crowd, in the same way that an intelligence service will often offer one of its own to a rival agency as a "defector", when in fact the aim is to confuse the enemy and waste his time with false and misleading reports.

Don't forget that the UK has been around a long time. Although the British Secret Service started officially in 1909, in practice the establishment has been up to its neck in the "great game" for at least 500 years.

Back over on this side of the pond, in recent memory the CIA actually owned various publishing houses for propaganda purposes - not a conspiracy theory but a demonstrable matter of fact.

So don't think this is new --- and don't believe everything you read in chat rooms!

They Never Learn

2010-01-11T04:37:00.000-08:00

You couldn't make it up. Obama's expression says it all.

When are they going to stop this lunacy? Or bomb somewhere that really deserves it like France?

Next up:

US Moves Border 100 miles North in surprise overnight move - Obama welcomes 33,000,000 new Americans

Nice

2010-01-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent vehicle they use for fighting fires in the Mont Blanc tunnel. Since they had to start hiring women firefighters they were finding the amount of time it took them to do a 3-point turn and get the vehicle pointing the right way resulted in an unacceptable number of casualties. They therefore came up with this!

As long as the firefighters remember to get in the correct end, they can be speeding to the rescue in seconds!

If the same engineering was applied to the Honda CRV, Chrysler Town & Country, etc., imagine the time it would save in your local Target parking lot.

Surely some mistake?

2010-01-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

I think it's only one cop, but I could see how you could make that mistake

New Green Fuel

2010-01-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

So in the UK with all the "climate change" legislation, fuel is set to become more and more expensive as higher and higher taxes are levied to discourage its use.

This doesn't affect members of the laughable government as they sit in their cosy warm offices and in the backs of their limos and private jets.

In the real world, however, the UK is having the coldest winter in years. Not that you'd know from looking at the UK Meteorological Office weather forecast - in the UK, even the weather is politicised!

In fact it's so bad that old people are having to burn books to stay warm

This might be no bad thing. You could order a bunch of books from Amazon and keep warm all winter - it'd be cheaper than all that imported Russian Gas!

May I suggest starting with this one?

Nigerian car thief targets Woody Allen

2010-01-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

This story is a wonderful encapsulation of modern Britain where the law-abiding are ripped off and completely failed by an institutionally socialist state.

Modern cars are exceptionally difficult to steal due to the electronic immobilisers they use. There are, therefore, two options for a determined thief in the UK with a pressing drug habit who is running low on cash. Both involve getting hold of the car keys.

First option: What do a lot of people do when they come home? Drop the house and car keys on the hall table. British homes have letterboxes in the front door where mail is placed. The enterprising thieves use a hook at the end of a pole to reach through the letter box and hook the keys from the table. I included the link to the Police website because this sort of thing sounds like an urban myth.

In the case of an elderly homeowner or a very fit burglar the second option is a more direct approach, where the victim is robbed and murdered in-home and the keys taken (in the UK a 'life' sentence for murder is about seven years)

And in the event that the homeowner resists, the trusty shield of British justice is there to jail the homeowner for defending his property

Famous filmmaker Woody Allen has a thing for the UK. He's a smart businessman, so my guess is he likes the fact that the actors and crew he hires there are desperate for the work. And some of the locations can be made to look nice on film if the bums are cleared away and the trash swept up first, and the actors filmed under bright lights to make it look like the sun's shining.

He's paying about $17,000 a week for an upscale home while filming. Next door is a bunch of squatters - people who break into unoccupied homes to live for free. Recently they spotted a guy who sounds like a Nigerian illegal immigrant trying the bamboo pole hook on Woody's house.

So this story has everything
- A state which can't keep out foreign criminals
- People living in an upscale house for free
- Even paying $17,000 a week doesn't get you a home free from the anarchy
- And a justice system which enables the above

Sherlock Holmes Movie Report

2010-01-02T08:34:00.001-08:00

Most movies today are aimed at mentally challenged, deaf, 14 year old boys. Today's directors like Michael Bay lower one's expectations to such a degree that you're relieved when a film turns out not to be completely unwatchable. Such was the case with "Mockney" Guy Ritchie's new film Sherlock Holmes (or since the whole thing was a set up for a franchise should that be "Sherlock Holmes 1")

Naturally as a Brit I can't watch anything Sherlock Holmes without comparing it to the definitive portrayal of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce:

I re-watched "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1939) last night and I have to say that as far as mood, atmosphere and the ability to understand what the actors are saying is concerned, it's better than Ritchie's effort.

Having said that, I think Ritchie did a good job. The studios need everything aimed at 14 year old deaf retarded kids of course, and he kept that in mind, with some martial arts and some explosions. But he also threw in some stuff for us old farts to enjoy as well.

The special effects were outstanding, especially the way they included Tower Bridge when it was still under construction.

Less impressive was how they had the heroes running around in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster and yet emerge at said Tower Bridge, three miles away.

The Thames was also not known for its shipbuilding industry! And the river is too shallow for a large boat to sink and completely disappear.

Well, at the moment it is, anyway...

I knew there had to be something in that Curry

2009-12-28T07:51:00.001-08:00

The 86 year old Governor of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India
has resigned after a tape surfaced of him and three women in bed

Here in the States we sit down to watch "It's a wonderful life"... coincidentally the title of the video he was in too.

More power to you sir! Even if it does kill you, you'll die smiling!

Ask Google Why

2009-12-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Not much going on today, it being Christmas and all.

To pass the time I was entering "why does" and "why is" questions into Google. Try it and see what people are asking!

Unelected former Commie Brit Prime Minister Gordon Brown...

POTUS...

Tiger Woods to take a break....

2009-12-11T17:23:00.001-08:00

...from playing golf.

Now intends to focus on shagging women on a 24x7 basis

Into The Storm

2009-12-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

One of the best films of this year you've never heard of is Into The Storm, which is about the great British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.

I was astounded that such a well balanced film could get made in the UK these days. If the BBC had done it they'd have made Churchill into a cross-dresser who flogged his servants to death. As it is we have a truly excellent film which packs the entire Second World War into 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Here Churchill responds to people in his cabinet who say Britain should negotiate a peace with Hitler.

And here, after the war, Churchill responds to the threat of Socialism, in a radio broadcast which strangely enough is not widely known compared to his other speeches. He sure was right, although they didn't need a Gestapo, as both parties in the UK were socialist anyway.

Asia Billboard Roundup

2009-12-06T14:28:00.001-08:00

I've just got back from roughing it in a bunch of five-star hotels all over South East Asia.

Here's a selection of ads and billboards I found while there

If you drink enough essence of Chicken you could be just like this guy here

This ad enjoins you "don't be a tosser".

I checked and it's true, they really do have the entire internet in that traffic cone. Apparently the Chinese did it last year.

Bad news if you're a Durian

Here's the latest from DJ Mojo Jojo. I got to get me some of that!

Finally we were checking some bags in at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. One of our bags, apparently, was a Le Sport Sac. To me it just looked like a gaudy waste of cash. Anyway, the checkin guy's eyes lit up when he saw it. He asked were we sure we wanted to check it in, as it was the most popular bag among the baggage handlers! You can't fault the guy's honesty, can you? I said they were welcome to it.

For God's Sake DON'T OFFEND ANYONE

2009-12-01T01:33:00.001-08:00

I feel sorry for the writers in newspapers. They must spend half the time second guessing themselves trying to avoid outraging any of the dozens of "victim" groups out there.

Occasionally this has hilarious results. In Chicago, an Alderman has ensured dozens of treatment centres for mentally ill, drug addicts, etc., are located in her ward, to create a ready-made block of supporters to keep her in office.

One of these guys has harrassed and scared locals for years

They talk about all the stuff this guy does, like live off the taxpayer, smoke crack, and beg aggressively.

And then the money quotation:

"Bellwood could not be reached for comment"

That's probably because he's somewhere between Edgewater and Pluto at the moment!

Back Rack

2009-11-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

Consider the following which was spotted in a California Wal Mart

And now comes the following news from Peru

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before extracting their fat to sell it for $15,000 (£9,000) a litre.

Other suspected gang members, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Imagine the carnage if this lot managed to sneak across the border into the USA!

Update (from that Socialist paradise, the UK)

Why don't they just borrow a C130 Galaxy from the USAF and fly this fat git to Peru. Problem solved!

Truly Britain Leads the World

2009-11-09T12:54:00.001-08:00

... in producing scum, like this couple

I'd sooner head down to Lincoln Park zoo and watch a couple of Orang-utans at it for half an hour

The End of History

2009-11-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Over in Europe, they are celebrating 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Pompous multimillionaire eco-rockers U2 outraged the locals when they held a concert to celebrate this... and erected a big wall to keep out those without tickets!)

And in an ironic twist the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, has signed the Treaty of Lisbon, so 20 years after his country threw off the shackles of Soviet Communism, it has once again ceased to be an independent country and is now a province of the EU empire instead.

The monstrous Healthcare bill just passed the house, I hear, so the upcoming National Health bureaucracy will soon be starting up. That should give hope to millions of unemployable numpties the length and breadth of the USA; their country will shortly be needing them, just as their ilk is needed by the British National Health Service, which is the third-largest employer in the world behind Indian Railways and the Chinese Army.

How do you make a political class or ruling elite? I'd say 1/5th fundamentally evil corrupt, backstabbing, double dealing two faced lying bastards and 4/5ths people who like the trappings of power and don't mind sucking up to them. Then below them a huge bureaucracy of people who can't get any other sort of work and enjoy doing a 3 day week on full pay with a decent pension. For that they'll be good little worker bees... handing out drivers licenses in the DMV, doling out welfare payments, building or liquor permits.... or herding people into gas chambers (depending on the requirements of the government of the day)

Anyway it's Sunday, so enough with the fantasies about emptying the statehouse, hanging the occupants from lamp posts and lighting bonfires under them!

Let's go back to a more hopeful time. 1968, to be precise. The Beatles played Madison Square Garden that year; the Soviet Army played Czechosolvakia; and in Italy, where the CIA kept the communists out of power for 40 years by paying off the local politicians, Lamborghini had been producing the lovely Miura for two years. 0-60 in 7 seconds might not sound much now, but back then you needed a calendar not a stopwatch to time your average family car's 0-60.

Enjoy watching this unbelievably cool looking dude pilot his supercar round some challenging hairpin bends in the Italian alps, pausing only to light a ciggie. Imagine that howling 4.0L V12 is 2 feet behind your head. Imagine some 22 year old redheaded cutie in the passenger seat looking at you invitingly. No road signs. No cops. No warnings. No speed cameras. No trucks. It sure ain't 2009!

Here's a Hybrid car I could live with

2009-11-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

It's a Chevmobile - a 1968 Chevy Impala with an Oldsmobile 455 (7.4L) engine in it

Beautiful car!

Salivate More

Funny, That

2009-11-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

mmm... commie high priest of the climate change hysteria... I'm going to go with "Yes".

Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiting from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

read more

And in other news

Well you could have knocked me down with a feather when I read that

This certainly is not the Peoples' republic of Britain! Over there they'd have let him go already.

What to buy Aunt Maude this Christmas?

2009-11-01T07:53:00.000-08:00

This isn't a joke. I actually used an earlier version of this in a hotel in Tokyo. Believe me the sight of a remote control peeking out from under the seat while you exercise your bowels is extremely disconcerting. The instructions were all in Japanese so I never felt brave enough to tinker about with the controls. Who knows what might have happened?

For people who want to take taking a dump to a whole new level go here

"Do you think we 'ave forgotten Agincourt?"

2009-10-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

594 years ago today the English Army under Henry V delivered the latest in a long series of well-deserved thrashings to the French at Agincourt.

British schoolboys were always told the English were outnumbered 5 to 1 (at least when I was at school - now they are probably doing finger painting, talking about their feelings, or studying "climate change")

Anyway a bunch of leftie researchers have now discovered by consulting tax records (no way 600 year old tax records would be anything less than totally accurate) that in fact it wasn't such a victory after all.

Because the English were only outnumbered 2 to 1

When you're fighting the French, then, it's only a decent victory if they outnumber you 10 to 1 or more.

Alice in Wonderland

2009-10-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm reading my daughter Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Written back in 1865 when the Civil War was still on, it's about a little girl who falls down a well into a strange land where nothing is as it seems.

Just like Illinois.

Today in the Sun-Times, and I had to read this a couple of times and check it wasn't April 1st, it says that the widow of mob enforcer Anthony Spilotro is working at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. They "license everything from barbers to banks and architects to veterinarians. We also oversee most of the state’s financial institutions, which have combined assets in excess of $4 trillion."

It's great news they have people with such deep and relevant experience deciding who's a fit and proper person to do business in this great state of ours!

I'm tempted to apply for a business license and see if they ask if you've ever "whacked" anybody, or whether you've ever had a business dispute with somebody and did you solve it (a) through the courts (b) with a baseball bat (c) a garotte (d) a meat hook or (e) Joe Pesci

You couldn't make it up. Truly the Sun-Times can be funnier than The Onion, even if a typical front page now looks like this

News from the Ghetto

2009-10-11T09:05:00.001-07:00

A bunch of people living in a housing project in the UK are distraught that an inspection has resulted in some of their most treasured possessions being removed as a fire risk

From our Religious Correspondent

2009-10-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

"I was just administering extreme unction!"

"Is Kowalski A Midget?"

2009-09-27T16:20:00.001-07:00

Just been rewatching a classic 1971 movie, "Vanishing Point". Anybody who enjoys films of this era, as I do, will be well aware that film crews at that time were more focused on mind expanding substances and adventurous sex than on their 401(k)s and audience demographics. As a result, their films often do not make a great deal of sense, but they definitely evoke a strong gut reaction from the audience - whereas todays' films either cause me to fall asleep (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), slap my head in frustration that it's been 3 hours and still the same old crap is going on over and over (Lord of the Rings) or throw up (anything with Sandra Bullock in it)

When I first came to the US and was picked up at the airport by the woman who would become my wife, I was subconsciously expecting her to turn up in a White 1970 Dodge Challenger. And now I know why. Of course, it turned out to be a Honda CRV.

Rent this film - or download it - listen to the insane howl of the V8 in that Challenger, and imagine it's you driving it, with a couple of Climate Change activists tied to the roof. Enjoy!

Playing at soldiers?

2009-09-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

Recently in Chicago some big ass criminal gave the slip to a couple of Cook County investigators who were supposed to be minding him.

This picture came from the print version of the Sun-Times and appears to show that the cops hunting the man were possibly a little.... over-zealous.

Or maybe something more sinister is going on?

Here's a shot from the Daily Mail of a bunch of Iranian Soldiers on the march recently

So either the Iranians have invaded Arlington Heights... or they use the same tailor!

Windows 7

2009-09-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been very impressed with the new Windows 7. They've finally cracked the taskbar and window navigation - they've done such a good job it's worth the upgrade just for that. "Date Modified" is now back in all explorer windows. The accessories (Calc, Paint Brush, etc.) have received their first makeover in 10 years. There's a really great builtin utility for screen capturing. And the whole product feels more slick and well put together.

It takes around 20 minutes to do a fresh install of Win 7. I used the 64 bit version except on my home machine where I need to use a Cisco VPN. Don't install the 64 bit version unless you're sure there are drivers for all the applications you need. Of course even with the 32 bit version you may find your printer's not supported.

With Win7 installed, I then needed to install Visual Studio 2005, VS2005 SP1, Visual Studio 2008 and VS2008 SP1. Each one takes around 22 minutes.

I mean, what on earth can it be doing? And how can the service packs take as long to install as the original products?

Anyway as far as Windows 7 is concerned, I strongly recommend it!

Harlot's Ghost

2009-09-18T18:27:00.001-07:00

Norman Mailer ... "donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School" (Woody Allen)

So I just waded through all 1,200 pages of Harlot's Ghost, Mailer's novel about the CIA which took the great man of letters 7 years to write.

It turned out to be absolutely excellent

With just one problem: the last line

"TO BE CONTINUED"

Thanks a bunch Norman!

(Norman Mailer 1923-2007)

These guys are on a hiding to nothing

2009-09-01T19:52:00.001-07:00

In the home of socialism an 88 strong "bad behavior brigade" is tasked with preventing les citoyens de Paris urinating in the street. I don't think they will have much luck - public urination, together with cruelty to geese, are as close to the heart of your average Frenchman as gun ownership is to a Midwesterner.

And as for the "Brigade des Incivilites" I believe the French language has a word for them: Tosseurs!

How Times Change

2009-08-29T16:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the Royal Navy, circa 1805

And here they are in 2009

The Navy of Nelson, Collingwood, Jervis, Cook and Cochrane has now lent its name to a tacky watch made in China

"I believe the mainstream Chicago media is tops right now"

2009-08-06T04:51:00.001-07:00

Above is an example of their brilliant proofreading

Seriously though, what is she smoking?

If I wanted to know what was going on in Chicago the Sun Times and the TV is the last place I'd look.

Move over, Ben Bernanke

2009-08-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

Her awesome money management skills make British woman Debra Wilson a shoo-in should the job of chairman of the US Federal Reserve become vacant

2009-08-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

Truly the dead tree press has lost the plot. Thirty years ago the Daily Telegraph was a newspaper of substance and merit. Now it's more like US Magazine. And do their headline writers even read the headlines after they've written them?

It's been obvious to everybody that Jackson has been cracking up since the Reagan administration

I am shocked, shocked!

2009-08-01T06:41:00.001-07:00

In the Trib today it says that Huron Consulting is restating 3 years of financial statements

The story doesn't mention that this firm was started by a bunch of ex-partners from Arthur Andersen after it folded in 2002 following the Enron bankruptcy.

Looks like a large network of contacts, shiny white shirts, gold cufflinks, Cartier watches and bouffant hair weren't the only things these guys brought with them!

Illinois Politics

2009-07-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

In Illinois the Republican and Democratic parties work together to fill their boots with as much taxpayers' cash as possible. They see their job as enriching themselves and their buddies and hiring armies of otherwise unemployable patronage workers on the public dime.

The second to last governor went to jail; the last governor is going to jail after his trial next year; and the current governor is essentially a brain-dead plank of wood they wheel around to make speeches.

Currently the state is $11,500,000,000 in the red. The architect of this cluster-fuck, greasy turd and State Treasurer, Alex Giannoulias, is running for Senate where he'll be able to bring his great talent to bear on stretching the national debt even further.

After watching the movie Cool Hand Luke recently my personal manifesto for the State of Illinois is to take everybody in the state house, chain them together, and make the bone idle lying fuckers dig roads and sleep in tents for three years. In most cases this would be the only time in their lives they had actually done an honest job.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

2009-07-25T09:25:00.001-07:00

In 1973 Woody Allen made a wonderful science fiction movie called Sleeper

Set in 2173, it tells the story of a man (Allen) who wakes up after being in suspended animation for 200 years. At that time there is a totalitarian government operating in what used to be the United States. ["Resisters to mind reprogramming will be eliminated for the good of state!" "What kind of government ya got here? This is worse than California!"] The head of the government has been blown up by the resistance leaving only a trace behind - his nose. The government plans to clone a new leader from the old leader's nose and it's Allen's job to stop them.

Why do I bring this up? Because it turns out that somebody has stolen Michael Jackson's nose. Apparently somebody in the morgue says that there was only a small hole where his nose should have been.

So right now, are the highups at Jackson's record company trying to clone a whole new Michael Jackson?

So they get to cash in on his death - and his resurrection!

Read the Cliff's Notes

2009-07-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Now here is an excellent article

Since many of you do not have the time to read it in its entirety, permit me to paraphrase

"The taxpayers of the Western world can no longer afford to subsidise the greedy lazy useless nonproductive deadbeat parasitical portion of the population: namely welfare claimants and government workers".

Why is service so appalling in the UK?

2009-07-18T05:29:00.001-07:00

One of the many areas in which the USA leads the world is food. At any time I can choose from a huge variety of great places to eat excellent food at reasonable prices served by polite, helpful and pleasant staff, whom my wife constantly complains that I tip too much.

Contrast that to the UK. If you don't fancy Indian, Chinese or Thai, which are mostly excellent, the equivalent of a hundred and fifty dollars gets a barely adequate meal for 4, with the courses arriving at different times, probably not even hot, badly cooked, with long waits, and surly service.

And now thanks to this post we have the reason.

So you have a choice when offered a job worth around £15,500 or less: take it, work hard, earn your own money or do nothing and get the same amount of money. What if you are offered a job for £16,000? You would be better off by £6.63 per week, not £9.61, due to tax. That's not a lot of money for a lot more work. £17,000 makes you £19.90 better off per week instead of £28.85 because of tax.

The State seemingly doesn't want people at the job centre to get jobs (or it would be making them do a lot more), and even if they are offered a job, unless they are offered a good wage (average in the UK is about £25,000) there is little incentive to take it.

If I decide to move into a flat on housing benefit, I will have a large incentive not to take a job unless it comes with a good. So, no bar jobs, no part time waiter work, etc. It just doesn't pay. The same goes for the other 2.38 million people.

And there you have it. Thanks to the caring socialists in charge, it just doesn't pay to do that kind of work. Hence the restaurants can't get enough staff, and those they do get are only there because they can't for some reason get enough benefits, which explains their attitude. No wonder eating out in the UK was always such a hit or miss proposition.

An utter travesty

2009-07-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

I saw something in Target the other day which pulled me up short

That's right. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in the bargain bucket for $4.75.

This film is based on the twenty-volume "Master and Commander" series by Patrick O'Brian (1914-2000). I've read the whole series several times, and I enjoy it more each time. The prose is the most beautiful I've ever read; the underlying research would provide material for a dozen PHd theses; I'm sure I will never read anything better in my lifetime; indeeed, the fervour of many devotees approaches religious levels of intensity.

Peter Weir and John Collee therefore had their hands full creating a 2 hour movie based on the canon. I would have said the books were not filmable. I would have expected Hollywood would have added a few sword-wielding pirate queens, for example. But they created a most excellent adaptation, preserving much of the feel of the books, with state of the art special effects, and a wonderful cast. There were very few false notes struck and overall I think the movie was a staggering achievement.

The movie also made me think Russell Crowe is probably the best actor working right now. I could not imagine anybody playing Jack Aubrey convincingly, but Crowe pulled it off.

So I was very sad to see it available at a knock-down price.

I despaired when I saw this on an adjacent shelf.

$4.75 for a cinematic masterpiece where the best acting talent in the world interprets the best work of one of the finest novelists in history;

or $13 to see a piece of furniture with legs spouting dreck written by a Hollywood hack likely off his head on drugs.

A difficult choice.

News Roundup

2009-07-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

British Diplomat Filmed With Two Russian Prostitutes. As soon as I saw this the first thing I thought was "The KGB have done it again!". Torquil Leamington-Feltch, 29, a British Diplomat was caught on video with a couple of hookers. Now there's a guy who's never read any John Le Carre. I mean, how could you be so dense as to be a British private school boy in Sverdlovsk and think two lovelies who invited you back to their hotel room for some no strings attached nookie were on the up and up? All he had to do was insist on renting a new hotel room and they'd have disappeared in ten seconds flat. Mind you, he probably thought that Russian women all have the hots for Brits whose accent is so upper class they sound like they have a bunch of plums in their mouth when they talk, and whose mothers still stitch their names on to the lining of their undergarments.

And in other news, in the UK, there are one million people who've not worked since 1997. Actually 1,000,646 if you count members of Parliament.

Bernard Madoff Gets 150 Years

2009-06-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in Ponzi scheme

After the sentencing Madoff told his counsel that with good behaviour, he expects to cut that sentence in half.

Invest in Chinese Real Estate

2009-06-28T15:47:00.001-07:00

I wonder if people who have put down deposits on the apartments in the two blocks which are still standing will now be entitled to their money back?

Tech Byte

2009-06-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm very impressed with the new IE 8.0 - so much so I've now dumped the Firefox 3.0.11 and made IE my default browser once more.

I surf with the default text size blown up to make it easier on my eyes. A recent Firefox update (not sure which one) introduced a bug which caused the text size of the page you're reading to suddenly reset to the default, which is annoying.

I've also noticed that the later versions of Firefox have slowed down considerably. While I'm reading a page, I'll open several links in tabs as I go so that I can have the pages ready in the background when I'm finished with the current one. Lately, it seems like something is hanging so that I frequently find that none of the pages in the other tabs have loaded at all. It happens on enough different sites to make me think the problem is in Firefox. Sometimes I've had to "PSKILL FIREFOX".

Now they've finally gotten round to adding a decent "find" function to IE, it seems to me there's no reason to go back.

Socialism Update

2009-06-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Time for a quick look at how caring Socialist governments are doing lately.

In Illinois the Chicago Tribune has broken a story showing how the University of Illinois was leaned on to accept unqualified candidates who had 'connected' relatives. Even to the Law School.

In return, as these candidates would have a heck of a time keeping up with and passing the course, the U of I had to insist that these people be found jobs in due course so as not to affect the U of I Law School's ranking. The money quote: "Yea I'm betting the Governorship will be open. One of them can have that job. Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don't pass the bar and can't think are close enough for Government work." No truer word ever written.

So what happens to lawyers who come up in this way? I have no idea, but it does shed some light on bizarre court decisions which you occasionally get here, like a 250LBS off duty drunken cop caught on video beating up a 125LB female bartender being let off with probation

Meanwhile in the UK it has been emerged that welfare payments will for the first time exceed all the revenue from the Income Tax

I wonder what's going to happen in the UK if productive, intelligent, professional people continue to leave at the present rate? The UK lost many of its best and brightest during two World Wars leaving us with a skewed population, a majority of people who thought Socialism was a good idea. It will be interesting to see if a Thatcher emerges which can reestablish the UK as an independent country with sound economics once again, or if it ends up as a poor province of the EU empire, rather like the poorer states in the USA.

New Shooter

2009-06-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

So I finally did it. To the dismay of socialists everywhere I bought a very nice Heckler & Koch P30 9mm pistol. It's similar to the HK USP 30 which is the preferred sidearm of the British SAS (the only thing in Britain which still works). If it's good enough for the SAS, it's good enough for me, I thought.

It wasn't cheap, but it's wonderfully light and well made, and if properly maintained it should last a very long time.

There was a 72 hour waiting period. "But I'm mad now!" I joked to the cashier. I got the feeling it wasn't the first time he'd heard that.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

2009-06-09T19:17:00.001-07:00

In other news Dalai Lama decks photographer in disco melee

World News Roundup from the BBC

2009-05-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Former South Korean President shows British Cabinet the way

2009-05-23T17:08:00.001-07:00

The former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun has jumped to his death

Now for the love of God why can't the members of the British cabinet do the same?

Some Justice for a Change

2009-05-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

This hideous lump of blubber is not a former member of the East German Politburo.

She is in fact Britain's Home Secretary - responsible for police, prisons, immigration, etc.

She just got her hat handed to her by the EU which said that It's an offence against human rights for police to retain DNA samples of innocent people

Now read that again. They're not saying police can't collect DNA samples. They're saying they can't keep DNA samples from innocent people who they come across in the course of their day.

This is amazing to me for the following reasons

- An unelected unaccountable court in the undemocratic corrupt EU has to tell the UK about human rights
- It actually feels like a victory to have this policy reversed when it's so plainly unjust those responsible for it should have been fired and jailed themselves.
- It shows that the Government the British people elected are not in control in their own country (a good thing - in this case)

Anyway, savor this all too rare victory against the forces of the state. It won't last long; when Miss Smith gets booted out by the British Electorate, she'll head to Europe for an extremely well paid unelected position and work away at getting this reversed.

And in other "justice" news, the man responsible for blanketing British roads with speed cameras - raising GBP100M a year in fines - pleaded guilty to doing 102MPH in a 70 limit

"It is free enterprise in a way"

2009-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

From The Foundry

Previewing the Obama administration’s upcoming “sweeping” environmental regulatory agenda, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told NPR’s Michelle Norris yesterday: “The President has said, and I couldn’t agree more, that what this country needs is a one single national road map that tells automakers who are trying to become solvent again what kind of car it is they need to be designing and building for the American people.” Norris then asked: “Is that the role of Government though? That doesn’t sound like free enterprise.” Jackson responded: “Well it is free enterprise in a way.”

Here's some examples where governments have tried this

The 1980 Austin Allegro from the UK
Faults: Square steering wheel (really!), wheels would fall off, tended to bend when jacked up, and the rear window would fall out

Soviet ZIL with proud new owner

East German Trabant, manufactured not from steel but from recycled paper (really!) with a 602 CC 2-stroke engine

Be interesting to see what society they end up building in the USA considering a senior member of the administration like this lady appears to have never read any history at all.

Denis Leary

2009-04-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Denis Leary for a long time. I still occasionally smile at Rescue Me

I think his short-lived series The Job was among the funniest things I've ever seen on TV

So I was slightly taken aback to see this in my local Whole Foods while stocking up on beer for the weekend

Way to go Denis!!!

UK Police Triumph

2009-04-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

"Hand over your mother or we'll smash the door down!"

Hilarious

Latest PC Claptrap

2009-04-20T10:56:00.001-07:00

Took the kids to the library this weekend and this caught my eye in the childrens' section.

Just the sort of PC nonsense libraries love to fill young minds with.

Let's not forget that since the CIA stopped backing Siad Barre as a bulwark against the Soviet backed Mengistu regime in neighboring Ethiopia back in 1991, Somalia has had no functioning government.

In 1993 18 US servicemen were killed by the locals which spawned the superb movie "Black Hawk Down".

And now Somalians focus mainly on piracy off the horn of Africa, although recently they made the mistake of taking on a US ship, the result being that snipers belonging to the Navy SEALS managed to end the careers of three of them from 75 feet away on the rolling deck of a ship, an awesome feat of marksmanship.

Of course, there are other careers open to the Somali people in the event they suffer from sea-sickness. Provided they can scrounge up enough for a plane ticket they can bring their rich culture to the UK where they can live comfortably on benefits while passing their days committing crime and smoking skunk with no danger of being shot by a sniper. Of course, they'd do well to watch out for any of Idi Amin's relatives

Death of Newspapers

2009-04-20T10:12:00.001-07:00

They say newspapers are dying.

I agree, and here is Exhibit 1:

The Sun Times front page today.

- Oprah
- Burgers
- Cute baby contest
- Pictures of columnists _as_ cute babies

H1B L1 Brouhaha

2009-04-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

Again and again in the media you hear CEOs complain that they can’t hire the overseas talent they need because of visa restrictions. Here’s a typical example.

What an utter crock.

They’d have us believe that in a country of 300 million, home to schools like Yale, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, and the rest, they just can’t find any smart people so they need to go overseas for them.

If you believe that then you also likely believe the Illinois legislature is filled with law abiding people who see public service as a calling.

The truth is far simpler. First off it’s primarily a money thing. They don’t bring computer programmers over from India and pay them minimum wage. But a continuous flow of overseas talent does serve to keep wage demand low.

The second reason is cultural. Managers in the big banks and consulting firms, and I speak from over 20 years experience of both, don’t get into those positions by being brilliant at engineering or having any ability to deliver anything whatsoever.

To become a manager on one of those places requires two key skills: first, the ability to think fast on your feet and say things that sound great right off the top of your head, and second, the ability to identify those with power and make them your friend, so you can hang on to their coat tails on the way up. Brown-nose and bull-shit. Forget all the nonsense they print in business books. Cancel the MBA. That’s really all there is to it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of one of these guys. You’ve got a choice of hiring:

- A US born and raised software developer who is smart, opinionated, articulate and knows how to deliver, wants to get ahead and expects a work environment which will enable him to do so.

- Somebody raised in the third world, where deference to authority is the biggest part of the culture, grateful to be here, mindful that if he loses this job, has a one-way ticket back to a land of bad plumbing?

No choice at all really, is there?

Sophisticated Hi Tech Anti Piracy Device Now Available for World Shipping

2009-04-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Instructions

1. Get a few of these about 200ft in size

2. Hang off the side of your ship

3. Sail up and down off the coast of Somalia in complete safety

GO SEALS!

NPR "This I Believe" comes to an end

2009-04-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

Driving home today I heard on NPR that their series This I Believe is coming to an end.

Ordinary members of the public tell what they believe in.

A truly inspiring series which captured the viewpoints of a fully representative cross-section of American society

From gay to lesbian
From pacifist to conscientious objector
From Berkley professor to Brandeis professor
From left winger to slightly further left winger
From anti war activist to anti-nuclear protester
From disabled to handicapped
From federal worker to government employee
From civil rights activist to victim of police brutality
From big government advocate to large government advocate
From people who want to ban guns to people who think the second amendment is a bad idea

No viewpoint was omitted - we heard from them all.

This blog salutes you!

Tibet Opens!

2009-04-05T10:48:00.001-07:00

Great news huh?

Here are the first of them queuing up at airport security...

How to fix our economic problems

2009-03-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

There's one sure way to fix our economic problems.

Get the unemployed back to work.

Let's start with the politicians and their flunkies, cronies and hangers-on! It might be a nasty shock to them, most of whom have no idea what it is to do an actual day of work, and produce a good or a service, but society would benefit in two ways. Firstly, they would no longer be parasites living off the productivity of the rest of us, and secondly they would not be handicapping the productive segment of society with rules and regulations intended to benefit whoever their main campaign donors are!

Failing that, let's just speed up all the corruption investigations going on and get some speedy trials going. If they're locked in jail they're not robbing the rest of us. Much cheaper to pay room and board for a politician in chokey than their speeding fines or for their dirty films

Space News

2009-03-22T17:44:00.001-07:00

From Reuters today some news that's totally out of this world.

NASA called a halt to tests when the astronauts, Budweiser drinkers to a man, all recognized the taste!

Ostalgie

2009-03-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Here's what looks like an interesting series from the UK Government's official mouthpiece, the BBC.

In the Lost World of Communism the BBC will be lamenting the passing of East Germany.

I was struck by the quote from East Germany's first president Walter Ulbricht.

"It has to look democratic but we must have everything under control."

That statement sums up perfectly the political situation in the UK, where two parties participate in a pretend-democracy, and also the EU which has been forced on the people of Europe whether they like it or not. When a referendum is occasionally taken, the result, which is always negative, is ignored, or the people are forced to vote again until they come up with the "right" answer.

So although the Berlin Wall and the East German regime did fall, and the last President of East Germany, Erich Honecker, like many Germans 45 years earlier, retired to Chile, what ended up happening was the primary idea behind the founding of that nation - all decisions taken by a small elite over the heads of the "great unwashed" - went on to be incorporated in how all the nations of Europe are now governed.

Ironic really!

Illinois Update

2009-03-02T10:05:00.001-08:00

Illinois is a political cess-pool. It's so corrupt there's a good chance your elected representative will be in jail before their term ends. Go and see your congressman, and you'll probably be patted down by one of his flunkies to see if you're wearing a wire.

So with the Illinois economy in the toilet you'd expect these noble representatives of the people to be focused 100% on helping to find a solution the problem, right?

Are they hell.

Ken Dunkin is trying to sneak in a gun ban by - get this - forcing gun owners to have liability insurance like motorists

These guys don't have a clue about achieving anything in the real world, but they are sure devious when it comes to methods of sneaking gun bans in!

Bus Slogan Generator

2009-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

I've been having a lot of fun with the Bus Slogan Generator

Public Service Announcement

2009-02-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

A friend of my wife has taken on some part time seasonal work. She gets paid $10 an hour to do peoples' tax returns at H&R Block. She has no accountancy qualifications whatsoever.

You might be better off yourself with pen & paper at home.

Latest from the CIA

2009-02-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

If you want to know what's going on, there's nobody better placed to tell you than the CIA

It's not all hanging the enemies of the state upside down for years and blasting them with the latest Metallica album, and firing remote controlled missiles at people. With a budget in the billions of dollars, the CIA is the most fearsomely effective intelligence gathering machine the world has ever seen. For example, in December 1991 they were telling the president of the grave risk posed by the Soviet Union and recommending the immediate internment of anybody whose name ended in '-vich', or who looked 'shifty'.

So now they are warning CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US

This is bad news for a British friend of mine, Nigel Clutterbuck, who picked now of all times to change his name to Abdulaziz Bin Derka Derka Allah Akbar Abu Jihad.

There's no way I can see that this could end badly

2009-02-03T07:52:00.001-08:00

German troops deployed to France for first time since 1945

"We kept your rooms just as you left them!" -French Defense Minister

Now here are some LUCKY men

2009-02-01T09:08:00.001-08:00

Many college-educated single mothers are setting up lives around other single mothers and all their children, with no role for men or romance

There is a God

2009-01-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, you creep!

Next up: Company for George Ryan !

Beyond Satire

2009-01-14T09:18:00.001-08:00

Thousands of commuters from the Chicago west suburbs were delayed 2 hours this morning when the police stopped all the trains so they could search for a man who had been behaving suspiciously.

It turned out the man was a secret service agent who told the ticket agent he was carrying a gun and asked if the Metra system had metal detectors.

The security industrial complex in the USA has grown fat and happy based on a campaign of scaremongering for the past 7 years. The objective being to make people scared so they surrender their hard won liberty. This dude has been at ground zero for all of that.

And yet it didn't occur to him that telling a ticket agent he had a gun might cause some consternation?

What a guy! Our nation is safe with people like him packing heat!

How did we get in this subprime mortgage mess?

2008-12-28T06:53:00.000-08:00

Obviously all those Harvard MBAs couldn't be wrong. Could they?

“I’d lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated,” said Mr. Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest — all involving drugs.

While Mr. Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said.

read more

A Christmas Message from This Blogger

2008-12-25T11:38:00.001-08:00

Just made the once-yearly visit to Church. The good thing with being Catholic is that the service is exactly the same every week, so you know you'll be out in exactly 45 minutes (or 1 hour if there's singing)

Anyway as usual there was the sermon about not being materialistic, followed by what for me is the most spiritually moving part of the mass, namely when the collecting tin is passed round.

Times are hard in the Catholic church. The subprime mortgage fiasco has caught the Vatican Bank on the hop; some cardinals in Rome are down to their last Jacuzzi, and the supermodels are beginning to stay away from what they call 'the pontiff circuit'.

Not only that but the Church continues to hemorrhage money in settlements to people who have been abused by its priests. Only last week I heard of a congregation shocked by news that their trusty deacon had been discovered with twenty young boys playing bingo in the nude. His excuse was that they were feeling "hot".

I give the last word to the brilliant Rowan Atkinson. Some time ago, the BBC in the UK had an obligation to show some vaguely religious content every Sunday night. They had a show called 'Songs of Praise' where the TV cameras visited some dismal parish or other. Here's Rowan's take on it.

How could this possibly have ended badly?

2008-12-23T09:22:00.001-08:00

Tom Cruise as German officer Claus Von Stauffenberg

How _could_ prettyboy Tom's performance have been anything less than totally convincing?

He is one of the greatest stars of our age, after all

"Option One is we bring him in alive. Feel free to consider option two!"

2008-12-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

A great look, and a great scriptwriter. You don't often find them in the same place on US TV.

My all time favorite Vic Mackey quote:

He has just burst in on a gangbanger humping his girlfriend. Needing information, he holds the gangster's head in a tank full of poisonous snakes. Naturally the girlfriend gives up the information. He pulls the guy's head out - by now he's the worse for snakebite - and as he leaves advises the shocked girl: "If you want him to live, you'd better start sucking face!"

This is not The Onion

2008-12-10T19:11:00.001-08:00

"Amid pressure from local politicians, some Chuck E. Cheese's have stopped serving alcohol and added security guards who carry pistols."

It's the Wall Street Journal

Justice!

2008-12-09T07:58:00.001-08:00

Truly this news has made the decade worthwhile!

It's the occasional ray of sunshine like this, that makes life worth living.

Some Business Plan

2008-12-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

1) Make one decent British gangster movie

2) Shag Madonna for eight years

3) Walk away with 32 million quid

Master Criminal Busted

2008-12-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

A Chicago police officer who had been relieved of his police powers was arrested in Rosemont for impersonating an officer, authorities said today.

Victor Brown, 35, of the 10000 block of South Wallace Avenue has been in custody since Tuesday on the felony charge. His bail was reduced Thursday to $5,000.

Rosemont detectives arrested Brown after he went to a hotel and asked for a free room to conduct an undercover vice investigation, authorities said. Hotel employees called police after he asked for lotion and on-demand movies, authorities said.

More financial fallout

2008-12-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

How Symantec Apps Are Built

2008-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

Here is a screenshot of the build environment for Symantec applications.

One Minute Movie Review

2008-11-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

Four Christmases

Reese Witherspoon & Vince Vaughan

Summary: Felt like eight Christmases
Recommended: If you enjoy seeing a baby vomit on Reese Witherspoon. Twice.

Saturday Fun

2008-11-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

Your Saturday fun today comes courtesy of South Yorkshire police.

Do you drive? Have you noticed trucks recently? Specifically, have you noticed their tendency to

- Blunder into your path because the driver is preoccupied with eating a pan of spaghetti

- Delay your journey by crashing into low bridges. (The driver being unable to compare the height of his vehicle with the height painted in foot-high letters on the bridge)

- Mow down queueing traffic at toll booths

Although no doubt there are many fine upstanding truckers without whom this nation etc., etc., as a car driver I find it much safer to treat any truck in my path as though it is being driven by a knuckle dragging non-English speaking moron who paid a bribe to get his license, is drunk, eating a plate of spaghetti and has been awake for 48 hours. Because the chances are it is.

The policeman in this clip should have borne the above in mind. He's driving along normally in the outside lane of a virtually empty 3 lane motorway at 130MPH (!!!) with his headlamps flashing when up ahead he sees a truck in the inside (slow) lane. In the UK, trucks are banned from the outside lane of motorways with 3 or more lanes. What do you think happens?

Enjoy!

Beneath Contempt

2008-11-27T16:57:00.000-08:00

In the UK An opposition politician, party spokesman on immigration issues, has been arrested by anti-terrorism police

His crime? Receiving documents from a government mole which showed that the government has completely lost the plot on immigration - which anybody with a pair of eyes and an IQ in double figures has known for 10 years.

Really and truly, the British government is beneath contempt.

Bush's Legacy

2008-11-27T16:49:00.001-08:00

From One Basket Case to Another

2008-11-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

President Jimmy Carter calls Zimbabwe a Basket Case. He'd sure be one to know!

Financial Meltdown Explained

2008-11-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

"Long Beach Financial, wholly owned by Washington Mutual, was a great example. Long Beach Financial was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking homeowners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000."

Read it all

Busted

2008-11-25T18:37:00.001-08:00

In light of the fact that Illinois now insist State Troopers call and get permission before doing more than 20 over the speed limit... here is a somewhat grainy clip from the UK way back in 1991.

On a warm July evening a couple of officers doing 92 MPH (in itself 20 over the limit) in an unmarked Rover 827 - basically a British Honda Legend with a somewhat tuned 2.7 V6 engine - were undertaken by a guy in a Porsche 911 (passing on the left is an offence in the UK) who then proceeded to crank it up to no less than 145 MPH!

This guy isn't as unobservant you might think, because British unmarked cars don't stand out a mile like American ones do.

All the same, I bet he had a bit of a red face when they pulled him over and showed him this film!