Just For The Record

Brett Davis did the right thing, for the 80th and for the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

Thank you, Brett

The Sixth Time Made Her Mad

We tend to give over too much of our personal space to those with a moderate level of power and authority and they seem more than willing to take it from us.


Having said that, would you wait for the sixth time your dentist assaulted you to complain?

You Finally Pushed Him Too Far

After months of acting as if he never read the comments on his blog State Embarrassment Frank Lasee has stood up for himself. He's stopped taking comments.


Frankie has been posting his Notes on his blogsite for months and for months he has steadfastly pretended that no one was commenting on his silliness. He never replied. He never clarified. He simply moved on to the next point of natter.


Never content to be a loudmouth in his own district Lasee has gone National with his ideas to arm schoolteachers and defund the UW School of Law. Now he's taken the discussion down a notch by shutting off comments to his own blog after deleting several over the last week or so.


Fractious Frank is said to be eyeing the Congressional seat that John Gard tried to win last cycle. The publicity he's been getting can't possibly be helpful in that cause. I suspect it's just a matter of time until Mark Graul or Fraley tell Frankie that his blog isn't doing for him what he thinks it is and the blog goes away entirely.


Until that day, go ahead and blogroll Frank's blog alongside the other political humor like the Onion if you wish. It's not as original but it's always good for a laugh. We miss ya, Frankie

Update: Nickknack Paddy Mack stands up for Frankie and says we're all being mean.

It Makes You Want To Throw Your Hands Up

What is going on here? I support the actions of the School systems but can't help wondering where the wheels started to fall off.

In Belmont one student is in custody. From Madison.com

The Belmont student had drawn a map of the school 's interior and labeled
some positions for "hostages, " school and law officials said, and was taken
into custody at the small Lafayette County school.
John Benkers, Belmont
Community Schools superintendent, said when students alerted the administrators
they had found the map, the 17-year-old senior boy was whisked away and police
were called with little notice in the rest of the 120-student high school 65
miles west of Madison.

Meanwhile, both of these stories are from Channel 3000

Evansville High School officials sent a letter to parents informing
them that security will be added at the school due to a threat of possible
violence there on Friday.
Evansville police said they interviewed the person making the threat
and two students who relayed the threat. School officials said they believe the
threat was made to disrupt and interfere with homecoming activities and that it
isn't an actual threat of violence.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

Edgerton High School officials have canceled the homecoming pep rally
planned for Friday because of rumors that a shooting will take place at the
event.
For the past two days, high school administrators have tried, without
success, to find the source of a rumor that there will be "a shooting at the pep
rally Friday," according to an internal memo by Superintendent Norman Fjelstad
obtained by WISC-TV and Channel 3000.

"It Is A Question Of War And Peace"

From Yahoo News

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to
spread awareness of man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for
the measures needed to counteract it.

I know that there are a few who will be upset by this choice, who have already asked, "What does Global Warming have to do with Peace?" This is just one more indication that a very large chunk of the World holds them to be willfully ignorant of the issues facing our population.

Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former U.N. undersecretary
for humanitarian affairs, also called climate change more than an environmental
issue.
"It is a question of war and peace," said Egeland, now director of the
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "We're already seeing the
first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders are
in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a
shortage of fertile lands.

Kool-Aid Dills

Paul has recently written about the perfect Chicago Style Hotdog and the pickles which must go with them. This story from the NYT raises the bar on acceptable cuke spears. I think.

Those pickles were once mere dills. They were once green. Their exteriors remain pebbly, a reminder that long ago they began their lives on a farm, on the ground, as cucumbers.

But they now have an arresting color that combines green and garnet, and a bracing sour-sweet taste that they owe to a long marinade in cherry or tropical fruit or strawberry Kool-Aid.

Kool-Aid pickles violate tradition, maybe even propriety. Depending on your palate and perspective, they are either the worst thing to happen to pickles since plastic brining barrels or a brave new taste sensation to be celebrated.

This is outside of anything I've ever tried. I like the fried dill pickles in Tennessee. Maybe I could learn to enjoy these.

Maybe not.

Truly Awful Stuff

One of the great blog links. Do not lose this click.



Here's a sample.




The "Crying On a Toilet" Bank.




















The "Hands" Bikini.

We shall speak no more of this.

The Religion of Baseball

I stole it from Dean but he got it from Beliefnet Joke of the Day,


Calvinists believe the game is fixed.


Lutherans believe they can’t win, but trust the Scorekeeper.


Quakers won’t swing.


Unitarians can catch anything.


Amish walk a lot.


Pagans sacrifice.


Jehovah’s Witnesses are thrown out often.


Televangelists get caught stealing.Episcopalians pass the plate.


Evangelicals make effective pitches.


Fundamentalists balk.


Adventists have a seventh-inning stretch.


Atheists refuse to have an Umpire.


Baptists want to play hardball.


Premillenialists expect the game to be called soon on account of darkness.


The Pope claims never to have committed an error.

Welcome To the Big-Time, Scott

Scott Speed talking about what surprised him most when moving from the rarified air in the F1 paddock to Pit Lane at Talladega.

[...] in open-wheel racing, you always have someone on the team who buckles you
into your seat. I got into my seat today waiting for someone to buckle me in and
then after awhile realized I was supposed to buckle myself in. I’m not used to
bringing my own helmet to the car either!”

There's Hope, Then

They've figured out the purpose of the appendix. Apparently, it makes germs for your gut.



That means that there's a possibility for someone figuring out what Frank Lasee is good for some day.

A Journamalism Lesson From Jess

You've asked what she teaches her students. I'll tell you what she teaches her students.

Don't demand that the media not talk to people or families anymore or ask
community members to stop talking to the media. You'll just end up ticking off
the media, and they're the ones writing the follow-up stories. Trust me. The
media tend to retaliate in print.

Especially against former employers. Trust her.

Words By Which To Live

Who said it?

[...]you might just have to accept the fact that sometimes the world is not a
perfect place and everyone is NOT out to get you.

No. Really? It was Fred. I don't think he was talking about Global Warming or about Jim Doyle. But he said it. Really.

It sounds like CBS wasn't the only group to send the B-Team to tape the AFP wing-ding-a-ling in DC. AFP didn't send the very best, either. I hope that the American Dream doesn't include YouTube, somehow.

Sorry about the Ron Paul video. We hired a company to tape all of the speeches
and to post them quickly. They did a terrible job and did not send enough people
to staff the event. They left the camera unattended and the tape ran out in the
middle of Paul’s speech (also missing all of Brownback and Huckabee). They
posted the speech and then noticed that they missed part of it, so they pulled
it from YouTube.

Sometimes, It's The Messenger. Sometimes, It's The Message

Tim says that David Brooks can see it.

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what
the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical,
and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play
or proportion. . .

Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats
and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t
running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to
keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I
merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank
Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and
company crafting domestic policy.

The Recess Supervisor says that Paul Krugman can see it.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a
certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little,
you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other
peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health
insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

Nick says that he can see it.

Conservative Values Have Led to Big Government Republicans:

This is where "conservatives" get naive. The major complaint among conservatives regarding Republicans is that Republicans have lost their way when it comes to big government. The problem is, you can't enforce the core Conservative beliefs without big government. How do you fight the War on DrugsTM without a huge investment by the government in both
size and money? The current battle costs us billions of dollars annually, and we're still losing it. The War on Drugs has done more to diminish our basic constitutional rights than the War on Terror ever has, and most Conservatives I talk to think we need to go further to police drug abuse.
Moreover, the War on Drugs is used as a model for how we attack other things that Conservatives and Republicans decry, that are part of the nanny state push like how we eat, and drink, and exercise. The War on Drugs was the original nanny state idea. How do you keep people from gambling if you aren't willing to have a big government that snoops in on every transaction that flows through your bank account? The list goes on an on.

Why can't the red-meat-true believers see it?

Get Well Soon

I'm glad he's not badly hurt. There are so many bad things to say about him and it's poor form to pick on a fool while he's in the hospital.

Needs Some Work

Looking for a fixer-upper? Someone on EBay has a deal for you.



Someone Tries to Sell Belgium on eBay

Is This Trip Necessary?

Don't ask Fred. He dunno.

From George Will: Read the rest

Sean Hannity, who is no Torquemada conducting inquisitions of
conservatives, asked Thompson: "When you look at the other current crop of
candidates -- Republicans -- where is the distinction between your positions and
what you view as theirs?" Thompson replied: "Well, to tell you the truth, I
haven't spent a whole lot of time going into the details of their positions."

It Just Never Came Up Before

Maybe Fred Dooley has a point. Some of the Hollywood types should probably not talk about science.

The Buchers Take Their Version of the High Ground

You have to be careful when you make choices for the wrong reason. They may turn out to be bad choices, too. What has Paul Bucher chosen to support with his beer drinking dollars?

You got your JibJab Joke site. Now with A-Hole Patrol.

The Association of Women Bodyboarders

Hoboken Bar Night.com Today featuring White Trash Bash

Horror of horrors. BudLight sponsored "Studio 60" on TV3 in Ireland

And what do these highly moral sponsors deem okay for our TVs? Hip-hop stars, Brass Poles and Skinny Dipping in prime time.

All Manner Of Scheduling Conflicts

It looks like there are others besides the Republican candidates who just can't make the time.

Rice Denied Audience with Pope

What I've Been Doing

There's been a whole lot of Real Life going on and I haven't been as assiduous about posting as I should be. But I have been commenting all over. Go on over to the OlBroad's place for one I really had fun with.

Q4. A woodcutter has a Chainsaw which operates at 2700 RPM. The density of
the pine trees in the plot to be harvested is 470 per acre. The plot is 2.3
acres in size. The average tree diameter is 14 inches. How many Budweisers will
be drunk before the trees are cut down?

A4) 3 on the drive over. 2 to get the saw started after the plug change. 1
more for every third tree up to 12, then 1 more for every two. Two more for the
drive to the Owl’s Nest and two in the back of Ray-Ray’s pickup on the ride
home.