Yes...

I'm still alive. I've been at my grandparents since the Thursday before last. Currently, I'm on my uncle's computer (he lives a few miles down the road.) I didn't plan on stay this long down there in Leland, MS, but things came up and so on... I'll be back up in Clarksville, where my precious DSL line resides sometime (hopefully) by the beginning of next week. No promises though.

And you can guess, posting will be non-existant to low for the next few days. Sorry, for not posting something sooner.

Quick Hits

A 6-year-old girl was forced to shut down her lemonade stand due to a neighbor's complaint. Fortunately, she's back in business; however, how can her neighbor be such a grouch? (via Drudge)

One of the signs of the End Times: Someone at LewRockwell.com praising a David Frum article.

The Ace of Diamonds has been captured. He is 4th on Most Wanted List of Iraqi thugs, following only Papa Hussein and his two demented sons.

Kentucky Governor Paul Patton pardons men indicted for breaking election laws. Did I mention that the men were involved in Patton's 1995 election campaign? "Attorney General Ben Chandler alleged the four colluded to help Patton's campaign get around spending limits by having the Teamsters pick up some expenses." Ahhh, unions and corruption. They kind of go together like butter and grits.

Al Gore wants to start a liberal TV network along with a liberal radio network. Now let me say what every conservative is thinking after reading that sentence: "Um, Al, have you ever heard of PBS and NPR? Or CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC..."

The Prowler reveals how Hillary Clinton plans to boost up her book sales numbers.

And remember, buy it today! (via KimandQ.com)

WHAT?!?!?!?

"Ole Miss mascot sidelined for football"

The University of Mississippi's Colonel Rebel mascot will be missing during the upcoming fall football season while the school searches for a new image.
Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone says the "Southern plantation-look" man with a big head, floppy hat and clothes and cane will no longer be on the field during games.

The Colonel Rebel logo, however, is still an official trademark of the university.

Boone said the decision is not part of any plan to completely overhaul or change the school's longtime nicknames "Ole Miss" or "Rebels."
"It's an idea we've been thinking about and discussing for eight years. It's not something that's new," Boone told the Oxford Eagle.

"The thing that has always struck me about our mascot is that it was not an athletic mascot. It was, as we've all said, an old man with a cane. It just
didn't look athletic, it didn't represent anything athletic and it seemed to be a different image than what we were trying to do from an athletic department standpoint."

::Sigh:: "...our mascot is...not an athletic mascot." If Univ. of Maryland can that a @#%^ turtle, excuse me, terrapin, then we can have a "an old man with a cane," datgummit!

And here' one thing that I've noticed: this mascot business didn't start until after the end this last spring semester. I guess Boone thinks it will be easier to put off this chicanery while most of the students are gone for the summer.

Come this fall, I just hope for his sake that he has plenty Cobra Security guards around him while he's in the Grove before a home game.

Here's a hilarious parody of LewRockwell.com Blog.

It looks like Kyle has survived the LSAT.

Advertisement

Are you a Democrat angry with Bush and his henchmen stealing the 2000 presidential election?
And are you dissatisfied with the current Democratic presidential contenders?

If you answer "yes" to both of these questions, then I you can join the literally dozens of Democratic supporters in drafting Al Gore in 2004!

Alterman

Eric Alterman's book What Liberal Media? is lovingly skewered by Jonah Goldberg in the lastest The American Enterprise. In one paragraph toward the end, Goldberg touches on an excellent point:

Alterman also clings to the bizarre notion that corporations are inherently right-wing. They aren't on any social issue I can think of. And on economics it's hard to think of too many corporations willing to lose money defending the conservative principle of free trade if they can make money from supporting tariffs or subsidies.

For example, is Alterman aware of the "Gay Days" event held by Disney World? And does he remember the boycott of Disney called by a rather obscure religious sect due to Disney's sponsorship of that annual event? Yep, a large corporation endorsing homosexuality just reeks of conservatism to me.

If you think President Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, then so did these people.

Matt Labash pens an interesting column on Hillary Clinton's new book, first starting with her previous literary adventures:

Then in 1998--Impeachment Year--Hillary took a break from hiding her head in the sand on the Lewinsky affair, and fired a shot across her critics' bow with "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy--Kids' Letters to the First Pets." To the unsophisticated reader, it might have appeared like more avoidance therapy. In actuality, it was a clever long-term political strategy. Locate people who will be of voting age in 2008 and who think that Labrador retrievers can read their letters. They'll believe anything. It was some of Hillary's ghostwriters' best work: "Socks and Buddy follow in the paw prints of many distinguished pets at the White House." Doggone great read, Hill.

Now this is pretty cool.

Quiz Time, Baby


What Common Breed of Dog Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

via Lee Ann

Quick Takes

Byron York in NRO today notes how well Bush Circuit Court nominee William Pryor has stood up to the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Two icons have died: noted journalist David Brinkley and legendary actor Gregory Peck

According to a report released Tuesday, hydrogen fuel-cells, if used on a large scale, could damage the ozone layer due to leakage. Not good news for environmentalists.

A clever San Jose 9-year-old girl outwits kidnapper. Heh

What will the "new and improved" Colonel Reb look like? Maybe something like this.

Kids, don't try this at home.

Yea! I got my Dilbert Newsletter via e-mail today! Scott Adams writes a very good article at the beginning entitled "Dumb Rich Guys." I was planning to give a few quotes from it, but it's all too good. So here it is in it's entirely (It beats me writing a long essay. Who do you think I am? Steven Den Beste?):

I recently read an article by an economist who said that poverty
causes people to become terrorists. He used big words and was very
convincing.

Then I watched TV coverage of a high school hazing ritual in an
upscale suburban neighborhood. Dozens of well-to-do Induhviduals
paid for the privilege of sitting in a field and having mud, paint,
garbage, eggs, pig guts, and excrement shoved up their nostrils
while being beaten with blunt objects.

I'm not an economist, but my theory is that you can convince a
certain percentage of Induhviduals to do any dangerous thing,
whether they happen to be poor or not. So let's stop picking on
poor people. If peer pressure can convince 20% of rich kids to
start smoking cigarettes -- and it does -- it isn't much of a leap
to convince them to grow scraggly beards and drive exploding cars.
It's mostly a difference in timing.

Osama inherited half a billion dollars. So I rule out poverty as a
cause of terror. I blame rich Induhviduals, and peer pressure.

Peer pressure is the most powerful force on the planet, and we need
to use it to our advantage. For example, I recommend that the
Western media and politicians stop using the menacing-yet-cool
phrase "Al-Qaeda" and start referring to the group as the
"frickin' Induhviduals."

Like the proverbial dog chasing a car, the Induhviduals haven't
considered what would happen if they caught one. For example,
let's say they (the Induhviduals, not the dogs) accomplish their
stated goal of destroying the economies of the Western world. Is
that really a good plan for people who live in a desert and import
most of their food?

Just for the record, if I'm down to my last potato, I'm not sharing
it with a guy who wants to kill me so he can get a better supply
of virgins in paradise. That lesson is a little thing I call
Economics 101, infidel style.

For the Induhviduals, it must look as if Americans are really dumb
to have the most awesome arsenal in the history of the world and
still be unable to stop terror attacks. They don't realize that the
way Americans look at it is that, so far, we're "really mad," but
not yet "REALLY, REALLY mad." Oh, there's a difference. Americans
understand that somewhere between "inconvenient air travel" and
"complete breakdown of Western civilization," the "REALLY, REALLY
mad" part kicks in. I won't give away what happens then, but
remember you first heard the phrase "New Iowa" in the Dilbert
Newsletter.

And let's stop calling the terrorist supporters "fundamentalists,"
because that sounds like it could be a good thing. I recommend a
more descriptive label, such as "slow learners," to keep things in
perspective. Then let's airdrop science and economics textbooks on
their terrorist training camps with condescending notes, such as,
"Maybe this will help. Call us if you have questions."

This would be a small step, in the sense that reading books about
economics is only slightly better than suicide. But you have to
start somewhere.

That's my plan. If you have a better one, be sure to include it in
your next newsletter.

Trent Lott is said to be thinking about writing a book:

"I'm going to tell all," said the Mississippi Republican. "Whoo-ee, there are going to be a lot of nervous people around here."

Asked twice by reporters if he were serious, Lott insisted he wasn't joking.

We here at the Ole Miss Conservative (well, it's just me alone operating this site, but "we" sounds better. Bear with me, people!) have obtained a first draft of the book. Among the many revealing details:

Orrin Hatch is rather ticklish.

Dick Cheney is actually Andy Kaufman wearing prosthetics and padding.

John Ashcroft is really into Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne.

Ted Kennedy's head is really that big.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and Steve Forbes are the same person.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson once beat the snot out of Tom Daschle for "eyeballing him the wrong way."

If you haven't seen this chart yet, do so now.

Barbour

Out on the campaign stump, Republican candidate for Mississppi Governor Haley Barbour, vowed to control spending and to avoid taxes:

“I will veto tax increases, and I will try to keep the Legislature from overriding us. I don’t think we need tax increases. We already have the highest local and state taxes in the South, according to the tax foundation.

“The goal should be to get control of spending.

“We are not in the worst financial mess we’ve ever been in because we tax too low. It is because we spend too much. Raising taxes is the enemy of controlling spending."

A favorite theme he uses is to compare more taxes for government to “like giving alcohol to an alcoholic. You will never get control of spending if you keep feeding the beast.”

Hopefully, if Barbour is elected, he won't succumb to the tax-and-spend-itis like a good many Republican governors.

via Magnolia Report

Dr. Byron wows me again.

If you have sent me an e-mail to this account: mi405106 -at- willow -dot- mcsr -dot- olemiss - edu, please know that I can't, for the time being, read e-mail sent there. I can tell there is new mail there, but I can't gain access to it. Feel free to use the jpcarver -at- olemiss -dot- edu address or mis40804 -at- cypress -dot- mcsr -dot- olemiss -dot- edu. Why do I have all and use these different address? It's a long story and I'm too sleepy to tell it now.

Tandy 200, cont.

The most fun I had on it was writing little BASIC programs using commands my dad taught me and from what I was able to glean from the user's manual. My first ever program was this simple one:

10 beep
20 goto 10
30 end

Simple, yet annoying.
And most of my programs were a derivative of this coding paradigm: Do something and keep doing it endlessly. Usually, that "something" was printing out special ASCII characters that seemed to be moving across or up and down the screen. Eventually, I wrote a more sophicated program. This program would start after the power had been turned on. The user had to enter in a password, if he entered the correct one then he would be sent to the computer main menu screen. If he supplied the wrong one, then power would turn off. Ah, good times...

Tandy 200

Prompted by Terry, here's a short description of my Tandy 200. My dad got it some time around 1989 and I would play around with it; in due time it was pretty much mine. It's described has a "portable computer," before the term "laptop" had been invented yet. Considering the size of the early "portable computers" I don't think anybody would actually put them in their lap, lest they crack their femur bones. The Tandy was powered by 4 AA batteries, had 17k of RAM, and no hard drive. Anytime you changed the batteries, the memory would be wiped clean of any pesky files lingering around.

Terry Oglesby of PossumBlog responses to my e-mail.

Two great articles from The American Prowler: one ripping Republican governors that have a tax and spend problem, especially Alabama Governor Bob Riley; the other is a savage rogering of Eric Alterman's book, What Liberal Media?

Today's Adventure into Narcissism

I've started one of those "100 Things About Me" pages, but I have not finished it yet.

Lee Ann, the She-Scourage of Idiotarians, has posted a fisking.

Reader Mike Debow sends this great quote:

"Realizing the power to tax is the power to destroy, and that the power to take a certain amount of property or of income is only another way of saying that for a certain proportion of his time a citizen must work for the government, the authority to impose a tax upon the people must be carefully guarded. It condems the citizen to servitude."

--Calvin Coolidge

Random Quotes

"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"
(Calvin Coolidge, Presidential news conference, March 1, 1929)

"I am a Ford, not a Lincoln."
(Gerald Ford, Speech upon being sworn in as Vice President, December 6, 1973)

"Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America."
(William H. Taft, speech, 1920)

I got 'em from here

Candidate Selects New Moniker

BOSTON -- Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry announced today that he has filed papers to officially change his name to "John Forbes Kerry, Vietnam Veteran." The new Mr. Vietnam Veteran explained why he felt the necessity of the change, "Since I mention my military service constantly, I figured, 'Hey, why not change it?' Though, Teresa isn't very happy; she just got started a few months ago using 'Kerry.'"

The Bixoli Sun Herald has a fairly lengthy article on the players involved in a judicial-corruption probe in Mississippi.

Hat tip to the Instapundit

Iraqi Artifacts Found

Some very valuable artifacts missing from the Iraqi National Museum have been discovered by US forces in a vault in the Iraqi Central Bank. The vault was inside another vault submerged in sewer water. I would have hated to have been any one of the privates who had to go into the water to get it.

Robert Kagan lays out the facts to those who believe Bush was lying about WMD's in Iraq.

Because if Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are lying, they're not alone. They're part of a vast conspiratorial network of liars that includes U.N. weapons inspectors and reputable arms control experts both inside and outside government, both Republicans and Democrats.

Another good'un from Cox and Forkum.

Would Jesus approve a war with Iraq?

"Yes", says Matt Friedman, from a March 20 column.

The Critic is back! In Flash Animation form!

Emily Jones fisks British know-nothing communist columnist Matthew Engel's farewell column.

Fun Facts

1. In 1992, the three major Presidential candidates, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, were all left-handed.
2. From 1981 to 2001, left-handers occupied the White House (Reagan, Bush, Clinton).
3. Other left-handed pres: Garfield, Hoover, Truman, and Ford; thus all but 2 ot the 7 were Republican.

Fun with Referral Logs

Yahoo Search: left-handed philippine presidents. I'm the 17th match.

Common Wisdom

If you have shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc, sell them as soon as you can.

I think this best describes the Left today (thanks to Jawsblog).

The Maha Rushie offers clear insight on the whole WMD business. And you gotta love the Paul Krugman picture.

Why I Have Little Sympathy for the Palestinians, Reason #142

WorldNetDaily reports on a horrid children's letter writing contest sponsored by the Palestinian Education Ministry where the young'uns vie to scribble the most hateful and vile things about Israel.

A Florida Power and Light meter reader was mauled by a group of pit bulls Tuesday morning; she now in critical condition.

I'm a dog lover, but if this breed dies out, I'll shed not one tear.

Muchas gracias to Southern Appeal for permalinking to me. I'll return the favor as soon as I can, but for now I am stuck with a ADSL that doesn't have much uploading bandwidth for a large file like my template.

So now LewRockwell.com has a blog of it's own. And as typical with the rest of the site, you would swear at times that you are reading The Nation.

And What's Behind Veil #1?

You know the Florida woman who refuses to take off her veil for a driver's license photo since it would violate her Islamic faith? Well, Michael Morgan has a photo, or I should say mugshot, of her veil-less.

Read the Whole Thing

Mark Steyn writes on his trip to Iraq. Need I say more?