The Consortium

I Can't Make This Up

This is a direct quote attributable to AlGore from the Examiner in reference to a rock concert to be held in Washington as part of the "Live Earth" comedy:

If we want to show our elected leaders that Americans want real action to solve the climate crisis—nothing will make that more clear than thousands of people joining me at the concert tomorrow morning.

Nothing tells people you are serious like getting bombed on the national mall at a country music concert.

Happy Birthday RAM!

Infrequent Consortium contributor, RAM, will have his 31st birthday celebration invaded by......creepy neohippies!  Get used to the smell of Patchouli and body odor!

The 2nd annual convention of the DailyKos community - known as YearlyKos - just announced that it will be held from Aug. 2-5, 2007.  And being just months before the Presidential Primary season begins I am sure the Second City will see its fair share of wannabes placating these cyber locusts as they descend on your town;  Mark Warner at Marshall Fields Macy's, Hillary's triumphant return to Wrigley Field in a Yankees cap, Al Gore dressed in one of those nifty blue recycling bags panhandling outside the Hancock Tower, John Kerry hosting a fundraiser with Ted Kennedy at Navy Pier ("free rides in my Buick on Lake Michigan!"), and Rusty Feingold working Halsted from Belmont to Addison.  I can only hope Daley has the riot gear ready for a repeat of 1968 - I'll bring the popcorn.

BORU

Unsolicited Talk Radio Advice

Truth and roof do not rhyme. 

If when you speak, they do - do NOT call a talk radio show and make yourself look like a ass.  Just sit at home and keep saying the two words until you hear the difference at the end.

Thank you.

BORU

Eyes on Kerry's Behind

Jay Tea at Wizbang! unveils the quote of the year in describing former Democratic nominee John Kerry's uncanny ability to be right most of the time in hindsight:

John Kerry spends so much time talking out of his ass, it's no surprise he'd finally slip and say he looks out of it, too.

How true...

-tre

Straight Thuggin' No More

I was watching the local Chicago Fox affiliate's newscast tonight and the lead story reported on a gathering of students at the University of Chicago meeting to discuss a twenty-person dorm party that had taken place on campus.  What got everyone in an uproar was the theme of the party which was billed as a Straight-Thuggin Ghetto Party.  Apparently several minority students were "deeply offended" by pictures taken of the party attendees:

The photos, which detail the attire of the party’s attendants, were sent to the Maroon [the student newspaper] and the administration by offended students. Students in the pictures are wearing sideways baseball caps, exposed underwear, bandanas, and other accessories. A male student in one of the pictures is holding a brown paper bag with a leaking bottle inside.

***

In response to the pictures, Aron Cobbs, political chair of the Organization of Black Students (OBS), sent a letter to administrators and several listhosts regarding the party. The letter stated that those students attending the party were “performing derisive stereotypes commonly associated with impoverished Black communities (i.e. urban ‘ghettos’) for the purpose of mocking a disadvantaged group of HUMAN BEINGS.”

I wonder if anyone thought about the fact that people who drink liquor out of brown paper bags and wear their underwear exposed deserve to be mocked.  Why would a group of supposedly intelligent, self-respecting students, minority or otherwise, be offended by this party?  It does not mock minority students nor does it mock all poor people.  Rather, the only people being mocked by the "Straight Thuggin' Ghetto Party" are people who don't have enough self respect to tuck their underwear in their pants or refrain from chugging alcohol out of a brown paper bag. I wonder if the University of Chicago would have had such a fit if the students instead threw a "white trash" party... Maybe I'm missing something.

-tre

Idiot of the Week

It was only a matter of time.  As the catastrophe left in the wake of Katrina's wrath continues to wreak havoc in New Orleans, Mississippi & Alabama, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has this to say:

It's all the Republicans' fault!!!

That's right.  The scion of America's First Family of drunks, philanderers, and targets has all-but-jumped on the opportunity to make this national -- and natural -- disaster a political football (just watch out for trees, Bob!).  According to Bob-Bob (that's how they refer to Kennedy kids, right?), Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's efforts to undermine the Kyoto protocol's completely impractical limits on CO2 emissions (while Barbour was a lobbyist) led directly to Katrina ravaging Barbour's state (as well of at least three other states, the governors of which presumably taunted the Hurricane gods by engaging in similarly dastardly eco-crimes). 

In support of his argument, Bob-Bob points self-satisfyingly to a recent study from a "a renowned MIT climatologist" that links the increased prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-created global warming.  According to RFK, Jr., "the science is clear."

Well, maybe not.  See, none other than the New York Times -- clearly a mouthpiece for the Republican party -- cites another "hurricane expert" that says the recent prevalence of destructive hurricanes is "very much natural," and that the lack of such hurricanes in previous years was actually the unnatural phenomenon.  The NYT article also cites the very study referenced by RFK, Jr. by MIT climatologist Kerry A. Emmanuel.  However, even Emmanuel admits that "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing."  Not so clear, now, huh?

Maybe Bob-Bob didn't make it to the end of the article.  Maybe he hit Uncle Teddy's stash before dashing off his screed.  Or, maybe, just maybe, he's being willfully ignorant in a lame attempt to win political points. 

Either way, for his attempt to turn what should be a national effort to support the people affected by this disaster into a partisan slap-fight, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wins my Idiot of the Week award.  Congrats, Bob-Bob!

-- RAM

(Links via Drudge )

UPDATE:  In case anyone reading this wants to do something more than blame others for the hurricane, InstaPundit has a very useful list of charities and relief efforts.

UPDATE II:  At least someone at the Huffington Post has the balls, er, perspective to call out RFK, Jr., et.al.  Gotta love this part:

Therefore, posters may be shot with a paint gun on sight:

****

2) for trying to tie the 'natural' disaster to global warming, the evil bush family or any political opponent, like, say Haley Barbour.

Or not waiting, say, 5 minutes before the bodies are fished out of the water to attempt to make political gain of tragedy. Boldness Points: For a Kennedy issuing blame over an event that involved drowning. (emphasis mine)

Methinks Mr. Gutfeld will likely not be part of HuffPo for much longer...(good for him!)

(Hat tip:  Ken Wheaton)

I *heart* Dayton, Pt. 2 (cont'd)

You may recall an earlier post regarding the plight of stolen beaver in the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek.  Well, apparently, beaver-stealing has now become an epidemic, requiring the installation of GPS devices on the remaining unmolested beavers. 

I can't make this stuff up.

-- RAM

(Via The Dayton Daily News (reg. req'd)).

ANWR or Bust

I have had it up to here (no, right here) with those idiots who don't want the United States to drill for oil in the barren wastes of Northern Alaska.  It is time to drill to the center of the Earth if necessary to free up the rich, creamy crude that lies beneath the Alaska surface.  Something has to be done to relieve the American citizen from the overwhelmingly excessive prices charged at the pump, Caribou be damned!!!

This afternoon I spent over $40.00 filling up my 13 gallon gas tank!!! Yes, $40.00, enough to buy my wife and I a nice meal at a relatively decent restaurant and enough to put four different outfits on my toddler.  But those things are no longer possible because the gas needed to fill my car now costs $3.08 per gallon. 

Now, I don't drive one of those 800 hp SUV's that get 8 miles per gallon.  I drive a Pontiac Grand Am.  A reasonably small automobile that gets decent gas mileage.  This is part of a conscious choice I made to be economically-conscious.  What a big waste of time that was.

Why is this so?  I choose to blame those money-grubbing, I-know-better-than-you liberals who tax the hell out of gas and those same jackasses who prohibit us from retrieving oil from our own outback where nothing lives.  My blame is well-placed and nothing will convince me otherwise.

To all those people who claim that the Liberation of Iraq is a war for oil, screw off.  If it was actually a war for oil, it wouldn't have cost me an arm and half a leg to fill up my gas tank.  My suggestion is that we actually start a war for oil.  Imperialism, inschmearialism.  We need to attack the nearest country with an abundant source of oil (re: Mexico or Venezuela) and bleed that country dry of oil.  This $40.00 a tank crap sucks!!!

If I were the dictator of the U.S., I would declare war on those mush-brained liberals who raise the dead with their wailing every time someone mentions drilling in our barren hinterlands for oil.  In my U.S., those idiots would be rounded up and sent to Europe to pay their $6.00 per gallon for Petrol.  I actually hope that the door does hit them on the ass on their way out and I hope that the door sent them sprawling on their faces into the unwelcoming arms of our aging ex-allies in Old Europe.

Oh, and in addition to those liberals, if we find out that the middlemen and refineries in the U.S. are price gouging, they should be summarily deported to Burma.

Thank you.

-tre

Ah, irony...

Two PETA Employees Arrested on Animal Cruelty Charges in N.C.

(Via Drudge)

-- RAM

Coolest. Monkey. EVER.

If they ever make a chimp version of "Goodfellas," this guy is a shoo-in for the DeNiro role...

-- RAM

(Hat tip:  My roommate, JB).