At least we're winning Afghanistan

Read an interesting story in Rolling Stone that I recommend you take a look at. It's about a reporter that manages to embed himself deep into the Taliban territory and speak with some of the local Taliban commanders. He almost gets himself Daniel Pearl'd, but squeaks out with some frantic phone calls to the right people.

My favorite line from the article is this fitting analogy:

"More troops are not the answer," a senior United Nations official in Kabul tells me. "You will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman."

His logic is indisputable.

They will greet us with candy and flowers

I know that Sarah Palin was on SNL last night, and I'm sure that's taking the lead story on most news outlets today. But did anyone catch the huge protest in Iraq against the "extension" of the US withdraw timeline? Probably not, since no US news outlet would cover such an "insignificant" story. Who do those Iraqis think they are? Telling us when to get out of their country? The nerve!

Thankfully, the BBC had camera crews there to catch the whole thing. I don't know about you, but when I see tens of thousands of angry, young men protesting in the streets, I get nervous. Why? A couple of reasons.

#1. If they are there protesting, that means that they probably aren't working and being productive members of society.

#2. If they're not contributing to society, then what are they doing all day? Most likely trying to figure out how they are going to support themselves and their families.

#3. If you have a large group of angry young men with no jobs, and no means with which to support themselves or their families, what do they do? They either turn to crime, or join the "freedom fighters" and attack our forces, thereby reducing security in the region and prolonging the conflict.

Sorry if this gets anyone down today. Go back to watching that hilarious Sarah Palin - SNL sketch! That'll cheer you up, you betcha!

Political Linebacker

If you don't think this is funny, then you have no soul.



When I was in the "Advance Course" (and those quotes are intentional), our small group really got a kick out of the Terry Tate "Office Linebacker" videos that were on the interwebs. As soon as I saw this gem, I knew that I needed to post it up here.

"Hey Katie!"

Cafferty did it, Cafferty did it

Well, after my rant yesterday about Palin, I found this clip from Jack Cafferty on CNN.



Jack Cafferty, hats off to you sir. Crotchety old dudes are usually going on and on about "these kids today" and "high gas prices", but Cafferty treats that Palin clip with the visible contempt that it so richly deserves. I just wish that I had posted before he made his commentary.

Fun fact: as old and crotchety as Cafferty appears, he's only 65 (born '42). McCain is 6 years his senior (born '36). Damn it. That's old.

I heart Sarah Palin

Ok, not really. I have to admit that the whole election was really set for me when Palin was named as the vice-presidential candidate. It's unconscionable that this dummy would be the #2 elected official in the nation. If that idea doesn't worry you, then you should seriously consider not voting this year. You may not, in fact, be qualified to be a citizen of the US.

Now this isn't anything groundbreaking. There's been plenty of press on how poorly qualified she is. Not to mention that ridiculous Katie Couric interview. PS - when you're running for VP, it would probably help to #1. know some reputable national newspapers, #2. know a little something about your running mate, and #3. maybe have a more than cursory knowledge of the branches federal government, like the Supreme Court for example. I don't think that interview could have had more softball questions, and Palin whiffed most of them.

"Hold on Joel," some of you might say, "everyone knows that these journalist aren't entirely objective in their covering of the news. There's all kinds of spin that they can place on her answers to make her appear less than qualifies." I will concede your point. After all, O'Reilly does his own share of news interpretation in his "No Spin Zone". So how do we measure the qualifications of Palin? Well, I think that standardized testing gives us a good starting point. A document was published that contains many publicly available documents all about Palin.

Here's Palin's SAT scores from 1982:

To sum it up, she scored a 841 (425V/416M). That places her in the 38-39% nationwide for high school students. Wow. That means that about 6 out of 10 kids scored better than she did. For a reference, I scored a 1420. I consider myself a pretty bright guy, but I don't think I'm presidential material. But apparently Palin does.

Hey, maybe the SAT was a little difficult for her. Maybe she was out flying her airplane hunting wolves the night before? What about her IQ? How does she stand up with the rest of the country?



An 83. Sweet Jesus. Let me be absolutely clear: I'm not saying that someone with an 83 IQ can't be a fully productive and happy member of society. Absolutely not. I do firmly believe that "all men are created equal" and everyone should be afforded the same rights and privileges under the Constitution. That being said, I think that the person holding the 2nd highest office in the land should be held to a little bit higher standard. If you look at the bell curve, the two segments of the graph on either side of the 100 mark represent one "standard deviation" from the national mean. This is where the bulk of the population will score. You can see that Palin's score falls outside that section. From the test info, it shows that her "National WIQ percentile (1982)" is 12.8357%. This means that roughly 87% of people scored higher than she did. Think about that. If you're reading this, odds are your IQ is higher than Palin's. Do you want to have her handling complex national issues and dealing with foriegn head's of state? BTW, she's rarely been outside the US except briefly to Canada and Mexico, and a trip to Iraq, Kuwait, Germany, and Ireland as part of a 2007 visit to the Alaskan National Guard troops over there. And the Ireland visit wasn't so much a visit as it was a refuel stop.

"But Joel," you may still ask, "she's just going to be the vice president. McCain brings plenty of experience to the ticket." While I'm not going to discuss the merits of McCain's experience in this post, I would like to point out that McCain's health is less than stellar. He's currently 72, and would be 76 at the end of his presidency if elected. FYI, the average life expectancy in the US is 77.8. That's the average. Now consider that McCain did undergo years of torture and has already had malignant melanoma removed. Would that have an effect on his life expectancy? What about the stress associated with the office of President? Would that contribute to lessening his life expectancy? Here's a study that connect stress to premature aging, and is there a more stressful job than president? McCain's doctor maybe?

So here's Palin, a documented dullard with no foreign policy experience who doesn't know "what exactly it is that the VP does everyday." If elected, this dummy is one 72 year old's heartbeat away from being the president of the US.

Are you worried now?

At these prices, I may reconsider rocking Fila...

I got this strange email message a couple of weeks ago, from harputs.com :

As a valued customer we're offering you the ulimate adidas Micropacer at $200.00 off
discount code :

Hamper

$200 off this week, come and get it

So, of course I'm thinking, what the hell would I buy that is $200 off??? From a shoe website??? Well, this is it:
Product DescriptionThis is the one. The ultimate shoe. Comes complete with: adidas branded miniature shoes in metal shoe box, memory card, action figure, laser trefoil projector, duct tape, pewter tennis racket bottle opener, large round trefoil belt buckle, key chain, lanyard, phone charm, roll of adidas stickers and an adidas originals balloon.
WTF?