I read an ominous story this morning about a new STD called LGV (lymphogranuloma venereum). There have been almost 100 cases in Europe and just this week there were 6 cases confirmed in the US.

“LGV is a serious condition and its emergence in New York City reflects continuing high levels of unsafe sexual activity among men who have sex with men.”
…
LGV can cause serious illness, permanent disfigurement and fuel the spread of AIDS.

I don’t mean to sound “intolerant” (pfft) or anything, but I sure wish all these “men who have sex with men” would cut it out. The next time I hear someone say that homosexuality doesn’t hurt anyone, I think I’ll hit them in the mouth.

Here’s the complete article.

I keep no secrets when it comes to my opinion of “big media” in the U.S. I cheered when Dan Rather was disgraced for finally getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It only took 25 years to catch him, but at least he’s caught.

I am a strong supporter of what has come to be known as the Couric Expeditionary Force. That is where we take Katie Couric, Dan Rather, and a handfull of other fat-headed, cowardly, elitist, media liars; put M-16s in their hands and American flag on their backs and drop them from a blackhawk deep in the Sudan.

With that in mind, let me share with you an article written by a “boots on the ground” commander in Iraq. “LTC Tim Ryan is Commander, Task Force 2-12 Cavalry, First Cavalry Division in Iraq. He led troops into battle in Fallujah late last year and is now involved in security operations for the upcoming elections. He wrote the following during “down time” after the Fallujah operation.”

The complete article is on WordTribune.com.

Here are a couple of excepts:

“All right, I’ve had enough. I am tired of reading distorted and grossly exaggerated stories from major news organizations about the “failures” in the war in Iraq.”

“Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.”

“What if domestic news outlets continually fed American readers headlines like: “Bloody Week on U.S. Highways: Some 700 Killed,” or “More Than 900 Americans Die Weekly from Obesity-Related Diseases”? Both of these headlines might be true statistically, but do they really represent accurate pictures of the situations?”

“Earlier this year, the Iraqi government banned Al Jazeera from the country for its inaccurate reporting. Wonder where they get their information now? Well, if you go to the Internet, you’ll find a web link from the Al Jazeera home page to CNN’s home page. Very interesting.”

“What about the thousands of things that go right every day and are never reported? Complete a multi-million-dollar sewer project and no one wants to cover it, but let one car bomb go off and it makes headlines. With each headline, the enemy scores another point and the good-guys lose one. This method of scoring slowly is eroding domestic and international support while fueling the enemy’s cause.”

“Much worse are the “talking heads” who sit in studios or offices back home and pontificate about how badly things are going when they never have been to Iraq and only occasionally leave Manhattan.”

“I find it amazing that some people are more apt to listen to a movie star’s or rock singer’s view on how we should prosecute world affairs than to someone whose profession it is to know how these things should go. I play the guitar, but Bruce Springsteen doesn’t listen to me play. Why should I be subjected to his views on the validity of the war?”

“Ironically, the press freedom that we have brought to this part of the world is providing support for the enemy we fight.”

Philadelphia police arrested a group of evangelists at a gay pride event. The group possessed all the necessary city documents required for them to have a public gathering and they followed all the relevant city ordinances. Still, they were charged with inciting a riot and possession of tool of crime… a bullhorn. Wha??

The DA has said that the group directed “fightin’ words” toward the homosexuals gathered across the street. Those “fightin’ words” came verbatim from the Holy Bible. Hmm.

The evangelical group was accosted by a “militant gay rights group” called the Pink Angels, who blew whistles to drown out the scripture reading and held up their pink wing-shaped signs in an attempt to cover up the group’s banners. When the Pinkies started getting mean, the police got involved and arrested… well… the ones who had followed the procedures to get the legal right to be there, of course.

Strangely enough, the ACLU has not come to the aid of these folks who were exercising their first amendment rights. Guess they’re too busy suing “X”-mas carolers for using religious hate speech in their songs.

You can read more in this article.

It’s official. A New England Journal of Medicine study proves shows that talking on a cell phone while driving is just as bad as driving drunk.

The use of cellular telephones in motor vehicles is associated with a quadrupling of the risk of a collision during the brief period of a call.

That is to say, if you’re talking on a cell phone while driving you are four times more likely to cause an accident. The study also found that “hands free” devices do not make you any safer. The problem is not where you hands are. The problem is where your brain is.

FOUR TIMES more likely to cause an accident! That’s the same rate for someone with a 0.8 blood alcohol level.

Hey, people! STOP IT!

I have a couple of email addresses that I use whenever I’m required to enter such information on a web form. I also have a nasty habit of putting my favorite stage name and old mailing addresses in these forms. My imaginary web surfing fellow is named JoBob Humperdink and he lives in Amarillo at the address I inhabited back in 1993.

I don’t know why everyone and their dog wants your email address before they let you see their news article or post a comment on their blog. Regardless, I call these my spam accounts. Inevitablly, someone will sell their collection of email addresses to the scummy underbelly of the internet and that address will begin receiving hundreds of spam messages. Thank the Lord for spam filters. On these two email addresses, the spam folders are always full.

But what’s so funny about that?

Well, I have come to enjoy spending a few minutes perusing my spam folders to see the oh so clever ways that the scummy underbelly tries to get my attention. Allow me to share a few subject lines from this weeks compost heap.

Jobob: Forget About Those Garage Bills

Your confirmation Jobob Humperdink …

Jobob Humperdink 11/10/2004-2:13:05 PM (This one is from the “IRS”. Gee that sounds important… not.)

Shop in AMARILLO

Jobob: Re-finance Today & Save

Confirmation for Jobob Humperdink

Egyptian Peanuts (Wha…?)

RE :Jobob Humperdink 1:10:19 AM 11/14/200… (Oh, now your getting clever… *roll eyes*)

Just do her! (Ah, yes. The subtlties of romance in the age of Viagra.)

Are You Overwhelmed With Credit Card Debt (Why, yes, I am. Thanks for asking. Why don’t you pour some lemon juice on my paper cut while your at it.)

Private urgent message from SunTrust Bank (Please oh please, my gentle readers, do not fall for these things!)

Have you ever looked at the world today and thought, “Wha..?”

Believe it or not, somehow, children have survived for at least 6000 years without any form of government interference in their lives. When I was a kid (Okay, enough with the old jokes.), a “car seat” was just that, the seats in the car (usually made of naugahyde that would melt your Umbro shorts in the summer). Now kids are in some kind of special restraint until they’re old enough to shave. In my day, as the youngest kid, my place in the car on family vacation was the back window deck. GASP! The way I remember, you were “high strung” and so you didn’t get much sugar. Now, you’re ADHD and get drugged into being a zombie. When I rode my bike, the only wore I helmet was when I was pretending to be Evel Knievel. Now kids wear helmets anytime they travel faster than a brisk walk. The way I remember it, when we were on the play ground at school… WE PLAYED!!

But not anymore. Today, kids are not allowed to be kids. Get a load of this story from California.

An 11-year-old girl in West Covina, Calif., was suspended from her school from doing “dangerous” cartwheels and hand stands during lunch time…

Administrators at the school said they were concerned about safety of their students. They said gymnastics on the playground creates an unsafe situation.

Great googly-moogly people! Why don’t you just lock your kids in the basement until their 18. As long as you throw them some Happy Meals and the latest XBox game every week or so, they come out as perfectly well adjusted obese psychopaths. They’ll fit right in! GAH!!

(Link borrowed from Drudge. I’ll give it back, I promise.)

Wow. I knew that the liberal powers that be were an angry stuborn lot, but I have to say I am truely surprised at the militaristic furvor with which some of them are taking up arms against the Bush administration.

Read this article in the New York Times and tell me that liberalism still has a shread of compassion for real people. All they seem to care about is destroying the “Religions Right”.

What is truely remarkable about this anti-convervative, anti-god rhetoric in the libral left is how closely it resembles Al Qaeda’s own fist shaking (as evidenced by this article at Reuters).

Well, let me just say this. If ya’ll is lookin’ fer a fight, yer gonna git one! Let’s get it awwn! My God is biggern’ yer hate any day.

Why don’t we all send two or three hundred emails to that effect to the author of that NYT article, Mr. Paul Krugman. krugman@nytimes.com

Do they not teach math to journalism majors? Granted, I’m an ubber-anal-retentive engineer type. Granted, I just finished working out the election results using complex formulas in an Excel spreadsheet. But still. Come on people. 2+2 does not equal 5.

At this hour, the media (at least Yahoo News and CNN) can’t decide who’s won New Mexico. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: .80%
Bush leads by: 2.06%

So, if John Kerry can win 256% of the votes not yet counted, he could win New Mexico. Ummm. No.

At this hour, they can’t decide who’s won Iowa. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: .29%
Bush leads by: 1.06%

So, if John Kerry can win 366% of the votes not yet counted, he could win Iowa. Seriously, people.

At this hour, the media can’t decide who’s won Ohio. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: 0%
Bush leads by: 2.49%

So, if John Kerry can win… well, divide by zero and you get infinity… If John Kerry can win infinity votes, he could win Ohio. GAAAH!!

Okay, okay. I KNOW that there are provisional ballots and all that silliness. I just think it’s funny that the liberal media is clawing and chewing and gnashing their teeth rather than admitting that they’re stuck with a conservative, Christian president for another four years despite all their back-stabbing, libelous, boorish efforts.

I have one word for you, Dan Rather…. NAA-NAA-NEE-NAA-NAAA!!

Fox News reports that Nicole Kidman’s new movie “Birth” is causing a real stir.

The premise of the show is that Kidman’s dead husband is reincarnated and comes to visit her as a 10-year-old boy. Okay, weird, but certainly within the scope for Hollywood.

The problems arrise when the 37-year-old “rekindles” her relationship with her husband, played by 11-year-old Cameron Bright. This includes some “tender” kissing and a nude bath scene. Eeeeew.

The film was actually booed at the Venice International Film Festival (See, I knew Italians where good people.) and several religious groups (including my Sunday school class) are asking for upstanding folks to boycott this film. This will, of course, cause more people to go see it, but those people aren’t the upstanding ones, now are they?

Personally, I’m boycotting this film. True, that would be like me boycotting space travel or eating cottage cheese (both things I would not normally do anyway), but it’s the principle that matters.

This just in, China thinks we are too big for our britches. Reuters quotes a Chinese official saying that the problems facing America are due to the “Bush doctrine” of “arrogance and cocksureness.” (Can you say cocksureness in a PG rated blog?!)

“The current U.S. predicament in Iraq serves as another example that when a country’s superiority psychology inflates beyond its real capability, a lot of trouble can be caused”

(Excuse me while I chortle. China is always good for a laugh.)

So, I guess that displacing a few million people to build the worlds biggest disaster… er… dam (which incidentally, has a long list of serious problems) would not be seen as cocksureness in the superiority psychology inflated eyes of the Chinese government.