CONTEST: Name That Security Firm!

AP: Blackwater dumps tarnished brand name

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning its tarnished brand name as it tries to shake a reputation battered by oft-criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two dozen businesses under the name Xe.

The parent company's new name is pronounced like the letter "z." Blackwater Lodge & Training Center — the subsidiary that conducts much of the company's overseas operations and domestic training — has been renamed U.S. Training Center Inc., the company said Friday.

The decision comes as part of an ongoing rebranding effort that grew more urgent following a September 2007 shooting in Iraq that left at least a dozen civilians dead. Blackwater president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees the new name reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security.

I don't know. "Xe" just seems kind of flat and dull. I'm sure my Hellions can come up with a better name for the "tarnished" Blackwater.

How about:

Mercs R' Us
KillCom
GunCo
Pay N' Slay

Suggestions? Best one wins a paperback copy of SAFE AND SOUND.

Quote of the Day

Katy Munger, writing at Breakfast in Bed:

Being a fiction writer is just like being a little kid who has lots and lots of invisible friends.

The Best @*&%# Idea I've Seen All Week

Deadwood Valentines.

Need I say more?

Hat tip to Making Light.

There's That Whole "Culture of Life" Again

Death Threats Mount Against Octuplet Mom

Los Angeles police say they will investigate death threats against octuplet mom Nadya Suleman.

Police Lt. John Romero says Thursday that officers are meeting with Suleman's publicist Mike Furtney about the flood of angry phone calls and e-mail messages.

Word that the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother is receiving public assistance to care for the 14 children she conceived through in vitro fertilization has stoked furor among many people.

Furtney says 500 new e-mails were received early Thursday.

Fortney says Suleman is living in an undisclosed location and spends time with all of her kids every day.

Look, I think the woman's an idiot. I think doing in vitro when you're single and unemployed is a really boneheaded move. But that's a far cry from threatening to kill the woman because she's on public assistance. And of course, killing her will do nothing to take the kids off the welfare rolls.

But it's good to see that there are some folks in the world who aren't assholes:

He says not all of the calls are angry. One family from the Midwest has invited Suleman and her brood to live on their farm.

Kat is Korrect

Kat Richardson, author of Greywalker, Poltergeist, and Underground, tells us why we should Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

What I love most about it (other than the fact it was written by one of my favorite people) is that it's not just pep talk. Kat provides some cold hard facts n' figures to prove that there really is hope even in this publishing environment.

Thanks, Kat. That came at a good time. 

Illiteracy Is a Terrible Thing

From the letters colum of The Pilot:

It appears Dusty Rhoades must have been "in an absolute frenzy of pants-wetting fear" himself when he wrote his usual finger-pointing baloney for Feb. 1. How else can he explain why he uses the same lame expression twice in the first four paragraphs?

Before he writes his column and before the paper prints it, maybe you could look for some facts:

Ali al-Shihri was released from Gitmo in 2007. The FBI suspects he helped plan last year's deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital.

Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi was released from Gitmo, and he turned around and blew up a police station in Iraq in a suicide mission.

These are just two of over 30 former Gitmo inmates who have resumed their terrorist activities.

The Gitmo inmates' complaints of cold meals, hard plastic soccer balls and paperback Qurans fall on mostly deaf ears.

Except for pansies like the ACLU, the media and whiners like Rhoades seem determined to put these terrorists back out on the street, no matter who they may kill next.

Curtis Richie

Whispering Pines

See, now if Curtis had actually been able to, you know, READ THE COLUMN, he might have recognized that the whole point was that terror suspects being moved to U.S. Prisons would NOT be "back out on the street". But since Curtis apparently has the reading comprehension of a scallop, the whole thing just goes past him.

And since Curtis also apparently can't remember who was President when, it doesn't seem to occur to him that the people he complains about being released to wreak more havoc were released by......the Bush Administration. Which sort of undercuts the whole argument that detainees should be kept or released purely at the whim of the Executive.

But you know, I'm glad Curtis keeps trying to read the column, even though he's apparently too dumb to understand it. I hope he can find the remedial reading help he apparently so desperately needs.