Saturday, March 03, 2007

Liberal Media, My Ass

From Max Blumenthal of The Nation: Just returned from CPAC, where I caught Ann Coulter call John Edwards a 'faggot' (Crooks and Liars has video). The crowd roared their approval, of course. Then Coulter endorsed Mitt Romney. Another gem from Coultergeist: Discussing black Republicans, she declared, 'Our blacks are better than their blacks.'"

Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, or, for chrissakes, Harry Belafonte say something inflammatory about Dubbya, and suddenly every so-called "journalist" is there, brows furrowed in faux concern, sticking microphones in the face of Democrats and demanding they comment on it. So when are we going to see journalists doing this to Mitt Romney?

*sound of crickets chirping*

UPDATE I:

I posted this query on the Romney campaign blog:

Governor Romney, At CPAC, columnist Ann Coulter referred to a Democratic presidential candidate as a "faggot" and said "our blacks are better than their [the Democrats] blacks."

Since Democrats are routinely asked to comment on inflammatory statements by celebrities who support Democrats, I was wondering if you'd care to comment on Ms. Coulter's remarks?

I know it's the "unofficial" blog, but it's the only site that supports comments. We'll see what happens.

UPDATE II:

I found a contact e-mail, policy@mittromney.com, on Romney's site and sent the same query there. I invite interested Hellions to do the same. Politely, of course.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Congratulations!

Congratulations are in order for a couple of friends...first, belated congrats to my buddy Toni L.P. Kelner, nominated for an Agatha for her short story "Sleeping With the Plush." Fingers crossed for you, Toni...it's an honor just to be nominated, as various Hellions have noted.

And to the much abused James O. Born, congratulations on winning Best Novel (popular fiction) in the first ever Florida Book Awards. Good work, Jim...but you realize we'll all be ripping on you again tomorrow, right?

Switzerland Accidentally Invades Liechtenstein.

ZURICH, Switzerland - What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. "It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something," he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn't have an army.


We've got our eye on you, you clock making invasion monkeys! One more slip like this and we might just get all Desert Storm on your cheese-eating asses.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Well, I Guess That's Okay Then

Courtney Love praises sheared Spears:

Rocker Courtney Love has offered her support to troubled star Britney Spears - and praised her decision to shave off her hair.

Love - who has herself spent time in rehab to battle substance abuse - claims losing her hair was a good move for the pop princess.

She told website TMZ.COM,, 'I think that was a cool thing she did, I'm dead serious.'"

I actually was trying really hard not to comment on the whole Britney trainwreck, largely for the reasons that Craig Ferguson so movingly goes into here.

But this was just too damn good to pass up. I mean, Jesus. When Courtney Love tells you shaving your head's a good move, shouldn't that tell you something?

Sunday, February 25, 2007

"I Find Your Lack of Pants Disturbing..."

25 lines in Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word pants.

Maine Again

First Naked Bowling, Now This:

Indoor pot farms a growing trend in rural Maine:

ALFRED - The recent arrests of two men accused of running large indoor marijuana-growing operations in York County is the latest example of what police say is a trend for growers to buy "shell" homes in rural areas.
The innocuous rural locations allow growers to produce year-round crops and operate sophisticated cultivating operations that are difficult for neighbors or police to detect.
These operations are a far cry from the old practice of finding a remote stretch of public land, planting a lot of seedlings and letting Mother Nature do most of the work until harvest time.
Modern growers are virtually professional horticulturists, investing thousands of dollars into growth lights, plant food and automated feeding and maintenance systems. Tens of thousands more are poured into real estate and elaborate heating, ventilation, soundproofing and power systems to conceal their crops.
"On the outside it appears like suburbia, but on the inside they are producing a crop every 90 days," said Roy McKinney, director of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.
In 2006, officials seized 2,356 plants in 38 indoor growing operations throughout the state, McKinney said. The year before, officials discovered 71 indoor growing operations, seizing 2,175 plants. The numbers are significant considering there wasn't a lot of talk about major indoor growing operations -- involving hydroponics, automatic lights and crops of hundreds or thousands of plants -- even five years ago, he said. The trend was established by gangs in Canada, he said, who would buy homes or take over abandoned industrial sites to set up large growing operations.

What IS it with you people? Is it the long winters? The dark and brooding landscape? Stephen King hanging around casting his twisted aura over everything? What?

Letters, Oh We Get Letters...

Latest Newspaper Column:

Never let it be said that this column doesn't strive to give the people what they want.

Recently, one of my loyal readers noted in a letter to this newspaper that during the Democratic Party's winter meeting, a Muslim imam "called the U.S. occupiers and oppressors" while giving the invocation.

"Why doesn't Dusty Rhoades write about that?" the reader wondered.

Well, my good and faithful friend, ask and ye shall receive.

The Muslim in question is named Imam Husham Al-Husainy, and he runs something called the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, Mich. Here is the prayer he gave, with annotations:

"In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate." (This is how most Muslim prayers begin. It's sort of a spiritual throat-clearing to get the attention of the Almighty.) "We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation." (OK, so far, so good, even if the English is a little off.) ...

"We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad." (Wow. That's a lot of messengers.) "Through you, God, we unite." (Isn't there something similar in the Pledge of Allegiance?) "So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom." (Right paths are good, aren't they?) ...

"Help us, God, to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality." (Well, that justice and peace and love and equality stuff certainly has to go. We can't have anything like that in a prayer.) "And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Amen."

Hmm. I've been through that several times, and it's pretty vague about the whole "oppression and occupation" thing, especially after the blessing part and the "thanking to make us a great nation." In fact, had this been delivered by a white non-Muslim in a suit rather than a dark-skinned guy in a turban, the whole thing would be generic enough that it wouldn't cause much of a disturbance at your average Rotary Club.

About the only threatening part about it was the bit about "the people you doom," and if you're put off your feed by that, then you really need to stay away from one of those fire and brimstone Baptists. They can really get rolling on the subject of doom.

Some commentators seem to have read into this bland invocation everything from a call for the destruction of Israel to a demand that America convert to Islam, even though those exact words are never used. Ironically, these are many of the same people who insist that George Dubbya Bush never claimed Iraq was an "imminent threat" because he didn't use those exact words.

The real problem people seem to have is not with the prayer, but the fellow delivering it, and here they actually have a point. Husainy has indeed appeared at rallies for Hamas and Hezbollah, rallies in which anti-Semitic slogans were chanted and the destruction of Israel was indeed called for. He's also, as a Shi'ite, quite a friend of the hardline Iranian government.

So, yes, the Democrats never should have had this terrorist-supporting anti-Semite speaking at their meeting. Somebody was really asleep at the switch for that one.

All that said, it should be noted that the Democrats aren't the only folks taken in by Husainy. In 2003, he and his followers were gung-ho for the Iraq war and cheered for President Bush to take out Saddam Hussein.

According to conservative New York Post columnist Debbie Schlussel, a vocal critic of both Husainy and the Democrats' invitation to him, "Hussainy was one of the imams shown in photographs around the world being hugged by President Bush after we invaded Iraq, and he was invited to the Pentagon to confer with top officials," including Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz.

This may explain why we haven't heard more out of the White House about this, and why the Republicans might want to be a little leery of trying to hang Husainy around the necks of the Democrats.

Now, my turn to ask a question.

Week before last, a guy named Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, aka "Michael Mixon," was indicted in New York for conspiring to funnel some $175,000 to terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Associated Press also reports that, according to the Federal Election Commission, Alshtari/Mixon is a major contributor to the National Republican Congressional Committee as well as being named as a member of the NRCC's "White House Business Advisory Committee." He's also listed as an "Inner Circle Member for Life" of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

So why aren't right-wingers writing letters about that?