WTF Is It Now?!?

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Quotes of the Day:

So one of the guys in command while this chicanery occurs gets to be in charge of the United States Army? Welcome to George W. Bush's America.

- - David Corn at TheNation.com

The administration has demonstrated a callous disregard for journalism, truth and transparency. As a result it has undermined both the credibility of the United States overseas and the ability of the American public to stay informed at home.

- - Frank Smyth at TomPaine.com

Mr. bush cannot decide which advisors to listen to because he has no store of knowledge of his own. Bush does not have a clue what to do now that he has run out of the options of doing the opposite of whatever Clinton did.

- - Lois Erwin at SmirkingChimp.com

People are now starting to question President Bush's Mideast policy - I didn't know he had one.
- - Leno

The BBC has announced it is coming out with a new version of "Survivor" that will be for kids. It's called "Altar Boy".
- - Leno

"The 'president' will exert the moral leadership of the United States to try to bring about a solution to the violence in the Middle East"

- - White House spokes-tool & Borscht-Belt Comedian Ari Fleischer (via BuzzFlash.com)


Things We'd Like to See:

"I speak as a committed friend of Israel": the Yellow Puddle of Texas, 4/4/02


Daddy's Widdle F*ckup

The bloody Israeli-Palestinian stalemate has plunged the Useless Yerkoff into a diplomatic predicament. [H]e has looked unusually indecisive and vulnerable to criticism that his actions - and inaction - have handicapped peacemaking efforts. The Clueless Cowpie might have himself to blame for complicating the situation.

He alarmed Muslim nations and many allies by declaring that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were an "axis of evil" that needed to be dealt with. Since his State of the Union address, goodwill built up over the years with Arab leaders has begun drying up. The Smirking Sockpuppet painted himself into a diplomatic corner when he declared shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks that a country that harbors terrorists would be dealt with as terrorists. As suicide bombers savaged Israel, the Moron of Midland was forced to admit that his one-size-fits-all doctrine didn't fit Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It's not the first time the Cretin of Crawford's rhetoric has shifted.

Read more at Yahoo Nooze.

Today in History:

1561 Over Nuremberg, Germany, a battle in the sky transpires between black and blood-red balls, disks, and crosses. It is not clear who came out ahead in this UFO transgression.

1818 Congress decided the flag of the United States would consist of 13 red-and-white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union. After the 2000 presidential election the flag briefly went orange, then changed to black.

1841 President William Henry Harrison succumbed to pneumonia one month after his inaugural, becoming the first U.S. chief executive to die in office. (I won't say it!!)

1935 Mrs Gertrude Smith of York, Pennsylvania discovered that she could mentally coax her hens to lay eggs bearing images. She would visualise, say, sunflower petals, of her initials, and these would appear on the egg, initials reversed. 'When I broke the egg open, the design appeared raised on the inner surface of the shell,' she said. When she succeeded in materialising an egg with a triangular cross-section, she was too frightened to try again.

1968 civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.

1983 the space shuttle Challenger roared into orbit on its maiden voyage.

1988 Arizona Governor Evan Mecham becomes the first U.S. governor to be impeached and removed from office in nearly 60 years. He was convicted for obstructing justice by discouraging a state official from investigating a death threat, and that he misused $80,000 in public money. Mecham was known for rescinding the state's observation of Martin Luthur King, Jr. Day, asking for lists of state employees who were gay, and using the word "pickaninnies".

2001 Chinese President Jiang Zemin demanded the United States apologize for the collision between a U.S. Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet. Chimpy McCokehead replied with "no, YOU apologize!", went on to lose 3rd game of Ms Pacman and round of Scrabble with Barney.

- - - Yahoo, ForteanTimes, Rotton.com

Daddy's Widdle F*ckup, Part II

Declaring American mediation in the Middle East a failure, the EU executive urged the United States on Wednesday to stand down as primary peacemaker and let a broad alliance of nations mediate a cease-fire and a durable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The call came as foreign ministers from the European Union were gathering for an urgent session here about the violence in the Middle East, where Israel has launched a large-scale assault in the West Bank after a string of Palestinian suicide bombings.

"It is clear (American) mediation efforts have failed and we need new mediation" before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict balloons into an all-out regional war, European Commission President Romano Prodi told reporters in Brussels.
- - Yahoo News

Daddy's Widdle F*ckup, Part III

Preznit Poopypants demanded that Israel pull back its troops from Palestinian cities it occupied in recent days and called on Arab nations to do more to crack down on terrorists. He ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region to carry the message.

"The storms of violence cannot go on," the Coward of Crawford whinged on his way to his secret fort. "Enough is enough."

The Israelis replied "What the f*ck???", while all Mr Powell could do was sigh and shake his head.

- - - thanks to BuzzFlash mail

Rare Planetary Traffic Jam

For a period of a little more than three weeks, anyone looking west at sunset will be able to see the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. A few hours later at 4 A.M., armed with a large-size amateur telescope, they can continue their grand tour by observing Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, a few wandering asteroids and maybe even Comet Ikeya-Zhang in the east. Finally, by quickly glancing down at the ground, they will have completed their grand tour of the solar system.
"Seeing nine worlds in just one night is something few astronomers can say they've accomplished," said Philip Sadler, Director of the Science Education Department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA, " [there] won't be anything like this for at least another 70 years. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
- - - http://www.cosmiverse.com/space04030205.html

'There's something weird going on'

Ghost stories are pouring out of the Sackville area of Nova Scotia.

Darryll Walsh, a parapsychology lecturer at the Nova Scotia Community College in Halifax, says there are more reports of ghosts and paranormal phenomena coming out of Beaver Bank and Sackville than anywhere else in Nova Scotia.

"Cape Breton has always been the most haunted area of Nova Scotia, but Cape Breton stories are much more traditional Irish, English, even French stories from an oral tradition," Walsh says. Walsh has never seen a ghost himself, and he believes 95 per cent of all "paranormal" activities can be explained. But he's convinced there's
something unusual happening in the Sackville-Beaver Bank area. He's actively investigating eight to 10 stories from the region.

"Some appearances of hauntings or ghosts seem to also be connected with earth stress, tectonic stress, earthquakes and stuff like that," he said. "We have to do a geological survey on Beaver Bank because there are too many weird things going on out there. It's a mystery, but I love mysteries."

- - - from Canada.com

Bronze Age burial site unearthed

Workers draining a road have stumbled upon the remains of a Bronze Age burial site.
The workers were cutting trenches at a roadside in Pitmilly, Fife, when they uncovered a 4,000-year-old pot that appeared to have been placed inside a stone-lined
chamber.

Douglas Spiers, Fife county archaeologist, said that the discovery offered a rare opportunity to learn more about the history of the area. “The pot sheds a considerable degree of light on life and death in prehistoric Fife,” he said. “Its contents are undisturbed and its condition, nature and age all combine to make this a find of national importance.”

He said that the pot was probably used to hold food. Knives, jewellery and food were often placed in graves to help the deceased’s journey into the next world.

The discovery will be tested using radiocarbon dating techniques at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and will then be handed over to St Andrews Museum to go on public display

- - The Times.co.uk

Gladiators in Roman England

An intriguing archeological find in Great Britain has added to the mystique of female gladiators. A routine inspection by the Museum of London's archeologists of a building site on the outskirts of the old city led to the discovery of the woman's remains. No sooner had the team begun sinking test pits at Great Dover Street, in the Southwark district, than they stumbled on a graveyard from an era when London was a remote outpost of the Roman Empire.

"It was Roman law that you couldn't bury the dead within town boundaries," archeologist Hedley Swain says, "so you'd have the cemeteries outside, and it was a custom to put them along the main roads."

As the archeological excavation expanded, the team found a wealthy Roman's grave situated on the periphery of the cemetery, the kind of spot where a social outcast might be buried. Yet the grave's inhabitant seemed no pariah. Mourners had lovingly dug a large pit and arranged timbers over it to make an impressive pyre. Then they had laid the corpse upon it and lit a fire. As the flames died, burnt fragments from the cremated skeleton toppled down into the pit, where mourners left remains of a costly funerary feast and arranged a trove of lamps and large tazze, or incense burners. Then they covered it all in a thick layer of earth. Osteologist Bill White determined the remains belonged to a woman who died in her twenties.

The researchers are certain of one thing: Gladiatorial spectacles were all the rage in Roman London. Two years ago, a team of 50 researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology Service completed an excavation of fragmentary ruins from the site of a first-century amphitheatre in London's Guildhall section. The massive oak structure would have accommodated 6,000 to 7,000 people -- in a city with an estimated population of 20,000. Clearly, the spectacles were popular.

Swain concedes that the enigmatic grave on Great Dover Street is open to other interpretations. It is quite conceivable, he suggests, that the mysterious young woman was nothing more than a wealthy, headstrong follower of an obscure Egyptian cult whose members buried her with all the pomp and ceremony required by their particular religious beliefs.

- - - National Post .com

*Pic from SmirkingChimp.com