This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge.
It's a Good Life (The Twilight Zone)
No doubt, military-industrial contractors, around the country, will spend the night attempting to summoning Anthony, from the Twilight Zone, pleading with him to wish Secretary of Defense Robert Gates into the cornfield.
Look at all the bad things he's saying, they'll tell Anthony.
Doesn't that make Anthony angry, they ask Anthony, in-between whispers to wish Gates into the cornfield.
Then, they'll down their second/third/fourth martini.
Robert Gates was in the house!
Robert Gates ... In the mother-fucking house!
Speaking at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., on the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Gates let those contractors know;
Robert Gates is in the mother-fucking house!
“Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state—militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent,” Gates said.
Gates acknowledged that saving money in the defense budget “will mean overcoming steep institutional and political challenges, many lying outside the five walls of the Pentagon.”
Apart from making the case against the alternate engine for the F-35 and more C-17s, Gates raised the alarm over Congress’s resistance to increasing the premiums and co-pays on the military’s health insurance. The Pentagon has attempted in the last several years to make modest increases to the co-pays and premiums in order to bring the health care costs under control, Gates said.
“Leaving aside the sacred obligation we have to America’s wounded warriors, healthcare costs are eating the Defense Department alive, rising from $19 billion a decade ago to $50 billion—roughly the entire foreign affairs and assistance budget of the State Department,” Gates said.
In case tightening collars denied oxygen to their brains, and the contractors were gasping for air;
“Another category ripe for scrutiny should be overhead,” he said. “According to an estimate by the Defense Business Board, overhead, broadly defined, makes up roughly 40 percent of the Department’s budget.”
And, not to be overlooked, Gates threw down against the Congress;
Gates said the Pentagon’s approach to coming up with the requirements for specific programs and contract must change. Requirements for weapons systems should be based on a “wider real world context,” he said.
“For example, should we really be up in arms over a temporary projected shortfall of about 100 Navy and Marine strike fighters relative to the number of carrier wings, when America’s military possesses more than 3,200 tactical combat aircraft of all kinds?” Gates asked in a reference to the congressional push to buy more Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets.
“Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners? Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?”
Here that Congress?
Robert Gates is in the mother-fucking house!
Libby Spencer, over on The Impolitic, knows that Robert Gates is in the mother-fucking house;
I've been thinking about this for the last few months. It's good to see DefSec Gates address wasteful military spending. He takes on all the sacred cows inside the Pentagon including medical benefits and so-called overhead, but I think the big money is in unnecessary equipment.
John Nichols, over on The Nation, knows Robert Gates is in the mother-fucking house;
The question, of course, is whether members of House and Senate -- Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals -- are prepared to recognize that real world context and operate within it.
The fact of the matter is that no discussion of cutting spending, balancing budgets and reducing deficits is serious if it does not include a discussion of how to cut Pentagon waste and abuse.
The Secretary of Defense is ready for that discussion.
Hear that military-industrial contractors?
Hear that Congress?
And Anthony, you ain't got a cornfield big enough, cuz....
Robert Gates is in the mother-fucking house!
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Robert Gates Is In The House!
Who Are They Guarding - Monty Python?
We have to agree with Michael Stickings, over on The Reaction (disclosure, this writer is a Contributing Editor there), that this, indeed, is the Photo of the Day!
New recruits of the Vatican's elite Swiss Guard march during the swearing in ceremony at Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican. The Swiss Guard, founded in 1506 and consisting of 100 volunteers who must be Swiss, Catholic, single, at least 174 centimetres tall and beardless, celebrate their 502nd anniversary this year.
Half harlequin, a little Medieval chest plate, mixed in with an homage to the doorman at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.
How would they stop some crime?
Run over, and like they could sprint in those outfits, and have the criminal fall down, pissing himself laughing?
They look like something out of a Monty Python skit!One day, lad, all this will be yours
"What, the curtains?
And the requirements ...Catholic and single ...
For the Vatican, the world's largest warehouse of men who like younger men who are "Catholic and single" ...
And dress like toys ...
Millie - My boy lollipop 1973
This Date ... On The Garlic
Friday, May 07, 2010
And Now, We Come To The Sanity Clause
I have to believe, all this nonsense about where President Obama was born would befuddle, even, the Marx Brothers.
From ABC News Today;
Poll: Half of 'Birthers' Call it 'Suspicion'; A Third Approve of Obama AnywayFourteen percent of Americans say without prompting that they think Barack Obama was born in another country, rising to one in five when those with no opinion are offered that as a possibility. But for many it's not a firm belief and some appear not to hold it against him.
Among those inclined to think Obama was born abroad, half also say that's their suspicion only, not a judgment based on solid evidence, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds. And perhaps surprisingly, about a third of so-called "birthers" nonetheless approve of Obama's work in office and express a favorable opinion of him personally.
[snip]
THE QUESTION – This ABC/Post poll posed the question neutrally; first: "On another subject, where was Barack Obama born, as far as you know?" Sixty-eight percent said the United States (or a location within the country), 14 percent said another country and 19 percent had no opinion.
Steve M, over on No More Mister Nice Blog, isn't buying it;No, I don't think that's the right explanation. The whole point of birtherism is that you can't possibly find out the truth because B. Hussein Osama is so EEEEEEEVIL!!! When anti-Obama birthers choose "suspicion only," they're not making an ambiguous statement about their beliefs; they're saying that the suppression of the truth is so great that history's greatest monsters would be jealous!
Of course, it's a ridiculous question anyway; what the hell "solid evidence" could there possibly be? But for some birthers the lack of solid evidence is solid evidence that B. Hussein is hiding ... something; others express this same feeling as a deeply held suspicion. It's just two different ways of describing the same invisible monsters under the bed.
It's over a year-and-a-half and these people ...
Oh, what's the use ...
Jesus Christ could come down, put his arm around Obama and vouch that he was born as, and remains, a United States citizen and the Birthers (aided, perhaps by a handful of Teabaggers) would boo and jeer the announcement.
DemFromCT, on Daily Kos says as much;Yep. Republicans and conservatives always get mad at polls that make them look bad, but they look bad because of what they believe and not because they were polled.
Why is this news, again?
Why is this poll being taken?The story returned to the news when the Hawaii legislature last week approved a bill authorizing the state Health Department to ignore repeated requests for information on Obama's birth records. The department's director had testified it was taking time and resources to respond "to these often convoluted inquiries." The bill's on the governor's desk.
This will be a Birther Meme by the beginning of the week.
Now, the state is in on it.
Help Me Mister Wizard!
Bonus Riffs
Alex Pareene: The Birthers: Who Are They and What Do They Want?
Alex Koppelman: Salon's handy-dandy guide to refuting the Birthers
Bonus Bonus
Maybe, they'll listen to the King
Suspicious Mind - Elvis Presley
This Date ... On The Garlic
7 May 2009... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Things About Manny Ramirez Taking Banned Substances (Fertility Drugs)
7 May 2008... On The Garlic
Editor's Note ... The Pearl Is In The River ...
7 May 2007... On The Garlic
The Laura Bush Bummer Bombing-of-the Day; Warning - Bypass this post if you don't want to be discouraged
Top Ten Cloves: Potential Problems At White House Dinner Tonight For Queen Elizabeth II
7 May 2006... On The Garlic
Weekend Special - Sautéed Cloves
Last Weeks Garlic Poll Results - The Real Reason President Bush Wants National Anthem Sung In English Is ...
Thursday, May 06, 2010
CSI Metropolis
This was some bonus news, that came out yesterday;
Footage Restored to Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, “Metropolis” had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed.
But on Friday Film Forum in Manhattan will begin showing what is being billed as “The Complete Metropolis,” with a DVD scheduled to follow later this year, after screenings in theaters around the country. So an 80-year quest that ranged over three continents seems finally to be over, thanks in large part to the curiosity and perseverance of one man, an Argentine film archivist named Fernando Peña.
And why is this a big deal?Made at a time of hyperinflation in Germany, “Metropolis” offered a grandiose version — of a father and son fighting for the soul of a futuristic city — that nearly bankrupted the studio that commissioned it, UFA. After lukewarm reviews and initial box office results in Europe, Paramount Pictures, the American partner brought in toward the end of the shoot, took control of the film and made drastic excisions, arguing that Lang’s cut was too complicated and unwieldy for American audiences to understand.
[snip]
That a copy of the original print of “Metropolis” even existed in Buenos Aires was the result of another piece of serendipity. An Argentine film distributor, Adolfo Wilson, happened to be in Berlin when the film had its premiere, liked what he saw so much that he immediately purchased rights, and returned to Argentina with the reels in his luggage.
For too long, all these decades, 'Metropolis' was thought to be a science fiction movie.
From Wikipedia;Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of the science fiction context to explore a political theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.
The full-cut version now straightens that out;The cumulative result is a version of “Metropolis” whose tone and focus have been changed. “It’s no longer a science-fiction film,” said Martin Koerber, a German film archivist and historian who supervised the latest restoration and the earlier one in 2001. “The balance of the story has been given back. It’s now a film that encompasses many genres, an epic about conflicts that are ages old. The science-fiction disguise is now very, very thin.”
When it comes out, and if 'Metropolis' is in a city near you, go check it out
Yet ...
While I have seen 'Metropolis' a few times, I was more partial, and liked better, Lang's "M", the riveting thriller, starring Peter Lorre, that "has become a classic which Lang himself considered his finest work."
Bonus Riffs
Ohhhh ... That's What Avatar Is About ...
One For The Film Buffs ... Max Ophuls
Rififi Director, Jules Dassin, Blacklisted, Dies at 96
Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play
The Madness of March Money
Show Me The Money!
In the article, "CBS Considered Paying ESPN to Take Tourney", the words "college athlete" never appearsInstead of making a deal with ESPN, CBS decided it would be more profitable to share the tournament with Turner Sports and agreed last month to pay $10.8 billion from 2011 to 2024 under that arrangement.
CBS preferred that deal because it enabled the network to maintain its connection to the tournament while carrying fewer games and mitigating the huge losses it was forecasting over the final few years of its previous contract.
Turner’s games will be on TBS, TNT and truTV, and starting in 2016, CBS and TBS will alternate the Final Four and the national championship game, a major coup for a cable network.
They could have, just as easily, been talking about Pork Futures.
With all that money being tossed around, television - and the schools - making millions-to-billions, the sad-sack chatter of kids bolting to the NBA for big bucks sound very, very hollow.
I wonder if this is in an schools' Finance curriculum?
Bonus Riffs
Breaking! ... Obama Takes Action, Siezes AIG's March Madness Office Pools and Brackets
Top Ten Cloves: How It Would Be Different If Alberto Gonzales Was The Head of March Madness
Top Ten Cloves: Signs That March Madness Is Taking Root In The White House
Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Tell It's March Madness
This Date ... On The Garlic
6 May 2009... On The Garlic
A Nothing Sandwich, With Everything On It
New Bill Russell Book!
6 May 2007... On The Garlic
Hey, No Whining There Tenet, It Was Your Job, You Silly Twit ... The Results - The Garlic Weekly Poll
6 May 2005... On The Garlic
Congress Acts On New National Driver's License; 3-Point Turn Kept In 'Patriots with Wheels' Bill; Homeland Security To Issue Daily Hand Signals
Sears, Nike Split Up; Retailer Tells Sneaker Company To Go USA
Top Ten Cloves: Things Ann Coulter Would Be Saying If She Were An Over-The-Top Liberal Democrat
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Top Ten Cloves: Reasons Dick Cheney Was Visiting Saudi Arabia
News Item: Why Was Cheney in Saudi Arabia?
10. Moonlighting for Fox News - Trying to get Saudis to say Oil Spill is Obama's fault
9. Picking up royalty check, for invading Iraq
8. Trying to give The Politico a scoop
7. Made a pit stop, after visiting Prince Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in the UAE, who lined up someone for Cheney to beat and run over
6. Looking for a buyer - Wants to put his old Secret Bunker on the market, for big bucks
5. No here will go hunting with him any longer
4. Saudis wanted to hear, first hand, the telling of the Leahy "Go-fuck-yourself" story
3. Felt he had to, personally, go over and explain his rabid, nitwit daughter Liz
2. Moonlighting as "Bag Man" for the Carlyle Group
1. Working out a "No Extradition" deal, in the event he gets prosecuted
Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Hola amigos y amigas ...
Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Cinco de Mayo is;a voluntarily observed holiday that commemorates the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.[2][3] It is celebrated primarily in the state of Puebla and in the United States.[4][5][6][7] While Cinco de Mayo has limited significance nationwide in Mexico, the date is observed in the United States and other locations around the world as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.[8] Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day,[9] the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico.[10]
Oh, and such an especial Cinco de Mayo this year, with the backdrop of the budding fascism in Arizona.
Seth Meyers, on SNL last week, had one of the better riffs on it;Myers: This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?" There’s never been a World War II movie that didn’t include the line "show me your papers." It’s their catchphrase. Every time someone says "show me your papers," Hitler’s family gets a residual check. So heads up, Arizona; that’s fascism. I know, I know, it’s a dry fascism, but it’s still fascism.
The Major League Baseball Players Union is against the new law...
Even Texas Governor Rick Perry is "Freaked Out".
And, just yesterday, Phoenix Sun owner Robert Sarver announced the team will wear "Los Suns" jerseys of their playoff match-up with San Antonio (and Sun player Steve Nash chipped in that "I think the law is very misguided.")
So, for Cinco de Mayo, we go with a tune, while not definitively Mexican, and we, fairly recently posted it, it is in the spirit of the day, sure to get your toes tappin'
WEATHER REPORT brown street 1979
Bonus Links
David Sirota: GOP's past gives the lie to "colorblind" claims ...Republicans claim Arizona's new immigration law has nothing to do with racial profiling. Oh please
Linda Greenhouse: Breathing While Undocumented
Eugene Robinson: Arizona's new immigration law is an act of vengeance
Mark Karlin: Bush, Slave Labor and Arizona
This Date ... On The Garlic
5 May 2009... On The Garlic
The Ann Coulter Surge
Press The Applause Button
Let's Buy Those Chaps A Round!
Today's Instant Ignorant Dolt - Joe The Plumber!
Retro Garlic: Shiekh de Sade
5 May 2007... On The Garlic
The Politico's DNA ... The Other Iraq ... And He's a Bible-Thumper Now ... Around The Garlic Patch
5 May 2006... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Cinco de Mayo At The White House!
5 May 2005... On The Garlic
Texas Bill Banning Cheerleading Causes Panic, Confusion and Exodus; Teens Flee State By Thousands, Causing Gridlock; See Bill As Ban On Being Teen
DIY Network Has An Ad Campaign - Finally! Three-Years-Plus in-the-making; All Hand-Made Print Run
Top Ten Cloves: What The Coma Fireman, Who Hasn't Spoken in 10-Years, Talked About When He Woke Up 
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Postcards From A Sad Edge
If the Teabaggers think they have it tough, being called names, dissed, and otherwise, not taken seriously, it's a walk-in-the-park compared to others.
At least they are not being murdered for their opposition, for slandering the President, the government
Roger Cohen, in today's NYT Op-Ed page, has a great read - "The Banality of Good";What was it like? I would ask myself, the years I lived in Berlin. What was it like in the leafy Grunewald neighborhood to watch your Jewish neighbors — lawyers, businessmen, dentists — trooping head bowed to the nearby train station for transport eastward to extinction?
How's them apples for an opener?
With what measure of fear, denial, calculation, conscience and contempt did neighbors who had proved their Aryan stock to Hitler’s butchers make their accommodations with this Jewish exodus? How good did the schnapps taste and how effectively did it wash down the shame?
Cohen quickly elucidates;Now I know. Thanks to Hans Fallada’s extraordinary “Every Man Dies Alone,” just published in the United States more than 60 years after it first appeared in Germany, I know. What Irène Némirovsky’s “Suite Française” did for wartime France after six decades in obscurity, Fallada does for wartime Berlin. Like all great art, it transports, in this instance to a world where, “The Third Reich kept springing surprises on its antagonists: It was vile beyond all vileness.”
"Vile beyond all vileness ..."
Fallada, born Rudolf Ditzen, wrote his novel in less than a month right after the war and just before his death in 1947 at the age of 53. The Nazi hell he evokes is not so much recalled as rendered, whole and alive. The prose is sinuous and gritty, like the city he describes. Dialogue often veers toward sadistic folly with a barbaric logic that takes the breath away.
I don't know if you can even begin comprehending, processing such a magnitude of evil.The book is based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, whose postcard campaign — “Hitler’s war is the worker’s death!” — frustrated the Gestapo until the couple’s capture in October 1942 and subsequent beheading. Fallada, a sometime morphine addict who lived in and out of asylums, got hold of the Hampel police files through a friend in late 1945, wrote a journalistic account that year, and then, in a burst of creativity, the novel.
[snip]
The book pulses with the street life of a terrorized city, full of sleaze, suspicion, drunkenness, desperation and murder. It proclaims the bestial sadism of which man is capable and the enormous moral stature of decency. It has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
Yikes!
From Elizabeth Bachner;If Primo Levi told me to crawl underneath the Brooklyn bridge, naked, and read the graffiti there -- if he were here to suggest that -- I’d be swinging over the side of that bridge right now, even though it’s 30 degrees and the middle of rush hour.
[snip]
So when I heard that Primo Levi had declared Hans Fallada’s long-obscure Every Man Dies Alone to be “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis,” I tucked into its 500 pages with a feeling of razor-sharp glee mixed with dread, worried and hopeful that it would make me unable to live in the same way anymore.
[snip]
Himmler planned on the Holocaust being an “unwritten page of glory.” Every unearthed manuscript or reprinted book like Every Man Dies Alone defeats that plan.
Go check out Cohn's entire article, it's a good one.
Bonus Links
Hans Fallada, From Wikipedia
Video of Anne Frank Surfaces on YouTube
RIP Lynn Redgrave
The Seekers - Georgy Girl-1968
Lynn Redgrave, Actress and Playwright, Dies at 67Indeed, for the film that made her a star when she was just 23, “Georgy Girl” (1966), she said she put on 14 pounds to play the title role: a previous generation’s Bridget Jones, a pudgy, gawky young woman whose painfully uncertain self-image leads her to sublimate her own desires to those of her acquaintances. She was nominated for an Academy Award.
Actress Lynn Redgrave dead at 67Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the freethinking title character of "Georgy Girl" and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances "Shakespeare for My Father" and "Nightingale," has died. She was 67.
Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died Sunday night at her Manhattan apartment. In 2003, Redgrave had been treated for breast cancer.
Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.
This Date ... On The Garlic
4 May 2009... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Google Flu Tracker Didn't Pick Up Swine Flu
4 May 2008... On The Garlic
Al Giordano: Let Operation Anti-Chaos begin!
4 May 2007... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: What Goes Into President Bush Giving Himself Nicknames
4 May 2006... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Problems That May Crop Up With Post Office Issuing A “Forever Stamp”
4 May, 2005... On The Garlic
Vegas, Circuit Clamors For Laura Bush; Press Laments Daily Briefings Now With Headlining First Lady
Clinton Joins Food Pyramid Protest; Says Won't Deter Child Obesity; Poll Shows Public Prefers The Sphinx
Top Ten Cloves: What Jilted Fiancés Can Do If Your Bride-To-Be Runs Away
Monday, May 03, 2010
Flying Monkey Illiustrated
We got a "Covergirl" email today, from the Flying Monkey perch at Human Events, heart-clutching, and breathlessly throwing rose pedals on the Queen of the Flying Monkeys, Michelle "Stalkin'" Malkin, for being "covergirl" of this month's other Flying Monkey perch, Townhall;
Michelle Malkin has been making a killing doing what she does best: exposing the corruption and lunacy of America's liberals. And the Left can't stop her.
Not to mention the bestseller book, of her endorsemnt of Internment
Most people know her as a conservative firebrand who has written best-selling books, including "Culture of Corruption," which dealt with the shady characters that have populated the Obama administration, and "Unhinged," which exposed the lunacy of the Left.
In which reviewer Eric Muller noted in his "There was no good reason for the mass internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.";That passage alone should tell the reader this book is not a trustworthy work of history but a polemic--The O'Reilly Factor masquerading as the History Channel.
[snip]
But Malkin does not so much as mention any of that evidence, except to say that a reader can find it elsewhere in "pedantic tomes" and "educational propaganda." She dismisses what she cannot rebut.
These objections to Malkin's handling of the evidence are the concerns of scholars and historians, and some may think them unfair measures for the work of a political columnist. "I am neither a historian nor a lawyer," Malkin reminds her reader in the book's prefatory note. But even political columnists are bound by ordinary rules of inference and logic, and it is on this score that her book fails even more spectacularly.
And others;The book proved to be highly controversial when published, with Asian-American groups in particular being highly critical. John Tateishi, the Executive Director of the Japanese American Citizens League issued a media release on August 24, 2004 stating "Michelle Malkin's book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror is a desperate attempt to impugn the loyalty of Japanese Americans during World War II to justify harsher governmental policies today in the treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans."
We'll make her The Garlic's "Cover Flying Monkey of the Day", with some of our highlights;
The organization Historians' Committee for Fairness condemned the book as "a blatant violation of professional standards of objectivity and fairness".[6]
Mirror, Mirror .. If Only Keith Olbermann Offered A "Sickest Person In The World", Sighs Michelle Maudlin, "I Would Surely Be The Sickest"
Mirror, Mirror ... She's Still The Sickest! ... But The Bush Grindhouse Is Gaining Ground ... Follow-Up On The Graeme Frost Conflagration
When A Michelle Malkin Quits The O'Reilly Factor, And No One is Around To Hear it, Does It Make A Sound?
Top Ten Cloves: Things Michelle Malkin Will Do Now On Friday Evenings, Since She's Off The O'Reilly Factor
She's Stalking Donuts Now!
"We lock and load our ideological ammunition."
Here's A Guy Destined To Win All The Toasters, Shavers and Kewpie Dolls
He's no "Opie and the Carnival" here.
Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double killA BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 miles away.
Holy Bullseye Batman!
Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.
“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.
“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”
The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.
The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.
Give this man a Kewpie Doll!
Bonus Bonus
You can go HERE, and watch the full episode of "Opie and the Carnival"
This Date ...On The Garlic
3 May 2009... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves - Reasons Arlen Specter Became A Democrat
3 May 2008... On The Garlic
Ding Ho Reunion For Laz
Editor's Note ... Still Jammed Up ...
3 May 2007... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Things Overheard At The Republican Candidates' Debate
Chopped Garlic ... Lightning Striking Twice ... Of Success ... Who's In Command ... Pentagon vs. Soldiers ... And Those Al Qaeda Guys - Again
3 May 2006... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Other Unannounced Measures White House Has For Pandemic Flu Draft Response Plan
3 May 2005... On The Garlic
Neiman Marcus Sells Self Through Catalog; "Almost Threw Away Book In Recycling", Says Buyer
Visa Ends Triple Crown Sponsorship But Keeps Derby; Cites Pending Use of Child Jockeys As Means To Increase Brand
Top Ten Cloves: Other Than Saying They Were Kidnapped, Stories Runaway Brides Can Use 
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Kissing Frogs ... The Auto Bailout Monty
It plays out like something from the old "Wonderful World of Disney".
A friendly-looking, white-haired older gentlemen, speaking in a tone, that of a grizzled, wise-to-the-bone, Midwestern small town doctor, a bit self-effacing, before laying on the con ...
Here, watch it;
GM Repaid Government Loan Ahead of Schedule
Ah, not quite there Ed, but thanks for coming and playing our game.
It's all a hustle!
Gretchen Morgenson uncovers all three of the Monty Cards in her piece today;
Repaying Taxpayers With Their Own CashTruth seekers the nation over, therefore, are indebted to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who in recent days uncovered what he called a government-enabled “TARP money shuffle.” It relates to General Motors, which on April 21 paid the balance of its $6.7 billion loan under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
G.M. trumpeted its escape from the program as evidence that it had turned the corner in its operations. “G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,” boasted Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chief executive.
[snip]
Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan.
[snip]
Mr. Grassley heard back from the Treasury last Tuesday. Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, confirmed that the money G.M. used to repay its bailout loan had come from a taxpayer-financed escrow account held for the automaker at the Treasury.
Even Snoozin' Larry Summers, woke up long enough to work the con;What a difference a year makes. Just about a year ago, the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse. Today, General Motors announced that it has repaid its $6.7 billion loan to the U.S. government in full five years ahead of schedule, and Chrysler announced that, after taking one-time charges last year associated with its restructuring, it produced an operating profit in the first quarter of 2010 for the first time since the economic crisis began. The prospect of a faster than anticipated exit from government involvement and a return of most of the taxpayers’ investment in these companies has materially improved.
This turnaround wasn’t an accident of history. It was the result of considered and politically difficult decisions made by President Obama to provide GM and Chrysler – and indeed the auto industry – a lifeline, if they could demonstrate the will to reshape their businesses and chart a path toward long-term viability without ongoing government assistance.
Holy Long Con, Batman!
Even Bernie Madoff, sitting in his prison cell, had to give himself a few headslaps after reading this today.
He was in the wrong racket.
If he only hooked into the Government money pipeline ... 
He had to be thinking about General Motors, taking over the Myra Langtry role in 'The Grifters' with the Government playing Roy Dillon;Roy Dillon: Maybe I like it where I am.
Myra Langtry: Well, maybe I don't! I had ten good years with Cole, and I want them back! I gotta have a partner! I looked and I looked and believe me, brother, I kissed a lot of fucking frogs, and you're my prince!
But, Gretchen spanked'em all;Of course, there is much joy in Mudville when a recipient of government aid repays its obligations. And it is also natural that the administration is keenly interested in reassuring taxpayers that losses on their bailout billions will be smaller than expected. Still, employing spin and selective disclosure is no way to raise taxpayers’ trust in our nation’s leadership.
Pucker up, everybody!
Bonus Riffs
Mike "Mish" Shedlock: Oh Please, The GM Bailout Was A Failure, And No The Taxpayer Hasn't Made Money
What's Good For Tesla Motors ...
Top Ten Cloves: Great Things About Obama Taking Over General Motors
Breaking News! GM Cancels UAW In Favor of Adopting Huffington Post Business Model ...Celebrities, Auto Enthusiasts and Bloggers To Build Cars For Free ...Huge Spike In Profits Forecast
This Date ... On The Garlic
2 May 2009... On The Garlic
It Will Never Be A Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day
2 May 2007... On The Garlic
Garlic Special: A George Bush Dream - The Victory II; In a new series, The Garlic has, occasionally, taken a look (and liberty) with the somnolent state of our Court-Appointed President
2 May 2006... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Problems The Illegal Immigrant Boycott Caused The White House Yesterday
2 May 2005... On The Garlic
Runaway Bride Influenced By Ad Campaign; Disappointed it "didn't stay in Vegas"; Vows Never To Return
First Lady Takes Swipes At Husband, Staff; White House Dinner Audience "Uncomfortable' with jibes"
Top Ten Cloves: Ways Your Maypole Celebration Pissed Off Your Neighbors
