The Poor Man scoops Kitty Kelley’s Shocking Revelations:
- Iraq didn’t have any WMD, or any significant ties to al Qaeda!
- George W. Bush is not a West Texas rancher whose simple heartland values and quiet inner strength have guided his climb to political and financial success!
- The economy is not strong, and it’s not getting stronger!
- The reputation of the United States has been demolished over the last four years!
- George W. Bush is an idiot!
- George W. Bush is a horrible President!
NewMexiKen waited at a stoplight yesterday next to a VW GTI. In the back seat were two young ‘uns — boys about four and six. Neither was in a car seat. Neither had a seat belt on.
This offense shouldn’t be a traffic violation. It should be an arrest for child abuse.
was admitted to the Union as the 31st state on this date in 1850.
with Beth.
There is really only one reason I don’t own a gun…. I don’t want one in the house.
Why?
I would use it.
In case you’ve missed it, Heather has a new look and a new outlook.
The about page is interesting, too.
Nice photos of the White House staff, which shall remain nameless.
Link and idea via Wonkette.
As you may have heard, voting for John Kerry will cause us to be attacked by terrorists. Which is weird, because we keep hearing that Kerry is pro-terrorist. Vice President Cheney apparently knows better: “[I]f we make the wrong choice,” he said yesterday, “then the danger is that we’ll get hit again.” Fearing that he may have been too subtle, Cheney also warned that should Bush fail to be re-elected, the waters will rise, the seas will boil, blood shall rain down upon the land, and terrorists will visit upon the house of each individual Kerry voter and there shall be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cheney then brought his cloak across his face, laughed maniacally and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving his support staff to cast goat entrails to determine the fate of the world should the GOP lose the Senate.
The one, the only, Wonkette.
Yet another in a series of occasional household tips based on NewMexiKen’s personal experience:
When intending to keep the remaining coffee warm after pouring the first cup, it’s best to place the carafe back on the hot plate of the coffee maker, rather than on the counter.
As home prices reach (and in some locations pass) $200 per square foot, it’s nice to have a little perspective. How about $1,265 per square foot?
Telluride, Colorado. 1891 Victorian. Three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths. Kitchen w/dining. Mudroom and laundry. 1,225 sq. ft. of living space.
$1,550,000
And if you read Newsweek or Time you might want to take a look at the Current Electoral Vote Predictor for a reality check. (The Newsweek and Time polls have been pretty well discounted.)
were born on this date.
Jimmie Rodgers, considered the “Father of Country Music,” was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on September 8, 1897. He died from TB in 1933. Jimmie Rodgers was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and among the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Patsy Cline, the most popular female country singer in recording history, was born in Winchester, Virginia, on September 8, 1932. She died in a plane crash in 1963. Patsy Cline is an inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Elizabeth, born in 1533. The one Virginia is named after.
Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson), born in 1860. She lived until 1961, but only started painting at age 76.
David Packard, born in 1912. The “P” in HP.
Buddy Holly, born in 1936. Just 22 when the music died.
Gloria Gaynor, born in 1949. Still surviving.
Julie Kavner, born in 1951. NewMexiKen liked her best in Awakenings, but we all know her as the voice of Marge Simpson.
A Flash animation of the last meal request of several men executed in Texas. Strange, yet somehow mesmerizing.
Link via Makes Me Ralph.
From AP via The Mercury News — Ken Jennings Wins Again on Jeopardy.
Update September 8: The link above requires registration.
USA Today has a profile of Jennings; found at the Detroit News.
Kottke has the story on what happens to Jennings, if you want to know.
NewMexiKen is thinking this is a small, but determined group.
Photo taken along US 285 between Alamosa and La Jara, Colorado.
From the Hoosier Gazette:
A five-year study run by Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction proves what many in the scientific community have always suspected: having children significantly lowers the IQ of both male and female parents.
Researchers at the Kinsey Institute began their study in 1999 by giving 200 married couples who were planning on starting families within the next four years Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. By 2003, all but 27 of these couples had conceived.
Another IQ test was given to each set of parents successful in conceiving and birthing a baby six months after their child was born. These results were compared to the previous intelligence tests.
In every single one of the 173 cases, both parents scored at least twelve points lower on the second IQ test, with the majority of parents losing twenty or more IQ points.
was born on this date in 1757. Not yet 20, Lafayette was commissioned a major general in the American army by the Continental Congress. (It helped that he served without pay and funded his own troops.)
Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, served Washington loyally at Valley Forge and during an attempted cabal against the Commander-in-Chief, saved American troops and supplies in Rhode Island, was instrumental in obtaining vital French assistance from Louis XVI, and was on the field at Yorktown in 1781 when the British surrendered. By then Lafayette was 24.
“The last time people listened to a bush, they wandered for 40 years in the desert.”
— Michael Froomkin quoting a bumper sticker
Russian mother forced to chose between two children at the school in Beslan last week.
“They said, ‘Pack your things quickly, and take your babies with you,’ ” Dzandarova said.
Shortly after, she learned that she would have to choose between taking her son or her daughter.
Dzandarova had both Alan [2] and Alana [6] with her and made a snap decision to pass Alana to her 16-year-old sister-in-law. But the guerrillas saw through the ruse and refused to allow her to take the older child.
“Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said: ‘You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.’ I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said: ‘If you don’t go now, you don’t go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.’ ”
She couldn’t save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them and herself.
“I didn’t have time to think what I was doing,” she said. “I pressed Alan even stronger to myself, and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then.”
Article from Friday’s Los Angeles Times.
Link via Body and Soul, which has much, much more.
A year ago NewMexiKen wrote about —
The historian John Alexander Carroll.
The San Luis Valley and Great Sand Dunes National Monument.
An electrician survives drill through head.
Greatest and worst figures from history according to right and left wing bloggers.
And an encounter in 1998 with a grizzly bear.
was born on this date in 1847.
From the review at Amazon.com of T.J. Stiles’s Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War:
James is often grouped with famous frontier criminals like Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy, but he’s best understood as a Southerner who forged partisan alliances in postwar Missouri and promoted himself as a latter-day Robin Hood. Stiles describes James as “a foul-mouthed killer who hated as fiercely as anyone on the planet” and places his life in the context of “the struggle for–or rather, against–black freedom.” Stiles’s fundamental point about James is as startling as it is convincing: “In his political consciousness and close alliance with a propagandist and power broker, in his efforts to win media attention with his crimes … Jesse James was a forerunner of the modern terrorist.”
was born on this date in 1912. On his death in 1992, The New York Times described Cage as a “prolific and influential composer whose Minimalist works have long been a driving force in the world of music, dance and art.”
Cage’s most influential and famous piece is 4’33”. It consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The work was among National Public Radio’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.
The piece, premiered in 1952, directs someone to close the lid of a piano, set a stopwatch, and sit in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Musicians and critics alike initially thought the piece a joke. But its premiere pianist, who never played a note, calls it his most intense listening experience. “4:33” speaks to the nature of sound and the musical nature of silence.
Listen to the NPR report [Real Audio].
is 64 today.
NewMexiKen found out an ugly secret by looking at statistics for the site since September 1. On Thursday, when there were no new postings whatsoever, NewMexiKen had a record number of visits — nearly 20 percent better than any previous day.
