Wah, Wah your way...to the nearest EXIT!

Finally, an uplifting news story. It's not enough that parents get tax credits and whatever else it is that they want for their snot-nosed-swine-flu-incubating little brats. So if you needed one more reason to like Southwest Airlines, this may just be it.

And on a more serious (and slightly unrelated) note, the topic of children who rape. Call me cynical (and people often do), but a poster and a workshop condemning rape aren't going to cut it. That's all.

Not Homoween Anymore

Dan Savage on the heterozation of Halloween, and why that's not a bad thing.

I have to admit I find using Halloween as an excuse to dress like a whore to be somewhat aggravating, but if you dress up as a dead whore, then that's ok.

Change

In what is shaping up to be a nice trend, President Obama reversed another stupid policy from the 80s. Since 1987, thanks largely to Jesse Helm's homophobia, the United States did not allow people with HIV to enter the country. Early next year, the HIV Travel Ban will be lifted, further doing away with the stigma associated with that disease.

Classy

Liz Cheney is a terrible human being.

Today's Funny But Not Funny Headline

Canadian folk singer killed by coyotes, park officials say.

More Stupid Poll Questions

This time courtesy of a Fox News poll. They are asking who is more determined to win the war in Afghanistan: President Obama or al-Qaeda/the Taliban? First of all, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are now two very distinct entities. Some in the Taliban might be sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but many are just fighting because they oppose the Karzai government. Furthermore, the question should be whether the American people want to win the war more than al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and well, they're kind of all over the place.

No such question was asked in their poll during the previous eight years of the war. I have no idea why that could be...

Good ol' C.I.A.

An already Vietnam-esque situation gets even...Vietnam...ier with the revelation that the Afghan President's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is on the payroll of the C.I.A. President Karzai's brother is widely believed to be heavily involved Afghanistan's booming opium trade. I can imagine this would piss off the military who are trying to halt opium production because it funds the Taliban. Perhaps we're seeing some tension between the intelligence community and the military playing itself out on the pages of The New York Times.

Governmental Incompetence: Cash for Clunkers

I can understand sticking by your ideological guns and all, but I don't understand anyone defending the cash for clunkers program.

Everyone can recall that when it was first rolled out, it ran out of money much faster than Congress predicted. Then American car makers didn't receive the brunt of the spending (though with Toyota's being made in San Antonio and Ford being made in Mexico, that may be a moot point). And, then there were the dealerships that "sold" the cars but didn't get paid by the government like promised and were put into financial dire straits of sorts and STILL haven't been paid months later.

And now, news is emerging that, despite the astronomical number being claimed on the government run website Cars.gov of 700,000 cars being sold due to the program, it probably instigated more like 125,000 sales (that's a 560% overstatement), not to mention that for each of those stimulus-y purchases, it cost we the American tax payer $24,000 for each car - that's over 5 times the max $4,500 government rebates.

So, the government spends 3 Billion dollars so that 125,000 new cars can be sold, claims it's a whopping success despite its terrible execution which lead to the program being scrapped, then totally, purposefully, misrepresents the numbers on their .gov website.

This coming on the heels of what I posted to as "bad" earlier, i.e. the news that the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus was actually overstated by several thousand.

These are the people who refer to a bankrupt program, medicare, as an indicator of success. And now they want to run healthcare? My God...the incompetence of politicians is unbelievable

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Good.

Bad.

Ugly.

Ayers-Heads

Some people still believe Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams From My Father. Luckily for us they write HILARIOUS, detailed articles articulating their reasoning for our amusement.

I hope no one finds out Stokely Carmichael wrote personal statement for law school admission before he died.