IT’S A GIRL!
Posted on Monday, June 20, 2005

Martina and John McBride, along with big sisters Delaney, 10, and Emma, 7, are delighted to announce the healthy arrival of the newest member of the McBride family. Ava Rose Kathleen McBride was born at 2:25pm on June 20, 2005 weighing 7lbs 7oz and 19.5″ long. Both mom and Ava are doing well.

Congratulations go out to one of the greatest singers in history and her family. Another girl, huh? Can you imagine if all of them get to singing like mom!? WOW!

Muslims rarely if ever address the issue of radicals among them. Usually it’s in the context of the following:

“Oh sure X is bad, but what he says is a perversion of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. The only reason more people don’t stand up to X is because Israel and the Great Satan have driven us to follow people like this. Remember, Islam is a religion of peace.”

Rarely a criticism of a muslim leader goes by without some criticism of someone else and some other organization or some other reason or some excuse. No muslim leader shall be criticized by muslims without the criticism being spread outside that narrow spectrum.

That being said, I am not a muslim, and have no problem calling the people who pervert MY religion the bastards that they are, and I also have no problem not saying they’re bastards because of someone else’s actions. Some people are just bastards.

Fred Phelps is a bastard. Aside from the fact that his site is Godhatesfags.com, which alone should raise even the most skeptical eyebrows, Phelps has singlehandedly made me hate him with his own press releases; hate being something I reserve for very few people.

I’ve been looking forward to Friday night for a few weeks now. For one night in my life, a living legend will be on the stage in front of me. Reverend Billy Graham is making his farewell tour of the United States, and for three nights this weekend, he will be in my neck of the woods. Anyone who thinks I would miss this for anything is off their rocker.

This is big news for our fair city. We don’t get “Billy Graham” type legends here very often. Oh sure the Pope’s been here and that was pretty awesome, but Christian evangelicals tend to gravitate toward states and cities that lean a little more red than New York City.

Graham is a good man. Despite numerous attempts to destroy him, he’s still a living legend and still loved by his followers. Obviously, that doesn’t sit well with the Phelps’ of the world, so they try desperately to paint him as a heretic and so on. Witness this tripe from his 1992 Frontpage Template Website.

Phelps and his crew are quite a bunch of bastards. From standing outside the Long Island school where there was a gay bashing with signs saying “God Hates Fags” to recent “events” where Phelps and his mindless drones praise God for IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) that kill our soldiers while protesting outside funerals for soldiers killed in Iraq.

This is no man of God, and no man of a Christian God.

I have no problem saying it unequivocally and unapologetically.

I’ll pray for his soul, though, because despite his pretention of being a man of the cloth, he’s going to need all the help he can get. I believe in Hell, Mr. Phelps, and I think you’re doing a marvelous job of paving your own road there.

Ironically enough, his site today quotes Hebrews 3:15.

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

I would advise Phelps to take into consideration the part about not hardening one’s heart.

Even when it came to her grave, Michael Schiavo had to make it about him him him…

Michael Schiavo, who said he promised his wife he would not keep her alive artificially and waged a long legal battle to remove her feeding tube, had the words “I kept my promise” inscribed on her bronze grave marker.

Get me to a vomitorium.

Source: Yahoo via Slobokan

Sirrios is a liar (shocked, aren’t you?)

And you just keep on thinking I am at UNC. At least what I am doing is working.

Sirrios has nothing to do with UNC (the University of North Carolina). Got that?

So here’s a comment email from Sirrios:

New comment on your post #1477 “Who cares if it’s not true, anyway?”

Author : Sirrios (IP: 152.19.5.31 , strand.med.unc.edu)
E-mail : no@mail.com
URI :
Whois : (link to arin querying that original IP)
Comment:
You are right. It is not amusing at all. It is downright corrupt. But hey, corruption and BushCo go hand in hand, so it is acceptable I guess.

Here’s a screenshot of it in case you want it…

So either he attends it, or he works at it.

Remember folks, you’re not anonymous on thissy here interweb and if you break my balls your info is out there for the world to see.

I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to be a leftist, you have to accept on faith everything but George W. Bush being an honest forthright man. Why else would this “newfound” information over the fact that everyone is basing their “Downing Street Memo” stories on a secondhand source without verification?

Now it gets even weirder. In a story on Rawstory, we find this fine piece of knowledge:

“I was given them last September while still on the [Daily] Telegraph,” Smith, who now works for the London Sunday Times, told RAW STORY. “I was given very strict orders from the lawyers as to how to handle them.”

“I first photocopied them to ensure they were on our paper and returned the originals, which were on government paper and therefore government property, to the source,” he added.

The Butler Committee, a UK commission looking into WMD, has quoted the documents and accepted their authenticity, along with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Smith said all originals were destroyed in order to both protect the source and the journalist alike.

“It was these photocopies that I worked on, destroying them shortly before we went to press on Sept 17, 2004,” he added. “Before we destroyed them the legal desk secretary typed the text up on an old fashioned typewriter.”

The copying and re-typing were necessary because markings on the originals might have identified his source, Smith said.

So first they get the documents, photocopy them and return them. Notice, they didn’t scan them with a computer or photograph them with a document camera. They photocopied them. Then, after they went to press, they destroyed the photocopies… BUT… Before they destroyed them, and this is where it gets really strange… They retyped them on an old-fashioned typewriter? Why?

That seems like odd behavior, doesn’t it?

And the funniest part is that Raw Story, with a straight face, posts a timeline, and bases them on the “retyped” versions that Smith came into posession of!

No one writing about this story has a first-hand copy of the source.

When I read the Yahoo story yesterday, I thought it was odd that he retyped the memos. Now it just gets even odder; why would you retype them on an old-fashioned typewriter, of all things? In order to accept the memos floating around as authentic, you’d have to suspend disbelief in a profound way on the authenticity of what everyone is holding in their hands.

Or, you could be a leftist and just presume that the lack of a formal denial is corroboration because in the leftist world, that’s how it works.

If I say something about you and you don’t deny it, it’s therefore true. Ignore the fact that the Government would then be forced to spend all day everyday issuing denials about mind control devices in microwaves and contact with space aliens.

Source: The Raw Story

For weeks we’ve heard about these “Downing Street Memos” and of course, the left is spinning it to say that the Bush Administration had already decided they were interested in going after Saddam before Operation Iraqi Freedom… And so on… And so on…

Let’s just ignore the fact that Saddam didn’t become a threat to the world on the day we first bombed Baghdad, and address this memo which so many on the left are now hanging their proverbial hats upon. Everyone is writing about them, and it’s safe to assume that someone has an original copy, right? I mean, surely, in all the myriads of Bush-bashing cliques in this country, someone, somewhere must’ve stored the original memo. I mean, we should be able to authenticate the memo somehow, right?

Well, buried in a Yahoo story from the AP that appeared yesterday, we find this interesting tidbit. Now, you have to keep in mind, this is not some fabrication of the vast-right-wing-conspiracy. This is the AP writing about the memos and their source:

The eight memos — all labeled “secret” or “confidential” — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

He what?

So, let’s understand this.

The memos were originally obtained by a person, who upon receiving them “retyped” them and then destroyed them. So…

Basically…

No one writing about them has seen the originals…

And no one writing about them can verify their authenticity because none of the ones being used are official copies…

But we’re meant to draw conclusions on the motives of Bush and Blair based on these admitted fabrications.

Well, alrighty then. Now that we have that straight… Anything new on the Little Miss Muffet story? I heard she had a spider problem.

Source: AP

Grandpa’s Birthday

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

-Mark Twain

We all think our dads know nothing when we’re younger, and we come to realize as we get older that they always knew more than we gave credit to them for.

Here’s to you Dad and Grandpa. Happy Father’s Day to the two men who always knew more than I ever thought they did.

Howard Dean wasn’t impressed with John Conyers’ meeting of the wackjobs or the literature they were handing out:

“As for any inferences that the United States went to war so Israel could ‘dominate’ the Middle East or that Israel was in any way behind the horrific September 11th attacks on America, let me say unequivocally that such statements are nothing but vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric,” Dean said.

“The inferences are destructive and counterproductive, and have taken away from the true purpose of the Judiciary Committee members’ meeting,” he said. “The entire Democratic Party remains committed to fighting against such bigotry.”

Well done, Dr. Dean.

Very well done.

I have to say, the TSA is really out-of-control stupid anytime someone dares question their competence. Take for instance this case of a woman who made an honest mistake:

For the third time this year, screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport failed to detect a passenger’s knife at a security checkpoint, prompting authorities to order the employees responsible to obtain remedial training, a federal security official said.

The latest lapse occurred at about 5:50 p.m. Monday when screeners at a Terminal C checkpoint failed to detect a 5-inch steak knife, said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

TSA officials only learned of the breach when the female passenger, who was about to board a Continental Airlines flight, cleared security and realized the knife was in her pocketbook, which also contained about $20 in change, Davis said.

So she realized she had it and returned it. For a moment, let’s just ignore the fact that the TSA thinks more training will solve people missing a five-inch steak knife in the screening process and keep reading. We haven’t gotten to the “we’re good and it’s never our fault” part:

“TSA recognizes that no single layer of security offers a 100 percent guarantee,” Davis said. “That’s why TSA has designed a multi-layered security system.”

Multi-layered? Were it not for the honesty of a passenger, all the layers in the world wouldn’t mean a damned thing. However, the moneyshot appears next:

“While we appreciate her willingness to return to the checkpoint and return the item, it still is totally unacceptable, nearly four years after 9/11, for a passenger to come to the airport and present themselves for screening with a 5-inch steak knife,” Davis said. “It’s critical that passengers know what’s included in the contents of their bag and come to the airport prepared to be screened.”

Got that? It’s not the morons at the screens that missed a five-inch steak knife who messed up. Oh no. It’s the woman who brought it in and voluntarily returned it. Someone should tell Mr. / Ms. Davis that the passenger was ready to be screened and the idiot doing it did a poor job of it. You have to admit… A steak knife of that size inside a purse should be pretty damned obvious to even the most “untrained” screenjockey.

Guess not.

I have all of her albums, and every one of them is a keeper. Some of the songs are so perfectly woven together that you sit in amazement as you listen to the words. This song below is one of them, and there’s an important lesson (subtly presented, yet obvious upon reflection) that we all (myself included) should do a better job of incorporating into our life:

Wide-Eyed

Having lives in Hollywood for about a year,
I was forced to come face to face
with many diverse people everyday.
I was surprised and embarrassed by how sheltered
my life had been until then…
Surrounding myself mostly with people who were like-minded,
and consequently, safe to know.
I really had to come to terms with my quickness to judge,
to laugh, to dismiss anyone who threatened my sense of normalcy.
And it made me wonder -
how would I have reacted to Jesus
if I’d met Him in Los Angeles?

When I met him on a sidewalk
He was preaching to a mailbox
Down on 16th Avenue
And he told me he was Jesus
Sent from Jupiter to free us
With a bottle of tequila and one shoe
He raged about repentance
He finished every sentence
With a promise that the end was close at hand
I didn’t even try to understand

He left me wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
I was tongue tied, drawn by my conclusions
So I turned and walked away
And laughed at what he had to say
Then casually dismissed him as a fraud
I forgot he was created in the image of my God

When I met her in a bookstore
She was browsing on the first floor
Through a yoga magazine
And she told me in her past life
She was some plantation slave’s wife
She had to figure out what that might mean
She believes the healing powers of her crystals
Can bring balance and new purpose to her life
Sounds nice

She left me wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
I was tongue tied, drawn by my conclusions
So I turned and walked away
And laughed at what she had to say
Then casually dismissed her as a fraud
I forgot she was created in the image of my God

Not so long ago, a man from Galilee
Fed thousands with His bread and His theology
And the truth He spoke
Quickly became the joke
Of educated, self-inflated Pharisees like me

And they were wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
They were tongue tied, drawn by their conclusions
Would I have turned and walked away
And laughed at what He had to say
And casually dismissed Him as a fraud
Unaware that I was staring at the image of my God.

Definitely a lot to be learned in those lines.

Absolutely nothing.

I think in some ways, we have become somewhat complacent about our privacy and offer too much of it up without batting an eyelash. However, I also think some people have gone the exact polar opposite direction.

Take for instance, this story out of Lawrence Kansas, where an email was sent to students who were failing. Judging from the story, the person who sent out the email forgot to BCC the people they were writing to, thus releasing everyone’s email to each other, and letting the “cat out of the bag” on who didn’t make the cut.

An honest mistake, obviously. I mean, I doubt that anyone at the school decided to do this in order to embarass anyone. But don’t tell the flunkers that…

“This certainly will be a reminder to anybody who is ever pasting e-mail addresses into a message,” he said.

Cohen also said the incident had been reported to the Department of Education’s compliance office so it could determine if there was a violation of the federal law.

Jim Bradshaw, a Department of Education spokesman, said the federal agency would investigate any complaints it receives from students. He said universities violating the law could risk the loss of federal aid, but that the department almost always was able to work with them to ensure future mistakes aren’t made.

George, saying the mistake probably gave others an inaccurate picture of the type of student she is, is considering filing a complaint.

“The fact that I have a master’s degree and over 200 college credits and have never failed a course before, none of that is in the letter,” she said.

Are you kidding?

Bear in mind, this email was only a notification to people that they had failed a class, and that doing so had put their financial aid in jeopardy. It didn’t contain any personally identifying information aside from an e-mail address. No financial data, income, actual grades, number of classes failed, or any other information.

Sometimes people make mistakes. I hardly think that the University sent out this e-mail with the intent to malign the people in it, but something tells me that them pondering complaints means they see a payday in their future in the form of a fat “you hurt me you bastard” lawsuit.

Source: Yahoo News

NYC Photobloggers 4 — Audience

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

I’d have to say that NYC Photobloggers 4 was a learning experience, the likes of which I haven’t had since I got a camera. There’s something to be said for sitting in a crowd of people who share the same interests and who are willing to take some free time to help you enjoy that interest.

Throughout the night, various people presented photos that were representative of their body of work. Pictures ran the range from great to average to mediocre, and there was even a presenter who decided that, at a NYC Photobloggers event, he wasn’t going to bother presenting any actual photos.

How quaint.

Of course, no gathering of artistic types in NYC would be complete without the left wing loons that permeate this city. From the nice older lady who sat next to me who bitched from 7:05 (when it started) through 8:45 (when it ended) about the lack of women participating in the presentation to one presenter (who my wacky neighbor loved) over and over telling us that he started his photoblog because he was depressed about the direction our country was going in after the 2004 elections, there was more than a fair share of left-wing silliness to be had.

Overall, however, it was all about the photos. Lots of people showed up, lots of knowledge gleaned, and overall something I really enjoyed. Seeing some of the work of these average every day non-professionals left me slackjawed.

My favorites from the night:

Favorite 1
Favorite 2
Favorite 3
Favorite 4
Favorite 5
Favorite 6
Favorite 7
Favorite 8
Favorite 9

Well done, guys, and I’ll see you all again next year!

Wisconsin May Ban Morning-After Pill

Jun 17, 11:22 AM (ET)

By RYAN J. FOLEY

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The Wisconsin Assembly approved a ban on the so-called morning-after pill on state college campuses, a restriction that would be the first in the nation if approved.

The vote in the lower chamber late Thursday sends the bill to the state Senate; both are controlled by Republicans. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle said he will veto the measure if it reaches his desk.

The legislation would prohibit University of Wisconsin System health centers from advertising, prescribing or dispensing emergency contraception - drugs that can block a pregnancy in the days after sex. The state university system has 161,000 students on 26 campuses.

Republican Rep. Daniel LeMahieu introduced the bill after a health clinic serving UW-Madison students published ads in campus newspapers inviting students to call for prescriptions for the drug to use on spring break.

“Are we going to change the lifestyle of every UW student? No,” LeMahieu said. “But we can tell the university that you are not going to condone it, you are not going to participate in it, and you are not going to use our tax dollars to do it.”

Amen to that, 100000000000%.

Source: My Way

Comments are back because a few of my most loyal readers have pointed out that they enjoyed them. However, I wasn’t about to go from no comments to the complete wild west crap we had here in the past few weeks. SO….

If you have something intelligent and on-topic to say, your comment is approved by me. If not, it will be moderated. Frequent misuse of my comments section will result in permanent banning from the site and I promise you you will never get a word in edgewise on this site ever again.

Now that we’ve gotten the niceties out of the way, let’s get the ball rolling.

Sorry for the tantrum, and now the show goes on.

City Hall Fountain — Closeup

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

Like water through the fountain, so are the days of our lives.

Balbulican, over at Stageleft.info, wrote one hell of a piece explaining to the world how he views blogs as a community, and so on. In an effort to address my shutting down of my comments section, he makes the following statement:

There are a lot of well written blogs out there without comments; butto be honest, I don’t read any of them. That kind of one-way editorial reflection I can get from newspapers. When I read blogs, I look for interaction.

Where to even begin with that comment.

Instead of ripping it apart with my teeth, I’ve decided to take a contrarian approach.

Despite Balbulican’s assertion that the cream rises to the top, well, frankly it just doesn’t. In a post completely unrelated to the topic he wanted to discuss, Sirrios decided to hijack a lighthearted (and albeit fun) thread about chicks (a favorite subject of normal men) and turn it in to a rightwing bashfest. He then changes his name to Pilot and continues the bashfest.

All told, the comment thread reached 20 comments with 3/4 of them not related to the post.

That’s interaction?

I’ve seen numerous blog comment sections degrade into the kind of idiotic rambling that Sirrios does. Many of them on Stageleft.info, where he’s tolerated because the authors agree with him. That’s fine. If Bal and Stageleft want to run their show that way, cool.

Me? I do expect more from my commenters, and I used to get it. Now I get Sirrios, Sam, Pilot, Steve Miklovic (also known as Rhazes), and numerous other left-wing trolls who do absolutely nothing to further any discussion here. Instead, they attack my readers and derail every single thread.

It’s not like it happens once in awhile. Every single thread written on this site has Sirrios’ stamp on it in one way or another.

I’m sorry, but Insignificant Thoughts does not exist so that Sirrios, who is too lazy, cheap, poor, or otherwise unmotivated to get off his cowardly pen-name-using-ass to start his own site has a place to expose his idiocy to the world.

If I want discussion, I’ll have it. If I want intelligent discussion, I’ll seek it out. But frankly, I have no interest in my site being a soapbox for someone else.

In a perfect world, people like Sirrios would know when a thread was just a light-hearted break or a fun shoot-the-shit kind of subject and just indulge in it and enjoy it. Instead he ruins it. Every single time, without fail, regardless of the subject, he takes a shit on this site.

If that’s what people want, fine. But Sirrios, Sam, and his bend of merry left-wing trolls, who apparently are all fine and dandy over on Stageleft.info, are not welcome here, and if I have to close the comments so I don’t have to read their idiocy anymore, then so be it.

Maybe it is a bit selfish of me, but I don’t care if anyone likes it or not. I don’t do this for one single person other than me. When I have to sift through comments and have to read 30 of them a day that are utterly pointless and off-topic, I get annoyed. If I have to kill comments altogether because some people make it a chore for me, then I’m okay with it.

If you don’t want to come back here because you can’t tell me how you feel about something I’ve written about, fine with me. I don’t do this for the hits. Never did, never will, so if it’s unpopular, I will somehow find a way to move on.

You’re more than welcome to stick around and keep reading. You’re also more than welcome to move on if you don’t like it.

I have no dog in this fight either way.

If you’re in the area, why don’t you drop by?

I’ve never seen so much stupidity piled into a forum that Sirrios wasn’t a part of.

Check out this moneyshot:

I AGREE WITH YOU WHOLE HEARTLY BUT WE ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING THAT GOD HAS TOLD US NOT DO WE ARE BECOMING LIKE THEM WE ARE LEADERS NOT FOLLWERS WHY ARE TAKING A BLACK SEAT TO OUR WHITE BROTHERS BECAUSE THEY SAY BUSH IS SO GODLY BUT WHY IS THE GODLY MAN KILLING PEOPLE WHY IS HE TRYING TO HELP GOD HE TOLD US NOT TO KILL SO HOW IS IT THAT OUR PEOPLE BELEVIE BUSH I WILL TELL YOU BECAUSE WE WERE TOLD TO VOTE FOR HIM IN OUR CHURCH BUT I DID NOT I DID NOT LIKE THE FACT THAT I WAS BEING TOLD WHO TO VOTE AND YES MY PASTOR IS WHITE BUT I AGREE WITH YOU

Wow. How, er, lucid…

Anyway, if you can tolerate ebonics, poor spelling, no grammatical ability, a complete lack of punctuation, and an utter overdose of stupidity, feel free to check out the entire thread.

Here’s a funny tidbit, from Neowin.net…

You’ve all seen the commercials, right? The preppy suburban soccermom strolls into an AOL boardroom meeting and jumps up on the table proclaiming how she wants security and free stuff and so on and the AOL executives go, “Okay.”

Or the other one (which is twenty five times more annoying) where the woman shows up at an AOL call center and says, “I heard AOL is protecting me from identity theft,” talks to the dork in charge, and then says, “I baked a cake…” and so on, culminating in some long-faced cubicle chick going, “I smell cake?”

Well, for all their work on protection of the plebes, and their numerous advertisements touting the launch of AOL 9.0 SE (Security Edition), Prolexic has determined that DT, Wanadoo, and AOL are the top three most virulent ISP’s. More interesting, however, is AOL’s global “rating,” where Prolexic claims that AOL is the worst ISP on a worldwide basis when it comes to harboring infected PC.

So the next time that commercial comes on, you can have a laugh because you know the truth about their silly little “We’re safe now! Really!” lines.

Neowin.net

By becoming a focus of evil for human rights groups, [Senator Mel] Martinez suggested, Guantanamo has become a recruiting tool for al-Qaida: “It’s become an icon for bad stories,” Martinez said, “and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio.” (I’ve been wondering the same thing about Mel Martinez.)

This is preposterous. NBC’s “The West Wing” is an icon for bad stories; Gitmo is a place where we keep an eye on evil, dangerous people who want to kill us.

Martinez was borrowing a point from Sen. Joe Biden — which is always a dangerous gambit because you never know who said it originally. The “Biden” version was: “I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo.”

So if people around the world believe that if they try to kill Americans they might go to a bad, scary place called Guantanamo, that will make them more likely to kill Americans? How about doing a cost-benefit ratio on that analysis?

Oh wait… If you’ve ever flown, this part is even better:

Without careful monitoring, interrogators aren’t even allowed to subject the detainees to temperature changes, unpleasant odors or sleep cycle disruptions. But on the bright side, they are allowed to play Christina Aguilera music and feed the savages the same food our soldiers eat rather than their usual orange-glazed chicken. That isn’t sarcasm; these are the rules.

No cold meals, sleep deprivation or uncomfortable positions? Obviously, what we need to do is get the U.S. Army to serve drinks on commercial airlines and get the airlines to start supervising the detainees in Guantanamo.

You go, Ann.