If D-Day Had Been Reported On Today by William A. Mayer

Underlining the less than effective Allied attack, German casualties--most of them innocent and hapless conscripts--seem not to be as severe as would be imagined. A German minister who requested anonymity stated categorically that "the aggressors were being driven back into the sea amidst heavy casualties, the German people seek no wider war."

"The news couldn't be better," Adolph Hitler said when he was first informed of the D-Day assault earlier this afternoon.

"As long as they were in Britain we couldn't get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them."

"Baptists, the people who brought you baptism; The unsexiest wet t-shirt contest ever." -- Rob Cordry

For Tuba Boy

Page Six

June 26, 2004 -- AFTER we reported how "Trading Spaces" star Paige Davis got down and dirty at the Broadway Bares event at Roseland Ballroom last weekend, Davis tried to downplay her impromptu striptease. In a memo she posted on the Internet, Davis said: "I did collect some money in a pretend-stripper fashion from a crowd that was 99 percent gay men! No one 'mauled my breasts!' I kept all of my clothes on at all times. If any . . . fans are shocked or offended by the Post's coverage, I would have them consider the source — the Post is known for rumor and exaggeration." Well exaggerate this, Paige: you were caught on camera. Photos of her mid-strip are in this week's Star magazine, showing Davis in a sheer thong, legs open, with men's hands mauling her breasts. Who's lying, Paige?

 
I shit you not, there is a huge federally funded datase known as the matrix

Thousands of law enforcement bodies now use them; five states have linked their own records with a huge commercial database in a federally funded program known as Matrix.

Who does their PR?

The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued and various other tidbits about your life.

Science fiction? Hardly.

A growing number of police departments now have instant access via handheld wireless devices to vast commercial databases that contain details on just about anyone officers encounter on the beat.

How can anyone now argue against the fact that giving your name is self-incriminatory?

Senate backs special election

Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that the Democrats' fast-paced effort to eliminate his authority to appoint a US senator if John F. Kerry wins the presidency is a ''political gimmick' that denies voters a fair campaign.

The bill would set up a special election between 145 and 160 days after an incumbent formally declares his or her intention to resign. If Kerry were to win the presidency, a special election could be held in late March or early April 2005.

The current law allows the governor to appoint a person to serve until the 2006 election if Kerry were to vacate the office early next year.

''That's not an election; that's a sweetheart deal," Romney told reporters. ''It's a political gimmick. . . . It's robbing the citizens of the right to a free election."

A shorter election campaign could benefit two congressman, Edward J. Markey of Malden and Martin T. Meehan of Lowell, who are already amassing large war chests. Markey has well over $1 million, and Meehan's account has swelled to $2.3 million. A slightly longer campaign would give other congressmen with smaller accounts, Barney Frank of Newton and Stephen Lynch of South Boston, time to catch up.

Sheesh! Senator Barney F. Senator Barney Fr.

Nope, I just just can't type it.

Way to go Sen. Flipper.

Crooks for Kerry: Lefty group hires ex-cons to canvass

A left-wing group with ties to Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign is hiring convicted sex offenders and batterers to go door-to-door to register voters in several battleground states.

Officials with America Coming Together, a nonprofit group heavily pushing Kerry's campaign agenda, conceded last night they hire cons in some states but insist the public is in no danger.

I wonder if they wear brown shirts while they do this?

I don't know how this happens, but somehow I doubt that the public service C-Span is up for sale on Yahoo's shopping service.

 
Not to be missed, my little tribute to Seaman Apprentice George C. Schultz was found, and was commented upon, by his mother.

In his euology, his aunt said, "Although George did not die in defense of his ship, he was brave when it mattered and died a hero nonetheless."

Yes he did, maam, yes he did.

 
Tales From Retail

I had my dumbest customer long before working for Target, but this story is such a hit I thought I'd share it with you

I was an Assistant Manager at a Blockbuster Video in a very rich, very exclusive, very WASPy New York City suburb. Many celebrities lived in this town; some of my regulars included Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Martha Stewart. These people are all richer than God and expect to always get their way. The word 'no' is something they never expect to hear.

So I get called over to assist my employee with a customer. The customer wanted to order the old Disney movie Song of the South, the one with Uncle Remus, Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Bear, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah for sale. The problem is it is no longer in print, as my employee has informed her. So she asks me the same thing.

Customer: I want to order Song of the South to buy but she said I can't. (The customer looked at my employee like the poor girl is the biggest idiot on earth.)

Me: Yes, I'm sorry ma'am, but that movie is no longer being printed.

Customer: Well when will it be back in print?

Me: Normally Disney has a five to seven year moratorium on its films to generate a buzz about its rereleasal. However, due to concerns raised by African-American advocacy groups that Song of the South is degrading to African-Americans, Disney has stopped printing it permanently.

Customer: Oh. Well, when do you think they will start printing it again.

Me, sarcastically: Oh, probably when all Americans can put aside bigotry and prejudice that has been pervasive since this nation's founding, and judge a man not by the color of his skin by the worth of his character.

Customer: Oh....well.....when do you think that will be?

WTIC is playing excerpts of audio version of X-42 Bill Clinton's memoirs this week. Tuesday night's excerpt contained a whopping scientific error.

Clinton described a moon rock that he kept in the Oval Office as having been carbon-dated to be 3,500,000,000 ("three point five billion", he said) years old.

There's at least two things wrong with this.

1. Carbon dating only works on carbon based life forms that were alive, so unless der SlickMeister knows something about LGM's that he hasn't shared with us, there is no way that rock was carbon dated.
2. On a more technical note, carbon dating is only good to about 50,000 years ago, beyond which any Carbon-14 in the fossil will have decayed to undetectable levels.
   

Now, ol' slick probably meant to say that the rock had been dated, but what's the difference, I'm sure he'll have an excuse for this gaffe.

Of course, the only thing Clinton knows about dating is that it's best when Hillary can't see it and cannot find out about it, it's best done with young things, and it's just something you have to do before you finally get a little something-something.

Still, maybe if he'd squeezed out this turd a little sooner his editor(s) would have had a chance to catch mistakes like this.

UPDATE: I found the text excerpted on the publisher's website.

On his last night in the Oval Office

On my last night in the now-barren Oval Office, I thought of the glass case I had kept on the coffee table between the two couches, just a few feet away from the desk. It contained a rock Neil Armstrong had taken off the moon in 1969. The rock had been carbon-dated to be 3.6 billion years old. Whenever arguments in the Oval Office heated up beyond reason, I would interrupt and say, “You see that rock? It’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through. Let’s calm down and go back to work.” That moon rock gave me a whole different perspective in history and the proverbial “long run.” Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment. Whether I had made the most of mine was for others to judge.

I blew the 3.6 billion, calling it 3.5 billion, but otherwise I think I was pretty accurate.

 
Goofy ebay item of the week:A copy of Bill Clinton's "My LiesLife" bundled with a sink into which you can "finish yourself off."

 
I don't write about it much on this blog, but I own and run target-sucks.com, primarily because I didn't like the fact that target registered targetsucks.com and didn't do anything proactive with it, like turn it into its complaint desk.

So, anyway, after using it as my proto-blog for years, I finally caved into all the emaillers that asking for one I finally set up a Target Sucks bulletin board.

I didn't want it to become like what the original walmart-sucks website became, that is, I didn't want an exhaustive listing of who's screwing who in which store to advance their careers, nor did I want to know about some pissy hot wheels collector who doesn't like some particular toy manager for allowing precious cars' "bubble" to get dinged. In order to make this happen I disallowed all personally identifiable information as well as the use of any particular city name or store number.

One of my other (of very few) rules over there is that I don't allow any discussions about unionizing Target. A particularly intrepid poster asked me today why I have this policy, and here is my response.

Why no union discussions?

1) Unions have become incredibly self serving organizations.

2) Union organizers in the past have been incredibly rude to me due to my policy, so I have no desire to see my board used to further their agendas, nor do I wish to help enrich their already fat bank accounts.

3) Unions protect the incompetent at the expense of the truly hard working.

4) Unions make the economy less efficient by adding substantial transactions costs to the acquisition of labor. Further, unionization leads to a less efficient distribution of labor to fulfill the changing needs for labor in a vibrant economy.

5) Unions by and large are corrupt, and corrupting, organizations. The portrayal of union leadership that you see on The Sopranos is closer to reality than you might think.

6) Union organizers have threated physical violence against me for not allowing them on the (old form of) this bulletin board.

7) Unions strangle the job market for young people in order to protect entrenched older workers. Sometimes this happens to such a degree that a company is killed off as its workforce dies/retires in such a way that there is no one left to train replacements.

8 ) Unions (mostly, I have seen exceptions to this one) would rather see a company go down then to make reasonable concessions.

9) Unions (historically, anyway, this one might be changing) fight progress and lack the vision to allow/enable/pursue a new way of doing things.

10) Unions, in the end, are primarily a bunch of thugs looking to shake down workers and management without having to contribute productive work to the company.

11) Given the modern regulatory state, with both OSHA & state level worker's protection legislation, regulation & administrations, the safety aspects of unions have pretty much gone the way of the dodo.

Aside: The idea that public employees have been given the ability to orgainize unions has been one of the great undoings of this country.

The Instapundit always hold up truck drivers as his example of how everyday people are a lot smarter than many give them credit for. Well, the workers at Target Stores around the U.S. are my daily reminder that people in all sorts of jobs really know how to think.

A great open letter over on TFL describing just one of the ways Texas is different from the land of TV writers.

Here goes with the new google "Site-Flavored" search. Apparently this will let you search the web through a filter that favors things of interest to the authors of this website.

Cool, my "We'll Kick Your Ass" merchandise got a mention over at the Museum of Hoaxes.

Conn. Gov. Rowland to Resign.

From the department of "Who Knew?"

Apparently, getting cheesy hair restoration from a company you found on the internet not only restores hair, it makes photographs taken of you turn out properly exposed. Every time.

Went on a factory tour tonight of the Sikorsky Blackhawk/SeaHawk/NightHawk/FireHawk/HH-60L Medevac assembly line. It was a great tour. I'm writing up my observations and will post them soon.

Another blogger bites the dust. It would appear the Curmudgeonly & Skeptical has packed it in.

He will be missed.

 

Funny that L.A. took that tiny cross off of its seal, only to leave behind a golden cow.

Maybe it's a golden calf?

Fitting, if it is.

 

 

If I were Yahoo! I don't think I'd be bragging about upping the free email storage I offer people from 0.6% of gmail's capacity to just 10% of gmail's capacity.

Dear Yahoo! Mail User,

Thanks for using Yahoo! Mail. It's our goal to offer you an email experience that makes it easy and enjoyable to stay in touch. Periodically, we make service changes to enhance that experience for our users. As of June 15, 2004, you'll enjoy the following benefits:

    Increased storage capacity from your current level [6 MB] to 100MB.

 
So much for e-commerce moving "at the speed of light."

Back on June 2nd I bitched about how Friendly's took a half-pint out of each half-gallon container to make a new, smaller, more expensive package.

Nine days later a Friendly's employee wrote me this email:

Dear [Name Removed],

Thank you for your e-mail regarding our website.

Please be assured that we have forwarded your comments to the people responsible for such matters.

Thank you again for taking the time to bring this to our attention.

Sincerely,
[CSR's Name Removed]
Guest Service Representative

Strangely, the originally complained about page is still falsely claiming that Friendly's sells half gallons of ice cream, and I found another page on the website that claims Friendly's sells 56 varieties of half gallons

I think Friendly's could use a new slogan. Here's a few suggestions to get the ball rolling.

Friendly's -- A few ounces short of a half gallon.

or maybe

Friendly's -- A half-pint short of a half gallon.

UPDATE As of March 15, 2005, Friendly's now uses the terms "large container" and "56 fl oz" instead of half gallon.

"Large container." A bit less of a lie for a bit less ice cream.

For the record, I too decline to cross party lines in order to run as Senator Kerry's VP candidate.

And now for something completely different.

EBay, the world’s largest online garage sale, is no stranger to political bickering.

Former President Bill Clinton, in 2002, took Senator Kennedy to small claims court over failure to ship a collection of adult themed DVDs. The suit was settled out of court and after a fifth of scotch.

Sara Lee Corp., the largest U.S. underwear maker
I didn't know what a trend edible underwear was!

OK, so my sense of humor is juvenile, and I had no clue that Sara Lee's largest unit is Apparel (including the Hanes, Playtex and L'eggs brands), but this is a funny story if you read into it.

Other interesting facts from the story...
"Sara Lee introduced the Wonderbra in 1993"
"Sara Lee's biggest brands including Playtex's Thank Goodness It Fits half-size bras"
I guess they support both ends of the market?

"Sara Lee has lost apparel sales since 2001 as women buy less hosiery" (what are women wearing if they aren't buying underwear?) "and rivals, including Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Fruit of the Loom" (Yeah, don't forget that Berkshire Hathaway started as a shirt company.)

"non-clothing businesses include cakes and breads, Jimmy Dean sausages and Kiwi shoe polish"
Got the carbs and Atkins markets covered, good job.

Tying in nicely with my earlier post about banning muslims from trains: Damn towel heads.

More window dressing in lieu of actual security: The MTA has proposed banning photography from the NYC subways.

What next, are they going to ban sketch books, canvas, crayons, pencils & pens because someone might notate things about the subway? Why not just ban memory? How about a ban on bad subway poetry?

Banning photography?
Yeah, that'll help.
I feel safer already.
Less free, but safer.
Wait a minute
I was wrong
I don't feel less free, but safer.
Nope, I just feel less free.
Oh, by the way,
Put the charges on the third column from the left.

Why not do something that'll really help weed out the terrorists, ban Korans, prayer mats, all muslim head gear, speaking arabic & maybe not allowing that smelly crap they eat on the trains.

Asides:

1) Train Postering

2) Luckily Mayor Bloomberg doesn't support banning subway photography, unless the photographer is smoking, in which case the photog should be flogged.

3) Surprise, New Jersey sucks on this issue.

4)Always schizophrenic, the MTA is currently sponsoring an exhibit celebrating subway photography.

I'm late covering this issue by a few weeks. Just google it to see the general reaction.

French looking two faced Senator John Kerry is actively hiding his fluency in French.
Click on either face for the story.

Zut Alors!

Shut up you Frenchy

Some guy trying to capitalize on the whole my woman done me wrong so I'm selling her stuff on ebay thing. This time -- google gmail account invitations from an account for which he pilfered the password.

Remembrances of Reagan:

• Rep. James E. Rogan
• Peter Robinson
• Michelle Malkin

My brother-in-law passed on this sad story about the needless death of Seaman Apprentice George C. Schultz, who died after injuries received in the line of duty.

He expressed concern, the chief said, that he may have lost the duty keys in the fall and that he was causing a scene. He also said he was upset that he was going to miss muster aboard his ship, the cruiser Monterey.

After receiving third degree burns over 80% of his body, Seaman Apprentice Schultz still had the wherewithal to be worried that he might not be able to do his duties properly. What a waste that he died simply because a known danger went unrepaired & unmarked.

Being in the military is dangerous, even if you're not pulling a trigger on the front lines.

Though this story about a South African drunk donkey cart driver fined for drunk donkey driving sounds funny, I wonder if anyone was drinking when Two Killed in Donkey Cart.

David Hasselhoff Arrested
But KITT was driving!

More Vietnamese anti-Internet asshattery.

HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam has ordered local governments nationwide to closely monitor Internet use and enforce regulations aimed at cracking down on "bad information" sent or read on the Web, an official said Tuesday.

The move comes after the communist country sentenced several dissidents to long prison terms over the past two years for using the Internet to criticize the government and promote democracy.
...
Under the new regulations, part of government policy announced in March, Internet cafe owners can be fined or jailed for allowing clients to download or send "bad information" on the Internet, the official said.

That includes allowing access to sites ranging from those deemed pornographic to those accused of disseminating state secrets.

Here's a Vietnamese state secret: Vietnam sucks ass. Maybe America's next "Vietnam" should be Vietnam.

Spoons has decided to make his website dark to google. I offered the following comment over there on this form of online self-immolation.

Several problem with doing this:

1. People will also lose the ability to use google to do domain specific searches on your blog using the site:thespoonsexperience.com handle. Often this is much more useful than any built in search engine.
    
2. Getting back in after you pull a website, then change your mind, can take google a very long time. Don't ask me why I know this.
    
3. Even if the perceived utility is low, unless the additional traffic is somehow pushing you into bandwidth overage charges, your marginal cost to support the extra hits is zero.

D'oh!

 
Someone from Ithaca was offended, imagine that, by a column.

Dr. Mike S. Adams response lets the facts speak for themselves.

[To be fair, here is a list of the department's entire faculty.]

Seems I was a bit behind the times on the whole Downsizing ice cream trend.

John Gifford, who with his brother owns Gifford's Dairy Inc. of Skowhegan, Maine, says what his bigger national competitors are doing is deceptive. He said Gifford's Famous Ice Cream won't be downsizing to the 56-ounce containers, which he said the packaging industry has dubbed "cheater cups" because they're designed to fool consumers.

Edgar Dworsky, editor of Consumerworld.org, said it's one thing for companies to tinker with odd-sized products, but he thinks it's unfair to downsize what has become a standard-size package. ''When a half-gallon becomes 56 ounces, what's next?" he asked. ''A carton of eggs with only 11 eggs? Or does a pound all of a sudden become 14 ounces?"

Tim Hopkins, vice president and general manager of the retail division at Friendly's in Wilbraham, said the company was faced with a choice: either raise its price or use cheaper ingredients. Hopkins said the company decided to maintain quality and join Edy's in raising the price by cutting the size of the container.

This is crap. They didn't raise the price of the retail unit, they cheated consumers by holding the price & repackaging less product into a deceiving container, designed with two of its three dimensions identical to pre-decontenting.

Asked if the new package was designed to make consumers think there had been no change, he said: ''It's not intentionally misleading."

More Bullshit. The packaging change was done so that the new container looks like the same old container.

Heck, Friendly's webiste still brags about "Instant Variety in each sundae half gallon!"

 

What the hell is this all about?

Ashok Das, a young supporter of Laloo Prasad Yadav, India's Railway Minister and leader of Rashtriya Janata Dal, a regional political party, displays Yadav's name painted all over his body in the eastern Indian city of Patna May 28, 2004. Das claims he has written Yadav's name one hundred thousand times on his body. REUTERS/Ravi.S.Sahani

 

Its proudest Alum? Lionel Hutz.