The Golden Gate

I will be away and incommunicado for 2 months. I do not expect Rich, my alleged co-blogger, to be posting. What that means to you is that I will be back January 2.

as it should be.

I am not officially sick to fucking death of this President. Jesus H fucking Christ on a Crutch!!!, as my dear old dad used to say.

from The Borowitz Report

October 24, 2005
U.S. FACING CRONY SHORTAGE

Not Enough Cronies to Fill Government Positions, President Warns

In a nationally televised speech last night, President George W. Bush warned the American people that the United States is facing a severe shortage of cronies and that if the crisis is not addressed there may not be enough cronies to fill key government positions.

“The shortage of cronies is a real and serious problem,” the president said in his speech from the Oval Office at the White House. “We ignore it at our peril.”

The president said that during his first five years in office he had hired so many cronies in top administration jobs that the demand for cronies had far outstripped the supply.

While some aides to the president have called for him to tap into the Strategic Crony Reserves, an old-boy network of Republican insiders warehoused in various think-tanks and lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., the president said that such a solution is “little more than a quick fix.”

“In order to avert a serious shortage going forward, we need to develop alternative sources of cronies,” Mr. Bush said.

Dr. Davis Logsdon, who has been studying the nation’s declining supply of cronies at the University of Minnesota’s Crony Research Institute, said that outsourcing some of the work normally performed by native-born cronies may be the solution to the crony shortage problem.

“The president may consider tapping into a plentiful supply of foreign cronies, specifically in the Saudi royal family,” he said.

Elsewhere, the White House revealed today that the actual nickname of Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby was not “Scooter” as originally reported, but “Leaky.”

Bush has named a new Fed Chief:

U.S. President George Bush has chosen one of his top economic advisers, Ben Bernanke, to succeed Alan Greenspan as head of the powerful Federal Reserve.

Bush announced the appointment at the White House Monday afternoon, flanked by Bernanke and Greenspan. His appointment must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, but a smooth confirmation hearing is expected.

Bernanke is currently the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and was long considered a favourite to replace Greenspan. He was a member of the Fed’s board of governors from August 2002 until this past June and is widely respected.

Thank God he’s not an old drinking buddy from Texas.

In his remarks at the White House Monday, Bernanke pledged no sudden change in Fed monetary policies.

“If I am confirmed to this position, my first priority will be to maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies established during the Greenspan years,” he said.

Bush praised Bernanke’s record, saying he “commands deep respect in the global financial community.” U.S. stock markets rallied when reports of Bernanke’s selection began circulating.

Apparently, Bernanke was one of the people to push for more openness around Fed policy and direction. We like that.

THE sex drug Viagra can cut the physical effects of stress on the heart by as much as 50 per cent, according to new research.

Normally used to treat impotence, it was found to be effective when treating simulated stress as a result of emotional problems or exercise, and the scientists behind the work said it could be developed as a treatment for heart patients.

Professor David Kass, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said his team’s research into sildenafil citrate, which is sold under the Viagra trade name, showed for the first time that it did have an effect on the human heart.

“We [previously] had no firm evidence as to whether or how this therapy might work in the human heart. Our latest research provides firm evidence this drug does indeed have an important impact on the heart,” he said.

“Sildenafil effectively puts a ‘brake’ on chemical stimulation of the heart. Knowing more about the effects of sildenafil on heart function will allow for safer evaluation of its use as a treatment for heart problems.”

In the study, reported in the journal Circulation yesterday, the scientists gave 35 healthy men and women with an average age of 30 a dose of an adrenaline-like chemical to simulate the effect of stress.

They experienced a 150 per cent increase in the force of their heart contractions.

“This stimulation is similar to the way the nervous system normally increases heart function when triggered by emotional or exercise stress, or in diseases such as heart failure,” Prof Kass said.

When the group received a second injection, the increase in heartbeat was reduced by 50 per cent among those also given Viagra.

Read the rest here.

Dave over at Logical Meme has a thorough post on this controversy which should not really be a controversy at all. It is a long post well worth reading. Here is one of my favorite passages:

Nor does ID entail rejection of evolutionary theory. Many a respectable philosopher and scientist have entertained the possibility that some form of higher intelligence might be the theoretical construct that best ‘explains’ how we perceive the reality we perceive and what might lie beyond it: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, C.S. Lewis, and contemporary philosophers such as Alvin Plantiga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Antony Flew.

At a minimum, ID and the basic philosophical position of deism (be it Gaia, Buddhism, extraterrestrial intelligence, God, or the theoretical construct of a humanly-unconceptualizable, advanced agency) serves to keep the precepts of reductionism (elsewhere referred to as ‘naturalism’ or ‘physicalism’) from becoming entrenched as dogma. There are plenty of well-founded and respectable philosophical reasons to problematize the assumptions of reductionism. The bizarre, counterintuitive “reality” at the quantum level, for instance, completely violates our “common sense” notions of causality and its accompanying reductionism, leading some scientist-philosophers such as David Bohm to posit a nonreductive ‘implicate order’ (a holistic concept) as the best theoretical explanation for the paradoxes that emerge from Bell’s Theorem.

Go read it all to understand both the ID thinking as well as the silly issue this lawsuit is actually about–4 paragraphs read aloud. Geez.

The CIA.

Oh Man. I read this story a couple of days ago, but Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom hits it out of the park on exposing the hearts and minds of the Moonbat Brigade. Funniest thing I have read in a long time. I wonder if the loony left gets just how badly out of touch with the reality of this enemy they are. Is it just Bush Derangement Syndrome? Or do they really think we can take Islamists and “hug ‘em and squeeze ‘em and call ‘em George”?

Forgive them, American, for they know not what they do. From Cox and Forkum:

DUBAI — Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab Al Zarqawi has said Islam permits the killing of “infidel” civilians, according to an audiotape broadcast on the Internet early Saturday.

“In Islam, making the difference is not based on civilians and military, but on the basis of Muslims and infidels,” said the voice attributed to the fugitive leader who has a 25-million-dollar price on his head.

“The Muslim’s blood cannot be spilled whatever his work or place, while spilling the blood of the infidel, whatever his work or place, is authorized if he is not trustworthy,” said the tape, whose veracity could not be determined.

The recording comes a day after US officials claimed to have seized a letter allegedly sent to Zarqawi by Al Qaeda number two Ayman Zawahiri, in which he raised concerns over the impact on Arab opinion of videotaped executions.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Islamist extremist, is Iraq’s most wanted man.

His Al Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers has claimed responsibility for some of the most gruesome attacks in Iraq, including the beheadings of foreign hostages and Iraqis.

An Islamic Guide to Beating your Wife

MADRID — An imam who wrote a book on how to beat your wife without leaving marks on her body has been ordered by a judge in Spain to study the country’s constitution.
    The judge told Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, imam of a mosque in the southern resort of Fuengirola, to spend six months studying three articles of the constitution and the universal declaration of human rights.
    Mr. Mustafa was sentenced to 15 months in jail and fined about $2,600 last year after being found guilty of inciting violence against women.
    A judge released him after 22 days in jail on the condition that he undertake a re-education course.
    The Spanish government has set up a commission to find ways for the Muslim community to regulate itself. A central recommendation is that imams speak Spanish and have a basic knowledge of human rights and Spanish law.
    In his book “Women in Islam,” published four years ago, Mr. Mustafa wrote that verbal warnings followed by a period of sexual inactivity could be used to discipline a disobedient wife.
    If that failed, he argued that, according to Islamic law, beatings could be judiciously administered.
    ”The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body,” he wrote.

Remember, multiculturalists, that when you tolerate all cultures, you are co-signing this behavior.