Chicks With Dicks

Five "female" athletes fail the gender tests at the Olympics. Otherwise known as the Eddie Murphy test, these 5 are officially out of the competition. Not to mention they look like shit in a bikini and shave more often than I do.

The Story

For more than a year, officials in Beijing have been designing a special laboratory to determine the sex of any athletes taking part in this year's Olympic games. "Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination," says Professor Tian Qinjie. The tests will not be conducted on every female athlete, but will be required if serious doubts have been raised about an individual competitor - invariably one competing in the women's events. "The aim is to protect fairness at the games while also protecting the rights of people with abnormal sexual development," he says.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events. Unsurprisingly, gender-determination tests were seen as degrading, with female competitors having to submit to humiliating and invasive physical examinations by a series of doctors. Later, the IOC decided to use a supposedly more sophisticated genetic test, based on chromosomes. Women usually have two X chromosomes; men an X and a Y chromosome. So, according to the rules of the test, only those athletes with two X chromosomes could be classed as women. However, many geneticists criticised the tests, saying that sex is not as simple as X and Y chromosomes and is not always simple to ascertain.

It is thought that around one in 1,000 babies are born with an "intersex" condition, the general term for people with chromosomal abnormalities. It may be physically obvious from birth - babies may have ambiguous reproductive organs, for instance - or it may remain unknown to people all their lives. At the Atlanta games in 1996, eight female athletes failed sex tests but were all cleared on appeal; seven were found to have an "intersex" condition. As a result, by the time of the Sydney games in 2000, the IOC had abolished universal sex testing but, as will happen in Beijing, some women still had to prove they really were women.

Transsexuals, who have had a sex change from male to female, can compete in women's events in the Olympics, as long they wait two years after the operation.

And how in the fuck to you appeal an intersex condition? You is or you aint!

These intersex individuals can be tough to spot, e.g.

Freedom From Fast Food

Two months ago we heard Obama say roughly the same thing, "we can't eat what we want..." Now, L.A. blocks fast-food outlets from opening in poor areas.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles City Council has approved a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a low-income area of the city.

The moratorium unanimously approved Tuesday is a bid to attract restaurants that offer healthier food choices to residents in a 32-square-mile area of South Los Angeles.

Councilwoman Jan Perry says residents at five public meetings expressed concern with the proliferation of fast-food outlets in the community plagued by above-average rates of obesity.

Nearly three-quarters of the restaurants in South L.A. are fast-food outlets. That's a higher percentage than other parts of the city but the restaurant industry says the moratorium won't help bring in alternatives.

Ineffectual bums. Somehow getting restaurants that serve arugula will end crime, decrease drug use and bring back jobs? Maybe forcing restaurants out of poor people's neighborhoods is not a good idea? Like ethanol mandates, this is a plan full of unintended consequences and another dodge by worthless politicians who have no clue what they are doing. Big government advocates always speak of freedom from rather than freedom to - and this is a classic example.

44 Year Old Woman Has 18th Child

This was almost a Darwin Award

Florida Woman Attacked by Fox, Then Shot By Husband

MORRISTON, Fla. — Authorities say a Levy County, Fla., man accidentally shot his wife while trying to hit a fox that attacked her.

The couple told deputies they spotted an animal in their yard Friday morning and went outside to see what it was.

The fox bit the woman on the left leg and wouldn't let go, so she told her husband to get a gun.

The man fired a .22-caliber rifle seven times, killing the animal but also hitting his wife in the lower right leg.

The woman was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The dead fox will be tested for rabies, but authorities say the results won't be available until next week.

Morning Wood

Angie Harmon

He ventured forth to bring light to the world

The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers

Classic Satire by Gerald Baker

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the

Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Why We Hate Free Speech and Our Children

Are we finally getting sick of "groups" calling for the firing of talk show hosts who say something controversial? Here's the latest.

Angry parents and activists were still waiting on Tuesday for Michael Savage to apologize for describing "99 percent" of autistic children as misdiagnosed "brats," with some groups calling on Talk Radio Network to fire the syndicated radio host.

Jim Ward, founder and president of ADA Watch, said in a statement on Monday:

"ADA Watch/NCDR calls on Talk Radio Network to fire Michael Savage...advocates across the nation are outraged over Savage's latest attack on people with disabilities.

Hey Jim. Boo fucking hoo. There is no "and the special classes shall be free from feeling offended" part of the constitution. Instead of calling for everyone's firing and shutting down free speech, use this as an opportunity to get your message out there.

"His despicable assault on children with autism...bla bla condemned as hateful and bigoted bla bla bla...disenfranchise people with disabilities bla bla bla."

What a bunch of brown shirted little fascist pricks. Assault on children? Give me a break. And how in the hell did Savage disenfranchise kids with autism? This guy apparently fucked up his cut and paste memo he was preparing for the 2008 general election.

Do these people lay awake at night with the thought that somewhere there might be somebody saying something they don't like?

Anyway, Savage's general point was that we are currently diagnosing something like 25% of our children with some kind of disability. Pretty soon, we will have an entire fucking nation of disabled children with a medical excuse for not becoming responsible adults. Of course, these same doctors are more than happy to throw psychotropics at 2 year olds and medicate an entire generation into a soma like trance - for a price.

Hopefully this whole thing leads to a discussion of why we are medicating so many of our children.

Here are some stats.

The increase in the number of prescriptions doctors write for treating ADHD is staggering. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the number of prescriptions written for methylphenidate has increased by a factor of five since 1991. About 80 percent of the 11 million prescriptions doctors write for that medication each year treat childhood ADHD, he said. In addition, production of Adderall and Dexedrine, also used to treat ADHD, has risen 2,000 percent in nine years.

The increasing use of stimulant medication to treat ADHD in the United States differs significantly from practices in the rest of the world, according to United Nations data, Woodworth said. The U.S. produces and consumes about 85 percent of the world's production of methylphenidate.

THIS is the real abuse of our children and was the point Savage was making. The pharmaceutical-advocate complex will attack and crush anybody who threatens their multi-billion dollar enterprise.

A Funny Thing Happened on July 15th

Bush removed the executive order banning offshore drilling. Look at how investors (Obama calls them speculators) have reacted. They now are starting to believe there is risk in owning oil futures. Oil is down almost 15% and we can only imagine how much more this would drop is congress would follow suit. I know the left would argue that oil development in the future can't help prices now. But what they don't understand is that markets in general and oil specifically are based on politics, psychology, data, and emotions - as well as how much oil is coming out of the ground today or tomorrow.

I got the chart from NYMEX. And you can too right here.

Morning Wood: Country Music People Will Accept Almost Anyone

Except Jessica Simpson. The folks in Kenosha were not buying what she was selling. She was booed when she walked on stage, even though she was sporting her Daisy Duke outfit.



OK, her first song wasn't very good. And she is a bit of a poseur. Admit it guys, you booed to impress your jealous girlfriend.

From the Kenosha News

"I just don't hear the country in her; I don't hear the twang. She's not good enough to be here," said Adam Matos, 21, from Arlington Heights, Ill.

One man summed her performance up in a single word.

"It's crap," said Ryan Sia, 28, from East Troy. "She doesn't belong here."

That's two words Kenosha, but whose counting.

Adam...Ryan. Until further notice, consider your mancards pulled.

Cat Fight: Meeeee-ow!

Danica Patrick and Milka Duno get into a "heated" argument about the way Duno talked on the phone and did her makeup while qualifying.

Seriously though. The whole thing looked like a publicity stunt and wasn't very exciting.

The hissing spat lasted about a minute, but the memories will last at least twice that long.

First Milke,



Danica:



The "fight."


Well, they got me to watch it. Look for NASCAR to have Jr. and Kyle in a hair pulling match next week.

Boy Suffering From Rare Disease Can Eat Only Grapes, Avocados, Onions

My kids would be down to grapes...

Jayden Ewing-VanderYacht has food allergies so severe they prevent him from eating almost all solid foods, the Bellingham Herald reported Thursday.

Jayden, 3, of Birch Bay, Wash., was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis at 14 months old and only can eat grapes, onions and avocados.

As the young boy watches his older siblings eat regular foods, Jayden must receive his nourishment from hypoallergenic formula that costs his parents more than $500 a month in insurance co-payments.

There is no cure for the non-fatal disease, but Jayden eventually may need a feeding tube, said his mother, Shaysee Ewing-VanderYacht, 26.

This is how the disease works: Jayden’s white blood cells think of solid foods as parasites and attack his body. At any given time, the boy's body can reject the foods he is able to eat.

The family is hoping to raise enough money so that Jayden can be treated at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, one of two hospitals in the country that treats severe food allergies, Ewing-VanderYacht said.

The American Physical Society Changes Stance on Global Climate Change

Read: Scientists want to act like scientists. Questioning hypotheses, testing new ideas and basically telling Al Gore and the IPCC to fuck off, errr it's time to have the courage to not do anything crazy (like S. 3036) and wait until we have the science right. In other words - look before you leap. Be sure to read Monckton's paper (at least abstract and conclusions below).

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

The shame everlasting for this organization is that they were led by the nose (and pocketbook) by non-scientist bureaucrats into a mini dark age of science.

The scientific method works.

Here is the landmark paper.

Climate Sensitivity ReconsideredEmail | Print

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley


Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

Radiative forcing ΔF;
The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
The feedback multiplier ƒ.
Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

The context

GLOBALLY-AVERAGED land and sea surface absolute temperature TS has not risen since 1998 (Hadley Center; US National Climatic Data Center; University of Alabama at Huntsville; etc.). For almost seven years, TS may even have fallen (Figure 1). There may be no new peak until 2015 (Keenlysideet al., 2008).

The models heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had not projected this multidecadal stasis in “global warming”; nor (until trained ex post facto) the fall in TS from 1940-1975; nor 50 years’ cooling in Antarctica (Doran et al., 2002) and the Arctic (Soon, 2005); nor the absence of ocean warming since 2003 (Lyman et al., 2006; Gouretski&Koltermann, 2007); nor the onset, duration, or intensity of the Madden-Julian intraseasonal oscillation, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the tropical stratosphere, El Nino/La Nina oscillations, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has recently transited from its warming to its cooling phase (oceanic oscillations which, on their own, may account for all of the observed warmings and coolings over the past half-century: Tsoniset al., 2007); nor the magnitude nor duration of multi-century events such as the Mediaeval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age; nor the cessation since 2000 of the previously-observed growth in atmospheric methane concentration (IPCC, 2007); nor the active 2004 hurricane season; nor the inactive subsequent seasons; nor the UK flooding of 2007 (the Met Office had forecast a summer of prolonged droughts only six weeks previously); nor the solar Grand Maximum of the past 70 years, during which the Sun was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar period in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Solankiet al., 2005); nor the consequent surface “global warming” on Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and even distant Pluto; nor the eerily- continuing 2006 solar minimum; nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~0.8 °C in TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost all of the observed warming of the 20th century.

Figure 1

Mean global surface temperature anomalies (°C), 2001-2008

Since the phase-transition in mean global surface temperature late in 2001, a pronounced downtrend has set in. In the cold winter of 2007/8, record sea-ice extents were observed at both Poles. The January-to-January fall in temperature from 2007-2008 was the greatest since global records began in 1880. Data sources: Hadley Center monthly combined land and sea surface temperature anomalies; University of Alabama at Huntsville Microwave Sounding Unit monthly lower-troposphere anomalies; Linear regressions – – – – – – –

An early projection of the trend in TS in response to “global warming” was that of Hansen (1988), amplifying Hansen (1984) on quantification of climate sensitivity. In 1988, Hansen showed Congress a graph projecting rapid increases in TS to 2020 through “global warming” (Fig. 2):

Figure 2

Global temperature projections and outturns, 1988-2020

Hansen (1988) projected that global temperature would stabilize (A) if global carbon dioxide concentration were controlled from 1988 and static from 2000: otherwise temperature would rise rapidly (B-C). IPCC (1990) agreed (D). However, these projections proved well above the National Climate Data Center’s outturn (E-F), which, in contrast to the Hadley Center and UAH records (Fig. 1), show a modest rise in temperature from 1998-2007. If McKitrick (2007) (G,H) is correct that temperature since 1980 has risen at only half of the observed rate, outturn tracks Hansen’s CO2 stabilization case (A), although emissions have risen rapidly since 1988.

To what extent, then, has humankind warmed the world, and how much warmer will the world become if the current rate of increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions continues? Estimating “climate sensitivity” – the magnitude of the change in TS after doubling CO2 concentration from the pre-industrial 278 parts per million to ~550 ppm – is the central question in the scientific debate about the climate. The official answer is given in IPCC (2007):

“It is very likely that anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases caused most of the observed increase in [TS] since the mid-20th century. … The equilibrium global average warming expected if carbon dioxide concentrations were to be sustained at 550 ppm is likely to be in the range 2-4.5 °C above pre-industrial values, with a best estimate of about 3 °C.”

Here as elsewhere the IPCC assigns a 90% confidence interval to “very likely”, rather than the customary 95% (two standard deviations). There is no good statistical basis for any such quantification, for the object to which it is applied is, in the formal sense, chaotic. The climate is “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” that defies long-run prediction of its future states (IPCC, 2001), unless the initial state of its millions of variables is known to a precision that is in practice unattainable, as Lorenz (1963; and see Giorgi, 2005) concluded in the celebrated paper that founded chaos theory –

.........

Conclusion

Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibilethe models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

Morning Wood: 'Beast' Man Jailed for Possessing 31,000 Animal Porn Images

A Tasmanian computer technician who considered himself a beast has been given a suspended jail sentence after being caught possessing bestiality images.

Rodney Scott McLagan, 48, of South Arm, today was sentenced after pleading guilty to possessing 31,000 illegal images, most involving human female sex acts with dogs, ponies, snakes, tigers and an octopus.

I usually draw the line with mammals. Turns out Rodney is a multitasker - he's into child porn as well.

Although 30 per cent of the total images involved child pornography, Hobart Supreme Court Justice David Porter today said only 20 per cent of those were actually viewed by McLagan.

"Your interests lie in the bestiality material," Justice Porter said in sentencing today.

McLagan's lawyer David Barclay told the court that his client had little or no interest in child pornography, and no relevant prior convictions.

Guys have tried that "my interests lie in the articles and not the naked women" line for years. I know my wife doesn't buy that shit.

Justice Porter said: "It also emerges from the report that you are particularly self-conscious about your teeth".

"One of the consequences of all of this in your case is that you equate yourself with a beast, reflecting the level of your self-esteem.

"It is that which motivated your accessing the material you did."

Sounds like Porter enjoyed pouring over the 31,000 images.

Time to clear the pallet.

McDonalds Gets Sued Again

A hearing-impaired woman filed a federal lawsuit against a local McDonald's, saying workers refused to let her order food at the drive-thru window.

Karen Tumeh of Lincoln says they insisted she either order at the electronic speaker along the drive-thru lane or come inside to order.

Tumeh wears a hearing aid but still cannot hear while using the drive-thru ordering box at fast-food restaurants, according to the lawsuit.

At least three times since September 2007 workers at a Lincoln McDonald's refused to let her place her order at the drive-thru window, Tumeh said.

In denying her service, McDonald's violated the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, she said. Tumeh's lawsuit seeks to force McDonald's to make accommodations for hearing-impaired people to order food in restaurant drive-thrus.

If making a lazy-ass American get out of their damn car gets you sued then we are in big trouble as a nation.

I can't wait until I can sue the NBA for not letting me play point guard for the Detroit Pistons. As soon as I figure out how to make my lack of leaping ability into a Federally protected disability I should be all set.

The part I don't get is why in the HELL do you wear hearing aid if you still can't hear.

Morning Wood: Olympic Special

Yes, you need a reason to watch olympic table tennis. And here it is.

Markets Work...if we let them

President Bush FINALLY recinded the Presidential Order that has prevented drilling on the US continental shelf. While critics (ie political hacks who like high oil prices) say it will take time for any new drilling to bring oil to market. People who understand markets know that prices reflect everything that is known at the time futures contracts are purchased.

So guess what happened.

Oil dropped by almost $10 a barrel in one day.

All while the congressional ban is still in place. If congress removes their ban we would see significant and immediate drop in oil and gas prices.

As I have asked before. Who wants lower gas prices?

Morning Wood: Granny Dearest

Family: Woman With 5 Dead Husbands Obsessed With Cash, Can't Be Trusted

Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy — and name herself the beneficiary.

"She told me that people of our stature have insurance policies on each other," he said. "That way, if something happens to you, you take care of me, and if something happens to me, I take care of you. It was all too suspicious. So I got out of there any way I could, as soon as I could."

As he and everyone else who came into Betty Neumar's orbit have learned, he apparently had good reason.

The 76-year-old Georgia woman sits in a North Carolina jail, accused of hiring a hit man to kill fourth husband Harold Gentry. Authorities are re-examining the deaths of her first child and four of the five men she married, including Gentry.

Here's a classic line.

No motive has been discussed, but records and interviews with relatives and police officials paint Neumar as a domineering matriarch consumed by money.

Naw, ya think???

To the outside world, family members said, she was Bee — a friendly woman who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity.

But Carstensen saw another side: fist fights at family functions, use of obscenities and belittling of relatives, how she would act "one way in public — especially church — and another behind closed doors."

Police in Ohio are looking into the death of Carstensen's stepfather, Neumar's son Gary Flynn, who was found shot to death in his apartment in November 1985. It was ruled a suicide, but his family has questions. A decision on whether to formally reopen the case is pending.

Didn't Lifetime already do this? Serial Grandma or something?

Sorry David, This Isn't Going Away

Second ref implicated in fixing scandal

NEW YORK — NBA referee Tim Donaghy made repeated phone calls to a second referee at the same time he provided inside information to professional gamblers during the course of the 2006-2007 season, according to court documents and phone records obtained by FOXNews.com. The records show Donaghy placed 134 calls to referee Scott Foster — more than the 126 calls Donaghy made to his bookie — between October 2006 and April 2007, the period during which he has confessed to either betting on games or passing on game information to gamblers. The majority of the phone calls lasted no more than two minutes and occurred prior to and after games Donaghy officiated and on which he admits wagering.

With the exception of 150 calls Donaghy placed to Thomas Martino, to whom he says he provided “picks” to win games and who was the middleman between the disgraced referee and a bookie named James Battista, the ex-ref phoned no one more than he called Foster. During this period, the most calls Donaghy made to any other referee were 13.

This is bad. Actually it's stunning. David Stern has been quoted as saying, "Donaghy was a rogue, isolated criminal acting on his own, without the cooperation of any other referees or league officials."

If the NBA had done it's investigation as thoroughly as they claimed, this phone call information would have been some of the first data they acquired. The league has fallen into WWE territory and letting this story leak out over several years is going to do nothing to rebuild credibility.

Not identifying Foster last summer means that Stern is a fraud with zero credibility and he needs to step down immediately.

What the Hell is Going On?

Miss USA falls on her ass for the second straight year at the Miss Universe pageant.

Miss USA, Crystle Stewart of Texas, tripped on the train of her bejeweled evening gown as she made her entrance. During the 2007 Miss Universe contest in Mexico City, Miss USA Rachel Smith also tumbled during the evening gown competition and became an unintended star on YouTube, where the video was shown over and over again.

First the video of Miss Smith. Way to go USA!



Now for Crystle Stewart.

Morning Wood: Olympic Special

Niki Gudex, Mountain Biker

Report: Putting food in gastanks leaves less food for stomachs

I wonder if this was really the plan to reduce our carbon footprint all along: starve the third world to death. From The Guardian UK

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Rapid demand growth AND biofuel mandates are the issue. Without mandates and subsidies in the EU and US, biofuels would be limited to geeks with no lives that spend time filtering McDonald's smelly grease traps for their modified Volkswagen Rabbit diesels.

Both McCain and Obama are in love with the mandates/subsidies because it makes the big AgBiz guys happy and shutting this down would mean losing a lot of states in midwest this fall.

Morning Wood: Olympic Special

Alison Stokke. Pole vaulter.

No Freaking Way...Riders Killed, Injured After Hitting Heads on Overpass While Standing on Bus' Open-Top Upper Deck

AP Story

WASHINGTON —District of Columbia police say one man was killed and another was critically injured Friday night when they stood up while riding on the open-topped upper deck of a bus and their heads struck a highway overpass.

The victims, both believed to be in their 20s, were heading to a Washington Nationals baseball game.

Yeah, they were heading to a game. Then they headed the overpass. I thought that only happened in cartoons.

Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda

The Times (UK) reports that American and Iraqi forces are putting the coup de grace on Al-Qaeda in Iraq as the terrorists are now holed up in the far northern part of the country.

Quote: "in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror."

Where is this in the American press? Forget presidential politics for 5 minutes, our guys have reversed a total mess after many of our gutless congressmen/women wrote this whole thing off as a lost cause 2 years ago.

I guess our media and political classes have too much invested in defeat to celebrate what our troops have accomplished.

10 Taliban Die From Premature Detonation

This story is from the AP, so note that Taliban terrorists planting roadside bombs are referred to as "militants" or "fighters."

Militants planting a roadside bomb detonated the device prematurely, killing 10 Taliban, said police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

The fact one bomb killed so many men appears to reflect the increased size of bombs Taliban fighters have been using in recent months. The bigger bombs — long used in Iraq but a fairly new phenomenon in Afghanistan...

No, the fact that so many men were killed reflects what giant morons they are...everybody knows Blockbuster Bombs don't go off unless you hit them "just right." That's a Bugs Bunny reference (see below). By the way, does this still qualify for the virgin thingy or is That All Folks?

Anyway, nice job AP; don't mention that these bigger bombs are mostly made in Iran and the success of the surge in Iraq is the reason they are showing up in Afghanistan.

Leap of Logic Science: The Green Scare Continues

Here's a gem from ABC News.


Plasma, LCDs blamed for accelerating global warming

What! My TV is killing the environment!

A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming.

Almost half of the televisions sold around the globe so far this year have been plasma or LCD TVs.

But this boom could be coming at a huge environmental cost.

The gas, widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997.

This is terrible. Call Harry Reid...TV's ARE MAKING US SICK!!!!!

Check that. Here's the little "sciencey" bit.

Levels of this gas in the atmosphere have not been measured, but scientists say it is a concern..

Huh? We have never measured the gas? But the headline. The headline was big, and in bold type...

PLASMA, LCD'S BLAMED FOR ACCELERATING GLOBAL WARMING

Now I'm no expert in journalism, but I am an environmental scientist and this looks like the latest installment of the Green Scare from our leftist press.

Where Do We Get Our Energy?

Energy. Abundant, affordable energy is the single biggest source of our standard of living. And a lack of that energy is the quickest way to push our lowest income residents into desperate straights. There is so little understanding out there regarding the massive scale of our electricity generating infrastructure that even our esteemed senators could make comments like those of Harry Reid (see below). The talk of renewables and green energy is in our future...distant future. But people alive right now will probably never see more than a few percent of their energy come from truly renewable sources.

Here is the breakdown of the sources of electricity in the United States:
Coal 49%
Natural Gas 20%
Nuclear 19%
Renewables 9%
Petroleum 2%

Hey, renewable looks pretty good at 9%. One problem. The environmental left doesn't like about 75% of our renewable electricity: hydroelectric dams. We will not be building any more of those dams mostly because of the endangered species act. So what does that leave us with.

Other renewables and % energy generated
Biomass 1.1%
Geothermal 0.3%
Wind 0.2%
Solar <0.01%

For comparison, let's look at France.

Nuclear 78%
Hydro 11%
Natural gas 4%
Coal 4%
Other fossil fuel 2%
Renewables 1.8%

If we got almost 80% of our electricity from nuclear, I guess we would have looked at Kyoto differently. France didn't buy into the "No Nuke" movement and now they are glad they did not listen to the environmentalists of the 1970's.

So, the leftist environmentalists worked feverishly to prevent non-carbon sources of electricity (hydroelectric and nuclear) in the US and now wants to add 7 trillion in carbon taxes to make the remaining sources prohibitively expensive.

Why not fix the mistakes of the 1970's with hydro and nuclear first?

A final irony. The biggest solar project in the US was scheduled to be constructed over the next 4 years. It has been blocked by a lawsuit from the environmental left. The issue: the Environmental Impact Statement. The just say no left is trying to ruin the economy by blocking all forms of feasible electricity, and at this point they look like they will have their way, just like the 1970's.