We Don't Believe It

There's a story making the rounds that at a recent dinner attended by all sorts of big-wigs, Senior Adviser to the President Valerie Jarrett (Stanford '78) mistook a multi-starred General for a waiter, and gave him her drink order.  Which he filled.

Did Anyone Notice?

It seems to have escaped everyone's attention that the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize just held an official state dinner to honor the jailer of the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, almost everyone.

Can you say "fierce moral urgency?"

"Women Laughing Alone With Salad"

Creepy.  Very, very creepy.

Four Turns - 21 Seconds

O. J. Simpson, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and ACORN

I think maybe we're not being fair to O.J. After all, his present incarceration probably interferes with his oft-repeated quest to find the real killer. ACORN, on the other hand, is led by not-yet-jailed folk, who are similarly committed to rooting out a few bad apples. So as an independent investigator, who have they chosen? Ken Starr? Rudy Giuliani? Why no, they've not.

Emily Yoffe, at XXfactor, observes:

Scott Harshbarger, the former Massachusetts attorney general and head of Common Cause, has been appointed by ACORN to investigate lapses in the organization that lead to its recent scandals. Harshbarger was responsible for one of the most outrageous "Satanic ritual abuse" prosecutions when he was AG, sending three innocent members of the Amirault family to jail. He has never repudiated the prosecution. It's sickening that someone who so abused his power would be appointed to investigate or reform anything. (I also see that Harshbarger was a big John Edwards' supporter, so his ability as a judge of character remains atrocious.)

Gilding the Lily

THIS is stupid. Just sayin'.

Breaking News

"International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves
U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising"

Developing . . . .

And Speaking of Creepy . . . .

. . . on so many levels:

We Don't Know Either

We have no idea what THIS is all about, or if it's actually "about" anything at all. We do know that there have been times when the inside of our head has looked a lot like this, but somehow that doesn't actually help very much.

Two Places

In the first place: We are filled with awe.

In the second place: The guy (and you know it was a guy) who is responsible does not date a whole lot. Let's just leave it at that, eh?

Google Maps -- Street View

California, of course: One picture.

G&S Sins Frequently

As you may have heard (on these pages? probably not), the Vatican released their revised, hip, with-it, au courant list of deadly sins. A refresher on the originals from the Catechism:

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth

Basic. We know them. Hell, even Brad Pitt knows them.

The updated list (per the BBC):

Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

Uhhh... what? You lost us on "morally debatable experiments," Ratzy. In the tradition of "stuff that really gets our goat," G&S (with some help from its cynical, godless, hedonistic research staff) offers some additional suggestions. After all, why stop at 7?

Littering
Line-cutting
Calling skim milk "non-fat"
Stopping when you get to the top of an escalator
Bouncing a check on purpose
One-sided printing
Exiting out the front door of the bus when there are people waiting to get on
Unsecured wi-fi
Using Starbucks corporate lingo when you order their drinks
Rooting for the Yankees
Failing to observe daylight saving time for no good contemporary reason
Wearing one of those bluetooth earpiece thingies all the time
Bottling domestic beer without a twist-off cap
Doing the macarena two beats off so that you switch in the middle of the measure
Doing the macarena at all
Amtrak
Keeping your .edu email address
Analog clocks on car dashboards
Gentrification
"Now That's What I Call Music!"
Saying "begs the question" when you mean "raises the question"
Giving raisins to trick-or-treaters
Red Bull
Calling everybody 'bro'
"Irregardless"
Insisting dollar coins are going to happen this time around
American Idol
Engagement party registries
Viral videos
Lower back tattoos
Citing Wikipedia

Your tireless editors continue to take suggestions.

Today in Total Bullshit

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said that the worst of the credit crunch may have passed.

In Which Your Two Contributors Have An Infantile Online Discussion Regarding Nothing Important

Gentleman Farmer: Wanna take a walk with me?
Hired Hand: don't be gay.
Gentleman Farmer: That was very insensative. [sic]
Hired Hand: yes. now go.
Gentleman Farmer: I'm offended on behalf of my gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, multigendered, and not gendered compatriots.
Hired Hand: i'm impressed by your inclusiveness, and yet unconvinced.
Gentleman Farmer: I have only recently been enlightened as to the existence of the "non gendered." A colleague thinks it's like nouns, but they're neither masculine nor feminine.
Hired Hand: i'm sure you've extensively studied the difference between sex and gender.
Gentleman Farmer: I've been told that people have sex, while nouns have gender.
Hired Hand: gender being originally a grammatical notion. boy, do people have sex.
Gentleman Farmer: But it's not clear if they enjoy it. The nouns, that is.
Hired Hand: right. i'm a verbgin, myself.
Hired Hand: i practice adjstinence.
Gentleman Farmer: I'm happy for you.
Hired Hand: that's right - i refuse to be objectified. indirectly OR directly.
Gentleman Farmer: You're not making this up on the spot.
Hired Hand: i sure am.
Gentleman Farmer: Then you ought to write it all up and post it to G&S.
Hired Hand: some girl asked me to gerund her, but i wasn't ing the mood.

Silda Wall Spitzer

The Associated Press speculates that Eliot Spitzer may have spent as much as $80,000 to buy the company and sexual favors of high school dropouts, while the New York Post opines that he may have been sleeping with hookers for as long as a decade. We found this November 10, 2006, profile of Silda Wall Spitzer, his wife of 19 years, in The New York Times, as then-Governor-elect Spitzer prepared to take office as the scourge of Wall Street:

By her own admission, she is an ambivalent political spouse, a high-powered woman in her own right who surrendered certain personal goals for the demands of public life. She was formerly a rising corporate lawyer, first at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and then as in-house counsel for Chase Manhattan Bank, and she makes no bones about the satisfaction she found in the work force.

But as her husband plunged headlong into the political life, she decided to devote herself to their three daughters (now ages 12, 14 and 16) and to starting a philanthropic foundation. In a recent interview, she declared, “It’s not necessarily the way I thought I would be spending my time.”

[snip]

Mr. Spitzer’s circle of close advisers is small, and his wife is among those he trusts most on political matters, friends and aides say. "I can’t imagine he would do anything significant — from appointments he would make to major decisions on policy issues — without full consultation with her," said Lloyd Constantine, a former prosecutor who was the chairman of the transition committee in 1998 as Mr. Spitzer prepared to take office as New York attorney general.

Mr. Spitzer makes no bones about his wife’s influence. "At the end of every day, there’s the inevitable recounting of what I was doing and where we’re heading on different issues," he said. "She pushes me to defend my views where we disagree. If I can’t convince her, I know my thinking needs work."

He cited Ms. Wall Spitzer’s "deeply held sense of ethics" and her intellect as forming the bedrock of her judgment. "I rely on her very much as someone to talk to in order to resolve a tough issue," he added. "What length of sentence to ask for, how severe a fine should be. They come down to questions of what is just and fair."

Article HERE. Silda Wall is of an age to be my younger sister. Were it so, I and a couple of buddies would -- by now -- be in lockup. But Eliot would have tubes up his nose.

THIMK

Improv Everywhere

It's Got My Toes A-Tapping

The Boston Globe reports:

On the inside, a set of bathrooms at Emerson College looks like standard fare. On the outside, there are newfangled signs to ease the concerns of students who prefer not to signal that they are entering a men's or women's bathroom. The symbols are gender-neutral, a picture of a man and a woman. In response to students' pleas, Emerson has changed the signs that used to be aimed at a specific gender on 21 restrooms in campus buildings and one of the college's two dormitories.

Emerson's changes, made in preparation for the upcoming school year, mirror moves by Tufts University and the University of Vermont, part of a small but growing number of universities modifying policies and facilities on behalf of transgender students. Several colleges have amended nondiscrimination policies to include gender identity, but student groups recently began pursuing more concrete changes, including gender-neutral housing, locker rooms, and bathrooms.

"This will bring more equal opportunities to the students of Emerson," said Jessica Ganon, a junior at Emerson who campaigned with fellow students to get the school to provide the gender-neutral bathrooms. "I am much happier that this makes life easier for others. I felt sorry for those who felt unsure of where to go."

Now we're confused: confronted by that sign -- which sports a girl with legs splayed, a guy on a pogo stick wearing a kilt, and a kid in a wheelchair, what are we supposed to do? With how many of the three must one comply before admittance is appropriate? What sort of toe-tapping codes am I supposed to use?

Hat tip to Chris Johnson, who comments:

[N]ot everything in life has to be or should be an Important Political StatementTM©®, bro. Sis. Whatever. Not to go all Freudian on you or anything but sometimes relieving yourself is just relieving yourself.

This is, of course, not some isolated incident. But since only latent homosexual suppressed psychotics use the term "Homosexual Agenda," we most certainly won't.

The "Love that dare not speak its name" has become the perversion that can't shut the Hell up.

VIKING HORDE FOUND ON ENGLISH FARM

No, really!

Just Kill Me Now

Reuters reports:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A name chosen to represent the merger of two major U.S. brokerage watchdogs will be changed because the acronym may be considered offensive due to its similarity to an Arabic term.

The Securities Industry Regulatory Authority, or SIRA, was the name that had been announced to represent the combination of NASD and NYSE Regulation.

SIRA, which will be regulator for all securities brokers and dealers doing business with the public in the United States, is now considering the name Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.

When NASD chairman Mary Schapiro announced the name SIRA at a luncheon in June, she was not aware that it "could create confusion or be considered offensive because of its similarity to an Arabic term used to refer to the traditional biographies of Muhammad."

"Because of this feedback, we determined that it was appropriate to select the alternative name of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, for our new organization," she wrote in a note to NASD employees.

Our friends at Dhimmi Watch opine:

A sira, you see, is a biography of Muhammad. Like this one, although of course the term more properly refers to the ancient traditional biographies of the man that were written by pious Muslims. And so the word can't be used for something as unholy as a financial organization. That would offend the perpetually offended, you see.

[snip]

Create confusion? Really? Devout believers crowding the halls of the New York Stock Exchange, looking for classes on the life of the Prophet? Lawyers in Armani suits storming into mosques and arguing positions for or against the actions of this or that broker?

But there's trouble ahead:

The Religion of Perpetual Outrage has a lot of work ahead of it. After all, the acronym finder shows lots of other groups named SIRA: the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association, the Southern Indiana Realtors Association, the Solar Imaging Radio Array, the Shipping Industry Reform Authority, the Southeast Idaho Recreation Alliance, Southern Indiana Radiological Associates, the Stein Institute for Research on Aging, the Section 115 Reform Act, and, of course, Selective Imidazoline Receptor Agonists. And don't even get me started about the Memphis Educational Computer Connectivity Alliance or the Supportive Housing Initiative Act or the Southeastern Universities Research Association or the Academic Leadership Institute or the International Kirlian Research Association.

Do you suppose The Religion of Chronic Indignation knows about the International Society for Laser Application In Medicine?

If it Looks Like a Poodle, and if it . . . .

"One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves."

Yes. Well. We are speechless. Go read it for yourself, HERE.

Let us know how it all works out.