Take 2

This time I'm ripping off a real lawyer, tattoos and all. Ladies and gentlemen, Dodd Harris:

Seconds to his blessing of Command Post - the first place to go for late-breaking news anywhere in the world. Kudos to Michele, blog MVP.

A picture of a man being removed from divorce court. Your caption may differ - enter the contest!

Of Schrödinger's Politician John F'ing Kerry, who can hold all positions at once. His filthy-rich African-American wife's positions are interesting too.

But here's the corker - PeTA's proposal to amend the Constitution. These people walk among us...

Why bother? Just start at the top...

Sheesh, what's with this lawyer thing all of a sudden? I must be missing my daily fix of Glenn Reynolds.

Does John F. Kerry have the stamina it takes to be President?

Via Drudge, we have this from the NYTimes:

"Mr. Kerry arrived Wednesday night for a full week of rest and relaxation, and a rare bit of privacy with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, at their high-altitude retreat.
His getaway came at a particularly rough time for the senator, the expected Democratic presidential nominee. For more than a week, he has had to defend himself from an onslaught of attacks by President Bush and millions of dollars in negative advertising, while taking criticism for calling Republicans 'crooked' and 'lying' and claiming to have the support of leaders whom he has not named. Moreover, a New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that many Americans were beginning to see him as the kind of politician who says what he thinks people want to hear.
Several Democrats and Kerry aides said some of his missteps were a result of exhaustion. They and some of the senator's friends said the vacation could not have come too soon. 'He needed it about as badly as anybody could need it,' said Sam Grossman, a real estate developer who has skied with Ms. Heinz Kerry here for decades, and with Mr. Kerry for years. 'The best thing that can happen is he'll sleep, relax, eat some good food, and then, in a couple of days, he'll be back firing again.'"

The last few primaries have been a cakewalk, so he shouldn't have been too worn out from that. If he gets exhausted defending himself, then makes more mistakes due to exhaustion, then when will things get any better?

It's a long time until the election. Then if Kerry wins, he'll have to come up to speed as President, staff his executive branch, and look forward to a mofo of a payback from Republicans when it comes time for confirmations. And then, if my theory is correct, it'll get a lot worse...

So IMO that's one more reason not to vote for Kerry. It's not just his foreign policy that's weak.

Larry Elder: Answers for the 'swing voter'

Right here.

How to get a lawyer to do your work for free

It's easy. Just go to one of their blogs and link all their stuff. You get all that research for nothing. So today I ransacked Clayton Cramer's blog.

Imagine being a wrongfully imprisoned person receiving a bill for room and board?

What a jackass FDR must have been! The Manhattan Project, strategic bombing, suspension of publication of scientific publications, all because he was afraid Hitler would come up with nuclear weapons. And then after the war, it turned out that there weren't any such WMDs. And unlike the current situation, they hadn't even caught Hitler using WMDs. I guess FDR is lucky he didn't have to run against John Kerry.

This shows what might have happened if that near-miss asteroid actually hit.

Or how about self-inflicted hate crimes?

Maybe it'll be easier just to go to the top and scroll down.

UPDATE - In the comments Mr. Cramer assures me that he is not a lawyer. I expect to hear from his attorney any minute. But my idea stands, doggone it - just go see Stuart Buck or The Dodd or Hawspipe instead.

Twin twins

From the Houston Chronicle:

Jacob, Jacoby, Jason and Justin -- two sets of twins weighing from 2 pounds, 5 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces -- were delivered healthy by Caesarean section at the Woman's Hospital of Texas.

Good luck. The article offered a prediction that it would take as many as 10-15000 diapers that first year.

Why did the Jews stay in Europe in the 30's?

This woman attempts to explain. She's a Jewish woman who has lived in France in 1972, and now fears that she must leave.

From Moe Freedman at Occam's Toothbrush.

Morality from the heart?

I'm agnostic. Dennis Prager is not. But we can agree on this.

Bernadette, Rhonda and Jacquelyn

Anybody here, seen those three names lately? Do you wonder where they've gone? Do pop songs have a big influence on girls' names?

I'm guessing that there are a lot of 39 year old Rhondas out there. Why? Because in 1965 the Beach Boys had a big hit with "Help Me, Rhonda". (Who was Rhonda, anyway? I've been scrounging on the web and haven't found any clues yet. Or was it just a name chosen at random?)

If her name is "Bernadette", I'm guessing she's probably around 37, because that's when the 4 Tops had their big hit. Along the way there has also been a novel "The Song of Bernadette" and the Irish woman Bernadette Devlin, so they may confound the data.

And then there are other pop culture figures - how about Jackie Kennedy? I'm guessing that about any Jacquelyn you meet is pushing 40...

Alright, in the name of science I simply must know if these things have any influence. So, from the top 1000 names lists from the Social Security Administration we have the following name frequencies by decade:

1940 Rhonda 340
Jacquelyn 206
Bernadette 240

1950 Ronda 345 (Rhonda did not show)
Jacquelyn 218
Bernadette 271

1960 Rhonda 46 (and Ronda was 218)
Jacquelyn 266
Bernadette 287

1970 Rhonda 92 (and Ronda was 348)
Jacquelyn 340
Bernadette 426

1980 Rhonda 303 (Ronda was N/S)
Jacquelyn N/S
Bernadette 555

1990 Rhonda 853
Jacquelyn 271
Bernadette 891

N/S=No show - not in the listing.

Hmm. Rhonda/Ronda spiked bigtime in the 60's, stayed respectable until the 80's, then dropped like a rock in the 90's. Bernadette was actually falling and continued to fall after the 4 Tops (I wonder what this would look like if broken down by race). Jacquelyn was gone by the 80's but recovered in the 1990's (I'm guessing that that coincided with the death of Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis, but the data cannot distinguish this).

Is this scientific? Not particularly. I used ranks, not frequencies. I haven't worried about name variations except in the case of Rhonda, and the data I'm using has some significant limitations itself. And if you even asked, you're no fun anyway.

Little Audrey!

You don't remember her? You must not have watched the kids' shows available in central IL in the 60's. "The Captain Jinks Show" ("Say goodnight, Captain" "Goodnight, Captain") showed her, Herman and Katnip and various other obscurities regularly.

Toonopedia says she was basically a ripoff of Little Lulu. She even had the same voice performer, Mae Questel, who also did Betty Boop and Olive Oyl (good grief, couldn't Popeye do any better than that? He even had to fight Bluto for her. We had better in my old engineering school...).

Audrey was PC before there was PC:

The Harvey Comics version of Audrey has an interesting distinction. Audrey's friend, Tiny, was colored black ? that is, "colored" black, because the coloring was the only way in which his racial heritage was indicated. This makes Little Audrey, in all probability, the first racially integrated comic book series in which absolutely no stereotypes of any kind were used.

How to Stage a Controversy

Democrats would love to keep George W. Bush from reminding us of 9/11. He'd be held accountable for increased defense spending, physical security strictures, and a huge negative impact on our economy without being able to defend himself.

Imagine FDR in 1944. Americans are dying abroad by the thousands, taxes are sky high, various items are rationed, and the government is spending money like mad. Apparently today's Dems think it would have been out of line for him to remind us of Pearl Harbor lest we disrespect the dead and the feelings of the living.

Matthew Continetti describes how the Dems tried to put 9/11 out of bounds here.

Sissy nation?

Maybe.

Stolen from Betsy's Page