The New Economy Sized Brains!

The US Government: "One gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund."

( Matt Tabbai's story on the economic crisis. )

Private, voluntary testing found Salmonella in pistachios; obviously, the solution is more federal intervention!

( Reporting just sucks )

Nouriel Roubini has more hope than Paul Krugman!?

( File under color-me-surprised )

"At what point do people beat their state legislator to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

( You'll never guess what Erick Erickson is so mad about. )

Note to self: ethnic cleansing is a useful first step in nation-building

( Matt Steinglass on an incovenient truth. )

Glenn Beck: America on the Road to Facism

( Omaha asks, 'And why do people listen to this guy?' )

Sarah Palin: "There was no one on the McCain team I could find to hold hands with and pray."

( Just one more Sarah Palin moment )

The Corner: Obama Likes Being Unpopular

( Bizzaro-world has nothing on Republican thinking )

Furry? Or undercover cop?

One more thing about the young man with the tail that occurred to me. There was one other piece of data that I didn't think at the time was relevant but, upon thinking, may have been. He was holding a notebook, and embossed upon it was the phrase "Centralia Police Department."

It was an odd detail, but while it didn't seem to fit with the rest of package, it didn't not fit either, if that makes sense. I've known quite a lot of furries, and quite a few of them had odd tics and habits, and more than a few have a strange fascination with law enforcement, or guns, or both.

Then bldrnrpdx mentioned that maybe he was being hazed, or had lost a bet. I have another explanation. Centralia is a small town about 75 miles south of where I live, famous for Crazy Sam's billboard, a primitive way of getting your message across before the era of blogs. It's one of those towns you just pass through on your way between Seattle and Portland, lots of cows. I dismissed the notebook as another furry quirk.

But then it occurred to me: The state's biggest police academy, the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center, is in my home town. It's a few bus stops south of where I (and this other fellow) got off the bus, but it's still within walking distance if you're healthy. And while he got off the bus walking toward the Starbucks, which is in the other direction from the police academy, I think that an alternative explanation is this: he was studying to be an undercover cop, and learning how to deal with standing out.

Thinking on it, it makes more sense. The tail was new, a bright and shiny and freshly bought raccoon's, as was the t-shirt. It couldn't have been laundered more than few times, it still had the essential blackness and strong print of a new purchase. The rest of his clothes were well-worn, and his chinfull of post-Miami Vice stubble was weak and patchy.

If he was an undercover cop, he failed this round. Hmm, wonder if I should go to some upcoming local furry cons and see if I spot him again.

"More Brains!"

Creationists Win Big in Texas

We are now doomed. Creationists have successfully won a victory "over Darwinism," and have mandated the teaching of "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution. We've been over this before: the Discovery Institute's "weaknesses" amount to a marketing scandal: they're either deceits, deliberate misreadings, or outright distortions of the ongoing process of scientific discovery, and nothing in the current biological record indicates design or divine intervention.

Texas is one of the four biggest states in terms of textbook purchases. If they can force textbook manufacturers to water down the biological science standards or, worse, introduce their own fatuous claims into the record, our nation is all the worse for it.

Jenny McCarthy: The return of deadly diseases is necessary for my peace of mind.

Orac lovingly gives us another "The Stupid, It Burns" article in which Jenny McCarthy says that the vaccine regimen currently administered is "so unsafe" that she'd prefer children die of preventable diseases to... what?

The problem is that the evidence is clear: the vaccines she rails about do not cause autism. They aren't "unsafe." But she won't accept that.

That's why Jenny McCarthy has a body count.

Bill O'Reilly reaches for a bad analogy.

( What is it with these loons? )

Newt Gingrich: "The media is always happy to cover the anarchic and violent left."

( And he's right! )

OneNews: "Sexting" is child porn. Kids ought to be branded for life for exploiting themselves!

( Le sigh. )

Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck fight to keep the dollar as US Currency.

( Why can't they discuss something more substantive? )