Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

Outstanding:

Last night, like every night, I made myself a martini. I filled a glass with several cubes of ice, poured a little extra dry vermouth over the cubes, shook the glass a few times, poured out the vermouth, filled the glass with gin and added three green olives – a drink with a marvelous piney aroma and appearance.

But it seems to me that the martini, a rock solid American institution, is dying, and this is a sad thing. Oh, there are martini bars out there, but they don’t serve real martinis; they are pink and blue. I find it hard to believe there is such a thing as a chocolate martini.

The martini is an honest drink, tasting exactly like what it is and nothing else. There are no fruit juices or chocolate in a martini, and it’s not served in a pineapple shell. The martini is a clear, clean, cold, pure and honest drink – especially for people with established values and a liking for purity, even in their vices.

I regret the passing of this friend from our culture, just as I regret knowing that I’ll never again see a pretty woman in nylons, garter belt and spiked heels. Now I read they want to do away with high heels and swimsuits in the Miss America Pageant. I suppose next it will be brown paper bags over heads and every contestant clothed in XXL potato sacks.

I want my grand daughters to have a shot at winning scholarships too, but if they look like a dump truck, they should change their appearance or enter a spelling bee.
Martinis, garter belts, bathing suits and high heels – why do good things pass away? Tonight I’m going to pour myself a martini, light up my pipe, sit in my backyard and give this matter a lot more thought.

Name Withheld
Oshkosh

Giuliani at Regent University yesterday:

Giuliani argued that Clinton treated the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack, calling it “a big mistake” that emboldened other strikes on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, in Kenya and Tanzania and later on the USS Cole while docked in Yemen in 2000. “The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani before the 9/11 Commission last year:

"The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don’t think he deserves it,” Giuliani said.

And yes, that is the Republican presidential candidate and former mayor of New York City (America’s Mayor!) in drag

This could get very interesting now…

President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House’s actual response can be found here at ThinkProgress.org.

It is that time of year again: time for the US Supreme Court to go into summer recess. That means we are seeing a flurry of rulings.  This one today caught my attention:

In a sweeping decision likely to affect school integration efforts nationwide, the Supreme Court on Thursday threw out programs from Louisville and Seattle that used students’ race as a factor in school placement to build diversity across a district.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision decrying racial considerations in public schools and was joined by his four fellow conservatives. The ruling prompted liberal justices to declare they feared for the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark that set the nation on the path of desegregation.

I am honestly no sure how I feel about this.  Should race be a consideration in school plans? I don’t know.

She is free!

In her first interview since being released from jail, Paris Hilton told CNN’s Larry King on Wednesday that she has never used drugs, isn’t a big drinker, and although she feels her incarceration was unwarranted, God had a reason for putting her there.

Being incarcerated, Hilton said, provided “time to get to know myself” and she has emerged from the jail cell with a determination to eliminate the bad elements, and bad friends, from her life. She also promised King, “I’m just going to follow all the laws."

Words of wisdom from Ms. Hilton:

"Don’t serve the time; let the time serve you,” Hilton said.

Interesting article:

Can you tell whether someone’s gay just by the way he or she walks?

I always figured guys in hot pants screaming “FABULOUS!” and large women in sensible shoes and flannel (lipstick lesbian porn stars aside) were gay.  Maybe I am looking at the wrong indicators.

A growing number of psychologists and geneticists are working on the “nature versus nurture” question—a question that’s set off a highly charged political debate about whether people choose to be gay, or whether gayness is determined by their DNA.

Hey everyone. I know you read this blog.  I have proof you read it.  LOL.  Seriously, I still need your help.  We seem to have stalled out on the hunger campaign and I need to fix that.  Please consider donating to this great and noble cause.  Kids should not have to go to bed hunger at night.  Your help is greatly appreciated.  You can donate here.

Interesting article in NYT (free registration req’d) on faith in American culture and politics from Senator Obama (D-IL):

Addressing the 50th anniversary convention of his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois said Saturday that the religious right had “hijacked” faith and divided the country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer.

But Mr. Obama said that religion has a rightful role to play in American politics, and he praised people of faith who he said are now using their influence to try to unite Americans against problems like poverty, AIDS, the health care crisis and the violence in Darfur.

Nice:

A Florida appeals court has upheld a lower court decision that denies requests for an independent source code audit of voting machines used by Florida’s 13th district, which suffered election irregularities in a highly controversial congressional race. The appeals court has chosen to support a lower court decision which asserts that forcing voting machine maker Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide source code access to independent security auditors would amount to “gutting the protections afforded those who own trade secrets.”

It all started when candidate Christine Jennings lost to Rep. Vern Buchanan by only 368 votes in a House race last year, the slimmest margin of any congressional race in the country. Irregularities in the election, particularly high undervote rates, caused Jennings to express doubts about the validity of the outcome. During the election, approximately 15 percent (or 18,000) of the total ballots cast in the district did not include a vote in the disputed race. By comparison, the absentee ballots in the same district and regular paper ballots used in neighboring districts only exhibit a 2 percent undervote rate for congressional races. The high undervote rates have been attributed to the ES&S iVotronic machines used in the 13th district.

According to The Nigerian Tribune:

THERE is a secretive sexual practice common to both men and women, as well as young people, and it is known as masturbation. A team of scientists in Australia recently found that 98 per cent of men engage in this sexual act, while many women cannot also feign ignorance on this sexual act. In fact, they revealed that 89 per cent of females also practise masturbation. Your Health findings show that this habit is no respecter of age, as many young boys and girls are also aware of what masturbation is all about.

Many of the medical practitioners who spoke with Your Health agreed that masturbation, which is the self-stimulation of one’s sexual organ by hand or by other means to achieve sexual excitement, satisfaction and ultimately, to ejaculation, is generally, secretive, but a bad practice common with teenagers.

Ummm...whatever!!! I mean, what?  I have no idea what you are talking about.  Seriously, stop laughing at me…

The Washington Post is running a rather lengthy (4) series of articles on everyone’s favorite Dark Lord of the Sith: Vice President Cheney.  I found this little gem in story number 2:

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden “torture” and permitted use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

And this:

No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney’s lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives “difficult to predict,” might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.

Ummm...

The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney told an agency within the National Archives that for purposes of securing classified information, the Vice President’s office is not an ‘entity within the executive branch’ according to a letter released Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Wow.  The details and files involved are located here.  Executive Order 12958 (as amended) states an “agency”

(i) ...means any “Executive agency,” as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105, and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.

5 USC 105 states:

For the purpose of this title, “Executive agency” means an Executive department, a Government corporation, and an independent establishment.

Here is what I say we do:  Let’s the Vice President this link:

Article II - Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term