Lots of funny stuff from About.com’s Political Humor section:

“Technically, you’re not paying taxes. According to the Bush administration, your bank account is being liberated.” —Jay Leno

“Iraq’s elite Republican Guard is doing so badly they’re changing their name to the Democratic Guard.” —David Letterman

“The Bush administration is absolutely ecstatic, as you might expect, about the way things turned out this week. Ari Fleischer said the president’s quote when he watched the events in Baghdad was, quote: ‘Freedom’s taste is unquenchable.’ And then he later admitted that the new Iraqi government is sponsored by Pepsi.” —Bill Maher

“All of Iraq’s oil fields are under U.S. control, which is ironic, considering all the gas stations here are run by Middle Easterners.” —Jay Leno

(more…)

In today’s Daily Trojan, Craig Stern writes that antiwar protesters don’t actually need to have ideas:

When one says that (a protester) isn’t providing fully fleshed-out arguments, one is simply describing the nature of a protest. Protesters are not supposed to provide the arguments — they prompt others to develop them by drawing attention to issues.

Well, that clears it up. So, protesters have no accountability whatsoever for what they say. They might not even believe it themselves! They’re just throwing it out there so someone else will think about the issues. Who needs a brain when you’ve got a protest sign and a dream?

Stern, in his infinite wisdom, also states that Saddam Hussein’s removal is merely a positive “side effect” of the war.

Uh-huh. Regime change in Iraq is a side effect of the war to bring about regime change in Iraq.

This seems like a good time to recall Stern’s personal motto, a quote from Voltaire: “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

Ironically, the column’s headline is “Conservatives wrong calling peaceniks stupid.” Heh. Could have fooled me.

(In fairness, I know Craig personally — here’s his website — and he’s actually neither ridiculous nor stupid. But he is wrong.)

UPDATE: In the comments on this post, Craig notes that he didn’t write the headline, and in fact he feels that it misrepresents his column. I sympathize; that’s happened to me many times at the DT. However, I was only poking fun at Craig with the headline, implicitly calling him stupid (before noting that he’s not actually stupid); I didn’t mean to seriously criticize him for it. Craig also thinks I quoted the him out of context in the above passages. I disagree; I feel that both of Craig’s quotes, while technically “out of context” in the sense that I didn’t excerpt the whole article, are neither distorted nor twisted. But, that’s up to you, the reader, to decide. Here, again, is the link to Craig’s whole article. Read the whole thing, as they say.

Also in today’s Daily Trojan Opinions section: the annual editorial slugfest between Armenians and Turks.

And in other news from today’s DT, Friday’s bomb scare at Felix Chevrolet (previous blog posts: 1, 2) is starting to make a lot more sense. Check this out:

According to an LAPD press release and a Los Angeles Times report, three men impersonating police officers entered the Woodland Hills home of Jean Antoun, 40, a general manager at Felix Chevrolet, around 7:45 a.m. Thursday and kidnapped his wife, Sylvia, and their 12-year-old daughter at gunpoint.

It was later found that the vest did not contain actual explosives and the microphone was not hooked up to a transmitter.

This Antoun guy was smart, though. Thinking his kidnappers were listening in, he had a conversation about cars with a salesman at Felix while quietly writing down on a piece of paper what was really going on. The salesman called police.

In the evening on Easter Sunday, as she rested comfortably on her chair, Toby was suddenly and unexpectedly surrounded by a small army of Peeps.

Naturally, given her exemplary military record, Toby fought the Peeps off bravely.

Click here for a movie! (268 KB)

Is it just me, or is it beginning to look more and more like the war in Iraq was nothing more than a brief distraction from Michael Jackson?

The Atlantic hurricane season isn’t supposed to start until June 1, but Subtropical Storm Ana is getting a head start on things.

Ana, though not entirely tropical in nature (hence “subtropical”), has stolen the first entry on the 2003 tropical name list. (Next up: Bill.) The storm is more than 300 miles southeast of Bermuda with 40 mph winds, and is expected to move harmlessly out to sea.

UPDATE, 4/22/03: Ana has been upgraded from subtropical to tropical.

The old version of this website is now back online (sort of) at 02-01-19.com, a domain name I registered when that date appeared to be the possible impact date for an asteroid in 2019. Now it’s basically just a placeholder while I get the files from those servers moved over to these servers.

A lot of the links on that site are broken, but a number of the non-blog links on this site should work again now.

This morning’s Daily Trojan includes a letter to the editor favorable to Becky’s column from last week.

Meanwhile, Chris Edling writes that the Bush Administration’s war plans have expanded once again:

In one of the boldest foreign policy moves in American history, President George W. Bush has announced his plan to invade and disarm Syria, the greater Eurasian landmass, and a number of extrasolar planets he believes may be harboring weapons of mass destruction and fleeing Iraqi leaders. …

(more…)

My dad and my friend Andrew are having an interesting discussion about my ideology over on, oddly enough, Toby’s blog. This stems from a previous discussion on this blog.

Andrew asserts that I am now a “certifiable neo-conservative” who is only held back from openly declaring himself a Republican by two, or possibly three, things: my belief in gay rights, my support of a strong church-and-state barrier, and, perhaps, my support for gun control. My dad, in response, wonders if I’ve really converted to conservative doctrine on economic issues.

Here’s my two cents…

(more…)

A popular Iranian blogger has been arrested by that nation’s authoritarian government. This is so not cool.

(Thanks for the tip, Instapundit.)

Those people in the “red states” take their religion, and their sports, seriously:

Heh. (The out-of-nowhere Royals beat the Tigers 4-3 on Sunday to extend their record to 14-3 — which means they’re tied with the Yankees for the best record in the American League.)

Anyway, Happy Easter.

Somebody crashed into Hartford’s landmark arch this morning. Some of the historic brownstone that was damaged may be irreplaceable.

Roughly 30 feet of a retaining wall at the base of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, which was built in 1886, were knocked out by the crash, according to the article on the Hartford Courant website. Police believe the offending vehicle is an SUV or some other large car or truck. The search is on for the driver.

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds: intellectual giant or puppy killer?

Toby was chasing her tail earlier. Details on her blog.

Officially, yesterday will go down in history as the fourth-busiest day in this website’s history, with 638 unique hits. In reality, the total is probably upwards of 1,500, and the rank is probably second or third. But I’ll never know for sure.

I got my second-ever link from Instapundit at 4:18 AM Pacific time, an event which can be expected to trigger a immediate flood of traffic. But my counter wasn’t working properly for much of the day, so I didn’t begin getting an accurate count of my hourly traffic until after 2:00 PM.

(more…)

The Guardian reports that Rummy and some of his conservative cronies debated the possibility of going to war with Syria, and started drawing up some plans. But President Bush shot down the idea.

Seems like if we’re going to do it, now would be the time, with our troops already there and all. But it doesn’t strike me as a terribly good idea, for about 5,000 reasons.