That'll stop all the wussy whining

Vatican Spins Off U.S. Catholic Church:

In one of his first official moves, Pope Benedict XVI today announced that the Vatican would "spin off" the U.S. division of the Roman Catholic church, but retain a 49-percent stake in the new entity, called R.C. Lite.
...
To counter Pope Benedict's dogmatic conservatism, several church sources said America's leading Roman Catholic politician, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-MA, is considered a shoo-in for the New-World Papacy.

"We need a pope with nuanced ideas," said one unnamed U.S. Bishop. "He needs to be a uniter, not a divider. He can't be afraid to change his deeply-held convictions in light of shifting public opinion. He must be courageous enough to keep his beliefs separate from his behavior and decision making."

If Mr. Kerry accepts the R.C. Lite leadership post, insiders say he will assume the name Benadryl XIII.

Pope Benadryl should make his first priority "reaching out" to Andrew Sullivan.

Strange ways

(Via FR) Ukraine’s Yushchenko Starts Anti-Corruption Campaign With Bath Ban. That stinks! Well, not exactly:

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has started the corruption clean-up campaign with an informal ban on visiting bath houses (banyas) for government officials, The Independent daily reports.

Shades of San Francisco!

“It’s all about showing the new face of Ukraine,” presidential spokesperson Irina Gerashchenko said.

I'll say!

“It’s no secret that you get all kinds of unsavory types there, and they are not the people with whom officials should be mixing.”

Woohoo!

Actually:

New Ukrainian authorities believe that a traditional place where Ukrainians, and indeed Russians, go every week to wash away their sins has become the check point where officials are nobbled by corrupt businessmen, the paper writes.

In the modern Russian and Ukrainian tradition the banya has become a staple of business culture, often replacing informal meetings and even business dinners.

OK, whatever you say. Follow the link for a fetching snap of bath house denizens.

Cookie's ringing the dinner bell down at the chuckwagon!

But not so fast, pardner - USDA to unveil Nutrition Frowny Face:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is retiring the Nutrition Pyramid, that familiar triangle crammed with assorted comestibles which has graced a wall on every grade school in America for 15 years. To replace the outmoded pyramid, the USDA has designed a brand new icon to reflect the very latest culinarily correct nutrition standards.
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For yet undisclosed reasons, the department rejected these designs, and approved the new icon to be unveiled tomorrow: the "Nutrition Frowny Face." This graphic, shaped like a stylized wincing human visage, segregates all foods into two broad categories: "Food You Can't Stand," and "Food You Like." The "Can't Stand" category is further subdivided into three groups: Smelly Food, Foreign Food, and Revolting Food. The government now recommends 18 daily servings of Food You Can't Stand, while Food You Like is not recommended at all in any quantity whatsoever.

Sheesh, leave it to the government to spoil the party. Hit the link for the pictures and I'll bet that you, like me, prefer the rejected Food Martini design.

Actually, that was Sean Gleeson having a little fun with the bureaucrats. The real deal is described in One-Size-Fits-All Food Pyramid Is Replaced:

Concerned about steadily expanding waistlines, the government flipped the food pyramid on its side, adding a staircase for exercise and giving consumers 12 individually-tailored models for improving their eating habits.

Inside the pyramid released Tuesday, rainbow-colored bands representing different food groups run vertically from the tip to the base.

Zzzz ... take a gander at it here. Even the Frowny Face is better - it actually has little pictures of food.

And while we're on the subject - Obesity Danger May Have Been Overstated:

CHICAGO - Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Tuesday that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

Gives you confidence, doesn't it? But what about all that whining about obesity that's been going on?

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight, the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity.

Fake but accurate, I guess. I wonder if the bureaucrats pick up the clue phone when it rings?

Ruh Oh!

No more Carmen Miranda - Biden Claims Bolton Staring at Him During Hearing:

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-DE, today asked the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to prevent President Bush's nominee for U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, from staring at him during confirmation hearings.

"Mr. Chairman, he's looking at me again," said Sen. Biden. "Make him stop looking at me."

How awful! And there's more - Bolton Denies Boxer's Claim: 'I Am Not the Walrus':

In perhaps the most substantive attack to date on President Bush's nominee for U.N. Ambassador, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, today accused undersecretary of state John Bolton of secretly engineering the British invasion of American pop music in the 1960s.
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Mrs. Boxer based her allegations on anonymous reports from terrified former schoolmates who said Mr. Bolton not only bought Beatles albums, but encouraged others to do so, "and brutally disparaged American jazz and big band music."

How low can you go?

Hey, wait a sec - it's ScrappleFace. But it's sure hard to tell.

Err America Hijinks!

Brian C. Anderson in the LA Times (!) - Why the Liberals Can't Keep Air America From Spiraling In:

The liberal Air America Radio, just past its first birthday, has probably enjoyed more free publicity than any enterprise in recent history. But don't believe the hype: Air America's left-wing answer to conservative talk radio is failing, just as previous efforts to find liberal Rush Limbaughs have failed.

Wait a second, you say, didn't I read that Air America has expanded to more than 50 markets? That's true, but let's put things in perspective: Conservative pundit and former Reagan official William J. Bennett's morning talk show, launched at the same time as Air America, reaches nearly 124 markets, including 18 of the top 20, joining the growing ranks of successful right-of-center talk programs (Limbaugh is still the ratings leader, drawing more than 15 million listeners a week).

And look at Air America's ratings: They're pitifully weak, even in places where you would think they'd be strong. WLIB, its flagship in New York City, has sunk to 24th in the metro area Arbitron ratings — worse than the all-Caribbean format it replaced, notes the Radio Blogger. In the liberal meccas of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Air America is doing lousier still.

Randi Rhodes or steel drum music? It's so hard to choose!

So why do liberals fare so poorly on air? Some on the left say it's because liberals are, well, smarter and can't convey their sophisticated ideas to the rubes who listen to talk radio.

So that's why Al Franken's comedy isn't funny!

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whose own stint as a talk-show host was a ratings disaster, gave canonical expression to this self-serving view. Conservatives "write their messages with crayons," he maintained. "We use fine-point quills."

Based on observing Mario over the years, I'd say his only fine-point is on his head.

More low amusement by following the link, but I liked:

If some liberals had their way, Congress would regulate political talk radio out of existence. Their logic is that scrapping Air America would be no loss if it also meant getting Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bennett off the air.

To accomplish this, New York Democratic Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey has proposed reviving the Fairness Doctrine to protect "diversity of view," and John Kerry recently sent out some signals that he too thought that might be a good idea.

Oh gosh, it's the Lurchster and wingnut Maurice! C'mon Maury, tell us again how Rathergate was a Karl Rove plot.

But it turns out that Maury is late to the party - Democrats long for 'Fairness Doctrine': Congresswoman seeks to lessen impact of talk radio by resurrecting law. For those of you too young to remember the 'Fairness Doctrine," it was a joke in view of persistent MSM bias. It was just another way of regulating speech that the limousine liberals didn't want to allow. Which is, of course, why they want it back.

A learning experience?

MAN SHOT IN HOME INVASION A PEACENIK:

The grad student shot in a home-invasion horror on the Upper West Side is a peace activist who hails from a small Pennsylvania town and moved to the Big Apple only last year, friends said yesterday.

Keith Whitmoyer, a 24-year-old philosophy student at the New School, is battling lung and stomach wounds in St. Luke's Hospital after Sunday's vicious attack. He was shot in front of his terrified fiancée after a thug followed her into their building on West 108th Street and pushed his way into the apartment, demanding cash.

After robbing the pair, the burglar appeared to linger, prompting Whitmoyer to ask, "Are you going to shoot me now?" The thug then pumped three bullets into him.

I recall the story of a writer of crime dramas who rode around for months with friends in the LAPD to get police procedural background and observed that many of the homicide cases involved folks who said, "Go ahead, shoot me!" They did.

Whitmoyer and van Leeuwen are human-rights activists and volunteer with "The War Resistors League," friends said.

Maybe he has learned something. Probably not.

A rootin' tootin' good time!

That's what Howie Dean has been having in California. When he wasn't busy telling folks what a great political issue Terri Schiavo's starvation death is, he was complaining about big money political donors - Republican ones:

Even though the biggest money donors in the last election cycle were Democrats, DNC chairman Howard Dean complained this week that Republicans have been "utterly corrupted" by the process.

"The reason we need you to give money is because the political process on both sides - but particularly on the Republican side - has been utterly corrupted by people who give huge amounts of money from large corporations," Dean told a high school audience in Vancouver, Ore.

Howie enjoys the big lie, apparently. For years, the Republicans have been the party of the small, individual, hard money donor. As for the Donks:

The top Democrat made no mention of donors like George Soros or Peter Lewis, who spent upwards of $50 million between them to try to defeat George Bush in last year's presidential election.

And made a candidate out of Howie, who had negligible public support as the primaries demonstrated so clearly. Hmm, maybe that's why he's trying to change the subject!

I don't remember that part of the movie

Maria meets El Mariachi

Today's Hoot!

Mark Steyn's Bolton's just too hip for scaredy-cat Dems:

Boy, this confirmation battle over John Bolton, the president's plain-spoken nominee for U.N. ambassador, is really heating up. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the Democratic Party's comely obstructionist, has charged that Bolton needs ''anger management lessons.''

I don't know about you, but nothing makes me want to hurl a chair through the window and punch someone's lights out like being told I need anger management lessons.

Especially when the teller is that fuzz brain, Babs "Wingnut" Boxer.

So I was interested to hear about the kind of violent Boltonian eruptions that had led Boxer to her diagnosis. Well, here it comes. (If you've got young children present, you might want to take them out of the room.) From the shockingly brutal testimony of Thomas Fingar, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Intelligence Research:

Q: Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm?

Fingar: No, he was angry. He was standing up.

Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face?

Fingar: I don't remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn't characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad.

He was ''standing up'' with ''hands on hips''! Who's he think he is -- Carmen Miranda?

Dang, that's scary!

As for the job Bolton's up for, what would make Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden put their hands on hips? Child sex rings run from U.N. peacekeeping operations? Sudan sitting on the Human Rights Commission while it licenses mass murder in Darfur? Kofi Annan's son doing a $30,000-a-year job but somehow having a spare quarter-million dollars to invest in a Swiss soccer club? There are tides in the affairs of men when someone has to put his hands on his hips and toss his curls. And, if the present depraved state of the U.N. isn't one of them, nothing is. Unlike most of the multilateral blatherers, John Bolton is hip to that.

I'm waiting for the Donk wussies to bring up the WaPo haircut critique.

I'm so excited!

Democrats Adjust Social Security Stance:

WASHINGTON - House Democrats have decided to quit emphasizing that they will not negotiate changes to Social Security until President Bush drops his idea for private accounts. The switch in strategy comes after Democrats learned from focus groups that people frown on the lawmakers for being obstinate.

The Democrat party can't break wind without a focus group. Hmmm, this really is good news!

"People feel like it doesn't show a good-faith effort," said a top House aide, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the internal data. "It makes us seem like we're `typical politicians.'"

As opposed to what, exactly?