I never heard of these folks before

Admittedly, the story is from the UK, but still - Katie Price and Peter Andre: the greatest album ever?

It's official: the debut album by highly-talented popsters Katie Price and Peter Andre has been classified by Amazon reviewers as possibly the greatest album ever - a terrible shock to those of us ready to dismiss their musical talents and consign A Whole New World to the dustbin of musical history.

One breathless correspondent classifies the masterwork as "simply genius", while another is moved to admit that the songs are "so emotional, they make me go weak at the sphincter".

Sheesh, kind of like the Mainstream Media and Barack Obama. But wait, there's more!

I have only one complaint about this meisterwerk. The Price. It's far too low. Were there to be but one copy remaining in the world, and had my own copy been mysteriously burned in a catastrophic fire in which I had been unable to risk my life rescuing it, I would gladly sell my children into slavery to buy that last remaining disc.

Somewhere the clue phone is ringing, but no one is picking up.

How do they separate the men from the boys in the Taliban?

With a crowbar:

The Afghan Taliban underwent a major reorganization last Winter. In addition to accepting suicide attacks (previously a no-no), and a more aggressive use of terror tactics against Afghans, a list of 30 "Rules" were issued. The word went out that members of the Taliban were to live and, in some cases, die by, these rules. Most of them have to do with pretty basic stuff. Like obeying orders, not ratting out your buddies to the police, not stealing from each other, not using Taliban assets for personal gain (there are several rules for this one, indicating that there are continued problems in this area), not recruiting existing Taliban members from another Taliban gang, fair distribution of loot captured in battle, and so on.
...
Taliban are also told not to steal from civilians, smoke cigarettes (nothing is said about opium) or sodomize young boys.

No word on goat bothering so morale presumably won't be too severely impacted.

(Hat tip: SondraK)

And a Merry Christmas to all

From everyone at the Country Store:

Hat tip: Moo Amp where you can get wallpaper of the computer variety with the above and other fetching bovine themes. That is, if you aren't all nervous about cows causing global warming.

Hearing their master's voice

Al Qaeda Sends a Message to Democrats:

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.

The fuzzy little cretin had two messages for his brown nosing servants:

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.

"And if you don't refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate," he said.

The bad news is that John Kerry immediately booked a flight to Islamabad, the good news is that Nancy Pelosi has bought a wardrobe full of burquas. The full face covering variety.

Ecoweenies caught making it up

Court upholds libel award against green group:

An Arizona appeals court has upheld a jury's $600,000 judgment in favor of a rancher in a defamation lawsuit, rejecting an environmental group's argument that documents it posted on the Internet were shielded by the First Amendment.

The Court of Appeals upheld a Pima County Superior Court jury's award of compensatory and punitive damages to Jim Chilton in his lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit with offices in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, D.C.
...
The environmental group argued that the documents were shielded by state and federal constitutional protections for the right to petition the government over grievances because the appeal and photographs submitted with it were public records related to official proceedings.

Well, they were public records, but they were also bogus:

The trial jury found the center made false statements in photo captions, including one that implied that grazing by Chilton's cattle was responsible for damage actually caused by hundreds of people, including the photographer, who attended a May Day festival.

Nothing like a Gaia worshipper hootenanny to bring out the best.

Speaking of ecoweenies and making it up, I don't know about you, but we've sure had a shortage of global warming around here lately. It was so cold yesterday that I was actually wishing that Al Gore and Barbara Boxer would stop by so I could hook Al up to the heater in the barn and Babs to the gas log in the fireplace. Yeah, the smell might be bad, but I'm willing to do my bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's Hoot!

Conan O'Brien:

This year White House Christmas decorations include several 10-foot-tall nutcrackers. Apparently, this was the biggest nutcracker at the White House since Hillary Clinton was first lady.

Speaking of nutcrackers (albeit the European variety), I see that Arianna Huffington has been spanking Hillary for being a political weather vane. For a former Newt Gingrich groupie turned leftoid moonbat, that's kind of rich. Even better, the Huffster seems to be touting empty suit Barack Obama for President without realizing that Her Heinous would beat him like drum. Shows what can happen to your head when you hang out all the time with the nutroots and Hollyweirdos. Well, if her political advice is a trifle wacky, at least Arianna can advise on how to marry rich gay guys and engage in unceasing self promotion of meager talent. Sort of like Zsa Zsa Gabor except for the gay part.

While we're on the subject of husbands, one more Hillary joke from Jay Leno:

Hillary Clinton is making calls, hiring staff and getting ready to travel to Iowa to launch her campaign. She will be on the road non-stop for the next two years. How will Bill ever manage? The poor guy stuck home alone. He will be heartbroken.

I'm sure he will. Of course, while we're talking stay-at-home spouses, there's Barack Obama's wife Michelle who is VP of Community and External Affairs at the The University of Chicago Hospitals at a salary of over $300K. The hospital says it's merely a coincidence that she got a big promotion that nearly tripled her salary after ole Barack became a Senator and that Michelle now gets paid much the same as the other 16 vice-presidents who actually have something to do with medicine and running the hospitals and medical centers and all that icky stuff. I say that unless she's phoning it in from Washington DC that means Barack is swanning about the nation's capital all on his lonesome. Beware of fat girls delivering pizzas, Barack!

Fun with global warming

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming:

David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."

You have hurricanes, it's due to global warming. You don't have hurricanes, it's due to global warming. The dog eats your homework, that's global warming too.

Next year Donk Barbara Boxer (reputed to be the dumbest US Senator, although there's lots of competition for that title) is taking over the committee and is promising endless hearings on ... (wait for it) ... global warming. Based on her performance yesterday, it's going to be a real snoozer.

It's the "Big Noise" from Virginia

George Will spanks bombastic nutjob James Webb, but not hard enough. Well, we knew he had a swelled head, it runs in the family:

Time to rock and roll

Paul Bedard:

Looks like the Republicans in the House aren't planning to play nice-nice with the Democrats after all. The emerging House Republican plan on how to address the new Democratic majority is turning toward an aggressive effort to portray Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and her team as out of touch and liberal.

"Come January, we'll take her head off every day," said a top GOP aide involved in the planning. "It will be a pure war of ideas over the next two years."

Leading the battle with be incoming House Minority Leader John Boehner and his conservative team. Insiders say that the goal is to pick at Democratic initiatives as pro-tax, pro-spending, or unworkable.

"We are going to re-establish that we are the party of ideas, that they got elected in a fluke, and we're going to make that known every day, every way," said the official. What's more, said another Republican aide, the GOP also plans to highlight what they see as Democratic hypocrisy or backtracking on previous promises. That started today when Boehner's office slammed the Democratic plan to abandon support for instituting the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. "There will be certain elements of 'I told you so' to the campaign," said the Republican aide.

I can think of some other fun elements too.

Today's Hoot!

SNL does Skeletor, er Nancy Pelosi:

(Via Herr Schlong)