Now The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Has You: Michele from A Small Victory has said that four blogs have "delinked" in the last few days. I've only seen one of them and it was a lefty site. Which makes you wonder if being named "website of the day" on certain conservative blog that shall remain nameless a couple of weeks ago had anything to do with annoying her liberal friends into dropping her? Michele compared it to having kids in school who didn't want to sit next to you in the cafeteria....

"...Thanks, guys. Notice I'm still taking care not to mention any names or put any links here. Anyone else going to step forward and say something? Come on, you can do it.

I'm 40 years old and this is grade school all over again, when Gloria told everyone that she hated me, so of course everyone else came out of the woodworks to hate me, too. It's like bringing your lunch into the cafeteria and realizing that there's nowhere to sit because no one will make a space for you."

It was probably too late to help, but I realized I had to try to give Michele some cover with her lefty friends while simultaneously giving her a heaping helping of liberal compassion. So I made the following post in that thread...

"My name is John Hawkins and I have taken Michele off of my links list because of her belligerence and latent conservatism.

John Hawkins
http://www.rightwingnews.com"

Unfortunately, Michele made no posts about her lefty friends giving her linky love again. Worse yet, Michele did a post about how her opinions have moved to the right...

"Let's get some facts straight. While I have been a registered Republican since 1980 (when I voted for John Anderson!), it doesn't mean I ever voted that way. And while I may have been a pacifist and tree-hugger at one point, it does not mean I ever embraced idiots like Moore and Chomsky.

The thing is, I am finally home. I feel comfortable here. My views have not so much changed as I have. What's different about the 2001 me and the 2002 version is that I believe in myself now. I don't doubt my convictions, I don't lose sleep over my thoughts. All this thinking, all this writing, all this reading, it's lead me to here. And this is where I want to be. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, you know what? It's your loss. Because I am a d*mned good friend. Politics, religion and baseball teams aside."

I now realized that my previous post had been in vain. The Vast Right Wing conspiracy had locked it's misshapen jaws around Michele's ankle and was dragging her into its doghouse of doom! It was too late to save Michele from her fate so I decided to give her a few more words of advice...

"Bwahahahahah! It always starts with a few small changes and then next thing you know the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has you fully in it's grip! Today, you're leaning right -- but in a year you'll be demanding a flat tax, asking why Bush hasn't already leveled Damascus, and you'll be cursing George Bush 41 for being such a lefty.

John Hawkins
Minion of the Vast Right Conspiracy"

There are some advantages to being a member of the Vast Right Conspiracy (or VRWC as we in the know like to call it). The VRWC and the Jews control the entire planet. The thing about the Jews controlling America? It's a myth (although though oddly enough they do run Iran -- even I can't figure that one out). We spend our days dining on endangered species and our nights sleeping on the finest beds made in our "child labor camps" in Latin America.

We know things you can't even imagine. Kennedy? He was assassinated by a young peanut farmer from Georgia who was so upset by what he did that he promised that he'd become President of the United States and win a Nobel Peace Prize to make up for it. We even know what Yasser Arafat does with all those baby wipes he seems to always keep on hand -- (I would tell you but it's incredibly disturbing. Pat Buchanan went completely insane after hearing about it).

But enough talk, if I say much more Henry Kissenger will have me killed. Michele, glad to have you in the club! I can't really get into this (Kissenger has already paged me), but let me just say that all new members have a feast in their honor and if you've never eaten Spotted Owl served up with a side of Nessie (yes, THAT Nessie), then you're in for a treat...

***Update***: Michele Catalano has received her VRWC membership card and has posted it up on her page...

Michael Moore Is Wrong About a Pro-Gun Rally? Say It Isn't So!: Michael Moore reeled off a long, pretentious rant on his page this week about a pro-gun rally Charlton Heston is had in Arizona. You see, some nutcase gunned down three professors and thenshot himself at the University of Arizona and so Moore didn't think it was appropriate for Heston to still hold his pro-gun rally. Here's one paragraph from Moore's editorial that'll give you a good idea of the pig's ear Moore is trying to turn into a silk purse...

"I am asking that you (Heston) not go to Tucson today. Do not cause any more grief, any more pain. Let the relatives and friends of the deceased mourn. Why show up to play the role of the bully, kicking these good people when they are down, just so you can prove that you have a right to your big, bad guns? These are not the actions of a once brave and decent man. They are the acts of a coward, as no man of courage would think of picking on his fellow citizens when they are so consumed with tragedy."

This is such a cockeyed line of reasoning. If it's improper for Heston to hold a pro-gun rally two days after someone gets shot by a psycho, does Moore think Nascar should cancel a race if someone in the same state dies in an auto accident within a 48 hour period before the race? If somebody you never met drowns on a Saturday, are you being a "bully" if you hold a pool party on Sunday? Hey Michael Moore, were the people who took baths within a 48 hour period after Andrea Yates "picking on" her dead children?

Ah Michael Moore, without you and Maureen Dowd, Robert Fisk, Ted Rall, and Jimmy Carter, the life of we conservative pundits would be so much less rewarding.

Thanks to Rachael Lucas for pointing this out on her blog.

Another Public Service Announcement For The Blogosphere -- Get A Hook For Your Blog: If you want to build traffic for your blog, you need to have some sort of hook, some sort of reason for people to keep coming back. In the warblogging world, that usually means you need to either be a "linker", a "thinker", or run a "theme" blog.

"Linkers" are blogs like Instapundit, Daily Pundit, and Crooow Blog that pour on the links. These pages are frequently updated and people usually hit them to find interesting news on other pages.

"Thinkers" focus on producing content instead of massive amounts of links. Rachel Lucas, USS Clueless, and Lileks (James) The Bleat are good examples of this type of blog.

The "Theme" blogs focus on certain motifs. For example, Little Green Footballs focuses on radical Islam and terrorism, Scrappleface focuses on humor, and Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store And Reading Room hones in on strange and obscure news.

Now the problem many bloggers have is that they're not consistent enough. They try to be a "linker" but they only post four or five articles a day or they want to be a "thinker" but they never write anything longer than 200 words. This causes their readers to get turned off because they really don't know what to expect.

Inconsistency and not really knowing what you want to do leads to a second problem: poor quality posts. If you don't know what you're trying to do, how do you know if you're doing it well or even often enough? If you want to be a "linker" then you know that short posts are fine, but you better pop out at least 8-12 links a day. If you want to be a thinker you may only need 2-5 posts a day, but they'll need to be longer and much more in depth. If you're running a "theme" then you need to focus your time there.

Every time you're trying to post something, you should know what you're trying to accomplish with it. Are you trying to get other blogs to link you, relating something personal about your life, getting info out there, giving some payback to blogs that have linked you in the past., etc? If you're posting about something a lot of other blogs are writing about as well, are you at least putting a fresh new spin on it or are you just aping what everyone else has to say? Can your readers see someone else saying pretty much the same thing you are on five other blogs or do you have something original to offer?

Last but not least, being original and knowing what you want to do is important, but being passionate about what you're discussing means a lot as well. For example, I often disagree with Dawn Olsen & Laurence Simon, but I like their material because they write with such zeal. Bold stands will pull more people who agree and disagree with you to your blog.

I hope this helped some of the bloggers who read the page. As far as I'm concerned, the bigger you grow, the more traffic I'll get from you when you link me. ;)

***Update***: Laurence Simon chimes in with some advice of his own and I agree with the overwhelming majority of it...

It's All About The Oil - A Fictitious Conversation: This war is about oil just like the Gulf War.

Just because the Gulf War was primarily about oil doesn't mean that every war is about oil. WW1, WW2, Vietnam, & the Korean War certainly weren't about oil were they?

No they weren't, but Bush and Cheney are oilmen, so this has to be about oil!

So if Bush and Cheney were both veterinarians would you think that we were invading Iraq to take all their pets? Or are you saying that only oilmen want to get rid of Hussein? If so, I can certainly put you in touch with a lot of people who aren't Exxon executives who believe we should invade Iraq... (Cont)

Hitchens Was Right When He Said...: I'm not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. While he is a talented writer, I disagree with him on almost everything. However, Hitchens recently had a messy, public, split with the Nation over the war. I read an interview with Hitchens today on Front Page Magazine of all places and I thought some of the things he said were worth noting. Here are a few notable quotes from the interview....

Hitchens on the Left: "So the idea that the United States could use force with moral justification is to them totally alien. They can't - they can't go there. They won't. But that is more a proof of their inflexibility than their attachment to principle. It's an empty position. It's a nihilistic position. If they said, "Yes, if bin Laden's the only revolutionary, he may not be perfect, but we're on his side," well, I could sympathize. No - I won't say sympathize, but I could see it, I could respect it. But they don't do that. They look for bogus equivalencies that actually lead to a cop-out. "Well, he did this bad thing, but we've done this bad thing." That leaves you exactly nowhere. And surely it should at least condemn both. In fact it appears to excuse both."

Hitchens on Moral Equivalence: "The fallacy is one of moral equivalence. The motive for it, or the ruse of it, is - I prefer to call it masochistic. It's a self-hatred. It's a refusal to believe that you would ever be justified yourself in having the arrogance to define and defend yourself against or to destroy an enemy. That would surely make you no better than them. But this is disabling."

Hitchens on the left's protests: "The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved. Ramsey Clark didn't organize a protest against Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran, or Kuwait. He's not antiwar to that extent. And nobody complained about the failure of the West - nobody complained in an organized street-protest way - about the failure of the West to rescue Rwanda. And nobody complained about Milosevic's invasion of Bosnia - well, that's not true, a lot of people did - but their juices only kicked in when there was intervention to remove him. Voilè! You see the bad faith of this all the way through. It culminates in the most fatuous slogan yet devised, which is: "Stop the war before it starts." Which is a protest against removing either al-Qaida from Afghanistan or the Taliban from Afghanistan or both. Well, at this point it has to be said I think that the left has lost every moral and political element that made it a formidable force as an antiwar movement in the 1960s."

Hitchens on quitting the Nation: "My quarrel isn't with the editors. It's with the readers. The magazine published a special Sept. 11 commemorative issue where they solicited letters from readers, "Tell us what Sept. 11 means to you." I think they printed three pages of these. The revelation of what readers thought and how they thought was so depressing to me. ...(T)here were three pages of them, all of which said: "Here's what Sept. 11 means to me - I've discovered I live in a fascist state." I said, "Well, that's goodbye." I don't want to have anything to do with reinforcing that kind of public opinion. When I can't persuade myself any longer that I'm just one among the columnists, I think I can't recommend to anyone that they read the magazine."

You can read the rest of the interview by going here.

Democrats And Republicans No Longer Have A Common Understanding Of Decency: I was listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about the Wellstone funeral yesterday and he reeled off what I think is the quote of the month...

“What concerns me about the future of our country is that we used to have a common understanding of decency. Now we don't. We used to have a common understanding of propriety, of what's right and what's wrong. We used to have a common understanding of what's insensitive and what is ghoulish. Now we don't. We used to have a common understanding of what is proper, and what's improper. We used to have a proper respect in this country for fairness, honesty. Now we don't.”

To me, that quotation sums up everything from the Wellstone "memorial service", to the aftermath of the 2000 election, to the Dems getting Laufenberg put on the ballot in New Jersey, to Bonior & McDermott saying Bush couldn't be trusted from Baghdad, to even the gleeful Alzheimer's jokes some lefties were telling about Heston. Ideology and politics are without a doubt important, but they're not everything. That's something I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time.

The Top 10 Horror Movies Of All Time: Since today is Halloween I thought I should post my top 10 horror films of all time...

10) The Fog: This movie really creeped me out when I was a kid.

9) Pumpkinhead: Saw this one on a first date and it's a much better horror film that the name or the art on the movie cover would indicate.

8) The Amityville Horror: THE Haunted House flick...

7) Witchboard: This is a really scary "B" movie that has never gotten the credit it deserves.

6) Candyman: Saw this movie in college. One of the girls I went with nearly freaked out when I threatened to say "Candyman" three times while looking in the rearview mirror.

5) Friday the 13th: This is the movie I think of when I think of "quality" slasher flicks.

4) Hellraiser: Clive Barker's masterpiece of horror.

3) The Shining: Jack Nicholson made the movie

2) Pet Sematary: Sigh - this makes me nostalgic for Steven King's work before he burned out. King was the master of his craft.

1) The Blair Witch Project: Brilliant use of story telling and atmosphere makes this the best of the lot.

Twelve Questions With Michelle Malkin: I was pleased to have an opportunity to interview FOX News commentator Michelle Malkin via email.. Michelle has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, The McLaughlin Group, The Lehrer Report, and 20/20. Furthermore, her syndicated column is carried by 100 papers nationwide and her new book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores is currently ranked 9th on the bestseller list at Amazon.

U.S. and France Near Deal on Iraq Attack: Supposedly we're about to cut a deal with France on a UN resolution that requires consultation with the UN before an attack...

"The United States and France are moving toward a compromise on Iraq that would oblige the Bush administration to consult the United Nations Security Council before embarking on military action against Saddam Hussein but still leave it the freedom to act alone.

American officials and foreign diplomats said that under the proposed compromise, the United States would take part in a Security Council debate if Iraq failed to comply with expected new United Nations demands for the destruction of its chemical and biological weapons."

I'm sure some people will be upset that Bush is going to "consult" with the UN but you have to understand what he means by "consult." Basically it consists of us telling the rest of the UN Security Council what we're going to do and then...well that's it actually. Once the Bush administration starts their "consultations," the rest of the UN Security Council can either like it or lump it.

Either way, the Bush administration has been making it VERY clear that they're getting tired of dickering with France over this issue. Bush himself has been saying in no uncertain terms that we won't hesitate to bypass the UN Security Council if necessary. Now Tommy Franks is even getting into the act...

"At a Pentagon news conference, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, indicated today that the United States did not need a United Nations Security Council resolution to win allied support for an American-led campaign to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

General Franks said the Bush administration's preference would be to work within a Security Council resolution, but failing that, the United States has enough regional and international support to lead a coalition to oust President Hussein and disarm Iraq."

There's a freight train going to Iraq and either the French can get on board or they can watch it go by. But the train isn't stopping for the French or anyone else for that matter....

Rally in Washington Is Said to Invigorate the Antiwar Movement & Terrorists Worldwide: From the New York Times...

"Emboldened by a weekend antiwar protest in Washington that organizers called the biggest since the days of the Vietnam War, groups opposed to military action in Iraq said they were preparing a wave of new demonstrations across the country in the next few weeks."

The demonstration on Saturday in Washington drew 100,000 by police estimates and 200,000 by organizers', forming a two-mile wall of marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers. They expected 30 buses, and were surprised by about 650, coming from as far as Nebraska and Florida.

..."The rally was like a huge gust of wind into the sails of the antiwar movement," said Brian Becker, an organizer of the Washington protest. "Our goal was not simply to have a big demonstration, but to give the movement confidence that it could prevail. The massive turnout showed it's legitimate, and it's big."

I'm glad that the antiwar movement feels "invigorate(d)." I'm sure terrorists groups, Islamo-fascists, and dictators across the world now feel "invigorate(d)" too since they've learned how many "useful idiots" there are in the United States. It must be nice to know that even if you fly planes into the WTC, bomb a disco, storm a theater, destroy a pizza parlor, or gas your own people, there will always be leftist dupes in the US doing everything in their power to impede the people trying to stop you. Most of clowns at these anti-war rallies would have been out protesting on behalf of Japan and the Nazis if they were around back in WW2. I can just hear them now...

"I'm not saying Hitler is a great guy, but America is like an imperialist nation you know? Roosevelt just wants to extend our global hegemony across the whole world. This isn't about Pearl Harbor either man! It's all about getting cheap labor in Japan and quality German cars. America has to break the cycle of violence by negotiating with Hitler instead of listening to Roosevelt's business cronies who want war. Hey FDR, we don't want your filthy war! Give peace a chance!"

Murdering innocent women and children is grim and desperate work especially when the American military machine is trying to stop you. But a few words from Susan Sarandon, Gore Vidal, Jesse Jackson, or even some random protestor waving an Iraqi flag may very well give the terrorists and the regimes that support them that "extra" motivation they need to blow themselves up or a plant a bomb on a bus. Thanks a lot you antiwar protestors, thanks a lot....

***Update***: Victor Davis Hanson talks about this same theme and says that these antiwar protestors also help inspire loons like Malvo and Muhammad and the distrubed kid who crashed a "light plane into an office building in Florida."

The Democratic Take On Wellstone's Memorial Service: I went to the Democratic Underground to get the lefty take on Wellstone's "memorial service." In a thread that had 73 posts, there only appeared to be 3 DU readers who saw anything wrong with turning Wellstone's "memorial service" into a campaign rally for Walter Mondale. Here are a few of the typical comments...

ndanger: "This was exactly what Paul would have wanted. I thought it was beautiful! Glad you saw it. It must have scared the hell out of repugs in the arena, because they knew they were going down in a big way Nov 5th."

austinboy: "Memorial services are about celebrations of the lives of the intended. Paul Wellstone's legacy was his passionate embrace of equality for all. Why should that not be celebrated? Rethugs are the only people I hear claiming some political benefit to the DEMS because of this. How cold-hearted and callous can you be when insinuating such tripe?"

kahuna: "Uh...the "person" was a "politician." How do you honor that person's life without mentioning politics? Please tell us. I really want to know. You obviously have thought out your opposition before you posted this thread. Please expand."

buff2: "Democrats have the COMPASSION,not the rethugs. I thought the memorial service was WONDERFUL! Of course anyone who thinks it was "appalling" is out of touch with the MAJORITY of the American people! GO WALTER MONDALE.....CARRY ON PAUL WELLSTONE'S LEGACY! WE LOVE YOU PAUL AND WE WILL MISS YOU! WE ARE GOING TO KICK YOUR RETHUGS.....GET USED TO IT AND GET OVER IT!!!"

That was some "memorial service" for the man the Dems are calling the "soul of senate." Apparently Wellstone's life was so meaningless, so pointless, such a nothing to his own family and supporters that they felt it was more important to use his "memorial service" to promote Walter Mondale's campaign than to actually talk about why Paul Wellstone was important to them. Here's a serious question for the Democrats -- is there anything that could have been done at that "memorial service" that you would have felt was beyond the pale if it benefited the Democratic party?

If let's say they dug up Wellstone's coffin and let Mondale do a stump speech from atop it, would that have been "too much?" What if they sold gory photos of the crash site for a $1000 dollars a pop and gave the money to the Mondale campaign. Would that have been OK? Somehow I suspect the Democrats would defend ANYTHING that they thought helped them retain the Senate, no matter how Wellstone's "memorial service" was defiled by it. That is pathetic...

***Update***: The head of the Wellstone campaign, Jeff Blodgett, has now apologized for the "memorial service."

"It was not our intent to inject that into the service," campaign chairman Jeff Blodgett said of comments made at the Tuesday night ceremony. "I take responsibility for that and I deeply regret it."

This line was also in the article...

"Some officials from local TV stations are said to be complaining that they were misled into televising live a partisan political rally."

Ted Rall Thinks Bush Had Wellstone Killed?: I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but a significant portion of the Democratic party has become enamored with absurd conspiracy theories. That is disturbing enough. But, the fact that prominent Democratic columnists can make statements that any reasonable person would find to be bizarre without even causing a raised eyebrow among their fellow Dems is scary. The latest example of Democratic derangement is Ted Rall's column on Yahoo.

Rall's editorial is titled, "The (Possible) Assassination Of Paul Wellstone." The entire piece is dedicated to raising the idea that Bush had Wellstone killed. Here are a few choice quotes from this despicable column...

"Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator?

"...Despite the money and sleazy tactics being used against him, recent polls showed Wellstone beginning to pull ahead. With Election Day looming on Nov. 5, many analysts were predicting a Wellstone victory and continued Democratic dominance of the Senate. Perhaps, the thinking goes, someone in the Bush regime decided Wellstone had to go."

Rall offers not one shred of evidence that supports the fact that Bush murdered Wellstone. Nothing, none, nada. Now imagine if someone came up to you and claimed that, "aliens are sending signals to my brain" or that, "I have to warn the President that the CIA is trying to kill him." Normally when people come up with oddball theories like this with absolutely no proof to support them, we assume they're crazy. But do Rall's fellow Democrats think he's nuts? Hell no, he has a column on Yahoo and the New York Times carries his cartoons. Do you think anyone at Yahoo or the NYT is going to be too embarrassed to carry Rall's work after reading this piece of lunacy? Don't hold your breath...

The Surreal Aftermath Of Paul Wellstone's Death: I ran across the following paragraph in an article about Dick Cheney not being invited to Paul Wellstone's funeral...

"Another White House official said privately that with the memorial service expected to draw thousands, the Wellstone family told the White House they did not want mourners subjected to the kind of security screenings that Cheney's attendance would have required. This official also said White House advisers worried that the memorial service, with unions bringing supporters by the busload, would double as a Democrat get-out-the-vote rally and be awkward for Cheney."

A "Democrat get-out-the-vote rally" at the man's funeral? It was ghoulish enough to listen to all the analysts speculating about who would replace Wellstone on the Democratic ticket only seven or eight hours after he died, but this is even worse.

<-- Clinton and Mondale yuck it up at Wellstone's memorial service...

We already have Hillary Clinton using Wellstone's death to plug Carl McCall's faltering campaign for governor in New York...

"I see a direct connection between our loss on Friday of someone who really was a unique force in American politics and this campaign Carl McCall is waging"

Then there are Harry Reid's asinine comments about how Norm Coleman is politicizing the race by doing polling so soon after Wellstone's death. Of course, Reid sees no problem with playing politics with Wellstone's death himself...

"...I mean, let's let the memory of Paul Wellstone be with us until he's buried in the ground, not have polls as to who is strong in this area and not so strong in this area. The people of Minnesota are going to have to decide who they want to represent them in the United States Senate, whether they want someone who has the legacy of a Hubert Humphrey and a Paul Wellstone or whether they want somebody that is conducting polls while somebody is taken out of the woods, having been killed in a plane crash."

I guess this is what's to be expected from Democrats these days. But it's still sad to see the Dems using the corpse of one of their own Senators as a cheap campaign prop.

***Update***: According to the Drudge Report (no link direct to these quotes), here is some of what happened at the Wellstone funeral...

"Win for Paul! For Paul! For Paul'...Cheering, handshaking, speechifying, yelling, clapping, stomping, laughing and shouting -- there's never been a memorial service like it... Instead of eulogies, stemwinders. Instead of pray for his soul, get out the vote. Instead of weeping, cheering. Welcome to bigtime politics 2002, where a memorial service for a tragically killed senator becomes a raucous DNC rally. All that was missing was the balloon drop..."

***Update #2: The Democrats are apparently using Wellstone's death as a political tool across the country...

"'In many ways, Paul Wellstone is still living,' Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., declared Monday at a political rally in Ames, Iowa, for Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin."

"...Democrats see signs that Wellstone's death could "inspire Democratic voters and increase turnout" on Tuesday, said Tovah Ravitz-Meehan, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee"

We're lucky that there's only a week to go. Otherwise, the Democrats might shove Wellstone's corpse into a Lenin-style glass case and cart him around the country in an attempt to drum up support. I guarantee you they'd at least ask his family for permission if they thought it was worth a point or two in Missouri and South Dakota. These people are without shame...

***Update #3***: Apparently Trent Lott and GOP Sen. Rod Grams were JEERED AT THE FUNERAL.

Here is part of a speech that was given by Rick Kahn...

"If Paul Wellstone's legacy comes to an end, then our spirits will be crushed and we will drown in a river of tears," a clearly emotional Kahn said.

...To U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., Kahn said, "You know that Paul loved you. He needs you now. . . . Help us win this race."

Jesse Ventura and his wife actually got up and left during Kahn's speech.

I found this quote over at American RealPolitik...

"Scott Libin, news director at KSTP-TV, Channel 5, said the station was in a difficult position and couldn't respectfully stop coverage in the middle of the service when it went from "eulogy all the way to political pep rally."

That was a really respectful send off for the "soul of the Senate" wasn't it? How could the Democrats stoop this low? How could his family allow his funeral to turn into a circus? If this sort of thing happened at my funeral, I would return from the dead, kick open the coffin, and then I'd start strangling people in the front row...

Touching Over The Internet? Uh-Oh...: You can now 'touch' over the internet...

"...The cube felt rubbery, although it didn't strictly exist. As I moved the pencil-like mouse in my hand, a cursor moved too in the virtual room where the cube sat. A little manoeuvring and the cursor was beneath the cube. Move the pencil (called a "phantom") upwards, and suddenly there was the sensation of weight, and the cube moved upwards on the screen. With a little practice, I could flip it upwards and catch it. The surface seemed to give, like rubber; the weight felt like a small ball, perhaps a golf ball.

A few minutes later another cursor appeared, and moved to the opposite side of the cube. Then we both pushed at the same time, and the cube rose. It was the first transmission of "touch" over the internet, demonstrated simultaneously in London and Massachusetts yesterday."

This is a bit lewd but do you know what my first thought after reading this was? "We'll have bots giving BJs on the net in five years using this technology." The technology editor at the Independent must have been thinking the same thing because he made three references to using this technology for internet sex in the article...

"...Developed by Joel Jordan, a PhD student at University College London, with MIT in Boston, the software used could one day mean that we will feel the sensation of objects picked up on the surface of the Moon or beneath the sea, surgeons could do operations remotely, a whole new genre of computer games could be created - internet arm-wrestling, anyone? - and perhaps a remarkable new spice could be added to internet sex."

"..."Teledildonics" has long been a holy grail of the sex industry, but the costs have been too great and the technology too complex. But once something becomes widespread, the sex industry will find a way to make it pay - and possibly even speed its adoption."

Sex and spam drive the internet my friends. Every hot new technology is either designed with sex or spam in mind or is eventually adopted by spammers or internet sex merchants. This technology isn't going to be any different.

Making Fun Of The French Is Always Good For A Laugh: IMAO put up some imaginary dialogue that made me laugh out loud. The article speculates about what would happen if you polled the French on gun control...

"American Polltaker: I wish to ask you some questions about guns.

Frenchman: Once again my non-violent diplomacy triumphs!"

Taliban Now Recruiting New Members For Its Book Club: Since their loss of power in Afghanistan, the Taliban have been turning their energies to other activities, including the formation of "The Taliban Book Club." The book club was set up in the early weeks of 2002, when Mullah Achmet-Abubu Lunituna heard that Oprah was disbanding her popular reading club. "Oprah is the second highest rated show in the greater Kabul area, after reruns of Gomer Pyle," said Lunituna earlier today, "and when Oprah announced her book club had run its course, I saw a void that needed to be filled." The Taliban Book Club will operate in a similar fashion to Oprah's club, as well as others (such as the Today Show Book Club), in that Lunituna will choose a title for members to read and then a selected number of them will meet once a month to discuss their impressions of the work. The Taliban Book Club meetings will be televised live on Al-Jazeera and "anyone" can join, insists Lunituna, "provided they are male, Muslim, have a beard, hate Jews, hate America, hate women, animals and small children and live in a cave."

The first four titles have already been selected: "Death to America," a searing portrait of Taliban freedom fighters battling the Great Satan, written by Lunituna himself; "Death to Israel," a searing portrait of Taliban freedom fighters battling the Little Satan, written by Lunituna's brother, Dave Lunituna (a drycleaner and part-time writer in Jalalabad); "The Even More Greatest Story Ever Told," the authorized biography of Osama Bin Laden, written by Mullah Omar; and "Five Days in Paris," by Danielle Steel. Asked about the latter selection, Lunituna said that "some of us guys really like gushy love stories, okay? Do you have a problem with that?"

If you liked this piece of satire by Marni Malarkey, check out more of his work at Broken Newz.

Every Violent Act Since 911 And Including 911 Has Been Perpetrated By Americans, Not Muslims: As I've detailed before, part of the American-left has descended into madness. If you want a perfect example of what I'm talking about, check out Vox NYC, a web page that I found via a link on the Democratic Underground message boards. If you want left-wing conspiracy theories, the kook who runs Vox NYC has got plenty of them. For this version of ACPOTI (Anyone can post on the internet), I've linked some of the insane conspiracy theories on this page and I've also added three comments made by readers of the page after each post. Judging by the number of comments on this page, stark raving lunacy apparently draws quite an audience.