Say Anything Blog

Cross Posted at www.ski-blog.com:

From today’s Arizona Republic:

SCOTTSDALE - Police are searching for a man who shot and wounded a large dog in the 6800 block of East Almeria Street.

Police were called about 8 p.m. Friday by witnesses who said they heard a bang and the yelping of a dog.

The Rottweiler’s owner discovered the dog, blood streaming from its mouth, near his carport door shortly after the gun shot, Scottsdale police said.

A veterinarian confirmed that the Rottweiler was shot once in the head, with the bullet entering the side of the dog’s mouth and exiting though its tongue, police said.

The dog was unleashed and unattended when it was shot, police said.

Police said witnesses reported seeing a man in his mid-30s, 5-foot 8-inches tall, and 200 pounds with a dark mullet-style haircut running westbound on Almeria Street, away from the injured dog.

The dog is expected to survive, police said.

He was possibly driving a 1984 Firebird and wearing a Levis Jean Jacket with a AC/DC patch on it.

Damn that Global Warming… er… Climate Change: 

There were no April showers to bring any May flowers, but many Arizonans woke to snow, spotty rain and strong winds Tuesday morning during the typically warm month of May.

The low-pressure system that brought the wet weather had passed through the state just after noon, but a 30 percent chance of rain in the Valley still existed, according to the National Weather Service.

The Valley saw just trace amounts of rain throughout the morning along with wind gusts of up to 41 mph, according to the weather service. Meanwhile, the Flagstaff airport had about three inches of snow and around 11 inches of snow fell at Sunset Crater northeast of Flagstaff.

Climate Change, baby.  Man-made.  I drove my SUV to Starbucks today getting 15.6 MPG knowing that I am doing my part to cause Flagstaff snowfall.

Sanchez commanded the US military in Iraq from 2003-2004. The three-star general was relieved of his commander in 2004 following the Abu Ghraib scandal, and in 2005, was told his career was over and he wouldn’t be promoted to a fourth star.

The primary reason appears to be his involvement in authorizing harsh tactics for the treatment of Iraqi prisoners.

Bob doesn’t want to tell us that part of the story.  Gross incompetence accusations?  From the man behind Abu Ghraib?  The same Abu Ghraib that set us back a full year in the war due to the PR nightmare it caused?  Perhaps this wasn’t all Sanchez’s fault and perhaps he was scapegoated, but it certainly isn’t gross incompetence to fail to promote a general that presided over the disaster.

What this leaves open to question is whether the demotions, firings, lack of promotions, etc., went far enough up the food chain or went too far.  Most folks that hate the Bush Administration wanted to see Rummy punished.  It appears that Sanchez thinks he was punished unfairly and that the issue went too far up.  Some kind of Goldilocks effect.  It cost him a 4th Star but considering the damage it did to US international standing, I believe that the Bush Administration did the best that they could to hold people accountable.

And that is what is great about RBB.  He cuts and pastes a paragraph or two, but fails to ever tell the whole story.  Why not include the two paragraphs that I did?  Oh, if he did it wouldn’t be worth him posting because it wouldn’t paint the distorted picture of the Bush Administration and Republicans that suits his agenda.

He may not have invented the Internet, but Cubans don’t know that since they probably don’t have the Internet:

HAVANA - Cubans are getting wired.

Computers went on sale to the general public on the communist island on Friday and potential consumers were lining up outside store windows to gawk and consider buying.

President Raul Castro’s government had authorized the sale of personal computers to average Cubans more than a month ago, but they were not made available until Friday.

Computer sales are the latest of a series of measures Castro has taken to make life easier for ordinary Cubans.

The new government also has erased bans on cell phones and luxury hotel room rentals, and has made it easier for state workers to own homes they once rented as part of their jobs. It also is letting more private farmers and cooperatives take a crack at putting fallow government land to better use.

But they have great, free public healthcare, right Michael Moore?

Fox News Reports on the situation:

Arizona State University may have less cheerful sidelines at sporting events next season.

After racy photos of members of the university’s cheerleading squad were spotted on a campus blog called “The Dirty,” the school cut the squad completely, MyFOXPhoenix reported.

The school’s athletic director, Lisa Love, made the decision Thursday evening.The pictures on the blog feature 6 of the cheerleaders posing in nothing but their bras and panties.

Although only six members of the squad are shown in the photographs, the entire 16-member squad will suffer the consequences, MyFOXPhoenix reported.

The cheerleaders told MyFOXPhoenix that the photographs were a result of college kids goofing off, and they believe the decision to disband the team has been in the works for a while. The photographs are two years old, and were taken at a “cheer party.”

First off, GO DEVILS!  Makes me proud to be a Sun Devil myself.  And since I have this weird male quirk of enjoying looking at scantily clad 20 year old cheerleaders, especially ASU Cheerleaders, I did a little research and got the link to the post at the Dirty that contains all the pics.

The Media wants to ensure there is a recession even if consumers and the economy will not cooperate:

For practical purposes, the positive growth numbers are just a technicality. It feels like a recession to American workers, consumers and businesses. A period of significant weakness could persist for months to come, perhaps well into 2009.

What’s equally notable, however, is that this downturn is unfurling slowly and in a muted fashion despite the shocks of soaring energy and food costs and a plunge in real-estate wealth.

Some economists even raise the possibility of something unprecedented in records since World War II: that economic officials will declare a recession even as gross domestic product continues to rise.

In the current economic cycle, much of the direct impact of a consumer slowdown is being felt overseas rather than in the domestic economy.

“In some sense the recession has been outsourced,” as people postpone purchases of BMW cars and South Korean flat-screen TVs while still paying for rent or child care, says Mark Vitner, an economist at Wachovia Corp., a banking firm in Charlotte, N.C. “If you look at the composition of these numbers . . . it really begs the question of whether we’re going to see a decline of GDP at all in 2008.”

For a couple of years now, America’s hunger for imported goods has been cooling, generally rising but at a decelerating pace. In some recent quarters, the pace of imports has actually fallen.

One rule-of-thumb definition of a recession is two quarters when growth turns negative.

All recessions since at least the 1940s, for example, have seen some period of decline in the production of goods and services.

Some economists believe that this year will see such a decline. But they also add that, even without negative growth, a recession may exist based on other criteria such as jobs and income.

“It’s possible,” says Peter Kretzmer, an economist at the Bank of America in New York.

Recessions are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private organization in Cambridge, Mass.

Moral of the story-even if we are not in a recession, economists in Cambridge can make shit up and declare one anyway.

Consumer spending is not declining here at home, but imports are slowing.  Why is that?  It is because the American Dollar is weakening and imports are becoming more expensive. 

This is more Clinton crap.  “I feel your pain” even if there is only a little bit of pain.  Dems and the media will create fake pain that does not exist.

How is this any different than Dems being vested in Global Warming to the point that they will ignore the fact that since 1998, the Earth has cooled?  Call it Climate Change not global warming.  How do they ignore the fact that they want a recession, but none exists?  Change how they define a recession.  How do they ignore the real and tangible progress being made in Iraq?  Move the goal posts and talk about political progress and reconciliation.

Dems want a recession, the Earth to boil, and troops to die.  It suits their political agenda and when there is cause for some optomism and when things are actually going well for the American people, they lie about what is going on.

Why did I find myself chuckling at this piece in the Arizona Repugnant:

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription-drug bills, they are selling off grandmother’s dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful - families forced to part with heirlooms.

“This is not about downsizing. It’s about needing gas money,” said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online-auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One formerly affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts…

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health-care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver in 2006 and is now disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother’s teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

“My grandmother raised me, so it hurt,” she said. “We’ve had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time it’s different.”

OK, so the economy was so good that one customer used to buy Versace jeans and Hermes leather jackets, then lost her job.  Now she has to sell them.  Or how about the economy being so good that another person living in a trailer home whose husband was a dump truck driver being able to collect DVDs, VCRs, stereos, and TVs.

It is a tough economy when people lose their jobs and have to sell their Versace jeans and DVD players.  These people need our help.  We need a government program to ensure that they get to live in total luxury.  Barack is going to save these people from the clutches of middle class living.

When GDP grows at .6% and the media is so deep in recession predictions that they look like fools, they start making shit up.  Just like they have tried to portray our military vets from Iraq as psychopaths despite clear evidence that they suffer from only slightly more cases of mental illness than the general population.

When Iraq stops being an issue and the economy is not in recession, the news must go on.

Run one single time for one single office as a Republican, yet run 8 years later as an oddball conspiracy theorist Independent for the presidential ticket with Lyndon LaRouche, and when you molest your kids, you are a prominent Republican:

A daughter of a civil rights icon who served as a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. testified Monday that her father regularly molested her beginning when she was 6 years old.

The Rev. James L. Bevel pleaded not guilty to a charge of incest before jury selection began Monday. Prosecutors have said he had sex with a teenage daughter years ago, and told her the sex was part of religious training.

The daughter testified she grew up in a communal lifestyle in which she regularly saw her father having sex with women and she came to perceive her own molestation as normal…

Bevel, 71, was a leading figure in the civil rights movement and was with King when he was assassinated 40 years ago. He also is credited with helping to conceive and organize the Million Man March.

In the 1980s, Bevel became active in Republican Party politics and unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1984.

Ran as an independent for the Presidency in 1992 as part of a nutjob conspiracy ticket but because he ran in 1984 as a Republican and molested someone, he was active in Republican politics.  I beat RBB to it.  Surprised that he didn’t see “Republican”, “incest”, and “molest” in some meta search that he does and already post it. 

It appears that the media works about as objectively as RBB.  If you can find a way to call someone a Republican and they commit a crime, do it.

Here is a Link to the Station Manager.  Stop screwing around with these guys directly.  Take the beef to their station manager, Clear Channel, and their advertisers.

It is rare that “professionals” in broadcasting or journalism would display such contempt towards bloggers and other writers on the internet as Walton and Johnson have shown to the readers and writers at Say Anything Blog.  They flat out plagarized a post by a contributor at SAB, but when it was pointed out, decided to double down and send out profane and rude e-mails to the folks that complained.

Simply having a show that is “on the edge” and “appeals to adult men” with whatever humor they profess to use is one thing.  Using other people’s work and passing it off as their own is another.

Clear Channel and this station have ethical standards as do most professionals in broadcasting.  These hosts apparently do not.  Consistently the webmaster as well as contributors at Say Anything Blog have tried to simply get an acknowledgement and an appology from the hosts and they have sent e-mails back that included statements as shockingly unprofessional as “fuck off”.

While the bloggers and readers of blogs out there may not be in your general area or folks that your advertisers are specifically targetting, the next step should the hosts fail to appologize and attribute the work to the appropriate author will be to begin contacting advertisers and contacting representatives of Clear Channel themselves.

Thank you for your prompt response and attention to this matter.

Check out their description of their show:

The W&J Radio Show is one of the most respected and universally imitated radio programs in the nation. No show has a more unique mix of “stream of consciousness,” opinionated and compelling talk, celebrity guest, musical elements, fictional characters and famous impersonations, great skit writing and production coupled with powerful interaction that radio audiences seem to appreciate.

They lift their jokes from the internet and then try to pass if off as their own.  Universally imitated?  That is because you steal the shit from other folks on the web, not because they want to be like you.

ASSHATS!

Check this post at their BLOG which I find ironic since they basically have e-mailed “fuck you’s” to bloggers when we question their ethics.

I am gonna hotlink since ettiquette does not apply to these asshats. I linked to their picture at their site, but the image is at all you can upload so they don't ban us from hotlinking.



Notice that the image has a fucking watermark of their show.  Yet here is another copy floating around the net without their watermark on it:



Posting someone else’s joke or someone else’s photo or something from an e-mail forward is perfectly acceptable.  You simply link back to them and offer the simple (h/t) that says thanks for turning me onto this.  A bit of web ettiquette that Jay Tea at Wizbangblog made part of my behavior on the web.

Go through the images on their BLOG that are nothing more than them lifting pictures from e-mails that someone forwarded.

These guys are dirtbags of the highest order.  When kids do this in high school or college, they are thrown out of school.  Apparently these guys never made it to high school to learn their lessons.

By the UN’s own Humanitarian Briefing in April 2003:

Humanitarian Briefing, 16 Apr 2003
Transcript of the UN humanitarian briefing in Amman, Jordan
Geoffrey Keele, Spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

There has been an outbreak of Blackwater Fever in southern Iraq. This is a waterborne disease also know as Laeshmaniasis.

The Iraqi Refugee Aid Council has told us of 100 cases in Amarah, 70 cases in Nasariya, and an unspecified number of cases in Az Zubair. The ages of the victims are not known, however, Blackwater Fever can be fatal and children under five are the most vulnerable to contracting it.

This disease - spread mainly by sand-flies—causes malnutrition and anaemia and can kill weaker, malnourished children (although no fatalities have been reported in these towns so far).

Symptoms of the disease include fever, weakness, discolouration, bloated stomach due to swollen organs, and black coloured urine due to hemorrhaging. If not treated within 4-6 weeks it leads to severe debility and eventually death.

Given this, our biggest concern is that the first cases of the fever were reported in February before the outbreak of the war. UNICEF immediately procured the drugs needed to treat the fever, but war broke out before we could get them into the country.

At that time, 100 cases had been discovered from Thiqar governorate in the south, to Babylon in the north. These are areas we still do not have access to, and 90% of cases could die without medicine (PENTOSTAM).

UNICEF has 1,000 doses of the medicine and we were able to send 100 vials of it to Nasriya yesterday. In an excellent example of UN - media cooperation, we sent in the life saving medicine with a German television crew. We hope to send 200 vials to Amarah tomorrow.

Nine Trucks caring clean water to the Fao peninsula left Iran today and entered Iraq at the Shalamcheh border crossing. Three other trucks were unable to cross today, but will cross tomorrow instead.

Named after Blackwater, the E-V-I-L Contracting Mercenary company... right?!?!? Liberal heads exploding in 3... 2... 1...

The left is posting things like this gem:

[suggesting Haliburton Fever as a better name] Malaria spreads through contaminated water, as well as mosquito bites. Halliburton served our troops contaminated water, so…

But this rant was the best:

That disease and PARASITES …and these American Doctors are totally ignorant of .The South lost the war to HOOKWORM infections …that the slaves brought over with them from Africa …And this DISEASE is on its way back big time here in America .In West Tennessee hundreds of people are being treated for everything but Parasites .My Grandmother died from Worm Infection .The Parasites gave her a stroke and then she died .She was the cleanest person in the world .I blame Poor city water and under-educated doctors .And these Troops have these Liver Parasites and more than probably other parasite infections .And all it takes is doses of Mebendazolefor HOOKWORM and Rounworm infection the other parasite infections take something else .I seen lots of people who are sick and being cheated by doctors and specialist from quality of life ..Because they are ignorant .I really feel sorry for all these Troops who will come back to a Health Care system that was Broken before they enter the Service .This country needs a big wake up call and BUSH and Cheney need to be IMPEACHED ! Bush went to take care of Africans with out Nets for misquitos …Hey same thing BUSH is happening here …PEOPLE ARE DYING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO HEALTH CARE AND no GOOD doctors to give the care needed !

Speaking of diseases and treatment, I think I need a vaccination and a tetnus shot simply for allowing my web browser to travel to the filth of DU and Think Progress.

RBB, you are a douche.

From Wiki on Son of the Beach:

Son of the Beach was a television series (2000-2002) that was a spoof of Baywatch, the chief joke being that the studly David Hasselhoff character is instead a normal, pot-bellied and out of shape bald man, but treated exactly the same. Much of the comedy of the series was based on sexual jokes, innuendo and the like. Radio talk show host Howard Stern was one of the executive producers.

The show centered on the adventures of Shore Patrol Force 30 (SPF 30, a pun on the term Sun Protection Factor), led by the pasty, out of shape and clueless lifeguard Notch Johnson. The rest of his patrol consists of B.J. Cummings (the dumb, White big-chested lifeguard), Jamaica St. Croix (the dumb, African-American big-chested lifeguard), Chip Rommel (the dumb, hunky, muscular male lifeguard who is an obvious parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kimberlee Clark (the smart but flat-chested female lifeguard). Many of the plots revolved around silly action genre clichés and movie parodies, with many of the feature roles played by actors and celebrities such as Mark Hamill, Erik Estrada, Gary Coleman, John Salley, Joey Buttafuoco, Patty Hearst, Adam Carolla, and Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.

The title is a pun on the phrase “son of a bitch.” Likewise, character names are rife with puns and innuendo. Porcelain Bidet, B.J. Cummings, Jamaica St. Croix, Anita Massengil, and Notch Johnson all refer to some sort of double entendre, while Chip Rommel’s name refers to the “Desert Fox”, further punctuating the fact that the character is German. Kimberlee Clark’s name is a pun on the company Kimberly-Clark, manufacturer of paper products such as Kleenex and Kotex.

For photographic evidence, check here (h/t Wizbang):

Now check Spitzer:

Great show that was on FX for about three years.  Night Stand may have been even funnier:

Mocking Jerry Springer-like talk shows, Night Stand was a fake talk show hosted by lovable, Dick Dietrick, played masterfully by Timothy Stack. Dick would bring on ridiculous guests and go into a plethora of even more ridiculous questions. A Springer/Ricky Lake- type show, the “Dick Dietrick Show” would bring on guests that not even fans of the entire “outrageous” talk show genre would want to see. Many of the themes had sexual overtones, obvious to everyone watching, except for Dick himself who would make comments that everyone else found explicit, but Dick himself thought nothing of it. Soon after he would scold the audience when realizing the sexual overtone, and say, “People, no....no.”

Much has been made about Arizona’s budget crisis and Arizona’s new Employer Sanctions law, including these here and here.  The Employer sanctions law is the controversial Prop 300 passed in 2006. 

But in 2004, Arizona voters also passed an ID law requiring that citizens provide ID to vote or obtain services.  And the Governor has been ignoring most of the meat of the law.  So the backers are taking her ass to court.

Arizona residents would have to show proof of citizenship to get state benefits for health care, food stamps, housing and other services under a motion filed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The filing, led by supporters of Proposition 200, is the latest involving the controversial law. Arizona voters approved it in 2004 with the aim of blocking illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits.

But the law has been applied to only a handful of welfare programs in the years since, per an opinion offered by state Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Prop. 200 backers say Goddard’s interpretation is too narrow and has never matched the intent of voters.

Message to illegals--you are not welcome to get free shit and work under the table in Arizona.  We don’t want you sucking off the tit of big government welfare programs.  We know that probably means that some hotel rooms might not get cleaned, that some lawns might not get cut, that some dishes in restaurants might not get done, that some fruit might not get picked, or that some construction might not get done.  And we have carefully weighed the costs associated with providing benefits for you and dealing with the associated crime and gang activity and the voters have concluded that you are no longer welcome by votes of 70-30 in two statewide elections.

Thanks for visiting Arizona.  Please depart back to Mexico or country of origin and apply for work visas.  We welcome you back if you come here legally.  And if you don’t want to, head to one of the states that will take you until they see our results and start copying our laws.

Will Franklin of Willisms (and son of site regular Zsa Zsa) writes about one of his favorite topics--domestic net migration frequently at his site.  I want to take it a step further with a discussion of demographics and education in California.

First, let’s take a look at the most recent US Census data on net domestic migration:

New York, in contrast, had the largest annualized net outmigration during the period, averaging 183,000. California (99,000) and Illinois (72,000) were ranked second and third, respectively…

California experienced the largest numerical change in average annual net migration between the 1990s and the 2000–2004 period. While the state continued to experience net outmigration between 2000 and 2004, the average annual net outmigration of 99,000 was smaller than the comparable figure of 221,000 per year during the 1990s.

Net domestic migration is one part of the population picture.  This means that in the 1990’s, 2.2M more US Citizens moved from the state of California than to the state of California.  From 2000-2004, another 500,000 moved and projecting the last three years that the trend remains, that is 3M more citizens leaving California than moving there.

The numbers grow even more ominous when you factor in birth rates.  Studies on fertility rates show that for Whites, Blacks and Asians, the number of births per woman is below the replacement rate of 2.1:

As shown in Figure 2, Latinas have much higher fertility rates than other ethnic groups in California. As of 2005, the total fertility rate for Latinas in California was 2.9 children per woman, substantially higher than for Asians, African Americans, and whites, who all had fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1.

According the the Census, the total population of California was 29.75M in 1990.  Of that number, 7.6M were Hispanics and 20.5M were White.  Yet from July 1, 2000, to July 1, 2007, the population of California increased from 34M to 36.5M according to the US Census figures. Of the 34M in 2000, 20.1M were white and 11M were Hispanic.

As I posted earlier today on Neiman’s Homeschooling thread, that leave California in an interesting predicament.  California must test their high school students in Spanish when assessing their scholastic proficiency for No Child Left Behind:

Try this shit on for size from California’s annual No Child Left Behind Tests:

Between spring 1999 and spring 2005, districts were required to administer the SABE/2 to Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in grades two through eleven who were enrolled in California public schools fewer than 12 months when the tests were administered. Districts had the option of testing Spanish-speaking English learners who were enrolled in a California public school 12 months or more when the tests were administered. The tests were administered between March 15 and May 14 of each year. Students in grades two through eleven were tested in Spanish reading and language, as well as mathematics in Spanish. Students in grades two through eight were also tested in Spanish spelling. Students were required to take the SABE/2 in addition to taking the required state achievement tests in English for their grades.

Here is what the results show:

For students administered the test as second graders, the average student math score is 69%.  For those tested as twelveth graders, that score drops to 31%.

These figures are directly from California’s testing website. 

For junior in high school, only 35% score at proficient in English, 40% score proficient in Math, 28% in science, and 33% in history.

The numbers are closer to 20% in Los Angeles County and San Bernadino County.

In every sense and at every grade level, Hispanics perform far worse in Math, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, and Science than their White counterparts, even when those exams are administered in Spanish to compensate for language differences.  Whites are leaving California in droves and White women are having children at well below the replacement rate.  These problems of California schools working so hard to educate Hispanic children in most public schools are dragging down the test scores and performance of their white peers.  Pockets of affluence and educated kids still do well, as do most asians, but these are in large part because these kids are isolated due to demographics and home prices from the poorer Hispanics.

In light of the recent home schooling decision, it is becoming apparent--if you are White, affluent, and desire for your children to be educated, you need to move your ass out of California or into a neighborhood so excluse and isolated that they are shielded from the major demographic problems going on.