One man's misfortune is another's opportunity

Team Discovery just announced the release of team leader Ivan Basso. He is leaving to address questions stemming from the Puerto doping scandal from last May in which 50 riders were denied entry in the '06 Tour de France. This leaves open the door for Levi Leipheimer to lead Team Discovery. Levi won the Tour of California earlier this year, but 5 days riding around your hometown is different from 22 days riding around France. Basso was Lance's pick to lead Discovery in the TDF but I think Levi can handle it. He's a good time-trialer, a good sprinter, a smart team leader, and an excellent climber.

If any of you are interested in reading some more about American and world cycling, I highly recommend Endless Cycle, hosted by peloton Jim. He's got a cool site in which we discuss all the current goings-on in cycling from Floyd Landis, the Puerto doping scandal, to Levi taking the lead role on Discovery, to other larger issues tangentially related to cycling and sports. Really, you should check it out.

Fear and loathing in France

This tidbit of news probably explains a lot...

According to an opinion poll published Friday, the French dislike themselves even more than Americans dislike them, Reuters reported.

The survey of six nations, carried out for the International Herald Tribune daily and France 24 TV station, said 44 percent of French people thought badly of themselves against 38 percent of U.S. respondents who had a negative view of the French.

We should expect little else from a nation of people who willingly participate in their own cultural destruction. Muslims have been agressively colonizing France for decades, yet the French look the other way and pretend that political correctness will get the Muslims to be nice and like them. They are only feeding the alligator in hopes that he will eat them last. How little must the French think of themselves that they won't even breed to save their country? How dark must their outlook be that they won't even fight for themselves against foreign invaders?

Then again, somebody might make the same assessment of the U.S. We barely breed enough to replace ourselves and we certainly won't fight to preserve our culture, borders, or language. How far behind France are we? A couple of decades I'd say.

Confounded by their own stupidity

Not to be derailed by the truth, wacky environmentalists insist that bio-fuels are the answer to the imaginary menace of global warming...

European union green fuel targets will accelerate the destruction of rainforests in South-East Asia and threaten the habitat of endangered species, such as the orang-utan.

In March EU leaders agreed to set a binding climate change target to make biofuel - energy sources made from plant material - account for 10 per cent of all Europe's transport fuels by 2020.

But the European Commission has admitted that the objective, which aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions, may have the unintended consequence of speeding up the destruction of tropical rainforests and peatlands in South-East Asia - actually increasing, not reducing, global warming.

To Gaia-worshipping cultists like Al Gore and his witless European counterparts, it matters not that they will be directly responsible for destroying the world's rain forests by thoughtlessly demanding that the world convert to a bio-fuel economy. The only thing that matters is that they feel better about themselves and their stupid, hybrid cars that nobody wants, and can look condescendingly down their noses at the rest of us as evil, capitalist polluters.

This is what South-East Asian rainforests will look like after stupid environmentalists' demand for "bio-fuels" is met.


Hat tip to Telegraph.co.uk.

How much for that sheep in the window?

This scam is even funnier than Al Gore's carbon-offset swindle...

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.

Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each.

That is a snip compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan.

The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.

She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.

Seriously folks, I'm not making this up. How dumb do you have to be to not notice the hooves? And you'd think the constant baaa baaa would be a clue. How do you live your entire lives and not know what a sheep looks like?

This is what dogs look like to the Japanese.

The jig is up Al

You'll be shocked, shocked I say, to learn that The Goreacle has been scamming the world's idiots by selling them worthless "carbon offsets"...

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010.
The FT investigation found:

■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

You'll be just as shocked to learn that Al Gore profits from every aspect of the carbon-credit scam. The scheme is to swindle rich, stupid liberals by convincing them that they can pollute as much as they want as long as they buy forgiveness from Al's carbon credit companies. It is said, "A fool and his money are soon parted". Well, I guess that pretty much describes any dumb liberal who believes Al Gore and his cult of environmentalism, and nothing is funnier than watching dumb liberals getting screwed by one of their own.

Hat tip to Financial Times

Ham sandwich control

You can't make this stuff up folks. It is actually happening in our country...

One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime at Lewiston Middle School, Superintendent Leon Levesque said Wednesday.

On April 11, a white student placed a ham steak in a bag on a lunch table where Somali students were eating. Muslims consider pork unclean and offensive.

The school incident is being treated seriously as "a hate incident," Levesque said. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan.

Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing," said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It's extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It's important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

There is so much stupidity in this story to ridicule, I don't know where to start.

How do you commit a hate-crime with a ham sandwich? Why did the story specify "a white student"? Would the paper have specified "a black student" if the kid had been black? I doubt it. According to the liberal template, only whites are capable of hate-crimes.

As an important, respected member of the alernative media, I have obtained an advance draft of the Ham Sandwich-Free Zone legislation currently before the Lewiston City Council:

Ham Sandwich-Free School Zone Act of 2007.

(a) Any person who possesses a ham sandwich in a place that the person
knows, or reasonably should know, is a school zone, unless it is with the written
permission of the school district superintendent, shall be punished

(b) Punishment shall NOT apply to the possession of a ham sandwich
under any of the following circumstances:
(1) Within a place of residence, business, or on private
property, if it is not part of the school grounds and the possession of the
ham sandwich is otherwise lawful.
(2) The ham sandwich is a mufaletta, panini, or other breaded lunch meat
capable of being concealed on the person and is in a locked container
or within the locked trunk of a motor vehicle.
This section shall not prohibit or limit the otherwise lawful
transportation of any other sandwich, including tuna, PB&J, chicken salad
or other pork meat sandwich capable of being concealed on the person, in
accordance with state law.
(c)Any person who violates subdivision (b) by possessing a
ham sandwich within a distance of 1,000 feet from the grounds of a public
or private school providing instruction to Muslims or sissified liberals shall be punished

Here is the police mugshot of the ham sandwich suspected of complicity in a hate crime against Muslim children.

Tony Blair...modern day Don Quixote

His country willingly participates in it's own death spiral as a result of aggressive colonization by militant Islam, yet Tony Blair decides to take a brave stand against traffic accidents...

BAD driving kills 1.2million people a year and is a bigger danger to the world than war or disease, Tony Blair said yesterday.

This is on par with the stupidity that is the global-warming hoax perpetrated by the Goreacle. Sometimes I think TB is a good guy, but then he goes and shows what a moron he is. His country is dying and he tilts against the traffic windmill!

Hat tip to The Mirror.

Geek Vader

What's more geekier than a StarWars fanatic? Answer: a StarWars fanatic who takes time out from his StarWars obsession to indulge his other hobby, hot-air ballooning.

Seriously though, this would freak me out if it came over the tree tops toward my house. I would definitely have to call the family out to see it.

Hat tip SciFi.com

I don't have a square to spare

Hollywood airheads Laurie David and Sheryl Crowe are touring the country in no less than three CO2-belching buses and three bio-deisel-guzzeling tractor trailers to tell us little people that if we just stop wiping our butts, we can save the world.

Sheryl shared her bizarre ideas after the tour ended in DC this weekend...

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Crow has also commented on her website about how she thinks paper napkins "represent the height of wastefulness".

She has designed a clothing line with what she calls a "dining sleeve".

The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another "dining sleeve" after the diner has used it to wipe his or her mouth.

Need I state the obvious? Why doesn't Sheryl use her "dining sleeve" for both?

Over at TheSmokingGun you can find Sheryl's absurd tour demands, including specific booze demands for each day of the week.

Pardon the Seinfeld reference in the title of this post but the story demands it.

Reader comments

Reader martin c. cox thoughtfully pointed out in the comments section to this post concerning the VT shootings...

Murders with firearms by country:

Germany: 384
Canada: 165
Spain: 97
Portugal: 84
United Kingdom: 62
Australia: 59
United States: 8,259

(Source: Nationmaster.com)

We could say: See, these numbers show why we Americans need guns to protect us!

Or we could ask: If guns are the best protection, how come there's so few murders with firearrms in the other civilized countries - where the population almost have no guns to protect them with at all?

My argument begins with these sobering statistics from an article in ReasonOnline magazine...

Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

Point 1: Even if you stupidly passed gun-conrol legislation, the guns are already here. How can you disarm the criminals without making the ordinary citizens vulnerable? If you disarm the general population, only the criminals will have guns and the murder rate will increase dramatically because we would be defenseless. You don't seriously think the bad guys would turn in their guns to the government do you?

Point 2: Those other countries do not have a second amendment to what passes for constitutions.

Point 3: Is it right for the State to prevent an individual from defending himself, his family, his property, or other citizens from harm? Really that is the only question that need be answered. Just think, if only one student or teacher at VT had the means of defending himself and others, think of the lives that could have been saved that morning. Can you look into the eyes of the parents and friends of those 32 dead people and honestly say you are still glad that VT was a gun-free-zone? I couldn't.