Chicken Soup 4 The Damned

US Rebuffs Bin Laden 'Truce Call'

"We do not mind offering you a truce that is fair and long-term... so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan... there is no shame in this solution because it prevents wasting of billions of dollars...."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly dismissed the truce offer saying: "We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business."

Shatner Kidney Stone Goes For $25,000

The money will go to Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for the needy.

"This would be the first Habitat for Humanity house built out of stone," joked Darren Julien, president of Los Angeles-based Julien's Auctions, which handled the sale.

Shatner, who played Kirk on the original "Star Trek" TV show and won an Emmy for his role on "Boston Legal," passed the stone last fall.

Obama Defends Clinton's 'Plantation' Remark

Sen. Barack Obama and other black Democrats are defending Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's description of the House of Representatives as a "plantation." First lady Laura Bush says Clinton's remark was "ridiculous."

Clinton, D-N.Y., a potential presidential candidate for 2008, did not retreat from the "plantation" remark, telling reporters the term accurately describes the "top-down" way the GOP runs Congress.

Iran Says To End Atomic Site Checks If Sent To UN

Iran said on Friday it would end voluntary cooperation with the United Nations over its nuclear program, including snap checks of atomic sites, if Tehran was referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

The United States and the European Union's three biggest powers said on Thursday that talks with Iran to curb its nuclear program were at an impasse and Tehran should be brought before the Security Council.

Iranian Foreign Minister Moocher Mistake warned that a referral would have "consequences" for the West.

'Million Little Pieces' Called A Fraud / Best-selling Oprah selection said to contain fabrications

Central to Frey's book, published in 2003, is his assertion that he was charged with assaulting a police officer in Ohio with his car, with inciting a riot, with possession of crack cocaine and felony drunk driving -- charges that he wrote resulted in him serving a three-month prison term....

The Smoking Gun's Web site displays the original police officer's report of the 1992 incident which shows Frey was found drunk in his car without a driver's license but did not, as he wrote, serve time behind bars for the incident or behave in the outrageous manner portrayed in his book.

"He (Frey) was polite and cooperative at all times. He was later released on $733 cash bond," the police report from the October 24, 1992, incident concludes.

Wealthy School Apologizes For Insulting Chants

Officials at a Wisconsin high school are apologizing for insults chanted at a basketball game. In their chant, fans of a suburban Madison school insulted their city opponents by suggesting they need food stamps to eat....

Middleton is a well-to-do suburb, while 40 percent of Madison East's students are eligible for federally subsidized lunches....

East got the last laugh. They beat Middleton 66-55.

Body Armor Leaves Troops Vulnerable

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the Marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon largely has declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

Wal-Mart Ends Automated Movie Suggestions

Wal-Mart said it had fixed the immediate problem by removing what it called the "offensive combinations" from a webpage on www.walmart.com advertising a boxed DVD set, Planet Of The Apes: The Complete TV Series.

Under "Similar Items," the page linked shoppers to four movies about the lives of the slain civil-rights leader, actress Dorothy Dandridge, boxer Jack Johnson and singer Tina Turner. It was manually changed by 5:30 p.m. CT to link shoppers instead to DVD sets of Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and Star Wars.

Whales Found To Speak In Dialects

Blue whales off the Pacific Northwest sound different than blue whales in the western Pacific Ocean, and these sound different than those living off Antarctica.

And they all sound different than the blue whales living near Chile.

"The whales in the eastern Pacific have a very low-pitched pulsed sounds, followed by a tone," said David Mellinger of Oregon State University. "Other populations use different combinations of pulses, tones, and pitches."

Bush, Congressmen To Donate Abramoff Contributions

Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign, earning the honorary title "pioneer" from the campaign. But the campaign is giving up only $6,000 that came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes that he worked to win influence for in Washington.

Lobbyist Admits To Kickbacks, Fraud

Former high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges, agreeing to cooperate in a federal corruption probe in Washington....

Abramoff is a longtime associate of several top GOP leaders, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Americans for Tax Reform director Grover Norquist, and former Christian Coalition chief Ralph Reed....

Prosecutors also detailed a "stream of things of value" given to an unnamed congressman, identified in the court documents as Representative No. 1, and to members of his staff. The items listed include a "lavish" golf trip to Scotland, tickets to sporting events and other entertainment, meals at Abramoff's "upscale" Washington restaurant, and campaign contributions to the representative and his political action committee in exchange for a series of actions by that representative. The Justice Department would not identify the congressman. But government sources have said he is Rep. Bob Ney, a veteran Republican from Ohio who heads the House Administration Committee.

Starbucks Wins Chinese Logo Case

A Shanghai court concluded that Chinese firm Xingbake had infringed the US firm's rights by using a Chinese name and logo similar to Starbucks.... Starbucks has 300 outlets in China, having opened its first in 1999.

...Starbucks insisted that it had registered its name and logo in 1996 and claimed that the use of the Xingbake name in 38 Shanghai outlets violated its intellectual property rights.

Artists Remove Austria Sex Poster

Controversial images of Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush and Jacques Chirac apparently having sex have been removed from billboards in Austria.... The artists said they were withdrawing their work so as not to detract from that of others involved in the project....

But denying his works were meant to offend, Aires told Austria's APA news agency: "Pornography is in the eye of the beholder. I suddenly had this image of three decision makers who are having an orgy while everything around them collapses."

Carnival of the Vanities #171

Send me your best 2005 short entry or your best excerpt of a 2005 entry, your name, the title of your weblog, your weblog URL, and the date of and permalink to the submitted entry. Consider that the best submissions will stand out in a page of submissions, which is how I plan to present them. Send your submission to mike [at] chickensoup4thedamned dot com by the 27th, subject-line: COTV.

In chronological order:

From Did You Know I Am a Sentimental Fool?

One big area that gets me every time is when one of our children takes their first steps. Well, last night WunderKid 3 took her first 5 steps to daddy’s waiting arms. It brought a tear to my eye and it does so as I type. I remember each of the other two children and how I felt but last night was a little bit different.

WunderKid 3 was born with a clubbed left foot....

Seeing her walk made me think of how I felt the day she was born. We had no idea about her foot until they put her on the warming table to clean her up. The nurse casually said, “We have a clubbed left foot”. I was floored. What did that mean? Then I saw it! Oh my. Would she ever walk? Was it fixable? What was involved in fixing her foot? How long would it take? So many questions. WunderWife was wheeled to recovery only knowing her foot was clubbed. She wanted to know if everything else was ok, but being a bass-ackward hospital, she was in recovery for over an hour. I was alone with WunderKid 3 all that time. I held her and looked at her face. I never looked at her foot. It did not matter, she was perfect to me. I know a clubbed foot is not a “big deal” in the scheme of things, but it threw me for a loop. But as I held her and showed her off to the family, I knew I was going to have to tell them. We have video of me holding her before I told the family. Looking at it now you can see the pain and worry written all over my face. As I looked down at my beautiful daughter, I thought of a million ways to tell everyone. I knew all their questions, I had the same ones. But I had no answers.
--Mike Talley, WunderKraut, 24 July 2005 (with 20 October video update)

From Don't Say I Didn't Help

As thousands of fourth year medical students struggle with their personal statements for the upcoming match I thought I would take this time to suggest some phrases that may catch the eye of your favorite program's director and raise your chance of success....

• Medicine: "I really love treating chronic disease. I particularly enjoy Diabetes. It always fascinated me how blood glucose can go up and then down and then up, and then down. I find it particularly interesting how certain medications will help and then stop helping, and then I add another medication, and then that will help, and eventually it will stop helping. Sweet!..."
• Surgery: "As a child I always wanted to cut things open. Especially animals and dead meat my parents brought home from the butcher. I remember those trips to the butcher shop. The smell of flesh and rotting blood reminded me of daisys blooming in springtime...."
• ER: "OK, let me say it like it is. Yes, I'd like to forget everything I learned in medical school. I don't like patients and this is a great way to make tons of money and have absolutely no responsibility what-so-ever. And the shifts...wow...don't get me started on the shifts..."
• Orthopedics: "This table on which I write my personal statement is lopsided. Wait...it is no longer..."

--Mad House Madman, Internal Medicine Doctor, 22 September 2005

From The Virtue Of Non-Coercion

Cultural relativism is false because the truth of any principle does not depend on one's culture, race or language. The law of gravity is in force for everyone, regardless of who they are. Its truth is objective and measurable. Likewise, moral knowledge, as a subset of knowledge in general, is not cultural. The laws of nature and of social life do not change. The society we live in does change, and that influences our decisions and judgments (as all moral judgments are necessarily contextual, as for any other form of knowledge), but our needs remain the same.

So the Christian and the relativist cannot pin cultural relativism on the moral realist, and thus their case cannot get off the ground. Rather, it is their own ideologies which suffer from this flaw.

How, therefore, can we justify non-coercion from a realist standpoint? Non-coercion is not a value (an object pursued or kept) but rather a virtue (a mental habit favourable to moral action). More specifically, as defined by Kelley, it is "the commitment not to seek values by initiating physical force against others". As a virtue, we must show that using it as a guideline makes one a better moral agent overall.
--Francois Tremblay, Goosing the Antithesis, 23 September 2005

From E-mail Newsletters: Increasing Subscriber Numbers

If your e-mail newsletter is suffering from low readership numbers, there are many remedies you can use to cure the problem. What is needed is a little marketing creativity, and a willingness to test the results.
--Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World, 27 October 2005

From Art Collecting 101: The Guano Should Stay Put

If you scroll down to the previous post, you will see how even more perfect for the CrazyStable would be this "conceptual work" by the eminently collectible Matthew Barney:

"A novel quandary presented itself in 2002," recounts the Times, when a hedge fund mogul purchased the "Ehrich Weiss Squite," a Barney installation which includes seven black Jacobin pigeons. (Hey, these are hipster pigeons--what other color would they wear?) Contained in a room with a transparent door, the birds are allowed to perch on a black box intended to represent the coffin of a Harry Houdini-like escape artist. "We were very concerned when we purchased this," said the curator employed full time to oversee the mogul's "burgeoning collection."

"Pigeon guano is acidic and we feared it would eat away at the acrylic coffin."

Of course, we had this problem often in our early days in Flatbush, but the mogul and his curator turned in their puzzlement to a contemporary art conservator specialist, who consulted with the artist "and decreed that the guano should stay put." After a week of "scientific inquiry," the conservator determined that the guano would remain harmless if it were kept away from moisture, so the whole wondrous work is now in a humidity-controlled warehouse in Queens*, "and the rented pigeons have returned to their coops."

[*The next time an artist, or anyone, gives you something you just can't bear to hang up or put out on the credenza or the mantlepiece, remember this line: "We're storing it in a humidity-controlled warehouse in Queens."]
--Brenda Becker, CrazyStable, 10 November 2005

From Anti-Consumeurism And The War Against The Poor

People hate Wal-Mart because it drives inefficient and limited competitors [out] of the market, but they love Wal-Mart when it tries to drive its smaller, minimum wage competitors away by driving wages up. So once again, people hate the free market, people hate the poor (as main beneficiaries of low-priced competition), people hate the expression of values (through the capacity to consume more), and people love government control. No surprises there.
--Francois Tremblay (again), The Radical Libertarian, 21 November 2005

ACLU: Anti-Children Legal Unit?

The ACLU's campaign to let killers loose in Michigan is called Juvenile Life Without Parole, a novel approach to the thorny subject of whether we should allow justice to run [its] course regardless of whether a person has passed his 18th birthday.

"Children are not disposable," said ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss.

I agree. Children are not disposable and those who kill them belong behind bars.

The FBI reported that in 2004, 107 children (under 18) were murdered by children.

Then there is the case of Lionel Tate, who at 12 killed a 6-year-old girl. Sentenced to life in prison, an appeal got him a new trial, which led to his parole. He violated those terms in 2004 and was given house arrest. Now 18, he is charged with robbing a pizza deliveryman at gunpoint. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
--Don Surber, 21 December 2005

Auld Lang Impeachment

Bush/Cheney's wrongs won't be forgot.
Each one we'll keep in mind.
These evil men must be locked up
For all their many crimes.

They spied on U.S. citizens.
They lied us into war.
And now it's time for righteous folk
To shove them out the door.

They both abused our Bill of Rights.
Took money from the poor.
Said up was down and black was white.
They are evil to the core.

They plundered our great nation's wealth.
They've terrorized our land.
Impeach George Bush and Cheney too.
It is time to take a stand.
--Madeleine Kane, Mad Kane's Notables, 27 December 2005

These entries were submitted at least in some part according to the guidelines -- either by sending me an excerpt or going through their 2005 archives, if not both -- and I thank them for their cooperation.

Still, the turnout was disappointingly low, and my only clue for why this should be came from "Fûz":

Mike,

Just an ordinary CotV entry over here, Boss.

We don't do "best of"s because nothing we do is [particularly] good to begin with. But we do kick into a Carnival from time to time.

And I'd really dig being near the top of the stack for a Carnival again...
Name is Fuz (Fûz) aka Fusilier Pundit
Blog is WeckUpToThees!
URL of post is http://weckuptothees.blogspot.com/ 2005_12_18_ weckuptothees_ archive.html #113531581543203765

Do you own being seen?

Merry Christmas
Fuz

I've apparently made a terrible breach in protocol. Not only do I not own being seen, my credit doesn't even qualify me to rent.

In the order they appeared in my inbox, here are the entries from webloggers who -- apparently without even bothering to visit my site -- had the sense to submit via the Conservative Cat submission tool. Because who doesn't like tools that facilitate spam?

Note: Some titles are unlinked. These weblogs submitted and appeared in the last CotV.

• BeyondBordersBlog.com - My Own Immigration Reform Plan
  Part of Connor's plan is to reward illegal immigrants who conform-- vote Republican-- assimilate quicker with quicker naturalization.
• The Clog Almanac - The President Owns The Intelligence, Not You
  The Clog Almanac catches the Bush administration's inconsistency, sharing responsibility with congress for intelligence failures, yet reserving the right to withhold intel from them as well.
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity - My Past Jobs In College
  Oh, you care what jobs Jim had during college, oh yes you do.
• Suldog-O-Rama - The Gift
  Suldog recounts a loving tale of Christmas as a young boy in 1965 -- which puts him in the Radical Libertarian's ideal demography for spending.
• Free Money Finance - 10 New Years Money Resolutions, Part 4
  All I know is without a part 5, your parts won't divide evenly into your list of 10.
• Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds - Some Words Of Wisdom From Morgan Freeman
  Just ignore the systematic vote-flushing black counties are subject to and we'll all be much better off.
• The Other Bloke's Blog - Hidden Cameras
  Hey, keep your lens out of my hidden agenda.
• Early Riser - Employee Stock Purchase Plan
  Guidelines for buying your employer's stock at a discount.
• Political Calculations - Bye, Bye, Byrdie!
  Senators for sale and more corporate welfare.
• Searchlight Crusade - Privacy Concerns in Real Estate Transactions
  "I learned privacy concerns in real estate transactions from you, alright? I learned it by watching you!"
• Shithouse Rat - How To Succeed In Blogging Without Really Trying!
  Even though Elvira didn't send me an excerpt, she didn't submit through a submission tool, for which she gets extra points from me.
• Sophistpundit - Open Discussion And Its Enemies
  Adam's Christmas wish is for more complacent liberal adversaries, to make aggressive dissent easier to shame away. Now that the president's popularity is dropping and all...
• LibertyCadre.net - Legal Defence Of Jihad In Turkey
  Wolfie would like you to know that the Muslims have extremist advocates -- kind of like how the US had KKK-friendly "Birth of a Nation" as its most popular movie for the quarter-century before "Gone with the Wind."
• Reb Chaim HaQoton - Winter's Darkness
  With a title like "Winter's Darkness" you might think it's something by "I am a Rock"-era Paul Simon -- fortunately it's religious insight from Reb instead.
• Multiple Mentality - Digital TV, the Federal Government, and the Hierarchy of Needs
  Josh discusses new federal guidelines and the place of television on our hierarchy of needs. Meanwhile, the FDA is considering making TV the new foundation of the food pyramid.
• The Browster Blog - Listen up Web 2.0 Developers: I am the dork among geeks
  From whom must Elisa receive a wedgie to finally qualify as a geek?
• Big Picture, Small Office - Have Link, Will Travel
  Big Picture Guy finds the voice of his car's GPS alluring. Lonely global positioning systems are waiting at home for your call, tiger.
• Adam's Blog - Christian Divorce Examined
  Adam questioned research that said Evangelicals divorced at a higher rate than atheists. His own research found that both groups experienced divorced people at the same rate. And wouldn't you know it, Adam's best-selling Christian counseling book can help you do better in your marriage.
• me-ander - Disastrous Evolution
  Muse muses on how government disinterest has left kibbutz-members vulnerable to frequent rocket attack.
• The People's Republic of Seabrook - Happy Holidays from the bin Laden family
  On the turn-ons and turn-offs of Osama bin Laden's scantily-clad niece.
• Coyote Blog - An African Holiday is a Great Idea, But the Principles of Kwanzaa Suck
  Yes, like there's no room for interpreting A Christmas Carol -- Dickens's attempt to revive interest in Christmas in the mid-1800s -- as Marxist.
• The Liberal Wrong Wing - Poll Update
  Kevin is taking polls on whether you see George Bush as the big ol' spendaholic-president he sees.
• The Nose On Your Face - I'm Not Sure Why I'm Aroused By These Things
  BDSM practitioners will be outraged how Buckley mixes images of sadism and masochism interchangibly... except of course for those who welcome the persecution.
• Blog d'Elisson - Preparing for the Onslaught
  Onslaught, as in the invasion of family during the Winter break. In iambic pentameter, yet.
• Business & Technology Reinvention - Threat of a Strike
  David wonders if strong union leadership helped avert a rail strike in Canada.
• TMH's Bacon Bits - Conservatives Are Not in the Mainstream - Thank God!
  DL observes success in fishing and other things depends on avoiding the mainstream -- where the fish aren't. He may want to reconsider that conservatives dominate the executive, legislative, and, arguably, judicial branches of the federal government.
• Ruminating Dude - Whoooooa
  "So given a choice, if your kid was going to wind up somewhere without benefit of baptism, what would you choose, limbo or a mild flavor of hell? And who knew that hell came in levels of intensity, sort of like buffalo wings? Why I never became a theologian I don't know..."
• Watcher of Weasels - Yuletide Ululations
  Dissing Santa Claus. And why doesn't that bastard do something about world hunger?