Subliminal advertising

No good deed goes unpunished and sometimes vice versa

Last minute gift ideas?

A D.C. kingmaker invites us all to play along.

You decide

In Illinois, where our governors make the license plates

A D.C. kingmaker shares this baseball-related insight.

Francturated Englishification and other amusements

Rules for climbing Mt. Fuji:

• A teffific Gust often overtakes three times consecutively. Keep yourself lying flat on the siope until it's completely blown over. Danger comes soonest when it's despised.
• In case of Bad weather such as, storm, fain, snow and a dense fog, avoid climbing futher than the fifth staition. when the weather breaks Suddely. just give up half-way and Return.
• The nearest-to-the-sky location in Japan is far colder than the feets of the mountain.
• Bring garbage back to your home.

Things people said

The gorillas are naturally bigger in Nigeria

Of course Nigeria’s president Umaru Yar’Adua welcomed the Supreme Court decision vindicating his 2007 election. But will a 4-3 vote quell the spirit of dissent by factions loyal to Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari?

Nigerian-born Washington, DC attorney Emmanuel Ogebe says, “This was the 11-hundred pound gorilla in the room. This was the closest Nigeria has ever been to losing the presidency by just one vote. So if the president assumes that this is a mandate, it’s not. If anything, it should send him back to the trenches."

Ogebe says if President Yar'Adua, Vice President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and the Nigerian state governors would drop their guaranteed immunity from prosecution while in office, it would send a strong signal for reform. If Blagojevich goes to prison, it would give hope to all Nigerians.

This item inadvertently suggested by a College Park sociologist from a colloquy with a Baltimore biomedical researcher, but it all sounds damn familiar from somewhere.

Don't believe your lying eyes

“From the moment the first American tanks crossed the Kuwait border, America was in a proxy war with Iran,” Ware says. “The Iranians knew it, but it took the U.S. four years to figure it out. Now the Iraqi government is comprised almost entirely of factions created in Iran, supported by Iran, or with ties to the Iranian government — as many as 23 members of the Iraqi parliament are former members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.” -- war correspondent Michael Ware.

thanks again to an Alabama rights attorney and knee breaker

Where have all the flowers gone?

A Washington, D.C.-based research expert alerts the Beagletarians to a site that provides some insights into where all the money goes (and apparently it's not in a hole in Daddy's arm).

Reader feedbag

In a world of troubles, the editorquemada still want to know the readership figures, endlessly pressing, and among the faithful, we can count these:

A transplanted Okie in the wild Tennessee hills reports a threat that the Republic of Texas will secede, figuring they have 65 percent of the defense industry, enough oil and natural gas reserves and most of the refineries, computer, medical, and universities to keep them free of having to live in the United States of Obamaland who is just like Stalin and Hitler put together, except not even the good parts about Hitler. But don't misunderstand, my Okie friend is not subscribing, although he is silent on the issue of his neighbors.

A national union president with an interest in the bright rays of truth that the Beagle proclaims reports, "I continue to be an avid reader."

A craftsman with a penchant for paronomasia writes, "The good doctor is with his Righteous brethren who have hijacked education 'reform' to bash yet another union so that dewey-eyed ivy leaguers can teach for the the 2 or 3 years needed to pad a grad school application and leave their children reading and writing at a grade level no higher than before."

An Iowa boy in Wisconsin passes on Dan Rostenkowski's apologia, but it ain't much.

Take that, you dawg

Speaking for many in Beagleland.

That's not the only thing Chicago is known for

Regular journalists have to cover the news, and the chattering classes have to gnaw on the bone of the moment, which said bone being Rod Blagojevich who sent so many commentators running for their pronunciation guides.

Moralists on the right are shocked, shocked at all the influence peddling going on in Springfield, but that's just Chicago politics. Moralists blah blah blah about the corrupt Democrats in Chicago, even though the last corrupt Illinois governor to go down was a Republican. Just for fun, let's go back and look at the foreign policy credentials of all the ambassadors to Luxembourg and Bermuda going back to WWII, and we believe you understand our point.

It seems that politicians of all stripes have fallen prey to the lure, and we are certain some of the Beagleship out there, if they'd seen it on the bill of fare, would have paid to sit next to Dick Durbin and feel just like Jimmy Stewart listening solemnly to the sage advice of Claude Rains (who by the way was not even American).

When Democratic Gov. David Walters sold a mess of jobs, and got pinched, a local pol observed, "Everybody has a list. His mistake was writing it down."

Liberalism on the couch

"When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious," says Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., MD, who is a psychiatrist, with a brand new book and supposedly no axe to grind.

What does Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., MD call it when the Advent calendar has become the 25 days of talking about the suppression of Christmas and Christians who must live in their bunkers terrified that some one might say, "Happy Holidays"? What does Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., MD, calls it when the wacknutters are promising a Nanny state run by Barack "Josef Stalin's bastard grandson" Obama and tells RightThinking Americans to buy up all the guns and gas they can and run for their lives? What does the good doctor call it when folks think it's okay to peep in on the imam on a regular basis just to see if he's up to no good, but taking a tithe out of Pat Robberson's billions is against gawd's law?

A tip of the hat to an Alabama rights lawyer and frequent contributor.

Some people are looking for...

Texas GOSPers wrestle with reality

David Hill, a Texas pollster, had some bad news recently for his friends. Texas is trending like Colorado in the political catastrophe department, and the trending is trending younger and more Hispanic all the time, and how come they won't go our way?

According to Texas voters, GOSPers have some image issues to contend with. They are perceived as arrogant, racist, corrupt, angry, and unwelcoming. Their core issues -- like immigration and cultural values -- don't excite the younger, Hispanic voters they want to attract. Multiple dead Democrats, like Ann Richards and Lyndon Johnson, are far more popular than live Republicationists, like George W. Butch, George HW Bush, and George P. Bush, a young Hispanic.

We know some of our readers (okay, one) don't like Democrats, but down there in the land of two former presidents, the people say the GOSPers are behind on everything -- common sense (-11%), trustworthy, honest, and ethical (-12%), fair and impartial (-20%), care about people like me (-31%), and championing children, the poor, and the elderly (-41%).

Hill's advice is that when people ask about things they want like support for children's health care and investing in education, just tell 'em you got their tax cut right here.

(Thanks and a tip of the hat to a transplanted political junkie whose home team took a shellacking recently. He notes that Hill's advice may play a key role in Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson coming back to challenge known GOSPer Gov. Rick Perry, because she knows that given the choice between a Republicanator and a real Republicanator, Texas voters will go with the one whose hair is slightly higher.)

More advice for TX GOSPers

Watch for all kinds of rules to change

Rove thinks the rules aren't fair because GOSPers weren't able to raise enough money. Of course, he considered Tom the Hammer's pay to play system completely consistent with a vibrant two-party system.

Now comes Peggy Noonan saying that the Department of Homeland Security sound a little Nazi-ish. Hmmm, distasteful and unnecessary, yes, but not so bad as long as the freedom-loving GOSPers were in control.

Beagletonians ev3rywhere find it startling that Peggy never noticed this til yesterday. To Beagle ears it had rung a little Nazi-ish from the start. If she had said it anytime over the past seven years, perhaps Peggy fears she might have been pilloried.

Where to find a lot of Republican'ts in the desert where mebbe they belong according to their own expert pundits and party faithful

The Bugl'es frequent readers include many people who are intimately familiar with Interstate 70 in Utah, which provides some interesting perspectives on the arrogance of government in Republican and Democratic administrations.

Unlike most Interstate Highways, I-70 in Utah was not constructed parallel to or on top of an existing highway and parts were constructed in areas where previously there were no paved roads.

So hop in your favorite conveyance on a fuel source to your liking and take a run down the highway. And shut off the radio.

Correct self-criticism is good for the party and the people

ON slow news days, lazy Beagletorials admit they're not as quick as the brownshirt FAUX. We acknowledge and apologize that rather than barking at predictable dead horses, such as the suppression of Xmas, we raid the wikipedia frequently to find items for consideration. We admit that we find solace, sound advice, and inspiration in history.

The alternative is to listen to Hamity and O'Really? and slamming Obama, not so much for what he has done, not so much for what he says he will do, but for having the temerity of doing what they say he is going to do in some weird goo-goo-land dimension where reality slides out of the way and we become Stalinist Russia the very next day.

The Beagle will shut up if they will

Republigospers are through licking their wounds over their shellacking in 2008 and have moved on. Moved on to whining full time about the unfair advantages Barack Obama had -- too many people liked him, his message was more effective coming out of his mouth than McCain't's, he had too strong of a ground organization, and too much money. All Karl Rove wants is good government, and he sets forth a modest proposal to level the playing field and fix all problems with campaign finance by allowing INDIVIDUALS TO CONTRIBUTE WITHOUT LIMIT.

Then, in one of the more stunning non sequiturs we've seen lately, if and only if we allow unlimited contributions, then we could have more transparency about who gave money. Karl explains helpfully that "That would give voters the tools they need to determine if a candidate is getting too much from unattractive people."

Cal Thomas' religious police can play a key role in this new enlightened democracy by informing on the most unattractive people.

Bring your tired, huddled masses so we can fix 'em

Cal Thomas has always been a passionate advocate of religious liberty -- which should be extended freely to all those who agree with him completely. Jews and Catholics get a pass for now, but here is the broad outline of his initial plan to bring more souls to Christ through the agency of the jackboot religious police:

"At the very least, all non-Western immigrants to Britain and America should be told prior to their arrival that our intention is to westernize them. They must learn English, study and embrace the history of their host nation and, if they are Muslim, they will be allowed to worship only in existing mosques. No new ones should be built. Existing mosques must be monitored to make sure that hate is not taught and aggressive behavior toward their host countries is not promoted. If such behavior and speech are detected, the mosques should be closed and the imams arrested or deported."