Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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The 30 strangest animal mating habits. For my money, the anglerfish wins, though the banana slug gets extra bonus cool points for occasionally engaging in "apophallation."
If you're trying to get the courts to reverse a previous decision and award you custody of your child, this may not be the optimal strategy.
Via Megan, this traffic-cam video of a highway storm drain erupting like a volcano is amazing. Whoosh!
Kriston reviews a performance with no encores.
A dull Swiss army knife does not slice through penis foreskin like butter. That might have been the freakiest thing about last night’s art performance by Adrian Parsons—why, if you’ve chosen this path, would you not invest in the finest in self-mutilation technology? Why saw when you could slice? Maybe there’s no singling out any one freaky thing about “Shrapnel,” a performance in which Parsons removed his own foreskin and stuffed it into a glory hole in the wall at The Warehouse. The performance was staged for “Supple”, a group show of otherwise modest painting and sculpture. Hope you caught Parsons’s act of auto-circumcision last night, since he won’t be repeating it.
But it's a big and magical internet, so there's Youtube video of the performance at the link. No close-ups, so not as gruesome as you might imagine, but it's still a guy circumcising himself with a Swiss army knife so, you know, buyer beware.
Four years later. Is it impolite to note that their track record hasn't improved in the interim, and they're still ridiculing the left as naïve and unserious?
...I do not think it means what you think it means.
Emilio is 17 months old and has a rare genetic disorder that's ravaging his central nervous system. He cannot see, speak, or eat. A ventilator breathes for him in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Austin Children's Hospital, where he's been since December. Without the ventilator, Emilio would die within hours.
The hospital contends that keeping Emilio alive on a ventilator is painful for the toddler and useless against his illness -- Leigh's disease, a rare degenerative disorder that has no cure. Under Texas law, Children's has the right to withdraw life support if medical experts deem it medically inappropriate.
Emilio's mother, Catarina Gonzales, on the other hand, is fighting to keep her son on the ventilator, allowing him to die "naturally, the way God intended."
Um, what?
Sad story. So is this.
Now here's a scam that never in a million years I would have thought workable or profitable. This is why I'm not rich, I guess.
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. Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new "poodle" was also a sheep. One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.
Japanese police believe there could be 2,000 people affected by the scam, which operated in Sapporo and capitalised on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like.
For any Japanese readers who are interested, I am selling the ultra-rare Carolina Ringtail Kittens to good homes for just $400 each.
Update: In the comments, the Japanese-speaking caucus of readers (!) suspects the story may be an urban legend. Regardless, it's been worth it for this picture alone.
Is that a burrito in your pants or are you just a superhero?
A doctor in Florida is facing charges, after being accused of groping a woman while wearing a Captain America uniform with a burrito stuffed down his tights. The incident, hardly fitting behaviour for a superhero, happened after 54-year-old Dr. Raymond Adamcik went on a bar-crawl with a number of other costume-wearing medics. Witnesses said that Adamcik was walking around with the burrito tucked into the waistband of his costume, asking women if they wanted to touch it.
When one woman refused to touch the burrito, it is alleged that the doctor removed the snack and groped her. The police were called, and, according to the official report, 'there were so many cartoon characters in the bar at the time, all Captain America's [sic] were asked to go outside for a possible identification.'
Adamcik was identified as the lecherous superhero in question, and taken to the police station in Melbourne, Florida – where, to increase his troubles, he was caught trying to flush a joint that he'd also stashed down his tights.
The mug shot, police report, mp3 of the 911 call, and video of Captain America getting booked are all available at The Smoking Gun.
Today's penile amputation story comes from London.
"This guy came running in then charged into the kitchen, got a massive knife and started waving it about," Stuart McMahon, who was eating at the restaurant with his girlfriend, told the paper. "Everyone was screaming and running out as he jumped on a table, dropped his trousers and popped his penis out. Then he cut it off. I couldn't believe it."
Couldn't believe it? Mr. McMahon obviously doesn't read this site.
Monologuist Mike Daisey on Thursday's performance of his one man show at the American Repertory Theatre:
Last night's performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.
I'm still dealing with all the ramifications, but here's what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles--they looked like a flock of birds who'd been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment...it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.
Video of the incident is at the link there and is really something to behold. Oddly, what seemed to set them off had nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity, but just the word "fucking".
If, like me, you've wasted untold hours playing Alpha Centauri, you'll be intrigued to know that long ago, Earth had fungal towers, too.
Scientists at the University of Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., have produced new evidence to finally resolve the mysterious identity of what they regard as one of the weirdest organisms that ever lived. Their chemical analysis indicates that the organism was a fungus, the scientists report in the May issue of the journal of Geology, published by the Geological Society of America. Called Prototaxites, the organism went extinct approximately 350 million years ago.
Prototaxites has generated controversy for more than a century. Originally classified as a conifer, scientists later argued that it was instead a lichen, various types of algae or a fungus. Whatever it was, it stood in tree-like trunks more than 20 feet tall, making it the largest-known organism on land in its day. [...] Although vascular plants had established themselves on land 40 million years before the appearance of Prototaxites, the tallest among them stood no more than a couple feet high.
Weird.
I started entering gibberish words into Google Image search to see what it would hand back.
Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery. The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out "n----- brown" on the tag.
"My daughter saw the label and she knew the color brown, but didn't know what the other word meant. She asked, 'Mommy, what color is that?' I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I never thought that's how she'd learn of that word," Moore said.
The mother complained to the furniture store, which blamed the supplier, who pointed to a computer problem as the source of the derogatory label. Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error. [...]
Moore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Compensation? Human Rights Commission? Wow. If bad translations are actionable now, there's a gold mine out there just waiting. Here's the part that cracks me up:
"Something more has to be done. We don't just need a personal apology, but someone needs to own up to where these labels were made, and someone needs to apologize to all people of color," Moore said. "I had friends over from St. Lucia yesterday and they wouldn't sit on the couch."
Yeah, you wouldn't want to get any of that on you.
(h/t: Shane)
So the Supreme Court upheld the ban on partial birth abortions, as I'm sure you're already aware, and Operation Rescue hailed the decision as "the first step toward outlawing all abortion."
"Today's decision justifies our faith in the new composition of the court," Newman said. "The time is now right to launch aggressive legal challenges across America to abortion on demand. This is the first legal crack in the crumbling Roe v. Wade foundation, and is the first, necessary step toward banning the horrific practice of abortion in this nation."
"If partial-birth abortions are unconstitutional, then all abortion should be as well. There is little difference between a second-trimester partial-birth abortion and a 12-week suction abortion. In fact, the suction abortion is probably more gruesome because it involves complete dismemberment of a live baby."
I'm not particularly surprised at the outcome, given the makeup of this court. But I was a bit surprised at something that Brock Landers pointed out: "I just realized the five Catholics on the bench were the 5-justice majority here." Not that's there's anything wro— no, wait a minute, I think there might indeed be something wrong with that after all.
Going tiny for wider coverage.
Tiny "smart" devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK engineers say. The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied, enabling it to be steered. [...] Dr John Barker, from the University of Glasgow, said the particles could use wireless networking to form swarms.
The polymer sheath surrounding the computer chip could be made to wrinkle or flatten out. Wrinkling the plastic sheath would increase the drag on the particle, lifting it higher on the wind. Flattening out the sheath would cause the particle to plummet. [...] "In our simulations, we have shown that a swarm of 50 dust particles can organise themselves into a star formation, even in turbulent wind." The ability to fly in formation would allow the processing of data to be spread, or "distributed" between all the chips, and a collective signal to be beamed back to a "mothership".
Terrestrial uses are also being proposed, including battlefield data collection and mixing smart dust into concrete to internally measure the health of buildings and bridges. Lots more technical data can be found at Berkeley's Smart Dust Project homepage (including magnified pictures of the devices), and the corporate spin-off, Dust Networks.
It's difficult to imagine just how shocked and traumatized the Virginia Tech campus and the town of Blacksburg must be right now. Then consider that Monday's carnage represents an average day in parts of Baghdad. Like today, when four bombs have killed at least 125 people.
Update: Juan Cole:
I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the "situation is improving" in Iraq. The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg.
Two quick hits before I trundle off to bed.
Via GaijinBiker, this video about the Kaye effect and leaping shampoo is very cool.
And via McManlyPants, I now know all about Alexyss K. Tylor's Vagina Power, which apparently runs on cable access. More info at her website.
Update: The second video has been pulled from YouTube, but can still be viewed here. If anybody knows how to save the Flash movie itself, I'd appreciate it if you'd do so and mail it to me for future storage in case this link goes down as well.
A UK Ministry of Defence thinktank led by Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a controversial senior officer, has outlined a number of challenges British forces might face in the period up to 2035. In its rolling Strategic Trends Programme document, the MoD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), they note that,
"By 2035, an implantable information chip could be developed and wired directly to the user's brain...Developments might include the invention of synthetic telepathy, including mind-to-mind or telepathic dialogue. This type of development would have obvious military and security, as well as control, legal and ethical, implications."
More can be read here and here. Be prepared to read about the threat of 'brain-chipped middle class goths in flashmob revolution by 2035' and middle class revolutionaries taking on the role of Marx's proletariat.
Hmm.
The sudden and alarming collapse in bee populations that I noted a few months back might be caused by cell phones.
Update: Or maybe pesticides? That would make more sense, but I really, really want to blame cell phones.
Will nobody think of the Mr. Peepers?
Authorities said that on March 23, Quinlan and his 39-year-old girlfriend drove to a Lynnwood shopping center, where he entered a Linens 'n Things outlet and she went into a Petco store, taking the duck with her. Stern wrote in court papers that a security guard thought he saw Quinlan shoplift an iPod speaker system, and a scuffle ensued. Police say the guard chased Quinlan to the Petco store, where Quinlan got the car keys from his girlfriend and tried to escape.
The man jumped into the driver's seat of the car as the woman walked out of the store with her duck. Not knowing what was going on, she tried to stop him from driving away and was knocked down by the open car door as it backed up. She dropped the duck. A Petco employee saw what was happening and "ran to save Peepers from the front of the car" just as Quinlan drove forward, Stern wrote. The car ran over the woman, inflicting serious injuries including broken bones in her foot and ankle, he said. Charging papers say Quinlan continued driving and didn't stop until his vehicle struck another car nearby.
The girlfriend and guard were not seriously hurt. Mr. Peepers was OK.
Also, these pictures confuse me.
In the age of incurable STDs, gonorrhea has been seen as no big deal. However...
The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea is now among the "superbugs" resistant to common antibiotics, leading US health officials to recommend wider use of a different class of drugs to avert a public health crisis. The resistant form accounts for more than one in every four gonorrhoea cases among heterosexual men in Philadelphia and nearly that many in San Francisco, according to a survey that led to Thursday's recommendation by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Gonorrhoea, which is believed to infect more than 700,000 people in the United States each year, can leave both men and women infertile and puts people at higher risk of getting the AIDS virus.
Oral flouroquinolones, such as Cipro, have been the main treatment for gonorrhea, but now the CDC recommends doctors use the less common cephalosporins, which must be injected. Gonorrhea had already developed resistance to sulfa drugs, then penicillin, then the tetracyclines.
"That leaves us with a single class of highly effective antibiotics," said Dr John Douglas Jr, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention. Other experts called the situation perilous. "We are running out of options to treat this disease," added Douglas, who said there are "no new drugs for gonorrhea in the drug development pipeline."
Good luck, youngsters.
CNN: "Take a nation of do-it-yourselfers, add a ready supply of cheap nailguns and what do you get? About 37,000 nailgun injuries a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1991, nailgun injuries have risen about 200 percent, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease."
Of course there are always the traditionalists, like the Filipinos who insist on doing it the old-fashioned way, but while America may have the numbers, Austria still wins.
Once could be carelessness, twice could be coincidence, but there's just no doubt any longer. They are criminals, trying to conceal crimes.
I'll be over here waiting for the folks who screamed so indignantly about Sandy Berger to exhibit similar outrage over this, which is clearly many, many orders of magnitude greater.
The male crocodile severed Chang Po-yu's forearm at the Shaoshan Zoo in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. Mr Chang, a zookeeper and vet, had been trying to retrieve a tranquiliser dart from the crocodile's hide so he could give it medication. But he appears not to have realised the reptile was not fully sedated when he stuck his arm through an iron rail.
They did manage to get the arm back from the crocodile and reattached it successfully after seven hours of surgery. Video of the zoo employees retrieving the arm at the link, though it's far less gruesome than the picture above.
Plants on other planets might be predominantly red, orange, or yellow instead of green, depending on the light conditions, but probably not blue.
When he asked her if she knew why McDaniel stopped her, she stated "because I was walking in traffic." Yes, that was correct, and he explained she couldn't walk in the roadway. Then, he asked her if she was high on some kind of drug. Her answer, the report said, was "I am. It's the Holy Spirit and little bit of marijuana." He asked if she had any left and she said, "Not enough to get you high, but I know who to go to for more." McDaniel asked who and she answered, "Jesus."
The Bush Administration gets more Nixonian with each passing day.
What am I supposed to make of a furry rapping Wordsworth?
I'm guessing Rudy Giuliani doesn't do his own grocery shopping.
It's just a guess, but I'm thinking the first one didn't make the squad.
The couple, who told police they are engaged, said they began arguing and hitting each other. Evans stabbed Farrell once in the side and once in the back with the grill fork, according to the police report.
"She alleges that he had struck her, so when he turned around she stabbed him in the back with a grill fork," said Newport Police Ofc. Tom Collins. She is being held in the Campbell County Detention Center in Newport. As of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, no bond nor arraignment date had been set. Farrell received treatment for the injuries at University Hospital.
You should probably cross the knife set off the gift registry as well. (via)
Emesis rhymes with rhesus, but yack rhymes with macaque.
Johnson, Hill and Cooper spent time with macaques, carefully noting when each individual animal vomited and whether it then reingested (for that is the technical term) whatever came up. All told, the scientists compiled "both quantitative and qualitative data on observations of 163 instances of vomiting from two groups of bonnet macaques in southern India". They used this data to "establish a conservative rate of vomiting in free-ranging macaques".
The rate is 0.0042 vomits per individual per hour. That's the conservatively high estimate, using data gathered by watching macaques who live near a temple on Chamundi Hill, a forested outcrop near Mysore in Karnataka. But it is not the whole story. Another group of macaques lives in the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary, in Anaimalai Hills, Tamil Nadu. These forest-dwellers vomit at a different rate from their temple cousins: 0.0028 vomits per macaque per hour.
The scientists observed closely and keenly. Here is a typical passage from their report: "Only one adult female in the forest showed interest in another macaque's vomit; she twice smelled the mouth of an adult female. During observations at the temple, we saw 20 different individuals show interest in another's vomit on 21 occasions. Ten of the individuals were successful in eating some of it on 11 occasions. Of the individuals that ate or tasted another monkey's vomit, two were adult females, two were adult males, three were juvenile females, and three were infants."
Science!
"Shown at work on Wednesday in Vrhnika, Slovenia, Grom uses an electric boring tool to drill approximately 2,500 to 3,500 holes in an eggshell. Inspired by traditional Slovenian designs, he has been known to pierce a shell as many as 17,000 times."
Update: As NotATurtle points out in the comments, nobody's going to top Wyoming's Easter egg, though the rest of the eggs are here.
Five reasons George W. Bush isn't as stupid as you think.
Fantastic photo essay of Antarctica.
"Pot. It mightn't kill you, but it could turn you into a dickhead."
Male births have steadily declined in the U.S. and Japan over the past 30 years, and an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male.
...emerged from the cave and saw his shadow, which meant six more weeks of winter. Sate yourself until you're sick on the twisted bunny- and peeps-related links up at Everlasting Blort.
"We just called the CBC to let them know that we're looking forward to their January debate with CNN but we're not going to participate in the proposed debate with Fox. The CBC champions critical issues that matter enormously to the future of our country, and we look forward to discussing them throughout this campaign and at their debate in January. But we believe there's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they're objective. If there was any uncertainty as to Fox's objectivity, it was put to rest when they attacked Democratic candidates, Democratic constituency groups, and the Nevada Democratic party when their last proposed debate was cancelled for lack of support."
Well done.
Update: Clinton and Obama follow suit.
Because it's the sort of thing I normally post here and would hate for anybody to miss it.
"The Bong-Bong Boxer makes fighting fun and educational for pre-school children." (via)
His lips are moving. Seriously, every word that comes out of his mouth, including "a" and "the". It's kind of impressive, in its own way. Every day, I'm a little more convinced that he's only there as impeachment insurance.
As long as I'm updating recent posts, you may recall that Michael Jackson wants to build a giant Michael Jackson robot in the Nevada desert. Concerns are being expressed, though, by those who have the most to fear.
On second thought, how 'bout you just STFU.
Here's a quick follow-up on yesterday's post about John McCain's leisurely stroll through a Baghdad market and Rep. Mike Pence's observation that it was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime." What happened the very next day when it wasn't flooded with hundreds of soldiers, rooftop snipers, and helicopter gunships?
Now, we know that people get killed in Iraq every day. And there are inter-sectarian murders for various retaliatory, symbolic or terroristic reasons. But 21 workers from this same market attacked, bound and shot in what sound like execution style killings? Right after McCain was there the day before in a walkaround to demonstrate the success of the surge?
This hadn't occurred to me until I saw this email from TPM Reader KT who wrote. "Do we know whether the ambushed market workers were the ones who had done business with McCain's group, and therefore with the US military? I really hope not."
At some point, the responsible thing to do is simply to shout down clowns like Pence and McCain the instant they open their mouths. I believe we have reached that point.
I suspect I might already be the last person on the interwebs to see Kermit the Frog covering Nine Inch Nails, but just in case I'm not, here you go.
A Flickr photoset of pictures taken at the International Hihokan Erotic Museum in Japan. Surprisingly unerotic (unless creepy mannequins and blue whale vaginas are your thing), yet still not safe for work. Lots more photos here. According to Wikipedia, "there are many sex museums called 'Hihokan (House of Hidden Treasures)' everywhere across the country. They are located in amusement centers in popular sightseeing spots or spa resorts, and ran by individuals, not by organizations. They date back to the 1960s–70s; more recently such type of amusement resorts for elder men have declined, and many personal sex museums closed in the 1990s." So strange.
Update: If the article is coming up as expired for you, here's an archived version.
Or not. Glenn Greenwald looks at the past pronouncements of some of the loudest surge cheerleaders.
They have repeatedly proven themselves to be the most craven and dishonest propagandists, people completely unburdened by reality and truth. Virtually everything they have said about Iraq over the four years of our occupation (never mind prior to it) has been blatantly and knowingly false -- just look at what Pence has been saying. And this behavior has been as destructive as it is morally deranged -- we stayed in Iraq, continuing on our disastrous course, and even re-elected the War President precisely because the Mike Pence's constantly lied to the country by insisting that we were winning, that reports of violence and chaos were media lies, and that Glorious Victory was just around the corner.
And they're still doing exactly the same thing, while continuing to reside in the core of our country's political power, treated as though they are respectable and credible figures. Even though it's not some new realization, it is nonetheless just staggering every time one goes and looks at their actual history -- what they have done and said -- and ingests the extent to which our government is run by such blatantly dishonest and amoral buffoons exactly like Mike Pence. And they continue to get quoted on the front page of The Washington Post as someone whose assessment of the Great Progress in Iraq is worth hearing.
Strictly for journalistic accuracy, every article that quotes someone like Mike Pence claiming that things are improving in Iraq and the Glorious Surge is working ought to include a statement that informs readers that Pence has been making exactly the same claims for four years straight, and that he announced in 2004 that we found WMDs in Iraq.
John McCain's latest Dukakis-in-a-tank moment has provided much entertainment for everybody, but putting aside the slapstick for a minute, let's examine the actual numbers.
In March, a total of 2,762 Iraqi civilians and policemen were killed, down 4 percent from the previous month, when 2,864 were killed. The number of Iraqi policemen killed across Iraq nearly doubled from 171 in February to 331 in March, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Meanwhile, the numbers of unidentified bodies found across Baghdad are rising again, suggesting an increase in sectarian-motivated death squad killings. In the first three weeks of the security plan, from Feb. 14 to March 7, 125 unidentified bodies were reported. But in the next three weeks, ending March 31, they nearly doubled to 230, according to the morgue data.
Statistics are often inexact here, with several ministries handing out different sets of data. Citing a security official who collected data from the Defense, Health and Interior ministries, the Reuters news agency, for example, reported this week that a smaller number of people had been killed, 2,078, which it said represented a 15 percent rise over February. U.S. and Iraqi officials said in interviews that while U.S. and Iraqi forces have focused their security efforts largely on Baghdad, violence is spreading to other parts of Iraq, and that they have noticed a rise in sectarian killings in recent weeks.
You'll notice that Pence appears in this last article as well, as one of the clown brigade accompanying McCain on his "stroll" through the market, "encased in body armor, surrounded by rooftop sharpshooters and enveloped in a shield of a hundred soldiers, helicopters (Blackhawks), helicopter gunships (Apaches) and all after another group of soldiers went in for a pre-jaunt security sweep". He's quoted as describing it "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."
Thank goodness I live in North Carolina, then, because Indiana sounds scary as hell.
Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic protozoa that's making me have to do all of the litterbox cleaning while the missus is pregnant (grumblegrumble), can only sexually reproduce in the feline gut. So while it commonly infects rodents, it really needs to get its host rodent eaten by a cat. You'd think that would be beyond the powers of a mere protozoan, but you'd be wrong. A new study led out of Stanford shows that infected rodents lose their natural aversion to the smell of cat urine—and indeed develop an attraction to it—while maintaining their other normal aversions like dog urine, strange-smelling foods, and open spaces. The toxoplasma, which forms cysts in the brain, tends to concentrate in the amygdala and apparently targets the specific neural pathways responsible for processing cat odors.
Pretty clever, all in all.
Update: The king of parasite blogging, Carl Zimmer, has more, including links to older posts about Toxoplasma.
Another diehard Republican calls Bush a disaster of epic proportions. His bona fides? Co-authored the senior Bush's biography, wrote official bios of the current president and vice-president, co-wrote a novel with Lynne Cheney, one of the original Goldwater staffers, etc. You don't get more insider than Vic Gold.
He is trying to explain why it was so hard to write his new book, one whose title encapsulates what he now thinks of his onetime friends: "Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP." The two men at the top, he says, were men he knew pretty well -- or at least he thought he did.
"What I described there was the Cheney we all thought we knew," Gold says ruefully.
His book, to be published this month by Sourcebooks with an initial print run of 20,000 copies, offers quite a different assessment of the two most powerful men in Washington. Under Bush and Cheney, he argues, the GOP has moved away from principles of small government, prudent foreign policy and leaving people alone to live their private lives -- all views Gold associates with his hero, Goldwater. "Invasion of the Party Snatchers" makes plain Gold's contempt for the direction of his party and the guidance of its leaders.
"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."
Rest assured, the character assassination of Vic Gold will begin any minute now. Meanwhile, Andrea Mitchell reports that GOP senators are saying off the record that they will begin abandoning Bush on Iraq if things aren't looking up by August.
