We know now we can't beat their machines.

As a minion of the Cartoon Overlord our own Overdroid was designated his spokesman on an interview on the G4 network.

Soon we will all serve the Overlord.

Bullwinkle, do you know what an A-Bomb is?

Islamist Squirrel attacks grade school.

A squirrel went on the attack in a San Jose elementary school Wednesday, bloodying an 11-year-old girl and a parent in a slashing, biting assault and injuring a second grown-up before making its escape.

All three victims from Evergreen Elementary School were treated for bites and scratches at a local hospital, school district spokesman Will Ector said, and all were undergoing rabies treatment as a precaution. They also were administered antibiotics, he said.

...

The squirrel dashed off after attacking the girl, and the school went into a lockdown as a safety precaution, Ector said. Traps have been set.

As a precaution President Bush immediately rushed to a secure location in Nebraska.

Peter Parker! And the girlfriend!

With regards to Spiderman 3 which we've been discussing over at Swinebread's place I just want to make one more short observation outside of the slice n'dice we're doing on the movie.

Peter Parker is the everyman. The right girl for Peter Parker isn't the beautiful actress Mary Jane or the gorgeous model Gwen Stacy. The right girl for Peter Parker the girl that lives across the hall and makes him cookies.

That is all.

We're off to Rome to see the Pope.

There's been a bunch of debate bouncing around the intertubes and the more traditional media about the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion focused on the make religious make-up of the majority in that opinion and what it means towards future cases before the court. Predictably; those that pooh-pooh each an every other claim of discrimination in our society are the first to trot out the discrimination defense when they feel the least bit wronged. In this case they're screaming that those who point out that the five majority members in that decision are catholic are somehow displaying an anti-catholic bigotry.

The well that those that defend the majority justices seem to always dip from is that of John Kennedy and his run for the presidency. Kennedy faced a lot of public criticism, mostly from protestant Evangelicals in a not so ironic twist, that a catholic president would be beholding to Rome if he were elected. In a 1959 Look magazine interview he responded to this criticism directly -

"Whatever one's religion in private life may be, for the office-holder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts – including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state."

President Kennedy was flatly stating that his duty to the constitution would come before his duty to his religious beliefs. The criticism directed at the five catholic members of the court after the Carhart decision is that they were inverting that equation.

Finally- putting all that aside and focusing on diversity. Many of us do want the court to be more diverse but not under the simplistic equation religious conservatives have held us to. A female conservative, a black conservative and an Italian-American conservative do no diversity make. What we need on the USSC is intellectual diversity. Five of any group that subscribe strictly to a narrow, ideologically binding religious worldview is counterproductive towards those ends.

Yeah, that's right... I'm bad!

There's a certain critter that crawls around the Fark.com political forums that I find more that a bit annoying.

No, it's not one of the dwindling number of Bush apologists that reside there. When it comes to Fark you can bet that nine times out of ten anybody bouncing into a forum making blatantly pro-Bush declarative that it's actually a Fark moderator trolling to stir things up and get page hits for the advertisers. True Bush dead-enders tend to congregate on LGF or Red State or Free Republic or some other such site where like-minded knuckle-draggers can find a sympathetic ear and a cheeto encrusted shoulder to cry on (not that there's anything wrong with that.)

The creature that drives me absolutely bonkers is the infamous Moderatus Fakus - fake moderate. During every discussion and regardless of the issue by the third post or so there will always be one of these little parasites poking into the thread and writing something along the lines of "Who cares? Both parties suck" or some other such inane comment intended to make the person who writes it appear above the political fray.

I have nothing against moderates. In fact; I consider myself to be center-left. What I do have a problem with are those that conflate being a moderate with an "all politicians suck" sentimentality. Yes, politicians are usually pretty shady characters and almost always narcissistic. Tell us something else we don't know, oh all-seeing one. Is the sky blue? Does the earth rotate around the sun? What other great wisdom can you bestow on us?

Add to that groups of politicians representing voters with like-minded views, let's call them political parties, and you have organizations that are going to be self-interested, clumsy and downright unattractive. So what? Can you name any organization put together by people that's perfect? There's no company or government, no church or union that doesn't have it's problems. Here's another great pearl of wisdom for you Mr. Moderate: people are imperfect. Any organization built and run by people will be imperfect by extension. It's the way we are.

You don't look clever, or smart or observant by pointing this out. "Politician's suck" doesn't make you John Swift. It doesn't even make you John Belushi. It makes you look whiny and annoying and afraid. Afraid that if you actually engage in the political debate you may be wrong about something.

Welcome to the human race.