“When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know.”

-Bill Parcells

JPost: Saddam's WMDs Found?
Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 6:05:06 pm PDT
An interesting report at the Jerusalem Post, subject to the 24/48 hour rule of verification of course: ‘Report on Sept. 6 strike to show Saddam transferred WMDs to Syria’.
An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday.
Furthermore, according to a report leaked to the TV channel, Syria has arrested 10 intelligence officials following the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh.

ABC's Nick Watt Smears Dutch Filmmaker as Racist
By Scott Whitlock April 3, 2008 - 18:20 ET

"Good Morning America" reporter Nick Watt smeared Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders as a racist on Saturday's edition of the ABC program. Watt, who interviewed the director over his new movie about radical Islam's incompatibility with Dutch culture, sneered, "You believe the Western Judeo Christian culture is superior. You believe immigration should be stopped. I mean, you're a racist, no?"

Wilders is under fire from Islamic protests in much of the Middle East and has been criticized by the Netherlands prime minister.
GMA co-host Kate Snow seemed skeptical as well. Speaking of Wilders's movie, she derided, "So, is this hate speech or free speech?" Snow failed to explain how, exactly "hate speech" is not also free speech.

At one point, after Wilders touted the superiority of western culture, Watt incredulously replied, "What do you mean, better?"
Leaving no doubt as to what his opinion is, Watt closed the segment by asserting, "Wilders calls this freedom of speech. Others call it fanning the flames."


I'll say it...BETTER

Randi Rhodes says: "I wanna rock!"

Man scaling fence strangles in straps of beer-filled backpack

Posted by Associated Press
April 03, 2008 08:00AM


VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Authorities say a transient climbing over a chain link fence in Vancouver choked to death when he got tangled in the straps of his beer-filled backpack. Police say 51-year-old James Francis Henry had been drinking beer Tuesday night while walking with his girlfriend, 38-year-old Kelli Jo Barkley. They were returning to their homeless encampment from their roadside panhandling site.
Barkley says he fell while trying to scale a 6-foot chain link fence, got his neck caught in the chest strap of his backpack and said, "Help me! Help me!"
By the time she got a nearby resident to call 911 and emergency crews arrived, Henry was unconscious and could not be revived.
Police said his backpack contained about a dozen 40-ounce bottles of beer.


Even this asshole has a girlfriend!

New Pig Book says Hillary Clinton's tops in pork spending, Barack Obama's 2nd, but John McCain had none!

The nonpartisan taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its newest Pig Book, an overwhelming detailing of all 11,610 pork barrel projects inserted in the current fiscal year's appropriations bills by individual members of Congress.
These semi-secret spending measures cost taxpayers an extra $17.2 billion this fiscal year alone. This is the first year legislators have had to attach their names to these measures.
That's B for billion dollar$. In extra spending. That typically didn't go through the usual legislative committee screening. A huge increase over the previous year.
And guess which one of the surviving presidential candidates likes pork the most? And the least?
According to the Pig Book ("The Book Washington Does Not Want You to Read"), New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is our new grand national oinker among presidential contenders for most pork barrel spending. She inserted a whopping 281 individual spending projects into bills for the benefit of New York interests at the cost of taxpayers everywhere.
That totals $296.2 million.
The new national hero, on the other hand, for not inserting one penny of pork barrel spending is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. As a longtime staunch opponent of such earmarks, McCain may be expected to raise the subject of such special spending if Clinton becomes his Democratic opponent in the fall's general election.
He may also bring it up if his opponent is Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who may be a freshman senator but still isn't shy about inserting special earmarks into legislation cataloged by the taxpayer group's annual report. He accounted for 53 special earmarks, totaling almost $97.4 million.
This includes about $402,000 for a juvenile delinquency program at the Shedd Aquarium and $383,000 for another ethanol research plant.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who still technically is in the GOP race, has campaigned against large government seeping into the lives of American citizens. However, according to the Pig Book, that didn't keep him from proposing eight pork-spending bills totaling $22 million, including nearly $4 million to alter a Galveston bridge.

-- Andrew Malcolm

A Singles Map of the United States
Which cities have a surplus of single men (or women) - and what that means for the country

By Richard Florida

Which of these two decisions do you think has a bigger impact on someone's life: finding the right job, or finding the right significant other? No one's going to argue with the notion that where you live affects your employment prospects. But the place you call home has a lot to do with your chances of finding the right partner as well. Having an enticing "mating market" matters as much or more than a vibrant labor market.
It's not just that some places have more singles than others. If you're a single man or a single woman the odds of meeting that special someone vary dramatically across the country.
By far, the best places for single men are the large cities and metro areas of the East Coast and Midwest. The extreme is greater New York, where single women outnumber single men by more than 210,000. In the Philadelphia area and greater Washington, D.C., single women outnumber single men by 50,000. I met my wife outside Detroit, where the odds were greatly stacked in my favor - single women outnumber single men by some 20,000 there.
In fact, single women outnumber single men in many large cities around the world, even though men outearn women at all ages, according to Lena C. Edlund, a Columbia University economist. One reason young women in the prime marriage years - the 25-44 age range - flock to big cities is to compete for the most eligible men. And smart women who gravitate to vibrant cities are more likely to stay single - for longer, at least - because they rightly refuse to settle for someone who can't keep up with them intellectually or otherwise.
But women do have an advantage in the American West and Southwest. In greater Los Angeles, for example, there are 90,000 more single men than women. In Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area, single men outnumber single women by roughly 65,000. There are considerably more single men than women in San Diego, Dallas, and Seattle, too. Each of these regions has grown substantially over the past two or three decades, offering jobs in everything from high tech to construction and services. As numerous studies of migration show, men - especially those in regions with declining economies - are initially more likely to move long distances for economic opportunity, while women are more likely to stay closer to home and family.
Being in a place where the gender odds are stacked against you can be very frustrating. "When I was in Chicago, it was never long between dates" says one single male. "When I'm hanging out with friends [in the San Francisco Bay Area], often times in a large room with few if any women, we routinely turn to the topic of how the dating scene sucks."
Greater Boston is unusual among large metro areas. It is one of the very few with a near perfect balance of singles - having just 1,600 or so more women than men - 604,960 men to 606,580 women. And this may be part of the reason why the region ranks third for young singles on a ranking of more than 150 metro regions my team and I compiled. The entire region surrounding Boston and its immediate suburbs does well, too. Worcester; Portland, Maine; and Portsmouth-Manchester, N.H., also score among the top five for singles among small-medium-sized regions nationwide.
This high ranking is good news, because singles attract other singles. Numerous studies have found that young people pick where they want to live first and then search for a job in those places. When Forbes magazine asked young singles of both genders what matters most in the places they live, more said "number of other singles" than said "great career prospects"; things like "wild nightlife" and "low cost of living" came in much farther behind.
The ability to attract young singles also bodes well for regional economies. Singles are a large and growing segment of the population and the workforce. With many postponing marriage until their late 20s and 30s, and with a significant share of marriages ending in divorce, singles now make up more than half of all American households, compared with just 20 percent or so in the 1960s and 1970s.
In our highly mobile society - where 40 million Americans move every year and 15 million of us make significant moves to a new county, a different state, or a different country - younger singles are the most mobile group of all. People in their 20s are twice as likely to move as 30-to-34 and 3.5 times more likely than 45-54.
The end result of these millions upon millions of location decisions is likely to be a widening economic and cultural divide between the relatively small number of fortunate regions that attract singles who can choose where they want to live, and the larger number whose populations are older, less-skilled, more rooted, or even stuck.

Richard Florida is the author of the new book, "Who's Your City?," and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He can be reached at florida@creativeclass.com.