Sean Hannity interviewed Ahnuld for a segment on Hannity and Whoeverthatguyisnoonepaysanyattentionto. I tried to watch, I really did. It made my head hurt. It was the kind of exchange that puts a person in mind of beating one's head against a brick wall. It feels very good to stop.

Someone needs to instruct Ahnuld to slow down the speech pattern. Listening to his whirling dervish response to any question on topics from steroid use to homeland security is just too stressful. It's a non-stop barrage of words that after a while cease to have any meaning. There's no "there" there; there's just a rapid-fire string of gibberish.

Gary Condit has a stripe down his back. It probably wraps around down there in his nethermost regions and works its way right up his front too. The color of the stripe is yellow. Like in coward's yellow.

Gary Condit is suing Dominick Dunne for some things Dunne allegedly said about Condit when Dunne appeared with Larry King as well as on some other talk show. According to Condit, the things Dunne said had to do with Condit having some extra-marital entertainment with Middle Eastern women, and in the process of his enjoyment, Condit also suggested to some Middle Eastern thugs that it would be a good idea if someone got rid of Chandra Levy for him.  Condit took offense, so he's suing Dominick Dunne for slander.

There is a lengthy list of newspapers and talkshow hosts around the country who had quite a bit to say about Gary Condit while Chandra Levy was missing. It would be impossible to count all the theories posed about Condit's involvement or non-involvement in Levy's disappearance. Out of all those who expressed opinions either verbally or in writing, Condit chose Dominick Dunne to sue.

Should a parent be able to eavesdrop on a child's telephone conversation, or is that an invasion of a child's privacy?

Fox News is reporting that yet another money scandal has been uncovered within the United Nations organization. This one involves the Sudan and there's supposed to be roughly $3 million involved. The reicipient of the $3 million has apparently disappeared.

The report went on to say that instead of focusing only on the Oil For Food Program scandal, the US investigation may now decide to encompass the entire United Nations with an eye toward reforming that whole place.

There's a much easier solution. That would be for the US to simply pull out of the UN and let the place fall apart. As more and more information comes out about how the UN is being run, there's simply no reason to remain part of it. The US has no problem in realizing what its responsibilities are when it comes to humanitarian or financial relief to 3rd world countries. The UN certainly can no longer make the same claim. The disaster relief reports from Indonesia describing the attitudes and actual participation of UN employees during the tsunami disaster was disturbing at best.

The US should withdraw from this bogus organization and allow it to find housing for its center elsewhere.

I've been part of BlogExplosion for quite a while now. I like the service very much. It does exactly what it claims to do - bring more traffic to our weblogs.  That's not the only reason I signed up, though.  The main blog I use for posting political opinions is made up of a small community of people who don't always get along very well. Okay, how about they throw hissy fits and go on the occasional verbal rampage. It's stupid and childish, so I went in search of another place to do my blogging where I was less likely to have some moron criticizing me because he's a fading star.  that's how I wound up at BlogDrive. Occasionally I think about closing the other place down completely, but there are some people there I really like, one in particular has become an online friend, and I've got a truckload of stuff I'd want to move.  So I keep things as they are and have most of my surfing credits going toward the other place.

One of the main subjects of dissent at the other journal site is who shows up on their most read journals of the day list.  For some that seems to be an indicator of just how good a blog is because it's a measure of how many people read it in one day.  I wasn't a member of Blog Explosion long before I realized that a topic of dissent there is the rating system. It's the same popularity issue at both places.  The journal community does it with numbers of readers; Blog Explosion does it with arbitrary numbers members assign to each other through a ratings system.

I didn't really care about the rating system at Blog Explosion. That's not why I joined. I just wanted more traffic, and I wanted to see what the rest of the blogging world was about. I got what I expected. But in the process I also got rated whether I liked it or not. I didn't pay much attention and as a result, I didn't know what my rating was unless I made a point of checking which I didn't often do.

I know some folks took the ratings very seriously. A message board was set up to discuss it. Complaints were received by Blog Explosion because people wanted to rate anonymously. Rating wars were apparently going on with low ratings as the revenge. So, BE made the ratings anonymous and had a poll to get input on what system should be used. I had no idea how that was going. When I saw a blog I really liked a lot, I rated it. My ratings were in the 9 point range with 10 being the highest rating available. The criteria I used for my ratings system was purely subjective. I liked the place for a number of reasons that mattered to me, so I rated. I didn't bother with those that weren't my preference. Frankly I liked being able to leave comments far more than the numbers rating game. With comments I could be specific about what what on my mind. So I did more commenting than rating.

The other day I found out that BE has revamped the rating system. I found that out because I read it on a blog I was visiting. So I checked out the new system. In my opinion, it's a fucking mess. There's about a bazillion and five categories I'm supposed to rate and then it all gets merged together into one final number. I noticed that I already had one rating. So I read it.

I don't know who it was who rated my journal. I don't care, nor will I bother to find out even if I can find out which I don't know that I can do. The main point the reviewer seemed to want me to know was that he or she didn't like my layout. No, let me rephrase that. He or she really HATED my layout. Big Time. Enough to finish the rating and then add an additional comment that the layout really stank.

This is hilarious to me. I used to have more to my layout, but there were some suggestions that it was too busy. So I de-busified it. It is now about as bland as it can be and still have what I want. No flashy colors. Easy on the eyes. Bland. The content was my focus. My one and lonely reviewer said the content was okay, but geez... that layout is dreadful.

Now, this could be interpreted as sour grapes, but it really isn't. I don't care what that reviewer thinks of my journal. Not one bit. I have been criticized for what I write, for what I don't write, for what kind of fancy layout I have, for some vague I-hate-the-layout complaint that tells me nothing about how to fix it. for being on a most read list, for being a sycophant, for being a bottom-feeder... the list goes on. If I took any of this to heart, I would never blog another word.

So what's my point? Believe it or not, I do have one. I'm not going to participate in the latest version of BE's rating system. I think it's ridiculously bogged down with categories, and I have no interest in that kind of evaluation for my blog or someone else's. I will, however, continue to leave comments. It's my opinion that blog owners get more pleasure from those anyway. There's nothing wrong with blogs being competitive, but there's Blog award spots for that.

As for that stupid most read journals list at the other place... there's still people who don't realize the list is too easily manipulated. They continue to throw temper tantrums because of who is on the list and who isn't. Puhleeeeze. Grow Up. Try blogging because it's a nice pastime from which there is some recognition if just one person shows up to read what we've written.

All these subjective opinions simply don't matter, but still.... I Mind.

I never thought I'd say this, because I've never been a cheerleader for this guy, but I want Howard Stern back on my radio station in the morning.

I completely understand why my local station dropped Howard. I don't disagree with their decision. He was becoming a royal pain in the ass with his whining and complaining about what his job had become. Instead of making the best of the time left in his contract, he seemed determined to make the worst of it. And why should stations continue to carry his program when all he did was encourage people to subscribe to Sirius? Not a very bright move unless Howard was looking for a way out of the time left on his current running contract. Which is probably why he's doing what he's doing. No point in being naive.

However, the problem is that when my local radio station dropped Howard, they replaced him. Of course they would do that. The thing is, they replaced Howard with two flaming idiots. Whatever Howard Stern is, he's not a flaming idiot. I may not like all the T&A Howard promotes, but he is about more than that so I can overlook what there is of it.  And even though I don't agree with much of Howard's politics these days, that's not all he's about either. I could overlook his political tantrums because there was always something that eventually took its place.

Now there's no relief from the flaming idiots. They begin and end their program with pathetic nonsense, and they use all the time between the beginning and end with the same horribly stupid content. They call themselves Nipsy and Earl. I call them Ditzy and Hurl.

The only people who think Ditzy and Hurl are funny are Hurl and Ditzy. They think they're hilarious, so they giggle and cajole each other through segments that can only be described as painful.

I knew Howard's time was limited, but I just wasn't ready yet to have something like Ditzy and Hurl replace him. I believe if Howard would just shape up, the local station would take him back for the duration of his contract.  I wish there were some way to appeal to Stern, but I haven't got anything he'd want. So I'm doomed to Ditzy and Hurl for as long as they last. This could be the death of public radio as we know it.

After surfing around to different blogs since yesterday, I'm getting the impression that liberals believe Barbara Boxer is some kind of hero because she found every way she could think of to call Condoleezza Rice a liar without actually using the "L word". 

News Flash: that doesn't make Barbara Boxer a hero. It makes her a very bitter, very stupid, very obnoxious Senator. Today Joe Biden is trying to match Barbara Boxer for stupidity and obnoxious. He's doing a very good job.

Both Boxer and Biden have the notion that in order for the Bush Administration to be acceptable in their eyes, this means the Bushies have to put on hairshirts and grovel around on the floor pleading forgiveness for making so many mistakes. This is absurd, but it's what the cratz want, and they won't stop presumably until they get it. I hope hell freezing over has some meaning for those people because that's the only time any Bush Administration official should ever subject themselves to such uncalled for behavior. 

Why is it so hard for the cratz to understand that George W Bush DID NOT LIE when he spoke about the invasion of Iraq to be for the purpose of stopping their proliferation of WMD's?  Just about the time I think, "okay, they have to get it NOW", one of them comes up with some ridiculous new take on the subject that shows one thing very clearly. It isn't that they don't get it. It's that they WON'T get it. Because as soon as they acknowledge the truth, that seems to indicate they will give up some high moral ground in debating who tells the truth and who doesn't.

When every nation on the globe believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD's because all the nations involved in intelligence gathering to determine what Hussein was up to concluded that indeed, he had WMD's, how does it make any sense to suggest that George W Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq? Based on the conclusions of intelligence agencies all over the world, George W Bush believed Iraqi WMD's existed, and he was unwilling to allow Iraq to continue to violate numerous UN Resolutions.

Everything that came after stems from that original intelligence. Add to that the continued disregard of Iraq for all UN Resolutions, there was more than sufficient reason to stop Saddam Hussein from building a larger stockpile of WMD's and pimping out his country for terrorist activity. For Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden to suggest otherwise shows their ignorance of the facts. All it would take is for both those blowhards to read a few books by people far more knowledgeable on terrorist activity than either of them will ever be. However, both of them reject any information that does not fit with the picture they want to portray of a president hell bent on lying his way through one term and doing the exact same thing through a second. They are doing their country a huge disservice with their unrelenting show of disregard of facts that are available to anyone who wants to take the time to learn them.

Just because the cratz don't want to believe the truth doesn't mean it has been either kept from them or distorted for their consumption. They are behaving like spoiled toddlers throwing temper tantrums, and it is beneath the dignity of the government positions they hold to allow them to continue with their fantasy portrayal of the Bush administration. Why should the Bush administration admit to mistakes they did not make? That's just plain ridiculous.

And besides that, I really REALLY mind.