Are These Shoes Appropriate for a Pregnant 16-Year-Old?

Separated At Birth

Expert cold reader James Van Praagh and Howard Stern wack packer Mark the Bagger.

Guess who played James Van Praagh in the tv movie about his life? Ted Danson!

We Have Your IP Address!

Did you ever click a link and see a picture of a kid in a bathtub or something and immediately shut down your browser, going into momentary panic that the FBI might break down your door and arrest you for looking at kiddie porn?  Well, that just might happen, pervert.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

The Onion: Black Guy Asks Nation For Change

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change:

"I'll be honest, when that black guy said he would 'stop at nothing' to get change, it kind of scared me," local mechanic Phil Nighbert said. "Just leave me alone."

Separated At Birth

Rebecca Mader from Lost and the kid from Mask.

Electronic Reactions to Fidel Castro Stepping Down

This was represented as a good piece on Castro.  Here you go:

http://tonykaron.com/2008/02/20/the-guilty-pleasure-of-fidel-castro/

There's been predictably little interesting discussion in the United States of Fidel Castro's retirement as Cuba's commandante en jefe, maximo etc. That's because in the U.S. political mainstream, Cuba policy has for a generation been grotesquely disfigured by a collective kow-towing — yes, collective, it was that craven Mr. Clinton who signed into law the Draconian Helms-Burton act that made it infinitely more difficult for any U.S. president to actually lift the embargo — to the Cuban-American Ahmed Chalabi figures of Miami, still fantasizing about a day when they'll regain their plantations and poor people of color will once again know their place. But let's not for a moment forget the mirror-image of that view so common on the left, where Castro's patent fear of his own people and reluctance to trust them to debate ideas and options (much less hold competitive elections that, in all probability, he'd have easily won) is strenuously rationalized on the basis of the CIA's repeated efforts to kill him. ...

Former Clinton administration member, current UC Berkeley econ professor and blogger, Brad DeLong posted this about the news of Fidel stepping down:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/02/good-riddance-t.html

Good Riddance to Fidel Castro!

Fidel Castro has retired. Good riddance!!

That the Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin Authoritarian Project of which Fidel Castro was the next-to-last exemplar was not an advance toward but a retreat from a better world was obvious long, long ago. ...

Castro apologists filled the comment thread on the above post.  Here's a good example:

Castro is one of those subjects about whom many intelligent people are incapable of being reasonable.

* Was he a dictator? Yes. Was he a Stalin? No.
* Did he improve Cuba's median living standards? Yes. Could he have done better? Maybe.
* Will Cuba be better off after he and his coterie are gone? Probably. Will it be more free? Unlikely.

I think our host would benefit from a few years of living on $3 a day. It might help him to understand why people are willing to trade what we call freedom for freedom from from overwhelming want.

The arrogance of this age, an age when the American elite have destroyed their own empire by imagining that they know how other people should live, is beyond belief.

Dr. DeLong responds to some of the comments here.

The Easy Reader Makes Books Easy to Read!

The Easy Reader (Book Holder)(News Paper Holder) from Amazon. The customer reviews are mostly positive. I want one!

High-Interest Lenders Tap Elderly, Disabled - WSJ.com

Payday loans hit the Social Security set:

The law bars the government from sending a recipient's benefits directly to lenders. But many of these lenders are forging relationships with banks and arranging for prospective borrowers to have their benefits checks deposited directly into bank accounts. The banks immediately transfer government funds to the lenders. The lender then subtracts debt repayments, plus fees and interest, before giving the recipients a dime. As a result, these lenders, which pitch loans with effective annual interest as high as 400% or more, can gain almost total control over Social Security recipients' finances.

McCain vs. Obama

Recent polls show that in a head to head contest, Obama beats McCain. Here's why.


(The video is only funny if you've seen Obama's "Yes I Can" video below.)

What's Wrong With Garry Trudeau?

Four questions:

1. Huh?
2. How many people even know what Pandora is?
3. Can one even use it to "knock out a playlist"?
4. How much does Trudeau get paid for this shit?

I know what the black soldier must be thinking: "Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up."