KetchupWoman returns

Just when you thought the world was safe from KetchupWoman, she rises up out of the pickle barrel and utters some more nonsense. Now she's accusing the Republicans of having rigged the 2004 election by hacking the voting machines:

Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November's election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on "accountability and transparency" in how votes are tabulated.

"I fear for '06," she said. "I don't trust it the way it is right now."

Please, KetchupWoman — stop the madness! You can find the full article here.

The Old Poodle

A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her faithful aged pet poodle along for company. One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long he discovers that he is lost. Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch.

The old poodle thinks, "Oh-oh, I'm in deep doo-doo now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here." Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, a look of terror comes over him, and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew", says the leopard, "That was close. That old poodle nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that old conniving canine." Now the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?" But, instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretends he hasn't seen them yet and, just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says, "Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

Eesti feline

I recently reconnected with Anton (whom I worked with at Previo/Stac), and somehow in the course of our email conversation cats came up. Imagine that!

Anton lives in Tallinn, Estonia.

Click on the picture for a larger version...

The old mule

The old farmer's mule had finally died of old age just before spring planting, so the farmer made a trip to town to buy another mule. His $125 didn't buy much, but he was satisfied with his purchase and he made arrangements to return the next day with a horse trailer to pick up the mule and the dealer agreed to keep it overnight for him.

Early the next day, the old man returned. "Jim," said the mule dealer, "that old mule died last night. I'm real sorry to have to tell you this. I know you were counting on it for your spring garden." The dealer offered Jim his money back, but Jim said a bargain was a bargain, loaded the mule on his truck and left.

A couple of months later the mule dealer happened to drive by Jim's place and was astonished to see Jim working his garden on a *NEW* $4,000 garden tractor. Honking his horn, he called Jim over and asked him how in the world he had managed to buy a tractor when not to long ago all he had was the $125 that he'd spent on the mule that died.

"Well", Jim explains, "After leaving with the mule, I had this idea. So I stopped off at the local print shop and had 2,000 $2 raffle tickets printed up. Grand prize: Gardening Equipment. I sold all the raffle tickets to people around town."

"Yeah, but where did you get the gardening equipment?"

"From you."

"No, I mean the equipment you had as the raffle prize."

"I got it from you."

"Jim, all you got from me was a dead mule."

"I know, that's what I raffled off."

"My Goodness, Jim! You raffled off a dead mule?! I'll bet that really made a lot of people mad when they found out about it."

"Naw, not really, the only one really ticked off was the winner, and I gave him his money back."

He never saw it coming

Mark Steyn's latest column is an even-better-than-usual (and that's a high bar in his case) example of his trademark combination of wit and commentary. Here's my favorite bit, talking about Bashar Assad's current situation (if you didn't already know it, Assad happens to be an ophthalmologist):

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The ophthalmologist never saw it coming. Assad's plan for a phased partial withdrawal over several months would have been hailed as a breakthrough a couple of years back. Now Bush swats it aside as too little, too late. In a poignant conclusion to his interview with Time last week, the neophyte dictator said: "Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to co-operate." You don't have to be an eye doctor to read the writing on the wall.

OK, that's enough ophthamology. The headline on Newsweek's cover, alongside the aforementioned Lebanese totty, was "People Power" - a novel concept in the Middle East, but very real. But just as worrying for Assad is a much older tendency in regional politics - the inclination to side with the winners. Right now, for Bush and the Iraqi people and the Lebanese people and Chirac and Blair and the House of Saud and pretty much everyone except the Canadian prime minister, the winning side looks like whichever side Bashar Assad isn't on.

That's a tough spiral to climb out of. Two years ago, Colin Powell took Jordan's King Abdullah to one side and told him, modifying a Rumsfeldian paradigm, that America saw him as part of "the new Middle East". The Sauds, Mubarak and Gaddafi are not entirely on board with this "new Middle East" thing, but since January 30 they've been doing their best to pretend they are - and the easiest way to do that is to stick some loser with the label of "old Middle East". Syria's prestige, such as it is, rests on its subordination of Lebanon. Abandoning that on a time frame demanded by Bush and the Beirut babes doesn't exactly communicate strength. The Iranians are still officially Assad's pals, but the word is that even they wouldn't be averse to a palace coup.

China builds wall around Taiwan

Scott hardly ever fails to make me laugh out loud with his ScrappleFace columns, but this latest one resonated with my funnybone...

Quote for the day

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

   Herodotus