HOLLYWOOD -- As of this moment I have not watched any of the History Channel's 10-part series The Bible on account of I read the book and I thought it sucked. Way too graphic for me. There's God using human agents to exact his wrathful vengeance on others, there's misogyny, there's… Read full post »

TODDANG PULU, Indonesia - I'd like y'all to peruse this little tidbit right now. At least the first paragraph. I'll wait . . .

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STAINES-UPON-THAMES, UK – Six months ago, the Surrey town of Staines, famed for its spoofable suburbanity as played up by Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G, and literally nothing else, decided it needed a makeover and by the formal decree of Surrey Lord-Lieutenant, Dame Sarah Goad, the/… Read full post »

BUDAPEST - Hungary is not just the land of Gabor sisters and Béla Lugosi, it's also home to the world's third largest system of thermal water caves. Oh yeah, and it's also indebted to the tune of billions of euros in foreign currency due to mature in the next few years… Read full post »

NEW YORK – A source close to the Mitt Romney campaign confided to a select group of journalists this afternoon that the Republican presidential candidate does in fact have a binder full of women and, said the source, “We’re talking top-shelf fillies here; not some Eliot Spitzer skan… Read full post »

INDIANAPOLIS – While stumping at a VFW hall in the capital of Indiana this afternoon, Republican Vice Presidential candidate and emerging heart-throb Paul Ryan inadvertently left his Iphone on a lectern and departed in a motorcade destined for the Indianapolis airport.

Eloisa Calde… Read full post »

SEATTLE - I'm not making this up: Discount Gun Sales, the Seattle-based online superstore for all your mail-order firearm needs, has for sale on its website a Walther P-22 pistol with a polymer frame and custom Cerakote bright pink slide, a deadly accessory offered to the consumer public in recogniti… Read full post »

SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES – In what pundits view as an attempt to offset his abysmal standing with Latino voters, Mitt Romney today aimed his campaign at another flagging demographic, speaking to a crowd of mostly African American voters at the West Angeles Church of God in Christ on Crenshaw B… Read full post »

SAN DIEGO -- As we all know by now, Mitt Romney went and said some things at a private fundraiser in the Boca Raton home of Sun Capital front man, bon vivant, man-about-town and maker of fortunes, Marc Leder, that he wishes the world hadn't found out about. But thanks to… Read full post »

LESOGORSK, Siberia -- What I don't know about bovines you could just about fit in the Grand Canyon. The one thing I do know about our familiar ruminant chums is this: if a bull's got his heart set on something, it's best to let him have it. The average bull, you… Read full post »

So a friend of mine said to me the other day, "I have no doubt he's well-intentioned, but Obama is spending us into the poor house." I hear such things often from friends and acquaintances and rather than choose to run with a different crowd I try to listen to what… Read full post »

OSHAWA, Ontario -- General Motors has announced plans to close one of two assembly lines at its Canadian plant that once formed the core of a Canadian labor force numbering more than 40,000 workers. According to a report in The Globe and Mail:

"The Canadian Auto Workers union received official notice… Read full post »

NEW YORK - In a metropolitan area with the world's second largest Jewish population, residents and visitors have endured a spate of recent anti-semitism not seen in a major American city since Mel Gibson went to rehab, a variety of Jew-baiting that's strange by any standard.

CNN's Jeanne Moos covered… Read full post »

MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass - Denizens of one Massachusetts hamlet can expect their public outings to be a bit more sedate in the future thanks to a town ordinance that outlaws public cussing. Last Monday night town residents approved the ordinance introduced by Mimi DuPhily, 63, a member of Middleborough's… Read full post »

I spent this morning thinking about things that evolve and about evolution in general. I know that when it comes to marriage equality and its barely-ready proponents to say one’s views are ‘evolving’ is to speak metaphorically – it’s not meant to be taken literally. What… Read full post »

A giraffe walks into a bar and says, "The highballs are on me."

That has nothing to do with the rest of this story but they say it's good to lead with a joke, which is what I'd like to think Ted Nugent was doing when he said of the President of… Read full post »

I read over the weekend that Bella Santorum, three-year-old daughter of Rick and Karen, is now a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. My Canadian friend and I were in Mexico at the time, which is slightly ironic because handguns are illegal in Canada, as they are in Mexico, and… Read full post »

I spent most of 2008 in the People’s Republic of China. I lived in Changsha, a city of some eight million souls in the middle of Hunan, a province just south of the Yangtze River, 500 miles or so inland from the Pacific. Changsha, though a densely populated metropolis, is a… Read full post »

On Monday The Huffington Post ran a story by Michael Calderone covering the White House Correspondents Association’s decision to deny veteran journalist Helen Thomas a table at its upcoming dinner at the Washington Hilton. In a comment on that story I said, “It’s hard to imagine any… Read full post »

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because… Read full post »

So I’ve been hearing a lot lately about our porous tax codes and how they permit all manner of corporate skullduggery by way of which the wealthiest concerns slip and writhe around the letter of the law and end up paying a fraction of what we impecunious peons believe they should… Read full post »

UNITED NATIONS, NY -  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadafragalistic took an uncommon step for foreign heads of state today when he endorsed Michele Bachmann’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly (minus delegations from the U.S. and all ot… Read full post »

Where truth-telling is concerned, a presidential campaign season is an infertile field. One hadn't ought to expect facts to dominate any political discussion and one certainly oughtn't to expect facts, those rascals, to pop up in debates showcasing ideologues preening for their base. So when one hear… Read full post »

When I was a boy, if you maintained there'd someday be a memorial on the National Mall dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., you'd have won a lot of bets. The world's a better place now than it was then, in some ways at least. Nobody in my boyhood would have… Read full post »

DONNA, TEXAS – It seems more than 30 Mexican soldiers made themselves a wrong turn a few days ago and ended up in Texas, where the locals are none too fond of invading Mexicans. It was the sort of thing that happens, apparently, more often than the general public might realize.… Read full post »