No Peace = No Near-Beer for the President

Bull Moose makes what I think is a perfectly reasonable suggestion: seeing as there are currently 10,000 wounded soldiers and we're up to an average death toll of more than 3 American soldiers a day, how about yanking back on the Inaugural "Party"?

I mean, we keep hearing about how personally devastated Rummy is, and how the President has been comforting people and seeing their agony ... how about we show it by maybe not blowing $40 million on another rich guy party? Donate that money to the whole body armor/truck armor fund? A simple swearing in, a gracious little moment of bowed heads, and we all go back to at least pretending that running a country is a serious business to be done by serious men.

At the very least, it'll spare us those agonizing newspaper write-ups by Washington hacks about "cowboy boots and tuxedos." Yes, yes, he pretends he's from Texas. The clothing is incongruous. We get it. The American Media should go to bed every night thanking God the vengeful flesh-eating zombie of Nellie Bly hasn't risen from her grave to feast on your useless brain-matter like a ripe peach at a Klan picnic. Because she should.

Where Do I Send the Check?

I'd seen these guys, and then forgotten about them:

Christian Exodus

ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.

Via Digby who joins the blogroll because, well, I'm not an idiot. His writing is smart, terse, he nails the big headlines -- at the same time he has an uncanny knack for snagging this stuff at the edge of our cultural peripheral vision.

I'm skipping the obvious jokes here, because this ties into a larger essay I'm writing. In the meantime go and browse, and send the folks some money. I know my audience. If you've got the pennies for all-access kaiju-porn, you can PayPal these people some bucks.

LinkDump: 1918 Flu

Stanford write-up
New Scientist - Flue genes resurrected in lab

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LinkDump: Epidemiology

CDC Emergency Response
Global Health Council
Biohazard News
Biohazard News - Smallpox Outbreak Sim

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LinkDump: Conspiracy Theories, General

Conspiracy Toplist
Conspiracy Planet
Above Top Secret
Conspiracy Theory - Wikipedia entry
Paranoioa Magazine

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Is it oily? Is it shameful?

Twenty Questions is an AI that tries to guess an object you're thinking of. A nice lunchbreak game.

That looks like work

Alien Loves Predator is amazing. Not just for the concept, but because somehow, the story of Alien and Predator living in New York captures the actual experience of living in New York better than every episode of Seinfeld. Ever. Yes, I said that. Begin the flaming. (from our amigo at 1031)

This, this is a wee little comedy blog with some gaming, comic book, science and politics. Over at The Sideshow, they're ripping through the news, fact-checking, pulling up old articles, analyzing the Christian Right while being repectful of real Christians, commenting on daily news stories and more important -- something our "real" media doesn't do -- following up on stories to see exactly how the truth falls out after the hype. Go take a look.

Part of what I'm doing here is building my own homepage in the links. A few different views of news and the world give perspective. Road to Surfdom has been added, for the Aussie view.