Ugh! Let's Get Away from the Campaign for A While

Let's take some time to think of more pleasant things, shall we? Like, er, true crime and murder.

Four new websites for you to peruse:

The case of Georgette Bauerdorf, a crime which still haunts me.

And of course, more websites on the Black Dahlia:

The Black Dahlia in Hollywood.

Black Dahlia Info, a great resource.

Los Angeles reporter Larry Harnisch has the most plausible hypothesis yet about the identity of the murderer (though I still have my questions about the suspect's ability to actually carry out the murder, pose the body, then send Elizabeth Short's possessions, after the grilling of Red Manley, to the Examiner). His key clue is downright creepy!

Click on his "multimedia" page to see the beautiful, eerie, and tastefully done "wordless documentary" of the Black Dahlia murder and its aftermath (around 21 minutes).

I'll be in class tonight, so be good, all!

Dead Bear Cub Covered with Obama Posters

This is cetainly not getting news coverage in the United States.

A dead bear cub draped in Barack Obama posters has been found at the entrance to a university in North Carolina, police said today.

Police and wildlife officials are investigating the incident at the Western Carolina University.

Maintenance workers found the 34kg (75lb) bear cub in front of the administration building at the entrance to the campus.

It had been shot, and Obama posters were stapled together and placed over its head.

"Someone evidently was wanting to draw attention to the election," Tom Johnson, the chief of university police, told the Asheveille Citizen's Times newspaper.

"If we find out who they are, we'll make sure they'll get some attention themselves."

Leila Tvedt, a spokeswoman for the university, said the institution "deplores the inappropriate behaviour that has led to this troubling incident".

"We cannot speculate on the motives of the people involved [oh, really?], nor who those people might be," she added.

"Campus police are cooperating fully with authorities to investigate this matter."

University police asked state wildlife officials to remove the dead cub and help in the investigation.

The bear hunting season in North Carolina began last week.

I can speculate as to the motivation:



The motivation seems pretty clear to me.

Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a fucking nigger, and he's a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed."

"You liberal idiots. Dumb shits. Welfare bums. You guys just fucking come to our country, consume every natural resource there is, and make a lot of babies. That's all you guys do. And then suck up the welfare and expect everyone else to pay for your hospital bills for your kids. I just say let your kids die. That's the best move. Just let your children die. Forget about paying for hospital bills for them. I'm not gonna do it. You guys are lowlifes. And I hope you all die."

Wow, way to fight eugenics from the "Darwinists," you assholes. Way to fight the next "Holocaust" that a bunch of science teachers are going to foist on our society. Right.

I volunteered for ACORN way back in the 1990s. Do your worst. (Shrug.)

Conservatives for Obama!

Christopher Buckley has endorsed Barack Obama for President, precipitating his resignation from National Review. (I like to call him "William F. Buckley Jr.")

This comes on the heels of Kathleen Parker's commentary calling Sarah Palin "a national embarrassment" and requesting that she step down as a candidate for Veeper for the good of the nation.

Get a load of the hate mail they're getting:

I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen's mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn't want to put NR in an awkward position.

I just love how the anti-choice crowd invokes the right to choose when it suits them (because they really don't want to lose their annual sob-story emotional blackmail fundraisers, oh excuse me, to end abortion at all).

Christopher, or Bill Buckley Jr. (sorry!), demonstrates the same wit and devil-may-care attitude that made me a longtime reader of a publication with which I had almost no agreement whatsoever.

Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it's pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review--a friend of 30 years--emailed me that he thought my opinions "cretinous." One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have "betrayed"--the b-word has been much used in all this--my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, "Cancel my subscription," I was able to quote the title of my father's last book, a delicious compendium of his NR "Notes and Asides": Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

Grab the popcorn. We're going to see a lot of Stalinesque purges of dissenters from the Republican Party. "Expelled," indeed!
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UPDATED: Well, by now you've certainly heard the news.



It's about time someone called the Republibots on this crap.

The Source of the Obama E-mail Hoaxes

Meet Andy Martin.

He's an anti-Semite.

Among other things.

(From the New York Times - requires subscription)

"The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama"
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: October 12, 2008

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.
Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

Racist Morons Boo John McCain in Lakeville

John McCain tries to do the right thing and set some people straight about Barak Obama:

1. Barak Obama is not a terrorist, and does not "consort with terrorists." (If these dipshits from Lakeville think Ayres is a terrorist, call the FBI! Come on, people, think! It won't hurt for long.)

2. Barak Obama is not a Arab. He is not a Muslim.



Incidentally, most Arabs in America are Christians, not Muslims. (And a fair number of them are atheists.) And one can simultaneously be an Arab and a "decent human being," their invention of algebra notwitstanding. I wish McCain could have brought that out as well, but he was dealing with a barely sentient ding-dong in a fright wig.

I have sincere respect for John McCain's love for this country and his wartime experiences (but he's not getting my vote). I doubt that all the members of this audience do. They're not voting for John McCain - they're voting against an e-mail hoax that got bundled, like toxic derivatives, into this campaign.

Regarding this recent, shameful confirmation of every cornfed yokel stereotype of Minnesota so much of us have worked to counter, all I can say is: Don't blame me! I live in the Twin Cities!

John McCain pandered to the right wing - and he got what he asked for.

UPDATED: Pastor giving invocation before McCain event proclaims: If Obama wins, God's reputation will suffer. Religion is a fucking joke.

Shimmies to Dispatches.

SECOND UPDATE: Then, on the left there's the walking-comatose Whoopi Goldberg, who in her ding-dong universe is worried about the prospect of "slavery" under a McCain presidency:



Right. Way to forget the Emacipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, Whoopi. I'd better not see you at any Juneteenth celebrations if you cannot remember that neither of those were Supreme Court decisions.

(Whoopi Goldberg should have no fear of being a slave, anyway. A slave is supposed to actually accomplish things. Who would want her?)

Being John Maverickish

Hey, remember this little gem, Being John Malkovich, in which John Malkovich goes through his own consciousness portal after everyone else has been there?



Well, it occurs to me that this is what must have happened to John McCain.

"I'm a maverick! Maverick! Maverick!"

In fact, after watching the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, I think that Palin went through John's portal with McCain.

"MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK! MAVERICK!"

Yeah, enough already, Walnuts. There I was trying to play Palin Bingo while your Veeper wannabee was going off onstage. I should have just made my own bingo card entirely consisting of the word "maverick" and awarded myself a macrame wall hanging, and called it a night.