10 – China says “okay to a 2nd child” – if shoddy construction killed your first one. Faced with unprecedented protests from the proletariat over the death of tens of thousands of kids in rural schools which collapsed during the earthquake, china has promised not to send parents to prison labor camps or force them to undergo abortions if they want to conceive a replacement. Who said the Chinese government doesn’t have a heart?

9 – Celebrity foreclosures – I didn’t even know ed mcmahon is was still alive, until I read that the bank wants to repo his mansion for being 12 months behind on the payments. Hey-oo! Why won’t Johnny Carson come to the help of his former sidekick? Also about to be evicted – former heavyweight champ evander holyfield. I was about to make a crack about expecting that it would have been mike tyson losing HIS mansion instead, the I discovered that tyson had already been evicted himself. Hey, jocks – dump the entourage and hire an investment manager, maybe?

8 – “I’ll whup ‘em” – this is barrack obama’s promise, if congress doesn’t pass his health care legislation after he’s elected. Sorry Obama – unlikely to effective. congress has a gold plated health care plan, and quickly obtain high quality treatment for any “whuppin” you deliver. And stop taking diction lessons from jesse Jackson, eh? You’re not from the hood, you’re from Harvard. Are you trying to get Joe Biden to retract his crack about you being the only eloquent black politician?

7 – Two top air force generals got retired, on full pension. Somehow this doesn’t seem like a real punishment for sending nuclear triggers to Taiwan, does it? We (allegedly) didn’t know until Taiwan returned them 18 months later. Hey, Taiwan . .. . you can counterfeit a swiss watch in 3 days, but it took 18 months to copy the nuke triggers? And if you believe these were sent to Taiwan “by accident” . . . well you probably believe in the tooth fairy, too . ..

6 – Falling home prices have made Americans “$1.7 trillion poorer”. This is a bonafide crisis, right? So what do you think will happen if the next president enacts $1 trillion of new taxes?

5 – McCain, addressing potential Florida swing voters, told them he thought it would be “exciting” to send a man to mars. Good thing Obama already has the democratic nomination locked up, or he’d have had to say “woman to mars”. Hey McCain . . . this is actually another Bush program, and you just got done telling the press “I’m not Bush”. Make up your effing mind, please . . .

4 – So why is diesel fuel a buck higher than gas in America, but the same price or lower than gas in Europe? The explanations still don’t add up. “Higher demand in Europe takes diesel away from Americans”. “Americans don’t drive that many diesel cars yet – when american demand goes up, price will go down” (DUH?). And my favorite – “US government regulation regarding removal of sulfur . . .. “. So let me understand – Europe is destroying the environment with high sulfur, low cost diesel fuel, and they’re lecturing US about not being green enough? Damn . ..

3 – The Wall Street Journal really DOESN’T believe in global warming, and to prove it they published an article yesterday showing consumers that they could get by a brand new mega-SUV at a deep discount, and the savings on the purchase price would pay for gas for years and years to come. Way to go, WSJ. And don’t forget to build homes with no insulation – they’re cheaper that way, and you can use the savings to pay your heating and cooling bills, right?

2 – Hillary sent her minions forth to let it be known that she deserves and wants obama’s veep spot. Then she publicly executed her minions when the press said such overreaching was inappropriate. Backspin – is she now in negotiations for the veep spot on nader’s ticket? Don’t laugh . . . if anyone would do it, it would be her, right?

1 – the jobless rate has jumped to 5.5% in just one month. turns out that subprime mortgages and avid consumerism aren’t entirely a pox on society, when you consider the alternatives, eh?

That’s the news from Baltimore, where tomorrow’s temperatures are predicted to be 95 degrees or higher, drawing howls of glee from the global warming aficionados who stayed indoors during the past 5 colder than normal months. Be sure to use sunscreen, and spin-screen, everyone.

The tooth fairy isn't real?! Where'd you get that crazy idea? Next you're going to say there isn't a Santa Clause either...

...or that Johnny Carson is dead!

1 – the jobless rate has jumped to 5.5% in just one month. turns out that subprime mortgages and avid consumerism aren’t entirely a pox on society, when you consider the alternatives, eh?

Sorry, BA, but i don't think fake economic growth is a substitute for the real thing. Just look in your bedside drawer, you know what i'm talking about, oooooohh yeah....

2 – Hillary sent her minions forth

Man, it was so sweet watching Hillary go down but then i realized that anything less than seeing her spontaneously burst into flames was going to be anti-climactic - (something i've never been accused of btw, ooooooh yeah....)

Santa Clara.

I thought the difference in diesel costs had to do with how it is taxed here verses there. Pretty sure we can blame this on ethanol regardless.

Totally unrelated - I have a Teagan & Sarah song stuck in my head. Not sure if I should feel embarassed about that or not. It's not really newsworthy - I hoping sharing will get it out of my head, at least for a while...

diesel federal tax is 8 cents a gallon higher than gas in america.

i don't know what the european tax is, but if its lower than the american tax my mind is going to be blown

Tarquin Machismo:

Man, it was so sweet watching Hillary go down but then i realized that anything less than seeing her spontaneously burst into flames was going to be anti-climactic - (something i've never been accused of btw, ooooooh yeah....)

I was expecting someone to throw a bucket of water on her after the flying monkeys went away.

China says “okay to a 2nd child” – if shoddy construction killed your first one

More than 70000 people just died and you are making a joke of it. Wow, just wow. Did you crack jokes during the Holocaust too?

*Sigh*

Methinks it's time to rein in your high horse, and trot down from the high moral ground there FirstInLastOut. She wasn't being flippant about the earhquake victims, she was pointing out the inhumanity of China's One-Child policy, and the bureaucratic insanity of those who enforce it. Sometimes the only way to deal with such crazy barbarity is through humour.

why do so many americans spout all this crap about how bad the Chinese government is as if they are speaking for its people. All of this is nothing more than anti-Chinese bigotry, plain and simple. Most Chinese are very proud of their goverment right now. And a joke about a very recent crisis that killed more than 70000 people is more than a little tasteless.

The fact that you think this is ok means you need to learn how to have empathy for other people who aren't like you.

The holocaust happened more than 60 years ago, do you think its ok to make tasteless jokes about it too? It's a simple question, care to answer? How about right after 9-11, did you make jokes about the families of the victims? Did you mock the survivors of the Katrina disaster? I'm wondering where your boundaries lie.

*Sigh*

Because that's still flying over your head.

FirstInLastOut, I don't know if English is your first language, but if it is, it really should be quite obvious that the original post was nothing if not empathetic towards the ordinary Chinese citizens, whose own government denies them the right to have more than one child. And then, when that child dies in tragic circumstances, such as was witnessed in the quake, the parents are offered what amounts to a voucher redeemable for another, as if children were some type of commodity to be rationed and controlled, doled out to ease political pressures on the local Party.

That's the real tragedy here: quakes, cyclones, tsunamis etc are an unfortunate but unavoidable part of life, it's the response to them that's important, and in this respect, the Chinese government have shown their true colours. In many districts, the only buildings to collapse were those built by, and for the government- schools, hospitals etc. Corrupt Party officials have long turned a blind eye to shoddy constrution practises, in return for financial kickbacks. Ironically, these "Communists" put money before people, and now it's the ordinary citizens who have to live with the consequences.

And First, where exactly are your stats to prove that "most Chinese are very proud of their goverment right now"? Considering that those who criticise the Communist Party end up in hard labour camps, it's probably not surprising that most folk express a teary eyed patriotism to tv cameras, journalists etc. One group who bucked the trend were the parents of a group of school kids, crushed to death under a poorly constructed school house. Said parents protested outside their local Party office, and said parents were dragged away by the police. And you have the gall to criticise a post on the matter, while the government you champion are acting so brutally to those in whose bereavement they conspired?!

And finally, FirstInLastOut, people are far too ready to throw around words such as "bigotry" and "anti-Chinese" in order to shut down any opposing points of view. It's wrong and it betrays an inability to support an arguement with facts and reason. If the Belgian government treated it's citizens as contemptuously as the Communist Party treats the Chinese people, the outrage would be similar. Since you continuously refer to the Holocaust, I imagine that you would have accused those who spoke against the Nazis as anti-German bigots? After all, most Germans expressed a pride in their government, at least in public. Anyway, now I have to go. Was gonna sign an Amnesty petition against the genocide in Darfur, but I guess that's just be engaging in anti-Sudanese bigotry eh??

...is the precious jewel it's always been. a friend in europe just emailed me that a liter of regular is E1.52. That's over $9 a gallon. Lots of taxes buried in there.

...that didn't stop the nation of Poland from mounting everything including outboard powered oxcarts from clogging all of austria's roads to see the EM game against shermany in person.