Sunday - December 31, 2006
Wrapping It Up
OK. That’s a wrap. Cut. Print it. 2006 is almost over and it’s time for all of us to get ready to greet 2007, the New Year. I’ll be 58 years old in March and I’m starting to feel every minute of it. My days of wild partying on New Years Eve ended ages ago. Nowadays I am usually asleep when midnight passes. So much for that “life begins at 50” bullshit.
In looking back in the rear view mirror, it hasn’t been a really bad year - at least not compared to others I’ve endured in the last half-century. 2006 had its ups and downs but nothing actually life-threatening. A few “bummer moments” here and there but nothing to regret. Overall, a good year. I hope yours was at least as good, if not better.
In any case, I usually spend New Years Eve pondering the past year so I can put it to rest the next day and start looking ahead down the road. Always keep looking ahead, kids. Don’t look back - there’s nothing back there that you can change anyway.
One thing that always strikes me each year is the number of places I’ve been on New Years Eve. I’ve been in Times Square, Trafalgar Square, Bourbon Street, downtown Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nashville, Tampa, Miami, Memphis, Indianapolis, St. Louis and one memorable New Years celebration in Manila where I just barely managed to escape without a tattoo (my wallet went missing too).
In spite of all that we all continue to forge ahead each year. What else are you going to do? Anyway, I’m outta here for the next 24 hours or so. I have to get my blackeyed peas, collard greens and cornbread ready for tomorrow’s first meal. You all take care of yourselves tonight and stay safe. If you’re out partying and get a little too much alcohol in your system - CALL A CAB! That’s an order. I want to see all of you back here on Tuesday.
There will probably not be much posted here tomorrow, if at all. I’ll be relaxing and enjoying some football. In the meantime, here is a New Years superstition to get you started. Feel free to add your own to the list. There are more at Snopes.com if you need help.
Finally ... a toast to all of you who have been coming here and reading, commenting, posting and having fun with The Skipper. I wish you all the best in the New Year. You’re all a great bunch of maniacs people. May God bless and keep you and may you always have more than enough ammo to keep the darkness at bay.
Salute! Kanpai! Prost! Mazel tov!
First Footing: The first person to enter your home after the stroke of midnight will influence the year you’re about to have.
Ideally, he should be dark-haired, tall, and good-looking, and it would be even better if he came bearing certain small gifts such as a lump of coal, a silver coin, a bit of bread, a sprig of evergreen, and some salt. Blonde and redhead first footers bring bad luck, and female first footers should be shooed away before they bring disaster down on the household. Aim a gun at them if you have to, but don’t let them near your door before a man crosses the threshold.
The first footer (sometimes called the “Lucky Bird") should knock and be let in rather than unceremoniously use a key, even if he is one of the householders. After greeting those in the house and dropping off whatever small tokens of luck he has brought with him, he should make his way through the house and leave by a different door than the one through which he entered. No one should leave the premises before the first footer arrives — the first traffic across the threshold must be headed in rather than striking out.
First footers must not be cross-eyed or have flat feet or eyebrows that meet in the middle. Nothing prevents the cagey householder from stationing a dark-haired man outside the home just before midnight to ensure the speedy arrival of a suitable first footer as soon as the chimes sound. If one of the partygoers is recruited for this purpose, impress upon him the need to slip out quietly just prior to the witching hour.
-- Snopes.com, “New Years Superstitions”
Posted by The Skipper on 12/31/2006 at 05:46 PM
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Year-End Closeout Sale On Moonbattery: 50% Off
- Turtle sets off fire alarm in Dorset, UK! Brussels blamed. Well, Brussels Sprouts anyway.
- A bit of science news perhaps? Philips is researching a laser razor that can make one shave last more than a month. Smooth!
- Brits feel America does at least one thing right: we’re better drivers than anyone! And we make it easy to rent a car!
- Spanish woman becomes first time mother, of twins, at 67!
- Godzilla celebrates 50th birthday. A real smashing party in Tokyo?
- What, Fallujah again? How many times to we have to take this shithole?
- First it was a fatwa against french fries, now it’s no rubbers (not even those tiny Indian ones)! What’s a poor disaffected Indian muslim youth to do?
- India to attempt to overload cell phone net on New Year’s Eve: more than 1 billion SMS messages to be sent that day.
- Kim Jong Il might try to get around international sanctions by selling gold in London. He’s done it before, after all.
- Locust plague in Eritrea. Moses could not be reached for comment.
- Swan plague in England. Shoot them? Hell no, but here’s a recipe just in case!
- And finally, you’ve got to go to Pravda to get the best headlines: “Saddam Hussein thrown in the garbage of history”. Good title, comrade!
Posted by Drew458 on 12/31/2006 at 05:26 PM
Filed Under: • Odd-Strange •
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Operation Crushed Nuts: The Final Days
Somalia’s Islamists Vow Never to Surrender
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - December 31, 2006
A phalanx of Ethiopian tanks and armored personnel carriers chugged toward Kismayo, the last city occupied by Somalia’s diminished Islamist movement, witnesses said Saturday, while the Islamists inside the city dug in and vowed never to surrender.
According to residents along Somalia’s coast, the Ethiopian troops, with soldiers from Somalia’s transitional government, were preparing to seize Kismayo, a port city near the Kenyan border.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a high-ranking cleric, emerged from a mosque in the city on Saturday, surrounded by gunmen, and told his followers that the Islamist leadership was not finished.
“The Islamic courts are still alive and ready to fight against the enemy of God,” Sheik Ahmed told residents of Kismayo in a speech on Saturday. “We left Mogadishu in order to prevent bloodshed in the capital, but that does not mean we lost the holy war against our enemy.”
Sheik Ahmed called on Somalis to begin an anti-Ethiopian insurgency. Already, several masked gunmen have surfaced on Mogadishu’s streets, suggesting a guerrilla movement may have begun.
Diplomats in Kenya, though, said that they were talking to moderate representatives of the Islamic movement on Saturday, trying to persuade them to back down. The Islamists are essentially cornered, hemmed in by the Indian Ocean, a sealed Kenyan border and thousands of troops headed their way. Their only route of escape may be to flee into the thickly forested area south of Kismayo, which Western intelligence officers suspect has been used before as a terrorist hide-out.
In Mogadishu, the presence of Ethiopian soldiers continued to spark scattered violence, with supporters of the Ethiopians battling street by street against the remaining Islamist partisans. Gunshots rang out, men and women battled with sticks and rocks and the thick black smoke of burning barricades lifted into the air.
Just two days ago, in a stunning reversal of fortune, Somalia’s transitional government, with the muscle of the Ethiopian military, reclaimed Mogadishu from the Islamist movement that had ruled large swaths of Somalia. Despite the Islamists’ repeated vows to fight to the death, their forces evaporated and Mogadishu fell without a shot. Many Somalis said Saturday that they hoped the same thing would happen in Kismayo.
More than a thousand people have been killed in fighting across the country since Dec. 20, and Somalia’s leaders now face the daunting task of trying to piece together a country that has not had a functioning central government for 15 years.
Posted by The Skipper on 12/31/2006 at 04:33 PM
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Final Resting Place
Posted by Rancino on 12/31/2006 at 08:39 AM
Filed Under: • Iraq •
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Sunday Funnies
Posted by The Skipper on 12/31/2006 at 07:02 AM
Filed Under: • Humor •
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Saturday - December 30, 2006
Barking Moonbat Of The Week
This week’s award goes to whichever one of these three ratbags is going to be next to dangle from a noose. While looking around the planet for the “asshat dictators” candidates for the noose, I realized we’re running out of this species of cockroach. Below are pictures of the top three on my list. You can vote on these three and seven others I have chosen to be the next “Dangling Dictator”. Runners-up that almost made the list were King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia), Hu Jintao (China) and Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan). Maybe next year, guys! So go ahead and cast your vote for who you think should be the next one to be frog-marched to the gallows.
Posted by The Skipper on 12/30/2006 at 09:39 PM
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Saturday Silliness
“Military Mouse Trap”
Posted by The Skipper on 12/30/2006 at 03:35 PM
Filed Under: • Humor •
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Weekend Eye Candy
OK, just because Saddam can’t hang out with us anymore, doesn’t mean we guys can’t have a little fun. While Ol’ Sodomy is enjoying his 72 raisins, the rest of us have to be content with beautiful women, and this week’s eye-candy is a tasty morsel named Natalie Taylor. This gorgeous brunette is all wrapped up in fishnet for some reason and to stifle the complainers out there I’ve chosen her for this week purely because there doesn’t seem to be any airbrush work going on.
I’ve also made a major change to the Weekend Eye Candy feature. From now on, the pics will be available in our Photo Galleries instead of in a pull-down here on the main page. I did this for two reasons: (1) as long as they’re tucked away in the gallery we can hopefully keep the children and womenfolk from accidentally stumbling on them and (2) in the galleries I can display larger images instead of the 640px width I’m limited to here on the main page. I’ve also moved the recent weeks’ entries to their own gallery pages to make them easier to view. So click on the links below, guys, and give your eyes a sweet treat.
(Warning: NSFW)
Playboy’s Cybergirl Of The Month
Natalie Taylor
Posted by The Skipper on 12/30/2006 at 03:10 PM
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Through The Looking Glass
His execution at 6:10 a.m. was announced on state-run Iraqiya television. Witnesses said 14 Iraqi officials had attended the hanging, at the former military intelligence building in northern Baghdad, now part of an American base. Those in the room said that Mr. Hussein was dressed entirely in black and carrying a Koran and that he was compliant as the noose was draped around his neck.
“He just gave up,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser. “We were astonished. It was strange. He just gave up.” He added: “Saddam Hussein is gone. All Iraqis will look to the future after the end of this era.”
Posted by The Skipper on 12/30/2006 at 02:36 PM
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Hanging Party
Saddam Hussein Hanged, Says Al Hurra TV Station
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Fri Dec 29, 2006 10:16pm ET145
BAGHDAD(CNN) - 11:07 p.m. EST, December 29, 2006
LONDON (BBC) - Saturday, 30 December 2006, 04:13 GMT
DUBAI (AL-JAZEERA) - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2006 6:27 MECCA TIME, 3:27 GMT
NEW YORK (NY TIMES) - December 30, 2006
SYDNEY (THE AUSTRALIAN) - December 30, 2006
BAGHDAD (FOX NEWS) - December 29, 2006 11:53pm ET
U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT - 10:00pm ET) on Saturday. Arabic satellite channel Arabiya also reported the execution had taken place.
Two co-defendants, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former Iraqi chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were also executed.
“Criminal Saddam was hanged to death,” state-run Iraqiya television announced, as patriotic music and images of national monuments were broadcast.
“Saddam’s body is in front me,” said an official in the prime minister’s office. “It’s over.”
In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said, “These are employees of the prime minister’s office and government chanting in celebration.”
A witness to the execution reported that celebrations broke out after Hussein was dead, and that there was “dancing around the body.” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki did not attend the execution, according to an adviser to the prime minister who was interviewed on state television.
“It’s a very solemn moment for me,” Feisal Istrabadi, Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” “I can understand why some of my compatriots may be cheering. I have friends whose particular people I can think of who have lost 10, 15, 20 members of their family, more.
“But for me, it’s a moment really of remembrance of the victims of Saddam Hussein.” The execution was videotaped and photographed, state television reported, and those images will be distributed to the media.
Al-Arabiya television network reported that Barzan Hassan, Hussein’s half-brother, and Awad Bandar, former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were hanged after Hussein. All three were convicted of killings in the Iraqi town of Dujail nearly 25 years ago.
Tab - The Calgary Sun
Posted by The Skipper on 12/30/2006 at 03:44 AM
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Friday - December 29, 2006
Through The Looking Glass
I hear you are not going to be with us to celebrate the New Year. I was saddened to hear of your sudden change of plans and a pressing need on your part to attend a special party in your honor this weekend.
I wish you well in this new enterprise you are about to embark upon. I am sure you will prove to be as successful in this new project as you have been in the past. We will go ahead with the New Years parties as planned but it just won’t be the same without you.
Drop us a line whenever you can, old pal. Come back and hang out with us whenever you can.
The Skipper
Posted by The Skipper on 12/29/2006 at 10:43 PM
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Motivational Poster Of The Day
Posted by The Skipper on 12/29/2006 at 06:39 PM
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Operation Crushed Nuts: Day 4
Here it is ... in a nutshell ....
Somalia Forces Retake Capital From Islamists
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 28 (NY TIMES) — Just hours after Islamist fighters abandoned Mogadishu, the capital from which they ruled much of Somalia, thousands of troops of the transitional government marched into the city on Thursday in a stunning reversal of fortune.
The government soldiers and the Ethiopian infantrymen who have been backing them poured in from the outskirts, residents said. The only gunshots fired were long celebratory bursts into the air.
Oh ... when the Saints ... go marchin’ in ... The Islamists, whom many Western nations had considered a grave and growing regional threat with terrorist connections, were vanquished faster than anyone had expected, or at least removed from power.
“We always knew these Islamists weren’t all they were cracked up to be,” said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for the transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. “And now we are where they used to be, in control of Mogadishu — well, as much as anyone can be in control of Mogadishu.”
Run away, little girls! Cowardly IslamoNazis! None of them are worth a bucket of warm spit. By Wednesday, the Islamist military had been decimated by Ethiopian airstrikes and mass desertions. Clan elders, traditionally the pillars of Somali society, pulled their troops and firepower out of the Union of Islamic Courts, or U.I.C., after a string of back-to-back military loses in which more than 1,000 fighters, mostly teenage boys, were quickly mowed down by the better-trained and equipped Ethiopian-backed forces.
“Our children were getting annihilated,” said Abdi Hulow, an elder with the powerful Hawiye clan. “We couldn’t sustain it.”
That pretty much sums it up. The kids were cannon fodder. Typical IslamoNazi strategy. Even before the government troops had planted themselves in downtown Mogadishu, the political negotiations began. Mr. Hulow and other elders said they had asked transitional leaders for positions in the new government in exchange for support. Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister, told the elders that first he needed help in disarming the militias.
Mr. Gedi also gave a short news conference on the outskirts of Mogadishu in which he reached out to the Somali diaspora, saying: “We need your help. It’s time to come home.” One group was noticeably absent from all these talks: conservative clerics, who seemed to have overplayed their cards.
You mean the Ratbag IslamoNazi Imams who preach jihad were suddenly silent? Go figure. It seems that many people, inside Somalia and outside, overrated the Islamists’ strength and popularity. Part of the reason, analysts now say, is that the Islamists had an excellent propaganda machine, controlling most media outlets in Somalia.
Translation: these weren’t “holy warriors” - they were bullshit artists. On Thursday, to celebrate the departure of the Islamists, many Mogadishu residents stuffed their mouths with khat, a mildly narcotic plant that the Islamists had outlawed, and cranked up Western music, which some clerics had tried to ban.
Things are now back to normal. Every body must get stoned.
Posted by The Skipper on 12/29/2006 at 06:21 PM
Filed Under: • Africa •
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The Arafat Conspiracy
The US State Department released documents last summer that confirmed Arafat ordered the hit on our ambassadors to Sudan in 1973. (Cleo Noel and George Moore were abducted from a party at the Saudi embassy and held hostage for the release of Sirhan Sirhan.
Nixon said no, and they were executed less than 2 days after their kidnapping) This has been denied by State for 33 years. The US and Israeli governments were aware of his order from the very instant that it was sent.
Why did the USA deal with Arafat, knowing he was a murderer? He was behind the Achille Lauro too, 12 years after that. But “He is a different man now than he was then”. That excuses murder?
This scumbag was feted at Camp David, allowed to speak (while ARMED!!) at the UN, given a Nobel Prize, and generally hailed in our press as some kind of hero. We gave Palestine BILLIONS over the years. To a criminal cartel posing as a government, run by a murderer. What The Fuck??
Well at least they can’t blame this on W. too much. President Bush “completely repudiated Arafat in a speech he gave on June 24, 2002”. Well, actually he said “Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism.” Not exactly the same as naming names ... though Arafat was THE authority then, and W continued to send the fuckers tons of money. Why waste diplomacy on thugs?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020624-3.html
So, we’ve been duped by our own government yet again. Thanks. I’d like a real explaination for this, but it would be hard to swallow. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I have no connection to the State Department at all, never have. But I’ve “known” he was behind this hit since it happened. We all have “known”. Why does the government have to lie? Two dozen b-52s in 1973 and there would not be a Mid East Situation today at all.
Blogs:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ (title: History Might Have Been Different)
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/008523.shtml
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2006/12/28/arafats-orchestration-of-1973-murders-acknowledged/
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/06/terrorism-and-media-symbiosis.html
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016333.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/014409.php
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008796.php
Newspapers:
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53513
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150191582217&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21365
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/12/flurry_of_atten.html
http://www.shinesforall.com/archives/2006/12/declassified_st.html
Posted by Drew458 on 12/29/2006 at 03:51 PM
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.