The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

COBURN WARNS OF "RAMPANT LESBIANISM." It seems that every time that former Congressman Tom Coburn (R) pulls close to Congressman Brad Carson (D) in Oklahoma's US Senate race, Coburn goes and makes another stupid comment. Well, there he goes again. Carson's campaign released a tape recording Monday they just obtained of comments that Coburn apparently made to an audience a few weeks ago. Here's what Coburn said: "Our [campaign] rep down here in the southeast area, he lives in Colgate and travels out of Atoka. He was telling me lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?" This pronouncement was apparently news to everyone in the Colgate area. "He knows something I don't know. We have not identified anything like that. We have not had to deal with any issues on that subject -- ever," said Colgate School Superintendent Joe McCulley. "I don't believe that [report] ... [our attorneys] haven't said anything to me about that," added the Executive Director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association. These kind of frequent gaffes were what worried GOP leaders in DC when Coburn announced his candidacy -- and was what prompted them to back his failed primary opponent.

Source is here.

You just can't make this stuff up. You really can't.

Grrr...the US Postal Service has just earned a Place Of Honor on my hate list for the month. For one, a DVD that's been sent to me three times since the beginning of August has still not managed to make its merry way to my door. Magic.

Now, apparently, there was some sort of lawn-gnome infestation in Post Offices nationwide during the beginning of October, which apparently caused the post office to misplace a large number of packages (including my rental DVDs) and return them to sender. I suspect that one of the packages I sent out at around the same time was caught up in this as well.

And they had been doing so well for me after they fired Mail Bitch. Urg.

It's almost 3PM, and I haven't even been at work for two hours. I volunteered to stay late (read: "work without interference") to do some crypto stuff, but what should have been easy, straightforward, and within my limited capabilities is turning into something much more complicated than it should be, and may possibly have me here until far later than I wanted to be. On the bright side, that means I can sleep in and come in late again tomorrow, hopefully avoiding any crises that may develop (as I did today).

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini

"Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Fascism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Fascism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Fascism's emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media."
- Ben Tripp, paraphrasing Mussolini's diary

"By setting up special parastate agencies or "corporations" to replace failing or inadequate private enterprises, [Mussolini] was able to control the important economic sectors. Elitists everywhere found that laudable."
- Ernest Fitzgerald