Bar Exams

This is something that may never happen again. Today both Rachel and James are taking bar exams, Rachel in Utah and James in Idaho.

James of course passed the Texas bar a year ago and was sworn into the Texas bar shortly before moving to Idaho, so he is a licensed attorney, at least here in Texas.

This is Rachel's first experience taking a bar exam so she is not an attorney yet, so her title is law school graduate. Something that was pointed out to me time and time again before Barbara was sworn into the Texas bar years ago.

COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO Rick Perry is all wet: You can put hay in a Prius

My grandfather Murdock would be happy to know that I could haul hay in my Prius if I really needed to.

Time for Some Campaignin'

Very funny (IMHO).

No good deed

Goes unpunished.

The Onion: Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Class(ic) Insults

From my friend Irish!

• The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."



• A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."



• "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr



• "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill



• "A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill



• "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow



• "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).



• "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)



• "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas



• "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln



• "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain



• "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde



• "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill



• "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.



• "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop



• "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright



• "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb



• "He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson



• "He is simply a shiv ver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating



• "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." Jack E. Leonard



• "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford



• "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed



• "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand



• "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker



• "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain



• "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West



• "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde



• "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)



• "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder



• "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

Autistic man found after week in woods

Boy, this is too scary - my worst fear come true. I don't think that John would be left alone at his camp though.

Postcards

Hard to understand how this guy didn't think anyone would be offended.

Postcards: "The Orlando, Fla. vendor of the Barack Obama/White House button that touched off a furor said today that he sold only four of the $2 buttons at last week’s Republican Party of Texas state convention, including one snapped up by a newspaper employee.

In the first interview he’s given on the flap, Jonathan Alcox said he came up with the button’s message — “If Obama is President… will we still call it the White House?”—based on a newspaper cartoon showing Obama in front of a sign for the White House, thinking to himself something like: “That’s the first thing I’ll change.”

“I’m not crazy,” Alcox said. “Why would I go out there and purposely put a button out there that’s going to offend people? We’re in this for business.”

“I thought what we were doing was clever and funny,” Alcox said. “We’ve never had a black president… It was just a mistake.”"

Kim Komando: My Generation

The Zimmers is a rock band unlike any other. This band has a whopping 50 members. And each one holds a distinguished title—elderly.

The name Zimmers comes from the British brand of metal-frame walkers. The lead singer, Alf, is 91. But he’s far from the oldest member. Buster (watch for the bushy beard) is a young-at-heart 100.

In this Video of the Day, The Zimmers perform a cover of The Who’s My Generation. The video was featured in a documentary about Britain’s elderly. It was released as a single, reaching No. 28 on the UK Singles Chart. The Zimmers are recording a full-length rock album. It should go on sale in September.

Why you should vote Republican (parody)

This is part of my "Don't spam everyone you know" therapy.

Loyalty Oaths for Clinton Supporters Pledging their Votes to McCain

I was a Hillary supporter also, but somehow I don't see myself voting for McCain instead. Check out the link to see the various 'pledges.'

Sudoku-addled jurors prompt mistrial

I knew there was a good reason for me not to play Soduku.

AFTER 105 witnesses and three months of evidence, a drug trial costing $1 million was aborted yesterday when it emerged that jurors had been playing Sudoku since the trial's second week.

In the District Court in Sydney, Judge Peter Zahra discharged the jury after hearing evidence from two accused men, one of their solicitors and the jury forewoman, who admitted that she and four other jurors had been diverting themselves in the jury box by playing the popular numbers game.

More than 20 police gave evidence in the case, in which the two accused faced a common charge of conspiracy to manufacture a commercial quantity of amphetamines. One faced further firearms and drug possession indictments. The prosecution and defence were due to deliver final addresses to the jury this week.

A browser for autistic children

From Kim Komando

John LeSieur has created a special Web browser for his grandson. The autistic boy is confused by many browser options. But the free Zac Browser eliminates many distractions. Do you know an autistic child who has tried it? Visit my Message Board to comment on the experience.

If I Only Spoke Spanish

Deeply weird live action Spanish version of "The Simpsons," called "Los Simpson," from the comedy show "Cruz y Raya":

Wires 24/7 Dutch man injures posterior in mooning accident

Hard to feel to0 sorry for this guy.

Jun 3rd, 2008 | UTRECHT, Netherlands -- Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a "mooning" that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back "for a joke."

It says that at one point the 21-year-old "pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant" that broke and resulted in "deep wounds to his derriere."

The statement released Tuesday says police detained the three men after the incident Sunday morning. But the cafe owner decided not to press charges after the men agreed to pay for the broken window.

The injured man was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.

Ice Cream Prayer

I heard the story of the "Ice Cream Prayer" for the first time in church today and was touched by it. Click the link to read it if you like. One of the nice things about the web is that I could find references to the story just by typing the words prayer and ice cream into a search engine and there were several references.

I saw a reference to the story on snopes.com and was kind of surprised to read some of the negative comments about the story. I guess it is one of those things like birds and angels that sound good at first until you give it some thought. I think I was happier before I read and agreed with some of the cynical comments to the story.

Gmaps Pedometer

My newest time waster.

I used to jog but now I walk because my knees give out otherwise. Being the obsessive compulsive computer geek that I am, I was delighted to find a website that would calculate the number of miles I walked by using a hack to Google Maps. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it, but once I got started it was pretty easy. I chose the hybrid option so I could see the street names along with an aerial view of the route I usually take on my Saturday walks (click here to see an example). I was delighted to see that I walked about 4.3679 miles.

The cool thing is that you can save the URL and send it to someone else or keep in in a spreadsheet.

Here is the what it says in the FAQ section:

What is this?

This is a little hack that uses Google's superb mapping application to help record distances traveled during a running or walking workout.

Why?

As a runner training for a marathon for the first time, I found myself wishing I had an easy way to know the exact distance a certain course is, without having to drag a GPS or pedometer around on my runs. Looking at Google Maps, and knowing there was a vibrant community of geeks hacking it, I knew there had to be a way. So here it is.
Note that there's a reason this is called a pedometer. Considering that you have to choose all the points in your route individually yourself, it's probably not suitable for driving trips and the like. But I've found it suits my purposes pretty well for getting running distances.

Something I hadn't thought of either but makes a lot of sense.
What McClellan's revelations tells us about McCain's judgment

At first blush, Scott McClellan's criticism of the Bush White House wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with the 2008 presidential race. McClellan hasn't had anything to do with John McCain, and most of the people McClellan calls out are not part of McCain's campaign.

But perhaps that's an unimaginative approach. McClellan's book apparently has quite a bit to say about the war in Iraq - clearly, a key campaign issue this year - including charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the war. The former White House press secretary added that the president failed to be "open and forthright on Iraq" and worse, "rushed to war" with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.

What does this have to do with McCain? Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod knows:

"What does all his experience get us?" asked Obama's strategic guru. "What do all those visits [to Iraq] get us?"

He continued: "The fact that he goes to Iraq and gets a tour apparently does little to provoke the kinds of questions that should be asked, and what Sen. Obama has been asking since the beginning. So it is not a question of longevity in government. It is a question of judgment, it is a question of a willingness to challenge policies that have failed. And he seems just dug in." […]

"We are talking on a day where the president's press secretary released a book where they frankly acknowledged that they engaged in deception and propaganda to essentially lead America to war. Senator Obama saw through that and raised the appropriate questions. Sen. McCain didn't," he said.

In this sense, the timing of the McClellan book is pretty helpful - it offers the Obama campaign a chance to reinforce the fact that when the White House was making a bogus argument, McCain bought it and Obama didn't. McClellan was, to borrow a phrase, catapulting the propaganda. McCain embraced it from the outset, and never let go.

McClellan helps put all of this on the front page, right where McCain doesn't want it.

Garrison Keillor, Mutterings over the graves of soldiers | Salon

Great quote.

"The Current Occupant tossed Nazis into a speech last week, something he rarely does since it only reminds people of Dick Cheney."

Here is another from the same piece. Less humorous though more true.

"On Memorial Day we'll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly. And there has been great public piety about those men and their "sacrifice" on the part of politicians who blithely sacrificed them."

Great Cartoon

One of those things that make me realize I am getting older, I am just not into text messaging, especially with a cell phone. I guess my fingers are too fat.

And Rachel did not reference any text messages when she spoke at her graduation last month.