A Little Saturday Night Music

Dean Martin - Baby, it's cold outside!

A Little Christmas Larceny

Illustration not indicative of story to follow.

A true story of why you should never do business with relatives!

We lived in southern Indiana from when I was eight until I was thirteen. One of those Christmases, closer to eight, I think, my siblings decided to go into the jewelry business. Now, I had sold a lot of stuff door to door during those years for spending money. I sold seeds and greeting cards and mistletoe, and one year I sold handmade jewelry.

My older brother and sister were in charge of production. They assembled ear rings and pendants made from cork balls, with straight pins holding a variety of beads sticking out like porcupine quills, tied with velvet ribbons. The idea was that my brother and sister would make them and then, sit at home in a nice, warm house while I went door to door, in chilly December, to look up with cheeks rosy from the cold at the homeowners and ask them if they wanted to buy some jewelry. (Christmas was coming soon, don'tcha know?)

I don't remember what percentage of the profits they offered me. I don't believe it was an equal share. After all, I was sales, they were management. So I bundled up and and started selling our wares door to door. Early in the endeavor, I got flustered by a question in the middle of my sales pitch and accidentally quoted the wrong price. A higher price. Which the customer paid.

Aha! Our goods are underpriced, I thought to myself. So, the new, higher price became the list price for the rest of the day. And because I was pretty good at math, I was able to calculate the difference between my siblings' asking price and the actual retail prices. So, when I finally made my way home, that amount found its way into a different pocket, and returning to the warmth of hearth and home, cheerfully gave my siblings what we had "made". They were overjoyed. I had met or exceeded their expectations. They split the money between us and congratulated themselves on having persuaded their little brother to be the one hustling out in the cold. While I, on the other hand, congratulated myself for being the one, hustling out in the cold.

Ah, the sordid tales of wayward youth!

Saturday Linkaround

Irony: Palin's a Quitter, Says Woman Who Quit EPA Job After Two Years

CA Says Hasta La Vista to the First, and Likely Last, Action Hero Governor

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – Stanley Kurtz

A NEW LOW… Obama Job Approval Rating Down to 40%

Iowahawk celebrates Seventh

Defunding Planned Parenthood

Obama, The new comeback kid -Krauthammer

If Obama Wins in 2012…

The Kennedys Leave Washington with a Whimper

Yogi Bear alternate ending -PG-13





Rule Five Roundup*:
Mariah Carey Is Expecting –Support your local Gunfighter


Rule Five Sunday, , When Bunnies Go Bad: 1968 Playmate of the Year Faces Prison for Shooting –The Other McCain



American Perspective- Katy Perry



Rule Five News , Hump Day Rule Five –Camp of the Saints



It's Interesting What Nude Pics Of Rima Fakih Can Do



Eye of Polyphemus – Katy Perry

NOW Objects to Hooters Feeding Kids


Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup, –Pirates Cove


More Lucy Pinder


Friday Pin up -Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World


Friday Night Babe – Carmen Electra


Vintage Babe of the Week –Raquel Welch


Rule Five Shameless Plugging -Yankee Phil


Pam Anderson –Last Tradition





*By no means comprehensive.

Use the comments as an open thread on any of these topics.

Cross posted at Say Anything.

WikiLeaks: Cuba Banned Sicko for Depicting 'Mythical' Healthcare System

By Proof

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up!


From the Guardian UK:

Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a "mythically" favourable picture of Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a "popular backlash", according to US diplomats in Havana.

I've always said that liberals were irony impaired, but can you see the irony in banning a film that was supposedly a "documentary", (Redundancy alert!) a film which supposedly, honestly depicts things as they really are, being banned because the subjects of the documentary might react negatively to the fact that it simply wasn't true? In fact, it was so far from true as to be described as "mythical"? That such care was NOT available to them?

The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks , is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.

But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so "disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room".

Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."

Wow. Aren't documentary makers supposed to, I don't know, document stuff? When you start making stuff up to make a point, don't you slip over into becoming a propagandist?

The cable describes a visit made by the FSHP to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in October 2007. Built in 1982, the newly renovated hospital was used in Michael Moore's film as evidence of the high-quality of healthcare available to all Cubans.

But according to the FSHP, the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. "Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is 'off-limits' to them," the memo reveals.

According to the FSHP, a more "accurate" view of the healthcare experience of Cubans can be seen at the Calixto Garcia Hospital. "FSHP believes that if Michael Moore really wanted the 'same care as local Cubans', this is where he should have gone," the cable states.

A 2007 visit by the FSHP to this "dilapidated" hospital, built in the 1800s, was "reminiscent of a scene from some of the poorest countries in the world," the cable adds.

Conservatives have known for a long time that Moore was a big, fat liar, er, a large, dietary and factually challenged individual. His dishonest editing of his earlier work should have gotten him kicked out of Hollywood.

The irony becomes complete, when you consider that Michel Moore has offered to go the bail on the wikileaker himself, Julian Assange. Well, before this latest "leak" he was!

On his website today Michael Moore has said that Cuba did not ban his documentary,

Because, denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Update: Moore claims: "The entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television"

Unfortunately, The entire nation of Cuba does not own television sets. 75-80% of the population does not. I would imagine that the top 20-25% of income earners have both TVs and access to better health care than the populace at large.

ownership tv-sets: 200 - 246 per 1000
http://www.populstat.info/Americas/cubag.htm


I'll have to look into that statistic, and see if it is households with (a) TV set or just the number of TVs per capita. If it is the latter, then, anyone with multiple sets would mean an even smaller percentage of the populace would have access to anything broadcast.


H/T Memeorandum

Cross posted at Say Anything, LCR.

TSA Liberty Meter

If they issued alerts for threats to the Republic, they way they do at TSA...

Five Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon

A little Rule Five beefcake for the ladies.

Long winter nights do strange things to a man. A conversation with a friend of mine back east got me to thinking about my own "degree of separation" from Kevin Bacon. So here goes:

I was an extra in a movie with Leslie Neisen,
who was in Airplane with Barbara Billingsley,
who was on the Love Boat with Loretta Swit,
who was in M*A*S*H* with Peter Riegert,
who was in Animal House with Kevin Bacon.

Quote du jour

“One anecdote’s an anecdote, two anecdotes are data.”

-Aaron Wildavsky