The Guild 5-21-2004 Things that make you go, hmmmm

[BigWaveBetty]

1 . Ever wonder about those people who spend $2.00 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backwards: NAIVE

2. Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

3. OK.... so if the Jacksonville Jaguars are known as the "Jags" and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the "Bucs," what does that make the Tennessee Titans?

4. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea...does that mean that one enjoys it?

5. If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?

6. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

7. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

8. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren't they just stale bread to begin with?

9. Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racecar is not called a racist?

10. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted,cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?

11. Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

12. 13.. If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?

13. Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?

14. What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

15. I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me .....they're cramming for their final exam.

16. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks , so I wondered what do Chinese mothers use? toothpicks?

17. Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen can look for them while they deliver the mail?

18. If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

19. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

20. Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?

21. If a cow laughed, would milk come out of her nose?

Bonus:

This face wants to know, "When are people going to face the reality?"

[BigWaveBetty]

Good Morning!

[BigWaveBetty]

Perspective the media won't give on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse:

May 17, 2004 -- THE tape was shocking. In the medical clinic at Abu Ghraib prison, nine Baghdad merchants were shown undergoing surgery to remove their healthy right hands on the orders of Saddam Hussein.
It wasn't hard to track the men shown in the video. The incident was well known in Baghdad and the tape had been widely circulated to terrorize other merchants who might dare to deal in foreign currency.

Nothing could more dramatically illustrate the depth of cruelty and inhumanity of Saddam's regime. Iraqis often say, "Cruelty is the tryant's art." And Saddam should take his place among history's cruelest tryrants.

I went looking for the men in the video. Of the nine who lost their hands in 1995, six were still in Baghdad, one had died, one escaped to Germany and one to Holland. I tracked them down and proposed I make a documentary incorporating the brutal amputation scenes, while telling their story to the world. They agreed.

They were not unique in Saddam's Iraq. During his 35-year reign of terror, Saddam and his Baathist cohorts punished citizens by cutting off hands, feet, ears, tongues or simply executing them. Thousands more were mutilated and lost limbs in Saddam's senseless wars with Iran and Kuwait. As many as 3 million Iraqis may have been eliminated during the Saddam years, with many now turning up in mass graves throughout the country.

Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qussay, often documented the punishment of those they accused of not supporting the regime, using videotape. One Iraqi general who fled to Jordan, received a videotape showing the rape and torture of his wife and daughters. Uday is reported to have taped his pet lions killing and eating two young men who he considered his rivals for the affection of a beautiful woman. Such tapes are scarce now and were probably destroyed as Baghdad fell a year ago.

As I began production of the documentary "Remembering Saddam" I also started a search for doctors, hospitals or anyone willing to help undo Saddam's brutal surgery. Luck struck in a Baghdad restaurant when discussing my concerns with journalist friends, I was overheard by an American at a nearby table.



Roger Brown, an oil engineer from Houston, Texas came over with a suggestion. "I'll bet Marvin Zindler at Houston's KTRK Channel 13 could help you find help for these men." Within days he had put me in touch with the Zindler and his producer Lori Reingold.

Marvin Zindler is famous as the crusading reporter whose expose in 1973 led to the closing of the Chicken Ranch Bordello. The story later became the play and movie "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Zindler didn't have to look far to find a doctor willing to provide his surgical skills. At 82, he projects a youthful, wrinkle-fee image and admits to more cosmetic surgery than Michael Jackson. His doctor, Joe Agris, is one of Houston's premier plastic reconstructive surgeons.

Dr. Agris agreed to operate on the Baghdad merchants. He enlisted the Methodist Hospital to provide surgical facilities, Dr. Fred Kestler, who is a specialist hand surgeon and Dynamic Orthotics to provide the training the patients would need to operate their new bionic hands. The German-American company Otto Bock offered to provide all seven prosthetic hands, while Continental Airlines agreed to fly the men from Europe to Houston and the Pentagon and Coalition Provisional Authority arranged to fly the men out of Baghdad.

By early April the documentary was ready for broadcast in both Arabic and English, and all the arrangements had been made to help the men start recovering a facsimile of their missing right hands.

True to their word, the Baghdad merchants shared their story with me, in spite of threats against them for cooperating with an American journalist. I also interviewed their wives, children and neighbors to document the depth to which their cruel punishment had blighted their lives.

The gruesome footage of their amputations is carefully presented in increasingly shocking increments as the documentary unfolds. In the final scene, a severed hand is placed on a table with forceps. "Is this the hand that threatened Saddam?" asks Basm Al Fadhly as he watched the tape of his hand being cut for the first time. "The Coalition doesn't need to find weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. Saddam killed our children without weapons of mass destruction. They are embedded in his brain."

Today, the seven Baghdad merchants will walk out of Dynamic Orthotics with their new hands. A final week of training with their new prosthetics is scheduled in Houston, then a week of touring and hand shaking in Washington before flying back to Baghdad in early June.

Last week, Nazaar Joudi was writing a letter to his wife as he experimented with his new hand. While in Abu Ghraib prison Joudi wrote a letter to his wife, with his healthy right hand, hours before Saddam's henchmen cut it off. That letter turned out to be prophetic. "I may lose my right hand," he wrote, "but hopefully Allah will replace it someday with an even better one."

My documentary "Remembering Saddam" continues to languish on the desks of yawning broadcast editors, but the subjects of that documentary will be writing letters to their wives with their new hands.

In spite of the current chaos and continued terrorism in Iraq, these seven Baghdad merchants are optimistic that life will stabilize soon. "I ask the whole world not to let this tragedy that happened to us be repeated," says Joudi. "The age of tyrants is over, the age of good remains. God willing. Good is coming in Iraq."

Don North owns and operates Northstar Productions Inc. based in Fairfax, Va.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/24175.htm

[lodwick]

Good morning, everyone.

[mountaineer]

I hope everyone had a chance to hear the soldier from Oklahoma who called Rush yesterday. He just returned from a year in Iraq. He and his men put 200 to Abu Ghraib prison. They were the worst of the worst, he said, including a man who had brutally raped children whom he - the Oklahoman - personally arrested, after seeing the injuries inflicted on the victims.

The soldier also said that things in Iraq are not nearly as bad as depicted, and that coalition troops are hamstrung by the "reporters on every corner," watching their every move. He said we could win the war within weeks if the media weren't dogging them at every turn. I hope Rush replays the call today.

[mountaineer]

"MICHAEL Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man." That's the title of an upcoming tome from ReganBooks by Jason Clarke and David T. Hardy, the creators of two Web sites devoted to exposing the filmmaker's hypocrisy, moorelies.com and mooreexposed.com. "Moore shows the greatest disdain for that which he actually is . . . a very rich, pasty white American male," the authors say.

Watching Moore spinning statistics in "Bowling for Columbine" and "Dude, Where's My Country?" spurred the authors to ask, "Dude, where's your integrity." The book, due in July, will expose his use of camera tricks, manipulated facts and spliced speeches. "Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary." (PageSix)

[mountaineer]

Speaking of liars, did anyone see Ann Richards last night? I don't know if she was on Larry King or what. I just surfed by in time to hear her claim that the administration said the war in Iraq would take one week. Is this woman back on the sauce? Arrrgggghhh.

[BigWaveBetty]

I did, he was great! Although the part about the reporters was disheartening. *sigh*

More idiocy from the 9/11 commission:

GORELICK: WE WERE TOO EASY ON RUDY [KEAN AGREES]

[mountaineer]

News of the weird:

Opera great Beverly Sills stalked by a 39-year-old female truck driver who wanted to marry her, story here.

A drug figure was gunned down in NYC, and Candice Bergen and Lorraine Bracco rushed to the scene, as honorary police commanders for the day. Story (which I assume we'll soon see on Law and Order).

Bill Clinton is all hopped up over his book:

Friends of Bill Clinton better start screening their calls. The former President is feeling chatty. For weeks, Clinton has been holed up in his Chappaqua home as he and Knopf editor Robert Gottlieb saw and chisel the 900-page autobiography titled "My Life." The book is apparently going through its final buffing this week, and the former Oval Officer has been reaching out to pals to give them tastes of his prose.

They never know when he'll strike.

Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) was sound asleep at 6:30 a.m. this week when the phone rang. It was Sen. Hillary Clinton. "She was very apologetic about calling me at home," King tells us. "She said the President needed to check some facts." [Hillary acting as x42's secretary now?]

King, one of four Republicans who voted against Clinton's impeachment, had heard from the ex-President a few weeks earlier. "He called me on the House floor. He was very serious - shuffling papers, like some editor was watching over his shoulder."

But during this wakeup call, King says, Clinton was "in a more expansive mood. He was pumped." [Cocaine will do that to a person]

"He didn't seem like he needed to check facts so much as try out what he'd written on somebody. He was like a guy with a new Cadillac," says King, who worked with Clinton on the Northern Ireland peace initiative. "[Clinton] said, 'That sounds good, doesn't it?' I said, 'Yeah, it sounds great.' ... It sounded just like him. He certainly was proud of it."

King, who has written two novels, added, "He's going to be the best book promoter the world has ever seen." link

[SuziQ]

ROTFL!! What a great way to start the day!

[BigWaveBetty]

crockumentary

LOL!

I was surfing a bit last night too and saw the ever appalling Ann but didn't linger long enough to hear that whopper.

We all know who told the world it would take a week.

"He is a threat. He's a murderer and a thug,” said Mr. Clinton. “There's no doubt we can do this. We're stronger; he's weaker. You're looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I'd be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished.”

Poor Ann, she cain't help it, she was born with her head up her rear.

[BigWaveBetty]

[mountaineer]

Poor Ann, she cain't help it, she was born with her head up her rear.

Indeed. Apparently she never noticed that her boy Clinton was born with a silver spoon up his nose, too. I think I startled Mr. M (and myself) when I heard her tell that outrageous falsehood about Bush saying the war would take a week. I screamed at the TV, "No one said that, you lying b*****!"

I'm usually much more refined, and I even forgot to add, "Bless her heart."

[mountaineer]

oops, too many *s.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

I am on my way to the Michigan State Republican Convention, so I will be away from FR for awhile.

Here's a joke for you all as I depart.

London Flight

Two Arabs boarded a plane out of London. One took a window seat and the
other sat next to him in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, an American
sat down in the aisle seat.

After takeoff, the American kicked his shoes off, wiggled his toes and was
settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, "I need to get up and
get a coke."
"Don't get up" said the American, "I'm in the aisle seat. I'll get it for
you."
As soon as he left, one of the Arabs picked up the American's shoe and spat
in it.
When he returned with the coke, the other Arab said, "That looks good, I'd
really like one too."
Again, the American obligingly went to fetch it. While he was gone the
other Arab picked up his other shoe and spat in it.

When the American returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.
As the plane was landing, the American slipped his feet into his shoes and
knew immediately what had happened.
"Why does it have to be this way?" he asked.

"How long must this go on?

This fighting between our nations?
This hatred?
This animosity?
This spitting in shoes and pissing in cokes."

[mountaineer]

Good one!

[codyjacksmom]

Funny...

[Endeavor]

(spoken loudly, and well, strangely): M A R V I N Z I N D L E R, EYE WITNESS NEWS!

I'll never forget watching this guy on local Houston tv news when I'd visit my grandparents in the summer. He was a riot, and I was only a kid at the time.

[SuziQ]

I'm usually much more refined, and I even forgot to add, "Bless her heart."

Well, frankly she doesn't deserve that little addition.

[mountaineer]

If Ann Richards and her fellow Dems were saying untrue things like that simply out of ignorance, I'd give 'em the benefit of the doubt and a "bless their hearts," but they clearly are wilfully and intentionally dishonest, and that's just plain wicked.