Poindexter just resigned the Pentagon according to Foxnews. Wanna bet (giggle) on the reason?

The keep playing the new White Stripes tune, Seven Nation Army. This song has the worst bass sound ever. The vocals are high-pitched, twangy and annoying. The drums are awful and they are so simple that anyone with the ability to count to four can play them. Guitar work is mediocre.

But strangely, I like the song. Go figure.

Per this:

Since the right-to-carry law was enacted in Florida . . . The homicide rate dropped 36 percent, firearm homicides dropped 37 percent and handgun homicides dropped 41 percent.

In the 10 states that adopted right-to-carry laws, the results were no change in the suicide rate, a 0.5 percent rise in accidental firearm deaths, a 5 percent decline in rapes, a 7 percent decline in aggravated assaults and an 8 percent decline in murder.

After Washington, D.C., enacted a handgun ban, the homicide rate rose 200 percent, while the overall U.S. rate only rose 12 percent. Of the 6.3 million violent crimes of rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, only 8 percent involved firearms.

U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Crime Victimization Survey has shown that resistance with a gun is by far the safest course of action when one is confronted by a criminal. The probability of serious injury from a criminal confrontation is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than resisting with a gun.

America has a crime problem. But the Europeans are worse, despite the claims that America is a dangerous place peopled with gun-toting maniacs.

The entry linked above has some rather interesting statistics. The murder rate of blacks is higher. The rate of those commiting murder among blacks is higher.

Update: Poor wording on my part and thus corrected.

I don’t really care for Kalifornia. I think that most folks would be better off if the place fell into the sea but I’d sure miss some of the people there. I haven’t really been following the Davis recall because I don’t care. Kalifornia could declare bankruptcy and it wouldn’t bother me.

I’m only interested in it from a point of view of What does it take to rid yourself of an incompetent government official?

However, SayUncle correspondent Andrew has been all over it with a fine-toothed comb. Just click here and start reading.

Say it ain’t so. I personally don’t believe there is right-biased or left-biased force dominating the media. I think that individual reporters and editors insert their biases into their pieces but there is no conspiracy.

Bubba links to one example of this that occurred right here in KnoxVegas. Shameful!

Frank became a monkey. He doesn’t like monkeys, unless they’re ninja monkeys, I think. Anyway, he’s a great humor writer who doesn’t deserve to be a monkey, but maybe a ninja. And I’m pretty sure when he refers to ninjas, he doesn’t mean Insane Clown Posse fans.

And since I am not above helping a link-pimper out nor am I above stealing err borrowing other peoples’ ideas, here are some Fun Facts About Franks:

They don’t all have friends named Ernest.

The do, however, all have friends named Bean.

If you rearrange the letters in IMAO, it clearly spells Frank.

Frank also refers to A mark or signature placed on a piece of mail to indicate the right to send it free of charge. Despite this, Franks are not stamps.

If you refer to a Frank as a Franc, Frank’s will become quite agitated and take a striking posture. Franc’s, however, won’t care all that much.

The sworn enemy of the Franks is not the French. It’s monkeys. The French are generally pissy about this. The monkeys typically don’t notice.

The average life expectancy of a male Frank is 74.1 years. The average life of a female Frank is indeterminable.

If you make fun of a Frank by referring to Beans and Ernest, they may become agitated. However, it is more likely that they will just ignore you.

If you make a Frank angry, they become Frank-incensed.

Apparently starting tomorrow, Tennessee will become the fourth state to honor all other states’ gun carry permits.

In Russia, an AmStaff kept paramedics from saving its owner. It was too good of a guard dog. This is one reason why you should appropriately socialize your dog, I suppose.

It seems The River is keeping its format. I got an email yesterday from the VP saying so. Now the KNS says it too.

Me and the Mrs. moved into our house in September. We started construction several months before that. We called the local cable company (Charter) two months prior to inform them that we’d be moving in September and we’re interested in purchasing cable TV and internet. No problem, they say assuring us they’d have it in by September. We even had our house wired for it with convenient little hookups outside for them.

We were the first to move into the new subdivision. It comes moving time and we call Charter who informs us that there are no cable lines ran to our subdivision. I speak with the builder and he informs me that cable, telephone, and electric had all been notified back when the land was developed and that electric and telephone came out and ran their cables. But not Charter. Me and the Mrs. got satellite TV instead, which is definitely better than cable since it now has local channels. The picture is better and it’s just more convenient.

Now that there are about 20 homes in the subdivision (of which about 14 are sold and lived in), here comes Charter. Back when the land was being developed they could have installed cable which would have been convenient for us homeowners and cheaper for them. Now, they’re installing cable because more people are there. Each home has a ten foot easement on sides facing the roads for these companies to install their pipes and cables and such. All the homes had sod placed in the yard. Here comes Charter with their diggers. They dug trenches in several yards, which leaves a mess and ruins your sod. The knocked out my telephone line. I was lucky, they didn’t have to dig a trench in my yard because the dirt was soft and they could drill under my yard. This exercise is costing them more money than if they’d done it at the start, as the other trenches were already in place.

The real kicker (mind you I was upset at them taking out my telephone line) is that they left a digger parked in a neighbor’s yard for days. This, of course, killed sections of her grass.

In addition, the homes already in the subdivision all have satellite television because cable wasn’t available when they moved in. So, in addition to extra cost because of the time involved in using the drilling machine and replacing telephone lines and sod, they are not getting revenue from the people already living there who opted for satellite because cable wasn’t available.

Charter has had some financial problems recently and I think I see why.

The RTB welcomes the following:

Opinari a right of center sort of blog.

Dreams of Flying Fish, a personal sort of blog.

Hatamaran, which is a hairy blog. Click on it to find out.

And Bugly. Who is engaged in an epic battle with Rug Doctor.

Welcome all!

Jeff has the weekly chart up.

No matter what they do, there will still be the Sunsphere making downtown ugly. What do you do with a giant golden ball? And, no, it’s not Al Gore’s Wig Emporium.

The TN lottery meetings will be closed to the public. So much for as open as possible.

After reading this, linked by SKB, I found that Dennis Kucinich really did sponsor a bill banning orbital mind control lasers:

And I thought Sharpton was the crazy one.

No, really.

Chuck has moved Redneckin’. Go here.

JP Morgan and Citibank agreed to pay $308M in federal and state charges for complicity in the Enron accounting scandal. The crime is that they didn’t look at Enron’s books to make sure their loan amounts agreed with the amounts the banks knew were outstanding.

Enron recorded loans as revenue and hid the loans on its financial statements. The money quote:

Banks “may not take the view they are not responsible for financial disclosure made by others. They may not hide behind accountants and lawyers. They may not say, ‘Everybody does it.'”

So, if I do business with another entity and I don’t agree their financials to mine then I have violated the law by not verifying the financial disclosure of others?

Update: As Marc asks, why not hold the Justice Department accountable?

Via Steve comes this site.

This well-endowed Asian girl will write submissions (up to 5 words) on her boobs, post the pic, and link to your site for free.

Me and the Mrs. are social-minded folks. We try to do our part. This post is about the difficulties in doing your part. One important element of doing your part is recycling. They™ say it’s good for the environment. They™ say it will ensure that future generations will have parks, clean air, blah blah blah.

Then why is it so hard? In our garage, we have several bins. The bins are labeled: paper, cardboard, aluminum, plastic, plastic bags, glass, newspapers, and magazines. Every couple of weeks, we take the stuff to the recycling center (why the city of Maryville won’t pick up recycling with trash pick-up is beyond me, since They™ say it’s so profitable). But the recycling center doesn’t take all this stuff. They only take milk jugs, not all plastic bottles. They don’t take cardboard, paper, or plastic bags. We have to make a separate stop for those items at the friendly neighborhood Food Lion. We drop off plastic bags in their recycling bin out front and take a buggy of paper and card board to the front office. It’s always someone new. We explain (as we’ve done for 9 months now) that we always bring in our cardboard and stuff and they put it in the crusher in the back for recycling. Food Lion may even make a tiny profit off of it. I also take the aluminum cans to the office and put them in a bin here. So, recycling takes up too much time. But we do it anyway, since we’re so social-minded.

Obviously others are upset about the center’s lack of recyclables too because at the recycling center (where they don’t take cardboard) there is a huge stack of cardboard on the ground beside one of the bins. I guess other recyclers haven’t discovered the grocery store yet.

If this is so beneficial, socially helpful, and profitable, why is it such a pain in the ass?

I’ve been nominated Secretary of the Interior by AlphaPatriot. I need to brush up on my upholstery skills.

A widow sues a gun manufacturer over her husband’s death. The widow loses. The gun manufacturer is now suing the widow to recover legal fees. The company has stated it is not going after her assets, just recovery of costs.

Good. It’s about time these gun companies started playing hardball.

Hat tip: Alphecca

Bob Hope is dead at 100. Godspeed.

The Assault Weapons Ban sunsets in September 2004. Here’s a release on the latest attempt. It bans post-ban models and makes the ban on high capacity magazines permanent (along with the whole bill).

A friend of mine recently had to take his two year old daughter to the emergency room due to an allergic reaction she was having. He loads her up in the car and heads to the ER. They treat her and everything is seemingly fine. The doctor suggests that (just to be safe) my friend take her to another hospital for some additional tests that could identify what caused the problem and that could prevent this from happening again. Of course, my friend agrees.

Enter the EMTs. My buddy drove his daughter to the ER. The EMTs suggest that they take an ambulance to the other hospital to expedite the travel. My buddy, of course, agrees. My buddy takes the car seat out of his car to give to the EMTs. The EMTs (trained professionals) place the car seat in the ambulance. My buddy checks the installation out and it is no good. He unhooks it and installs it himself. He’s thinking that in the amount of time this took, he could have gotten his daughter to the other hospital in his car. He secures her in the seat and off they go.

My buddy is tailing the ambulance (which doesn’t have its lights and sirens on) and waving to his daughter because she sees him tailing and his waving at him mouthing Daddy. The ambulance driver obeys the speed limit and traffic laws. At this point, my buddy is thinking I could have done that. They arrive and everything is OK.

A month later he gets a bill in the mail. One item listed is $600 for unnecessary ambulance fees. He could have done it himself faster. And his insurance won’t reimburse him for the unneeded ambulance fees.

Be careful what professionals talk you into.

Update: The Mrs. informs that my buddy did call 911, who took her from her home to the hospital. And she fell off the couch and it wasn’t an allergic reaction. Getting senile in my old age.

Being the second entry for half a day equals:

Now fellow RTBers, volunteer to host the tailgate party.

Four teenagers went on a rampage through a cemetary, knocking over headstones. They caused up to $100,000 worth of damage.

Someone needs an ass-whippin’.

With the demise of Mr. Davis, it is to be expected that he will be a martyr for gun control. But following typical gun grabber doctrine, the rules don’t apply to him. His organization’s desire for . . . no more guns to fight wars and no guns to kill children wasn’t even followed by Davis. He was known to carry a gun himself. He was even accused of waving his gun around his opponent’s campaign workers.

Good thing he’s not the martyr that gun controllers are looking for.

Update:

“The system killed my brother,” he shouted. “Just the same way they killed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the system knew that my brother would continue fighting for the betterment to stop violence. That’s who killed my brother. The system.”

The system?

Also, Askew (the shooter) had a gun license. All these politicians packing while the average New Yorker can’t even get a gun without paying almost $600 in fees before buying a gun.

Here is the current Volunteer Tailgate Party. After literally minutes of hard work and exhaustive research on my part, I’ve put together the finest things that the Rocky Top Brigade has to say about life, the universe and everything.

Rex rescues a pterodactyl. Yes, you read that right, a prehistoric bird.

Barry takes on Confederate symbols and the tenth amendment and interprets the amendment thusly:

it seems to me mostly the amendment says that where there is not a specific federal regulation, the states are free to create their own statutes.

I, of course, think it means that whatever privileges are not granted to the federal government remain with the states and the citizens.

Barry also has the misfortune of going through his family’s first encounter with real live skinheads. Bummer.

Troy bids farewell to his uncle Buddy. He also ponders aging and relevancy of things past in this thought provoking piece.

BA (of A-Team fame) tackles incentive pay.

The venerable Donald Sensing questions whether Democrats are really liberals. And, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, he delves into whether Bush is really conservative.

Guy Montag alerts us to the NYT 9/11 scam, which evokes the almost always guaranteed to be used for political gain eminent domain (which is not a white rapper). He draws our attention to Hatch’s (again, not a white rapper though he does appear to have some mad skillz on da mic) proposal to rid DC of its draconian gun ban.

The always affable Les Jones enlightens us as to how guns in the hands of citizens can deter terrorists and some good all around quotes.

RTB’s other Barry takes on UraniumGate with the strategic (though seemingly random) use of bold fonts, underlined fonts, and ill-advised line breaks.

Rich talks about something that is near and dear to my heart, jerks. Why is it near and dear to my heart? Because I am a jerk, just not the kind he’s talking about. That type is offensive to us genuine jerks. Underachievers!

Deb over at Sugarfused is pimping for some bling bling. Seriously, if you go to Amazon from her site, she gets credit. Someone may as well profit off my mad clicking.

Jane gives us the skinny on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Of course, why would straight men need Queer Eyes? We usually get married and go through the same thing on our own, without all the stereotypes.

Manish draws some darn convincing parallels between Islamic terrorists and Nazis. Actually, my conclusion is that terrorism is a war on jealousy. How do you fight against that?

SouthKnoxBubba details Graham’s economic plan, which seems OK except for that tax fairness bit. As if? No one should pay 40%, not even evil millionaires.

Here, your humble host points out what bastards management can be. And here I tell you all about either 1) lying cops or 2) lying reporters.

The above were the submitted articles. The following were picked at my leisure:

Ahh, screw them if they’re too good to submit stuff. See, I really am a jerk.

Update: Thomas submits this entry about 12 words, not 16. And this entry about RAGA extortion.

Update2: CJ addresses Kobe Bryant’s situation.