I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat

Don’t hate me for this, but I have to pass on the grossest news story of the week: “A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe”. Collagen.

662 Russian soldiers have died this year, not counting those killed in Chechnya. 182 suicides, and who knows how many of the rest “hazed” to death. That is one seriously fucked up army.

The Israelis have sort of ended their occupation of the Gaza, unless you count the borders, the airspace, water supply, power supply, and their claim to have the right to send in the IDF any time they feel like it. Still, Gazan children can bathe in the Mediterranean for the first time, which is not nothing. Synagogues and settlements are ablaze. The last thing the IDF did Sunday before leaving was to put new signs on the former saying “Holy Place” in English and Arabic but not, you’ll notice, Hebrew, allowing Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom (in Hebrew, shalom means hello, goodbye and hypocritical douchebag) to decry “This... barbaric act by people with no respect for holy places.”



Schwarzenegger, defending his $45m special election: “People say it’s a waste of money to have the election. I say it’s a waste of democracy not to have an election.” Um, does that actually mean anything?

John Roberts: “I come before the committee with no agenda.” Funny, I never heard of him working for a Democratic administration. He’s been a Republican hack lawyer from the start. Suddenly we’re supposed to ignore his entire life before he started wearing black robes to work two years ago, just like we’re supposed to ignore Shrub’s life before he turned 40. Also, “ump,” enough with the baseball metaphors. We’ve heard about all the confirmation coaches he’s been spending his time with, and I strongly doubt there was even a word of his oh-so-unthreatening opening statement that came from his own pen and hadn’t been focus-grouped, including his claim to be a mere umpire: “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” You’ll notice his speech writers didn’t include a mention of home runs, and it’s the home runs he’s planning to call for Chimpy that worry me. This whole “judges are umpires” line may play well in the country, but anyone who knows anything more about the Supreme Court than that there are nine of them and they wear black robes knows it to be arrant nonsense.