I snapped this yesterday, on SR15 by Dahlonega.

The following exchange took place during today’s Bush press conference in the Rose Garden.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

PETER WALLSTEN OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m interested in the shade look, seriously.

WALLSTEN: All right, I’ll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there’s no sun. (Laughter.)

WALLSTEN: I guess it depends on your perspective. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Touche (Laughter.)

Wallsten is legally blind. According to a report, he wears sunglasses to protect himself from further degeneration of his vision.

Click here for the video.

Six minutes left in the match. I’m rooting for the Ticos.

If they win or tie, everything in Costa Rica will stop and this song will be played.

Update: Nevermind.

Zarqawi is dead.

That’s great news.

Such great news, in fact, that it’s worth remembering that the U.S. had multiple chances to kill Zarqawi before the invasion of Iraq.

Why didn’t the U.S. kill Zarqawi before the war?

Because the Bush Administration feared that, without Zarqawi alive, the U.S. would have one fewer justification for the invasion.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam

So celebrate Zarqawi’s death, but don’t for a second give this Administration credit it doesn’t deserve. Today’s news is like the Atlanta Fire Department disabling every smoke detector in town, then bragging about all of the fires it was extinguishing.

Keyboardist and composer Billy Preston has died.

Preston is best known as the musician responsible for the delicious electric piano bits on “Get Back.”

News of Preston’s death prompted me to rummage through my collection of Beatle bootlegs in search of something semi-rare and interesting that Billy Preston played on.

I found a rehearsal tape of Lennon’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” which Preston actually sings on. It’s interesting, but only in the way that Southerners call things interesting when they actually mean to say that they don’t like something.

Far more interesting (to me, anyway) is one of the rehearsal recordings of “Get Back” that I found. Recorded before Billy Preston temporarily joined the band, it features Paul McCartney singing about “Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.” Before it was a nonsense song about transexuals in tight sweaters and marijuana, “Get Back” was a nonsense song spoofing nativist, anti-immigrant attitudes.

So here’s the barely listenable rehearsal version of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” featuring Billy Preston and John Lennon singing.

And here’s the gibberish, “No Pakistanis” version of “Get Back.”

Rest in peace, Billy Preston.

“Many people have accused me of baying for the buttocks of an innocent child,”

-Nicholas K. Kaloki, a Kenyan school teacher who wants Kenya to re-legalize the use of caning as punishment in schools.

The following story arrives via andy2000.org’s Austin correspondent:

I wonder if it’s the same person who wrote this headline.

UPDATE: Yes, it’s a real shelter.

Raving Brands, the company brought us Moe’s and a variety of other shitty restaurants, has purchased Flying Biscuit.

The following letter comes to me from Dave Lopez, a “behavior coach” for the residents of a youth shelter at the YMCA in Sarasota, Florida. I believe that he is responding to this column.

I particularly enjoy how I magically transform from “terrorist looking Mexican” to “commy” to “socialist” then to “suicide bomber” for “allah”. It’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of being a MexicanMuslimAtheistLeftistReactionaryTerrorist.

Once again you have created an article of no value what so ever. First I would like to know why the change in appearance? Were you getting to much heat for looking middle eastern? Are you going for the “terrorist looking mexican to cross the border” appeal? I hear thats the new thing. I am very surprised that you are able to publish such nonsense, and more surprised that you get paid to feed us garbage. Of all the articles from you that I have read, not one of them answered any questions for me. Maybe you should call the column something else so people aren’t hoodwinked into your misleading information. I don’t know what point you were trying to make about your comparisons from the “Has the war on terror made the world safer from terrorism?” article. Maybe you should just write for entertainment weekly or something. What about the real questions that your blind, leftist, liberal ass chooses to ignore. “How many new schools have been put up for the children of Iraq since Saddam was pulled out of his rat hole?” or “How many women and men of the FREE IRAQ are able to start their own business?” or “How come there was 6 terrorist attacks under Bill Clinton and only one under the current administration?” or “Why wasn’t state sponsored terrorism, i.e. Saddam and Iraq, investigated after the First World Trade Center attack?” or simply “Why does the news media, whom have an inherited obligation to show the American people both sides of the story, ignore all the positive things going on in that war?” or, wait this is the best one yet, “Why does Creative Loafing/Weekly Planet insist on allowing you to cloud the vision of the readers and either lie or talk about irrelevant crap that you call writing.” Your bias gibberish is nothing short of exposing the one-sided, liberal minded attitude of the Weekly Planet. I’m real sick of seeing you commy, socialist pigs get all the print and air waves. It’s about time for a new look at things. I urge the Weekly Planet to find someone else to write this article, someone who will look at this War with a less bias approach. And don’t think just because I’m writing this that it makes for good publicity, sure I read the Weekly Planet but I can’t tell you anything past the “Don’t Panic” section, I then through the publication away in discuss or use it for the bottom of my bird cage so the crap can build up on your article, it looks better, puts it in common company. Please send your resume to some complete entertainment publication and quit giving the people of this area more left-wing, bias crap, we get enough. You might as well star adding your praise be to allah in the article and sign up at the nearest suicide bomber recruitment center, I hear they are looking for young, idiots with no direction in life. Oh yea, one more thing, next time you write more crap, just think about the innocent victims and families affected by the atrocities of terrorist on September 11, 2001, instead of your own selfish ideas. Have a terrible day!

Dave Lopez
Artist/Graphic Designer
www.ringling.edu/~dlopez/portfolio

Jim McAuliffe of Lawrenceville thought he was being really clever when he came up with the idea of shipping bricks to Congress via UPS as a way of telling the bums in Washington that they should secure the border with Mexico.

Unfortunately for McAuliffe, it turns out that some of the people who haul mail around the Capitol are slightly more clevererer.

A Senate postmaster is refusing to deliver some of the bricks from his facility directly to congresspeople, claiming that they require $3.90 of U.S. postage (in addition to the UPS charge) to be delivered.

Said Mr. McAuliffe about his plot’s foiling:

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “They delivered all the other packages but now that the volume is so much higher, they’re being ugly about it.”

Let me reiterate — the guy who came up with an idea expressly conceived to inconvenience and annoy people thinks that its “ugly” for those same people to evoke a legal reason not to waste their time or strain their backs on him.

Mr. McAuliffe, the people who deliver mail to the Congress already have enough to worry about without people like you bugging them. Drive the bricks to D.C. yourself.