We all of course remember this little tidbit from Hillary Clinton when it comes to her impression of VP Dick Cheney:

“Vice President Cheney came up to see the Republicans yesterday,” Clinton said at the fundraiser. “You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges.”

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The Mosul Dam is an epic display in poor structural design- and continued mis-management according to a report filed by the Army Corp of Engineers.

The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. “The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability,” in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

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Pirates of Somalia just doesn’t seem to have the right ring to it… and yet- that’s exactly where we’re at.

Pirates in Somalia hijacked a cargo ship with dozens of foreign crew members reportedly on board, officials said Tuesday.

The attackers seized the ship late Monday in the waters off the war-battered capital, Mogadishu, said Paddy Ankunda, a Somalia spokesman for the African Union, which has peacekeepers at the city’s port.

A cargo trader who works at the port said the ship was from South Korea, with 43 foreign crew members on board. The trader, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to feared reprisals from the pirates, said the ship had been carrying a load of sugar from India. Both spoke by telephone from Mogadishu.

The pirates are not believed to have been South Korean- but they were all dressed in flamboyant outfits of ruffles, feathers, buckled overcoats, and rapiers.

An international watchdog reported this month that pirate attacks worldwide jumped 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007, with the biggest increases off the poorly policed waters of Somalia and Nigeria.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was released May of 2007. The 5th month in 2007- for anyone who’s paying attention.

In preparation for the 2008 election, I’ve added a pre-election poll to the site located to the right. (Because Lord knows you won’t be clicking away at a bazillion other pseudo polls in the year to come.) It’s really for my own morbid curiosity to get a feel for the readership of PM. Yeah, that’s right. Morbid curiosity. Because the fact is that every single one of those candidates listed aren’t exactly a model of humanity. Each one of them could potentially be the next pile of dog shit who rolls into the White House next year.

As the esteemed Skitz M. Jones says, “[I have] no political affiliation due to being convinced that all politicians who make it far enough to find public office must be- by nature of their positions- full of shit”.

Don’t worry about your vote changing later down the road. I certainly understand that some piles of shit may smell worse one day than they do the next. Every month you’ll be able to vote again.

Let’s see who the biggest turd is. Get to votin’!

With all the strains put on our armed forces today- it’s amazing they can get much of anything done outside of trying to rebuild Iraq, rid the world of Al-Qaida, and stay alive.

So someone really needs to tell our planet itself to get off their backs!

To the Dials, the home on New Moon Lane represented safety for Shellie and their six daughters and 10 grandchildren while Billy, a Marine master gunnery sergeant, was deployed in Iraq. And it was where the Dials had planned to retire when Billy finishes his current hitch.

But in minutes last week, the Witch fire burned the Dials’ dream home to the ground. Shellie e-mailed the bad news to her husband in Taqaddum, Iraq, where he is maintenance chief for a helicopter squadron. He is seven weeks into his fourth tour in Iraq.

“I told him I needed him home, but if his Marines needed him more, he should stay in Iraq,” Shellie Dial said.

And it’s not just the guys who are staying put to complete the mission, but those stationed matters of miles away, within the state lines.

Also on Sunday, California National Guard Sgt. Jerrod Dett remained on duty in San Diego, despite the fact his Running Springs home was destroyed by the Arrowhead fire just hours after his unit was mobilized. He could ask for leave but had not.

“We have a mission to do,” said Dett, 36, a food preparation specialist. “I want to concentrate on my job: getting food to the soldiers and to the people in the shelters.”

Well damn Gaia, can we cut these guys some slack? And while we’re at it…

Dozens of construction projects launched by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect the New Orleans region from the most catastrophic floods are behind schedule by an average of nearly eight months, an internal audit shows. Local officials are concerned the completion date will have to be pushed back a second time.

Hey officials- how many destablized regions of the world have you ever tried to fix at the same time?

Nearly 85% of construction contracts for upgrades to the region’s flood-control system are behind schedule by an average of about 230 days, the audit says. About 74% of pre-construction design contracts for other improvements also are lagging, by an average of 122 days, or about four months.

Well you know what that means? Mother Nature is just going to have to realize- we’re fighting over there so we don’t have to fight anything over here. Not poverty, social security, corruption in corporations, public apathy, racial inequality, or terrorists… and certainly not the Planet Earth! So no more floods. Problem solved.

Oh, and we also can’t do anything productive about genocides- so don’t even ask.

mas·cu·line

–adjective

[Origin: 1300–50; ME masculin < L mascul?nus, equiv. to mascul(us) male (m?s male + -culus -cule¹) + -?nus -ine¹]

—Synonyms 2. manly. See Male

The above was taken from Dictionary.com’s page on the definition for masculinity. Though- other than saying it has something to do with being a dude, who is usually strong or bold, it’s pretty vague on what it means to be masculine. And I a guy myself, I must admit, I’m a little stumped on what exactly it is. I mean, if you show me guys like Steve McQueen, or Charles Bronson- yeah, I’d have to say they seem pretty masculine, and many would be hard-pressed to disagree. Of course, looking at the AskMen.com release of the top 49 manly men of today- finding a common thread in the people picked by readers for the list, is considerably more complicated than one might think.

As reported by WENN (World Entertainment News Network):

Soccer superstar David Beckham has beaten off competition from actor Matt Damon to be named the Most Masculine Man Alive. The British hunk, who is married to Posh Spice Victoria Beckham, topped an online poll created by website AskMen.com. More than one million people took part in the vote to find the Top 49 Men today. Coming in third behind Beckham and Damon is rapper Timbaland, followed by tennis star Roger Federer and Justin Timberlake.

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As of today, 719 square miles (1150 km) of land has burned in California this last week alone. I think all of us have heard more than enough news stories about the fires (24 hour coverage!) and even if we’re trying to ignore the news reports, we still can’t help to get an ear full of it somewhere. I thought perhaps I’d be one less site adding to the onslaught of “Cali Fire 2007″ information.

But I can’t ignore that number. 719 square miles. I decided to put it into perspective

The fire’s destruction is roughly 31 times larger than Manhattan, NY.
If it was in Chicago, it would have engulfed the entire city 3 times already.
London would also be completely burned to the ground with an additional 100 miles of it’s suburbs smoldering too.
Miami, Orlando, and Tampa Bay Florida combined would have been destroyed days ago.

So, I guess I can understand what all the hoopla is about.

Americans have long taken pride in our hard working nature. We staunchly stand by our determination to work until we collapse from exhaustion. 40? 50? 60 hour work weeks? Not unusual. Work through holidays? Expected. Vacation for longer than a 3 day weekend? Almost unheard of.

Get ready for some numbers, people:

Only 14% of Americans get a vacation of two weeks or longer every year. And even then, most don’t use their vacation time for fear of losing their job or getting laid off for being “lazy”.

127 other countries in the world have a minimum paid-leave law including:

• Australia – four weeks by law
• Europe- four and five weeks by law
• Japan – two weeks by law
• America- none…. by law.

If our sanity wasn’t enough reason to remodel our work ethic then health stats indicating a huge drop in the risk of heart attacks might (30% in men and 50% in women).

Either way, it all comes down to our desire to keep our jobs, look tough, handle the workload, and earn our keep like good Americans. People are afraid. Not only do we want to keep out of the minds of our bosses when “cutback” season is upon us, we also don’t want to come back from a vacation with 500 emails, a back log of phone calls, and the rest of the year trying to play catch up.

Just something to consider.

Osama bin Laden, remember him? (He’s not dead yet, we still don’t know where he is, he’s the man deemed most responsible for the atrocities committed on 9-11?) Yeah… that guy. Well anyway- he’s got a new message for Islamist extremist insurgents in Iraq. Get together, hug it out, and get back to what you’re there for- fucking up the Americans.

His opinion is that the different groups have been so busy worrying about “fanatical tribe loyalties”, they’ve lost sight of the real agenda- making us go away.

In the brief tape played on Al-Jazeera television, the terrorist leader urged militants to ”beware of division…. The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner.”

Anthony Cordesman, a terror analyst, said bin Laden’s underlying message appeared to be aimed at al-Qaida in Iraq — ”that al-Qaida needs to be less arrogant and moderate its conduct.”

You know, swap a few words around in the premise- and this could be a good election campaign speech. Something along the lines of wanting the Republicans (and/or Democrats) to be less arrogant and moderate their conduct, so that the whole United States could gather under one banner (as long as it doesn’t read “Mission Accomplished”).

Of course… we don’t have anyone in the United States who has “fanatical tribe loyalties” (unless you count that pesky 25% who still think Bush is doing a bang-up job. Maybe they thought “bang-up” meant “like looking at a car accident”?).