Dwarf's penis gets stuck in vacuum cleaner

It's a rainy, dreary day here in Connecticut. It's a helluva lot worse in Mexico. Drop a shekel or three in a collection plate for Hurricane Dean relief.

Since it's a rainy day here, I'll leave you with some reading material.

Starving Gaza, by Chris Hedges, at Truthdig:

Gaza has become the Sarajevo of the Middle East. Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza’s industry, farming and infrastructure.

See also:

Gaza's public employees getting paid on one condition: stay home

Genocide in Tranquil Kurdistan.

Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America (an old article, but still interesting).

From Truthout comes:

Prelude to an Attack on Iran, originally published in Time Magazine.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens - a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

Survivors of Bombs Left to Die in Rubble.

British military sparks US fears of losing Basra:

Stephen Biddle, who sits on the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of a group that advised the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told the The Sunday Times in London that coalition forces were no longer in control of the city.

"I regret to say that the Basra experience is set to become a major blunder in terms of military history," Mr Biddle was quoted as saying. "The insurgents are calling the shots … and in a worst-case scenario will chase us out of town."

Another senior US officer told The Sunday Telegraph: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it … They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control."

The officer warned of "a stink about this that will hang around the British military".

The old expression "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas" comes to mind for some reason.

And the most important story of the day, from the bin of "you can't make this shit up":

Dwarf's penis gets stuck in vacuum cleaner.

Okay, who left the door open?

Seems the Universe has disappeared. Well, 96% anyway.

Greatest Mysteries: Where is the Rest of the Universe?

In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles.

Now you know why your parents always told you to shut the door! See what you did?

Turner described dark energy as "really weird stuff," best thought of as an elastic, repulsive gravity that can't be broken down into particles. "We know what it does, but we don't know what it is," Turner said.

That's what I told my 10th grade Chemistry teacher when he asked me how I managed to burn the entire lab table: I knew what it did, I just didn't know how I did it. He strongly urged me to avoid sciences - finance would be safer.

Too bad that guy wasn't around to advise Karl Rove, evil minion of DOOM! Well, thankfully, he's a goin' bye bye, but I'm sure he'll be on Dumbasses speed dial.

Strangest things in space.

No, I'm not on the list.

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I believe the Earth has it's own cycles, just like people do. Every few hundred years the weather patterns shift, just as they are doing today. Vineyards flourished in England once upon a time; sea-levels have been muich higher and much lower than they are now. Life changes. I have no doubt human beings polluting the Earth makes the shifts in climate worse, but I'm not sure I buy the whole Global Warming spiel. Then I see this:

NASA Data Goof Fuels Global Warming Skepticism:

A small tempest is brewing in the blogospheric teapot between climate scientists and global warming skeptics over a recently revealed discrepancy in NASA's U.S. temperature records.

A former mining executive who manages a Web site dedicated to skepticism over global warming was combing the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data for U.S. temperature anomalies—or the amount that one year's average temperature departs from the climatological average—when he noticed that the temperatures made an odd jump between 1999 and 2000.

Global Warming: How Do Scientists Know They're Not Wrong?

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Queen of Mean, dead at 87

That would be Leona Helmsley. Before her life with Harry,:

She married a lawyer, Leo Panzirer, whom she divorced in 1959. Their only child, Jay Panzirer, later ran a Florida-based building supplies company that did extensive business with Helmsley properties. She later was briefly married to a garment industry executive, Joe Lubin.

Before her son's death of a heart attack in 1982, she told interviewers she would not talk about him "because terrible things can happen to people these days."

She evidently was referring to being knifed by robbers at her Palm Beach home in 1973. She was stabbed in the chest and suffered a collapsed lung, and Harry was wounded in the arm.

After her son died, she sued the estate for money and property she said her son had borrowed, and an eviction notice was served on her son's widow, Mimi.

Mimi Panzirer said afterward that the legal costs wiped her out and "to this day I don't know why they did it."

Rest in peace Leona.

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Someone with more cats (and probably yarn) than I have. That makes my day!