Torricelli is scheduling a press conference for 2 PM eastern. I wonder if he’s being pressured to drop out while the Dems still have time to find an alternate candidate?

Nelson Mandela continues to dissipate his reputation with foolish statements. Now he says that the UN is getting dissed by the US because Kofi Annan is black. Following his recent comments that Israel is a “white” nation and Iraq is a “black” one, this myopic and distorted race-based view of politics is rendering, if it hasn’t already rendered, this once-notable and respected man into utter irrelevance.

The real question should be, how did this loon become New Jersey’s poet laureate in the first place?

Mark Steyn doesn’t think much of Al Gore’s latest attempt at relevance.

The whole thing, as usual, is worth reading, but my favorite bits:

The sight of the Democratic Party wrestling with its conscience is like some old-time carnie freak show: It’s strangely compelling, but you can’t help feeling it’s cruel to put these poor misfits on public display.

and

In fairness to Al, the boy genius was one of only a few senior Democrats with a 12-year consistent robust record on Iraq. But, demonstrating his usual political instincts, he chose to discard his pro-war stance just as his party’s senators were discarding their anti-war stance. The Dems have pulled off a remarkable double: Not only does the leadership’s belated approval for war look opportunistic, but so does Al Gore’s belated opposition to it.

Also read his revised lyrics to the old song, “War!”

One of the bloggers (I disremember who) was taking up a collection to offer trips to Baghdad for the anti-war types. Some idiotarians are actually going to Baghdad to serve as human shields for Saddam, though it’s not clear that they’re aware of the possibility of subsidization by the “warbloggers.”

Kelly, who has made 16 trips to Iraq, sounds unflinching. She is driven by the tremendous collateral damage inflicted by today’s weapons. The United Nations described the damage to Iraq after the gulf war as “near- apocalyptic.”

“You can’t be a vegetarian only between meals,” said Kelly, 49. “And you can’t be a pacifist only between wars.”

She has been blunt when recruiting volunteers for this trip: “We are asking people to be able to say they have had a good life and this could be their last year.”

She hasn’t been paying attention. The precision on weaponry had increased tremendously since the Gulf War. Collateral damage will be minimal. The problem is, she probably considers all damage to Iraq as collateral.

She shouldn’t worry too much about the getting killed thing, though. They’ll always be able to surrender to French journalists, just like the Republican Guard does.

[Update at 2:40 PM PDT]

Now I remember. It was the Shropshire Challenge courtesy of Dr. Weevil.

John Carmack had his first manned test flight yesterday.

A company Down Under is selling screaming dolls. They emit shrieks when you stretch them lengthwise, and their little eyes bulge out, a la Bart Simpson, when you choke them. The anti-violence types are, rhetorically at least, up in arms–they’re afraid that it will desensitize children to violence.

But it brings to mind other applications, much less violent, employing voice-recognition technology. How about a Tom Daschle or Dick Gephardt doll, that screams in agony whenever you threaten it with a tax cut, or non-union federal workers? Or a Bob Byrd doll (with optional white hood accessory), along with a pair of scissors, that whines when you cut out amendments for new proposals to move the federal government to West Virginia? Or a Chuckie Schumer and DiFi matched set that quiver at the sight of a gun? Or a Hillary doll–you supply the screams yourself…

The possibilities intrigue.

I (and some NASA folks) are looking for suggestions for a name for NASA’s new nuclear propulsion initiative–something more poetic and mythical than, say, “Nuclear Propulsion Initiative” (though NPI is at least as good a TLA as SLI).

These are my initial thoughts:

We could call it Son of Orion, but Orion had no offspring–he was killed by the father of a woman he courted, via scorpion or other means, depending on the version of the story. And Son Of Orion makes it sound too much like a bad Japanese SF movie. Heyyyyy…how about Mothra? Or Rodan? Or Godzilla? Let’s borrow from modern mythology.

Hermes or Mercury would be most appropriate, but they’re taken. At least Mercury is (since the European Hermes never flew, perhaps it could be considered to be still available).

How about Argo? A propulsion system fit for long voyages. The JASONS would like it, if they were still around, but I think that DARPA has disbanded/defunded them…

Of course, if we want to go Norse, I don’t think that Odin has ever been used for anything significant.

It might be sacriligeous to the Indians, but Hindus aren’t all that uptight about such things, generally, so we could also go with Kalki, the tenth (and yet to appear) avatar of Vishnu. He will come astride a white horse, with a sword blazing like the tail of a comet. Seems appropriate to me…

Does anyone have any other suggestions? My experience is that my readership is generally better read and more knowledgable than me (at least collectively). Any classicists out there with more ideas?

Lest anyone think that the title is referring to the corrupt, but hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-Senator from New Jersey, no.

Apparently Teddy Kennedy stopped sandwiching waitresses long enough to bloviate on the Senate floor against continuing the war (I say continuing, Ted, because it never really ended, since he’s gone back on every jot and tittle of the peace agreement that he signed in 1991, and we’ve been bombing him with some regularity ever since, including just the past couple of days).

I just heard excerpts of it, but apparently, if we go in, it really will be the Mother Of All Battles this time for sure. It will be street by street, house to house fighting, and we’ll lose a battalion of troops every day. There will be oceans of Yankee blood flowing across the desert, and shrieks of agony such as have never assaulted the ears of the world, as we fight all the untold legions of brave, staunch and determined defenders of the Supreme Leader, Beloved Torturer And Gasser Of His People, Saddam Hussein.

It being his first language, he delivered the speech in English, but I’m convinced that it would have been more poetic and appropriate if he’d left it in the original Arabic.

Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that there’s anything at all to any of this absurd lunacy, what in the world has happened to the Kennedys? What happened to the notion of “bear any burden, pay any price” so eloquently stated in his brother’s inaugural address?

The warbloggerwatchers like to call anyone who hasn’t served in the military, yet sadly recognize the need for war, “chickenhawks.” Is there some converse to that bizarre notion? If someone like Ted Kennedy calls for peace, does it require that he has never squeezed his thick, pasty white thighs into a size XXX set of camos? Is it his lack of military experience that so qualifies him to screech hysterically and querulously about the brave Iraqi army (the one that was surrendering to Italian journalists just a few short years ago), before whom our men and women in the military should apparently tremble? If so, then perhaps the Kennedys are indeed the ones to whom we should look for military guidance. Has any member of the Kennedy clan served in the military, this side of WWII?

I’d like to say that it’s time for the torch to be passed to a new generation of Kennedys, but judging by the disaster that is the Kathleen Kennedy Townsend campaign, I suspect that it’s going to have to skip a generation or three before it finds anything worthy of its predecessors.

The good thing about this, of course, is that it continues to expose the widening fissure between the new San Francisco Democrats (as exemplified by the latest incarnation of Albert Gore, Jr.) and those members of the Democratic party who are concerned about defending their nation, and maintaining some semblance of political influence. Bloviate on, in whatever language you want, Ted.

Scientists have come up with a way to regenerate mammalian teeth–they’ve demonstrated it by growing pigs’ teeth in rats’ intestines.

Eeeewwwww…

Brush early and often. As one wag at Free Republic said, “it kind of eliminates the need for a mouth…”

Seriously, this could mean a revolution in dentistry. No more crowns, bridges, dentures or implants. Just regrown teeth, like sharks.