Another bizarre story from my favorite odd country: This guy was attacked by an angry mob who shaved his head. His offense? He dialed the wrong number.

They have discontinued Gift Wrap service. Or at least, at most stores. According to the incredibly rude woman on the phone, the closest location to my house in Phoenix that still provides the service is in… California.

With Gift Wrap gone, is there anything left that distinguishes Macy’s from Kohl’s or JC Penny’s?

Nope.

A prediction from a former insider: look for a Macy’s bankruptcy no later than February 5, 2010.

*and other things I hope that I never see on my future daughter’s Christmas wish list.

A duo of revolting developments that have made their way around the blag-o-sphere today:

1. A Stripper Inspired Tassle T-Shirt

2. A Pole Dancer Action Figure

Because Bratz were just a little too subtle.

This one’s almost ancient in web terms, but don’t forget about breast-feed-me-baby complete with halter top:

I won’t do the righteous indignation or snark as well as others out there, so I’ll leave it The Other McCain, who leads off with “God owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology” and goes downhill from there.

Michelle Malkin has been on this beat for a while now. She calls it the Girls Gone Wild culture. I personally blame Sex & The City, and before that, Friends.

Since his first post on the subject, Junior has had a few more run ins with scorpions. I believe he declared himself the Scorpion King the other day.

(Probably because he thinks he looks like “The Rock”, but I digress.)

Well, Junior, it could be worse. You could have THIS crawling around in your house.

That, my friends, is the world’s biggest bug, described as a “Giant Burrowing Cockroach.” And it is creepy indeed.

SO when you finally find the theory of what they want their website to do, it seems to want to calculate direct movie taste compatibility. I couldn’t care for that idea in the least.

What I do know is that I might get some accurate recommendations for movies I’ll enjoy. I spent nearly my entire lunch break last Thursday “ranking” and “mini-reviewing” movies.

That’s right folks.

Russia, who has been oh so adamant that we not deploy missile defense in Eastern Europe, just rolled their own system out to their border with North Korea.

It seems Russia is a little worried about those North Korean missiles straying into their land.

But I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

Ted Kennedy died the other day. You can get the predictable hagiography elsewhere.

I’ll instead focus on the other side.

We’ll start with Chappaquiddick. That’s the common name used to describe the incident in which a drunken Ted Kennedy killed a woman. (It happened on Chappaquiddick island.)

It goes like this: Ted Kennedy, a US Senator and married man, met up with 5 male friends and 6 unmarried females for a party. At some point in the evening, he took a woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, for a ride in a car.

Kennedy, who was drunk, crashed the car off a bridge. Kopechne drowned. Kennedy returned to the party and did not tell his friends what had happened. The police were not called.

He returned to his hotel room later that night. The next morning he eventually called the police at the urging of his friends (and after the car had already been discovered). He had his driver’s license suspended for six months and received a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of the accident.

So how did the magnanimous “Lion of the Senate” feel about the incident? Remorse? Nah, it was his favorite topic for jokes:

I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

The conventional wisdom says that Chappaquiddick is why Ted never became President. I still want to know why it wasn’t his record as a felon that precluded him from serving.

Over at The Huffington Post they want to know if Kopechne could have seen what a great Senator Teddy would become, if she wouldn’t think dying was worth it. Actually, that meme is not just a HuffPo thing.

Other classy Kennedy fun facts:

• Noted feminist and hero to women everywhere had a thing for sexually assaulting women.
• He had the chance to pass Universal Health Care during the Nixon Administration, but instead torpedoed it.
• He actively worked to undermine Ronald Reagan’s dealings with the Soviets in 1984.

But other than all of that, I’m sure he was a really great guy.

Oh yeah. That movie sucked. At least as much as Pearl Harbor did.

This past Saturday was my nephew’s 3rd birthday. It was, unfortunately, a dry party. So the adults had to make their own fun — by tearing down a disused corn crib. My brother-in-law has the video up at his site, click the link to watch 5 minutes of destructive goodness (shamelessly throwing site traffic his way, so no video here).

It turns out that buildings are pretty hard to knock down, even after you have cut the supports.

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I wasn’t really paying attention to these new-fangled blag thingies back when this story hit the big time. But a few years ago (during the 2004 election) CBS news ran a report that strongly implied that George Bush was a cowardly draft dodger, and had joined the National Guard to avoid having to go to Vietnam.

The story hinged on a set of documents that turned out to be fake. A group of conservative blogs proved that the documents, which were allegedly from the 1970s, were really created in Microsoft Word.

In the aftermath Dan Rather lost his job anchoring the CBS Evening News, the producer for the report was fired, and CBS hired an outside investigator to figure out what went wrong.

A few days ago, Bernard Goldberg wrote a story pointing out an interesting fact that was generally overlooked in the CBS investigator’s report, which came out a few years ago.

Mapes [the producer] had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

As for the “cowardly coward” claims, Goldberg states:

For the record: George W. Bush has always maintained that he joined the National Guard not to avoid service in Vietnam but because he wanted to be a fighter pilot. He has openly acknowledged that he did not want to be drafted and serve in the infantry, and says he signed up for the Guard knowing full well he would have to spend almost two years in flight training and another four years in part-time service.

Predictably, those on the left will not be swayed by annoying things like facts discovered by independent investigators. You can see that in the comments on Goldberg’s site. To them, George Bush = Hitler, the Cowardly Lion, and Satan himself.

However, I have always held that history will judge President George W. Bush more kindly (and fairly) as time goes on. Yes, he had his flaws. He certainly couldn’t string his sentences together. But a cowardly draft dodger he was not.

via Hot Air