"Welcoming O.J. Simpson to Orange County"

• The OC Register (Cheney confronts San Clemente protesters with a smile) reports that two dozen or so people participated in a peaceful protest outside the gate of Casa Assh*le in San Clemente yesterday, where Vice President Dick “S & W” Cheney attended a private fundraiser honoring Ken “Hooker” Calvert. Maybe 200 people attended the fundraiser, checkbooks in hand.

I guess it was a kind of auction.

Meanwhile, outside the gates, protesters yelled “war criminal” and such. One sign read, “McCain=Bush III.” Referring to Cheney, one protester opined, “It was almost like they were welcoming O.J. Simpson to Orange County.” That’s pretty good, although Simpson only killed two people, y’know, and he didn’t make any money doing it.

The Reg reporter talked to that rat bastard Calvert, who explained that “the president has kept us safe the last eight years.”

OC Register video of protest


• Yesterday, the Reg (Thief took computer, then called to ask for parts) told the delightful story of a thief who stole a computer and then came back to buy parts for it.

Well, at first, the guy just phoned the store, ‘cause the computer had missing parts. Turns out this computer is pretty distinctive, and the parts it needs are distinctive too. So employees got suspicious; they asked for the serial number. Bingo.

The next part of the story helps explain why I read the paper each morning:

Employees called the police, who were present at the building when the man showed up, but were unable to make it to the entrance before he left the scene.

• This next story is pretty special too. According to Inside Higher Ed, some guy is in the hot seat over a situation that arose when he was chancellor of North Carolina Central University, in Mayberry. During this fellow's chancellorship, the university

started a degree-granting program in a church outside of Atlanta, run by a donor and board member, without the permission of North Carolina officials or accreditors.

That nobody was told about this program is special all by itself. That it was at a church is good, too. But that this thing was run by a trustee and donor puts this way over the top.

• Meanwhile (again, according to Inside Higher Ed), “San Jose State University’s English department has announced the 2008 ‘winners’ of its Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors the worst possible opening lines for fiction.”

Here’s the winning entry:

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

I don’t get it. That’s a great opening line. Imagine the illustrations!

Neanderthals were slicker than I thought

• I’m as guilty as anybody of using the term “Neanderthal” to suggest coarseness and loutishness. In fact, back when Tom Fuentes replaced Steve Frogue on our board in 2000, I was quoted as saying, “We’ve gotten rid of a crude Neanderthal but replaced him with a slick one” (OC Register, July 13, 2000). I now realize how horribly I maligned Neanderthals with that remark.

According to a piece that appeared in the Guardian over the weekend (In praise of ... Neanderthals), we've grossly underestimated our hairy brethren. Recent research suggests that Neanderthals likely could speak (they sang). Plus their brains were bigger than ours.

Here’s an interesting factoid: there were never more than 10,000 Neandos, or so new genome evidence suggests.

I have no doubt that just one Tom Fuentes can stink up things better than all the Neandos who ever lived rolled together into one hairy ball.

• Amanda Parsons of the OC Weekly updates us on the Democratic protest of Dick Cheney and today’s San Clemente “GOP hobnobery.” Evidently, we’re all invited:

If interested, bring a sign and join the OC Democratic party and friends today at 2:15 p.m. at Trestles State Beach parking lot (5 South to Christianitos Rd.; Left at stop sign and go over the freeway. Make a left at the next stop sign and the parking lot is on your right-hand side). At 3:00 p.m. the group will march to La Casa Pacifica [aka Nixon's "Western Whitehouse"].

• The OC Reg also reports on the protests ( Vice President Cheney's visit draws differing views), noting that things sure have changed since 2001:

The Bush administration’s approval ratings are near the lowest of his presidency, at about 30 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics Website. ¶ And Cheney’s rating is at its lowest in a June Harris poll. After peaking at 69 percent at one point in 2001, only 18 percent now approve of the way the vice president is doing his job, with 74 percent disapproving.

• The Times has a story about Pastor Rick Warren’s “prominence.” (See Visits by McCain, Obama to Orange County church underscore Pastor Rick Warren's prominence.) Too bad they don’t have a story about Warren's dishonesty—or whatever it is. After weeks of telling the public that tickets for the “civil forum” would soon become available, yesterday, he announced, just four days before the event, that no tickets will be made available to the public after all. They’ve been distributed to congregants, at from $500 to $2000 a pop. —It’s a fundraiser, folks, and it's raising millions.