BBC has the scoop:

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

I don't know how to make this relevant to this blog, but it is really weird and super interesting.

NRO's Reihan Salam explains:

But here's the thing: Wal-Mart's support for an employer mandate isn't remotely surprising. Cohn rightly notes that "Wal-Mart is acting—as it always does—out of pure self-interest."

My undestanding is that, after all of these years, Wal-Mart has suddenly found itself in the same situation its competitors once did: Dealing with unpredictable health costs and facing new competition from businesses that have found ways to spend even less on employee health benefits. Is there some justice there? You bet.

On the other hand, politics is all about channeling self-interest so that it serves the public good. And the timing of this is pretty telling.

There is another way of looking at this. As a large, powerful, deep-pocketed firm, Wal-Mart can sustain regulatory burdens that mom-and-pops and new entrants can't. And so burdensome regulations are invariably Wal-Mart's ally. Jonathan Rauch explained this dynamic brilliantly in his book Government's End. It makes perfect sense for Wal-Mart to back a regulatory initiative that hurts its bottom line as long as it hurts its competitors more. 

Wal-Mart is one of the most powerful American companies ever to exist.  They will continue to grow because of deft political and self-interested moves like this one.  I'm in awe of their agility.  This isn't the first time a massive business entity has tried to use the power of the government for it's own interest.  Conservative Compendium's (and now American Thinker Blog's) Brian Garst fills you in.

I recently purchased an HP Touchsmart Desktop computer using their online Site-to-Store method and I was very happy with the experience (especially the price, which was $400 less than alot of other websites). 

I also went there yesterday after work to get some lunch meat, and it was the cheapest lunch meat I've come across in a long time.  I will continue to spend my money at Wal-Mart because when I do, I spend less.

CBS 3 has the scoop:

"I've been crying non-stop, happy tears, I'm going to the funeral. I was supposed to go to London in two weeks to see him," Beverly Brown of Croydon said.

I'm not one to have much faith in humanity.  Whatever was left has been eroded by the public's reaction to Michael Jackson's death.

American Thinker's Rick Moran captures my thoughts here:

As for Jackson's impact on the world, it says something truly awful about us that so many people would become rabid fans of this man of little talent. As a child with "The Jackson Five," Michael had a nice little voice and was very cute shaking his hips like an adult (The sexualization of children Michael's age when he performed with his brothers is another article entirely.). But as an adult, Jackson's voice - OK for pop but no great shakes for any other milieu - was thin as a reed with an annoying false vibrato and a squeaky "hiccup" that supposedly drove female fans nuts.

People have noticed a Libertarian shift among Republicans.

The money quote:

I know what you’re thinking. That’s just an isolated incident, right? What about the poll from Right Wing News today that says a majority of conservatives would vote for an atheist president?

6) Would you vote for an atheist for President?

Yes: 67.2% (41 votes)
No: 32.8% (20 votes

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room under the tent for conservative Christians, it means the opposite actually. Atheists, Agnostics and religious conservatives can co-exist under the same tent because they’re united by conservatism, not their religious views.

Corruptocrat Senator Chris Dodd (D, CT) is way down in the polls, and this has created a vaccum that a Libertarian Republican candidate has begun to fill.  The establishment Republican candidate is polling 15 pionts ahead of Dodd, and libertarian Peter Schiff is within the margin of error.  This is good news.  Our party needs these libertarian voices.

I'm going to give Coors Light's advertising slogan the same treatment that I gave to Bud Light's, because it certainly deserves it.

Coors Light wants to differentiate itself from the competition by trumpeting the beer's temperature:

The campaign, scheduled to begin on Monday, is the most recent effort to make Coors Light beer synonymous with “cold” and help differentiate the brand from competitive brews. That brand image work has been successful enough so far to bring Coors Light into a virtual tie with Miller Lite for the ranking of No. 2 light beer behind the longtime sales leader, Bud Light.

The campaign is meant to tease beer drinkers, piquing their curiosity until the introduction on May 15 of what Coors Light is calling cold-activated cans: The mountains on the cans’ labels turn from white to blue when the beer is the right (cold) temperature for drinking. The cans are a companion to the cold-activated Coors Light bottles introduced in 2007.

Seriously?  You want to set your product apart from the other products by associating the beer with "being cold"?

All beer consumers drink cold beer.  It might be Miller Lite, Bud Light, or Hoegaarden, but it most certainly will be cold. 

I find the ad campaign insulting, which is why I don't drink Coors Light.  Millions of other people don't find it insulting, which is why they purchase the beer for the "cold refreshment".

At the end of the day, I think these ad campaigns say more about the American population than it does about mega-brewers. 

Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years behind bars.  He'll probably serve 15-20 years, then croak.

The New Haven fire department denied promotions to white people because of their race.

Will Sotomayor's confirmation process be harder?  Vote in the poll on the right side.]

At the end of the Court's opinion, Justice Samuel Alito strikes the "death blow" to the dissenting opinion written By Justice Ginsburg:

Petitioners were denied promotions for which they qualified because of the race and ethnicity of the firefighters who achieved the highest scores on the City's exam. The District Court threw out their case on summary judgment, even though that court all but conceded that a jury could find that the City's asserted justification was pretextual. The Court of Appeals then summarily affirmed that decision.

The dissent grants that petitioners' situation is "unfortunate" and that they "understandably attract this Court's sympathy." But "sympathy" is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law--of Title VII's prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today's decision, has been denied them.

Michael Jackson died yesterday after ingesting a monumental cocktail of painkillers.  He was certainly a triumphant and tragic figure.  The music he made when he was eight years old still reverberates in dance halls across the world.

Every public figure imaginable was asked for a reaction from media members upon his death.  Each question was met with a ubiquitous "I grew up with his music, he was an icon" reaction.

Most humans defer to a respectful stance upon another human being's death, which is usually admirable.  Michael Jackson's deeds, though at times philanthropic, do not deserve such a degree of deference.

Never in history has someone's unholy actions been so overlooked by a populace as Mr. Jackson's.

Our society is so litigous that most settlements are looked at with distrust, but the 1993 child molestation case does not warrant such disbelief.   Mr. Jackson's defenders will point to the fact that he was never found guilty of the charges levied against him.

The man paid $22,000,000 to his accuser.

People will counter this fact by saying he paid this amount to clear his innocent name.  They must ignore the fact that his name was irreperably sullied by the accusations alone.  Any confiscatory legal fee charging defense attorney understands this and would not suggest such an exhorbitant amount to settle the case.  The amount of his settlement alone does far more than suggest his guilt.  In my estimation, it confirms it.

After the multi-million dollar settlement, Mr. Jackson's reputation only continued to get worse.  In pop-culture, his reputation begat the sad but poignant South Park episode, The Jeffersons.

The fact that Trey Stone and Matt Parker made this episode does not confirm Mr. Jackson's guilt, but it does confirm that his reputation could not be salvaged with inumerable aquittals.  Again, I point to ther fact that any defense attorney worth $600.00 an hour would be aware of this in any settlement negotiations.

We live in a country where talent almost undoubtedly and somewhat monolithically overshadows criminal behavior.  The reactions of pop-culture figures to Mr. Jackson's death sadly confirms this.

The reactions to Michael Jackson's death speaks to this sick phenomenon.  I pray that the country has at least begun to realize this.

Conservatives have gotten much more organized since we got brutalized in the last election.  For the past few days, I've been calling local congresspeople and asking them to vote no on H.R. 2454 (Cap and Tax Global Warming Bill) and vote no on Obama's healthcare bill. 

I simply cannot get through to anyone today.  I either get a busy signal or a message saying that all circuits are busy.  Hopefully we are able to put enough pressure on our elected officials to do the right thing.  I guess we'll know by the end of the day.

Please, call your local congressperson and give them the same message.

I'm not sure what to think of this pick.  Holliday played last season at shooting guard because UCLA already had a very good point gaurd.  After Holliday was picked, I watched his highlights on ESPN.  I didn't see anything that would translate into point gaurd skills.  He seems to be solid defensively.  Perimeter defense is certainly important, but I wasn't wowed with anything else.  I don't think ESPN would show any highlights that would really impress me, but I was at least hoping to see some distribution or deft ball-handling.  I certainly could be wrong, but I'm tired of "tweeners".  I thought UNC's Lawson would have been a better pick for the Sixer's style.  I guess we'll have to see.  Either way, the Sixers aren't going to be contenders anytime soon with the contracts they have on the books.

How did Ed Stefanski get the reputation he has?

“It’s not helpful.  This is a guy who clearly could have been in the running as a serious presidential candidate with a serious record of cutting taxes and cutting spending.  It does indicate that men who oppose federal spending at the local level are irresistible to women.” - Grover Norquist on Mark Sanford

I usually find myself agreeing with Jason Whitlock, especially on Rev. Al Sharpton.  He has recently penned a thoughtful critique of Jim Brown's recent lamentation about the lack of social activism on the part of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Read it and leave a comment if you feel obliged.

Real Clear Politics has the video.

Hot Air's Ed Morrisey has the analysis.

Obviously, this is no surprise.  After all, politicians are better people than us and their healthcare is more important.  It's sort of like Cuba, where there are different hospitals for the government officials and the regular peons.  I wonder why Fidel Castro had to go to Spain for his treatment?

By the way he describes this Argentinian woman via email, I'm going to assume she's very attractive:

Two, mutual feelings .... You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...

I'm a sucker for a curvy woman (and by curvy, I don't mean the "how fat women describe themselves on dating websites" kind of curvy.  I mean a woman with a great shape).  I hope we get to see a picture of her soon.

I also love the "...but hey, that would be going into sexual details" part of the email, as if he didn't already broach "sexual details" in the last poetic sentence.

Read the rest of the emails here.

Independence Day Tea Party

Declaring Our Independence From Tax and Spend Politicians

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 8, 2009

Media Contact:

Andrew Monaghan

Email:  panzramic@gmail.com  (cell) 267-808-7408

Philadelphia Area grassroots organizations will mark our nation’s independence with a  2^nd Tea Party in Love Park that our Founding Fathers Would Be Proud of:

July 4, 2009 1:00pm-3:00pm

Our Federal Government is preparing two massive increases to our cost of living, both of which will decrease our quality of life:

Government Run Health Care and Cap and Trade Tax increases.

The possibility of these proposals becoming law is a chilling and stark reminder of our government’s desire to control our lives, tax our paychecks and make medical decisions based on cost-rationing formulas developed by egghead bureaucrats.

Do you want to pay more in your energy bills to fund policies based on a scientific theory pushed by statists and environmentalists?    Do you want to be told you can’t have life saving treatment because a government rationing formula says that you’ve lived long enough?  Do you want to idly sit around as our so called leaders recklessly spend the money you earn?

Of course you don’t!

The Tax Day Tea Parties were focused on bailouts, pork and stimulus packages.  We are now concentrating on the two most pressing laws that the federal government and its constituencies are frothing at the mouth to pass.

Please join us on Independence Day to declare your independence from these big government policies!

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admits to having an affair with an Argentinian woman.  He was a rising star in the GOP for refusing stimulus money.  Unfortunately, that star has begun to descend today.

Cross him off the list for 2012.  The GOP wilderness just got a little bit wilder.

Michelle Malkin's reaction:

It’s the only fitting word for a man who abandons his wife and four sons on Father’s Day weekend to indulge his “overdrive” on an Argentinian fling.

Mark Sanford: Bastard.

This is hardly a surprising development in the "taxation of healthcare benefits to pay for universal healthcare" passion play.  Talk about political payoffs for getting candidates elected:

But those union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would not be subjected to the tax, according to proposals under discussion.

Union workers enjoy some of the most extensive and costliest health benefits, and union officials complained their members would be unfairly burdened by a health care tax because their contracts cannot be changed quickly enough to avoid it. 

Union members also represent one of the biggest and most powerful Democratic constituencies and their support of any health care reform proposal is viewed as essential to getting a bill passed in Congress.

Baucus has proposed the tax threshold on health care benefits be set higher than the cost of policies available to federal employees and he has proposed exempting until 2013 those plans negotiated as part of union contracts.

“It’s a means of making sure that unions are foursquare behind any reform bill that comes out,” said Henry Aaron, a health care policy expert at Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Critics of the Baucus proposal to exempt unions from a health care benefits tax said the exclusion could be used to lure into unions employees who are anxious to avoid the benefits tax.

Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate with the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute, said excluding union benefits is also practical.

“The reality is, unions are in the position where they are going to get hit the hardest on that tax, and they just can’t change it on a dime like everyone else,” Fronstin said.

I hope he isn't right.  He probably is.

My favorite line from the story:

Buffett repeated his criticism of "cap and trade" as a method to control pollution, saying it would be a huge, regressive tax.

Duh!

Grievance-monger Jim Brown on Tiger Woods:

“You know what’s so interesting about Tiger to me?” Brown said. “He is a killer, he will run over you, he will kick your ass. But as an individual for social change? Terrible. Terrible. Because he can get away with teaching kids to play golf, and that’s his contribution. In the real world, I can’t teach kids to play golf and that’s my contribution, if I’ve got that kind of power.”

Conservative Compendium's Brian Garst has a good point of view:

Showing young black men that they can be something other than thugs and gangsters doesn’t make a difference?  If everyone - black, white or whatever - were the kind of people Woods and Jordan are, we wouldn’t need anyone to make a difference in society.

People with attitudes like Jim Brown are keeping black Americans down.

From CBS2 in Chicago:

"I lost a lot of blood, so they had to give me a lot of blood for me to get back on my toes," said De'London Smith.

De'London Smith was stabbed through the heart on Friday. He's still recovering at Stroger Hospital where he says blood transfusions saved him.

"It gave me life again. Because from what I heard, I was dead," Smith said.

But now it's the trauma unit that needs saving. Doctors say the facility's supply of O-negative blood is dwindling.

"So that's the lifesaving blood, and that's what we have virtually nothing left in the hospital," said trauma surgeon Dr. Andrew Dennis.

The blood bank showed us the eight units of O-negative blood that's left. Only three of the units are designated for trauma patients though. Any more outbreaks of violence on the streets pose a threat here.

"Tonight we may be in a very tough situation," Dr. Dennis said. "Because we're that short on O-negative blood."

O-negative is the universal donor type and anyone can accept it when seconds count.

"Anyone that is bleeding, that needs blood emergently, that is their first line of defense," Dr. Dennis said.

Dr. Dennis says the reason for the shortage is the high numbers of victims of shootings and other violent crimes who come here for life-saving treatment.

"We see probably an average of between 10 and 15 people who get shot or stabbed every night," Dr. Dennis said.

Chicago is my favorite city in America, but that is probably because I only have seen the beautiful parts that tourists see.  In reality, it sounds like a real nightmare.  This is a shame.  If any Chicago hospitals want to purchase my blood, I'm open for business.  Get at me...

NRO's Andrew McCarthy reports:

In truth, it’s worse than that. Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.

Leave a comment, please.

From Al Dente Blog:

Well, it seems The next time someone tells you box wine is gauche, you can tell them you drink it for the superior flavor... scientists published a paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry documenting how when they compared bottled wine and boxed wine, wine in the bottle contained more substances that can contaminate the wine's flavor and odor.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

I guess my mom is alot classier than I gave her credit for.

On health insurance companies being against a public option:

"If they tell us they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."

The intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking, even by Obamanian standards.  It's the old tried and true "straw man" argument, which our current President has become a master at employing. 

For his argument to work, he'd have to compare apples to apples.  He doesn't. 

A private company charging customers directly for services is not in any way analogous to a government taxing a third party to pay for the services that another party receives.  This fact alone obliterates Obama's meme.  We move on to the "competition" aspect of Obama's straw man argument.  To "compete" you must be in the same "arena" as your "competitor".  Again, a private company is not in any way analogous to government services, so the two aren't in the same arena, and the two aren't competitors.  In fact, the mere idea of the public option (which is a trojan horse for government run healthcare) is the antithesis of competition. 

If people have the choice of having another person pay for their healthcare, they will always choose that over paying themselves.  If you are standing in front of two restaurants, one where you have to pay and another where other people have to pay, which one do you choose?  This also totally ignores the fact that you do pay for government run healthcare via your taxes.  The only difference is that that government run healthcare leads to rationing and long waits for surgery, regular doctors appointments and x-rays.  In general, it reduces healthcare quality in exchange for healthcare quantity.

In fact, Britain had to pass a law that emergency room patients had to be seen within 4 hours of being admitted to the hospital.  Hospitals were forced to come up with a creative way to circumvent this four hour deadline.  The UK Telegraph explains:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors – in some cases for more than five hours – before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.

Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients – or are diverting them to different sites – in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them.On two occasions in January, ambulances took more than five hours to unload patients at Queen's Hospital in Romford, Essex.

In the same month, journeys to Weston-super-Mare hospital in Somerset were repeatedly held up, with more than a dozen waits of two hours, including delays of four and five hours.

Dozens of A&E units refused all 999 arrivals for periods of several hours, on hundreds of occasions, forcing crews to take desperately sick patients on lengthy journeys, and shifting pressures to other hospitals, the documents show.

In the course of six months, hospitals in the West Midlands ordered a "divert" on more than 450 occasions, closing A&E units to all 999 arrivals for hours at a time.

During a six-week period last autumn, hospital chiefs in the north east of England closed casualty units to 999 arrivals on 34 occasions, for up to 19 hours at a time.

In summary, government run healthcare decreases the quality of healthcare.  The "public option" is simply a trojan horse that will destroy the healthcare industry.  Republicans need to hammer this issue home. 

Powerline has the details.

Inviting the Iranians to a celebration of human freedom and liberty is like inviting Shaquille O'Neal to an "all time great foul shooters" celebration.  It just doesn't make sense, and discredits the respective institutions.

Political points can be scored by Republicans on this issue.  I suggest they step to the stripe and start shooting.  Hopefully they'll do better than Shaq.