Joe the Mugger and other outrages.

1) Note: I wrote this first item Monday morning and whadya know, it's like I'm prescient. Just ask cautionary whale Rush Limbaugh! Or don't.

It's going to be interesting to see the lengths people will go to in the next two weeks to try to discredit Colin Powell. Oh and you know they will. I would like to think that there will be adult, nuanced disagreements but as it happens, I've been to this rodeo before. I believe it'll likely be more like Chris Rock's description of the media treatment of voters' races:

"Well, they black, he black--I guess that's why."

2) In other news of my telepathy, when I heard that story about the McCain volunteer that was supposedly assaulted by a politically-minded mugger who carved a B into her cheek, my immediate response was, "Well, that's not true." I didn't have any reasoning behind it--I just knew it. Later, I actually thought about it and had these thoughts:

First of all, a mugger usually wants to rip and run. They don't want to hang around for afternoon tea. Second of all, the picture of her face. I don't know much about black eyes, so the comments about the swelling or lack thereof didn't mean much to me. The B is backwards. In addition, it's superficial and very neat. Now some people suggested that the mugger could have had the woman on the ground with her head upside down between his knees but again, that seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go through--time, public location, etc. I was also wondering, what did he do it with? None of the reports I read seemed to mention that. Now combine that with her refusal to seek medical treatment, which even Michelle Malkin found fishy. Get tetanus or die trying is MY game, missy (see also: below). Then, there were her Twitter updates. 12AM: Oh my gosh, you guys, I sure am in a black dangerous neighborhood*. 3AM: Wow, bummer night, dudes. [I'm being facetious, obviously, but this is not that far off from her real posts.]

Taking all these thoughts into account, the weapon became obvious. She was assaulted with Occam's razor. Of course, I wasn't the only one who came to the same conclusion so I'm sure I'm not the only one who found the latest updates unsurprising: Campaign Volunteer Faces Charges In Attack Hoax. A couple years ago, I was watching a program on Susan Smith and one of the men that interviewed her said that he was knew she was lying because of the way she told her story. Truth-tellers get all the facts out at the beginning until the story tapers down, whereas liars start with the taper and then ramp up to all the details. I was mugged, I was mugged and he didn't like my bumper sticker so he beat me and he carved my face, I was mugged and he didn't like my bumper sticker so he beat me and he carved my face while sitting on my chest, I was mugged and he didn't like my bumper sticker so he beat me and he carved my face while sitting on my chest and he groped me.

Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning. This one was a reference to Susan Smith:



Thirteen years ago.

3) Today I received a bill from the physician who treated me last month. Now, we're confused as to why we're being billed a third time (I received a second bill about a week ago), when we gave a credit card at the hospital the morning I was there. However, this bill features an interesting line item. See if you can pick it out.

Apparently, I get the honor of paying $54 because the doctor said, "You shouldn't smoke--smoking is bad, mmkay?"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

*And comments from locals say that this wasn't a dangerous neighborhood and the street level ATM gets many passersby.