Although the story from New Mexico about 81-year-old Chano Mares losing his house — after a burning mouse ran back inside from a fiery leaf pile —- certainly counted as 2006’s most hysterical news story, we find out today that it isn’t true at all.

Mares lost everything — and has no insurance — but the mouse story still makes him smile.

“I started laughing, and I’ll be laughing from now on,” he said. “It’s silly.”

With a little luck, the information that the mouse was already dead will dissuade the imminent-but-misguided crusade of Animal Rights activists-slash-eco-terrorists intent on harrassing an uninsured, homeless, elderly man.

On Thursday (5-Jan-06), 700 Club spokesman and former Presidential hopeful Pat Robertson told everyone that Ariel Sharon’s stroke had one simple reason: “God’s wrath.”

Local columnist Sam Venable let him have it but good.

For a man who claims to be a purveyor of Good News, this guy has done more to turn people away from Christianity than an army of atheists.
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The 9/11 attacks?

God’s wrath.

The Gulf hurricanes?

God’s wrath.

(Athletic interpretation: God’s wrath was the reason the University of Southern California lost the Rose Bowl. It had nothing to do with being outplayed and outscored by those heavenly blessed, sin-free cherubs representing the University of Texas.)

In Preacher Pat’s line of reasoning, we should file every unpleasantness in our lives – allergies and flu, monetary and marital failures, vocational and educational woes, transmission troubles and computer glitches – under the general heading of God’s wrath for some sin, known or unknown, that we may have committed.

If so, it’s a wonder the entire lot of humanity down through the ages hasn’t gone insane from guilt.

You have to wonder which Bible it is that Pat Robertson reads, because it really seems to be missing a Testament. It’s probably fallen out with all of the bashing he does with it.

I would urge readers to chip in $0.01 each so we could buy him a new one, with a yellow highlighter marking up the first four books of the New Testament, but I’m sure he’d just hit one of us in the head with it.

All day today, I’ve heard news reports about how “the NSA spying on ordinary Americans by installing software on your computer. Stay tuned, and we’ll teach you how to remove it!”

What a load of absolute nonsense!

The plain truth: The National Security Agency is devoted to the creation, dissassembly and translation of Codes and Cryptograms. It employs some of our country’s best and brightest Linguists and Mathematicians. It is not an organization which is remotely involved in “spying;” this myth is propagated by Conspiracy Theorists and other lunatics who have repeatedly called it “No Such Agency.”

And a Cookie? A cookie is not a piece of executable code, and certainly does not fall under the category of “software.” Cookies are small files which are stored on your hard drive by a website. The most popular example is Forum software, which greets you with, “Hello, Sam!” (or whatever your name is) when you visit. MSNBC, CNN, FoxNews, CBS and ABC all use Cookies.

Cookies are not spyware, contrary to popular myth. Cookies cannot “track your internet usage,” contrary to popular myth.

The most nasty thing a cookie can do is say, “Oh, you’ve seen this banner/pop-up ad already, so we’re going to display a different one.” Nothing sinister there, other than sometimes several sites use the same source for those ads, and they can get an idea where your IP address travels within the realm of the sites they serve. Big deal!

Basically what we had here today was, “Everything that happens in Government is the fault of the President. We have no new news with which to bash said President, so let’s make a big deal out of absolutely nothing and scare the crap out people by making something up!”

It is reprehensible that so many seemingly upstanding, impartial journalists felt that it was okay to run this completely asinine story which is nothing more than a baseless lie.

I’m all for Freedom of the Press, but at this point, it’s painfully obvious that some limits are in order. The so-called journalists who keep peddling this kind of tabloid fodder as fact have made it abundantly clear that the Media as a whole cannot conduct itself in an ethical manner.

Harry Shearer dropped a great video clip of Ann Coulter on his blog. Apparently, like many of her frequent targets — Kerry & company — she’s also unfamiliar with how Cameras work.

In other German news today, Austria denounced Arnold Schwarzenegger for not granting clemency to Tookie Williams. What, like we should have patted him on the back and given him a Nobel Peace Prize?

A bad man died today, but a number of people whose movies I’ll no longer watch are still whining, “Why, he redeemed himself! He became a good Christian! He wrote children’s books! He became a spokesperson, speaking out against hatred! He doesn’t have hate in his heart! He’s all about Love and Compassion!”

Sorry, but I’ve heard this same spiggot of bullshit from or about the KKK, Adolph Hitler and Charles Manson. So why are so many people of the opinion that Tookie Williams didn’t deserve the Death Penalty?

Never mind that Tookie was one of the founders — more on that later — of the violent Crips street gang. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of murdering a 7-11 clerk. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of killing a Taiwanese family; yes, even their daughter. Never mind that he was convicted of two counts of robbery. Never mind that he was involved in multiple attacks on other inmates and guards while in prison.

No evidence? Never mind that the murder weapon was one he had purchased, legally, years earlier — or that it was found in his home after the murders. Never mind that Tookie bragged about having done these terrible things to many people — including friends, family, roommates and other Crips members. Never mind that others who were with him during the crimes turned on him, as well.

Never mind that this case has had a full twenty-five years of judicial and investigatory review supporting the fact that he is not only guilty, but deserves to die.

Never mind that this guy was not just a “deluded and confused young African-American” who was “in with a bad crowd;” in fact, Tookie, himself, claims that he was the bad crowd: a founding member of the Crips. Never mind that that being the case, we will probably never know all of the atrocious behaviors, that this man personally ordered or coerced, of many deluded and confused young African-Americans.

No, let’s ignore everything we know about Tookie! Let’s make another movie about him depicting him as a humble father who loved children and never hurt anyone!

In my book, being a Man is all about taking responsibility for your actions, and accepting the consequences thereof. It is that mentality that seperates the Men from the Boys.

Schwarzenegger said it right:

“…without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”

I don’t even want to hear why this so-called ‘man’ deserves to be exalted the the status of Nelson Mandela by offering him Nobel Peace Prize.

And if State-Sponsored execution does in fact upset Austria’s sensibilities and remind them of Hitler during World War II, so be it. That’s a sure sign that they need to start denouncing Hitler more and Schwarzenegger less.