The Friday Bacon

Ya just stick your arm right in there, it doesn't matter.

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

The Daily Show used this as a punch line several times. I am not sure why bacon flavored mayo is the perfect example of American gluttony. Especially when we have naked jello wrestling.

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

Bacon wrapped chicken breasts stuffed with mozzarella cheese.

Beer prices rise for the Consumer as Costs of Production Fall and Profits Rise

A number of brewers announced recently that the price of beer that the consumer pays will be going up citing rising costs. In the CNN story above the reasons given are less vague. The brewers claim to be raising prices to offset rising commodity prices and fall in volumes. Though, commodity prices have fallen recently and have caused farmers and dairies to worry about staying profitable this year. Also, ten days ago Anheuser-Busch InBev announced that their second quarter profits had grown despite the drop in volume because of cost cutting measures. One has to work through the maze of business doublespeak in these non judgmental articles regarding price increase and increased profitability to understand that cost cutting and "synergies" in these cases refers to job cuts as a result of the InBev takeover of Anheuser-Busch.

If you are the kind of person who likes to buy American and support American jobs, it is getting harder and harder to find an economical beer. Though some of the big brewers still employ Americans.

The Friday Bacon

That's supposed to be a cheeseburger with a pound of bacon on top. I have no idea what that crap around the bottom is.

The Friday Bacon

Breaded fried cheese wrapped in bacon!

The Friday Bacon

I saw this sign trampled on the ground so I took a picture of it with my cell phone.

Gygax Statue

It has been two months since a non-bacon article and I break our silence to announce that Gary Gygax's widow is planning on erecting a monument to his greatness in Lake Geneva, WI. The article is sparse on details, but I assure you that if the opportunity presents itself we will place whatever fund raising widget they create on this website as well. I have not been to Gen-Con since WOTC took it from Milwaukee and created several clones, but I may just have to go to the 2010 event if there is going to be hoopla about the Gygax statue.

The Friday Bacon

Extra greasy bacon

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

Fried bacon with gravy for dipping. Can you feel your arteries hardening just by looking at the picture?

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

I guess this is what it looks like when you cover one of those bacon weave mats with cheese and roll it up.

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

Bacon wrapped hot dog with cheese.

Tazing Grannies

The video embedded in this story from MSNBC has been heavily edited but I think the screams of the granny speak for themselves.

I still find this incident disturbing, and the actions of the deputy immoral, even though there may be a reasonable person out there that could answer our standard question with a "yes." But that all depends on how you frame it, and whether the taser is supposed to be a less lethal substitute for the officer's pistol.

If you frame the question as whether the use of the taser saved lives in this incident, a reasonable person could answer in the affirmative. If you ask whether the deputy would have had to resort to use of his side arm or lethal force if he were without his taser, the moral calculus changes.

Dismembering Justice

In my last article on the torture conducted by the Bush administration, I may have left out another important reason for a full and complete reckoning for all involved at every level of government. It was in my last article I explained why I understand that Obama won't prosecute the agents that carried out the torture. To reiterate, we need our agents in the field to be able to do their jobs without worrying about the outcome of the next election and whether their actions will become unpopular.

However, of course that was the plan of the Bush administration all along. It now appears that from the beginning they planned on denying any responsibility for the torture by arguing that they had only asked how far they could go legally and it was the nefarious Department of Justice that told them to torture. Though, the new information seems to indicate that those lawyers were pressured to produce opinions that indicated torture was legal.

Given the amount the DOJ was politicized by the Bush administration it is highly unlikely that any advisory opinion that emanated from that DOJ was free of undue influence. Also, why would the DOJ have generated this opinion if it werent asked? And why would the question have been asked if it werent abundantly clear what the "correct" answer was?

Though if you believe the story being sold to us by the former administration through MSM is true, that every lawyer "consulted" by the Bush administration agreed that the techniques were legal, that does not make it so. The DOJ does not make the law. Congress makes the law. And Congress has made torture illegal. As I have explained in my previous article, waterboarding and the other techniques used were and still are torture.