Uncle Horn Head

Customer: "Why didn't you tell me I have call waiting?"
Tech Support: "Sir, we have no way of knowing if you have call waiting."
Customer: "Well, you should ask everybody!"
Tech Support: "Do you have call waiting?"
Customer: "What's that?"

...That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.

"She was really very surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said...

Al Gore's decision to try to win the 2000 Presidential election in the courts after multiple recounts had confirmed President Bush's victory in Florida continues to have baleful effects. Today Victor Yanukovich said that he would contest the result of yesterday's election in the Ukrainian Supreme Court, notwithstanding what would appear to be a clear, eight-point victory for Yushchenko.

Al Gore's elevation of personal interest and partisanship above the national welfare, in clear contrast to the conduct of former candidates, like Richard Nixon, who had far more legitimate grievances than Gore did, has echoes in the bare-knuckle Washington state "recount" which promises to install a Democratic governor. (Check out Sound Politics for continuing coverage of he situation in Washington.) Unfortunately, Gore's influence is not limited to this country. The United States is widely regarded as the exemplar of democracy, and the conduct that Gore legitimized here will inevitably be seen by many politicians in other countries as legitimate.

In the end, notwithstanding a fairly long career in public life, the only thing that Al Gore will be remembered for is his abuse of the judicial system to try to reverse the result of the 2000 election.

The Manchester United Christmas party twice erupted into mass brawls after Darren Fletcher and Rio Ferdinand were punched, says The Sun.

The party at Manchester's Prohibition bar twice kicked off big time - with players like Wayne Rooney and Gary Neville piling in to help their teammates.

The first brawl started just before midnight when a 'spotty friend of a reserve team player' punched Darren Fletcher, knocking him to the floor.

Neville, Rooney, Wes Brown and Rio Ferdinand all piled in to help out Fletcher - but the trouble was apparently soon calmed.

Then at about 2.30am a mysterious 'man in a white suit' punched Ferdinand, seemingly out of the blue. So the by-now drunk players all piled in once again to have another brawl.

The players are said to have drunk £50,000-worth of champagne before leaving the club at 5am.

"Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job leading our efforts at the Department of Defense to win the war on terrorism and to help bring about a free and peaceful Iraq, and the president is focused on working closely with him on those matters," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

CLIFTON, N.J. (AP) Like something out of a Disney film, the story of Paco the Python is a serpentine tale of a pet snake missing in Missouri for more than a month until turning up 1,000 miles away, accidentally shipped to New Jersey in a box with a DVD player being sent for repairs.

And like any good Disney yarn, this one has a properly happy ending. Paco has been making python friends and feasting on pre-killed rats in a cozy cage at an NJ Pets store in Clifton, and will be shipped back home to Missouri, this time in temperature-controlled comfort...

A vehicle so extreme in its power, so incomparable in its appearance, that it defies any attempt to place it in a traditional category. Simply stated, HUMMER(tm) gives new meaning to the word invincible.

In keeping with its famous heritage, HUMMER(tm)Fragrance For Men is masculine with rugged and adventurous attributes. This classic yet bold new fragrance for men embodies all that HUMMER(tm)is.

Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.

The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.

Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients...

PHOENIX - U.S. Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and the failure to send more troops.

McCain, speaking to The Associated Press in an hourlong interview, said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation, explaining that President Bush (news - web sites) "can have the team that he wants around him."

"I have strenuously argued for larger troop numbers in Iraq, including the right kind of troops — linguists, special forces, civil affairs, etc.," said McCain, R-Ariz. "There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue."

When asked if Rumsfeld was a liability to the Bush administration, McCain responded: "The president can decide that, not me."

The number of starving in the world has increased by nearly 20 million since the mid 1990s

While hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on weapons, war, killing and destruction and countless more billions are spent on Christmas, the number of people starving in the world is increasing, instead of decreasing.

However boring those people are who spread gloom and doom stories at Christmas time trying to make the rest of us feel guilty as we tuck into our stuffed turkeys and push yet another glass of wine into our already bloated bellies, the latest report from the FAO deserves mention this Christmas.

"The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004" is the name of the report released yesterday, December 8th, by the UNO's Food and Agriculture Organization. To ignore this report is a sin.

While certain nations spend billions, not tens of billions but hundreds of billions of dollars on the destruction of the State of Iraq (and tens of thousands of its citizens, including innocent women and children), the number of starving in the world has increased by nearly 20 million since the mid 1990s, according to the report.

Furthermore, between 2000 and 2002, the number of starving rose to 852 million people, nearly one billion. At the beginning of the third millennium, what are we doing?

At this rate, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which intended to halve the number of starving by 2015, will never be reached and what a pitiful comment on humankind that some of us spend so much on illegal wars, slaughtering children with cluster bombs in a quixotic quest for Weapons of Mass Destruction which continue to go AWOL, while at the same time more and more people find themselves without enough money to put a meal on the table...

Police issued an arrest warrant Monday for a man charged with assaulting a convenience store clerk with a hamburger...

Middletown – He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq.

Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.

"There's people in my unit right now – one of my team leaders [who was] over in Iraq with me, is doing everything he can to help me .... but it's looking bleak," Loria said by telephone from Fort Hood yesterday. "It's coming up on Christmas and I have no way of getting home."

Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures."

Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.

Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective," he said...

CAPITOL HILL A Democratic senator isn't satisfied with the answer Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave to a U-S soldier in Kuwait today.

The soldier complained that he and his comrades had to dig through landfills for scrap metal and other material to reinforce their vehicles.

Rumsfeld responded, "You go to war with the Army you have."

That's not good enough for Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut -- who's written a letter to Rumsfeld, saying that his answer was "utterly unacceptable."

Dodd says it's up to the government to provide safety equipment for soldiers in battle. He said, "Our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide."

LONDON (Reuters) - Church leaders have condemned a Christmas nativity tableau depicting soccer star David Beckham as Joseph and his pop singer wife Victoria as the Virgin Mary.

Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush also starred as two of The Three Wise Men at the birth of Christ.

Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians united in calling the exhibit -- at Madame Tussaud's waxwork museum in London -- a new low in the cult of celebrity worship.

In the tableau, Australian pop star Kylie Minogue also hovers above the crib as an angel, while "Posh Spice" Victoria lays her shawled head tenderly on Beckham's shoulder.

The shepherds are played by Hollywood star Samuel L. Jackson, actor Hugh Grant and camp Irish comic Graham Norton.

The Vatican was not amused...

Police were in pursuit of a 37-year-old man riding a lawnmower moments after he threw two Molotov cocktails at his ex-girlfriend’s front and rear doorsteps.

The cocktails, which were emptied Budweiser beer bottles filled with gasoline with a piece of cloth sticking out of the opening, never ignited but the fumes did make breathing difficult for a number of neighbors.

Firefighters had to transport two neighbors to the hospital for respiratory problems...

Long Beach -- California first lady Maria Shriver Tuesday defended San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds as "a father, a great baseball player and a great Californian'' and said parents -- not politicians -- might be the most effective influences on young athletes about the dangers of steroids...

...(Arnold) Schwarzenegger, a seven-time Mr. Olympia who has admitted to past steroid use in his days as a body builder, has been a longtime advocate for better physical fitness for children and headed former President George H.W. Bush's Council on Physical Fitness...

In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Friday of pursuing a dictatorial foreign policy and said mounting violence could derail progress toward bringing peace and democracy to Iraq.

Putin also criticized the West for setting double-standards on terrorism, pursuing Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Iraq while giving refuge to "terrorists" demanding Chechnya's independence from Russia.

The Kremlin leader's tough remarks came on a visit to former Cold War ally India, where he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a joint call for greater cooperation in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

Unilateralism increased risks that weapons of mass destruction might fall into the hands of terrorists, and would stoke regional conflicts, Putin said in a hard-hitting speech to an invited audience.

"Even if dictatorship is packaged in beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology, it will not be able to solve systemic problems," Putin said. "It may even make them worse."...

Vote with your wallet, shop in stores that support your political beliefs and stay away from stores that don't.

Home Depot? Red. Circuit City? Red. JC Penney? Red. Sears, Staples, Walgreens? Red. So where's the blue? The Gap, CostCo, Bed Bath & Beyond, Barnes & Noble, Toyota (the only car maker to support Blue more than Red). They get Coors, Bud, Busch and Michelob but that's nicely balanced out by the Blue getting Guinness. The only anamoly I've found so far is Target, a Minnesota based company headed by a strong Democrat, is in the Red.

Will this change anyone's shopping habits? I hope so.

MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said...