AFTERTHOUGHT

During the warm-up hour of the show today Royal and I had a little back and forth about computer simulations like Second Life.  There's some philosopher at Oxford who thinks the chances may be about even that we are merely a part of someone else's virtual computer world ... a virtual computer world created on some incredible computer thousands of years into the future.  Give this story a read ... good exercise for your mind.

ESPN APPEARANCE

No word yet as to whether or not Vick is going to agree to a plea deal.  I do have a time for my ESPN appearance on Monday though.  Looks like it will be around 2:30 in the afternoon, Eastern time.

CAPTION THAT!

This morning we called for you to send in your captions for this photo. Here are some of the top submissions. Which one do you think is the best?

HOW ABOUT SOME MORE READING ASSIGNMENTS!

Democrats are already starting their media campaign to discredit General Petraeus' progress report a month before he is set to make his report.  Yesterday in the Washington Post said the report is "a White House con job in the making."

Meanwhile, CNN is jumping on the bandwagon too, reporting that a majority of Americans don't trust a military assessment of our progress in Iraq.  So who IS supposed to judge ... the media??

How long until this apartment manger is sent to jail ... or at least called a racist!  The manager sent a letter to all residents saying that if they are illegal immigrants, they have until the end of the month to get out.

For those of you who might have missed my Nealz Nuze segment, here is a government outrage for you.  How much does it cost to ship a 19-cent washer to a military base?  Apparently $998,798 ... all at the taxpayer's expense.

Here's some more on the NASA temperate measuring goof ... an interview with the man who discovered the mistake.

It's hard to avoid these stories about the horrors of universal healthcare.  Let's go back to Canada for this one.

THE POWER OF THE BOORTZ SHOW

Flexing our muscles here. But hell, if we don't brag who is going to brag for us?

Yesterday we had Chris Crowley on the air. He's the co-author of "Younger Next Year, a Guide to living like you're 50 until you're 80 and beyond." I love the book, and I made it clear that reading it had a profound affect on me. Well .... Let me get the bragging over with so we can get back to other stuff. On Wednesday the book was number 841 on amazon.com. I talked about the book, and by yesterday morning it was number 49. By late yesterday afternoon, after my interview with Crowley, it went to number 2 ... trailing only Harry Potter. This book was published two and one-half years ago, and we've pushed it back up to No. 2 on amazon.com. Wish I could do that with my book.

Where's my commission check?

If you missed the interview and want to know what's got people storming amazon.com, sign up for the Boortz Blast newsletter. You'll find the entire interview in next week's issue.

HOW DO YOU "SPREAD PROSPERITY FAIRLY?"

Warren Buffet, who knows something about prosperity, says that he thinks that, as president, Barack Obama would be able to "spread prosperity fairly."

I'm not going to dwell on this, but just where in our Constitution does it say that the president, or, for that matter, the government has the responsibility to spread prosperity? Their job is to allow prosperity to grow by getting the hell out of the way. And what do we mean by "fairly?" Does this mean everyone gets their "fair share" of prosperity? How do you determine what a fair share is? What would be more fair than allowing people to keep the wealth they have produced, and allowing others who fail to take advantage of the special privilege of being an American to suffer the consequences?

Remember ... below the neck, a man is only worth a buck an hour.

TERRORIST CONVICTED

After many years the courts have officially declared Jose Padilla (or as I like to call him: Osama bin Lopez) a terrorist. He was afforded his right to a fair trial. He was given a lawyer. He sat in front of a jury of his peers. He has gone through the system and guess what ... he was, indeed, guilty.

You might remember that Padilla was held as an "enemy combatant" for over 3 years until he was finally turned over to the U.S. court system. He is a U.S. citizen but moved to Egypt in 1998 to study Arabic and Islam. Then he supposedly went to Afghanistan where he trained with al Qaeda.

Now he faces life in prison for conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism, and providing material support for terrorism.

He is now a convicted terrorist. May he enjoy the rest of his years in our wonderful prison system. I suspect that there are quite a few inmates there who would like to discuss with Jose their disgust with Islamic terrorists who want to kill their relatives.

Question: Will Jose join a Hispanic or a Muslim prison gang?

AUSTRALIA VEERS FROM GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE

The state government in Sydney has come up with an ingenious plan to tackle its waning public health system ... let the private sector do it!

The government is considering leasing "excess space" at the Prince of Wales Hospital to a private hospital next door.

Why is there excess space? Because the public cardiothoracic unit has enough spaces for twelve beds ... but a lack of government funding meant that it could only afford to keep four of the beds filled. This meant that patients have had to wait up to three months for urgent heart surgery. Three months ... urgent??

So the government proposes combining the private and public sector. This just thrills the doctors. They think it is the greatest idea since penicillin.

But don't worry. The government spokeswoman says, "There will be no change or reduction to the existing public cardiothoracic services at Prince of Wales Public should this proposal proceed."

You hear that? No change! You'll still have to wait for four months for urgent surgery .. unless, that is, you chose the private sector option.

You fools out there clamoring for government health care .. this is your future.

IMAM UNIONS

In Turkey they have, what are known as, imam unions. The leader of one of these unions is upset because he thinks imams should be paid overtime to compensate for leading the nation's Muslims in 18-hours worth of prayers ... every day.

Turkey uses taxpayer money to pay 70,000 preachers to lead daily calls to prayer. They wake up at 4am and sometimes don't finish until midnight.

Some unions are complaining that other public servants and government workers get paid for overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week, five days a week. Well ... you just can't cram in those five prayers a day into a 40 hour work week.

Actually .. I rather like the idea of a union. Local 45 of the Union of Islamic Prayer Leaders has a nice ring to it. I vote they go out on strike immediately.

At least one imam union is opposed to the complaint saying that clerics knew that they were getting into when they signed up for the job.

SPEAKING OF MUSLIMS...

So, we're thinking an appropriate caption for this would be "What's the point?" Think you can do better? Email it with the subject "Caption" Oy! we've got plenty now. You'll just have to check back later and we'll put our favorites up to a vote in the Afterthought.

UPDATE ON HUGO CHAVEZ

Chavez outlined the rest of his changes to the Venezuelan constitution. Here are some of the main changes:

• Removing term limits for the presidency, and extending the term of office from six years to seven
  
• Bringing in a maximum six-hour working day
  
• Increasing presidential control over the central bank
  
• Strengthening state economic powers, allowing the government to control assets of private companies before a court grants an expropriation order.

Well we already knew about the term limits but a six-hour workday? What kind of productive society will there be if businesses can only ask their employees to work six hours a day. That sound you hear is the Venezuelan economy going in the tank! I guess it doesn't really matter when the rest of his reforms eliminate the private sector anyway. Remember ... this jerk, the Mugabe of the Western Hemisphere ... is a socialist.

There's a revolution coming. Just watch.

"I SWEAR I'M A WOMAN!"

Virginia Grace Soto is a white Hispanic woman from the Dominican Republic. (No word yet on whether she is a legal U.S. resident.) The corrections reports describe her as "androgynous in nature." But even after a strip search and a shower with male inmates ... they couldn't tell she was a woman?

Looks like there's more to this story.

Turns out that this was not the first time Soto was arrested. She'd been arrested twice since April and both times the officers classified her as a man. It began during her first arrest for prostitution. Although she told the officers she was a woman, she was booked as a man after an interview with the city's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit.

She was arrested again in July on drug-related charges. Since she was already in the system, they assumed that she was still a "man."

After her arraignment, she was brought back to the men's receiving unit at the jail. At this point she was strip searched by two jail officers ... who apparently failed to notice that she was a woman because she held a hand over her genitals. Assuming that she was a he, the corrections officers falsely assumed that there was no hiding place behind those hands.

I've read a statement by one of the prison guards who conducted the strip-search and it all began to make sense. "I didn't see nothing," said one of the jail officers, "but I was still thinking male." Clearly the government hired the best and the brightest.

Finally she was taken to an examination room where it took a doctor to officially pronounce Soto a woman.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

"TB Guy" Andrew Speaker and his wife were guests on the Neal Boortz Show today. More photos.

The closer we get to General Petraeus' report, the harder it is to deny that the troop surge seems to be working, despite what Democrats want to hear.

Another Muslim taxi cab saga. In Vancouver, a Muslim taxi cab driver refused to pick up a blind man with a guide dog because the cab driver is not allowed to "associate with dogs."

Radical environmentalists want to make it a crime to deny that global warming exists. Meanwhile, the infamous Newsweek looks back at the "unanimous proof" it published in 1975 ... warning of global cooling.

Environmental activists (or as I like to call them, warmers) chained themselves to the gates of a small airport in England. They are protesting the impact of private air traffic on global warming ... I mean climate change. They are okay with government-run air travel though. It's just the rich people with their private planes.

Senator Byron Dorgan got upset with Indian health services and their inability to provide adequate healthcare. Here's a concept: Tribal officers make $100,000 ... get your own private healthcare and stop leaching off the government!

Democratic presidential candidates promised to reverse the decline of the union movement in this country.

Just in case you haven't been following the government funded Muslim school in New York City, their infamous principal Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser resigned.

Yesterday I was talking about the newest twist in the Chris Benoit case. Here's the latest on who gets the money.

German scientists claim to have broken the speed of light.

Four out of five teens say that they have seen drugs being sold in their high school or seen someone come to school drunk or high. I assume these are government schools they used in this survey.

A man in South Africa was shot in the side. What did the hospital say to do? "Walk it off!" Three weeks later, he is still trying to convince the hospital to remove the bullet.

A priest was fined $8000 for ringing the church bells too loudly in the morning.

There are some strange people living around here. Really strange.

Do you want some evidence that the African continent is, as it always has been, a basket case? Check this out.

Want to know why we haven't had a virtual Boortz event in Second Life? Here's a good illustration of what can happen. Not safe for work.

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