Buttersquash Ranch

Ginger Altoids

Yes, Ginger Altoids.

These.

So what? So buy some. I found these in Target one day, and they are fiercely strong. They are something like twice as strong as Old Tyme Jamaican Style Ginger Beer, which is so unfindable that I can't even find empty bottles for sale on Ebay.

I don't want to see the same thing happen to Ginger Altoids, but as you can see from the occasional frantic blog entry from similar fanatics, these are difficult to find but pop up in the most unusual spots.

My find is at Target, in York, Pennsylvania. As usual with this odd product, for some reason, it is at the checkout lanes, and only at the checkout lanes (not on the shelves even in the otherwise complete Altoids section).

You can apparently buy these here at the Altoids website.

So why am I shilling for this company? I'm not really, but for this product, because it has the air of yet another Really Great Thing that shows up, is unlike anything else on the market, then promptly disappears, leaving behind angry, fanatical cultists who gripe bitterly for years about its disappearance.

So go buy 20 or 50 or 100 tins of the things online. Well, try one first. If you like them, you'll adore them. The one caveat is they are extremely strong. I don't consider the original Altoids very strong at all, and by comparison, Spearmint and Wintergreen and Cinnamon are insipid. By comparison, these make me break a sweat.

Aside from Old Tyme Jamaican Style Ginger Beer, no other product has ever even approached the level of gingeriness reached by Ginger Altoids.

Final comment. You bastards selling these things on Ebay are predators, considering you can buy them straight from Altoids at present.

Torture, Murder, and now Slavery

The Times of India reports that, not content with mere rape, torture, and murder, the U.S. occupation is now kidnapping and enslaving Indian nationals and forcing them to work in Iraq.

Four Keralites, who were "cheated" by job agents and taken to a US military camp in Iraq, managed to escape recently narrated their nine-month-long ordeal in the camp as slaves.

One of them said "We were slaves in American kitchens".

Don't Get Too Smug, Lefties

In case you're tempted to think that anti-war is always good and the state is always bad, here's an interesting case, involving anti-war protesters acting despicably and police acting calmly and reasonably. The anti-war protesters vandalized a 9/11 memorial for no discernible ideological reason, while police chose to let them.

However, although officers witnessed the vandalism Saturday afternoon, police did not arrest three people seen damaging the display because they were "exercising the same freedom of speech that the people who put up the flags were,' La Habra Police Capt. John Rees said Monday.

What? Not a single savage beating? What's wrong with this country?

Patriot Act Suppresses News of Challenge To Patriot Act

If you had any lingering doubt that the government has gone insane, now the Washington Post reports that the Patriot Act itself forbids reporting on Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act

In "value added," I sucked down the docket sheet from PACER, as well as a summary of the case.

These aren't terribly useful, as the Patriot Act forbids reporting on cases about the Patriot Act, which is a nice little Constitutional Klein Bottle in which to conceal this despicable piece of legislation.

The ACLU itself has constructed as complete a page as possible considering the unlawful and unconstitutional restrictions they are under. Here is a redacted version of the complaint itself.

Atrocities

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

What's this? A description of atrocities performed by Saddam Hussein? No. It's a description of atrocities performed by U.S. troops, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and quoted in an article in The New Yorker today.