Watertiger has your snark round-up over at Fire Dog Lake.

It’s time for mandatory sports analogies [it’s an insulting guy-thing].

If you are going to throw the ball right down the center of the plate just below shoulder height, don’t expect the batter not to take a cut at it.

If the ball rebounds towards a lone player and the goal is open, don’t expect the player not to take the shot.

If the deflected pass lands in the hands of a defender and there’s no one between him and the end zone, don’t expect him not to run with it.

If the “paper pundits” are going to feed straight lines to the unwashed masses of the Internet, don’t expect blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]} to give them a free pass.

Squadrons of rabid lambs is just too absurd a target to ignore. Technically “squadrons” are mounted: horses, armor, aircraft, it doesn’t matter. Mounting lambs is frowned upon. While “rabid” has multiple meanings, lambs attacked by rabid dogs or coyotes die an extremely painful death if not put down immediately. It sounds like someone needs to discuss a childhood trip to a petting zoo with a professional.

If they are going on the attack they really need to read some decent attack authors to learn the flow of insults. At a minimum rent a few film noir videos to pick up a few phrases. Consult William Safire, he did some fun stuff for Agnew. Vicious voles of virulence is Safire’s type of thing: alliteration and it covers the bases.

They really need to avoid being labeled hysterical hamsters of hypocrisy for their pathetic use of insults. Come on, you are supposed to learn this stuff at recess in elementary school.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is probably not thrilled to be showing up in newspaper articles. Financial institutions in Brussels are not known for enjoying the limelight. They didn’t have much choice, as they received seemingly legitimate subpoenas from the US Treasury Department, but they will now have to answer questions from their member institutions who will be very put out about this entire affair. The Wall Street Journal might be acceptable, but articles appearing in common general newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times [a California newspaper!] is really not how things are done.

[Links to the newspaper reports are at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.]

This is no surprise to al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi millionaire who owned several international companies and started his extremist career moving money around to finance anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan. He is well versed in international money laundering, and is aware of the monitoring points.

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A weekend feature of Why Now.