" The victim gasped loudly as blood poured from his neck. His killer held up the head at one point, and placed it on top of the body. " -- The killing of Eugene Armstrong
Year upon year in the world's darkest woods
On the dirt at the foot of the ancient trees,
Tangles and brambles and dead brush increase
Which the sunlight can never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Our ash that descends in our clearest of skies?
Our leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer,
Bringing that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, war shall prevail.
This lesson is written in stone.
No dreams will defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that is burnished on bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
"OH FOR A MUSE OF FIRE!
J M Hanes, in the comments to our Shakespearean homage -- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts picks up our sorry tale of woe, our slo-mo tragedy, with the ever popular Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, aka Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
ACT III
Scene I
[Enter THE KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS,
OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
THE KING: And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from Omlet why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
ROSENCRANTZ: He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession.
THE KING: Yet may true stated what you have observed,
Unwrinkle the body politic in parts.
Seated, second from the left.
While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.*
Cruising in the bright August morning down Highway 5. California's great central valley, north of Sacramento, where the farm towns roll by, their blunt names like an old catechism of your life, "Willows," "Williams," "Orland," "Nord."
Rice fields shimmer in fives shades of green. Enough rice to feed the Orient with a bunch left over for the States. Old and new orchards in whirring diagonal rows. Roadside attractions promising 20 different varieties of olives. White egrets pacing in the irrigation canals. Yellow crop dusters banking and coming in low over the highway.
Heading south towards San Francisco; towards an appointment with an old friend trapped too early in a brain where all the furniture is fading, dissolving, melting into a blurred now and a bright twenty years ago.
The old story. You wonder about a friend you haven't been in touch with for a decade. You meet someone who knows someone who knows him. Or you run an Internet search and find an email of a person who once knew him. And you ask. Most of the time things are fine, but then there's that time when the news is not good. Not good at all.
How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again. *
You get a phone number for his brother and you call. His brother fills you in on the details.
Several strokes stemming from a traffic accident twenty years gone and an operation on the brain five years later. First wife saw what was coming and cleared out, dumping the marriage to become a poet. Right.
He married again and, by all accounts, married well. Had some good years. Was back to his music and his songs. But then the strokes came, and came again, and his mind began to liquefy. The second wife couldn't handle all the care -- could you? -- and placed him, at last, in a home in San Francisco.
One daughter sees him often, the other daughter seldom, the second wife some times, the brother every six weeks, the first wife never.
And so, because of what was, and because you have to be, at the least, a witness to this part of his life and yours, your arrange a visit.
Continued...
Citizens United
My favorite line from the trailer. (An ernest gray haired woman at the fringe of a demonstration in New York City: "When you talk about a dictator, there's pros and there's cons...
CUT TO: Man tied to post in middle east with his back being whipped to the bone.
".... If a dictator provides free health care, I like that dictator. If a dictator provides a free university education, I like that dictator."
CUT TO: Taliban woman being shot in the head in soccer stadium.
BLOGGER: I wish to complain about these documents you palmed off on your shrinking but credulous audience last week.
RATHER: Oh yes, the, uh, the Bush Guard memos. They are full of accurate facts.... What's,uh... What's wrong with them?
BLOGGER: I'll tell you what's wrong with them, Dan. They're forgeries, that's what's wrong with them!
RATHER: No, no, they're just pretending to be forgeries. They contain accurate facts vetted by all experts we could find that agree with me.
BLOGGER: Look, "Kenneth", I know a forgery when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
RATHER: No no they're not forged because they're accurate! Remarkable set of facts, aren't they. Best I've ever made.
BLOGGER: The "facts" don't enter into it. Forged facts forfiet their factualness.
RATHER: Nononono, no, no! They're accurate in the facts from our carefully checked but secret sources! I know they're true because I've reviewed the tapes of myself claiming they're true.
BLOGGER: Look, I took the liberty of examining those tapes when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason you claimed they were true was the fact they'd been NAILED to your head.
(pause)
RATHER: Well, o'course they was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed them to my head, I would have forgotten where I got them from in the first place. Nailed or not, they'll still fly. They'll still Voooooooom!
BLOGGER: "VOOM"?!? Mate, these documents wouldn't "voom" if you strapped four million frothing moonbats on them! They've been trying that over on Kos for days and there is no lift-off. These documents is bleedin' demised!
RATHER: No no! Don't you understand? They're ACCURATE even if they're FAKE! They're pining for a Democratic Administration. Which makes them TRUE LIES.
BLOGGER: 'They're not pining! They're passed on!
These documents are no more!
They have ceased to be!
They've expired and gone to meet their maker! ... Speaking of which...
They're a set of stiffs!
Bereft of truth, they're a pack of lies!
If you hadn't nailed them to your forehead on national television, they'd be compost in a New Jersey landfill next to Jimmy Hoffa.
These documents are pushing up the daisies!
Their hopes of altering our national election are now 'istory!
They and you are off the twig!
They have kicked the bucket, shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain on your career and joined the Hitler Diaries!!
THESE ARE EX-DOCUMENTS!!
(pause)
RATHER: Well, I'd better replace them with another set of true lies I whipped up on my old Selectric over the weekend. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry Blogger, I've had a look 'round the back of CBS News, and uh, we're right out of forged documents with accurate facts.
BLOGGER: I see. I see, I get the picture.
Rather: I got a John Kerry.
(pause)
BLOGGER: Pray, does it talk?
RATHER: Not to the press.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS I'll be in the process of relocating from Laguna Beach, California to Seattle, Washington. In the interim, I'll be driving Highway 1 up the coastline of California, Oregon, and Washington and I don't plan to push it. One thousand miles of coastline is nothing to just zoom past if you've got the chance. (See Laguna Dawn for my observations on part of this route.)
UPDATE: The Getty, Cambria, the Sur, Berkeley, Mill Valley, Stinson Beach, Bolinas, .... currently in Mendocino. The road goes on forever.
During this period, my ability and desire to update this page is likely to be intermittent. In the meantime, I've made a little list of essays and items in various categories that may be of interest to the idle browser.
Omlet | Act 3, Scene 1
SCENE I. A cabin in the Gulfsteam, 40,000 feet over New Jersey.
Omlet
To be or not to be President: that is my platform:
Whether 'tis more nuanced to vote for before against
The 87 billion of outrageous appropriation,
Or to make my case upon the seas of health care,
And by raising taxes get it fully funded? To windsurf: to trap-shoot:
To say "I cannot bring a gun to the debate." Oh end
The heart-ache and the thousand polling shocks
This campaign is heir to, tis a consomme
Devoutly to be reheated. To be elected, to rule;
To rule: perchance to decide: ay, there's the belly rub;
For in decision what results may come
When we have pulled out and hugged Chirac
Must give us all pause: I can't get no respect
That makes worthwhile of so long campaign.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of November;
The Limbaugh laugh, the Clintonian contumely,
The wrath of despising wife, the landslide votes of scorn,
The insolence of Begala, and the spurns
Of all my ambitions to be an aging JFK,
When I myself might my quietus make
With a pump-action? Who would Carville bear,
His grunts and sweating items of "To-Do,"
But that the dread of always junior senator,
That obscurity where I shall sink, from which
No non-Kennedy emerges, freezes me like headlighted deer,
And makes me bear John Edwards' southern drawl,
Than fly off to Nantucket or Gstaad to sport until December.
Thus candidacy doth make mincemeat of my myth;
And thus my native shape of waffle
Is amplified by my pale cast of speech
And my life's enterprise of "It's my ambition, stupid!,"
With view of my face their votes turn awry,
And lose the name of Winner. -- Soft me now!
The fair Teresa! Nymph, in thy checkbook
Be all my ambitions, stubs.
===
SOOTH! The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts, doth continue at Protein Wisdom
Omlet | Act 5, Scene 1
SCENE I. A field in Red Bank, New Jersey. Prince Omlet examines the skull of a famous news anchor....
SOOTH! SCENE III. A lavish hotel room in Cleveland Enter OMLET and JOHN EDWARDS as described by Blogfonte.
===
UPDATETH:
Sooth, fair Instapunditeers, who, upon this plain of Mars
Hath joined good Sir Jeff and I, old Gerard of Gaunt,
To ponder demons from the Democratic depths
That rise with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of our ears do pour
Their leperous distilment. Abide in this abode,
And with keyboards brave and full of wit
Inscribe your scenes in comments that will fit.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death�s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor�s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who�d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They'�d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river�s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we�ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in deaths ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbors skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Whod screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
Theyd writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the rivers further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that weve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
You know it is time for an emergency reboot of your brain when you read a paragraph like this in the New York Times on the death of Star Trek:
Some people suggest the problem is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, several actors, writers, producers and directors of past "Star Trek" incarnations say, may be to stop making new "Star Trek" stories for a while. -- Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on 'Star Trek'
and your mind instantly translates the paragraph into:
Some people suggest the problem is with the New York Times is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, many editors, writers, reporters and readers of past "New York Times" incarnations say, may be to stop publishing The New York Times for a while.On the other hand....
"It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom. " -- Lincoln
He or she does not yet have a name although that dark fact will emerge from behind a bullet or in the explosion of a coward's car bomb. When their paths intersect we will all know the name and most of us will mourn. That mourning will be fitting and proper. What will not be proper, what will repulse, is that some Americans, and not a small number, will rejoice at this death of an American soldier.
The 1,000th American to die in Iraq will be marked by most Americans as both tragic and yet another reason to continue to crush Islamic terrorism relentlessly, using whatever it takes. When the word of the 1000th death is passed the words of Abraham Lincoln above will live again in the hearts of every American that understands every generation must pull the sword of freedom from the stone.
But because of freedom and what it means, this country will also allow the
Continued..."If you do not join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you dance, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance? And I will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. And if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what's the sin in that? We all begin there. Come on."
-- Robert Fulghum
"The most important sort of disobedience is to write essays at all. Fortunately, this sort of disobedience shows signs of becoming rampant. It used to be that only a tiny number of officially approved writers were allowed to write essays. Magazines published few of them, and judged them less by what they said than who wrote them; a magazine might publish a story by an unknown writer if it was good enough, but if they published an essay on x it had to be by someone who was at least forty and whose job title had x in it. Which is a problem, because there are a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders.
"The Internet is changing that. Anyone can publish an essay on the Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it. Who are you to write about x? You are whatever you wrote.
"Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story. The Web may well make this the golden age of the essay. And that's certainly not something I realized when I started writing this."
-- Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay
Children are easy.
One gun will rule dozens.
Shoot one, the rest will obey.
Children are easy
To keep and control.
No need to water or feed.
Children are easy.
Their tears are quite tiny.
No need to hear them or heed.
Children are easy.
They gather in schools.
It's simple to beat them en masse.
Children are easy.
Their bones are like sticks.
You can snap them in two if you please.
Children are easy,
And much cheaper to kill.
One bullet can blow away three.
Children are easy.
There will always be more
For the bags, for the bags, for the bags on the floor.
Once you understand the Pravadaesque Mindset that marks a New York Times lifer, the paper's capacity to irritate usually subsides into wry amusement. But every so often, the paper describes its own limited mindset so well it is hard to just let it slide. This morning's lead editorial on Russia is a textbook example of denial, incapacity and intellectual insanity: ( Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya ) It leads with:
A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada.It would be difficult for most honest reporters to write a more labored lead, but we aren't dealing with honest reporters here, we're dealing with a New York Times editorial.
To begin with I suppose that if by 'most Americans' you mean those who do not read newspapers, fail to watch television or listen to the radio, who never collect information from the web, and live in caves under the rich soil of Amish country, it might be conceivable that those Americans feel a terrorist attack on children in a school to be a "remote" event -- but only the ones with no children. This sort of shrink-wrapping the vast 'unwashed-unreaders' of the New York Times is a hallmark of the Times editorial page. It is a kind of noblesse distress signal in which the self-appointed and unelected media government distinguishes itself from the rabble. It is unfortunate that, to judge by declining circulation and audience figures, the rabble is also distinguishing itself from the major media.
After cleansing the room of the Yahoos, the editorial whips out the show stopper: "It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada."
Actually it is hard to imagine that there breathes an imagination so dead that it thinks the Chechen atrocity is hard to imagine at all. Imagining it doesn't take more than three brain cells. If, lacking those three brain cells, you still struggle to imagine it, the media is chock full of aids to you imagination in the form of pictures, first hand accounts, and video. Pick up any newspaper or turn on any news station on the radio and television. These aids will be along right after the extensive reports on William Clinton's Big Mac bill coming due. The Russian outrage is many things, but "hard to imagine" doesn't make the list.
What is hard to imagine is that a newspaper which was once an American newspaper could write about such a thing happening and not reflect on what would happen if it the events actually took place in America. But that's what the Times does in the same sentence. Notice how the hypothetical 'happening' takes place "outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada." A curious bit of localization for a newspaper whose offices are over a subway in New York City and only a few blocks from several schools.
Somehow the terrorist killings at Russian schools cannot be imagined by the Times to happen in America, in New York City, where 3,000 died. No, they have to be moved off, placed at a politically correct distance. With that, I suppose, no avid reader of the New York Times will imagine that what was done to the children of Russians will ever, could ever, happen to their own children in the city of New York.
If the readers could imagine such a thing then they certainly might not support the forthright Times editorial board in the one thing it wants out of the entire episode: "Unless Vladimir Putin opens up negotiations with legitimate Chechen leaders, Russia will not be the only nation to suffer more terrorist attacks."
Ah, the New York Times wants -- after the slaughter of hundreds of children -- appeasement and negotiation. On a certain level, it is comforting to known that in a world awash in fear and fascism, the New York Times remains true to the obsessions of its publisher and his editors. What would it take for this to change? It is hard to imagine, but at some future dark day the sight of dozens of the children of New York's media elite lying shot and burned in body bags on the sidewalk outside their private schools in New York City might do the trick.
I wonder whether, if that terrible day should ever come, the editorial staff of the New York Times will use copies of today's editorial to cover the faces of their own dead.
It wasn't in what Bush said or how he said it. Nor was it in what he didn't say. it wasn't in the common touch parts, or the "Memo to America Re: My Upcoming Programs" part. It wasn't in the cheers or the protesters hustled out. It really wasn't in any of that because every part was what was expected, and what was practiced -- over and over again. Smooth and, you will excuse me, not entirely lacking in nuance. Yesterday was Miller Time. Tonight was a Noh Drama. It contrasted well with the D'oh Drama played out last month in Boston.
What it was in was the way in which the erstwhile "opponent" felt so behind, so defeated, so crushed that he felt he had to, he just had to, rush onto the airwaves and froth into the slipstream. Except for his dwindling pack of true believers, nobody watched, nobody listened --except to mock -- and nobody waved goodbye.
If I had any secret doubts that John Kerry has lost this election , and lost it big-time, they are now swept away by his blast of blather in the last hour.
I don't expect Bush or the RNC to back off of Kerry one centimeter for one nanosecond. It is important, for many reasons, that Kerry and the depraved version of the Democratic Party he leads to be crushed into compost so that a new party can grow back in its place. But I do expect Senator Kerry to sleep with Senator Kennedy's fishes.
Now, if we could just figure out how to start a recall election in Massachusetts.
The great British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli once said: "My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me." The inaptly-aptly named 'Wretchard' of Belmont Club certainly fills out that notion admirably.
But it is more than just mere agreement that makes The Belmont Club a force for good in the blogsphere as well as the world. The real drawing power of the Belmont Club is the author's almost flawless melding of scholarship with style.
Many in the blogsphere write well, but few write as well and fewer still better. The prose of Wretchard is, on a day to day basis, clean, clear and spare with just a soupcon of poetry thrown in -- not just in his frequent pointed quotations from the masters. It's a prose that illuminates not only the insights but the great range of his mind.
Continued...
"Say goodnight, Gracie."
"Goodnight Gracie."
"Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
I was looking kind of dumb
With my finger and my thumb
In the shape of an "L" on my forehead "
-- SmashMouth, All Star
In the last few days there have been a lot of cycles wasted by people on the left, right, and center noting how badly the Kerry campaign is doing. To my mind, this is like suddenly discovering gravity.
The Kerry Campaign is doing badly because it has always done badly. Snagging the nomination from eight or nine less-electable clowns doesn't mean you're doing well, it just means you're not doing as poorly as the rest of the pack.
Still, I will admit that the campaign itself has, over the last fortnight, begun to do poorly in a more visible fashion than the performance of the previous year. Usually, they were able to keep the lid on somehow keep the right face on things, but of late this mask has begun to slip and that's a sign of deep existential distress on the inside.
The big question that keeps the keyboards humming at this point is : "Why?" This meditation is usually answered by some pundit or another hauling out the quick fix, the sure tactic, and the smooth move that will set things right and put John Kerry back on the path to the big chair in the oval office. Some have even gone so far as to propose Joe Trippi be brought in from the fields of clover he is currently cavorting in to right the good ship Kerry and send it smoothly into the harbor.
All these answers and suggestions are rank nonsense.
The single and only internal reason that things are now seen to be going badly inside the Kerry campaign is that deep inside the Kerry campaign, in the very core of the candidate himself, the have seen the fiery finger of fate write in glowing and deeply etched letters the single word: LOSER.
That's right -- down in the center where the Kerryites are sifting their statistics and spreadsheets and seeding their spin they already know what most of us are just beginning to sense-- THEY'VE LOST AND THERE IS NOTHING, BUT NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Continued...
Times Square Then Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Times Square Now: Was it worth it? Photo by Van der Leun
Donald Sensing reminds us that history is "what happened when" and why it means something more than "today is the first day of the rest of your life." At One Hand Clapping he reminds us that: On this date in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered almost without conditions to the United States and our allied nations, ending World War II.
I love it when card-carrying Upper Westside Wackos like Donna Leiberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union proclaims "We are not some fringe lunatics, we are the people. We are the mainstream of America!"
It makes me feel good to know that even after years of abuse, Prozac is still working for people like Donna. It confirms my judgment that people like Donna have been so nuts for so long that they actually think the life they lead is normal. I'm all for extending and heightening this delusion for as long as possible so that their crack-up after the looming November Bush Blow-Out will be permanent.
Over the years I probably attended more than two dozen Civil Liberty Union parties and somewhere, to my shame, I probably have a sheaf of cancelled checks. Between the cocaine, the marijuana, and the booze found and served at these little autofornication festivals, I can assure you that at no time did the word "normal" enter my thinking when discussing the parties. Among the many
Continued...Stan at Logic & Sanity: School seized in Russia reads Russian and is translating, summarizing and blogging the details of this unfolding atrocity from the Russian wires whenever a new item surfaces.
Earlier today, the animals who did this released 26 hostages. They still hold and threaten to kill hundreds .... of children.
Here's what the hostages they released look like:
On Loaves, Fishes, and LILEKS (James)
I'm always among the last to be persuaded of the miracles of loaves and fishes to be found in "new" technologies and "new" media [see item just below this one], but during my recent month's break from blogging I took in a lot of arguments about the significance of blogs in this election cycle. Still, with all the citations of this study and the pointers to that study and the constant links to this issue provided by Reynolds I was, due to my innate conservatism on this issue, not quite persuaded. Until today when, at last, LILEKS (James) put paid to this issue in his usual offhand. "oh, by the way," manner.
James Lileks, the Mark Twain of our era, is always at the top of my must read list. He's best taken with the first cup of coffee in the morning. Although he's at the top of my list, I hesitate to link to him since I assume anybody coming here has already been there.
This morning, however, he serves up a textbook example of why blogging matters.
===
Hmm. First, Hewitt's interview with Terry McAuliffe.
HEWITT: I want to start with some very easy questions.
MCAULIFFE: Yeah.
HEWITT: Do you believe that John Kerry took a CIA man into Cambodia and kept his hat?
MCAULIFFE: Uh, I have no idea.
HEWITT: You have no idea that he made that story to the Washington Post and that he made it again in 2004 to the LA Times?
MCAULIFFE: If John Kerry said he did something, I'll take John Kerry at his word.
HEWITT: Do you think that he ran guns to anti-communists in Cambodia which he told the U.S. News & World Report on May of 2000? MCAULIFFE: I don't know. You'd have to ask John Kerry about that. I don't know what he did in Cambodia or didn't. That was a war 35 years ago. I want to talk about this year.
HEWITT: Did he go to Cambodia on Christmas Eve -- your understanding-- in 1968?
MCAULIFFE: I think he probably did and probably George Bush when he was in the Alabama National Guard was driving the boat.
"Now watch this.
"In one instance, it's "I have no idea," and in the other he's quite certain what Kerry did. In McAuliffe's mind, the contradiction doesn't matter -- who'll notice? He's compartmentalizing. The Hewitt interview ceased to exist, or matter, the moment it was over. On to the next engagement. But that's oldthink, brother. If you want an example of how blogging can impact elections, this is a perfect example. Radio host blogs an interview with big-time party strategist. Another blogger uses a camcorder, iMovie and a .mac account to post a snippet of an interview with the same guy on the same subject. A third party draws a connection between the two statements. You can hunt and link and draw your own conclusions. You're no longer the reader, absorbing what the editors have sought fit to give you. You are the editor."
===
Who are you going to believe? Us or your lying eyes?
Lileks, as usual, is the polite Minnesotan in his use of "compartmentalizing." What is really going on is that McAuliffe is lying through his bleached porcelain inlays. He is lying as fast as he can and as hard as he can. He is lying because he knows that his candidate has lied, that his party has bought the lie and that the only slim, razor thin hope, for victory lies in more lying.
The only problem is, as Lileks so deftly demonstrates with one excerpt and one link, is that lies that previously "didn't matter" are now blood simple to expose and distribute.
And with tens of thousands of blogs eager to participate in the exposure of lies and real-time fact-checking it becomes harder and harder to disavow them. Blogs stand McLuhan on his head as a medium that instantly massages messages and finds all the lumps, bumps and blockages.
This current electoral campaign has exposed in harsh and brilliant light the brutal fact that the major media does not now have, nor has ever possessed, a self-policing mechanism. (Spare me the pointers to Dan Okrant, the clean-up of the Jason Blair hoax or any of the numerous other items. These are either desperation moves or post mortem effects -- most likely the latter.)
For a long time it has been obvious that the major media has become, through sloth, attrition, nepotism and cronyism, a self-selected and unelected shadow
Continued...On the Recurring Plague of the Technocrits, the Global Swarming of the Internet, and the Flaming Ozone Holes of the Blogsphere
NOTE: When I initially wrote this response to one of the endless Technology-As-Messiah manifestos that polluted the Net in the boom-boom days of the dot.bomb bubble, I had assumed that the then looming blow-out would put paid to the mouthbreathers who then spewed their gospel on the rubber-tofu circuit of conferences and seminars. Of course, I was wrong.
I failed to take into account that these perverted purveyors of pap had no second careers lined up and were indeed members of the hard-core unemployable. (Which is probably why so many have failed to see any improvement in their personal economies of late.) I did not foresee that their bodies would no be exposed to the elements and recycled by roaches, but that they would simply enter a state of stasis until reanimated by foreclosures on their jumbo mortgages, or the need to put their spawn into useless colleges.
With the advent of the GoogleSpasm, they have all returned to life and are again selling the same old spew in the same old bottles but with a few new fonts on the label.
Watching their tsunami of crapola again infest the Net, it seems appropriate to return to this essay and update it just a tad to acknowledge that the undead spawn of Neuromancer lurch among us again. The Technocrits are back. Time to get out the sledgehammer and sharpen several dozen wooden stakes.
In this besotted age of unremitting technological spasms, we all struggle to maintain our consciousness, social position, phony-baloney jobs and inadequate incomes through rigidly researched and needlessly reiterated blather. The Ponzi schemes that unfold each day in communications and computing can be numbing, yet still personally enriching -- which is why we need to pay attention to who's got the honey pot.
One understandable reaction is to blather: "Are these changes good, bad, or profitable? Should we sell out or buy in?"
The answer is "Both, frequently, and 'SHOW ME THE MONEY!'"
"But how, Uncle Gerard," you ask, "can we buy in?"
My children, nothing could be simpler. Just look around and whip out the cash. You are The Consuming Class, do what you do best. When in doubt, buy the bullshit.
Hypnotic technologies, such as voice mail, Gmail, feature-glutted and overpriced software, fertility drugs, boner pills, Spam, genetic engineering, instant messaging, Gameboy, cruise missiles, online conferencing, Black Tar Heroin and Roofies are making business, dating and life itself more convenient and enjoyable, and many (white) people in San Jose, New York, Boston, Washington, Seattle, Bern and the Grand Cayman Islands healthier, wealthier, and wiser.
So get yours now while the getting is good. With Google on the Big Board, Technocrit is back in play.
Technology is again working hard at trivializing work, atomizing families, and puffing up the economy in utterly predictable ways. Our cool new technologies -- now wireless! with snapshots! -- are also reintroducing every single day age-old forms of muscular tension, wrist damage, sight impairment, mental distraction, goofing off, and spiritual and physical masturbation. You also get useless gadgets you just gotta have to organize a life that has no purpose beyond the next
Continued...The American Left, the Democratic Party, and John Kerry's "message" is that everyone should just back off on this "War on Terror" business and look to their wallets and their health care plans. This group of unhinged allies seems to feel the important things at this time are entitlements and more taxes. Check that-- their only real idea is that George Bush must go. Beyond that, they have no real feelings or plans or proposals whatsoever.
But all their hate and all their rabid insanity comes to nothing, to less than nothing when, looking about the world, you see that the psychopaths of the Islamic religion are capable of this:
School seized in Russia.An elderly woman -- shot. An 11th grade girl -- shot in the back.Details... ~50 children managed to escape at the time of seizure. 11 students and 4 adults hid in the boiler room (from where they were safely led out by the police). Later on, 2 girls managed to escape. They report that the terrorists are acting very aggresively and are scaring the children. One of the terrorists is wounded. The hostages are being kept in the school's gymnasium. The number of hostages mentioned here is 500 . Terrorists have mined the area around the school.
There are about 25 terrorists, 4 of them are women with bomb belts, and they also have 2 dogs. now being re enforced with troops. No more specifics are given.21 year old Kazik brought his sister to school. He tells the journalist what he witnessed.
Around 9 am, an old truck pulled up and about 20 heavily armed terrorists dressed in black and wear black masks and 4 women with bomb belts came out.
Children started to run. Those who were standing closest to the street were able to make it out. Terorrists starting pushing others, and throwing some children through windows (!!!).And elderly woman was shot, and a girl who looked like an 11th grader was shot in the back. She died on the spot.
I've long realized that a small page on the web is not a tool for convincing anyone of anything they don't already believe, but it just stops me cold when -- knowing what these people are capable of, and having been shown it time and time again -- there are still people who are my fellow citizens that actually believe anything other than killing will work with this pathology. Instead, the tens of thousands of Left/Democrat demonstrators are using their time to dance, jump, and posture around Manhattan today. I've heard this lauded as an admirable exercise in freedom and perhaps it is. It's also just sick.
We once would have said that an attack on a school and the threatened killing of hundreds of school children couldn't happen here. Nobody says that anymore. And if it did?
Would that finally wake us up? Would it? And if not that, what, exactly will it take? You don't root out this kind of psychopathology with talk therapy, you quarantine and then cauterize it.
And it will come to that. Yes, it will.
Glenn Reynolds in the Wall St. Journal on why old media can't seem to bail out Kerry's swamped boat.
Ten Bullets from Stephen Green that are shooting .527 holes in the hull of said boat.
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
PI PIE
PermaLinkIâll Be Knocking Out Beautiful Poetry This Whole Goddamn Flight
There are no limits to my subject material. Iâll write a poem about flowers. Iâll write a poem about dragons. Iâll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and youâll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But donât get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeneyâs Internet Tendency: Monologue:
Koan for Our Era
Comment of the Moment
"Get me re-right"
Everyday exciting things happenâ to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. âA good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.â
Mitt did it all wrong
Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ｍ Don Surber
Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot
Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.
Landlord's Nuts
The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord
The Vile Monsters of Planned Parenthood and Their Hostages
And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com
A double whammy on the dumb class.
The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ｍ Gucci Little Piggy
Ten West of COFAX
Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:
View from the Land of NO-Money
Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment
Not a dry fly in the house
The Choice: A Scion or a Bastard
They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contendersâBarack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romneyâall exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com
Gay Choice? Yet More "Settled Science" That Is Becoming Unsettled
who were very loosely defined as âexclusively or mostlyâ homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a âgay gene.â But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed heâd discovered the âGod gene,â so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: Whatâs Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine
Beardski: Just the Thing for the Coming Global Ice Age
Have you ever wondered where your Flying Car is, now that you live in the Age of the Jetsonâs, dear reader?
When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacobâs Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal
Where Christian virtues fail
"May I suggest that this is not a rejection of the Tea Party,"
Inside The Ridiculously Complicated Process Of Buying A Super Bowl Ad
And now football, like Madonna, is over...
"Then there's the other Republican Party. "
that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!
Piltdown Man: Another Case in Which "The Science Is Settled"
those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer
"If you were an Iranian subscriber to the Post who works at Iran's "Interests Section" inside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, what would be your considered judgment? "
I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore
The Summing Up
Citizens of Slab City
soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands
Big Wind: For Dummies, Chumps, and Greens
it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:
"There are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: "
the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the âÂÂway you lookâÂÂ, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days Âť Are You "Them"?
Even a Nun Might Say, "Jesus Christ it's cold in Europe!"
And the Sammy Hager Award Goes to McCain for "You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!"
but evidently theyâre issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: Itâs down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldnât be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Copâs Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain
"Spoiler alert! Living in San Francisco with her gay male BFF blogging the existential ennui of being unmarried was my tip-off."
Change is nothing but the status quo
considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance
The One-Check Education Bill in the United States
If Newt wasn't steeped in envy, spite, and self-pity he wouldn't have to empty his drool cup so often
"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didnât deserve congrats â CNN Political TickerSigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!
Strange Apparatus
Nerd Valentines
The Dead Cities of Syria
Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer â extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas
10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science
In which Warren Buffet wraps up his national tour of intellectual drooling and presidential fellatio with bunny ears
The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."
If he's talking about prayer we know he's lying. On the other hand....
Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com
Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low
So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge
Caesar Commands the Jews Eat Pork, Quakers Join Army, Amish Get i-Pods, Christians Burn Incense
Kinder, Gentler Embroidery
OâSullivanâs First Law: Any institution that is not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.Â
It is a fresh reminder that the left fully absorbed and adapted the Brezhnev Doctrine: once they capture an institution, they aren'ÂÂt giving it up. How dare a private foundation stop coughing up the dough. It explains why "diversity" means conformity to liberal views in newsrooms, college faculties, and Hollywood studios. It's why the left reacts with howls of outrage every time you propose reducing taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, even as the left disingenuously argues that NPR and PBS receive only a "tiny" amount of tax subsidy. It should also remind us how the left will fight every battle to shrink government like it was Verdun. Which suggests one obvious conclusion if you're an incoming Romney Administration: go big. Go after everything at once. -- | Power Line
DIANA WEST: An Interesting, In-Depth Interview
Diana West, discusses her weekly online column syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. She writes about cultural and political issues from a self-described conservative viewpoint. She talks about some themes in her columns, including the spread of Islamic law throughout formerly non-Islamic areas of the western world and her opposition to the war in Afghanistan.
"Every day we see people championing the pathetic in journalistic essays:"
No one champions the simple strivers, those who take care of themselves and in the process alleviate society of one more charity case, and along the way create wealth via 'gains from trade' implicit in market transactions. A simple prosperous mensch who does not hypocritically claim he primarily works for others is off the radar, implicitly insulting to any intellectual making considerably less than him. The kind of change Murray is talking about will not happen until productive, successful people again feel pride in their distinguishing learned characteristics, including the willingness to shame people who do not have them. -- Falkenblog: Charles Murray Reiterates Willpower
Poor Mitt Romney
I would suspect he has actually done more for the poor than anyone else in the presidential sweepstakes, by virtue of the tithes he has paid to his church and the whopping taxes he has actually paid. While we might carp and squeal about his tax rates, the actual amount of cabbage he has forked over in his career to the federal government must cover a sizable acreage indeed, and we assume that even given the spectacular ineptitude of that same government in distributing assistance to the needy without leakages of Mississippi dimensions into various private spillways and sluice gates, a fair amount of Mitt's earnings must have found its way into the pockets of the deserving. -- | The Daily Cannibal
Commenters Can Be Really Mean
2:00 PM: Golf with Plouffe
5:00 PM: Dinner with the wookie
6:00 PM: Sneak a cigarette
6:15 PM: Watch Oprah on Tivo
8:00 PM: Smoke a joint and have sex with a male campaign staffer
8:05 PM: Done with sex
8:10 PM: Watch the wookie scarf down everything in the White House refrigerator
9:00 PM: Hold the wookie's head as she "purges" her snack
9:30 PM: Watch Ray Maddow fantasize about sex with him
10:00 PM: Pass out
This is the ghetto way of life.
The ones I do are 1) really big-ass black guys with hardcore street cred, 320 pounds and a lot off tattoo chatter on their arm, 2) Mexican psycho dudes with tattoos on their face. See the commonality? Once you etch shit in your face you are telling the world that you have ceased belonging. This is a clear signal of danger. Animals use subtle aromatic spear to ward off predators. Man now uses skin ink. Heavy skin ink. -- Men in East L.A. that scare me ｍ An Unmarried Man
"Fiat, fiat, fiat": Catholics need to declare the president as anathema
Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Barack Hussain Obama himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.That would pretty much work for me. What about the Catholics among us?
- Only By Fire Is Fascism Finished
- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts, Redux
- Visit to an Old Friend
- Movie Most Unlikely to Be Applauded at Cannes or Given an Oscar
- The Dead Documents Sketch
- The American Digest Reader: A Short Selection
- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts
- The Missing
- The Missing
- Times Fatigue
- On Media Ghouls, American Decency, and the 1000th Soldier
- Will You Won't You Come and Join the Dance?
- CHILD CARE
- The Dead Imagination of the New York Times
- The Victory Speech
- The Belmont Stakes
- Post-Mortem Effects: The Kerry Campaign is Over
- VJ Day, September 2, 1945
- Just Your Average American
- The Islamic Terrorists and Their Child Hostages