Taken by Wally Pacholka. Click to enlarge.

"Is there any place in the world you could see a real sight like this? Yes. Pictured above is single exposure image spectacular near, far, and in between. Diving into the Earth far in the distance is part of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, taken with a long duration exposure. Much closer, the planet Jupiter is visible as the bright point just to band's left. Closer still are picturesque buttes and mesas of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, lit by a crescent moon. In the foreground is a cave housing a stone circle of unknown origin named False Kiva. The cave was briefly lit by flashlight during the long exposure. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka reports that getting to the cave to take this image was no easy trek. Also, mountain lions were a concern while waiting alone in the dark for just the right exposure." - From APOD @ NASA

The Falls at Kaaterskill, Cole, 1826

Why most contemporary painting is crap: Hudson River Schooled by James Panero - The New Criterion

The original Hudson River School was full of secrets—perhaps more than any other movement in American art. So the prospect of a genuine revival giving way to false profundities couched in technique is a serious concern. The original Hudson River School artists did not go into the wilderness to paint illustrations of the natural world. They went to paint the God they saw manifest in the natural world.

Startrek Socialism: The Western Chauvinist: Is Modern Liberalism Gene Roddenberry's Fault?

Capitalism or socialism? How primitive. As far as I can tell, no currency ever changes hands. Everyone in the Federation seems to "work" for the Federation (is this the U.N.?). And, of course, they're perfectly matched to their positions. I mean, Scotty was born an engineer. You get your food from this nifty device called a replicator - no charge! Housing, clothing, transportation, child care, education - all provided by the Federation. Whoopee!

Continued...

Dear Congress:

I am writing in response to your request for additional money via the "WTF!? Re-Financing America Extortion Act of 2008." I put "Poor Planning" as the cause of my overnight insolvency. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

I am a taxpayer by trade. During the last year of the recent mortgage "accident," I was working alone on the roof of a broken-down six-storey building in West LA, laying down slate shingles and edging it with solid copper gutters, hoping to flip it to "Flip This House" at the Steal It Yourself cable francise. When I completed the paperwork to purchase this pig, I found I had some cash on hand thanks to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" section of the "No-Money-Needed Mortgage."

This money, after I converted it to seemingly solid gold GoogleRands, weighed 240 lbs. This was delivered to me on demand by a bank-insured helicopter drop onto the roof of the building I was hoping to flip. Talk about your "windfall profts!" This was money for nothing. Rather than carry the gold GoogleRands down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. To do so I had the helicopter lift me off the roof and deposit me on the ground. It was all part of their "customer servicing."

Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and

Continued...

Continued...

If you've been playing the new game "Where in the World is Michelle Obama?" you'll be pleased to know she hasn't just been at home baking cookies. Indeed, it is even possible she's been sitting for the first bust of the proposed O-Admin, 2009.

Or perhaps our more demented artists have been mistaking eggs for chickens. In these days of artists taking leave of their senses in a manner not seen since Andy Warhol quit illustrating shoe catalogues it is difficult to know the bathos from the bathwater.

Submitted for your approval: The latest glob of bathos to hit the fan, Daniel Edwards' overheated and possibly premature hunk-o-hooey, Michelle Obama’s Makeover for America

[Click to enlarge]

For the salacious details of this new Nefertiti of the Windy City, we must turn to some steaming hot artsy bullshit from the Leo Kesting Gallery:

Continued...

Continued...

OKAY!!!! LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT!!!!

AS OF THIS MOMENT 2008, HAS OFFICIALLY BECOME THE ALL CAPSLOCK ELECTION!!!!

AWARE OF ALL, AND THE SOUCE OF SOME, INTERNET TRADITIONS, I HEREBY DECLARE THAT WE ALL ENGAGE THE CAPSLOCK KEY AND REFRAIN FROM RELEASING IT UNTIL NOVEMBER 5TH!!!! AFTER WHICH YOU CAN

release it if your side won.

If your side did not win,

YOUR CAPSLOCK SHALL MUST REMAIN DOWN FOR AT LEAST 4 MORE YEARS!!!!

PLUS ALL SENTENCES MUST END WITH AT LEAST 4 EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!

ONE FOR EACH YEAR YOU HAVE LOST!!!!

READY!!!!???

ENGAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---

INSPIRED BY THE ANCHORESS!!!!

Christopher Hitchens notes, not without irony, that

"American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less." -Pakistan is the problem. Slate Magazine

Of course, that may not be so much of a problem since so much of Obama's allure depends on either not meaning exactly what he says, or not meaning anything he says. Obama communicates to his supporters in the "beyond the linear-verbal mode." What he says is not what you get, it is what you see that you get. But you are only buying the visual not the verbal.

His supporters "believe." They believe that after he is elected, the "real Obama" will emerge from behind the curtain and lead them to the promised land. The real policies of Obama are not to be spoken before the election, but left to come along after in classic Manchurian Candidate mode. Mandrake the Magician has done less hypnotic gesturing in his whole career than we have seen from Obama in this campaign.

At the same time, the thing for his supporters to worry about when it comes to Afghanistan-Pakistan is

Continued...

[Illustration by Doug Ross Click to scare yourself.]

On Monday James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic, ate piping hot crow during his required ritual humiliation segment on Fox. [*Scroll down for video clip.] He did so as The Atlantic, in full-damage control mode, strove to underscore that The Atlantic did not know what it was getting when it hired Jill Greenberg to defraud Senator McCain. What he says makes a certain amount of sense -- "We didn't know the gun was loaded!" -- but not complete sense. Especially if you know a bit about how magazine issues are planned.

As a result, I'm not buying the Bennet/Atlantic line that the magazine did not know what they were getting. Indeed, his argument pretty much boils down to a plea of "Guilty -- but with an explanation." I can accept that Bennet himself may not have known about Greenberg's peculiar political pretensions. (Note that he is careful to use "I" throughout the clip below -- as in "I have not had any correspondence with her..."), but Jason Treat, the art director of The Atlantic must have known. And it is Treat that's probably in the hot seat at the present time.

Jill Greenberg's politics and style are well-known to any one who pays attention to the work of "editorial" photographers. They are especially well-known to the art directors of magazines since it is their job to know. It is a very small world.

Continued...

[ UPDATE: Monday - Video: Atlantic editor James Bennet takes a turn in the Fox barrel saying, in essence, "Who knew?." Magazine and article author are just "victims." Atlantic to apologize to McCain, suspend payment to Greenberg, contemplating lawsuit. Details at bottom of post. Scroll down.]

"Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.” - Jill Greenberg

The Atlantic Monthly's current cover by Beverly Hills photographer Jill Greenberg looks like this:

Not really Annie Leibovitz quality, but not even Annie's delivering that these days. ["One sees such portaits, and what can one say but...”Salieri."]

As far as it goes it is workmanlike enough and presents McCain, unlike the Obama covers we are used to seeing, without the halo. Given the level to which the owner and the staff of the Atlantic are in the tank for Obama -- the owner's wife, Katherine Brittain Bradley, is on record in one instance for $28,500.00 to committees supporting Barack Obama-- even the cover-lines are not half-bad if a bit half-hearted. I'd only remark that it is no accident that the Atlantic's editor approved the upper red slash bar with the words "Porn" and "Adultery" in it. Editors, especially those whose paycheck depends on displaying their bias for their boss, love those little gotcha games. I know. I played them too.

But that's not where the Atlantic cover story stops.

It's a question, you see, of the disposition of all the McCain "out-takes" from this shoot. Out-takes are images taken of a subject at a photo shoot that are not used for publication by the client commissioning them. Typically, when you hire a photographer for a shoot -- and I have hired dozens over the years -- the photographer delivers all the film or digital images taken to the editor and art director for their review and selection. In a professional shoot these can easily be dozens if not hundreds of images.

[Greenberg NSFW, children and other living things now on continued page]

Continued...

Note: In response to this item on my sidebar yesterday I received the "comment" below by Mumblix Grumph, who when I wrote to ask him where he got it replied, "From my own head.  I thought it up while driving home from work yesterday." I've moved it here so that it not be missed.

"Look at his hands, Bobby." Dad said.

Ten year old Bobby had been staring at the imposing face of Abraham Lincoln feeling that he had been silently judged and that Abe had found him unworthy.

"The hands, Bobby. That is the mark of a great artist. Too many people get focused on the face, but the hands...that's where the skill of the artist truly shows.

Continued...

Where have we seen the Sarah Palin look before? Here's one comparison.

Attractiveness is a quality generally found in the political classes. Not always, of course, but more often than in most other lines of work. And while a certain intelligence plus an ability to immediately make a direct connection to another person are probably more important qualities, attractiveness doesn't hurt.

What is highly unusual, however, is for a candidate for office to be actually beautiful. To even the most passing glance of anyone not poisoned by ideology, it is immediately obvious that Sarah Palin possesses classic beauty. The last day's flap over the attempt of her opponent, Barrack Obama, to attach the label of "pig" to Ms. Palin not only fails because it is coarse and rude, it also fails because it is not true. I might also suggest that, inside Obama' mind, he plunged into his gaffe because he knows he does not possess "beauty."

Continued...

[Personal Note: A shout-out to my Harley-dude brother Tom and his sidekick Kim in Grass Valley -- and his pals at the secret Peets' coffee shop. Guys, for all you do, this Harley Babe's for you!]




HT: Media Blog

By last Friday, I'd gotten used to the idea that the children of Republican candidates had become, for many in the media and in the dark web of Obamatrons, fair game. I thought with that we had finally reach the bottom of the slime that support Barack Obama. But as always I was wrong. It would seem that for many of Obama's supporters there really is no bottom.

If you know anybody who is still considering a vote for this man, show them this and ask how any decent human being can align themselves with this sort of political machine? No matter how you might feel about Obama, his supporters -- at this point -- have sucked all the honor out of the man and his campaign and his party. It's like watching a monstrous post-modern inside-out version of the Klu Klux Klan ooze out along the edges of the Democrat Party.

Continued...

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... - Sarah Palin's Address to the RNC

Is Obama's courage limited to talking? I've been reading a number of quotes from Senator Obama over the past 24 hours that have to do with fighting. He's not taking things lying down. He's not going to be "bullied." That the sort of tough talk that's pretty much par for the course in political metaphors these days.

Last night, for instance, while getting paid a hundred grand and change for having dinner, the Obama scene went like this:

Bon Jovi [once a well-known rock star] and his wife, Dorothea, hosted more than 100 people for dinner on their mansion lawn by the Navesink River in Middletown, N.J. The price was $30,800 a person, to be divided between the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

"When I look at Barack, I see an old man," Bon Jovi said in introducing his guest. Obama is 47, Bon Jovi is 46.

Obama spoke for about eight minutes before greeting guests individually. He vowed to fight Republican attacks on his character and background more fiercely than John Kerry did in his losing campaign four years ago.

"We're not going to be bullied, we're not going to be smeared, we're not going to be lied about," Obama said. "I don't believe in coming in second." - Obama At Bon Jovi Event: 'We Won't Be Bullied'

Sounds tough, doesn't he? And in the pure political sense of Chicago machine politics, he probably is.

Obama's also known for shooting hoops. As one of my commenting readers put it:

Obama, after Governor Palin's speech: "I've been called worse on the basketball court." My fantasy reply from Governor Palin: "I'm a runner and a basketball player. I don't think he can beat me on the court. I don't think he's got the stamina."

That's amusing because, as most people can sense, it has more than a grain of truth in it. Stamina is more than simply making campaigning for President your day job, stamina comes from doing a tough job in crisis mode, day after day. Sort of like, say, being an infantry soldier doing a tour of Iraq. Or flying jet fighters into places where they have a lot of anti-aircraft guns and missiles.

All of this leads me to a question for which I do not have a ready answer: "How much personal courage does Senator Obama possess and when has he demonstrated it? Not talked the talk, but walked the walk.

Surely we must have some examples of this somewhere but I don't recall any.

Why is this important? Because, as is obvious, there are times when courage, real courage in the personal, the physical, the spiritual, the moral or the political sense, is called for from a President.

We have numerous examples of these sorts of courage in the life and political career of John McCain.

What has Obama done that demonstrates real, classical courage? I would really like to know.

To my mind, courage is a far more necessary element for a leader of the United States to possess than any other. It even trumps experience. I've heard a lot from Obama and his supporters about it taking "courage to vote for Obama." But really all it takes to do that is to get to a polling place in November, go into a voting booth, and pull a lever, push a button, or mark a paper. It takes no courage at all.

Leading the country to safety and security after it has been attacked and 3,000 citizens killed in a morning -- that takes courage and we've only seen that in one man. The next President had better possess that sort of courage as well.

So again, I ask, when have we ever seen Obama demonstrate real courage?

In the tradition of "Leave Britney Alone!": Watching this two -minute clip will be either the funniest or most disgusting two-minutes of your day. Probably both.

Via davidthompson: When Hippies Weep

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories' Five Minute Project: Hot Dog Bun Grilling Jig solves one of my most persistent grilling issues.

Cooking hot dogs (and similarly shaped things) on the backyard grill is one of those classic American summer traditions. One of the weaker parts of this scheme is preparing the hot dog buns. I happen to like mine toasty and warm and crunchy, and without the hinges broken!

Detailed instructions at the link. I'm making four this weekend.

Any Questions?

Oh, the Biden, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white.
Just a stilleto has Sarah Palin,
And she keeps it … ah … out of sight.
 
Ya know when that Biden bites, with his teeth, babe
Scarlet blather sinks down like lead.
Fancy gloves, though, wears Sarah Palin, babe,
So there’s nevah, nevah a trace of red.

Now on the sidewalk … sunny mornin’
Lies a Democrat just oozin' and walin' … eeek!
And someone’s sneakin' ‘round the corner...
Could that someone be Sarah Palin?

Ah - there's a band wagon …rollin' off the road don’tcha know,
Where Obama's runs’s just a'droopin' on down.
Oh, that speed bump's, it's knocked 'em off, dear.
Five'll get ya ten Sarah Palin's back in town.

Now, d'ja hear ‘bout Mainstream Media? They disappeared, babe,
Lyin', jivin' ... and just talkin' trash.
And now McCain spends just like a sailor...
Could it be Sarah Palin's raising cash?
 
Now … Barack Obama … buh-bye now dude …      
Miss Nancy Palosi... lookin' like Charlie Brown
Oh, the votes surge to the right, babe,
Now that Palin’s... back in town.

Continued...

The Way It Is

One of the realities of contemporary American political life that has been brought into sharp relief by the Web-Wide Palin flamewar that has broken out in the last week is the nearly complete absorption of the Democrats into the American Left. Outside observers have long known this to be the case, but as the days go by this is becoming increasingly clear to unaligned and unhypnotized Americans.

I've looked at how this happened and what it means in: Radical Roots and the Conquest of the Democratic Party where I note:

Continued...

Dateline: AmeriKKKa, 1968 -- 2006

WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, majoring in marijuana at the university, hanging out with the Progressive Labor Party, and skipping through the clouds of tear gas on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I was convinced that any war that would send my long-haired, sensitive, poetic and acid-tripping self off to wade through rice paddies in Vietnam just had to be wrong, wrong, wrong .

In those years it was easy to see the United States through red-tinted glasses. All you had to do was load a Chillum , roll another Giant Doobie, put "Blonde on Blonde" on the turntable, plug in the Bongomatic and light everything up. Like so many others in that long ago land of Nod-Out, this ritual was my major course of study.

Once this gentle ritual sufficiently soothed my tortured soul I'd often make my way (s l o w l y) to the daily Vietnam Day Committee meeting for a righteous rap session on how "the man can't bust our music or our movement." Then I'd float my way back home to listen to my hot red-diaper girlfriend rhapsodize about her Worker's Party parents and natter on about old Progressive Labor Party parties in New York that seemed to center not on politics but on heroin suppositories. She thought "those were the days."

Continued...

This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it's a fall, not a flight, but it feels like one until you hit bottom. Unless you keep digging. Which is the job of liberal arts departments. - One Cosmos: The Metaphysics of Envy and the Revenge of the Left

The tsunami of mud dredged up and thrown in the direction of Sarah Palin and her family over the long weekend is, I think, unprecedented. The size of the wave of filth is only exceeded by its velocity. Overall the volume of mud represents just how much Palin is feared by those for whom nothing less than an Obama victory is required for them to keep breathing on Earth.

One of the few other places we see this sort of behavior in nature is when, threatened, a tribe of primates joins together in a hooting display that quickly escalates into the flinging of feces in all directions. As a result we also note that rising above the mud is the unmistakable odor of fear. But there are, as many have noted, deeper foundations of filth on which the rumors and the ranting rests.

Continued...

Biden received 5 deferments before being declared medically ineligible for Vietnam

"According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency.

"As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.

"In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school."

Speaking as someone who remembers well the endless University discussions -- in private and in large meetings -- about how best to get a 1-Y deferment if you couldn't get a 4-F, I can only say that I applaud Biden for being awarded, at such a young age, the Asthma Get-Out-of-Vietnam-Free card. By 1968 that was a particularly hard sell. It had simply been used too much. I got my 1-Y at about the same time, but asthma was not an option for me. I had to go all the way to an Air Force Base outside of London to make it happen.

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If the goal is not beating Obama, despite the fact that the polls show he can be beaten, then I would say that the Republicans are simply victims of themselves....

If winning is to be abandoned as strategy, and the Republicans lose, what is to be done in the next five years with a lame duck Obama who can do as he wishes? Whine and complain? Get even more sick and tired of ever-more-entrenched Obamacare? Start an armed revolution? Position another loser to head the 2016 ticket? I think a lot of Republicans will get tired of this new, losing paradigm. I know I will. --Classical Values

A recent trend is prominent blacks like Kobe Bryant getting in trouble over remarks insensitive to gays.... I think it reflects a more general impatience with stereotypical black behavior. A lot of straight white people are happy to seize upon a different Official Victim Group as a club to justify finally upbraiding blacks to not be such knuckleheads. -- Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog:

Back to a list of 2:

"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)

Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."

Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy

Road kill scraped off a randomly-selected backwoods highway comes next, followed by a gap,

followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes

John Fleming reflects on Side-Lines: Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot

"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."

Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.

The Yorktown neighborhood of Philadelphia, immediately adjacent to Temple University,

prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update

What will it be about? Anything.

There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t 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. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:

If you enter “Dostoyevsky” into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days. --Dostoyevsky — Marginal Revolution

Clint is right. It IS halftime in America. We're down by about 5 trillion. Time to switch quarterbacks. -- Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad: The Untold Obama Connection - The Hollywood Reporter

Elementary school students learn what journalists do. “

Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”

No matter who you support this year, you have to admit Mitt Romney went about becoming president the wrong way.

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? -- ｫ Don Surber

The "O" Face Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this,"

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.

I'm sure there will be a lot of takers to explain that house as mental illness, but like I said: I'm not buying.

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

Planned Parenthood is very far from the uncontroversial organization the Susan G. Komen Foundation aspires to be. According to its most recent annual report, for 2010, Planned Parenthood sells abortions to nine out of every 10 pregnant women who come to its clinics.

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

I still like the Charles Murray argument which is, basically, that the poor are increasingly populated by the cognitively inferior and that taking away certain social controls has lifted the lid off of the crock pot.

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 ｫ Gucci Little Piggy

At 1,000 feet above the water... 40 knots too fast with the glideslope full scale deflection below us. Obviously, this is not going to work.

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:

There is not enough money in the world to pay back America's national debt.

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

On the same day a report revealed the names of a number of top donors to presidential campaigns, President Barack Obama spent time with around 25 wealthy donors who paid $35,800 each to be with him behind closed doors at a Washington hotel. --President Obama Spends Afternoon With Wealthy Donors In DC ｫ CBS Washington

Voters this year look set to continue an odd pattern that's prevailed in presidential politics for a quarter century.

They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all 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

In 1993 geneticist Dean Hamer studied pairs of brothers

who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” 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 “gay gene.” 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 he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine

Hit the piste like Grizzly Adams’ gung-ho nephew with your very own Beardski. Part insulating ski mask, part fake beard; these spectacular accessories will make you look like the most experienced man on the slopes. --Beardski @ Firebox.com

Answer: you sold it for a mess of pottage.

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 Jacob’s 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 there liberty turns into license and licentiousness: pornographers admired as men of business. Wealth promotes an industry of envy, as lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians make it their daily business to loot what others produce. Medicine turns to infanticide, and the Hippocratic Oath languishes. Science goes mad, and says the universe is nothing but a carousel of atoms, and your brain a defective calculation machine that merely hallucinates self-awareness and free will. --Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

but rather of the candidates themselves. None of them are worthy -- at least at this point --€” of the presidency. A three-term congresswoman and a half-term governor are as unready as Barack Obama was in 2008. Let's not fight fire with fire. Let's use water. That usually works unless it is a grease fire. --The view from the fence « Don Surber

"The $4 million price tag is the least of it." -- The 1st of 14 screens @ Business Insider

It does not believe that most of the national debates are a tempest in a teacup

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!

Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago,

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

U S Bases

What would you report home to Tehran after reading the Washington Post day after day?

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

JUST ABOUT AS BAD A GAME AS YOU'D EXPECT FROM TWO MEDIOCRE TEAMS...

There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120ｰF summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions,

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

Once an honest and intelligent person opens himself to the facts,

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:

those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones,

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 “way you look”, 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 » Are You "Them"?

“Slow traffic keep right” is such a simple rule to understand,

but evidently they’re 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: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t 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 Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain

How exactly do we know, from the photo, that she is on the political left rather than right?  Seriously.  Here is her blog and profile.  Here is her Twitter feed.  How do we know?  And that we know — should it make you less confident in your own political beliefs?  WWRHS? -- Assorted links -- €” Marginal Revolution

The status quo must be thought of as a direction, not merely a state,

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

If you had to write one big check for the whole twelve years of public education of the 88 percent or so of the entire population of the United States that doesn't go to private schools, at 2011 rates of $10,441 per person per year, it would be a check for thirty-three trillion, eight hundred forty-eight billion, eight hundred eighty-six million dollars. --Sippican Cottage: Bin Laden; Joe Biden; Whatever

Tru' dat, but every few days it seems that this whining "candidate" redefines "sore loser:"

"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 didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political Ticker

Sigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!

Hoping for another visitation from ye olde Proverbs 5:3

Valentine's Day gift ideas for the nerd in your life.

Over 700 abandoned settlements bear the collective name 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 – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas

Kenneth Boehr, Clara Lazen's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used

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

No fool like an old.... etc. A Day With Warren Buffett Offers Wealth of Photo Opportunities

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."

Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com

No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month!

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

To all Roman Catholics who voted for Mr Barack Obama: SUUUCKERS! -- | John C. Wright's Journal

☛ Thinking Right Archives ☚

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• A True Image from False Kiva
• Executive Summaries
• The Barrel of GoogleRands
• The Poetry of the Young Barry Obama
• Michelle Obama's Makeover for America by Daniel Edwards
• Palin Should Give the Kid a Get Out of Jail Free Card
• THE ALL CAPSLOCK ELECTION!!!! A MODEST !@*$%!!! PROPOSAL
• Obama's War
• Atlantic Mechanics: What Did the Atlantic Know and When Did It Know It?
• Out-Takes: Behind The Atlantic's McCain Cover [Bumped]
• The Hands
• The Beautiful Candidate
• It Really Is Just This Simple: #2
• Democrat Palin Hate: There Really Is No Bottom
• Does Obama Possess Courage?
• "Hand me the gun. No, the bigger one." -- David Thompson
• Sheer All-American Genius!
• It Really Is Just This Simple
• Sarah the Knife
• Everything You Really Need to Know About the Palin Family