- Scipio notes: To eliminate rabies you kill dogs.
- Who's Next?
The likely targets would not at first be American. India was chosen for a reason. It was next door to Pakistan, it had poor security, and exiting to Pakistan was theoretically possible. Indeed if there were twenty not ten attackers, then ten have escaped. The Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France, Britain, are all convenient targets. All these nations lack any meaningful ways of killing the plotters, which to them is the only thing that matters in considering such attacks. -- Whiskey's Place: The Bombay World
"I find myself increasingly repulsed by Muslim practices and beliefs. Middle Eastern, African, Asian, American, the country of origin makes no difference. Women and children treated as chattel, genital mutilation, child brides, honor killings, culturally accepted pedophilia, the black drapes and head coverings, no rights, no votes, little to non-existent educational opportunities, no voice, no choices, no recourse. Persecution of homosexuals. Imprisonment, stoning and whipping for morality crimes. Lack of free speech. The foul treatment of non-Muslims in Islamic countries. The demented hatred of Jews. Sharia Law. Wahhabism. Madrasas. Blind obedience to Mullahs.Praying towards Mecca - a place on the map few will ever see. Individuality is shut down, originality and freedom of the mind discouraged. Islam pisses on human talents that fall outside the dark walls of its faith. Hell, I even dislike their dislike of dogs....
My lip curls at their love of theocracies, a willingness to subjugate themselves to the whims of dissolute rulers along side an ancient text they can’t even begin to comprehend, subsuming their divine individuality to a tide of dogmatic mandates. I have no use, or respect, for the people who follow this religion. I’m past tired of their bombing, shooting, acid throwing, coup d’etat loving, rioting asses and it looks like the rest of the world could stand a break from these murdering bastards, too.And she's just warming up.
Stuff White People Like Alert: "A collectible of the highest quality and integrity:"
PULL! **
Coming next-- The Joe Biden Chia Pet. (As foretold by Connecticut Yankee)
- "From The One comes the Change" So for Barry, when did it all become about Barry? @ The K. Ryan James blog
Obama: "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost,It comes from me. That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."
Killer
- Death toll in Mumbai attacks climbs to 155; Indian minister: Number could reach 200 - Haaretz - Israel News
- The plagues of terrorism and piracy will prevail until the West plays by Hama Rules
In February 1982 the secular Syrian government of President Hafez al-Assad faced a mortal threat from Islamic extremists, who sought to topple the Assad regime. How did it respond? President Assad identified the rebellion as emanating from Syria's fourth-largest city — Hama — and he literally leveled it, pounding the fundamentalist neighborhoods with artillery for days. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed up the rubble and bulldozed it flat, into vast parking lots. Amnesty International estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed in the merciless crackdown. Syria has not had a Muslim extremist problem since.
Until then, Mumbai will both past and prologue to "how we live now." Continued...
In the news today, Feds Warn Of Terror Plot Against NYC SubwaysA Pakistani immigrant was arrested and convicted for a scheme to blow up the subway station at Herald Square in 2004. There was also a planned cyanide attack on the subways by al-Qaida operatives that authorities say was called off in 2002; another aborted al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003; and a plot to bomb underwater train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan, which was broken up in 2006 by several arrests overseas.
Not, alas, news to me. What It Would Take (below) is republished from American Digest from March 13, 2004. As you and yøur family give thanks tomorrow, you might want to include George W. Bush.
AN EMAIL ASKS WHAT IT MIGHT TAKE for Islamic terrorists to move to the next level in the United States. It wouldn't, as most of us realize, take all that much. Here's one approach, but only one. There are many.
The Elements:
One City: New York
Three Locations: The Brooklyn Bridge, Union Square, Penn Station
Terrorists: 4
The Equipment:
Plastique explosives ( 10-15 pounds) of good quality, preferably military, from one of the stashes hidden years ago around Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Backpacks: 2
Ten penny nails and ball bearings: 4 pounds
Anthrax: 2 Liters from the New Jersey stash
Machine Guns: 4 (Small) with 2 extra clips each
The Time:
Late September to Early March when the weather makes wearing coats common.
Intellectual Equipment:
An understanding of the New York subway and bridge system, an understanding of symbolism in America, a willingness to die.
The Method:
For over a year after the Eleventh, I used to think about the nature of the Brooklyn Bridge, and how easy it would be to damage this 19th century structure every time I walked across it -- which was often.
On the Eleventh I stood at the Brooklyn end of the bridge handing out water bottles to the ash-shrouded ghosts that had fled across it in endless droves.
After the 11th the Brooklyn Bridge was closed except for emergency vehicles for weeks on end. After that the bridge was guarded and vehicles vetted on a random schedule for months. Sometimes the "security" went so far as to park a police car at the Brooklyn entrance.
For all I know this goes on today.
The Bridge and what it represents and, more importantly, what it controls in the way of access to and from NYC, makes for an exquisite lynchpin for a memorable workday morning in New York City. The way to work this little terrorist scenario is as follows:
Continued...Feds Warn Of Terror Plot Against NYC SubwaysA Pakistani immigrant was arrested and convicted for a scheme to blow up the subway station at Herald Square in 2004. There was also a planned cyanide attack on the subways by al-Qaida operatives that authorities say was called off in 2002; another aborted al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003; and a plot to bomb underwater train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan, which was broken up in 2006 by several arrests overseas.
If you're heading home for the holidays, here's hoping these people find you.
Welcome Back from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.
HT: The exceptional Swiss Miss
- Whenever I hear the word "art" I rack a shell into my shotgun:
Liberal culture... hasn't produced any high art because it doesn't want to, doesn't know how to, and doesn't believe in it. What started out as an individual revolt against exhausted traditions... became enshrined as a Permanent Revolution against the crusty old bothersome past, the same big hunk of history that summed up the innumerable failures of the West, at least as the grave penseurs defined them. If we are the enlightened ones, then it stands to reason that the culture of the Dark Ages must reflect the sexism, imperialism, fascism, classism, and other myriad isms that stained the globe. But they'll still go see a traveling exhibit of old Masters, and they'll still pile in the halls to hear Beethoven, because those are still the gold standards for Taste, and Taste has long been their favorite, and most self-flattering, virtue." - LILEKS, (James) @ screedblog "I know what I like, too"
WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.
"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet." - iowahawk: Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post
WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.
"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet." - iowahawk: Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post
In the strident and petulant gay protests that erupted after California's Proposition 8 passed I can't be the only one who noticed the broad yellow streak in the crowds. What we've seen in the last couple of weeks is a long, long way from Stonewall. Indeed, if most of the protestors ganging up on the Mormon Church weren't gay, you'd be allowed to call them sissies.
An editorial in The National Review this morning notes,
It’s also worth considering that, while gay-rights advocates cannot discuss same-sex marriage for more than 30 seconds without making faulty analogies to Jim Crow-era anti-miscegenation laws, some 70 percent of blacks voted for Proposition 8. While there have been a few ugly racist statements by gay-rights supporters, such vile sentiment has been restricted. Not so the hatred directed at Mormons, who are convenient targets.
"Convenient targets" is too soft a term for what's up in these cowardly protests. A more accurate term is "safe targets." And, as has been shown again and again over years, Christian churches and beliefs are the safest and most non-threatening targets of choice for twisted ideologues throughout the United States. There is one fact which has not escaped the notice of those who would jam their agendas down the throats of those who disagree with them: there are no consequences -- ever -- for attacking a Christian church or beliefs. None. Zero. Nada.
Continued...Bruce Sterling says goodbye to all that:
"Hairshirt-green is the simple-minded inverse of 20th-century consumerism. Like the New Age mystic echo of Judaeo-Christianity, hairshirt-green simply changes the polarity of the dominant culture, without truly challenging it in any effective way. It doesn't do or say anything conceptually novel – nor is it practical, or a working path to a better life." -The Last Viridian Note by Bruce Sterling
A good question without any easy -- or quick -- answers.
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Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
-- Poe, The Conqueror Worm
At the Seattle houseboat where I write, it's either spider mating season or a spider building boom. Unlike the rest of the builders in this burg, there's no slump in the spider building boom. Here no bubble has burst. All about this floating world on the lake, spiders big and small are weaving elaborate webs in all the angles a host of houseboats offer.
In fact, so many spiders are getting so busy that it behooves you to begin the day waving a straw broom across your doorways and walkways lest you end up wearing a web. Getting your face slapped and your mouth filled with web is no way to start the day. I know. So sweeping the air with a broom like some latter day sorcerer's apprentice is required. That's my current ritual and it works, most of the time. But webs, I've found, come in all sorts of shapes and diameters and not all are easily seen and swept. Miss one and you get a face full of web and the spider gets, I imagine, very ticked off seeing his long night's labor wiped out in a split second. If you both get very unlucky, you get a mouth full of web with a crunchy spider filling. Not my idea of a crisp morning's memorable moment. Certainly not the spider's.
Continued...
Would you like your Obamraham in yellow or red?
Gary Wills, like so many others of his smitten cohort, returns to the myth of Finding the Lincoln in Obama, and yet refuses to see -- with millions of others -- that the making of Lincoln was not in his election, but in the Civil War that followed in its train.
No acolyte like Wills seems wants to underscore this brute fact of the Lincoln/Obama debate. Certainly not me. Not at this time.
Instead I take solace from a passage in the Holy Book of Bob Dylan:
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
-- Bob Dylan | It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Or, as Gagdad Bob says in the comments:
The problem is, the moment Obama actually does something, he will have made the transition from ideal to real. He will have undergone the formality of existing, which is always an insult to omnipotence -- not necessarily to his, but to that of his cult members. It's the same reason why you can't show a picture of Mohammed.
I commend to you: Revolution of the Soul @ The Doctor Is In
It’s time for a counter-revolution. There is an alternative to our current cultural narcissism with its corrosive, calloused, destructive bent. It is not a new government program, nor a political movement; no demonstrations in the street, no marches on Washington. Its core ideology is over 2000 years old, and the foot soldiers of the revolution are already widely dispersed throughout the culture.
This revolutionary force is called Christianity, and it’s long past time to raise the banner and spring into action.
Then we must act like the counter-culturists we claim to be. Be patient with those who are difficult; be generous in time and money; express gratitude to those around us (when was the last time you wrote a thank you note to your doctor, your contractor, your attorney, to the manager of the store employee who helped you?). Lose the profanity; guard your tongue. Repair broken relationships, as best you can. Be joyful in difficult times, knowing that God is at work in your life despite your difficulties. Be compassionate rather than judgmental to those whose life choices are destructive or misguided. The tattoos and piercings we ridicule are cries of desperation from those hungering for purpose and meaning.There's more at the link. You will want to pay attention to it.
Obvious to those whose minds are not colonized:
There is no way to end a war but through victory or defeat. Defeat is embraced through various forms of nuanced language, such as "end it," "honorable withdrawal" and "redeploy." Victory requires no such trickery or vocabulary. Victory is victory.... There are many who deserve credit for the successful strategy that has brought victory in Iraq (one which must, naturally, be maintained and preserved), such as General David Petraeus, Fred Kagan, Jack Keane, Aussie David Kilcullen, Dr. Mary Habeck, and the list could go on to include every man and woman in and out of uniform who contributed and sacrificed. But the fact remains that only President George W. Bush made or would have made the command decision he made. Only President George W. Bush, derided and vilified, had the conviction and determination to allow a path to victory when nearly everyone else had written Iraq -- and her people -- off to defeat. Call it "The Audacity of Victory." - The Tank on National Review Online
Newt Gingrich, along with the ten thousand other Party Leaders idiots who sleep with the fishes, declares Palin won't be future GOP leader. Instead, the Newt instructs the rest of his walking dead to throw their skeletal shoulders to the wheel and roll the stone of other Republican governors up the hill. He, along with many trepanned others today, likes neophyte governor Jindal: “If you want to understand healthcare, you can do a lot worse than to bring in Bobby Jindal who may well know more about health policy than any other elected official in America and is doing an extraordinary job in Louisiana.”
The most tedious argument over the past fortnight is the one in which our pinhead pundits debate whether or not the election of Obama means racism is over.
Here's the short answer: "No."
If the election of Obama proves one thing about the race card in American politics, it proves that the race card is just to valuable a card to take out of the deck. It works and will keep on being played until it doesn't work any longer.
Which leaves us with the even more tedious question, "How long, oh pinhead pundits, how long until racism is over in America?"
Here's the less-short answer: "Racism in America will be over when the people do not elect or re-elect an African-American for President."
As to when sexism in America will be over, that's going to happen at the end of racism or shortly thereafter. In fact, given the rise of Sarah Palin and the intensity which the current ruling racists of America are seeking to destroy her, the racists know that too.
To: The Central Committee to Make America Nice Instead of Evil
From: Bill Ayers @ Newspeak Central
Re: The Way Cool New Pledge of No Allegiance
Dudes,Dudettes, (and Others Transitioning Between Genders or Just Diddling with Your Doughnut,)
It seems that people are still in a people's struggle about the Pledge of Allegiance and just don't know what is now cool. Well chill, because as we at Newspeak Central all say. "In Obama, all shall be cool."
As part of the "transition" Newspeak Central has reviewed the "old and in the way" Pledge of Allegiance. After six months of multicultural diversity focus groups this is the new one. We hope you give us hugs for it.
Did you ever have to make up your mind
Pick up on one and leave the other behind?
It's not often easy and not often kind.
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
-- The Loving Spoonful
BACK AT THE BEGINNING of this whole mess in the early 60s, Mario Savio got a lot of things wrong, but he got one big thing right. Mario peaked when he stood on the Sproul Hall steps in Berkeley in December of 1964 and said to me and a few thousand others, "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part..."
Now I'm pretty sure that if Mario were alive today he'd be among all those other Berkeley lifers who no longer speak to me other than to police my brain at a distance, while contemplating perfect organic vegetables in a perfect world where all the bongs have brimming bowls and cats and dogs sleep together in perfect harmony and all is, at last and finally, really copacetic in the world; that world where everyone gets a big fat check from the government, unless you are oppressed -- in which case you get two.
Ah, well, that was all long ago and all their town and colleges are all a crapulous shambles so let them go, let them go, God bless them. I come not to bury them, but to take inventory.
Now, as the Potemkin Presidency begins its rollout with YouTube fireside chats, it comes to me that I have passed, probably long ago, the "point of fulcrum" that John Fowles speaks of in The Magus: There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
It is my habit to take an inventory of my life from time to time. Usually it is just a mumbled conversation with myself while shaving, but at other times it assumes more concrete lineaments. It is usually in two parts, the public and the private and, as is the nature of such things, the public is both more superficial and more interesting. This is that section of my current testament. The private may or may not be along later.
I find, in processing the superficial portion of this annual inventory, that there are a number of "burning social and political issues" that no longer burn in me. It is not that they don't raise my hackles and push my buttons, but that I'm pretty much beyond the "point of re-persuasion."
These are the items that make this year's list, triggered as they usually are by a popular catch phrase that just won't die.
1. IS IT ART?
This was once stated as "It's pretty but is it art?" No more. There is almost nothing created today by 99.99999% of the talentless American citizens that have the hutzpah to call themselves artists that even begins to ooze into the "pretty" unless it is the "pretty ugly." As for beauty found in the kind of American contemporary art celebrated by the Art Mafia, you can forget about it. They hate beauty and love "edginess" since their need for novelty and cheap stimulation far exceeds their need for beauty. The reintroduction of beauty as a predominant value in American art at this point would only expose how base and ugly the decades since the classic abstract expressionist period have been.
Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers....
-- ***
Post-election ego-fluffing opportunities abound on the Barack Talk Express. Today's tidbit is the floater that Hillary's large experience shall be tapped to become the Secretary of State.
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
-- ***
Still, if Hill's got the fix in with the Big O, she'd better get the fix that'll fix her and have her hubby named Ambassador to the UN.
Continued...
New York Times Company Stock Falls to $7.34
If this keeps up the Sulzberger family may have to buy it back. If they have any cash left behind the sofa cushions.
Some people have all the fun.
In which Peter Sellers actually says, "She's are not my patient. Get dressed pleased." Yeah, right.
Found at Here’s Looking Like You, Kid who remarks:
I'm not sure wearing black hose with a peach ensemble is recommended; but when the woman is Sophia Loren -- and those black stockings are attached to the garters of a black corset -- just who is going to complain? - Seduce Like The Millionairess With An Accessorized CorsetAnd, yes, I know I'm weak for posting this. Still, I thought other weak readers might also enjoy it. Am I so wrong?
This just might be the post-O theme I've been looking for. What do you think? Take the poll after the jump.
Continued...I track about 300 blogs a day via Google Reader (If you don't have it, get it.) using a customized interface. Most of the time, items that I think are worthy or interesting are posted in the ReadRight sidebar. Today, my capture buffer overfloweth... hence the following.
- The Anglo-American Interregnum:
"Said Interregnum, which we are of course still in, has been a period of global monotonic decline in official authority. As in the late Roman period, declining official authority, declining personal morality, and increasing public bureaucracy are observed in synchrony. This is not in any way a coincidence. The combination is an infallible symptom of the great terminal disease of the polity - leftism. Leftism is cancer. At least in its present adult, sclerotic and non-fulminating form, it is extremely slow in its progress, but the end is not in doubt."- Unqualified Reservations: Patchwork: a positive vision (part 1)
- NATO For Sale "Red Storm Rising," the Remake.
- Belmont Club » If no intent, why the capability? "Some will argue that neither the West nor Israel have anything to worry about so long as it "reaches out" to Teheran; so long as it keeps the Ayatollahs happy. The problem with relying on pure diplomacy while allowing Iran to acquire an offensive capability is that if diplomacy fails, it fails catastrophically."
Continued...
1. "Women on the left hate Palin because she has a great sex life. Most of the women on the Upper East Side... their husbands haven't been aroused since Norman Mailer signed copies of the Executioner's Song back when Rizzolis was a bookstore."
2. "I'm happy now that it's over that Obama was elected. Obama is so smart that when two dim mindless magpies like Reid and Pelosi trundle down to sell their tired Willy Loman wares he's going to ignore them. I hope Obama does so well that four years hence I'm salivating to vote for him."
3. "Barney Frank wants to be arrested."
"An animation with Jules, a biologically designed robot. This animation was created to test the limitations of his servos and experiment what he can and cannot do."
Color me with many coats of Schadenfreude. I know, I know. I'm weak. I can't help it, but I just love stories like this: Times Company Stock Hits Another 52-Week Low
"With the new charge and related tax adjustments, the Times had a net loss of $106 million, or 74 cents a share, in the third quarter, compared with a profit of $13.4 million, or 9 cents a share, a year earlier."Continued...
Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.
"I told you that bitch was cray-zee!"
Continued...Here's a handy chart for you to print out and keep handy for those tough calls in online forums or comment threads.
Chart by The New York Times, 1913, for "Nearly 15,000,000 School Children Are Defective." Today, it could be used by the Times as an internal organization chart.
- See also Cobb: Three Degrees of Stupidity an enlightened discussion of fool, idiots, stooges, the doofus, the airhead, the twit, the spaz, cretins, dolts, and retards.
Ain't it just like the Left to play tricks when you're tryin' not to riot?
We sit here stranded though we're all doin' our best to deny it
.
The Dems claim a mandate for change, temptin' you to defy it
.
Hope blossoms on the opposite side
.
In our camps the flamewars abide
.
The talk radio station plays nice,
But it's got nothing, really nothing, to entice.
Just Limbaugh and Hannity so entwined
,
And these visions of Obama that conquer my mind....
In our empty treasury the pols play blindman's bluff with the supply chain
And the leftoid bloggers they whisper of escapades on the Palin Campaign
We can hear Abe Lincoln slap his forehead
Ask himself if it's him or us that's really insane
Neoneocon, she's all right, she's stayed clear
She's delicate as she posts to the 'sphere
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Obama's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the comments at her blog
Where these visions of Obama have come up from the bog
Now, little boy Ace, he takes himself so seriously
He slags Andrew Sullivan, he likes to post dangerously
And when bringing O's name up
He speaks of a farewell finger to thee
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so scrappy and all
Hosting open thread squawks for recall while America's at the mall
Oh, how can I explain?
It's so hard to rant on
And these visions of Obama, they kept me up past the dawn
Contemplatin' congress, your sanity goes up on trial
Voices blather this is what lobotomy must be like after a while
But Pelosi musta had the Biden Botox blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the Little Green Footballs all freeze
When the jelly-faced Kossacks all sleaze
Hear the ones with dementia say, "Jeeze
Find us more killers to appease."
Oh, tax-hikes and deficits swarm in our new head of state
Where these visions of Obama are not up for debate.
This blogger now speaks to the Anchoress who's trying hard to pray for him
Sayin', "Name me a politician who's not a parasite and I'll go out and I'll campaign for him"
But like Michelle always says
"Can't find a decent Dem much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares to napalm them
And the real Messiah, He still has not showed
We see the Cross we emptied now corrode
Where Liberty and belief once had glowed
Mr. Death, he now steps to the road
He writes they're coming for more money than they're owed
On the back of the Jihad truck that loads
While the next 9/11 explodes
The harmonicas play high fading blues for John McCain
And these visions of Obama are now all that remain.
The kids are not all right: Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization | Adbusters
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization â a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
Photoshop: For Real
Click to enlarge
Via Design You Trust. World's Most Famous Social Inspiration. On Flickr - HOW IT WAS MADE.
Fluffball of the Future: Admit it, you knew that all this genetic engineering stuff would come to this. Ball o fluff by *HumanDescent on deviantART
Alice, Updated. I approve. From the Lee Moyer interview @ LCSV4 The Illustration News Portal
From FDR to GWB: GOOD Sheet: The First 100 Days» "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people," Franklin D. Roosevelt told supporters in 1932 while accepting the presidential nomination. When he took office the following year, he spent his first 100 days enacting a dizzying number of reforms designed to stabilize an economically depressed nation. Since then, a president's first 100 days have been an indicator of what he is able to accomplish. In January 2009, the clock starts again.
1) Joe Lieberman - fate thereof. Joe, when the going gets DemDumb, undumb Dems get going.
2) The endless muck suck by former "aides" to Sarah Palin.
3) That video of the slop-talking, brain-dead elementary school teacher trying to pass on her disease to the kids in her "care." Fire and forget.
4) The neck and neck Speedo pose-off between Andrew Sullivan and Keith Olbermann for "First Lewinski" role in the forthcoming docudrama, The Admin of O. (Got to admit that, in purely technical terms, Sullivan's got the hot hand in this one, but Olbermann's sucking up fast from the rear.)
5) The frothing stomach-churning buzzkill sweeping Woodstock Nation as more and more Obamacons realize that the 56 million Americans who voted against Obama are not going to be easily persuaded to join the Borg. Plus, they vote. Double-plus, they're re-organizing. Triple-plus, they're armed and sending Mission Packs of ammo to each other for the holidays.
6) Any wisp of an iota of a scintilla of a jot that Mike Huckabee will be stumping in Iowa this month.
7) Any auto-fellationist "Greater Good" revisionism from the press about how the press was the national savior in our recent "difficulties." (With a note to self to get back to doing what little I can to help kill these parasites now that their oxygen from the Election ad budgets has been shut off. Joke: "What do you call a journalist in New York City starting in February of 2009?" "Waiter!")
8) Pretty much any story with enough grease on its groin to ooze its way onto memeorandum. For now.
Okay, here's the plan. If you like your sea-to-shining-sea community organized America Serves | Change.gov has 4 new corps for U.
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.Now you may not like the idea of cradle to grave government service opportunities, but others - who are, needless to say, your betters - do. Adding the 4-Nu-Corps-4-U to Americorps and Peace Corps expands the universe of re-education programs beyond your dreams.
Exactly where is the money for these corps going to come from, you ask?
Silly wabbit, it will come from those antiquated corps of yesteryear. You know, organizations like the Marine Corps.
HT: Belmont Club
Morning and mourning afterthoughts are filling up the "Newest" category @ Some Ecards
Examples:
Comics.com has made it's archives free and searchable. This includes over 21,000 Peanuts @ The Peanuts free online library
Here's Peanuts #2 from October 3, 1950:
Here's today's strip:
It would seem that some people just don't know the difference between November and January:
Stocks fall as investors ponder Obama presidency
Baghdad rocked by fresh bombings
Gaza rockets fired after clashes
Iran army warns US forces to steer clear of borders
Russia to move missiles to Baltic
Perhaps George Bush, as a parting gift to an ungrateful nation, could remind them.
HT: Dan Friedman
In the meantime, proof again of the old French maxim: "Never a rose without a thorn."
Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are
... I'm voting to bring back the Divine Right of Kings.
Hummm, it was sort of a white guys' club after all, wasn't it? Who knew?
'All hands on deck, we've run afloat!' I heard the captain cry
'Explore the ship, replace the cook: let no one leave alive!'
Across the straits, around the Horn: how far can sailors fly?
A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive.
We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come home to die.
No lofty peak, nor fortress bold, could match our captain's eye.
Upon the seventh seasick day we made our port of call,
A sand so white, and sea so blue, no mortal place at all.
We fired the gun, and burnt the mast, and rowed from ship to shore.
The captain cried, we sailors wept: our tears were tears of joy.
How many moons and many Junes have passed since we made land?
A salty dog, this seaman's log: your witness my own hand.
- Procol Harum
A long, long time ago
On graduation day
You handed me your book
I signed this way:
"Roses are red, my love.
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet, my love.
But not as sweet as you."
Bobby Vinton
World's first blue roses after 20 years of research
The blooms are genetically modified and have been implanted with a gene that simulates the synthesis of blue pigment in pansies.... The world's first genetically modified blue roses were created in the laboratory four years ago, although further research was required to make them safe to grow in nature.I'm never fond of reading the phrase, "to make them safe to grow in nature." I always wonder what happens if there is a slip-up. But then I'm so old-fashioned in this regard. Rampant genetic modification? What could possibly go wrong?
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be....
- Tennyson
Local scribbling Seattle schmucks find themselves hoist by their own petard. Run and hide like little girly-men.
Chicago Boyz posts Tit for Tat
after "the Stranger, a leftist rag in Seattle, Wa. decided it would be funny to write a supposed review of local haunted houses in which the scariest houses where those that had Republican campaign posters in their yards. [h/t Instapundit] Presumably trying to be thorough, they displayed the addresses of the houses prominently in the article.and calls for some turnabout:
I figure that turnabout is fair play, so I did some Internet research and found the address of the paperâs editorial director.
Chicago then asks:
"If a reader in the Seattle area would like to swing by and take pictures, we could post those, you know, just to be thorough."Happy to oblige.
1146 16TH AVE E
SEATTLE, WA 98112
Stranger offices
1535 11th Ave. 3rd Floor
Seattle, WA 98122
Once the story made it to Instapundit and other pages, the brave Stranger Staffers redirected the link to their brave expose to Drudge and shut down comments on the subject at "The Slog," the Stranger's blog.
Too late though: Copy of the page with addresses blanked is HERE.
Brave, brave new worlders.
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Death Thirst Still Not Slaked: In a paradigm shift, winning means losing!
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
PermaLinkGays over blacks, Part XIV
That was then (October 2011). This is now.
"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."
Widespread Dependence on Big Wind Will Bring Frostbite and Death
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
"CIVILITY NOW!" In which Morgan soft soaps who he'd vote for before the current president
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
"Bad Boy. No gun for you:" Comment of the Moment
"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.
Student, don't let the sun set on you here!
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
PI PIE
I’ll Be Knocking Out Beautiful Poetry This Whole Goddamn Flight
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:
Koan for Our Era
Comment of the Moment
"Get me re-right"
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.”
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? -- ｫ 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 ｫ 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 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
Gay Choice? Yet More "Settled Science" That Is Becoming Unsettled
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
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 Jetson’s, 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 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
"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 âway you lookâ, 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"?
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 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
"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 didn’t deserve congrats – 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 – 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
- Monday, December 1 (Updated)
- Kaddish - Sunday, November 30
- Repulsive Islam
- And now a word from our sponsor: The Obama Gold Plate
- Saturday, November 29
- Panic
- Friday, November 28 (Updated)
- How long, oh Lord, how long before Joe Biden...
- No Internet Today.
- What It Would Take to Kill New York -- A Simple Scenario from March, 2004
- What It Would Take. Revisited.
- Obama Operative Sneaks Into White House
- Welcome Back!
- Wednesday, November 26 (Updated)
- Advertisement
- Anthems for Our Time: "And it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops."
- Tuesday, November 25 (Updated)
- BREAKING! Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post
- The Gay Cowards Parades