You gotta believe!

0r - The Not-So-Pretty Perversions of Patrick Goldstein and Friends

Patrick Goldstein, Testing Pos for Perversion

The arrest of Roman Polanski for his repulsive crime has caused an eruption of foul-smelling gas bubbles in the media slime ponds where many of what passes for America’s public “intellectuals” wallow.

Foremost among these sources of stench is the chancrous Patrick Goldstein who, like many others who are “intellectually insane” sucks his pay-check out of the fetid swamp of the Los Angeles Times. Like many ill-educated and under-read third-rate scribblers, Goldstein thinks it’s the mark of a “writer” to throw a “lit’ry” reference into his prose slop from time to time. That he either has not read or comprehended the work he cites escapes his notice as he hopes it will escape his readers.

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For many years, there's been one group in the American melting pot that has consistently underperformed in terms of productivity, intelligence and moral behavior.

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Yearning for the Mud @ AMERICAN DIGEST

The French have an idiomatic phrase nostalgie pour la boue which means, roughly, "yearning for the mud." "Yearning for the mud" in America is a compulsion that comes over people when they have, for complex reasons, a need to immerse themselves in self-degradation. It's usually a mix of drink, drugs, and weird sex until the soul is obliterated by the abused flesh. The obliteration of the soul and the abuse of the flesh is one of the central tenets in many of our post-modern, secular lifestyle religions.

Most people try this sort of thing a time in their youth, but soon grow out of it when time and experience get the upper hand. Others grow out of it via deep psychoanalysis and a few trips to the rehab clinic. Still others are simply killed by it, their lives bracketed by dates that are far too close together.

Many, however, never kick it and were, in the past, thought of as "perverts" but are now more kindly seen as "differently minded." They live in those urban cores of the soul we now esteem as "Alternative Lifestyles." Once there they busy themselves in making bad design, bad decisions, bad art and bad politics. We are rich and kindly as a culture so we generally let them be. Once comfortable in their redoubts they think it their duty to sally forth from time to time and infest the rest of the nation.

A minority of the last group make a career of nostalgie pour la boue and are generally known as "pundits," "media personalities, or "celebrities."

There's a lot of cross-over of all kinds between celebrity culture and media culture. Indeed, at a lot of levels, it is becoming hard to tell them apart. Both live, for the most part, in an insulated bubble that is impervious to personal moral, psychological, or political change and ruthlessly exacts the penalty of expulsion from the bubble in the event of such change.

I'd like to suggest that there's another kind nostalgie going around in this hybrid culture that glories in the mud:Nostalgie pour la defaite -- "yearning for defeat."

Nostalgie pour la d馭aite is that state of the soul when an American, who either came of age in the Vietnam era, or who was taught and mentored by many leftists or liberals of that vintage, yearns for the defeat of America, and acts accordingly in word and deed. This compulsion is not only required to keep their residency in their subcultures, but to keep their status as well. The more virulent their articulations of hate, the higher their regard by their peers. Neither children nor even infants are safe from their depravities.

It is a perverted form of "confirmation bias." In a way, joining this group is like joining a gang -- once you're in, getting out is not an option unless you seek social and political death. Once articulated, this state is then seen as confirmation that his or her world view and social milieu is the correct view and correct milieu. To operate otherwise would throw not only all the professional views and actions of the last thirty years into question, but the entire structure of the afflicted personality as well. It is life in the lie and Palin, as an example and a symbol, puts the lie to this lifestyle.

An America that is ascendant rather than retiring, an America whose policies are aggressive and not apologetic, is an America the People of the Lie are simply unequipped to inhabit or report on. They have, quite frankly, an empty tool box when it comes to this task and no raw materials with which to build. The only America they can support is one that supports them without question. They want one thing and one thing only -- a blank check for money, means, unceasing regard and opportunity.

Our current infestation of American media personalities and American celebrities with Nostalgie pour la defaite rises from decades of beliefs in an America that is best as a "pitiful, helpless Giant;" a kind of "Nostalgie pour la jeunesse perdue" -- nostalgia for lost youth. It is literally the only America they know and their entire professional and personal lives, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Hamptons to Beverly Hills are based on this grand assumption. They've had Presidents and Presidential candidates that, commuting to and from these locales, have confirmed it to them. Their coworkers in their jobs confirm it to them. Their significant others, drawn from the same ranks, confirm it to them. The parties they attend, the awards they give and receive, the places they vacation, the books they read and the films they make and see, all confirm it to them over and over again. It is not only the only America they know, it is the only America they can know.

Anything that confirms the Nostalgie pour la defaite is news they can use. Anything that confirms American exceptionalism is not, by definition, news at all. Anything that actually represents American exceptionalism -- as the candidacy of Sarah Palin does -- is bad news and must be crushed by any means necessary.

These afflicted Americans are raised and trained to desire that, in all things, America should always lose and become less of an important force in the world. The results of a weaker America do not concern them. It is only important that America become and remain weak and hamstrung. Only then will Europeans and others say nice things about them as they flit about the world.

If America is to become weak, what do they propose in its place? The short form for their vision of the future is "an empowered United Nations."

At which point they step from their Nostalgie pour la dfaite back into nostalgie pour la boue -- the yearning for the mud. In the final analysis, it isn't that big a step. It's where they feel most at home.

Every so often I stumble across something that intersects with something I've written long ago. Case in point, photographer Kate Peters' 'home' and a long forgotten poem from 1992:

Homestead

It was found in the fog that shivered
        the slivers of glass in the windows.
It was seen in the sheen of the moon
         on the unworn wood of the floor.
It spoke with the slow, patient clutching of light
         and tapped out the unknown codes of the flesh,
         the indistinct worm of the years and the shapes
         of desire, possession, and fate.
It was mute.

It was stitched in the spaces
         of the wind's alphabet.
It was clothed in cool hands
         gloved in wet weather.
It appeared on the paths
         that admitted no passage.
It's rachety rhythms
         were all made of match sticks.
It waited.

It's slashings were tattooed
         on drapes of dank velvet.
It's gibbering laughter inserted itself
         between doorway and jamb and continued to carve.
It's snickering plumbing
         rotted the dinner.
They had left, they had left.
         Indeed, they had left.
Of that all their objects would clearly attest.

WARNING! That which is seen cannot be unseen.

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Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

If you're not creeped out, you haven't been paying attention.

Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a photo smile this amazingly consistent. On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself — the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr. And, of course, compressed into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.

Discussing this astounding series with a friend who noted the iron control that has to be maintained not only in expression but in body by people who are fakes, I was reminded of The Mechanical Turk

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Something wonderful is being posted in episodes at Sippican Cottage. Sippican, not only a star-class furniture maker, has also put in his time in contracting. The current series, part memory, part imagination, part reportage explores money, position, status and a host of other elements seldom seen. It's a kind of extended "This American Life" in prose.

I've arranged the episodes so far in a normal order so you don't have to. It's continuing on Monday. You'd best catch up now.

Some Enchanted Place "It was all you could do to keep yourself from tugging your forelock when you talked to the owners, if you ever even saw them....

So you'd walk like a shade through the byzantine halls, looking for the right door out of the hundreds, to fix something that would stay unfixed for a thousand years in a normal person's house."

Some Enchanted Place, Part Three "No house is an inanimate object....

They all have the same stuff, these people with a vapor trail of names and numerals appended to their names and phalanxes of zeroes marching to the horizon in their hidden bank accounts. They have gravel that must be gathered from a riverbank in Elysium. It doesn't even look like little stones."

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Graven Images: Racist Fundamentalist Churches of America @ AMERICAN DIGEST

I am a minister's daughter. I attended more than "my share" of church and church programs when my father pastored churches in KY, TN, and NC. All were open to people of all races and each congregation had members of different races.

I attended my denomination's church schools through my freshman year of college. Again, all were attended by children of all different races.

I knew about racism only as a subject touched upon in classes I took (such as history classes) and from what I heard on the news. But, it was not something I really experienced first hand.
I am White and cannot speak for any of the Asian, Black, or Hispanic people I have known through my church. But, as an overly-sensitive type, I do not recall witnessing anything of that nature.

This is what I know: there are so many myths about "fundies," about our intelligence, our academic achievements, and our private thoughts about people who are "different." The reality from inside is this: members of my denomination, compared to the general population, have a higher percentage of advanced degrees; our test scores in church school were higher than those of our public school counterparts (I personally scored a 1400 on the SAT); I see more marriages of couples of different races inside the church than outside the church (I think this is because our religion is a stronger identifying factor for us than our individual races).

I could ramble on and on forever but I guess my main points are this:
A. "They" (liberals? mainstream media?) have no clue about religious people or what drives them. B. It is possible for groups of people to find common ground that transcends their outward appearance (race) that binds them together in common purpose.
C. No one can force "B" on other people and make it stick. You can force them to behave in a certain way but it only works if they are converted.
D. To quote my father, "the ground is level at the cross." A truly Christian church is the truest democracy there is. There *can* be true love among its members because each member recognizes they are a sinner who deserving of hell but is saved through the sacrifice of a sinless Savior who took our punishment upon Himself. When Christianity is at its finest is when the members of a church body put aside judgment of each other and turn that onto themselves. It's the recognition of what Christ did for ME, knowing my own sins all too well, that we can overlook faults in others. We are human too and no church is perfect (meaning the members attending it) but at least we strive for something better than this evil world has to offer, strive to live holy lives pleasing to God. A church such as J. Wright's is of this world and not of God.

And, coming back to my point "A," I have concluded that this is why the media/liberals/whatever, will never have any true understanding of the mindset of Islamic fundamentalism. While I do not, obviously, agree with the religion of Islam itself, any religious person can probably at least understand the what it is to be a BELIEVER. That should not be passed over lightly - a true believer who is a Christian is instructed in the Bible that they may be persecuted to death. One must be willing to die for the sake of Jesus' name. No political talks in this world will change that mind. This is why I pray for conversion of individuals who adhere to the Islamic religion. That is the only lasting path to peace.

Posted by: Karen at September 24, 2009 11:27 AM

Sometimes, very rarely, unpatriotic actions in the United States actually have, gasp, real consequences. Freedom's Lighthouse brings us this example of a 21st century "Ducting Stool." "Flag Burner" Duct Taped to Flag Pole as Punishment by VFW Commander

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Why do we have that pants-suit load of a Secretary of State roaming about the world, when we could have people like John Hargrave on the case to bring nations, hot dogs, and buns together?

"He that has been refused

a reasonable, or unreasonable request, who thinks his merit underrated, and sees his influence declining, begins soon to talk of natural equality, the absurdity of "many made for one," the original compact, the foundation of authority, and the majesty of the people. As his political melancholy increases, he tells, and, perhaps, dreams, of the advances of the prerogative, and the dangers of arbitrary power; yet his design, in all his declamation, is not to benefit his country, but to gratify his malice." -- The Patriot, by Samuel Johnson

File under: "I try to become more cynical every day, but lately I just can't keep up."

Remember is little gem the next time the teachers in your community say they need to be paid more money.

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With Castro and Gaddafi rolling out the love for Obama at the UN, here's a third tin-pot dictator with a mental state that further enhances the reputation of the current president of the United States. Obama sure can pick 'em:

TEGUCIGALPA -- It's been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He's sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and "Israeli mercenaries'' are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.... Zelaya was deposed at gunpoint on June 28 and slipped back into his country on Monday, just two days before he was scheduled to speak before the United Nations. He sought refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya said he is being subjected to toxic gases and radiation that alter his physical and mental state. -- They're torturing me, Honduras' Zelaya claims - Honduras - MiamiHerald.com

"Torturing?" Can't have that. Send in the attorney general.

Remember this the next time somebody says, "The science is settled...."

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[Note: The following was written by FrankP of England in a comment on Quisling Time: I've said it before and I'll say it again, "The Road to a Democrat Led Defeat of America Goes Through Afghanistan" . I thought it perceptive enough to republish here.]

You simply cannot have a Marxist in the Oval Office and lead the world in a fight against a combination of covert communism and the rise of militant Islam - a very unholy and, to the uninformed, incredible alliance. Never before have the Left used such a powerful 'useful idiot' as militant Islam to further its cause, but it is doing it apparently without realizing that Islam may consume it also, eventually.

We in the UK have experienced the worst decline in our culture and standing in the world following a a similar event in 1997, when a cabal of Marxists led the Long March of Antonio Gramsci's game plan into No.10 Downing Street. Blair conned the British electorate; Obama has conned the American electorate. Both were Trojan horses. The triumph of the heirs and successors of Gramsci; the Frankfort School; Alinski; Ayers et al means that the Long March has now penetrated the very heart of Washington, giving impetus to the Marxist dictators around the world who see America on the backfoot.

You either get rid of your current POTUS and his political thugs soonest, by electoral demand, or all the blood and treasure spent during World War II and the various engagements to contain and defeat communism since then will have been in vain.

Britain is already down the pan. Its sovereignty has been severely dissipated by the EU and unelected bureaucrats in Brussels; its Capital has been dubbed Londonistan because of its infiltration by Islamic subversives. A predicted change of government from New Labour to 'New Conservative' (probably infiltrated by Gramscian disciples also) will make very little difference. Our currency is under threat and may soon fall to the Euro - a Mickey Mouse currency. The financial and fiscal system has already been destroyed from within. We are no longer a reliable ally of the US.

You have time to rescue your country from a similar disaster to the one that has befallen ours. For God's sake get moving. It needs more than Glen Beck, who has (with a little help from his friends) made a good start. It needs gravitas, analysis and public explanation. As the MSM is part of the problem it can only be done on the blogs. Fox TV is having some success as the only outlet in that medium that has exposed some of the truth about Obama and his roots and even they are holding back much of what could be exposed, presumably because Murdoch wants to keep a get out card just in case the wind blows against him.

I posted messages like this on blogs various during the Presidential campaign, particularly on Melanie Phillips blog who is a prolific writer on the subject and as an apostate of the leftist creed knows what she is taking about. But I have been blogging about the counter culture threat since 2003.

In fact I have been a close observer of Communism on the move since 1952 when as a radio intercept operator in the British Army (the "Y" Service - now known as GCHQ), I listened to the military, diplomatic and agitprop press propaganda spewed out by the USSR and its satellites. I later served in the London Metropolitan Police throughout the 1950s - 1980s and saw at very close quarters the organized subversion that took place through the counter-culture war that still thrives today.

The message must be sounded and writ large: Marxism is still on the move. It is Western Civilization that is crumbling through the death-watch beetle of covert communism and the death-wish spider of the jihad that is rampant throughout its pillars. When the Iron Curtain was torn down, it provided opportunities for Marxism that were undreamed of throughout the cold war.

The British experience must be regarded as a terrible warning, my American friends. Heed it or follow us into the abyss. You have many fine writers and researchers over there who have exposed the truth of the Leftist threat: heed their words and use your votes in the mid-term elections to start the fight back. Time is short, use it well.

Proving that the ruling maxim of modern advertising is, "When in doubt, morph."

---

For a chain of stores in South Africa. From Ads of the World

Leslie Gelb is "lost" and thinks Americans are "confused" about the stalling policy of Obama on Afghanistan:

Nothing significant has changed to account for the shift from Mr. Obama's confident policy proclamations to his temporizing statements of recent days. The president certainly understood before last week that the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. And he knew when he was inaugurated and when he first uttered his colorful "war of necessity" phrase that his party, and the public generally, were increasingly opposed to the war. == Leslie H. Gelb: Obama’s Befuddling Afghan Policy - WSJ.com

I'm not: The Road to a Democrat Led Defeat of America Goes Through Afghanistan @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Afghanistan deserves to be fought and won on its own terms, not as a stealthy way of retreating from the field altogether. Anybody who tells you the Iraq war is useless and Afghanistan is the "real" war is really telling you Afghanistan is just the long way home. Wagging our tails behind us.

In the Obama book still unpublished but being written day by day with the working title, Dreams of Myself, it's not enough to "transform" the American giant into a compliant second-rate nation, it must be gelded as well.

First published October 4, 2008.

The Stone Trees of Yakutsk

"Then from there the only way to go to this place is by a boat. Armed native individuals can offer you a "cheap" $500 trip on a small boat, so in three days you can be on spot. They can show you the fields of wild hemp flower around which, as some tourists say, often can be picked up by your guide while you are exploring the stone forest, and then boiled together with some milk to meet you when you are back in camp with some mind blowing mixture. And they are all armed there, those natives...."

More photos at Oddity Central

Where in the world is it?: Location via Google Maps

[Note: It's now clear that "racism" has somehow not been eliminated with the election of an African-American as president but exacerbated. It has now drenched our discourse with its stench. But from what dark wells is this poison water being drawn? Qui bono? Perhaps it's time we looked a little more closely at places where it still is to be found. And not just at "the usual suspects" which now seem to have been broadened to include all those who do not agree with the program being proliferated by the president. In that spirit I am republishing this essay from March of 2008.]

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.
-- William Blake

It seems to me that when visiting the left-leaning sites of the web one is forever bumping into a virulent fear and hate of Christianity. It sometimes is couched in an insecure, buffoon's atheism, but more often than not takes aim at the biggest boogyman the American Left can think of -- Christian Fundamentalism. These rants are not hard to find. They are legion.

We're told, over and over, that Christian Fundamentalism is the single greatest threat to the American way of life; that it is, among many other evils, a breeding ground for race hate. We are reminded of the virtual descendants of Simon Legree among the Baptist Republicans of the Caucasian persuasion. We are harangued without end about their ceaseless lust for power. Baptist Democrats, it would seem, possess a "Get Out of Racism Free" card. Not because of their religious belief, but because of their party affiliation. It is a strange religion where sanctity is determined by politics and not by faith, but that seems to be the case.

This afternoon on the lawn my gardener asked me if I have given myself up to God yet. He is a devout believer, a Christian Fundamentalist with a paperback bible in his back pocket. It's new this year because he gave his well-worn one last September. He is concerned for my soul. And he has reason to be. I confessed I had not but was still searching, as indeed I am.

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"Obama is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is the Obama interest." -- Apologies to Churchill

Neoneocon is pondering the enigma today as well in

"I’ve figured something out about Obama, and that is this: nearly everybody’s trying to figure Obama out....

A unified field theory of Obama would explain all his moves. I think that the idea that he is a covert far Leftist and statist up to no good does exactly that. But saying that aloud is still unconscionable to most people (not to mention racist!). And the difference between Bill Ayers and Obama is that, although Ayers may not be the most straightforward guy in the universe, he's honesty itself compared to Obama. The reason for Obama's stealth is clear, however: a person as far to the Left as Obama could not be elected President of the US while being clear and upfront about his agenda, so dissemblance about the essential self and its goals is required.

First impression of this new roll-out of corruption from Big Government? Compared to the shattering revelations of the ACORN tapes, this one is small beer on short legs.

Now I detest the NEA for a lot of reasons and have for a long time, but a story on Big Government » Blog Archive » How to Corrupt Artists in One Quick and Easy Telecon strikes me as one that only the elites on both sides give a tinker's damn about. The lead virtually says it with,

If you've ever wondered -- and worried -- about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of "independent artists from around the country."

Well, okay, I have "wondered and worried" about the NEA, but I also know that most people in the country don't spend more than a minute a year at most wondering or worrying about the relationship of the NEA and "independent artists from around the country." The only thing they think about if they think about our current crop of "independent artists" is why there are so many of these parasites around and why most of what they "produce" is either disgusting, depressing, ugly or the usual combination of all three.

Add to that the fact that the evidence behind the story, damning as it is, is not exactly compelling. Not only that it's radio, not television. While nothing says "corruption" more clearly than a video of ACORN employees revealing their real agenda by abetting the establishment child sex salons, nothing numbs you more than having to listen to recorded phone calls from White House arts dweebs begging for another HOPE poster.

I salute what Breitbart did last week, but in the game that Obama's playing, last week is last year. It would have been better to release the NEA tapes last week as a warm-up and the ACORN videos this week. As it stands, this is a weak Act II.

Last Week in Newsweek and Next Week in Newsweek.

Racist Baby? authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman clairify the Baby bit in NurtureShock : How We Got Pulled Into a War Between Rush Limbaugh and Maureen Dowd

Third, we never meant to provide any fodder for the divide between Republicans and Democrats, or liberals and conservatives. The science suggests liberal white parents are just as guilty of speaking in code to their children about race as conservative white parents. This is a concern that ought to be owned up to equally, on both sides of the aisle.

Perhaps with their groundbreaking research on the President Racist? cover story they will fill us in on whether or not "liberal black parents are just as guilty of speaking in code to their children about race as conservative black parents."

A concerned Newsweek readership of 5 breathlessly awaits.

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Or, "The Ninja Nibbler of the Night"

As a friend of mine recently pointed out, "Women shop. Men resupply."

Too true. Whenever I find myself in one of our current Cathedrals of Food (AKA: "Whole Foods -- Why Pay Less?"), I don't buy meals, I buy components. Though I've lived alone for some time, I buy like I'm supplying a small tribe. I've tried to control this by selecting the "little" cart. You know, that half-pint shopping vehicle, that grocery Miata, that let's you believe you're not really buying as much as you are. It doesn't work. I come home, unpack my "kills" -- at about $69 a bag -- and mumble, "Who's going to eat all this?"

House guests are the God's answer to "Who's going to eat this?" They are. That's okay. I love to cook for people. I'm good at it and it gets boring cooking for one; expensive too since I loathe leftovers.

Problems return when your house guests are stealth eaters. You know who I mean. Yes, you. Stealth eaters never, ever overeat -- except on the sly. They are the Merrill's Marauders of the post-midnight refrigerator.

Ordinary stealth eaters can be dealt with because the damage done by their pillage is obvious. You had half of a banana cream pie in the frig at sunset but by dawn it is gone. Vanished. Evaporated. Kaput. Never to be heard from again. Not so much as a ransom note, just a crumpled tin husk folded and stuffed down the side of the garbage bag beneath the camouflage of a crumpled milk carton.

Not pleasing, especially when you were planning on banana cream pie for breakfast. Still you suck up your sorrow, move on, and resupply.

No so with the worst sort of stealth eater -- the dreaded food eroder.

The food eroder is so stealthy he or she can even conceal their eating from themselves. The food eroder wishes to eat but not be seen eating nor to be known to have eaten. The food eroder can make your entire refrigerator into a Potemkin village where you think you have a LOT of food, but actually have almost none. A food eroder deals in cuisine disinformation.

Case in point:

Some weeks back I had a house guest. This house guest was a very careful eater -- someone cognizant of the fine points of nutrition; someone who knew the calories in a twice-baked potato down to the last bacon bit swimming in a dollop of sour cream. This nameless but shameless someone also had a finely tuned economic indicator and never met a leftover that was not loved, caressed, and consumed -- even when the original meal was lost to recorded history.

I once had a kind of grudging respect for this guest who was so much more disciplined about food than I could ever hope to be. But that was before I discovered -- after the guest's departure -- that I had been sharing my home and sacred refrigerator with a food eroder, a late-night Ninja nibbler.

You see, in order to fulfill my male mission of re-supply, I need to know what supplies are actually on hand. With a food eroder, this cannot be known since -- if you do not actually hand inspect every item in your larder -- you can never be sure of the quantity. What you can be sure of, I now know, is that a food eroder will guarantee you have less than you think.

The clearest example of this is -- as I have discovered today -- the most often decimated target of any self-respecting food eroder, ice cream.

About a month ago I noted that the house had no ice-cream in the freezer. This is not good -- especially should an after-midnight-ice-cream emergency break out while watching, say, "I Got the Hook-Up."

To prepare for such an emergency, and thus avert an ice cream crisis, I resupplied the freezer with a full half-gallon of French Vanilla. Since my house guest was looking a bit peckish at the time I offered to make a couple of sundaes (carmel sauce, shaved almonds, etc.). My guest gracefully accepted and the half gallon of ice-cream supply was reduced by perhaps a pint overall. This left around three pints. Such was the state of the ice cream three weeks ago at last check. Need for resupply? Negligible.

Fast forward to today when I was suddenly stricken with an ice-cream-emergency (While watching, yet again, "I Got the Hook-Up.") and staggered to the supply in the freezer. As I removed it I noted it felt strangely light for a container that should have contained about three-pints. You can only imagine my shock when upon opening it I discovered that it contained only about a half-inch thickness of ice cream covering the now far distant bottom.

But that was not the worst of it.

On closer examination, the surface of that razor-thin level of ice cream was scored by a series of small parallel grooves across it from side to side. It was as if somebody had gone back and forth over the ice cream with a teaspoon like a lawn mower.

I knew then I had been hit by the food eroder. I knew that, over several nights, my ice cream had be hit again and again and again.

Just a little this time. Just a little more that time. Then a bit again when the compulsion struck. And all, it was clear, in a shameful and furtive way as I slept.

This degradation probably went on and on until the food eroder could no longer avoid the terrible truth that nearly a half a gallon of ice cream had been consumed whilst standing at the refrigerator with spoon in hand. At that point shame overcame the eroder and the container was placed carefully back in the refrigerator so that it would appear to be undisturbed.

The food eroder escaped without ever having to face the shame. I'm off to resupply and thus avoid a post-midnight ice cream crisis. My only solace is that I know that the food eroder, now back home and faced with a refrigerator stocked only with the desiccating remnants of cantaloupe and celery is still having to walk an extra two miles every day in penance. Ice cream giveth, but ice cream doth not taketh away.

Meanwhile, my stock is back to normal. But I am taking steps to avoid future shock. I'm installing a state of the art motion-sensing alarm on the refrigerator instead of my previous sign that said, "Too late. Already here."

Outside Penn Station, New York City
Click to enlarge

Inscription: "I want to be like Jesus. I want to live a long and healthy life but I will rather die on the cross like Jesus than to be any criminal. I want to be like Jesus."

Morgan notes a curious imbalance in the touted lifestyle of Potus and Flotus:

Not that I mean to insult vegetable gardeners, but it seems to me an imbalanced lifestyle has been embraced, one devoted to the lifestyle of a vegetable garden who possess vast holdings of land, but is obsessed only with that one damn garden. Pull the weeds, spray the weeds, fertilize the vegetables, plant the vegetables, harvest the vegetables…from the moment the gardener rises in the morning, until he puts his weary head down for the night. Just stay fixated on image, image, image the way the gardener remains fixated on the garden.

Elsewhere, there are bridges that need mending…and fences too. There are taxes to be paid on owning the land. There is a house to be painted with a roof that needs patching. Babies with dirty wet butts that need changing. Meals to be cooked, and after that’s done, dishes to be washed and ovens to be cleaned. And on the far corner of the property a pack of wild coyotes is making inroads, doing their scavenging and fornicating and pooping and yelling. As they get bolder, they’re going to start carrying off things like kittens and puppies, then work their way up the babies.
There’s shit to be taken care off. All over that spread.

But no. Nothing matters except the vegetable garden of public image. -- House of Eratosthenes

Hasn't he noticed that Miracles Grow in Mrs. Obama's Neighborhood: And All the Good Little Children Say "Yes"?

The Conqueror Worm - Poe

THE CONQUEROR WORM.

    LO! 't is a gala night
        Within the lonesome latter years!
    An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
        In veils, and drowned in tears,
    Sit in a theatre, to see
        A play of hopes and fears,
    While the orchestra breathes fitfully
        The music of the spheres.

    Mimes, in the form of God on high,
        Mutter and mumble low,
    And hither and thither fly—
        Mere puppets they, who come and go
    At bidding of vast formless things
        That shift the scenery to and fro,
    Flapping from out their Condor wings
        Invisible Woe!

    That motley drama!—oh, be sure
        It shall not be forgot!
    With its Phantom chased for evermore,
        By a crowd that seize it not,
    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.

    But see, amid the mimic rout,
        A crawling shape intrude!
    A blood-red thing that writhes from out
        The scenic solitude!
    It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
        The mimes become its food,
    And the angels sob at vermin fangs
        In human gore imbued.

    Out—out are the lights—out all!
        And over each quivering form,
    The curtain, a funeral pall,
        Comes down with the rush of a storm,
    And the angels, all pallid and wan,
        Uprising, unveiling, affirm
    That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
        And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) heavy tanks prepare to make their way on to the main east-west thoroughfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, in Beijing on September 18, 2009, as the government rehearsed for a huge October 1st parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China. Security swarmed the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade's route through the heart of the city and past Tiananmen Square. Many more striking images @ China prepares for its 60th anniversary - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Let's review:

By Jim Treacher @ Jim Treacher's Blog That Is on the Internet. Suitable for printing out and distributing far and wide.

I don't know whether Scott at Powerline is being coy, obtuse, otiose or all three when he writes,

"To be charitable one might say that the Obama administration does not know how to help friends or to hurt enemies. Yet this seems to be the way they like it."

They do know, Scott. And they are, relentlessly, helping their friends and hurting their enemies.

And by the way, Powerline's on that list, just way-way-way-way down. It's a long list they've been making for years, but they've got plenty of time.

Spare a moment for Mary Travers, 1936-2009. We shall not see her like again.

She could touch your heart...

and she could turn you on with a signature hair flip. (:32)....

Continued...

YouTube - "'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett"

Andrew Flippone observes: Something has happened to PBS favorite "Charlie Rose." The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named "Steve" is "not happy." But who is "Steve" and why is he angry? And why does the mere mention of his name stop Charlie cold?

Via: Lady, That's My Skull: Local News

Midway | Puyallup, Washington | Saturday September 12, 2009 8:08: 30 PM

Updated....

Continued...

Andrew Sullivan reacts to the unseemly demands of 67% of the American public

I say again, "A raaaaacist is anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal."

It pains me to have to take (mild) issue with other members of the Founding Bloggers, but it does seem to me that today's hope that the Race Card will be tossed out onto the waters of oblivion along with slavery, the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Affirmative Action. Simply put: It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

Why? Because when it comes to the defending the Obama administration's current dog's dinner of legislation, the race card is not just the strongest card in the left/liberal/progressive deck, it is the only card in that deck.

When all you have in the deck is the Race Card, the name of the game is "52-Pickup." The technique then is similar to a spastic Ricky Jay trying to decapitate a duck or penetrate a water melon. For example:

Continued...

Because it's so normal, it's weird.

WARNING: SENSITIVES STRONGLY CAUTIONED. YOU CANNOT UNSEE THIS.

Presenting the unsung masterpiece Jenny Carter by solocosmo in "High Def!"

Don't you just love saying "High Def?" It's so modern and cutting edge, but it's also just fun to say. Sort of like the Seinfeld riff on "Sal-sa!"

GEORGE: Salsa is now the number one condiment in America.

JERRY: You know why? Because people like to say "salsa." "Excuse me, do
you have salsa?" "We need more salsa." "Where is the salsa? No salsa?"

Be that as it may, by popular demand, here's that Jenny Carter illo in "high def!" Click on the itsy-bitsy image at your peril. But save it for the next time we have that cracker raaaaacist Carter to kick around.

Don't say I don't do nothin' to keep the level of Carter criticism as high as the ex-President deserves, because I just did.

Christopher Merola : A Republic, if You Can Keep It - Townhall.com

This Thursday, September 17th, 2009, will be the 222nd anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution. We have come a long way as a nation in that time, but have we gone the way our founding fathers intended us to go?

Had enough? Oh yeah? Here's more. I'm proud that the Establishment Media, in cahoots with "the Most Media Savvy White House EVAH" is joining me in my quest to give America More Obama I Say. MORE O!-BA!-MA! Jake Tapper (surely in the Top 10 of the Current White House Enemies List) asks, Obama Over-Exposure?

This Sunday, President Obama will be interviewed on five shows -- ABC News’ “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” CNN’s “State of the Nation”, CBS’s “Face the Nation”, NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Univision’s “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos."

It's a rare feat called "the Full Ginsburg." In modern media lore, the first time someone pulled a five-show feat was 11 years ago, in 1998, when Monica Lewinsky’s attorney William Ginsburg made the rounds to defend his client. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, did a Full Ginsburg in 2007 after launching her presidential bid....

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Sep 16, 2009 8:00 AM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink:

Citizen and patriot Andrew Brietbart, the man behind Breitbart News, Breitbart.tv Big Hollywood, and now Big Government.

The Always Trenchant Jim Treacher commenting on the four-day-old Big Government: "I don't want to say Andrew Breitbart is a genius, but the last guy with a launch this successful was Neil Armstrong."

Andrew Breitbart: Hear him now and hear him later.

(JOHN F. KENNEDY) TYPED LETTER AS PRESIDENT

Here we see another example of the famous "Kennedy wit." It was real and it was genuine. Can anyone imagine a collection of the witty sayings of Barack Obama coming out unless it is ghost-written. I, for one, don't recall the current President as being particularly witty in unscripted situations. But I'm willing to take pointers.

• Fascinating and illuminating: One year after Hurricane Ike - The Big Picture @ Boston.com Collected here are a series of before-and-after photographs - which (starting with the second one below) will fade between "before" and "after" when clicked.
• Shannon Love on the Acorn child prostitution scandal. Three Times is Slavery and Treason

  "Acorn was promoting slavery. Sexual slavery. The sexual slavery of children. Is that overwrought? Well, it isn’t in my book but then I have a low tolerance for the sexual enslavement of children."

• No jobs? Get used to it. Adviser: High unemployment for years “The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”
• The Mandate of Heaven "is a traditional Chinese philosophical concept. Tian would bless the authority of a just ruler, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate. The Mandate of Heaven would then transfer to those who would rule best.... The Mandate of Heaven had no time limitations, instead depending on the just and able performance of the ruler. The Mandate also does not require that a legitimate ruler be of noble birth...."
• I don't want to know how they know: "[C]arrion appeals to those who hate waste and, as one prolific UK roadkill consumer puts it, out of 40 carcasses found here, 20 will be edible." -- davidthompson: Them’s Good Eats
• Mercer Caverns | Murphys, California | Atlas Obscura "Visitors should wear clothes which they never expect to wear to a wedding afterward. A candle is to be carried in one hand and it is prudent to have a supply or matches in one's pocket."
• Overcoming Bias: What Do Nature Lovers Love? "While nature shows and nature lovers often give lip service to the wonders of natural selection, in fact they mainly love the particular species alive now."

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

-- Theodore Roethke | The Waking

Cornyn: Obama model of bipartisanship on war, not healthcare - TheHill.com

Yet the Obama administration – which has struggled recently to shore up support for its work in Afghanistan – remains open to the idea of additional deployments. So too are congressional Republicans, Cornyn said Saturday – evidence that the two parties could still cooperate on key issues, he added.

“On Afghanistan, President Obama has shown the kind of leadership he promised during the campaign – he’s built consensus and earned bipartisan support,” Cornyn said.

The jacket with every small identity device containable within.

Small footprints and dinky jobs

The no future 70s punks in britain

The flash-millionaires and the lack of morality that attends them.

For well over a year after 911 I was able to provide funds and hosting for this site. I'm proud of that and prouder still that it still remains:

America Attacked 9 1 1

Visit this site and you will see why. It was a handmade flash site put together in the days immediately following 911. In a way, it's now somewhat of an anachronism but it remains because it has the terror and the hope of those days woven into its bones.

Yes, it takes awhile. But if I can take it so can you.

It slipped past editors at the Boston Globe in 1980.... but all over the country tonight copy editors on suicide watch to make sure it doesn't happen again:

[Here's the history of this.]

Best reaction to the speech? There are so many it's hard to choose, but this one from the self-serving David Corn's obamallation speaks multitudes:

Obama's Speech: The Doctor Is In | Mother Jones

Submitted by Michele (not verified) on September 9, 2009 - 11:20pm.

As a child of hippies, I just posted this plea on Facebook: Whatever happened to question The Man? Which starts like this:

"Oh wild-haired, anti-establishment flower children, where have you gone? Too tired to question the man? Too busy waving your AARP cards, having put down your freak flags? Given up, have you? Eaten the establishment crap? Don’t question, don’t protest, don’t worry about the generations to come. Rush through policies that congress doesn’t even have time to read. Just believe, believe... Government's the new religion."

And gets progressively more pissed off about the swill Obama-bots have swallowed without question. Where, I've been wondering, are all the intelligent people who I remember who didn't trust govt.? And here you all are! As goofy Biden would say, "God love ya!"

Hector-in-Chief

Off-Mike Moments....

... and tonight's most memorable on-mike moment:

Wise men and women will mix the martinis and pack the bong full. Here we go again....

Continued...

If Obamaspew be the food of fools, BRINGETH IT ON!
Give ALL excess of Him, that, surfeiting,
The Obamatrons may sicken, and so die.
That Hope and Change again! it had a dying poll fall:
O, his valved voice slurps o'er my ear like the sweet drool,
That cackles over another bank bailout,
Stealing my money while flatulating! Enough; no more;
His words sound not so sweet now as before.
O Story of O! how tired and boring art thou,
That, notwithstanding his venal verbosity,
Deceiveth as the devil, nought truth enters there,
Of what no validity soe'er,
But falls into debasement and low approval,
Even in a joint session bleat: so full of shapes is his fancy
That he alone is high and fantastical.

“I’m out! I’m free!” -- Farrell to Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The Times
....

Continued...

No SUCH thing as TOO MUCH!

Phil Plait at the charming "Bad Astronomy" page has hit the big time today with his eructation on The mainstreaming of crazy. Phil, like all card-carrying scientists in search of tenure, grants, continued employment, and more book contracts, has decided, as is his right, that all those opposed to the President's address to school children simply, scientifically speaking, crazy and evil:

Continued...

Is that a pistol down my pants or.... BLAM!

Where to begin with this newsquib? It exceeds the mind's capacity for bogglement.

So much for packing a, um, rod

A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy shot himself in the penis Sunday after fumbling with a gun that had slid from his waistband, authorities said yesterday.

Khamir Grant was then arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon ... law-enforcement sources said.

Grant told cops that he was walking home from Amersfort Park at East 39th Street and Avenue J in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m., when the gun began to fall into his pants, sources said.

When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet right through his penis.

Grant staggered home and told his mom what had happened, sources said.

They took a livery car to Kings County Hospital, where Grant was released after treatment and then arrested by police.

There's so much now normalized wrongness here that the only thing it underscores is "the banality of evil" in everyday life. But let's review anyway.

Continued...

From the dawn of diversity in 1969.

Once upon a time in the United States, someone somewhere in the government for the greater good asked, "What better medium to get across the message of benevolent government programs is there than comic books?"

The SSA certainly knew this and, along with other government agencies, has a long history of "getting the message out." Here are some samples from the Social Security Administration's Special Collections - Public Information Materials where you are warned, "This is an archival or historical document and may not reflect current policies or procedures."

Continued...

Aftermath: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

From AMERICAN DIGEST NEWS, October 26, 2004 September 7, 2009

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a blogger whose head literally exploded in the final week of the election "health care" summer!

No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but a small room at the blogger's residence was sprayed with blood and brain matter when Gerard Van der Leun's head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB .

"He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the screen and his fingers frozen over the keyboard," said early responder, Miguel Wilsonista. "He seems to have hit 'Post' for what had to be the 3,456,856th item of inept political photoshopping this year when the blast occurred.

Continued...

If you, like me, are subject to spontaneous head detonations when you hear those doleful words "health care," you'll find A Goy and his Blog's "Tilting At Mass Hysteria" soothing. But you'll have to put in some time....

Excerpts:

Go get a soda and stop in the restroom on the way back. This is going to take a few minutes.

You know you live in a world where 2 2 = 5 when fact is ridiculed and fantasy is validated.

Welcome to America, 2009.

We have come to conflate health care and health care insurance so blindly that we can no longer conceive of getting health care without having insurance “coverage” for it.

This is part of the mass hysteria that must be cured if we’re ever to get health care costs back under control.

The irrational misconception that health care and insurance for it are one and the same is, ironically, the biggest part of the health care problem. Why? Because it derails every substantive discussion on the topic and sends it off into the weeds where it has nothing to do with getting health care costs back under control. In the health care “debate”, everyone’s arguing over “how to cover the rising costs” or the availability and unfathomable actuarial and economic complexities of “coverage”, when the goal here is something completely different and far simpler. The goal is to get back what we once had: a health care market that supports affordable routine health care.

Follow on HERE. And yes, there are the helpful graphs.

Leslie Gelb: "North Korea is Run by a Porn King" @ Big Think

Via Rethinking Security: And Now For Something Completely Different

It might be fun to take a victory lap over unseating a Green Munchkin, but there are plenty more where he came from and they've got money and men and material. As Napoleon forgot, remember that the road is long and the outcome uncertain -- especially when you invade Russia.

Source: Edward Tufte: New ET Writings, Artworks & News

Update: More wise caution at Riehl World View: Be Careful Conservatives

As for what comes next, remember that it's the health care debate that must come first. It's also what matters more to us and all of America in the end. So, don't get lost in what one Fox personality is picking up on that's going to boost his ratings. And don't get so giddy over one in the win column that you take your eyes off the ball. I suspect Obama would appreciate nothing more right now. Hitting a home run in a losing game isn't cause for too much celebration, after all.

It's amazing the crap that Hillary Clinton seems willing to take these days. It makes me wonder if Obama is using the carrot of Veep in 2012 and the stick of "The Hillary File" to keep her in line. It certainly can't be because Hillary has suddenly discovered her inner toady, can it?

Believe it or not, there is a classic Iowahawk 1951 Mercury coupe owned by Jesse James in this picture.

• Illegal Residents: Natural born and naturalized citizens of the United States who actively work to undo the nation while taking full advantage of the benefits.
  
• 1-Sentence Review, Inglorious Bastards: If once every two generations a film features a Jew emptying a machine gun clip into Adolph Hitler's face, I can't say I see the harm in that. -- Solomonia
  
• Baron Bodissey is updating Samuel Johnson: "The accusation of racism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
  
• Please update your spell-checkers: There are five A's in 'raaaaacism'

Continued...

Tom Curley: Head Muppet of the Associated Press

[UPDATE: Jules Crittenden today has an informed and balanced view on the entire issue at Jules Crittenden ｻ Professional Issues. I recommend it. ]

It was there only for a brief moment on Wikipedia before the editing gestapo got it, but the truth endures, for now, in the cache:Tom Curley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Curley, an executive battening off the rotting hulk of the Associated Press, had ignored common decency and a direct appeal from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to refrain from publishing photographs of a dying United States Marine. Gates said,

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”

Decency? For the chancre ridden media scum that infest our nation,

Continued...

Duty calls. Back sooner or later.

Photo by Philip Greenspun

[Republished from September, 2008 before all this talk about rationing life became the stuff of our American dinner table conversations and nightmares. This was the habit of mind in Europe one year ago.]

Together at last: The Baroness and Dr. Joseph Mengele

"They told them they would be given medication
that would help them. Oh, yes, they were given
medications, medications of poison that gripped
their heart and closed their eyelids still;
that is the sort of medication they were given."
-- Colonel Leon Jaworski, 1945 **

An evil woman touted as "the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock" says it's time for some tough love and hard death among the demented of England. Call it "the culling the herd to save some money" ethic. Warnock says, "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service."

Or, as Orin Judd so succinctly puts it: "Ever notice how "medical ethics" is nothing more than justifying murder.

We do and we also note how this is a rising trend in the "ethical" thinking of Europe. Or perhaps we shouldn't say "trend" as much as a nostalgic yearning for the past century where an interest in eugenics amongst the "leaders" of that civilization was part of the biggest butcher's bill in history.

Where have we seen this sort of "cost crisis" medical thinking in Europe before? Oh yes, that would be the Hadamar Hospital AKA the Hadamar Euthanasia Center

The Hadamar Nurses welcome you to their facility

Thus in 1906 the Korrigenden-Anstalt in Hadamar was converted to a mental institution. By 1930 the home contained 320 patients. As decreed by Nazi law, from 1934 nursing costs for mental patients were reduced. By 1936 the mental homes had become overcrowded, and conditions worsened as a result of the reduced quantity and quality of food supplies. The building had been designed to accommodate 250 patients, but by 1939 about 600 inmates were crowded into cramped quarters.

During late August 1939, following Hadamar's designation as a military hospital, patients were distributed to surrounding mental homes. However, between November 1940 and January 1941 the sickrooms were converted into quarters for the medical and administrative staff of the new T4 Hadamar euthanasia killing centre. The staff had been transferred from Grafeneck following the closure of that facility.

Rooms to receive arriving patients were located on the first floor. A gas chamber disguised as a shower room was installed in the basement of the building, together with a crematorium with two ovens which were attached to a chimney. Gas entered the chamber from an adjacent room through pipes with holes punched in them.

That was only the first phase of the killings at Hadamar. Sloppy and very unscientific. They got better in the next phase.

Killing at Hadamar recommenced in 1942 as part of the second phase of the euthanasia program, the so-called “wild euthanasia.” Now the victims were murdered by administering lethal doses of barbiturates or morphine-scopolamine injections. While initially there had been some pretence of medical deliberation before deciding on a patient’s fate, with the arrival of Polish and Russian workers in 1944, mostly diagnosed as “tubercular” despite a complete lack of medical examination until after their death, the killing became automatic.

"The killing became automatic." That's the phrase that pays these days, isn't it? If we can only get to the automatic killing phase of medicine, then everything will be copacetic... cool... "it's all good."

Continued...

Michelle Malkin in The Beslan attack: 5 years later is linking current remembrances and updates. This essay was written September 4, 2004 -- In another place and time.

---

The boy that lies in his father's lap covered with crusts of blood gazing upward at nothing, nothing at all except his own pain.

The soldier with the unlit cigarette carrying the little girl in filthy underwear with a long smear of blood across her nose and down her chin.

The child's small hand with the dry pool of blood in the palm and the small gold crucifix lying in it.

The stretcher being run past the camera carrying what might, under the burns and the blood, be a young girl.... and another, and another, and another, and another, and another....

I began to gather these images yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before? I'm not really sure. The cascade of outrages, the piling of atrocity on top of atrocity, has become so unremitting that it is sometimes difficult to know where one episode of evil ends and another begins.

The waves keep coming and, because they are always to your back, they keep slamming you down into the hardpacked sand. You pick yourself up and spin around to face the next wave, but this sea of evil is cunning and the next wave will always come from behind your back no matter which direction you face. All you can know now is that there will be another one, and it will come at your back in the way the bullets came for the backs of the children in Russia.

Because I am both too old and too distant to either pick up a weapon to defend, or offer help and comfort to the wounded or the dying, I am forced back on silly, futile, small gestures such as gathering images of the atrocities. In this I disgust myself and, like those who did not stand with Henry V, hold my manhood cheap.

I thought that, perhaps, I could gather enough of them and arrange a kind of gallery as a testament, my own small memorial, to the children who were shot in the back or otherwise slaughtered by the diseased "militants" who thought nothing of these lives taken for their vile cause and their vile god. Somehow I would, I imagined, at least bear my own small witness among the millions of others doing the same around the world tonight.

And so I collected the images. I selected ones that showed the fascist smirk that always rises dark above any slaughter of innocents. I selected ones that revealed the courage of those who would try to rescue them. I found and saved some that revealed the chaos and sharp edge of the moment when all that a child may have in front of him is ripped out of him. I saved 10 images, saved 20, saved 40 and then came to the 41st photograph and stopped.

I stopped because in that one image, grainy, indistinct and from the far side of the world in a situation I could not imagine, I saw the one thing I was not expecting to see at all.

No, that's not it. It was not what I saw but what I recognized.

What I recognized was something that I could not see in the picture, but a recognition that came to me through the picture. I knew it immediately and at such a deep level that my first reaction was to look away, to go on to the next picture no matter what it was, to determine to never look at the 41st picture again.

But of course I did. I did because I had no choice. I had no choice because within this one picture I could see two separate episodes of my own life somehow together in one image that depicted an outcome that terrified me to the core of my being.

This is the picture I could not look at. This is the picture I must look at. I will try to explain -- not really to you, but to myself -- why it terrifies me more than all the other pictures.

Continued...

• January 2012
  
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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

Re: The Planned Parenthood Paroxysm --

It is a fresh reminder that the left fully absorbed and adapted the Brezhnev Doctrine: once they capture an institution, they aren'€™t giving it up.  How dare a private foundation stop coughing up the dough.  It explains why "diversity" means conformity to liberal views in newsrooms, college faculties, and Hollywood studios.  It's why the left reacts with howls of outrage every time you propose reducing taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, even as the left disingenuously argues that NPR and PBS receive only a "tiny"€ amount of tax subsidy.  It should also remind us how the left will fight every battle to shrink government like it was Verdun.  Which suggests one obvious conclusion if you're an incoming Romney Administration: go big.  Go after everything at once.  -- | Power Line

An hour's worth of C-SPAN Q&A: Diana West, Syndicated Columnist, Universal Uclick - YouTube

Diana West, discusses her weekly online column syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. She writes about cultural and political issues from a self-described conservative viewpoint. She talks about some themes in her columns, including the spread of Islamic law throughout formerly non-Islamic areas of the western world and her opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

a scared mother of four on food stamps, or her selfless Community Activist advocate.

No one champions the simple strivers, those who take care of themselves and in the process alleviate society of one more charity case, and along the way create wealth via 'gains from trade' implicit in market transactions. A simple prosperous mensch who does not hypocritically claim he primarily works for others is off the radar, implicitly insulting to any intellectual making considerably less than him. The kind of change Murray is talking about will not happen until productive, successful people again feel pride in their distinguishing learned characteristics, including the willingness to shame people who do not have them. -- Falkenblog: Charles Murray Reiterates Willpower

As for Romney and his disregard, real or putative, for the poor,

I would suspect he has actually done more for the poor than anyone else in the presidential sweepstakes, by virtue of the tithes he has paid to his church and the whopping taxes he has actually paid. While we might carp and squeal about his tax rates, the actual amount of cabbage he has forked over in his career to the federal government must cover a sizable acreage indeed, and we assume that even given the spectacular ineptitude of that same government in distributing assistance to the needy without leakages of Mississippi dimensions into various private spillways and sluice gates, a fair amount of Mitt's earnings must have found its way into the pockets of the deserving. -- | The Daily Cannibal

Obama's After Lunch Schedule as given by a commenter on: Just What Does Barack Obama Do All Day @ The Daily Caller

2:00 PM: Golf with Plouffe
5:00 PM: Dinner with the wookie
6:00 PM: Sneak a cigarette
6:15 PM: Watch Oprah on Tivo
8:00 PM: Smoke a joint and have sex with a male campaign staffer
8:05 PM: Done with sex
8:10 PM: Watch the wookie scarf down everything in the White House refrigerator
9:00 PM: Hold the wookie's head as she "purges" her snack
9:30 PM: Watch Ray Maddow fantasize about sex with him
10:00 PM: Pass out

I rarely encounter men I feel immediately threatened by.

The ones I do are 1) really big-ass black guys with hardcore street cred, 320 pounds and a lot off tattoo chatter on their arm, 2) Mexican psycho dudes with tattoos on their face. See the commonality? Once you etch shit in your face you are telling the world that you have ceased belonging. This is a clear signal of danger. Animals use subtle aromatic spear to ward off predators. Man now uses skin ink. Heavy skin ink. -- Men in East L.A. that scare me ｫ An Unmarried Man

The formal statement of Anathema goes like this:

Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Barack Hussain Obama himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.

That would pretty much work for me. What about the Catholics among us?

☛ Thinking Right Archives ☚

• Links
• Links

• The Very Near Future of Literacy in America
• The Leap of Faith
• Mud Men: Polanski & Le Miserable Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times
• Andrew Klavan: Are You A Racist? A Frank Conversation
• Brutally Simple: My Current Exit Strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan
• The Mud
• Homestead
• Manic Maniac Monday: Just When You Thought the World Was Safe from Tom DeLay
• The Mechanical Turk: That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain....
• The Birther, the Truther, and the Frogger @ LGF: Charles Foster Kane Johnson Pwnd and Pied
• "It was a routine job, really." The Serial Unfolding at Sippican Cottage
• Inside Christian Fundamentalism
• The Ducting Stool
• Advanced Hot Dog / Bun Diplomacy
• What's It All About, Barry?
• Suffer the Little Children -- Updated
• Obama's Man in Honduras? A Raving Lunatic
• How to Publish a Scientific Comment in 1 2 3 Easy Steps
• London Calling: "Time is short, use it well."
• Bill Presley and Adolph Dean