US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet trick or treaters at the North Portico of the White House as they celebrate Halloween. The First couple welcomed more than 2,000 children from Washington, Maryland and Virginia schools and their families to celebrate Halloween.

Halloween at the Obama House

Seen first @ KA-CHING!

And don't miss: The inside scoop (illustrated) from Michelle Obama's Mirror's: Lady M’s Purrrrr-fect Halloween Party

Clinton puzzled at Pakistan failure to find al Qaeda

Hillary Clinton, setting the argument that women are as smart as men back 100 years every day.

Your answers for the inquisitor
In his wine-stained satin lace,
Are as irrelevant as answers
Deduced from deepest space.

Your presence in his universe
Confirms him of your crime.
He seeks to seal all passages
Divined from space and time.

Behind the science of his spectacles
Lives a mind reduced by power.
A gesture from his languid wrists --
All's over in an hour.

"We seek to keep our faithful
Baptized, confirmed and saved
From those dark, unknown questions
That live beyond the grave.

"Hunched within my velvet throne,
My pen controls the door
That opens to the vaults of night
Above the killing floor."

To surge, or not to surge: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous battles,
Or put down arms against a sea of troubles,
And by withdrawing end them? To retreat: to fight
No more; and by retreat to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To retreat, to leave;
To leave: perchance to lose: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that leaving, what defeat may come
When we have shuffled off this Afghan soil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of a long war;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of polls,
The oppressor’s wrong, the talking head’s contumely,
The pangs of pacifists, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his swift exit make
With a curt order? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary war,
But that the dread that some would cry “defeat,”
That vicious accusation from whose bourn
No politician returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Nobel Committee! Wimps, in thy orisons
Be all my sins forgotten.]

-- By sooth it is by ye bardlette: neo-neocon »

The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie. -- Everything you wanted to know about Oren Lavie's HER MORNING ELEGANCE

Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it? Courtesy of The Virginian.

Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.)

Take a look. It really is quite illuminating for a single graph:

Continued...

From time to time I take on small photographic projects. One of these is called 1,000 Photographs of New York City.

Beginning in early October of 2001 and ending at around ten in the evening of November 9, 2002, I kept a detailed photographic record of what we were like and how we lived in New York in that shaky first year of our unsought new era. During those months I took over 23,000 photographs in all the areas and neighborhoods and places in which I found myself, night and day. Of these I destroyed most. In the end, I kept about 5,000 that struck me as worth preserving for one reason or another. Of those I've narrowed it down to 1,000.

I began this tonight and will continue with it until all 1,000 images of the set are uploaded -- no matter how many days, weeks, months that may take. In general I'll try to add ten to twenty images from the set per day, but not promises.

If this appeals to you you might want to bookmark: 1,000 Photographs of New York City.

Illustration via the indefatigable iOwnTheWorld.com

"TALK-SHOW host David Letterman has been recorded on tape having sex with a female staff member - and he is worried that the footage will eventually be leaked, it's reported today." -- News.com.au

It was interesting when Pamela Anderson's "leaked" to the Internet because she still looked like, well, "Pamela Anderson" at the time. It was less interesting when Paris Hilton did it because skank is skank no matter how blond or how rich. Nowadays the concept of celebrity sex tapes is banal and boring and fills me with equal measures of revulsion and inertia. Whose sex tapes would you LEAST like to see?

Snark And Boobs has some suggestions.

• Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins
• Rosie O'Donnell and her wife
• Bill Clinton & any of his chicks
• Mitt Romney and his wife
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Al and Tipper Gore
• Harry Reid and his wife
• Keith Olbermann
• Janeane Garofalo

Aside from "all of the above" whose sex tapes would you least like to see? Top of my list would be "Nancy Pelosi with Nancy Pelosi."

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, famously told the governor to “kiss my gay ass” at a Democratic fundraiser last month. Two days later, the governor responded in the veto message of one of Ammiano’s bills.

Can you decode the letter?

Via Ka-Ching!

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• Castro Gay Men to Tom Ammiano: "Stay Out!" (sfist.com)
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Again I ask, "Where do we get such men and women?" And now I add, "Why have we saddled them with a President whose most notable achievement is to find whole new frontiers in dithering?"

"The Warrior Song" Now Available on iTunes. All profits donated to the Armed Forces Relief Trust. Get it from the source HERE.

HT: Little Miss Attila “Kill with a heart like Arctic ice.”

By night a chaos of commingling power,

The whole Pacific hovers hour by hour.

The slow Pacific swell stirs on the sand,

Sleeping to sink away, withdrawing land,

Heaving and wrinkled in the moon, and blind;

Or gathers seaward, ebbing out of mind.

— Yvor Winters

Yesterday the German news magazine Der Spiegel published in SPIEGEL ONLINE an interview with Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, one of the most influential conservative commentators in the United States. The result is an interview of over 4,000 words giving us in-depth look at Krauthammer's thinking and observations that we'd never see in the American news media. Since a wide-ranging interview of this length is a rarity in any medium, I'd urge you to read the entire piece. It will give you a sense of the Krauthammer's wide-ranging intellect that you can't get from newspaper columns and brief television appearances. That said, here are a few choice excerpts:

On the Nobel "Prize"

SPIEGEL: Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?

Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.

SPIEGEL: Why does it?

Krauthammer: He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.

Emerging Powers?

Krauthammer: The Chinese are rising, the Indians have a very long way to go. But I'm old enough to remember the late 1980s, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy and the prevailing view that America was in decline and Japan was the rising power. The fashion now is that the Chinese will overtake the United States. As with the great Japan panic, there are all kinds of reasons why that will not happen.

Wars of Necessity, Wars of Choice

Krauthammer: The phrase "war of necessity and war of choice" is a phrase that came out of a different context. Milan Kundera once wrote, "a small country is a country that can disappear and knows it." He was thinking of prewar Czechoslovakia. Israel is a country that can disappear and knows it. America, Germany, France, Britain, are not countries that can disappear. They can be defeated but they cannot disappear. For the great powers, and especially for the world superpower, very few wars are wars of necessity. In theory, America could adopt a foreign policy of isolationism and survive. We could fight nowhere, withdraw from everywhere -- South Korea, Germany, Japan, NATO, the United Nations -- if we so chose. From that perspective, every war since World War II has been a war of choice.

The Obama "Doctrine"

Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.

The full interview is HERE.
[HT: Wheat & Weeds: But He Could Be Re-Elected Anyway?]

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. -- Albert Einstein

What I've learned from debating religious people around the world. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too.

Atheism: class is a distraction | Carlo Strenger | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage..... None of what I have said here is new except for recent data. It has become quite fashionable to bash Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens et al and to call them "new atheists" as if they say something new. It is even more fashionable to think that atheism betrays a lack of cultural sensitivity or sophistication, exemplified by Terry Eagleton's moniker "Ditchkins", used to make fun of Dawkins and Hitchens. But basically they restate the very cogent analyses of thinkers like David Hume, Marx, John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche and Freud that explain why humans hang on to the strangest beliefs despite evidence to the contrary..... While some critics of the "new atheists" have made valid arguments, primarily that their optimistic humanism is far from realistic, they are missing out on a simple point: adhering to a scientific worldview requires discipline; it requires giving up on the certainties of childhood and the belief in ultimate protection. I don't know whether doing so turns us into better human beings, but it certainly makes us intellectually more responsible.

You just have to love John Nese and spend 12 great minutes with a great American businessman. As Chow.comtells it:

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).

No high-fructose corn syrup? Yes, yes, and yes! High-fructose corn syrup is perhaps the single most invidious ingredient in super-market foods. When I scan ingredients and see it on the list that item goes back on the shelf. It's not only calories consumed to no purpose, it's calories that taste crummy.

I've been dining out lately on the incredible difference between Mexican Coke (sane cane sugar) and the swill passed off as American coke (high-fructose corn crapola). It's true and you can taste and feel the difference with one sip. As a result I am very pleased to listen to this high-priest of boutique sodas, a man who knows what he's talking about.

Here's a few choice quotes pulled from the video:

Corn syrup is totally unnecessary. Why would you use corn as the sweetener? Once a year Coca Cola makes a kosher Coke. It's got a yellow cap. Try it side by side with the regular Coke. The one with the cane sugar just goes pop! And it explodes and it's delicious., The one with the corn just goes fzzzzt.....

"Energy drinks? UGH! Energy drinks just taste bad."

"Big business loves big government. It just uses it to take over the market and then jack up prices."

"What I always wanted to do was to do business with other businesses my size."

"People still come in looking for RC Draft which was a soft cola. Very smooth."

"Coke and Pepsi love recycling. It gets them out of ever have to wash a bottle. If we really cared about the environment you'd have 're-use' and not 'recycling.'"

Re-use rather than recycling. I guess he's hip to the ever expanding glass mountains accruing at municipal garbage dumps around the nation since, surprise, it's cheaper to make glass from sand that to recycle it. Men like Nese should be in government rather than the substandard toads, right and left, that currently infest it. But then again, no. If he did we'd be out one really great soda store and that is just not worth it.

[UPDATE: Yes, Nese's Galcos Soda Pop Shop lets you buy on line for shipping to your parched home address. Check out Galco's Soda Pop Stop for details. ]

If you've ever seen the History Channel series Ax Men,

filmed in and around these counties, understand that the foul mouthed, hot tempered, illiterate rednecks featured on this show are the creme de la creme of mossback society. Supported mostly by what is left of the logging industry in these parts, they live largely in dilapidated singlewides surrounded by clearcut woodlands and collections of the rusted remains of every car, truck, motor, transmission, and assorted piece of machinery or scrap metal that have been handed down through generations from father to son. To a city boy like I was at the time, they were suspect in every way. Which leads me to the proverbial hole in the donut of this tale. -- WESTSOUND MODERN

I'm not at all sure which pagan religion my 10-year-old stepson belongs to. Perhaps it is the arcane cult of "Nintendoism" with its secret rites of "The High Priests of the Thumb". Perhaps he is an acolyte of "Transformerology," which evidently commands him to amass enough Legos to build a Romanesque Chapel in his room that is large enough for himself and two friends.

I am disturbed this unknown cult requires him to keep a graven image in his room that resembles a large square sponge with legs and a Satanic expression. From time to time, he is known to take trays of burnt offerings, in the form of charred circles of dough covered in melted cheese and a sauce as red as blood, into his room. The offering trays are later recovered, but there is no trace of the sacrifice, only vague stains of red on the sponge and rug beneath it.

I am not sure how or when he came by this religion. Perhaps he was converted during one of those dead of night gatherings known among his coven as "sleep-overs." Sure, they sound innocent enough, but I am positive that these are covens at which much arcane and secret knowledge is transferred.

No matter what the source or nature of his unknowable religion, one thing is clear about the dangers of it. He has become convinced that there is such a thing as magic. My fear is that he may be right.

I suspect this because I have witnessed this dark magic at work in my own home.

One often seen magical incident is what I have come to know as "The Ritual of the Spirit Shoes." In this ritual, he discards his shoes at any place in the house in the sincere belief that they will reappear lined up in pairs in his closet. This, you will be astonished to learn, is exactly what happens. They actually do appear in the closet within the next 24 hours. At times they even reappear, as if they sense they will be his choice of footwear for the day, next to the front door ready for his feet in a kind of reverse Cinderella moment.

I have come to understand that "The Ritual of the Spirit Shoes" is only one of the strange effects that comes about through the intervention of "The Magic Floor." This "force" seems to be able to cause any and all items of his clothing discarded at any point in the house to vanish only to reappear, clean and folded, in his drawers and closets.

I have tried to reproduce this effect for myself by discarding items of clothing here and there about the house, but the only magical effect this seems to have is to cause "the look" to appear on the face of my wife. After which, I collect my spurned offerings from "The Magic Floor."

By far the most stunning proof that my stepson's religion is dark magic with large mojo is what I have come to understand as "The Miracle of Toys and Games."

As a 10-year-old boy, my stepson has no job, no prospects of a job, and is currently doomed to be a member of the hard-core unemployed for an unknown number of years. Because of this, he does not enjoy positive cash-flow. In fact, if he has any cash-flow at all, it is decidedly negative.

Still, he seems to have an ever expanding level of possessions. No sooner does he obtain, through prayer, an X-Box than he calls out to his strange gods for a Playstation II and, poof!, it appears. It comes complete with several strange circles of shiny metal that he places in the slot on the Playstation altar for an extended periods of worship.

Objects of this level of expense must, it would seem, be chanted for intensely, and the chants repeated frequently, over a period of time. The more mundane items such as school supplies seem to be the fruits of silent prayer. Still, the miracle manifests itself on a daily basis when, without any tapping of his own horde of cash kept in a large brown cigar box, his possessions multiply around him.

All this happens behind his back and without any intervention from him while in a trance state. At this level of contemplation and meditation he receives visions from strange beings that appear to him hour upon hour. Observing him in this state I can only conclude he is channeling his arcane gods through some mystical conduit that he calls "The Cartoon Network."

I am not sure what messages he is receiving since those few visions I have been allowed to witness involves bizarre figures of a slightly oriental cast flying about on alien worlds. Other than flying and exploding, they are unmoving except for a vibrating crimson squiggle where their lips would be. I am not sure what gospel they are preaching. I am sure, however, that I there is a monthly tithe for this somewhere in my cable bill.

No matter. Although it is a bit unnerving to witness the magical power of my stepson's unknown religion, I am at least comforted to know that he, unlike so many of our materialistic children, has a rich and full spiritual life. That's so important in these days when the secular seems to be dominating so much of our culture. Since many of his friends seem to share the same religion, I am also gratified that he has chosen peers whose family's values also accentuate the spiritual.

Yesterday I thought that I would help my stepson take one of his first steps towards adulthood by getting him his own wallet. In this way I believed I could begin to show him how to be responsible for his own finances. On reflection I thought better of it. His religion is so powerful that he would simply take it into his room, mutter some words over it, expose it to the mystic rays beamed in via "The Cartoon Channel," and it would be transformed into "The Boys' Wallet of Wonder -- Money checks in, but it doesn't check out." He would always leave home without it.

---

First published five years ago this month.

Continued...

Continued...

For starters, what's not to like about Mister Tough Guy by Mark Steyn on National Review Online?

The most recent whine — the anti-Fox campaign — is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies

Continued...

"Whenever anyone preaches disunity. Tries to pit one of us against the other through class warfare, race hatred, or religious intolerance, you know that person seeks to rob us of our freedom and destroy our very lives...."

In from National Juggernaut who observes, "This cartoon seemed far-fetched In 1948."

Thanks to Mizz E in the comments for pointing this one out.

Continued...

Illustration via The People's Cube - Correct Opinions for Progressive Liberals

Neoneocon rounds the bases in her essay today, Tyranny and Obama: success or failure

Continued...

Ooooo.... that's gonna leave a mark.

below....

Continued...

How is it that when Righties quote Lefties, they have video, audio, and notarized confirmation from the Pope, but when Lefties “quote” Righties, they have Wiki entries contributed by “Cobra”? -- THEY WANT TO BELIEVE | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

Mickey Kaus is, like many who still suffer from "Obama Arrangement Syndrome,"** contorting himself enough to squeeze into a FedEx shipping envelope over the Fox News issue. In Kausfiles : What's Your Beef With Fox, Mr. Dem-Basher? he comes up with this key graph on why Fox News is the same but different.

Continued...

"Americans voted for 'change' in the last election. They didn't vote for 'surrender. " A bookend to the video of Penn Jillette is this hard jolt of sense from Pat Condell. He lays out how the forces of darkness now are chipping away at the First Amendment.

Continued...

"I sat on TV, while my hero Tommy Smothers yelled in my face how pissed off he was at me for appearing on Glenn Beck. It broke my heart. "

Portrait of a man trying to come to terms with friendship versus the truth.

Continued...

Step by Step Illustration after the jump:

Continued...

As tanking traffic, revenues and interest metastasize at the once proud but now flaccid Little Green Footballs, czarina Charles ("I'm writing as bad as I can") Johnson takes time out from slander and libel and Christian bashing to post a "News Item" that begs his dwindling clutch of hatchlings to buy their Halloween costumes and candy from his Amazon links:

Continued...

MSNBC's overpayed Contessa Brewster opines about the lot of all the $10-an-hour workers in her exclusive circle and then gets her professional American race hustlers mixed up.

Contessa Brewster: Joining me now to talk about this and the nation's joblessness is Reverend Al Sharpton.....

Jackson: Ah.... I'm Reverend Jesse Jackson....

Brewster: O, er, well you know the script in front of me said Al Sharpton. Looking at your face I know you're Jesse Jackson. We all do.

Oh, do we now, Contessa, you ignorant slut?....

Continued...

And speaking Personally... and if a man speaks any other way we might as well start looking for his Protoplasm Daddy or Mother Cell...

I Don't Want To Hear Any More Tired Old Progressive Talk And Progressive Con .... The same things have been said a million times and more and there is no point in saying any of them again because NOTHING Ever Happens in the Progressive world.

(And while we're at it: I Don't Want To Hear Any More Tired Old Conservative Talk And Conservative Con about playing nice with these junkies. Once the Progressive needle goes in, it never comes out. Junkies don't kick if you're kind to them. Junkies only kick if you kick them.

Only excuse for this tired Progressive death route is THE KICK when the Progressive circuit is cut off for the non-payment and the Progressive-skin dies of Progressive-lack and overdose of time and the Old Skin has forgotten the skin game simplifying a way under the Progressive cover the way skins will.... A condition of total exposure is precipitated when the Kicking Addict to Progressiveism cannot choose but see smell and listen.... Watch out for the cars....)

It is clear that Progressiveism is Round-the-World-Push-an-Opium-Pellet -with- Your-Nose-Bullshit. Strictly for Scarabs – a stumble bum Progressive heap of pure bullshit. And, as such, Progressives strap on your drool cups and please report to disposal. We’re tired of smelling and hearing your looping loopy bullshit.

Progressives always beef about The Rush Limbaugh as they call it, turning up their black coat collars and clutching their withered necks at the mention of the man's name and hissing, like the green lizard dwarfs, "Raaaaacist!"... this is pure Progressive con.

A Progressive does not want luke-warm Rush Dementia, he wants the Cool-Cooler-Cold RUSH DEMENTIA. But he want The RUSH Cold like he want His Progressiveism -- NOT OUTSIDE where it does him no good but INSIDE so he can sit around with a spine like a frozen hydraulic jack... his metabolism approaching RAGE Absolute ZERO at RUSH.

TERMINAL Progressives often go two months without a bowel move JUST BY THINKING ABOUT RUSH and the intestines make with sit-down-adhesions --Wouldn't You?-- requiring the intervention of an apple corer or its surgical equivalent.... Such is life in The Old Progressive Ice House. Why move around and waste TIME?

Room for One More Inside, Sir.

Some entities are on Alinsky dynamics kicks. They invented Alinsky dynamics.... Wouldn't you?

And some Progressives are on Obama Kicks and that's a thing out in the open the way I like to see what I eat and visa versa mutatis mutandis as the case may be.

Obama's Naked Hope Room... Strip down. Oil your body. Step right up... Good for young and old, man and donkey.

Nothing like a little Hope snake oil to grease the wheels and get a show on the track Jack. Which side are you on? Fro-Zen RUSH Hydraulic? Or you want to take a look around with Honest Obama?

So that's the #1 World Mental Health Problem I was talking about back in The Article. That's the Prospect Before Us Friends of MINE.

Do I hear muttering about a personal razor and some bush league short con artist who is known to have invented The OBAMA? Wouldn't You? The razor belonged to a man named Occam and he was not a scar collector. ONE Ludwig Wittgenstein BY NAME! QUOTING: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus: "If a proposition is NOT NECESSARY is it MEANINGLESS and approaching MEANING ZERO.''

Question: "What is More UNNECESSARY than Progressiveism if You Don't Need it?

Answer: ''ProgressiveS, if you are not HOOKED ON Progressiveism.''

I tell you boys, I've heard some tired conversation but no other POLITICAL BLATHER AND YABBLE can approximate that old thermodynamic Progressive Slow-DOWN BUMMER.

Now your Ron Paul addict does not say hardly anything sane and that I can stand.

But your Progressiveism "Bullshit Smoker'" is more active since he still has a Tent and a Lamp... and maybe 7-9-10 fellow treehugging Progressives lying up in there like hibernating reptiles keep the temperature up to Talking Level:

How low the other Progressives are whereas We -- WE have this heavily funded tent and this Soros-powered lamp and this tent and this lamp and this tent and nice and warm in here nice and warm nice and IN HERE and nice and OUTSIDE ITS COLD.... ITS COLD OUTSIDE where the Liberty Oppressors and the fascist Rush boys won't last two years not six months hardly won't last stumble bum around and there is no class in them.... But WE SIT HERE and never increase the SOCIALIST DOSE... never-never increase the socialist dose never except TONIGHT is a SPECIAL OCCASION with all the Liberty Oppressors and the fascist Rush boys out there in the cold.... And we never eat it never never never eat it....

Excuse please while I take a trip to The Source Of Living Drops they all have in pocket and opium pellets shoved up the ass in a finger stall with the Family Jewels and the other shit.

Room for one more inside, Sir.

Well when that Progressive record starts around for the billionth light year and never the tape shall change us non-Progressives take drastic action and the men separate out from the Progressive boys.

Only way to protect yourself against this horrid peril is come over HERE and shack up with Conservatism.... Treat you right kid.... Candy and cigarettes. First one's free.

I am after THIRTY years in that Progressive tent. In and out in and out in and OUT. Over and Out.

So listen to Old Uncle Gerard who invented the William Burroughs Find-and-Replace Blog Posting Regulator Gimmick on the Hydraulic Jack Principle.

No matter how you jerk the Progressive handle the result is ALWAYS THE SAME BULLSHIT.

Got my training early... wouldn't you?

De-Progressiveized Babies of the World Unite. We have nothing to lose but Our Progressives. And THEY are NOT NECESSARY.

Look down LOOK DOWN along that Progressiveism road before you travel there and get in with the Wrong Mob....

A word to the wise guy.

---

[No apologies offered to William Burroughs' Testimony Concerning A Sickness. Mistah Bill he dead. A penny for the old guy. He's found the Exit...

... it's time Progressiveism did the same.

Closing in on the meaningless day when there will be one tweet for every person on Earth, Twitter went past a milestone yesterday when it logged tweet 5 billion. Not likely to rank in history near, say, the creation of the Salk Vaccine, the tweet was nevertheless emblematic of the internet. It contained both sex -- "sexysloan" -- and the inability to capitalize "Lord" because.... Well, because the shift key is just too much trouble. It's a Rule 34** / e.e. cummings world. We just text in it.

** Rule 34 " If it exists, there is porn of it. " Generally accepted internet rule that states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject.

Geller and Spencer: They're real and they're spectacular.

Questioning the Commander-in-Chief

In a quick pre-Frankfurt six-figure sale, Mitchell Ivers at Simon & Schuster/Threshold acquired world English-language rights to The Post-American Presidency by Pamela Geller, the popular Atlas Shrugs blogger, and four-time New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer [of Jihad Watch] (The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam [and the Crusades]). Scott Mendel at the Mendel Media group did the deal and says the book will appeal far beyond Threshold's conservative base. Publication is expected in July 2010. -- Deals: 10/19/2009 - 10/19/2009 - Publishers Weekly

Continued...

Shameless self-promotion with a rock and roll hook for

My Offsite Site

Not only the Rolling Stones here , but the most recent 10 items on my Tumblr site are below.

Continued...

I would not feel so all alone, / Everybody must get stoned.

"If religion is the opiate of the people, marijuana is the new religion."

Gentlemen, start your bongs! Today it was announced that the Obama administration "will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday".... and because it's cool!.... and because it takes us a step closer to legalizing (and taxing) a very profitable cash crop.... and because, in the America of the very near future you're going to have to be very, very stoned not to see how deeply you're being screwed.... and because stoned people, if they can get off the couch, tend to vote for their pushers.

And also because the Obama is a stoner and wants to get some fine ganja growing in Michelle's garden. That way he can take up smoking again and have everybody say, "It's okay. It's only some fine White House chronic, not tobacco." Wanna bet?

American Digest saw this coming in the middle of last December....

Continued...

The Chuck Norris Bible: "More American Than the King James Version!"

The amazing grace of Larwyn sent me this, The Blind Boys of Alabama singing "Amazing Grace." And it is amazing.

It's moving on to midnight Sunday here in Seattle where, at last, the rains have moved in. End your weekend or start your day with this. You can't got wrong either way.

The Blind Boys of Alabama

are a gospel group from Alabama that first formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind at Talladega, Alabama in 1939. The three main vocalists of the group and their drummer/percussionist are all blind.

If they can see, surely we can too.

Say you get a dozen Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (make sure they're the "government approved" ENERGY STAR), and install them to feel better about your "carbon footprint." It's true that these 12 bulbs are going to cost you around $50, but that's a small price to pay for feeling good, isn't it?

Now, get to work. Let's say you're a fast light bulb screwer-inner and get it all done inside of five minutes.

Whew, that felt great, didn't it? Think of all the money you've saved and how much you've done to save the planet Earth from TEOTWAWKI!

Now if only China and India could be convinced to stop bringing 200 new souls into the world in the time it took you to change 12 light bulbs and we really might be getting somewhere.

Two hundred new human beings every five minutes in these two nations alone. And 200 more during the next five minutes. And 200.... Humm, 12 light bulb changes versus 200 human beings.... surely there's room for negotiation.

Continued...

A current Twitter fad is rewriting the Bible (140 characters or less at a time) to a more liberal perspective: #liberalbible . This run of twitter brain jazz often produces some memorable items. Here are just a few out of thousands:

Surely re-distribution and massive taxation shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I will execute great vengeance upon the Right; and the'll know that I'm the LORD, when I'll set Rahm Emanuel upon them.

Blessed are the appeasers...for they shall inherit the Nobel Peace Prize

And G-d said to Obama, you shall lead your people out of Chicago to go to Copenhagen for an ego beatdown.

And on the 38,034,034th day, Man created Botox. And Nancy Pelosi knew it was good.

Do unto others what you think is best for them.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Unless you're a Kennedy. Or a Clinton. Or Jesse Jackson. Or a liberal in general.

I will fear no evil, for Barack shall meet with them without preconditions.

Love thine enemies and sell out your allies.

Wheresover your wallet shall be, there shall my hand be also.

On the 7th day, Obama created the 57th state!

Come unto Barack all ye who are poor & lazy and he shall give you food, shelter, clothing, and a college education.

For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose the majority in congress?

Then Barack said: “Let there be transparency!" and there was none.

For everything a season under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die- and we will decide if and when either will happen.

Whatever is expensive, whatever is ineffective, whatever increases our power, think on such things.

Shepard Fairey: "I state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used...and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images."

Why would Fairey make such a statement at this point? Perhaps because the only thing worse than being caught in a lie is, as his lawyers obviously informed him, being caught in a lie when that lie can be transformed into a criminal charge of perjury. At that point, the case against Fairey for stealing an image transforms itself from a question of money and damages into something that has actual jail time attached to it. Fairey saw the handwriting on the wall and that hand writing said, "1-to-5." At this point his mind concentrated itself and saw that there were -- at last -- possible consequences to being a Lying King.

Continued...

"Go back to the porch!" is code for "You're a house negro." Williams is having none of it.

Via Complicated Shoes

Poster boy for male menopause, Charles Foster Johnson is proving to be a bigger inspiration to the blogosphere than his sclerotic writing and photography skills would ever suggest. This just in from BITE ME! Comics presents....

Hilarious and much more work than Johnson merits on his humble merits alone. Still, there's a certain pleasure in seeing the talented use of an axe and a stiletto on a deserving target.

Five pages more @ BITE ME! Comics presents...

I'm using my Tumblr blog -- Van der Leun: Things That Go Boing in My Brain -- more and more as a simple and effective scrapbook of things I find and things that go boing in my brain. As the rain and snow settle in across this not-so-warming-globe, you might want to check it out every so often. In the last couple of days you'd have found, among many other things....

• THE 27 DAILY AFFIRMATIONS FOR BLOGGERS
  
• The Deeper Suck of Shepard Fairey’s “Art”
  
• Brain Dead Conservatives Obsessed with 'Freedom'
  
• Juiced Up and Sloppy Keith Richards can’t play...
  
• Visitors? Strange Days. My mom and dad in the...
  
• EVER DREAM THIS MAN? every night throughout the night ...
  
• Tallest Treehouse in the World It looks downright dangerous ….
  
• Time and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg - Time and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg
  
• 10 WORDS — The Painted Words of Ed Ruscha [Slideshow]
  
• Pissed-Off Women
  
• Scientists Give Flies False Memories
  
• TAKE NOTICE! That the SPHINCTER Grip Spring...
  
• It takes this much money to eat with Barack Obama...
  
• Overwhelming Entertainment! It’s got it all:...
  Western theme, Steve Martin, elephants and chimps! What’s not to like?

So far this month there's over 200 items @ Van der Leun: Things That Go Boing in My Brain, so if you do decide to go, pack a snack.

Video for Fagottron's track 'Expialidocious'. The track is composed of a sine wave bass, custom drum sequences, and sounds recorded from the Disney film 'Mary Poppins'.

Click Me and Grow Big

The Pumpkin that Ate My Backyard

It began as a $1.49 seedling at Home Depot which I bought for my step-son to plant.

He planted it, as heedless 9-year-old boys will, in an obscure corner of a sandy bed under some ice-plants. It seemed to me at the time that the pumpkin was going to have a short and shady life.

But then, after about a month, it seemed to suddely clamber across my terrace. Then it strangled the corn plants. That gave it HUNGER and it ate the chair. When it approached the deck it lunged, fell back and sprouted this "fruit" of the vine.

Now the pumpkin is trying to invade my neighbor`s yard. Last night I heard them outside calling plaintively for their new puppy to come back in, "Sloopy! Little Sloopy! Sloopy, come!"

But answer came there none...

I grew this once in another life. It was a frightening experience.

If it wasn't for Halloween, this grotesque and useless vegetable would be extinct. And good riddance.

Let's review.

Somewhere dotted about the fruited plains of America something like lebenty-leben gazillion acres of pumpkins are planted every damn year. Then care and water and chemicals are slathered on these fibrous tumors causing them grow big. Some very big. Some so big that they can be hoisted into the air and dropped onto a car and obliterate said automobile.

Many are midget pumpkins. This year I'm seeing teeny-weeny baby pumpkins ripe for pumpkin abuse. But most are middle to large hunks o' pumpkin by the time they are "ready for harvesting."

Sounds so pastoral, doesn't it? "Ready for the harvest." Except that when you actually "harvest" a plant the assumption is that, somewhere, somehow, some people are actually going to eat the thing.

Continued...

From Material sent to Mark Steyn

Continued...

This.

Source: Gary's Social Media Count @ PERSONALIZE MEDIA

Last known picture of Falcon Heene with a smile on his face.

Balloon Boy Found Alive ... At Home

The kid who everyone thought was flying through the air in a homemade balloon was finally found -- hiding in a cardboard box in the attic of his home.

This is one case where a kid won't have to "wait until your father gets home."

There is a world dimensional
For those untwisted
by the love of things irreconcilable.
--Hart Crane

I've written elsewhere that one of the "things you can't say about the First Terrorist War" is that it is, at bottom, a war of two religions. So it is with the culture wars in America today. It too is, and you are not supposed to say this either, a war of TWO religions.

Then again, that is not quite right. Try it this way.

We are fighting a war of two religions in which only one side is allowed to be designated as a religion -- the Right. "The Right" in these terms is always code for "The Religious Right", which is, in turn, code for "Christianity." This is sometimes, by the legion of scribblers ready to push out the party line at the drop of a hat, modified for form's sake into "Christian Fundamentalism." But realistic observers of this game are not fooled and know it to be the same sort of bearded shorthand by which "Islamic Fundamentalism" is made to stand in for Islam, pure and simple.

In whatever form the attack takes, we have seen -- and will continue to see -- an attack on Religious Americans by another group of Americans that previously identified themselves as "secular," but who lately are trying to wrap themselves in the raiment of religion to a greater or lesser extent. I am expecting a plethora of punditry soon that includes the phrase, "Some of my best friends are Christians, but...." at every opportunity.

Continued...

December 10, 1950 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, novelist William Faulkner gave the following speech at the Awards banquet. Unlike most other speeches given by most other recipients of the Nobel Prize, this speech has endured like Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury. This is an example of what can rise out of the Nobel when it is awarded to someone or real achievement who actually deserved it. [Emphasis added]

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The poet’s, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

CNN: Decades to build credibility, eleven minutes to decimate. The most masterful evisceration of a news network to date. How the people who work for CNN can come into work in the morning after this is beyond me. They must be doing it for the money because pride and self-esteem doesn't enter into it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Continued...

Johnson, Charles Foster (Naturalized Iranian), Ocean, 2009. Collection of The Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum Gaitlinburg, TennesseeMaster "hands-on" shutterbug Charles Foster Johnson's latest foray into the world of things seen but not seen is sure to bring knowing nods of awe to his adoring acolytes. Indeed, within minutes of being unveiled to the deserving few at LGF, it was garnering breathless comments such as "Marco" and "Polo." Coyly entitled "Ocean" it is already known to discerning critics and collectors of Johnson's work as, "The Molesting Post."

Today's most influential critic of fine-art photography, Ace d'Allahpundit has cracked the Johnson referential surface once again and offers up this penetrating, and exclusive, analysis:

"With 'The Molesting Post' Johnson at once presents us with what at first glance seems to be an out of focus post and bar motif set starkly against his trademark soft and fuzzy ocean with a soupçon of foam. This, however, is only the signifying surface of his deeper signifier.

Mark how the stark black shaft of the post is topped with a broad black knob just above the cut part of the shaft. Reflect on how the top of the knob just barely intrudes into the clear off blue of the sky above after rising out of the weedy mud below. Recall that placed against the wet of the ocean the shaft and knob must obviously be, if not soaking wet, at least pleasantly slick with sea spume. Reconstructing this deconstruction of angst, desolation, dark childhood fears of being locked in the closet, plus the profound isolation of the self from the self implicit in all of Johnson's work, and we can ultimately "decode" the inner confession that lurks just beneath the surface of all of Johnson's mature work.

With 'The Molesting Post' Johnson has finally broken free of his previous inhibitions and become, at last, a mere self of his former shell. I, for one, am glad that the fierce internal pressure that writhes within Johnson's most tortured work has finally found it's release in the eternal truths of soft-focus photography."

My secret email agent sends in this report and says, "Wow! Someone surely put some time and effort into this one!" [Clicketh to embiggen]

Plus this snazzy new video, "Kiss Me Son of God" by Dr. Wu via iowahawk: The Art Just Won't Stop. You'll be humming this all day.

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
-- SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 W.H. Auden

Much as Barack Obama is the imaginary friend of liberals, so Charles Foster Johnson is the imaginary friend of himself.

From Science Made Stupid Written and Illustrated by TOM WELLER. A 1986 Hugo Award Winner.

Americans at Their Very Best: Why this isn't clocking upwards of a million views on YouTube is beyond me. Stick around for the slo-mo instant replay.

"This pie fight was held the day before my sister's wedding to celebrate the occasion. In all, 78 pies (54 Lemon Meringue and 24 Boston Cream Pies) were disposed of in approximately 78 seconds! "

When she is off the radio I announce,

"All the big pieces are still there." She smiles at my poor attempt at early morning humor, then asks me who is going to be flying... "You of course," I say. She is such a smooth pilot, in fact maybe the best I have ever flown with at this airline, that I always try to shove the flying to the right side of the flight deck when we work together, which is often. Yeah, I have more experience and possess a "been there, done that" gray hair factor, but she is a better stick. Her Dad was a well known and respected pilot, too. It must be genetics. -- Flight Level 390: Why Am I Dressed this Way?

Be kind to Aliens,
And treat them nice.
Be kind to Aliens,
Take my advice.
Be Kind to Aliens.....
And you will hear them say:
"Thank you for being kind to Aliens,
We love to be treated that way!"
--Proposed Planetary Anthem for Earth

Ok, you've read it all. Roswell. Crop Circles. Close Encounters. Slashdot. All of the hubs of Alien Conspiracy. You've parsed it out, you know it all, and you've made your call. Well, you're wrong.

The Aliens are here, and blending into your everyday life in ways so insidious you regard them as .... should I say it ... annoyances.

Here is a brief guide to three of the many Alien races you meet every day and don't even know it:

THE SURVEILLIONS

Surveillion: Natural State and Human Disguise

These folk live every libertarian and Slashdotter's nightmare: Constant and accurate surveillance of their thoughts. One might question, on an enlightened planet like our own, how they survive at all. Indeed, Surveillions live out their daily lives here on the cusp of mental mayhem.

Continued...

"Clearly, reality has jumped the shark." -- Fat Man

Iowahawk is on the case with Dial 'M' For Maternity Excerpts from the new Mike Loads gyno-mystery by Andrew Sullivan

Nine months is a lot of time. Enough time to rehab a darling vacation bungalow on Cape Cod. Enough time for a whirlwind romance with the contractor. The birds 'n' bees boys down at the OB/GYN lab claim that's how long it takes to hatch a baby. But in my line of work you learn it's also plenty enough time to hatch a plot -- maybe the single biggest stinking political gestation coverup plot ever to hit P-town. My name is Loads. To me, everything is a mystery.

READ. IT. NOW.

"All cults of personality begin as high drama and end as low comedy." -- Benjamin Kerstein Obama’s Nobel Prize: The World as Farce | The New Ledger

The always interesting Bookworm Room today is a case study in how a reaction to news evolves in the Blogsphere. There the first raw WTF!? to the news of the Nobel Peace Prize and then a chain of further thoughts as more information comes in.

The updates Bookworm has been posting today are a map to a mind engaged with the news and looking for a greater understanding.

Bookworm Room » Obama wins the Peace Prize *UPDATED -- FREQUENTLY*

First reaction:

I've decided that this is a preemptive prize, because the Committee looked ahead to the insane nuclear winter and global Muslim/non-Muslim war Obama’s fecklessness is bringing into being and they knew:  he makes a desert, and calls it peace.  Since the Committee can confidently expect that, once Obama does what he does best, there will be no more prizes, now was the time for a preemptive award.

Then the Updates begin.

Continued...

"I'd like to thank all the little people."

The Fix Was In: Worth noting, Obama took office less than 10 days before the Feb. 1 deadline for Nobel Prize nominations. -- @markknoller

2:09 AM You always knew those beauty contest declarations about "world peace" would pay off. And without even having to put on a bikini. US President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his calls to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and working for world peace.

Plus his signal accomplishments so far in office, "Jack" and "Shit." Now the whole world has an imaginary friend. And like all beauty queens he looks good in a thong.

Continued...

We can't say we weren't told. An important essay by Dr, Bob:

"With the loss of the notion that man is a reflection of a divine Creator, and accountable to a higher Being or Law, the individual must compensate for his devaluation (for we are, after all, just cosmic accidents) by becoming ever more outlandish and outrageous in ways self-destructive, offensive to others, and hideous. Michael Jackson becomes our Dorian Gray — as the rotting necropolis of the spirit seeps through the grave clothes we have so carefully wrapped, having whitewashed the entombed soul with plastic surgery, slick production, Photoshop edits and high fashion. Our Ferragamos and facelifts, our tattoos and painted toes, are but weathered signposts on the rutted road to the expansive wasteland of our inner desolation."

Read the rest at Life in the Necropolis | The Doctor Is In

This brings together a great song by Gordon Lightfoot and rare footage. Edited with a clear eye and a large heart it's one of the finest tribute videos I've found of You Tube. Worth your time twice over.

Created by Joseph Fulton

HT: Michael Jorris in my comments.

snapped shot * technical difficulties

However, I will add that there is not a single online source that I've been able to find references Watusi (Hard Edges) as being a "study" of Matisse's prior work—Merely that she declared that, "If that old man can do it, then so could I"—which isn't usually considered to be how you "study" something.

Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963: A prominent abstract painter of the 19...

Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963: A prominent abstract painter of the 1960s and 1970s and the first African-American woman to have a solo art exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum. Born in Columbus in 1891, racist attitudes and a poor education system for African-Americans at that time hampered her childhood, but she excelled at architectural drawing.

Henri Matisse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Le Bateau (1954) (This gouache created a minor stir when the MoMA mistakenly displayed it upside-down for 47 days in 1961.[20])

Henri Matisse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Afterwards, he started using a wheelchair. Until his death he would be cared for by a Russian woman, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches d馗oup駸. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of this technique he called "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.

Michelle Malkin » Do the Watusi: Art, imitation, and the Obamas

Do the Watusi: Art, imitation, and the Obamas
By Michelle Malkin • October 8, 2009 05:49 PM

Yesterday, we chuckled over the indecision-themed “word art” that the Obamas chose to hang in the White House.

Today, a Free Republic poster notices another of the Obamas’ curious art choices: “Watusi (Hard Edge),” by Alma Thomas, who is described by the NYTimes as “a longtime Washington resident who is an African-American painter.”

Alma Thomas’s “Watusi” (1963) looks to be an almost exact reproduction of a 1953 piece by Henri Matisse titled “L’Escargot:”

Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down for 47 days December 4 in History

December 4, 1961 in History
Event:
Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down for 47 days

The Escalator or the Stairs: Watch that first step, it's a B-flat.

He ran on "Do You Believe in Magic," and he finds that he has to govern to "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?"

Ah, well, that's his problem and I'm sure he's got it all figured out. After all, he's the "smartest politician ever." Right? Right.

Our problem is whether or not Mr. Wonderful and his rollicking sidekicks are taking us right into the:

Continued...

To be heard at the Wheel of Stars Made by the genius of Jim Bumgardner and derived from data beamed down to Earth from Hipparcos:

I used this information to plot the brightest stars, and cause them to revolve about Polaris (the North Star) very slowly, as the stars appear to do. Like the night sky, this is a sidereal time clock -- it takes nearly 24 hours for the stars to fully rotate. You'll notice some familiar constellations, such as the Big Dipper in there. As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star's BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star's magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).

Hear it now. Five minutes in full screen mode should recenter you with God's great cosmos.

Today we all love saying "Massive ordinance penetrator" six times swiftly. US giant bunker-buster bomb project rushed since Iran's Qom site discovered 28 September @ All Things News Function?

15-ton super bunker-buster bomb (GBU-57A/B) Massive Ordinance Penetrator, which can reach a depth of 60.09 meters underground before exploding.

Here's the team of "Can do" Americans that made it all possible. Applause please.

Please take a couple of minutes from your day to watch this touching message from the folks at the top of the power pyramid.

[Bootlicking] Stage Participants Four doctors will stand on stage behind the President during his remarks. [Lab coats will be supplied.]

Proctologist-in-Chief: Surrounded by doctors, Obama pitches overhaul Oh sweet Jesus and Mary mother of God! Is there nothing that cannot be reduced to an inane photo-op? Apparently not in this diversity-drenched photo. (I especially treasure the aging hippy doctor with the ratty grey pony-tail. He's both a doctor & a lawyer so, I guess, he can go sue himself. Big Obama donor? Of course.)

"[The doctors] consider this thing a done deal, and they're jockeying for position on one of those righteous death panels. We've seen death panels before in this country, and it was a very fucking bad idea that time, too." -- Velociworld: O Death

Hard to know whether to file this under " jack or squat.". Either way, it now appears that the motto for "Health Reform" will be "Bend Over Here It Comes Again."

Continued...

Now I'm not saying George W. Bush doesn't love America. He clearly does. And I'm not saying he's the kind of man who takes pleasure in watching his successor slowly pinned and wriggling on the wall. He probably doesn't. ("Karl, what say we let that doofus with the Howdy Doody ears win the next one? It'll be good for at least another decade of those Pelosi losers eviscerating themselves. Put up... oh... I don't know... that McCain character. He's so dim he'll actually think it'll be an honor.")

And I'm not saying he likes watching prestige, power, wealth, and lives slowly being drained out of the body politic. He clearly loathes it. And I'm not saying that he's the sort of guy that say's "I told you so..." when he hasn't. He doesn't have to. Everyone except the most besotted core of Obamallationists knows the deep and sucking morass that is enveloping the Wunderkind with every passing day.

I'm just saying that sometimes, late at night on the ranch in Crawford, George W. Bush has to wander out onto the land and wonder....

Continued...

Wow! Just wow: After undocking, the space shuttle Discovery crew got a memorable view of the developing International Space Station (ISS). Pictured orbiting high above Earth last month, numerous solar panels, trusses, and science modules of the ISS were visible. -- Astronomy Picture of the Day, October 5 (This is much better if you click to enlarge and the link has a very high-def version. Recommended.)

Location, location, location: "Sited upon small volcanic cone in the high desert midway between Las Vegas & Los Angeles, this 60-acre retreat seems to cap the mountain top with its dome-like roof." -- 50451 Silver Valley Rd, NEWBERRY SPRINGS, CA 92365

Ssssh: Frank Warren of Post Secret reveals he receives about 1,000 post cards a week.

Continued...

American Thinker: The Obamas Violated First Three Rules of Selling

Of course Barack and Michelle Obama failed in Copenhagen. Their strategy could not possibly succeed. In their academic arrogance, they thought they could sell a product they clearly do not believe in (the United States) and moreover, they could do so by stressing the benefits to the seller (Chicago) and not the buyer (the IOC). And to top it off, they committed the faux pas of talking too much about the sales force (themselves) and not about the product or the buyer. ... The bottom line is this: this was an Obama epic fail period. They were the sales force, they were the focus of the sales presentation and they were the product. The Obamas were there to sell the Obamas with the Obamas. All Obama all the time.

And the world said, "No thanks."

A recording of a video projection show perfectly mapped to the front of a mansion in England. You've just got to see it to believe it.

HT: Gerard

Video created by BulletPeople

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years. It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques." --A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Obama talking while touring cure for world problems. How's that working out? ZZZzzzzzz.... And now, while we wait for Joe the Plumber to deploy the Roto-Rooter to remove that look from FLOTUS' face, some "traveling music:"

I'm hearing the light from the window,
I'm seeing the sound of the sea,
My feet have come loose from their moorings,
I'm feeling quite wonderfully free.

And I think I will travel to Rio
Using the music for flight,
There's nothing I know of in Rio,
But it's something to do with the night.
It's only a whimsical notion
To fly down to Rio tonight,
And I probably won't fly down to Rio,
But then again, I just might....

From your goto source for mainlining the soul of Michelle: Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Blame It On Rio (and Racism)

The Storyboard. He carried, for most of the day, a large wooden cross and stood near an entrance to Penn Station. Mute, his message read:

Police name is Cartwright and 2 other police rape sodomize my wife in the mid town south precint tues january 21 1986 . My daughter was torture and murder at bith in the hosp 5 more children missing nurse l miller use sciorggies and gut the child no operation no surgery my-leg-broken-police...

As far as I could tell, no one ever stopped to ask him about it. God knows I didn't.

Peace, Love, Sales. If John Lennon crawled out of the grave without a cent, this is the job he'd take. Maybe it was him. What did I know about instant karma? It was a profitable hustle for a bit because it was so, well, creative. On hot summer days, the rose colored granny glasses brought out the dollars for pot research because we were all glad someone was doing it while we were at work. When the basket filled up his "sidekick" would drift over and be flicked back. One day they were gone. I imagine they'd finally raised enough to continue the research elsewhere before the big bong hits of winter slapped them stiff on the heating grates.

Continued...

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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 ☚

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• Trick or Treat or Else!
• The Secretary of Squat
• El Greco's Inquisitor
• Obamlet
• Something Wonderful: Her Morning Elegance
• A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades
• New York Life: A Tumblr Show
• No More Celebrity Sex Tapes Please. We've Just Eaten.
• O Say Can You See Schwarzenegger’s Secret Message?
• The Warrior Song
• The Slow Pacific Swell
• 'Obama Is Average' Interview with Charles Krauthammer
• On the Limits of the Human
• Something Someone Wonderful
• “Hey boys, We’re from Seattle and we’re lost…Can you help us out?”
• The Magic of Childhood
• Just when you thought it was safe to not think about LGF...
• Fauxblography: Johnson Expunges His Own Dictionary from LGF
• Rainy Day Sunday Fun Zine
• Saturday Unfunnies: America's Future ISMS from 1948