"Only during such times are strong men and women of greatest importance. At all other times we have Hollywood."
"On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel. Inside the tepee are 21 photos of 21 soldiers killed during the first months of a year-long tour of duty. The fallen will belong forever to the honor rolls of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and they will join the sacred list of names of those who have given their lives in service of the United States of America." -- Michael Yon:Into Thine Hand I Commit My Spirit
As this long year and difficult decade closes I ask again, as I have for many years now, "Where do we get such men and why do we deserve them?"
Update: In answer, this from the comments.
From whence they come, we know too well:
Our children, brave and true.
What we struggle with, and always must,
Is how to thank them for what they do.
Why a son might risk his future
For his father’s weakening past
Is to ask an answered question
In America … may she last, may we last.
-- Matt Bruchett
"We no longer have time for the good,
the beautiful,
or whether or not something is true.
We have only time for conversation." -- John Cage
No, do not go. Rest easy here awhile. This will take time, true, but the good, the true, and the beautiful always does. Here "Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives, making a case for restoring it to the centre of our civilisation."
[An item from my back pages of more than six years ago. Slowly, the world is catching up with me. And I hate it.]
"It does basically make you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff." - Susan Hallowell (above), Director of TSA's Security Laboratory.
There's a hole in your wisdom,
a hole in your sky.
Two holes in your head
where the light's supposed to get by.
Time to lock and load.
Time to get control.
Time to search the soul
And start again.
-- Bob Seger
It alarms and amuses me to listen to the vast conservative choir sing the “Hallelujah Obama’s Overreached! Chorus” from this year’s “Way New Messiah.” Many among the opposition seem to believe that “the way things are going” it is only a matter of less than a year before a wised-up electorate corrects their collective miasma of 2008 and throws the bums out. This will occur, they believe, because economic and social conditions in America will inevitably continue to worsen. They’re right about what’s about to happen but wrong about the outcome.
By any reasonable measure, the current Conservative strain in America is clapped out, bankrupt, unattractive, over and out. Do you doubt that? If so reflect that the most organized and funded part of American Conservatism today is known as the Republican Party. The Republican Party actually labored mightily last year and threw up John McCain as a presidential candidate. Is it any wonder that, faced with John McCain, a majority of the electorate threw up? And yet, that is the political arm of Conservatism today. In a way, John McCain’s current foolish blather is a perfect emblem.
To succeed in the halls of power is going to take a new and more vital branch of Americanism taken in part from the old line Conservative stock but melded with a new and more forceful Jacksonian spirit. While America is a “Conservative” nation (or so we are unreliably informed), Conservatism as currently constituted is far too spent as a political force to draw enough youthful allegiance to carry it forward in the face of the rapacious nature of the Obama gang. More and more it will find itself in the position of having brought a rubber knife to a gunfight.
In the current Conservative dreamtime it is only the matter of one to two years before “the reaction” sets in and their triumphant return to power begins. The forces, Conservatives contend, are evident everywhere:
Continued..."As soon as my blackness enters the frame, webtracking is over. As soon as white Wanda appears the camera moves. Black Desi gets in there... no face recongition any more.... And the worst part is I bought one for Christmas."
Update: As you might expect, Hewlett-Packard is freaked out by this video. In a somewhat unconsidered post on their blog they propose that the glitch doesn't have to do with skin color but with... wait for it... the nose! Oy!
"We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting." -- Customer Feedback is Important to Us - The Next Bench
Last night I had one of the most frightening dreams a man can have. I dreamt that someone, someone who hated me deeply, had given me a brand new computer for Christmas. I woke up screaming, but the dream persisted.
A new computer! I could just see it. It had everything: a processor so fast that it was measured in googlehertz rather than megahertz, more ram than the entire sheep population of New Zealand, a hard drive bigger than the Great Plains, and a megaplex sized-monitor capable of displaying 2.5 trillion ordinary colors at warp six and with such a blistering intensity that your eyes boiled in your skull. A broadband connection so huge it could suck the Library of Congress dry in a nanosecond. The CPU was covered in sable. The keyboard fashioned from rare woods. The wireless mouse was surgically implanted in my finger tip so all I had to do was gesture mystically.
It got worse.
This Christmas puppy came loaded with Fritterware. It had Openfly OS, BrokenWindows Version 6.66, HomelessOffice 2004, Internet Destroyer, Fretscape, iEverthingEverywhere and Pong. The Paperclip was back as the host of my new computer's "interactive" training program aptly named RageMaker. When I opened the box in my nightmare my first impulse was to rip open all my other presents in hopes that someone had given me a gun so I could just shoot myself.
Nothing is worse than a fully loaded new computer, and I've been using them for nearly 20 years. Setting up a new computer is like getting ready to French Kiss an elephant; you know it will be a new experience, but you know it won't taste like Veal Cordon Bleu.
Continued...
If we knew the intent of the beasts that we keep
In far fields and dark valleys, in the pale light of sleep,
In marked shards of clay, in papyrus and parchment,
Beneath the brick hearth, in the marks on old bones,
In the marrow of bones, in the plowing of stones
Parting sand furrows where our dreams are pale sparks
In the roots of our nerves, sprouting to thoughts,
To the tee-shirt philosophies of cheap magazines,
And the afternoon shows of electronic dreams,
That drown our blank selves now dredged up from sleep.
If we knew the intent of the beasts that we keep,
We would surely sit senseless, would hide from the sun,
And turn on ourselves the unregistered gun.
If we knew the intent of the beasts that we seek.
If we knew the intent of the beasts which we slay
From couches confessional, in the stone barns of God
Where the soul's soundings echo the light in the sod
To our penitent minds; which illumines our stark
Hearts from within, that dazzles our dark
With His fierce pyrotechnics, with His animate spark
That glows in that womb where all yearning starts,
And yearns for the flare at the top of the arc --
But burns like dead screams flung down in the dark,
Like torches cast deep where drowned Incas decay --
We would know then this life takes place in one day,
That the beasts which we keep are the beasts of our sleep,
Created from dust in the long dusk of God,
That we know the intent of the beasts which we keep.
In these New England villages and towns I’ve noticed it slowly while driving to this or that seasonal celebration. The holiday lights on the houses and in the yards are fewer this year, switched on later and turned off earlier. At the parties the cheer is a bit more forced. Inside the malls the shoppers all seem a tad glum, the stores’ offerings and blandishments forced, and the sales sooner and more drastic. There’s nothing dramatic, only a sense, a strangely unnerving sense, that this Christmas season is, in a word, diminished.
Somehow this last year now passing has slowly and steadily broken every promise made when it began. Instead of revival, the nation and the spirits of its people have been slowly immersed into a state of quiet desperation as its history and institutions have been stripped from it in such a methodical manner as to seem malicious. Those sworn to be the servants of the people, to preserve and protect their traditions and laws, prove each and every day to be not the exemplars of the best of us, but of the worst.
Now, as we move from the last night of Hanukkah towards the morning of the birth of Christ, our false servants are swearing – for no clear reason – to pursue passage of their rejected laws and Byzantine litigation right into the eve of Christmas. It’s a frenetic secular sacrilege mounted in some obscene ritual to instill in Americans not a respect for their government but a despair of its intent. It tarnishes the season and it is the death of hope.
At the same moment, the supposed leader of the country, raised up out of a lifetime of hustle and charm, out of a “handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged;” raised up from obscurity on an historic wave of optimism, flits about the world on a gigantic airplane trying to bestow large sacks of money he does not have on other nations who do not deserve it. He flies into snow and cold across the oceans for half a day. He speaks some petulant words and for a couple of hours huddles with other gnomes of ill-star. Then he flies back across the ocean into another snowstorm in Washington where more weekend blather and petulant yabble is being brought to bear on the “urgent” problem of how to spend the most money on the fewest people.
In the house which this cardboard “leader” and his family inhabit, the people’s house, the word “Christmas” is spoken seldom and then grudgingly. The traditional Nativity scene was to be kept in storage this year but was brought out, again grudgingly, only when it was clear that the political cost of hiding it exceeded the cost of displaying it. We were informed that this man and his wife and children once spent twenty years sitting in a Christian church in Chicago, but the role of Christ and Christmas in this church evidently took a back pew to the endless racial tribulations and racist obsessions of its pastor and parishioners.
Yes, the national Christmas tree was lit this year, but it may well have been called a “holiday tree” (I wasn’t paying close attention.). I’m sure that bunting and decorations suitable for the public areas of the White House are all in place and suitable for framing. But I doubt that in the private quarters anything resembling a traditional Christmas will take place. I don’t know this, but I sense it. And I have found that my sense of things pretty much parallels the sense that many of my fellow citizens have. Our sense is that this Christmas is, as a result of all that has transpired during the last year of this “historic” presidency, diminished.
If there is one theme that can be shown to be constant on our national scene of late, it is that of “diminishment.” America shall have less. America shall do less. America shall strive less. America shall be less. Americans will be told that this diminishment is for their own good. And they shall be expected, if not required, to agree.
Not all shall, of course, be diminished. Some few in the protected classes shall be aggrandized. Some shall find their holiday tables made even more bountiful than their tables were last year. But this shall not be because they have earned their bounty but only because they have been clever enough to position themselves at the overflowing trough of what is risibly called “public service.”
For the rest of us, we look at a future filled with uncertainty as to prosperity coupled with a certainty about taxation, regulation, legislation, and ever encroaching limits on personal and collective freedom. We move into the final week before Christmas with the promise from a government that barely recognizes those from whom it receives its mandate to increase our indenture and servitude on Christmas Eve.
It’s not a holy Christmas this year, but a cheap and secular “Xmas.” It’s small and it’s mean and there’s nothing very merry about it. It’s the Season of the Grinch.
"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."
NASA - Reflection of Sunlight off Titan Lake
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan.
"The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere."
Okay, I'm sold. I'm seeing it.
Via: Babies are Good! @ The Anchoress who knows where the good stuff is.
Simplicity itself from lunchbreath's Photostream
Alternative: Let the underemployed minions of Barack Obama stop asking us for $5 campaign contributions, find whatever number of million Americans can't afford a healthcare insurance and buy it for them!
Have you noticed a subtle shift among some of the acolytes of the Holy Church of Global Warming Climate Change? I have.
In the wake of the scam's exposure -- and the collapse of the Holy See of "Climate Science" from a god to a cult -- many of the faithful have begun to hedge their bets, their Pascalian wagers, on the received truth of "Global Warming." Many have begun to admit, yes, there is something to the idea that the "scientists" at Hadley CRU are a bunch of criminal liars, data cheats, and self-aggrandizing charlatans.... but (and there is always this but) the "prudent" thing to do is to act as if the hoax is true. And it is very important to these acolytes that the disclaimer is always presented in the clear, usually in its own paragraph, so it can be cited in case there's trouble from the faithful.
Case in point.
Continued...Omaha, Nebraska: December 31, 2010 The Reformed Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Mass Progressive Suicides (CIMPS) of December 2009 today released its findings on the tragedy.
CIMPS’ summary concludes:
Continued...Late last year a virulent poem created by Al Gore decimated the Progressive Movement of the United States when 98% of its membership committed suicide after reading it. Contrary to rumors of a putsch by the Conservative Revolutionary Front, it is the finding of the emergency U.S. government in Omaha that it was not LSD in the water supply of Washington, the Upper West Side, and vast portions of Hollywood, San Francisco, and 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue that precipitated the near extinction of American progressives. Neither was it a conspiracy of global oil interests headed by defrocked members of the KGB. The deaths are attributable to the deranged act of a lone poet.
Overwhelmingly hilarious from the twisted but beautiful minds at The Nose On Your Face
Everybody with a blog or access to a blog is ordered, under pain of mockery, to reblog this immediately.
"Sometime next year. Maybe sooner if the daily rushes start to look really bad." Written on July 24th of this year:
1) As I have written about before in The Road to a Democrat Led Defeat of America Goes Through Afghanistan, and spelled out in Afghanistan Bananistan: The 10 Point Plan, Afghanistan is Obama's "Get out of bad election results and/or get re-elected free card." He can pretty much use it any time he needs it to become "The man with the vision to bring peace to America." All he has to do to keep the card fresh is to give our forces there just enough rope for them to twist, hang, and die slowly in the wind. If you've been paying attention, that's just what has been taking place.
Continued...
"A six-sided polygon that encircles the pole of Saturn and it is sitting there as a set feature.... It's been there now for at least 20 years and we're saying, 'What is this?' "
Will miracles never cease? No. Even should we cease, miracles will unfold forever. Miracle resides in the deepest foundations of this universe where everything that is is a miracle.
In London, last November. There are small laughs coming from the audience at the beginning.... and then the magic of this old master overwhelms them into silence.
Not found in the video here is the complete text for Cohen's A Thousand Kisses Deep
Continued...Sufficient unto the morrow is the evil thereof. For now.... stand by me and I'll stand by you.
(With deepest apologies to Henrik Ibsen and his play GHOSTS )
Andrew. Yes, yes; well, listen to me, Charles, You are very strong-minded, I know. Sit quite quiet when you hear what I am going to tell you. You mustn't scream or flounce. Will you promise me that, Charles?
Charles Johnson. Yes, yes, I promise -- tell me what it is.
Andrew. Well, then, you must know that this fatigue of mine -- and my not being able to think -- is not really the illness itself--
Charles Johnson. What is the illness itself?
Andrew. What I am suffering from is obsessional; it--(touches his crotch, and speaks very quietly)--it lies here.
Charles Johnson (almost speechless). Andrew! No--no!
Andrew. Don't flounce; I can't stand it. If I was man enough to have comments I’d ban you. Yes, I tell you, it lies here pulsing in my groin, waiting. And any time, any moment, it may break out.
Charles Johnson. How horrible --!
Andrew. Do keep quiet. That is the turgid state I am in--
Charles Johnson (springing up). It isn't true, Andrew! It is impossible! It can't be that!
Andrew. I had one erection while I was abroad and away from your handy handle, that pony tail. But with some manipulation it passed off quickly. But when I learned the condition my condition was in this dreadful haunting fear of flaccidity took possession of me.
Charles Johnson. That was the fear, then--
Andrew. Yes, it is so indescribably horrible, you know. If only it had been an ordinary mortal disease Juan the bell boy could have re-erected me in your absence, safely of course. I am not so much afraid of flaccidty; though, of course, I should like to boing-boing! as long as I can.
Charles Johnson. Yes, yes, Andrew, you must boing-boing!
Andrew. But this is so appallingly flouncy. To become like a helpless child on my uncle’s lap again -- to have to be fed, to have to be frittered. Oh, it's unspeakable!
Charles Johnson. Hush, hush, sweet Andrew. We shall progress progressively in our progress united as close as two can be. My child has his Charles to tend him....
Continued...Sooo relaxing and so mellow. Take two and call your congressman in the morning.
And this man's voters, they're not so pleased
All too often little change in hated policies
He broke his promise, but its too late
And they realize his vows
Always have an expiration date.
Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
The waning of infatuation
The poll numbers slip slidin' away....
My eternal thanks to Jewel who sent this cure in the comments to Drain Bamage: I Guess It’s Going to Be “All About Soul” Forever
A faction of the the Conservative Revolutionary Front called WeAreChangeChicago gets in Al Gore's face and gets booted from Borders @ 2:00. Then they follow the fraud's care out into the streets of Chicago.
Tell me lies,
Tell me sweet little lies.
-- Fleetwood Mac
As we all learn whenever we feel the teeth of truth's bear trap snapping closed the first lie told to escape the trap is, in retrospect, the most illuminating. This "primal" lie is the one told in haste and either repented or embroidered later as the truth begins to inexorably emerge. That is why to connoisseurs of lies the first and freshest lies are always the most delicious when it comes time to fry them up.
So it is with the first and most primal lie of ClimateGate; "the emails don't amount to much at all." This was the first lie to come out of the mouths of the Alarmists and their supporters and it was yummy. This lie was, indeed, the main "Talking Point" (i.e. Group Lie) for a number of days until a deeper examination of the emails themselves and the read-me files and the comments in the programs gave their first lie and indeed their whole enterprise the lie.
Looking back it is easy to see that the emails, far from being just trivial statements exchanged between pals, partners in deceit, and collegial others, were indeed the window into the entire mind-set that drove and sustained what is looking to be the largest and most far-reaching hoax in the history of science; a hoax perpetuated across decades by dozens if not hundreds of "scientists" for the sake of "saving the planet" and money, and fame, and status, and power. Indeed, this hoax makes Bernard Madoff look like a street-corner three-card-monte hustler. Looking through the window provided by the emails you can discern, with no effort of imagination whatsoever, the much greater real-world environment in which the hoax was born, grew, took on a life of its own, and was fed and sustained until it swept the whole world into its maw.
Think about your own collection of emails written to friends, associates, and colleagues over the years. They form, taken en masse, footnotes and journal entries that document your life. Email does not exist in a vacuum. It replicates in outline the conversations, phone calls, meetings, work sessions, bull sessions, conventions, and all the other multifoliate actions that define your days. So it is with the HadlyCRU emails.
You don't need to read the thousands of messages. Just read around in them and you'll get the picture soon enough.
What comes to life in these bits of electronic notes swapped hither and yon is the picture of a culture in which corruption was so deeply embedded that the fudging of data, the suppression of dissenting views, and the preening over the control of the future of economic and social life on earth was the common stuff of the days and nights. The emails show us a small, elite, unelected and self-selected group that was putting one over on the world and prospering because of it.
What laughs these folks must have had. What rollicking asides, nods, nudges and winks must have passed between them after a couple of pints down at the pub. You can feel the pats thumping on the back, hear the "atta-boys" being muttered, appreciate the chortles as yet more grant money showed up and a whole new spiffy building was erected in which their whole shameful scam could unfold unperturbed.
And when somebody, some hero somewhere - inside the organization or out - finally blew the whistle on the party what was the first thing the HardlyCRU crew did?
It trotted out the first knee-jerk lie, the most amusing one in retrospect, that the emails were just "ordinary communication," a bit of fooling around; that the emails (the most immediately accessible part of the hack package) were really no big deal and that there really was nothing to see here... so let's just move on. Please?
That was the primal lie. Because the emails were, alas, true. They were the door that anyone could read and walk through into the entire sordid landscape of lie. Most people will not understand the arcance code of software programs. Most people will not understand the now bogosified "science" of "climatology." Most people will, as the fraudsters of HadlyCRU knew and depended upon, allow themselves to be "blinded by science." And for decades they were.
But anyone can read the emails and sense, from everyone's deep experience with their own emails, that there was - despite the protests - something very, very wrong going on. Anyone reading the emails catches the tone if not the substance and knows that there's more than mischief afoot and that something in the mindset behind the emails is perverting science.
For a few days the HadlyCRU Alarmists and their fellow travelers could toss out their first and most primal lie, but it was too late. For if you read the emails you could not be blinded by science any longer - unless it was in your personal interest to feign blindness.
Once that happened it became easy to spot the liars at HadlyCRU and among other Alarmist supporters. It was simplicity itself. Anyone who told you that "the emails were a non-event" was part and party to the hoax and the lie. There was no longer any reason to believe any of them. You might not know enough about science, but you knew a lot about email and how it indicated what the real world environment of the writers of that email was like. If you were an honest person, you had to believe, finally, your own lying eyes.
[Note: Reposted because I don't have the time right now to examine the eternal banality of Charles Johnson's prose. But I will get around to it. As for his recent little list of why he left wherever he thought he was, all I can say is, "Door. Ass. Bang."]
The Hockneyesque "Green Sphere Upon the Sands of Solace." From the "What? On the Beach Again?" series. Here we see the questioning autodidact Johnson confronting the existential vacuity of American beachspace with a sardonic Worholian distancing of the self from the mundane spritziness that is the Malibu shell of angst, despair, and desolation. Note that even the small Macintosh-referenced trash icon in the middle distance is in an emptied state.
Mozart: [hesitantly] I never knew that music like that was possible!
Salieri: [uncertainly] You flatter me.
Mozart: No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... ”Salieri."
-- Amadeus (1984) - Memorable quotes
Of late many have opined on the mental state of Charles Foster Johnson erstwhile hotchat master of Little Green Footballs. Words such as "dementia," "quisling," "bull goose looney," "testicular chancre," "slobbering obamallationist," and "schmo" have hurtled about the blogosphere for months. I shall not endeavor to improve upon this brick-bat barrage of blandishments in which Mr. Johnson is repeatedly and heartedly encouraged "to perform self-intercourse with a low-yield thermonuclear warhead."
Nor shall I note that having a "big" "b-log" floating about like a cowchip on a vast sea of Internet sludge is akin to possessing a two-inch penis. Neither shall I underscore those slanderous assertions that Johnson's writing skills are limited to the "Paste" command. I note only that before "Paste" there is always his first tool, "Cut." I shall also say nothing to underscore the obvious assertion in so many quarters that a "Dan Rather Scoop" is now so far in the past that even Dan Rather's lawsuit has run out of Dan Rather gas.
No, too much has been done to malign Charles Foster Johnson, that Howard Hughes of Somewhere Lost Angeles. Instead I propose to consider the one area in which there can be no justifiable criticism of the "artiste" that dwells within the eternal sunshine of his mind, his photography....
Continued...
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
Gays over blacks, Part XIV
PermaLinkThat was then (October 2011). This is now.
"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."
Widespread Dependence on Big Wind Will Bring Frostbite and Death
Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy
"CIVILITY NOW!" In which Morgan soft soaps who he'd vote for before the current president
followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes
"Bad Boy. No gun for you:" Comment of the Moment
"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."
Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.
Student, don't let the sun set on you here!
prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update
PI PIE
I’ll Be Knocking Out Beautiful Poetry This Whole Goddamn Flight
There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:
Koan for Our Era
Comment of the Moment
"Get me re-right"
Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”
Mitt did it all wrong
Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ｫ Don Surber
Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot
Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.
Landlord's Nuts
The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord
The Vile Monsters of Planned Parenthood and Their Hostages
And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com
A double whammy on the dumb class.
The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ｫ Gucci Little Piggy
Ten West of COFAX
Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:
View from the Land of NO-Money
Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment
Not a dry fly in the house
The Choice: A Scion or a Bastard
They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com
Gay Choice? Yet More "Settled Science" That Is Becoming Unsettled
who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a “gay gene.” But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine
Beardski: Just the Thing for the Coming Global Ice Age
Have you ever wondered where your Flying Car is, now that you live in the Age of the Jetson’s, dear reader?
When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacob’s Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal
Where Christian virtues fail
"May I suggest that this is not a rejection of the Tea Party,"
Inside The Ridiculously Complicated Process Of Buying A Super Bowl Ad
And now football, like Madonna, is over...
"Then there's the other Republican Party. "
that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!
Piltdown Man: Another Case in Which "The Science Is Settled"
those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer
"If you were an Iranian subscriber to the Post who works at Iran's "Interests Section" inside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, what would be your considered judgment? "
I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore
The Summing Up
Citizens of Slab City
soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands
Big Wind: For Dummies, Chumps, and Greens
it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:
"There are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: "
the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the âway you lookâ, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days » Are You "Them"?
Even a Nun Might Say, "Jesus Christ it's cold in Europe!"
And the Sammy Hager Award Goes to McCain for "You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!"
but evidently they’re issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain
"Spoiler alert! Living in San Francisco with her gay male BFF blogging the existential ennui of being unmarried was my tip-off."
Change is nothing but the status quo
considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance
The One-Check Education Bill in the United States
If Newt wasn't steeped in envy, spite, and self-pity he wouldn't have to empty his drool cup so often
"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political TickerSigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!
Strange Apparatus
Nerd Valentines
The Dead Cities of Syria
Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas
10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science
In which Warren Buffet wraps up his national tour of intellectual drooling and presidential fellatio with bunny ears
The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."
If he's talking about prayer we know he's lying. On the other hand....
Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com
Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low
So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge
Caesar Commands the Jews Eat Pork, Quakers Join Army, Amish Get i-Pods, Christians Burn Incense
Kinder, Gentler Embroidery
O’Sullivan’s First Law: Any institution that is not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.
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
- Something Wonderful: The Shrine in the Afgan Night
- The Great Souls of Our Time: Van Morrison [Just became a father at 64]
- The Emperor's New Speech Impediment
- Something Wonderful: Surprise
- Something Wonderful: Why Beauty is Important
- [June 2003] "Another Reason to Never Fly Anywhere Ever Again"
- Something Wonderful: The Known Universe
- What’s Bad for America is Good for the Obama Gang
- Something Wonderful: HP WebCams are Racist!
- Fear of Fritterware: The Nightmare Before Christmas
- The Beasts That We Keep
- The Season of the Grinch
- Something Wonderful: The Glint on Titan
- Something Wonderful: The Babies Are Coming
- Something Wonderful: Lunchbreath's Top Sekrit Health Plan
- The New Apostles Creed: "I believe in the Holy Goric Church"
- Something Wonderful: When the dark night seems endless, please remember me
- December 31, 2010: Defused Lethal Poem Released by Government. "Safe but Still Sucks" says President
- Something Wonderfully Vicious and Delicious: Little Green Footballs/Charles Johnson Calendar Infomercial
- "Maybe Sooner:" My Obama/Afghanistan Prophecy is Ahead of Schedule