A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? -- WarGames
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear for Bush Derangement Syndrome's Great Hits. The year was 2005. Evan Maloney was there and he kept detailed video notes: >bt: A Trip Down Memory Lane
Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act. It’s true! But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009. Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.
I'm on the sidelines when it comes to beating back the tsunami of slander from the Leftoidsphere's recent twitfit of hallucinatory racism and threats of violence coming out of the Tea Party meetings. The fact that former NY Times Drama Queen Frank
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Interested in getting better at writing? I always am. If you are as well this letter/memo written by Mamet to his writing team for the television show, The Unit delivers the goods. Ostensibly "Made for Television" but anyone interested in improving their writing for any medium would do well to mine it for nuggets of gold. Particularly appealing to me is this injunction:
"The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama."
If I were a tattooing sort of guy, I'd have this tattooed on the back of both of my hands and set it to flash in flaming subliminal letters on my monitor three times a minute.
It is the Talmud to the Torah of:
"THOU SHALT NOT BE BORING."
That's a commandment to remember when writing on the various subjects, arguments, concepts and commentary that arise in the current struggle henceforth to be known as "The Thermonuclear Phase of the Culture Wars."
Long ago, a friend of mine quipped, "Better ideas require better arguments," and while that's true it is also dated. As they wind their way
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INT. UNDERGROUND DC PARKING GARAGE. BOTTOM LEVEL. NIGHT.
Libra's footsteps echo off the walls. The buzz of a flickering neon light is heard. In the corner of the garage a whole sector of lights has gone dark. Shadows thicken. A lighter flickers in the darkness as a cigar is lit.
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In my line of work, I have to look at the Internet for many hours a day. As a steady diet this is not good.
As you all know, the Internet makes it drop-dead easy to find at least 30 things that really piss you off before your first cup of coffee cools. I don't care where you're coming from, this axiom (15 Minutes Internet = 30 Things That Frost Your Cookies ) is universal. [See: Godwin's Law / Van der Leun's Corollary for an earlier iteration. ]
So it is always , I have to remind myself, always in my best interest to get up and get out of the house on a regular basis. Normally I try to do this every day and four times on weekends, but "knowing how way leads on to way," hours can pass and my resolve is still waiting to be acted on.
During the weekdays, however, I have a great break clock just across the street from my house. It is probably the best break clock a man can have. Its alarm is made of children's laughter.
Three times a day, the elementary school across the street throws the doors to its playground open and several hundred children blast out onto the blacktop. They're out there right now. Whoops, and shouts, and laughter. Just a second, I've gotta go check....
... tick... tick... tick ....
.... Back now. Great break. I took a walk to the end of the block. Then I walked back again. Then I walked to the corner market where they've had an unusual run on donuts. Only three sad sprinkle-cake donuts left. Pass.
While walking I noticed something that we all notice and that we all forget. When it comes to children and recess, there is no "walk." There's run, jump, skip, hop, dash, sprint, bounce and lope. But there is no walk. I mentioned this to my neighbor who also works in the market.
"I know what you mean," she said. "I love to skip. But, let me see, the last time I skipped was.... ten years ago with my niece... it was a skipping race out on Lopez Island in the summer. I was pretty much laid up for a day after, but I loved it."
She handed me a bag and gave me a look. What could I do? I skipped out of the store and all the way home. It's tougher than I remember it being. But I commend it to you. It's a way of walking that changes your view of the world. Things, well, things don't piss you off so easily if you throw a skip or two into your day.
It's still recess at the school across the street and the kids are not slowing down. How wise they are for people so young.
Especially appropriate for the present moment, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" is one of the touchstones of revolution then and now. It was originally delivered "in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia." And at that moment it is worth noting that from the point of view of Henry's government, the speech was treason.
Interestingly, the speech itself was not written down or even published until some years after Patrick Henry's death.
The text of this speech first appeared in print in Life and Character of Patrick Henry by William Wirt which was first published in 1816, seventeen years after Patrick Henry's death. In 1815, Wirt wrote to a friend, "from 1763 to 1789... not one of his speeches lives in print, writing or memory. All that is told me is, that on such and such an occasion, he made a distinguished speech" Wirt corresponded with men who had heard the speech and others who were acquainted with people who were there at the time. Wirt wrote to Judge St. George Tucker, who had been present for the speech, that "I have taken almost entirely Mr. Henry's speech in the Convention of '75 from you, as well as your description of its effect on you verbatim."
Tucker's account was based upon recollections and not notes. Tucker attempted a reconstruction of only the first two paragraphs of the speech. Tucker wrote, "In vain should I attempt to give any idea of his speech". While this implies a degree of uncertainty over the content of the speech, the amount of research done by Wirt in the process of creating his text strongly argues that he was able to accurately reconstruct the key points, especially the famous quote itself. It is generally agreed that it ended with, "It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Give me Liberty, or give me Death!
Prescient? "A Palestinian woman passes anti-Barack Obama posters that went up on municipal billboards overnight, on June 14, 2009 in downtown Jerusalem, Israel." -- Anti-Obama Posters Displayed in Jerusalem
In retrospect, history’s worst decisions all look obviously flawed. This can sometimes make the past look unreal. Did Chamberlain really think he could cut a deal with Hitler? Did JFK really expect to overthrow Castro with the Bay of Pigs invasion? Yes and yes. Tomorrow’s questions are obvious: ObamaCare and bullying Israel? Yes and yes. -- Outsmarting History
With every passing day it is becoming clearer to me (and I trust clearer to all) that unless it involves Jews who donate to Obama, Jews who (still) support Obama, or Jews that can do some dirty jobs for Obama, that we now have a President who openly hates Jews.
Why? Who can say for sure. It may be a consequence of that little sourjourn he took to Pakistan during his mysterious mid-college walkabout. It may be a consequence of hanging about in those private schools in Hawaii with his odd grandfather and odder still Communist pseudo-daddy. Or it may just have been injected into him during the decades he sat in the Isreal-hating served up in heaping portions in Reverend Wright's racist "black liberation theology" "church." It really doesn't matter. Anti-semitism is the most ancient virus to infect the human soul ** and it has found a host in President Obama. When you see the mushroom clouds over the middle east, they'll have his name on them.
** Excerpt from On the Most Ancient Virus to Infect the Soul @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Anti-semitism is not a sign, a symbol, a bullet or a gas. It is a Virus. It is the oldest known virus to infest the human soul. In those infected, the virus is clever enough to mask it's existence by renaming itself as "anti-Zionism." Through the renaming of this ancient disease as a “political problem,” infected souls can transmit the virus to their friends, families. They can spread their disease at their schools and in their their community, church, or nation. The virus is also transmitted by exchanging infected fantasies with infected ideologues. By changing it's name the disease made it possible for many to deny that they have contracted the virus, and that their souls are chancre-ridden and rotting. This facilitates the current outbreak.
Yes, anti-semitism is a clever virus and this shape-shifting is one of its oldest methods of perpetuating itself. Like other viruses currently feasting on humans, this one always has a pleasure principle associated with it. It feels good to get it and we live in the plague years of "If it feels good, do it." Those whose moral immune systems have been previously compromised by other pleasure-born diseases have souls which are particularly susceptible to this virus.
Reaffirmation Post: In which I discuss how I got from "there" to "here" back in April, 2006....
My Back Pages: Debating on the step of Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, 1966. (Left to right:) Me (Somewhat younger but just as strident), An Iranian friend named "Jaz" -- worked with me in the UC library, a refugee from the Shah's Iran -- probably went back after the fall of the Shah, (foreground right) He lost his eye in the Hungarian Uprising and had to run for the border and on into the West to stay alive. In this picture he's attempting to convince me that Communism is an evil ideology. I'm not buying it then, but I buy it now. (Click to enlarge)
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
-- Maggie's Farm
A friend with whom I have a daily correspondence takes great pleasure in needling me on my, shall we say, adamantine position that we need to start fighting the First Terrorist War to win it and not as if we are engaged in a game of patty-cake. In March of 2004, after the Madrid bombings, while I was trapped on a Cruise Ship somewhere deep inside the sixth circle of Hell, he decided it was an ideal time convert me to his policy of "reasonable accommodation." It was the moment in which, as he put it, "...the common citizens of Spain and France are saying 'Tell us again what this got us, other than lots of angry teenagers with bombs?' "
I replied that I'd lived for years in France, with months in and about Spain, and most of the 'common citizens' of those countries would surrender to anything and sell out anyone if it meant they could shop in peace for a few more years. Vichy and Franco came to mind as examples.
"Soap. Ballot. Jury. Ammo." -- Joan of Argghh!
It's seldom you see an entire American political party united as an enemy of America. We usually leave that sort of thing to places like Iran and North Korea. But to have a real "Axis of Evil" I guess you need at least three entities.
On the one hand, I loathe the leper dance being performed in congress today. This swapping of political fluids is revolting to behold; qualifies for hardcore political porn like I haven't seen in my lifetime.
[Bumped and updated to point to the fascinating discussion in the comments.]
Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan
Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.
Total states involved to date: 38
State legislatures needed to convene a Constitutional Convention: 34
State legislatures needed to agree for an amendment to the Constitution proposed in a Constitutional Convention to be ratified: 38
This path to amending the Constitution has never been used, but there's always a first time. In any case, the President has no power to veto any proposal or ratification coming out of the process.
In the nearly 225 years since the adoption of the Constitution, we've never held another convention. Maybe it's time. Maybe that's why so many fear it but it seems preferable to the more contentious way of resolving Constitutional conflicts. We've done that once before... in 1861. Once was enough.
But mercifully not as the centerfold. Now you can read it and not just for the letters. The article is a 2,000 word backgrounder on the implosion of the Global Warming Hoax.
An Inconvenient Fraud? @ Penthouse Magazine
Al Gore and his pals in the science establishment want us to totally change our lives because of a theory that might not even be true. Have the sacred cows of global warming been gored beyond repair?
By Gerard Van der Leun • Illustration by Zachary Pullen
It was good to be Al Gore in the last part of the last decade. In the year 2000 he was the world’s biggest loser. By 2009 he was one of the world’s biggest winners after becoming the master of disaster. Flummoxed by his noninvention of the internet and his nonelection as president of the United States, Gore found a winning hand in predicting the end of the world. In the process, he received an Oscar for his film An Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel Peace Prize, and millions of dollars through his interests in companies that dealt in “carbon credits.” Gore became more of a “Comeback Kid” than Bill Clinton ever was. For most of 2009, it was still good to be King Al. But late in the year, Al Gore’s beloved internet betrayed him.
On November 17, 2009, someone, somewhere, copied some 4,000 emails and documents from a password-protected server at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England and put them up on a free and open server in Russia for all the world to read. Whoever made these documents available was an unknown soldier of the truth. Taking the handle of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), he or she stated, “We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. This is a limited time offer, download now.”
Read the rest @ An Inconvenient Fraud? @ Penthouse Magazine.
And while Salinger lived the movie rights to Catcher in the Rye were among them. Here's an interesting Letter of Note: Holden Caulfield is unactable.
Continued...This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. Enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there's a surprise!).
Illo from the always sharp4-Block World
In Obama Invited to Give a New Gettysburg Address - Washington Whispers we learn that " Gettysburg is looking ahead to July 2013, organizers of the 150th anniversary of the decisive three-day clash between Union and Confederate forces have extended an invitation for Obama to deliver his own Gettysburg address, we hear. "That would be really cool," says Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau President [and drooling metrosexual] Norris Flowers. "
Later in the comments which contain a lot of projectile vomiting, commentor "John of XX" offers up the text:
President Obama's Gettysburg Address
Two hundred and thirty-four years ago your fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. I have come to dedicate a government expansion bill, as a final solution for those who work all their lives that that nation might pay its bills. It is altogether fitting and proper that they should do this. Let them know their place.
But, in a larger sense, I cannot dedicate...I cannot consecrate...I cannot hallow this bill.
The brave children and health care advertising props, living and dead, who went all the way to Washington for my photo ops, have consecrated it, far above even my power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what your fathers said, but it can never forget what I have done.
It is for us the ruling, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished bill which the health care props who spoke here have thus far so nobly promoted. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from the jobless Democrats we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these Democrats shall not have lost their seats in vain—-that this nation, under me, shall always advance toward a healthier subjection-—and that government of the people, by the statists, for the Democrats, shall not perish from the earth for as long as China allows.
HT: Mushduck for the alert.
I've often described online discussions and essays as "Brain Jazz." Like a lot of modern jazz one musician (writer) riffing off another can be irritating. But when it works, when it comes together, brain jazz can be transcendent. An example coming off my RSS stream this morning is when Stuart Schneiderman of the wonderfully titled therapist's page "Had Enough Therapy" takes up Victor David Hanson's latest essay Reflections on the Revolution in America and "free associates" on Hanson's theme with Revolution or Coup d'Etat? As readers know I always try to note a new essay by Professor Hanson with a quote or a link in the sidebar. But this morning, Schneiderman takes it, as they say, up a few notches with his own insights. A sample:
As I was reading ["Reflections on the Revolution in America"], a thought popped into mind-- that, after all, is the definition of free association--- and that thought was a book: The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes.
Harvard Professor Pipes wrote a long, difficult, extensively documented tome to demonstrate that the Russian Revolution was not really a revolution. It was not about what Hanson describes as: "the abject poor and starving storming the Bastille." Not at all. According to Pipes the Russian Revolution was a coup d'etat, an overthrow of the government by a small group that arrogated all power to itself in the name of the poor and the starving.
The Russian Revolution was not an uprising of the proletariat against their capitalist masters. It was not a Hegelian rebellion of slaves against their masters. All of that is mythology, well suited for philosophy and literature classes but having little to do with reality.
In the Russian Revolution a small group that thought it knew what was best for everyone took power in the name of the working class and the peasantry.
So, where Hanson calls what is happening in Washington today a revolution, he is more clearly describing a coup d'etat. As long as we understand that a coup d'etat does not have to be violent, but can easily use the mechanisms of government to subvert the system, we have no problem grasping what is going on.That's just the lead in to a longer reflection on what to call the current "Cosa Nostra" moment unfolding in the capitol.
You might want to read Hanson's Reflections on the Revolution in America before reading Revolution or Coup d'Etat? But either way, they'll enhance your day.
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The continent that dealt it.
Science News via Wired Science (there's two "trustworthy sources") sends the world to hell today with the latest TEOTWAWKI fear bomb with Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice
"If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas."Here's how it goes, I guess. Over the vast millennia the suppressed bacteria are building up a gigantic bubble of gas under the ice. Suddenly, due to global warming, global cooling, earthquakes, and a comet strike that ice is thinned, weakened, and the vast continental sized bubble of methane just can't take it anymore and comes ripping to the surface.
"This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends...." Sensing curry in the wind, a scientist at India's Antarctic station, Dakshin Gangotri steps outside and decides to enjoy a smoke. He flicks his Bic and..... kerblooey! The Kali Yuga begins and the world ends with a bang and a whimper.
"And the face at first just ghostly turned a whiter shade of pale..."
The face of (Muhammad) (Karl Marx) (Rasputin) (Jesus) that so many around the blogosphere are seeing today is, alas, a mere figleaf of their imaginations. Sorry, kids, it just isn't there.
How do I know? I used an ancient reporting technique. I walked to the corner and looked for myself at the real cover on-sale now for $5.95 [Pass]. Nope. No face. Instead, there's just your average highlight on the apple representing either a reflection of one of the main umbrella lights used for portraiture photography, or something dropped in by the Newsweek photoshop jockey making everything nice on the final image.
Now I had some fun with this in the sidebar yesterday, but like many things on the web, "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing." Today, this thing is all over. What people are freaking out about is either a subtle photoshop (which I doubt), or an artifact of pixillation that happens when an image is reduced and optimized for web display. The latter is by far the most likely explanation.
The whole kerfuffle brings to mind the infamous spotting of "Nig" in the Hillary Clinton "Who Answers the Phone at 3AM" spot.
Here's that apple under normal copying from website to website:
See a ghostly bearded face? Of course you do. Want to see it more clearly still. Here let me hit the same image with a whiff of the Unsharp mask.
Chilling, what? So, grasshopper, the question for you is: "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?" Answer: Neither. Hie thee to a magazine rack and look for yourself.
“We must disenthrall ourselves.” – Lincoln
Whenever humans seek to perfect the imperfect world either progress or regress may be the result, but regardless of result evil ensues. Whenever a class of people, self-anointed, seek to impose Utopia on the world, evil ensues. Whenever a group of people seek to arrogate the power of the people to themselves, evil ensues. It is not that power corrupts but that some people are compelled to corrupt democraticly distributed power through statist centralization. If the age of kings was the age of rule by one monarch, the current age drifts towards the rule of many smaller kings acting in unison. This is the age of the Multi-Monarchists; of rule by the faction of “Little Hitlers.” Their accoutrements are not uniforms and stark symbols, but cap & gown, press passes, and union cards. Their collective policy is plague.
All faction, no matter its origin or ideals, is in the end Fascist. The Founders knew Faction and feared it. Much of the Federalist Papers is taken up with the problem of suppressing Faction and the Constitution is the carefully wrought attempt at a solution to it. Of course, the Founders also knew that Faction as Facism is never finished except by fire and fire alone. This is why, in the Founders founding document, the Declaration of Independence, they included this provision,
"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
As the Founders knew from their own experience, this is much easier said than done. Sustaining such a government was even harder. Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation:
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Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett: “Obama’s attitude toward leadership is really a very womanly one…” via The Powers That Be where there's a video clip.
Just in case you thought the New York Times does not worship the water he walks on. I would only remind the Times of the immortal lyric from the Kingston Trio's Coplas**: "Tell your parents not to muddy the water around us." "Por que?" "They may have to drink it soon." -- As Health Vote Awaits, Future of a Presidency Waits, Too - NYTimes.com
HT: The gobsmacked Big Fur Hat.
** Extra Credit: Spot the racist references in this old hit from the most admired liberal folk group:
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Click image to posterize
Click image to posterize
A Barbara Boxer Killer: Now this is how political advertising should be done. A "CarleyforCalifornia" production. Hang around for the last few frames.
Katz sent this to me to cheer me up. It worked. It'll work on you too.
Created by JWM in Thinking Right: Working in the Green Slime
Go green. Lower quality, higher prices. Get less for your money. Cleaners that don't clean. Paint that doesn't stick to anything. Harsh, retina grating light bulbs full of toxic chemicals. Electric vehicles that ultimately use more energy than they save. Wind powered turbines that destroy acres of land for a minuscule few kilowatts of unreliable power. Equally unreliable solar grids more poisonous than a cyanide farm. And don't forget the endangered species. Outlaw surfing because it might annoy some life form somewhere under water. Forget about trout streams, and surf fishing. Shut down the water for California's agriculture to prevent a negligible risk to a tiny fish while billions of acre feet flow out to sea unused. Don't worry. All your produce is coming from Mexico, Chile, and Peru anyway. Forget about the energy it takes to move it those thousands of miles. In the mean time, tax Co2 emissions until your winter heating bills run higher than your mortgage- in Southern California. And lower emissions standards until the internal combustion engine is outlawed altogether. We'll all get around on high speed railways that don't go anywhere anyone wants to go. There's a great future in bicycles. Made in China.I gotta put that on a poster.
There's more. Much more.
Big Fur Hat put this up at iOwnTheWorld calling it "Very, Very Interesting" I concur. I've seen it before, years back, and thought so at the time. With every passing year I think more of it and wish I had had the prescience and the continuity to have compiled such a record.
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Enough with the government trying at every opportunity to crawl inside you house, life and mind. Mark Krikorian's idea. My illustration in case somebody needs a demo:
Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it. Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties. -- Sending a Message with the Census - Mark Krikorian
"Is that a polar bear on your ass or are you just glad to see me?"
PARIS — Models in head-to-toe yeti suits picked their way around towering but quickly melting icebergs, sloshing through a deep puddle of Arctic melt in their shaggy fake fur. Call it climate change chic, Chanel style.
Nah. How about we call it demented, drooling, clapped-out, idealess, posturing pile of piffle? With a soupcon of really revolting designs carefully crafted to induce popping flashbulbs and projectile vomiting at fifty meters.
First day of deer season and she's a hood ornament.
"I am Merkin Twink hear me roar!"
Wags often remark that gays control fashion and use it to express their hatred of women. Not completely true on either score, although envy for the feminine while yearning for the mud can play a role. Overall, you've got to remember that although fashion goes to great lengths to convince weak souls it's an "art," it's actually a craft elevated to the level of an industry. As such it draws in a lot of creatives but also a lot of businessmen as well. Sexuality varies and nobody who actually knew or knows some of the cigar chomping guys in the schmata trade would mistake them as light in their Italian leather loafers. Make that mistake you you might find yourself cutting your teeth on the curb.
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Morgan at the House of Eratosthenes spotted this. It deserves to be part of the catechism of losing. I'd also observe that it is the habit of conservatives to bring a calm and logical argument to an ideological gunfight.
In one of my previous lives as an editor and publisher, I caused this elegant edition of Winston Churchill's The Second World War (Six Volume Boxed Set) to be published.
Every so often Houghton Mifflin refreshes the jacket and box art, but my central concept remains the same: "Stack 'em, box 'em, and make 'em buy them all at once." When I first suggested this format, the sales department opposed it saying it would be "too expensive" on the one hand, and "cut into the declining sales of the separate hard cover volumes" on the other. Such is the genius of sales departments at book publishers. In the end I prevailed and this edition now seems to be a perennial. Amazon sells it for $75 a pop which isn't bad when you consider it's around $12.50 a volume with a spiffy box to keep them in -- and that the hard cover set goes for $416 new (If you can find it) and around $280 used.
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This week's Medal of Freedom Award goes to Vulgar Morality for Death of news -- readership dies laughing edition
The NYT stands at the pinnacle of the global news business. Yet it too has suffered a terrible decline over recent years. But if the photo and caption below are any indication, they have just hit on a brilliant new approach to journalism -- call it info-comedy. The heck with validation. Who needs editors? Go for funny -- nobody edits funny.
You need to watch this. You really need to watch this and then post links or embeds wherever you can and send to all your friends and liberal acquaintances. The demented geniuses at I Own the World told me about this and now I've told you. Go forth now, and tell the multitudes.
Oscar hopeful Sandra Bullock crowned worst actress
Unlike most Razzie honorees, Bullock showed up to collect the award, dragging a cart of DVDs to hand out to members who she accused of never seeing the dud movie. "Thank you for ruining my career with a very bad decision," Bullock told the group, while threatening to read her dialogue from the role "until 4 in the morning."
Well, ex-cuse me but I almost forgot we were having the Academy Awards today until this eye-candy caught me eye with a grappling hook. I don't know if Ms. Bullock will win Best Actress for The Blind Side this evening but she certainly gets my vote for Best Gown of 2010. If one is going to go out for the evening with a high-table lady, this has everything I like. Now I'll be watching.
Update: The hardest working (but still cute in a fedora) linker in Blog Business, Little Miss Attila, brings us Sandra Bullock Has More Class in Her Little Finger Than Most People Have in Their Entire Bodies:
What can I tell you? I'm having fun with this for a bit. I'll be back to crafting diatribes soon enough.
There's a reason the doctors are kept nearby.
Update: Commenter SteveH sends in a link to this video, Waking Up is Hard to Do by the Laryngospasms from 2008. Put in the present context of the entire country waking up to the rolling horror of Obamacare, the iron here just ooooooozes out of the monitor.
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Everywhere you go you see "Frequently Asked Questions" scattered about to help you find out what everybody else apparently knows. Nobody, as far as we know, is helping you with the essential questions of life, the Frequently Answered Questions ®.
These are the questions you ask or answer hundreds of times in your life. But do you answer them correctly? Sadly, millions of people do not.
As a public service we present the first in our ongoing series of answers to Frequently Answered Questions ®.
If you have any Frequently Answered Questions® you'd like help with, pop them in the comments and our crack staff of out-of-work philosophers, professional wise-guys, cut-rate gurus, and grief counselors between assignments will be happy to enlighten you.
Of course the number-one-with-bullet Frequently Answered Question® in today's post-racial America is:
Are you a racist?
Well, if the truth were told, who isn't? But say either "No," or "Who you calling a racist?" or "Get out of my face you dumb chunk of human garbage!"
As we all know, this question is never answered in the affirmative -- except by white liberals seeking to curry favor, get a date, or be declared legally black.
Indeed, this question doesn't have to be answered. The fact that you are being asked the question establishes that you are, indeed, a racist. This is primarily true if you happen to be of the white persuasion, but can also be true is you are of a member of a majority-minority. This means any minority which is larger than any other minority present.
Hence, a Native American gets to ask an African-American if he is a racist because the Native American is from a minority-minority (unless the encounter is happening in a Casino). However, the "once-was-a-slave" rule comes into play here since the minority-minority was only conquered and subjugated, rather than captured and subjugated and made to take a long, unpleasant sea voyage. By invoking the "once-was-a-slave" rule an African-American, even if one of the majority-minority, can reasonably deny racism since, having invented the "Are you a racist?" gambit, African-Americans cannot, ipso facto, be racist. Got it? Good. There will be a spot quiz on this question when you least expect it for the next 50 years so you'd better get crisp about it.
Was George Bush legally elected president the first time?
Only ask this question if you've got the next five hours to burn.
Is it still George Bush's fault?
Silly Rabbit, studies have shown that everything since and including the Crucifixion of Christ is George Bush's fault.
Have you lost weight?
Always an excellent question to ask. The answer doesn't matter and the asker really doesn't care unless he or she is about to hit you up for a loan.
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Death Thirst Still Not Slaked: In a paradigm shift, winning means losing!
If winning is to be abandoned as strategy, and the Republicans lose, what is to be done in the next five years with a lame duck Obama who can do as he wishes? Whine and complain? Get even more sick and tired of ever-more-entrenched Obamacare? Start an armed revolution? Position another loser to head the 2016 ticket? I think a lot of Republicans will get tired of this new, losing paradigm. I know I will. --Classical Values
PermaLinkGays over blacks, Part XIV
That was then (October 2011). This is now.
"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."
Widespread Dependence on Big Wind Will Bring Frostbite and Death
Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy
"CIVILITY NOW!" In which Morgan soft soaps who he'd vote for before the current president
followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes
"Bad Boy. No gun for you:" Comment of the Moment
"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."
Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.
Student, don't let the sun set on you here!
prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update
PI PIE
I’ll Be Knocking Out Beautiful Poetry This Whole Goddamn Flight
There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:
Koan for Our Era
Comment of the Moment
"Get me re-right"
Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”
Mitt did it all wrong
Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ｫ Don Surber
Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot
Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.
Landlord's Nuts
The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord
The Vile Monsters of Planned Parenthood and Their Hostages
And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com
A double whammy on the dumb class.
The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ｫ Gucci Little Piggy
Ten West of COFAX
Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:
View from the Land of NO-Money
Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment
Not a dry fly in the house
The Choice: A Scion or a Bastard
They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com
Gay Choice? Yet More "Settled Science" That Is Becoming Unsettled
who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a “gay gene.” But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine
Beardski: Just the Thing for the Coming Global Ice Age
Have you ever wondered where your Flying Car is, now that you live in the Age of the Jetson’s, dear reader?
When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacob’s Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal
Where Christian virtues fail
"May I suggest that this is not a rejection of the Tea Party,"
Inside The Ridiculously Complicated Process Of Buying A Super Bowl Ad
And now football, like Madonna, is over...
"Then there's the other Republican Party. "
that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!
Piltdown Man: Another Case in Which "The Science Is Settled"
those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer
"If you were an Iranian subscriber to the Post who works at Iran's "Interests Section" inside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, what would be your considered judgment? "
I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore
The Summing Up
Citizens of Slab City
soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands
Big Wind: For Dummies, Chumps, and Greens
it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:
"There are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: "
the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the âway you lookâ, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days » Are You "Them"?
Even a Nun Might Say, "Jesus Christ it's cold in Europe!"
And the Sammy Hager Award Goes to McCain for "You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!"
but evidently they’re issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain
"Spoiler alert! Living in San Francisco with her gay male BFF blogging the existential ennui of being unmarried was my tip-off."
Change is nothing but the status quo
considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance
The One-Check Education Bill in the United States
If Newt wasn't steeped in envy, spite, and self-pity he wouldn't have to empty his drool cup so often
"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political TickerSigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!
Strange Apparatus
Nerd Valentines
The Dead Cities of Syria
Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas
10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science
In which Warren Buffet wraps up his national tour of intellectual drooling and presidential fellatio with bunny ears
The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."
If he's talking about prayer we know he's lying. On the other hand....
Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com
Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low
So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge
Caesar Commands the Jews Eat Pork, Quakers Join Army, Amish Get i-Pods, Christians Burn Incense
Kinder, Gentler Embroidery
- Later for Traitors. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize. Hold On.
- Show of Glands
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David Mamet on How to Write
for Television - The Assignment
- Something Wonderful: Patrick Henry Redux
- Run, Jump, Skip, Hop
- Something Wonderful: Today is the 235th Anniversary of "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"
- The Openly Anti-Semitic President
- Goodbye to the Way We Were
- One Political Jonestown on the Rocks Coming Right Up
- Let's Take a Meeting: Running the Numbers [Bumped]
- Something Wonderful: Welcome Home
- Baring All for Climategate: I'm in Penthouse this month...
- Some Things It Seems Are Not for Sale
- Clever: The Future of Publishing
- Obama @ Gettysburg: A new birth of sleazedom?
- "Not a revolution but a coup d'etat" Schneiderman Riffs Off Hanson
- Climate Strange Report: Potential Gaian-sized fart lurks beneath Antarctica
- About that Newsweek Apple: Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes
- Okay, that's it. God destroys the world tomorrow at 12:05 PM EST