"Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven." - H.L.Mencken

---

Bumper Sticker Insurrection Spotted by a [Legal Insurrection] reader at the Grand Canyon ... Rewards clicking to expand and careful inspection.

Proof -- Dateline: Moab, Utah Taken at Site

DATELINE: Moab, Utah
He'd hunted big game for years all over the United States. Hunting was a way of life to him. But, in all those years, he'd never shot a buffalo. He'd put his name in for the lottery that gave out yearly licenses to shoot buffalo, but year after year the winning number had eluded him. As he failed, again and again, his need to add a buffalo, an American bison, to his life bag grew to obsessive proportions. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He determined that he would buy a couple of young buffalo, raise them, and then shoot them. It seemed like a plan.

When the buffalo purchase was completed the question arose about where these buffalo were to be raised. He wasn't a rich man and the cost to two baby buffalo maxed out his credit cards. The only viable option was to raise them on his front lawn in Moab, Utah. Accordingly, the buffalo were delivered and put out to pasture, or "out to lawn" as the case may be.

Besides grass the lawn also contained, courtesy of his kids, a couple of soccer balls. Shortly after the buffalo became his lawn ornaments, he was out walking among them when one of them discovered a soccer ball and butted it over to him with its nose. Without thinking he kicked it back towards the other buffalo, who passed it to the first buffalo who butted it back to him. An hour or so of passing and kicking the soccer ball between man and buffalo ensued.

When he went out on his lawn the next morning, they were waiting for him. One seemed to be playing midlawn while the other hung back by the water trough which had become some sort of goal. The forward buffalo butted the ball towards him. Without thinking he returned the kick over the head of the forward. No good. With a speed belying its bulk, the defensive buffalo moved quickly and butted it through his legs to the porch. When it bounced off the barbecue, they seemed to do a brief victory prance. The game was afoot.

Day after day, week after week, the strange lawn ritual with the soccer ball went on and on. In truth, he had long since pulled far ahead of the buffalo in goals, but what do buffalo know about keeping score?

In time, however, the hunting season came around. He looked out of his house on the first morning and saw the buffalo waiting for him, the soccer ball in front of the forward, the defensive buffalo pacing slowly back and forth by the water trough. It came to him then that he could never shoot them. It would spoil the season -- and the soccer season, in the deserts of Utah, is never really over.

On a hot afternoon soon after, he looked out his window and discovered, much to his delight and his neighbors' shock, that the two buffalo on his lawn were indeed male and female.

Now it is two years later and he has four buffalo on his lawn. He doesn't hunt anything anymore. Says he's lost the taste for it. His old hunting buddies come by every so often and razz him about the buffalo.

"You started with two and couldn't shoot them," one said. "Now you got four, and next year you're gonna have five. What are you going to do then?"

He went to his garage and came back with a basketball.

HT: Porretto who writes, "Finally, a YouTube video that deserves to go viral."

Make it so.

HT: Sun Tzu @ Big Peace

Job Data Casts Pall Over Economic Recovery and nobody, but nobody, believes 9.6% is true.

Wall Street, NYC Photo by Vanderleun

ONCE upon a time
Making money was a crime,
And I was in my prime,
And working for nothing.

Now that habit's hard to break,
And what I got you wouldn't take
The time to steal. Life's so unreal
When you're working for nothing.

        Working for nothing
                   -- ain't my act.
        Working for nothing
                   -- an un-natural fact,
        Working for nothing.

Continued...

Robinson Jeffers
(Portrait by Ansel Adams)

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
      and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
      the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
      and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
      not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
      the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
      and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
      the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
      of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
      or drown in despair when his days darken.

-- Robinson Jeffers

"No place but in this besotted country could some bright young shoeless Arkansan go to Washington with nothing more than the Worlds Biggest Rolodex and some finely tuned Kennedy Body Language only to retire rich as Croseus 8 years later to a triple residency in Chappaqua, Georgetown and some architectural Gewgaw in Little Rock." - D.W. Sabin"

From Sense of Events: Heck, I even miss Clinton! Pass it along.

In a thoughtful reply to Side-Lines: Green Martyr with "Embiggened" Ideas Go Boom American Digest commenter FrankP, looks at a rare class act in American television journalism from his comfy chair in Angleterre:

I watched this story unfold on Fox News Channel from the comfort of my armchair in Norfolk, England, throughout our evening (your morning).

Megan Kelly kicked it off with a breaking news item and tentatively put together the early stages in her clinical and precise way, then handed over to Shep Smith. He fleshed it out during the dramatic stand-off with a gradual supply of background gen which moved it from a possible 'Asian' terrorist strike, to an environmental nut-job pantomime, in very smooth transition.

Interjected were vox pops from eye-witnesses and harrowing pictures of infants being removed from danger in their cots, one sitting up and apparently enjoying the incident (unlike his rescuers) despite looking a little bemused by all the excitement.

Shep, in his inimitable way sailed through an hour of faultless non-stop commentary, orchestrating the whole shebang with characteristic consummate ease and interjecting his wry humour into the incident without stepping over the line. He managed to get a couple of digs at Al Gore in the process.

Then Neil Cavuto took over. During his stint the researchers had contacted the husband of Lee's sister; Cavuto proceeded to tease from him the story of Lee's life and gradual decline of his mental health. Cavuto got more or less the complete story of Lee's families trials and tribulations resulting from Lee's descent into madness.

All this with a life and death stand-off being depicted by a multi-screen set up. Brilliant. It was a masterpiece of reportage.

Unfortunately I missed the denouement because just as we got to the vinegar strokes, we had a power-cut (not unusual in these here parts these days; it’s the Socialism thing – beware!). By the time power was restored, Beck was already into his usual entertaining crusader shtick - and didn't even mention it. It was only later when I scoured the Internet and discovered that Lee had been whacked by the SWAT cops; by then it was yesterday's potatoes and I went to bed.

The point of my own long ramble about it is to underscore for you guys that you are very lucky to have Fox News. We have nothing even approaching its professional journalistic and production qualities in Britain. The Fox Channel gets written off here by our liberal/communist MSM as a right-wing looney / commercialistic outfit.

The two hours plus of the Lee hostage siege was gripping telly and the journalists and producers should collect some sort of award as a result. Only in America, indeed! Congratulation to Fox - and all who sail in her.

As for the lies and corruption of the Al Gore bandwagon - perhaps some of them should reflect on what their cynical scams can provoke in the minds of the impressionable. The evil bastards won't - of course.

Posted by: Frank P at September 2, 2010 7:31 AM

"When I was a boy I had a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye"
-- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb

The inscape of our world is always with us, omnipresent; a third that walks beside us. We are the ones who shut it out, who lose the thread when tangled in the web of daily events, who forever forget that we can always remember.

To live always in the light, in the presence of the now is something that is perhaps only possible for saints, as it is, for brief moments, available to poets. The power and luminosity rising out of the base ground of being can easily overwhelm our reduced senses; can strike us dumb, leave us numb. But at the same time this state of being is the state that we seek in our blind tapping towards God, thirsting for the merest sip of it, listening for the smallest hint of it, when we are in prayer or meditation, or satisfied at last to sit silently with ourselves.

At times we despair and turn our back on it, the pearl of great price we shall never possess, never grasp in this life. But the hints persist and proliferate always in the natural world about us, haunt us in the shadows of our soul. To have tasted the smallest crumb initiates a hunger never slaked by the senses alone. Once seen, even in the briefest glimpse, the sight is never forgotten. But if we drop our shields just a bit, we can see glimmer of that greater light almost at will.

Here's one technique for reaffirming the basic evidence of wonder in our world; that the world is made of a perceptible mystery beyond our means of measuring, but not beyond all sight unless we will ourselves blind.

Continued...

UPDATE: Drudge, September 1, 2010

THIS YEAR: August 31, 2010

---

LAST YEAR Note: First published July 10, 2009. [ "Speaking of Palin, she will stump for five GOP candidates, four of them will win, everyone will talk about the one who didn’t." ** -- Predictions for 2010 @ House of Eratosthenes

Commenting from that same time: Morgan was right then and he's becoming more correct with every passing day. She's top dog right now and the Republican establishment, pundits and pols, cannot or will not see it. But they will. She can shift votes and enthusiasms by endorsing. She can get followers to come out and doorbell for her choices. She can get lawn signs planted and voters driven to the polls. She can raise money for her choice of candidates. Lots of money. And, win or lose, when this election is over just imagine how many political markers Palin will have collected.]

Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on. -- Wikipedia
"I can't fight for what's right when I'm shackled to the governor's seat." -- Palin

In the last [week][month][year] Sarah Palin has moved herself from the periphery to the center of power in the Republican party. The Party just doesn't seem to know it... yet. But they will. Palin will draw them into her orbit like the law of gravity.

By resigning as the Governor of Alaska, Palin has positioned herself as the single most valuable power broker for the GOP in the 2010 elections. Simply put, in close primaries pitting Republican against Republican, and in close general elections for the Senate or Congress, Sarah Palin's endorsement and/or campaigning for a candidate can get that person elected. In addition, Palin can also raise money for a party and for candidates who would otherwise be strapped for cash. These are formidable political powers and only by freeing herself from Alaska will she be able to exercise them.

While it is true that, had she remained governor, she still would have had the power to attract crowds and energize the Republican base for the Republican cause, it would have been an effort mostly at a distance and, as a consequence, an effort of second intensity. The logistics of moving between Alaska and the lower 48 while still performing the duties of governor would have limited her involvement. Her resignation at this moment gives her time for family, to rest and reflect, raise money, organize a core staff, and still have time for a lot of quiet meetings and walks on the beach with various Republican hopefuls on the city, state, and national levels.

The question is not who among the Republicans won't want Palin's endorsement in 2010. The question is which Republicans in close contests, incumbent or challenger, would be able win without it. This raw political fact will become especially visible in the last few weeks before the 2010 polls when Palin will give a new meaning to "barnstorming."

The elections of 2010 are rightly seen as critical to the future and fortunes of the Republican Party, as well as the nation. For the Republican/Conservative cause it may very well be the last bus stop. Failure to recapture a significant number of seats in the House and the Senate in order to bring balance back to the legislative branch will be a sign that the Party's present thirst for death has been successful beyond their wildest dreams. There will be a lot of must-win and closely contested seats available as the present malaise in the economy and breakdown in the international order becomes clearer and clearer.

2010 is a make or break election for the Republicans. And the person in that year that can make and break Republican candidates is now Sarah Palin. She's not only a star, she's the only star the Republicans have or are likely to have. Love her or hate her, the Republicans must have her, and she must be available for active campaigning across the country.

And as Palin will benefit the Party in 2010, so will she benefit from any electoral victories (primary or general) that she will have had a hand in securing. Politics raw runs on money and markers. An endorsement or appearance by Palin brings crowds, commitment, enthusiasm, and donations -- not from the interior old-guard of the Party -- but from the rank and file conservatives and the center-right feminists. These people form the mass of the Party. It might ignore them between elections, but it will need their lawn signs, donations, and door-belling in the primaries and general elections. Palin can give all this --the people -- to the candidates of her choice. She can do this by simply showing up.

A retreat from the public eye for a bit will not diminish her stature but enhance her myth. Myth, as we have seen in 2007-2008, is a powerful force in elections.

What will Palin get for bringing in victory and money? She'll get what she doesn't have now -- markers. At the present time it's hard to think of any markers that Palin holds. You have to actually deliver money or victory to a politician to get a marker from a politician. If she campaigns broadly and effectively for various Republicans in 2010 she'll have a sheaf of markers going into 2012. She'll also have a core staff already tempered by the 2010 elections, most likely a book, and an enhanced myth. By the end of 2010 Sarah Palin will have become the most powerful person in the Republican Party. Palin will be, at the very least, a kingmaker, at most a populist Queen.

Her enemies in all parties may not have quite figured this out yet, but they sense it. Sensing, they fear her. And that's why the hate goes on.

Continued...

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-- Wordsworth

Sooner or later, one or more insane Muslim jihadists are going to figure out how to defeat an airport security system at one or more of the hundreds of airports sending flights into the country or inside the country itself.

Once they get on board one or more planes, they will succeed in blowing them out of the sky causing hundreds of innocent deaths. If they are really lucky they will manage to detonate their bombs over a city causing hundreds of more deaths on the ground below.

The gelded child who styles himself as a president will make mewling noises on and off for a week or so, and then will go on a stress induced golfing vacation. The congress will be predictably outraged. There will be funerals and a lot of TV, newspaper, and magazine coverage of the "missing."

Flights will be stopped for a week or so in order to give the appearance that Homeland "Security" actually knows it's ass from its elbow if only because its ass is so gargantuan from the head of the agency down.

Flights will then resume at an even more glacial inspection pace except for those in first class, government class, or with private jets. The rest of us will then be told that in order to board the plane we must strip naked and don bright orange government approved flight sacks complete with relief tubes and Depens.

All except for Muslim men and women and children whose religion will not allow them to participate in such a demeaning measure.

Jim Treacher @ The Daily Caller has a collection of What they’re saying about the 8/28 rally in a selection of newspapers and web sites. It reads like a cheat sheet from Journolist: "predominantly white," "predominantly white," "predominantly white," and, just for a change, "overwhelmingly white," "overwhelmingly white," "overwhelmingly white."

Well, golly gee, Aunt Em, was it? And if it was, what does it mean?

A glance at the actual demographic facts might lead one to conclude that it was close to a cross-section, a true core-sample, of America:

White Americans (non-Hispanic/Latino and Hispanic/Latino) are the racial majority, with an 80% share of the U.S. population, per official estimates from the Population Estimates Program (PEP), or 75% per the American Community Survey (ACS). Hispanic and Latino Americans compose 15% of the population. Black Americans are the largest racial minority, composing nearly 13% of the population. The White, not-Hispanic or Latino population comprises 66% of the nation's total. -- Race and ethnicity in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seems to me that no matter how you compose it, any random selection of Americans is bound to be anywhere from "predominantly" (66%) to "overwhelmingly" (80%) white.

I wasn't aware that there was some unspecified percentage of a crowd that was required to be non-white in order for a crowd to "look like America." And if there is such a requirement, could the possessors of this secret percentage please inform the majority of what it might be? Only fair. Goes to character.

I'd ask Al Sharpton about that since he certainly carries on like he knows, but I don't think I'd trust his answer. As someone remarked today, "If Sharpton was white he'd be in the KKK."

"Tens" ? Click it and see what you think.

If you count tens in fifties you can say that I suppose. Times reporters are doing their best on the spinner with Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

Meanwhile... (same article)

Across town, several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

With a football field containing some 5,000 square yards hundreds of people have to feel very crowded, doncha know?

Listen, it don't really matter to me
Baby, you believe what you wanna believe.
You see, you don't have to live like a refugee.
-- Tom Petty

Central to the 'progressives' suicidal rush to condemn the Cross and celebrate the Mosque is their decades long and continuing attempt to equate "tolerance" with "approval." These two states are not the same thing which is why the English language provides two distinctly different words.

Why does the First Amendment enshrine both speech and religion as things the state shall not legislate against or establish an approved version thereof? To formalize "tolerance" without requiring "approval."

In this wise, it is possible to form a society of individuals with vastly different ideas and religions in which the liberty of all is respected by all. In essence we agree that I tolerate your worship of a moon god and you tolerate my worship of a tree. It's "live and let live" at the most basic level. If, on the other hand, you decide that I have to make continuous noises of "approval" of the moon god in order for you to grant me the right to worship the tree god in peace, we are headed towards an argument that ends in guns.

Stated bluntly the American tradition is that I don't require approval of my beliefs from you and you don't insist on my approval of your beliefs. Regardless of what we may do, we tacitly agree not to do things which exacerbate a state of mutual disrespect. We mutually agree not to get in each others faces about these issues with acts like, oh I don't know, building a temple to the moon god so that it casts a shadow across my cemetery. Doing so starts a process of disrespect that also tends, if history is any guide, to end in guns and fire.

"Toleration does not require approval." It really is the simplest of social compacts and like all great and simple ideas bringing in nuance and qualifiers doesn't strengthen our common bonds as a society. On the contrary, it only weakens them. This is well known to those that seek to create a climate of continual upheaval in the mistaken belief that, in the end, the fire will not consume them. They should reflect that civil war consumes all. Then again, perhaps they know and knowing do not care.

It is well to reflect that every single move in the past few decades that has resulted in a loss of individual liberty has begun in a plea for tolerance and ended with non-negotiable demands for approval. Those familiar with the decades of the 1840s and the 1850s, the last time the fires in the minds of men grew this hot, will recognize our current conundrum as mirrored in the various issues that led up to and away from the Missouri Compromise. Many were ready, up until the very last moment, to tolerate slavery. But most were not prepared to step over that line into outright approval. Yet those who began in asking for tolerance for slavery ended in demanding approval. As always, it ended in guns and the sweeping away of an old and corrupt institution.

In the spirit of America, I am prepared to tolerate a vast and unfettered range of religions, beliefs, lifestyles, and other things that my fellow citizens may wish to don in order to decorate their lives and souls. But if they come to me and seek my unfettered approval for this or that hobby-horse they have chosen to ride I shall reserve my approval according to my judgment. Should they then, like piqued children, insist on my approval of this or my disapproval of that as a requirement in custom or in law for my continued full citizenship in this nation, we will find ourselves at daggers drawn.

I show you the American contract enshrined in the Declaration and codified in the Constitution. Like Lincoln, I show you a land "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal." Like Whitman, I give you "the sign of democracy."

From these founding principles, forged and tested in fire, we have built a land in which we -- difficult as it may be -- agree to "tolerate" each other. I do not require, nor do I seek to compel, your "approval." Beware if you seek to compel mine.

HEY! You! No guffaws. No chortling. These beclowned designers are serious: Dowling Duncan redesigns the US bank notes

The depressing thing here is that the braindead firm of Dowling Duncan actually thinks this adds value.

Continued...

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I was a book editor (200 titles), a magazine editor (1,000 + articles) and, briefly, a literary agent. During that time I saw proposals and manuscripts without number. Most failed to even engage my attention because they failed to tell me what I, as an editor, really needed to know.

When I became an agent I developed the following document for my clients who were having trouble writing a simple proposal. Typically, they'd get bogged down in creating a long, drawn out monster that was too turgid and too worked over to be of use.

A writer new to the game of publishing (and it is a game and a clumsy and ugly one) would always spend far too much time getting to yes or no. My writers would have a lot to say about their subjects and they seemed to feel that by saying a lot in the proposal they were improving their odds. Wrong. Less is more in this game, trust me.

And besides, a proposal is just that. A proposal. There's no sense in investing a huge amount of time in something that isn't going to be published and for which a writer is not going to be paid.

Contract first. Book second. Hear me now or hear me later after you've wasted a year or more of your life.

At any rate, I had an email exchange today with a writer who is struggling with the proposal. I sent that writer this document I dredged up from the depths of my back-up hard drive. It struck me that it might be of use to other suffering writers. And so, here it is.

Some may scoff and say that "books are over," but don't you believe it. The plain fact is that even now, in the ever so advanced 21st century, if the human race really values knowledge, books are where we put it.

The 330 Word Book Proposal Schematic in 5 Parts

1) What the Book is About (1 -2 Pages)

Start with the title and subtitle. Make these two elements as attention grabbing as possible. They will be the "handle" the editor uses for pitching the book to the acquisition committee.

Single-spaced, this section sets out the condensed form of the book. Think of it as expanded jacket copy.

What's it about? What's its point of view. What is the arc and shape of the book? What patterns will it reveal? How will it educate, illuminate, amuse or inspire? Why is the book important now?

Function: This section gives the acquiring editor reasons for recommending the book for publication.

2) Chapter by Chapter Outline of the Book

Each chapter is given a title and then one or two paragraphs that set out what will be covered in the chapter when written.

Function: The allows the editor understand the structure of the book.

3) Sample Chapter

Pick one chapter from the outline and write it start to finish.

Function: This allows the editor to know how the author will write the book and, indeed, if the author can in fact write.

4) Core Market for the Book (1 Page)

Who is going to buy the book?

Who are the people who will be interested in the book?

Be fairly specific here. It's not a "There are 300 million people in the United States and they all eat, therefore my cook book...." argument. Editors want to have some idea of the "hard-core" market of buyers' the people who have to have it.

Indicate other similar and/or complimentary books and influential magazine / web articles on the subject.

Function: Helps the editor identify and quantify the possible market for the book.

5) Why the Author is Qualified to Write This Book. (1 Page)

Why you? What are the author's particular qualifications for writing this book? Include degrees, writing experience, web credentials, background.

Function: Allows the editor to know that the author has the expertise to write the book.

Time to be great again.

"No problem. I've done this thousands of times...."

Every time I think that mankind really is "the crown of creation," something like this comes along to confirm we're just God's experiment with "the smart monkey" to see if He can generate better monologue material for "The Late Late Eternity Show with Jehovah:"

A man has been severely injured after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut on his car by blasting it with a shotgun. The 66-year-old American shot the wheel from arm's length with a 12-gauge shotgun and was peppered with ricocheting buckshot and debris. According to a sheriff's office report, he was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with severe but not life threatening injuries. His legs, feet and abdomen were worst affected, but some injuries went as high as his chin.

The man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for about two weeks at his home near Southworth in Washington state, about ten miles from Seattle. He had successfully removed all but one wheel-nut on the right rear wheel and resorted to firepower out of sheer frustration on Saturday afternoon. -- Man hurt after blasting wheel with shotgun

How I would have loved to have been listening in on that thought process:

"One damn nut to go.... just one.....

Just fit this lug wrench over the nut, and t...w....i....s...t, and....."

SPROING!

"ARRRRGH! SHIT! KNUCKLE FUC.... BUT... BUT... no problem....

....just get this big Visegrip and lock it down.... there....

Now just whack the sucker with this small sledge hammer and....."

WHAA-TUNK!

"SAAAYWHAT! YOU MOTHER.....! OH, MY SHIN! MY SHIN!....."

Deep measured breathing and slowly rising rage rumblings ensue as the afflicted limps and hobbles about the shop.

"That's it. THAT'S IT! You sombitch nut!

You're COMING OFF BABY! OFF! Time for the BIG GUNS!....

Guns? Yes, that's it. I'll just BLOW THIS MOTHER OFF!

"Get that shotgun out of the cabinet. That's it.

Load both chambers. Saves time.

Won't be effing around this time. Got to get in close.

Get that barrel right on the steel nut which is on the steel wheel which is on the steel axle which is on the steel car.... and....

stand at an angle so that there won't be any chance of ricochet and just s..q..e..e..z..e off a round and...."

KABLAMM!

And then a silence over which we hear a slowly rising siren and the a small voice-over saying, "I wonder if they've got Monster Garage on the hospital's cable system...."

I wish I'd been this quick-witted when this happened to me. Wait for it.

Take my country, please.

We talk about sealing the border. We talk about not letting the Mexican flag prevail over the American flag. It's all nonsense. The real symbol of Mexican illegal immigration goes unremarked. It's right there in the foreground. It's the Pinata.

The pinata is a bright candy-and-toy-filled container (generally suspended on a rope from a tree branch or ceiling) that is used during celebrations. A succession of blindfolded, stick-wielding children try to break the pinata in order to collect the candy inside of it. -- Wikipedia

I submit that America as The Big Pinata is what all this is about. It's all it ever has been about. This Mexican flag over the American flag hung upside down (Distress!) simply takes our eye off the ball, or rather, the pinata. And since pinatas are normally approached blindfolded, that's not surprising.

The kids above know, even if it is unconsciously, that the pinata is what is at stake here. What illegals from Mexico and every other country want most is unlimited chances to step over the line and take another swing at The Big Pinata. To date our border reality, if not our policy, enables that.

Those Americans who would like to think that there really is a border want the number of chances to take a swing cut back to somewhere below absolute zero. Those Americans who are consumed with the notion that self-esteem is more important than security favor unlimited swings along with policies that feed, clothe, medicate, and otherwise care for those 'wretched masses yearning to get the Big Pinata jackpot.'

Congress seems to be going for a policy which is: "Okay, kids, you get unlimited swings but, damnit, you gotta get in line, sign the guest book, and take your turn. After all, we can't have a horde of party animals just whaling away at the Big Pinata from all directions. Somebody could get hurt. And while you're waiting, could most of you please walk the dog, water the grass, take out the garbage, mind the deep fryer, give our spouses a little satisfaction in the afternoon, and do all those other dirty, little jobs that 'Americans just won't do.' You know, like coal mining."

In the meantime, it's clear that the Pinata Party is going to continue. After all, what can really shut it down? The fun's too cool. The prizes are too rich. And they're not even carding most people.

I know, I know -- a Wall; favored solution of Israel and East Germany. It'll probably happen in some form or another, but -- in the present political climate -- it's not going to happen anytime soon, mano, so be cool.

In America, just the argument about the wall is good for another five years. Then there'd have to be "legislation" for appropriation since no state is going to pay for it. That's at least two sessions of Congress right there. Then we'll have the period in which the various federal agencies will draw up the specs. Then the bidding period. Then the review of the bidding period. Then the review of the bids. Then the discovery that the winner of the bidding process is a company owned by Halliburton. Whoops, back to square one. Then the awarding of the contract. Then the beginning of the construction of a barrier that's what, a thousand miles long? Get back Great Wall of China, here's something else that can be seen from space with the naked eye.

Timeline? Ten years minimum. Fifteen in realistic terms. Twenty in Washington Time.

And guess what? The Big Pinata will still be there and the party will still be going strong, and the people will still keep a coming.

I mean, wouldn't you? If you are a person with an IQ level a few points above that of broccoli, and you want to make some money and have a good life, and you suddenly discover that, oops, you've been born in a Third World oligarchy like Mexico, without the benefit of being born into the Mexican oligarchy, you're walking north, compadre. North is where they're having the pinata party. And you don't care that the party's been walled up inside an exclusive club with a bunch of big armed bouncers manning the velvet rope and checking ID, you're going to get in somehow.

If anyone thinks a wall is magic bullet that puts our immigration problem out of its misery, they are sadly mistaken. As inventive as the means of getting in now sometimes seem (hiding people "inside" car seats, leasing children in order to become an instant familia), they will seem like amateur hour once a wall (physical, electronic, cyber) goes up. Once that's done, we're in for decades of Wile E. Coyote antics south of El Paso. Human catapults. Rent-A-Rocket Packs, Pocket Submarines, the Full Rube Goldberg.

Why? Because we've done everything possible to stop the flood except the one thing that would stop the flood: call off the party and slap the organizers of the Big Pinata Raves into jail, pronto, so they can't organize any more. And, while we're at it, we need to make sure any pinata around is empty. Yes, even if you make it and hit it, you get bubkis. Nothing falls out. After all, when a slot machine doesn't have a jackpot, nobody plays it.

Will we do it? Will we really throw the people who hand out the jobs in jail? Will we stop giving free food, shelter, medical care, education, and citizenship to babies born on American soil no matter the status of their parents? "In the present political climate," no way, Jose.

The stark reality is that for this country to get serious about immigration and controlling our borders, something else other than just a flood of illegals coming in on a daily basis has to happen. Something terrible. Something that doesn't just cost mere money and jobs, but costs lives. A lot of lives. That's the one way, the only way, that anything will be done. And what will be done then will be, well, the most terrible solution to the border problem any can imagine, and nobody wants.

Communist East Germany. Searchlights and the Stasi . With the guns pointed out and Predators high overhead.

And that, my friend, is. not. going. to. happen.

by Gerard Allen Van der Ginsberg

For Karl Rove Solomon

I SAW the second-best minds of my not-so-Great Generation destroyed by Bush Derangement Syndrome, pasty, paunchy, tenured, and not looking too sharp naked,

bullshitting themselves through the African-American streets at cocktail hour lusting for a Cialis refill and one black friend on the down-low,

aging hair-plugged hipsters burning for their ancient political connection to the White House through the machinations of monied moonbats,

who warred on poverty and Blackwater's Wal-Mart and bulbous-eyed and still high from some bad acid in 1968 set up no-smoking zones on tobacco farms in the unnatural darkness of Darwinistic delusions floating a few more half-baked secular notions like "Let's all worship Zero!",

Continued...

PART II of GROWL [First published August, 2009.]

by Gerard Allen Van der Ginsberg

What Socialist Party of cement and aluminum bashed open American skulls and sucked out their freedom, brains and imagination?

Democrat! Darwinist Solitude! NEA Filth! Pelosi Ugliness! Recycling Cans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming silent under the D&C! Boys sobbing for Big Daddies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Democrat! Democrat! Nightmare of Democrat! Democrat the loveless! Gone mental Democrat! Democrat the heavy aggregator of girly-men!

Democrat the incomprehensible African-American plantation! Democrat the skull & crossbones soulless Senate and Congress of sorrows!

Democrat whose buildings are Fascist overbuilding with gun slits! Democrat the vast bloating stone of Deficit! Democrat the broke government of the pauper nation!

Democrat whose mind is pure machinery! Democrat whose blood is running tax money! Democrat whose fingers are in your wallet!

Democrat whose breast is a transexual dynamo! Democrat whose mouth is a smoking tomb! Democrat of the atheist thumb pulling out a plum and saying what a free to be bad boy am I! Democrat whose only god is Dracula!

Continued...

The robot says, “What will you have?”

The guy says, “Martini.”

The robot brings back the best martini ever and says to the man, “What’s your IQ?”

The guy says, “168.” The robot then proceeds to talk about physics, space exploration and medical technology. The guy leaves, but he is curious…

So he goes back into the bar. The robot bartender says, “What will you have?”

The guy says, “Martini.”

Again, the robot makes a great martini gives it to the man and says, “What’s your IQ?”

The guy says, “100.” The robot then starts to talk about Nascar, Budweiser and John Deere tractors.

The guy leaves, but finds it very interesting, so he thinks he will try it one more time. He goes back into the bar.

The robot says, “What will you have?”

The guy says, “Martini,” and the robot brings him another great martini. The robot then says, “What’s your IQ?”

The guy says, “Uh, about 50.”

The robot leans in real close and says,

Continued...

One of the many seemingly throw-away moments in Mad Men; moments that shine a brief light on a mystery.

Here's its an ancient couple in a brief cameo. They've come through the years to a mystery that is only known to them. Like many marriages that survive, it runs on the trivial that lives in the deep:

"Did you get pears?" "We'll discuss it inside."

There's a novel or a sermon or a life hidden in that. Few will get to read or hear it. Fewer still will live it.

For some it will seem banal, but others will hear it,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Perhaps that is what Don hears as he pauses. Or maybe it is what we hear.

Or maybe it is what Matthew Arnold heard on Dover Beach,

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Which is just a poet's way of saying, "Did you get pears?"

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✪ Thinking Right ✪

...It will not run away."

There is nothing wrong with having a job, he argued, but it becomes a moral danger when it begins to occupy too large a place in one's mind. Granted, it must take up a large proportion of one's waking hours, in the weekdays, but the person who carries his job about with him like a snail his shell, may become more snail than human. --- David Warren

Both borrowed over $60,000 to finance an "higher-ed degree" and both graduated in 2000.

But one majored in advanced chemistry, he currently declares an annual income of around $210,000, and is fully employed with two dependents. This graduate makes regular interest and principal payments, and only owes $5K on his student loans. And the other student majored in Transgender studies and Foreign Relations, only makes $35,000 each year ( teaching at his alma mater), and he has no dependents. Over the past ten years, this student has only paid $500 to principal. -- Chicago Boyz More on the Higher-Ed Bubble

From the demented The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys

nor the fuel to fly my B-52 that far, so I'm selling both my nukes to the first terrorist group that will promise to use one of them on San Francisco." -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Historians will surely record the summer of 2010 Blogging as the Parking-Space Era. -- Sonic Charmer

A modern man is a man who forgets what man knows about man. -- #1,810

Question. Who is Klein's WaPo Silver Daddy that he can keep sucking down paychecks?

"Another month, another grim jobs report. We lot [sic] 54,000 jobs in August. Most of those -- in fact, 114,000 of them -- were expiring census jobs." -- Ezra Klein - August jobs report: 54,000 jobs lost; unemployment rate hits 9.6 percent

Charles Krauthammer - Our distracted commander in chief

"If this is true, then Obama's military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate members of Congress, pass health care and thereby maintain a president's political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out. But Obama sees his wartime duties as a threat to his domestic agenda. These wars are a distraction, unwanted interference with his true vocation -- transforming America."

IJWTS:

"Nothing, but fucking NOTHING, is EASY on Facebook. It's their value proposition."

If you are Mom-who-resurrects-horrible- dead-Windows-machines-one-last-time

(after infestation by virtual bedbugs and Tviruses from teen boy’s internet explorations) you will remind your teen boy (who tends to be absent minded) “Don’t leave anything in your history that might shock your Father. “ -- Retreiver @ From The Borderline Socipathic Book for Boys | Little Miss Attila

Lauer can pretend to believe this horseshit, but nobody else does.

Earlier this year NBC's Matt Lauer asked Obama why he has not chosen a church to attend. Obama said that his presence might distract other parishioners窶殿 compunction not shared by his predecessors. Instead, he makes do with a daily devotional email from a group of pastors. Christianity by Blackberry, one might call it. No wonder folks are confused. -- The President窶冱 Pastoral Emails ｻ Spengler | A First Things Blog

I just don't know how folks like Lauer can get the taste out of their mouths at night.

Or, as commenter Rodrigo put it: "If Obama were to murder Lauer's family and burn down his house, he'd be thrilled the President visited his home."

[Bumped for the snark factor]

Even if you go into the ‘learned professions’

you are going to have to be entrepreneurial and flexible. Technology is going to rock your world and economic changes and upheavals are going to change the rules on you over and over. This is not how the knowledge professions (law, medicine, teaching, the civil service) used to work. In the old days, you got the right degree from the right school, got a job with a good employer and rose steadily through the ranks through a long and increasingly distinguished career. At the end you had a safe pension.

Almost certainly, this is not going to happen to you. -- Back To School - Walter Russell Mead

Sippican Cottage: Hey, It's Time For Pointless Lists Of Tools Compiled By People That Think Defragging Hard Drives Is Heavy Construction

Circular Saw - "Nothing beats a circular saw for speed and convenience when it comes to making straight cuts on a variety of materials." Well, a table saw does. By a large margin, actually. And if you have a circular saw, that crosscut saw you told everyone to buy is going to end up on eBay some day, covered with rust but with the teeth still razor sharp. But soldier on, skinny glasses dude, I'm warming to your delirium tremens approach to prose and pounding on things

No Kombat = Kollapse of Kwislings:

MSNBC spent the last seven years cheering for the defeat of U.S. troops in Iraq and the nation’s complete failure post-Saddam. Now those troops will return home victorious, Iraqis will have the chance to build their version of a shining city on the hill, while for MSNBC the lesson learned is: “no defeat is as bitter as the defeat you suffer, while cheering for the defeat of others.” -- Big Journalism

Drive them fast to their tomb.

The Sayings of Lee: My Demands

FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

The most interesting thing about Lee's ideas is that they are simply monstrously enlarged versions of mainstream Leftwing notions.

Promoting birth control in Third World countries, abolishing all advanced combat systems, ridding the world of the Judaic-Christian heritage, Climate Change, building down the US economy, handing out subsidized housing -- what could go wrong? Nothing out of the ordinary in that, is there? But one way to detect logical fallacies is to see what happens when you scale them up. Those harmless ideas when projected onto a horizon ten miles high and fifty miles wide are so awe-inspiringly crazy that either you say "What the f*ck? "or "Why not?" James Lee said "Why not?". -- Belmont Club » The Temple of Dagon

Later.... Environmental Militant James Lee Shot and Killed After Taking Hostages at Discovery Channel Headquarters - ABC News

Manger said the suspect had "metalic canisters" strapped to his chest and back. When Lee was struck by police bullets, one of the canisters "popped." Police have not confirmed if the canisters were a bomb, but Manger said the "device may have gone off" when he was shot.

Okay for today, but.... who's next?

neo-neocon asks and answers, "Democrats or Republicans: does the difference make a difference?"

As I see it, what the Republicans did wrong in the early years of the twenty-first century involved the flaws and frustrations inherent in government itself, a slow bleed of integrity and an accretion of power and of corruption by money. Such imperfections seem to be part and parcel of all government窶覇xcept for some ideal, Platonic one that exists only in our imaginations or legends. The remedy is not to opt out, it is to work for those who seem to be most resistant to such temptations, and to hope they continue to avoid them as long as possible, and then to toss them out as soon as they succumb.

"The Summer of Recovery," the finale of the first full season of "Obama,"

a midseason replacement that premiered to hype and high ratings but is now struggling and may face cancellation: "Barack uses his trillion dollar stimulus to create the best summer ever--the 'Recovery Summer'--but wastes hundreds of billions on things like studies on how cocaine affects monkeys, investigating the link between yoga and hot flashes, bus-stop art, international ant research, and an upgrade to the statehouse and political offices in Topeka, Kan. Eventually, the economy ends up barely ambulatory." -- Daniel Loomis writing to Taranto @ The Summer of George - WSJ.com

PERFECT SHIRT via Tim Blair HT: BFHat

It’s certainly brown. I hate the table, which looks like it was saved from a rusty Borg cube. Otherwise it has a nice autumnal feel – sedate, calm, subdued. If I was called there I would find the colors soothing, but it does sort of have a 4:00 PM-in-America feel to it. -- Lileks, The Bleat.

Beck is unabashed that God can be invoked in public places by citizens, who vote and assemble and speak and freely exercise their religion.

They are supposed to be too browbeaten to do this. Gathering hundreds of thousands of them to peaceably assemble shows they are not. But showing that the people who believe in God and practice their religion are fellow-citizens who share political and economic values with majorities of Americans is a critical step. The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world -- and to potential political allies who are not religious -- is critical. -- Chicago Boyz I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing

Humanity is the only totally false god. -- #1,781

Lending to small businesses? Is Obama trying to tell us that there's no available money to loan to small businesses right now?

Let him explain why small banks are sitting on one trillion dollars in excess reserves right now .. but somehow don't want to put that money into the lending marketplace? Wait --- I'll tell you. He doesn't know. You could take what Obama knows about small business and the mindset of the people who own them and shove up an ant's ass and it would rattle around like a marble in the Super Dome. -- FULL-SCALE ATTACK - Nealz Nuze on boortz.com

If states were really interested in protecting, not taxing the public, speed cams like this would be in use. -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Education secretary urged his employees to go to Sharpton's rally

"ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the 'Reclaim the Dream' rally and march," began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

Sadly, most did not attend because they were too illiterate to decode the order.

Because numbers above 1 were just too difficult.

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