The always amusing P.J. O'Rourke shines this week in a brutal takedown of Hillary Clinton's dubious book: with Hillary's History.
Reading O'Rourke is not only better than reading the book, you can comprehend Hillary's entire effort in his first paragraph:
IF YOU PLAN not to read this summer, "Living History" is just the book. Hillary Clinton's new memoir is more than 100,000 pages long. At least I think it is. There are only 562 page numbers, but you know how those Clintons lie. A mere ream of paper could not contain the padding that has gone into this tome. Hillary--with the help of at least six ghostwriters--nails the goose of a manuscript to the barn floor and force-feeds it with lint.A more common writer would stop right there and declare his work done for the week, but O'Rourke is just warming up. Later, in a slightly longer paragraph, he sums up the Clinton years with a concision worthy of an entry into the Encyclopedia Americana;
However, it says something unflattering about our era that prominent political figures--who used to write declarations of independence, preambles to constitutions, Gettysburg addresses, and such--now use the alphabet only to make primitive artifacts, like the letter-inscribed tablet that Charlemagne is said to have put under his pillow each night, in the hope he'd wake up literate. Conservatives, including most of the Founding Fathers, have always worried that the price of a democratic system would be a mediocre nation. But George Washington and William F. Buckley Jr. put together could not have foreseen, in their gloomiest moments, the rise of Clinton-style über-mediocrity--with its soaring commonplaces, its pumped trifling, its platinum-grade triviality. The Alpha-dork husband, the super-twerp wife, and the hyper-wonk vice president--together with all their mega-weenie water carriers, such as vicious pit gerbil George Stephanopoulos and Eastern diamondback rattleworm Sidney Blumenthal--spent eight years trying to make America nothing to brag about.Unlike "Living History" this review deserves a place on your summer reading list.
Miller Emerges as New Voice for Bush Re-Election
Stumping for George Bush in Los Angeles, Dennis Miller had a few choice words for, well, every Democratic Presidential candidate. His most pointed observations, however, were reserved for Internet darling and appeasement afficianado Howard Dean.
"[Howard Dean] can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearm, he's never going anywhere."
The American Zen Master
by Dick Allen
from Poetry Daily
Zen also is to be found, he tried to instruct us,
in a car dealer's showroom, and in shoelaces. . . . Also, in America,
you don't sit at the feet of the Zen Master
but you have coffee with him, preferably at Starbucks,
next to one of those outsized suburban malls where everyone looks half dressed,
half dazed and half dead. "The secret of Zen," the Master said,
may come halfway through a Yankee Candle store
when you realize you can smell nothing,
or from reading Hallmark Cards backwards,
or choosing nothing from an overstuffed refrigerator. But it isn't a secret."
As for our questions,
instead of smiting us around the shoulders with a bamboo cane,
he'd hand us little writing-intensive packets of Equal and Sweet 'N Low,
then lean back, smiling like a sushi plate. Sometimes, he'd babble:
"Tums, drive-up windows, ATM machines.
Checkout-line scanners, 1000 Megahertz,
the industrial landscapes so remarkable." Often
we'd catch him staring at the intricate face
of a digital wristwatch, or contemplating
a simple button-down shirt on a white shelf in a Wal-Mart.
All things. "Throw your computers into the eyes of children,"
he loved to tell us. "Work for the Federal administration,
if that's what you must.
Wear last year's fashions, re-endure the 8os.
Take the last train to Clarksville.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill her." We'd come to Zen
One of the many blights on classic American culture that the cult of "brand extension" hath wrought.
A friend that edits a magazine writes, to his personal email list of cranks, loonies, and general malcontents:
To all: For an upcoming article celebrating curmudgeons, we're planning a list of "50 things that aren't as good as they used to be" and we invite your contributions. Thanks a bunch. Creativity counts. Crankiness too. Here are two, to give you an idea: Not as good as they used to be: TV News Anchors -- Buncha movie star pretty boys. Chet Huntley had a dog face, but you could trust him. Traveling Carnivals: They've shut down the freak shows and moved them to FOX.My just-off-the-top-of-my-head response reads as follows.
OREOS -- This was, without a doubt, America's greatest store bought cookie ever. And it dominated the market. But was that good enough for the sleazoid 90s "marketing" department? No. They wanted more and even more. As a result they have 'New-Coked' this cookie into oblivion with endless variations on the theme. The heresy began with "Double Stuffed" Oreos. This simple-minded d-oh moment came when somebody thought, hey, let's double the stuffing! It did not matter to them that the perfect proportion of white cream stuffing had already been achieved. Nope, this is the DoublePattyWhopper school of marketing drool: 'If one is good, two is twice as good.' Actually, if one is good, two in the same bun or cookie wafers is a bloody mess. And in addition, in order to get the double stuffing working correctly, they've upped the glue in the stuffing. No double stuffed Oreo comes apart neatly and cleanly. It always shatters. The pleasure of the original Oreo was that you could take it apart and have a chocolate wafer option. A bittersweet chocolate wafer option. Now even the wafer's been made sweeter.
MUSIC IN RESTAURANTS, BARS AND EVERYPLACE ELSE: God forbid we actually have to talk to each other in any of the places that we congregate. And, with the now universal notion that if the music is bad you make it louder, all conversations are conducted at a shout. And having Coldplay's latest hit follow you into the john is the final insult.
TWO BY FOURS: The basic structural unit of building. This along with candy bars has been getting progressively smaller as it becomes more expensive. Collapsing modern homes' problems can be traced to this basic unit. Take a tape measure with you the next time you go to a lumber yard and see that this item has been steadily whittled down. How low can it go before it becomes a default one by two?
THE DAILY NEW YORK TIMES: No, no because they make things up, but because of the section creep. This thing used to be two sections. You could have all the news that fits in your head in a brief commute. Now it arrives in sections both multiple, and assuming that you are unemployed in order to have the time to read it.
AUTOMOBILE CONTROLS: Once upon a time, three speeds forward, one reverse, steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator. Nice and simple and made the car go where and when you wanted it to go. Not so anymore as the feature creep of computer programs invades the automobiles of America. This reached its apotheosis last year when BMW launched the 7-series with controls so
Continued...Is al'Qa'ida really on the run, close to being washed up, rendered powerless, and its members finding themselves confined to a small room with a Readers' Digest Condensed Koran? Opinions vary, but the Rand Organization's Bruce Hoffman is not a wild-eyed optimist. In his detailed and insightful Al Qaeda, Trends in Terrorism and Future Potentialities [NB: in PDF format], he examines what is known about the current condition of the terrorist group. For them to be rendered operationally harmless, they would first need to be stripped of three essential elements:
[W]hat was critical to the success of 9/11 were three capabilities that al Qa'ida likely still retains. First, was the ability to identify a key vulnerability or gap in the defenses of its principal enemy—America—that could be mercilessly exploited (e.g., the U.S. commercial aviation security structure). Second, was the effective use of deception on board the four hijacked aircraft where, the passengers and crew, were deliberately lulled into believing that if they behaved and cooperated as they were told—the standard operating procedure for crew and passengers on hijacked aircraft that historically had enhanced chances of survival—they would not be harmed. Third, suicide attack was employed to ensure the attack’s success. None of these essential qualities was dependent on al Qa'ida having a base of operations in Afghanistan—and thus could likely be replicated in some future plan that successfully identifies and exploits a gap in our defenses and then cleverly and adroitly assembles the operational requirements for that attack to succeed.
All of which suggests that the current administration's obsession with making air travel safe from all possible terrorist approaches, is just that, an obsession unlikely to stop future attacks. Indeed, it would seem that all this concentration on inter-city public transport security is a waste of assets. The pure fact is that all it would take to bring New York City of a halt again, murder thousands of its citizens, and send the US economy back into a tailspin would be three dedicated members of al'Qa'ida currently living in Brooklyn, and possessed of burning down death wish and a terrible intent.
Of this more in the days to come.
From Areopagitica by John Milton
"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
"Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness. Which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain.
"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read."
"Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another...."And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will...."
From Today in Literature
"Winter's Tale," by Mark Helprin, who was born on this day, 1947. A best seller when first published in 1983, the book's New York setting has won new readers since the World Trade Center disaster; from the chapter, "Nothing is Random":
Every office has one. Useful for hiding documents that establish your guilt. The downside is that documents that establish why you deserve a raise and promotion will be in the top drawer, back.
Photograph by Jef Poskanzer. More Poskanzer images at Fotolog, and infiitely more at Jef Poskanzer's Photography
Monday Morning Spooks by Hugh Hewitt.
Responding to Josh Marshall's continuing attempt to prove himself today's equal of Clinton toady Joe Conason, the level-headed Hugh Hewitt comes up with what is most likely a permanent truth in today's foreign policy assesments by American citizens:
I will leave it to the foreign policy mavens like Marshall to come up with a more precise standard, but I think the layman's rule is this: If the commander in chief perceives a significant risk of severe casualties to Americans, he uses whatever force is necessary to remove that risk. The forgery of documents related to purchases of uranium from Niger, or the lack of a detailed Baghdad hotel bill from Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in no way detracts from the correctness of the president's assessment of all the evidence of risk. The attempt to impeach the president's conclusion by impeaching parts of his data set establishes a standard under which many future September 11s could never be prevented because of the distinction between "signals and noise in intelligence collection."Hewitt is onto something here. In today's world of infinite information sources, influential people more and more seem ready to make up their own minds about political questions that matter to them. It would seem that the more access to pundits we have, the less influence the pundits have over the populace.
This is why last week's blather from Al Gore and associates over the need for more liberal voices and radio and television programs sounds as flat and boring and irrelevant as... well, Al Gore. Americans, in larger and larger quantities, no longer seek multiple opinions from numerous sources. They seek access to facts and are perfectly able to draw their own conclusions.
Of course, this means that what any political party needs to be able to do is to control The Factoid Factory. When you are in power, that's easier to do, and when you are out of power, it is almost impossible. Hence the growing frustration and hectoring tones found in places like Josh Marshall's Screed of the Day. The rise of the Internet has not only made it possible for Marshall to marshal his opinions, it has also made it possible for the Layman's Rules to bat last. Just hit the clicker or the back button. "They opine. You decide."
State Department Report on "Trafficking." Scroll down.
During a long evening of poker at a friend's apartment in New York in the late 1990s, one man who attended and who had far too much bourbon regaled us with tales of his recent trip to Havana. 'You can have two sisters as your sex slaves and housekeepers for a week for the price of one night in a Holiday Inn in Boise,' he claimed. I replied that it didn't seem like the kind of vacation I'd enjoy and besides it struck me that, in a country like Cuba, you could find yourself in a jail pretty quick if the government caught you.
"The government?," he replied. "Hell, the government will pick you up and drop you off at the apartment. How do you think they get any money at all on that island? The '56 Chevy is the car of choice and the dollar is the coin of the realm."
It is encouraging that our State Department is catching on to Castro's Ministry of Pimping at last. But it is equally discouraging to note that Cuba's need for cash has driven it to the Bangkok solution of offering its children for sale to perverts with global reach.
Still, this revelation of Cuba's Child Sexploitation Policy is unlikely to stop numerous celebrated Americans from dashing off to Havana for a photo op with Fidel at every opportunity. Maybe they too agree with the new Cuban motto: "Cuba kids, si. Yankee kids, no."
The currrent US State Department evaluation of Cuba's sex trade reads:
Cuba is a country of internal trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Minors are victimized in sexual exploitation connected to the state-run tourism industry. Despite occasional measures by the Government of Cuba to crack down on prostitution, state-controlled tourism establishments and independent operators facilitate and even encourage the sexual exploitation of minors by foreign tourists. Government authorities turn a blind eye to this exploitation because such activity helps to win hard currency for state-run enterprises.
An icon for the 21st century that surpasses the Taco Bell Chihuahua would have to be this horned woofer run up for Target Stores by the Peterson Milla Hooks agency. We're not sure what he's promoting for Target, but we are sure that if he was on the shelves in time for Christmas, he'd run out of the store.
The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum | is an exceptional online sight featuring numerous flash-enabled tours of current and past exhibitions. Now showing is "The "National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now" showcasing 80 designers and firms who are setting the pace in contemporary design.
BIG-HEADED BREW: Maybe the folks at Stone Brewing haven't heard that the customer is always right. How else to explain the San Diego beer maker's Arrogant Bastard Ale? As the Los Angeles Times reports, the back of the label minces no words. "This is an aggressive beer," it reads. "You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory."
Not likely to surpass Bud in sales any time soon.
Chris Kathman's sharp article The peasants are acting like emperors! highlights the persistant obnoxiousness of recording industry executives as they launched their latest phase in their no-win war against file sharing.The position of these Class A Hypocrites is that getting music for nothing from friends, associates, acquaintences or people promoting their taste in music is "stealing." Perhaps it is, but since these record company bozos haven't shelled out a penny for their grossly overpriced products since the dawn of time, how would they know? Kathman, once an insider, lays out their heaping sack of dirty laundry when he writes:
For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the execs have been doing for years - getting music for free. I was in the loop for a couple years, when I was writing about music for a free weekly, as well as a major daily newspaper, in Los Angeles, many years ago. And I can tell you none of these characters paid for anything, ever.The bookcases in their offices and their homes were (and are) filled with product that they receive for free as a matter of course. They would not dream of ever paying for recorded music, themselves, with very few exceptions. But now that the average consumer can download a ripped file from the Internet, you'd think it was the end of Western Civilization, from the way they talk.The false piousness of their pronouncements on this subject really offends me. I assure you, back in the day, if somebody at Record Company A wanted a copy of the new LP by so-and-so and the such-and-suches, they would shout at the secretary to call their good friend at Record Company B and have it messengered over, with the fee for the messenger charged to the artist signed to Company B! Maybe it took a little longer than getting an mp3 off the web now, but my point is that they did not go down to their local record store and pay list price to nobly support the artist who they claimed to be interested in.The truth is broader than that. Freebies throughout the media are as deep as the ocean. Many people in the music, book, film, and television industries have been battening off freebies for decades.
Those that doubt this and are in New York City are invited to take a visit to the Strand Bookstore and note how many "review copies" grace the shelves in the basement. From the publisher to the "reviewer" to the Strand -- sometimes within 24 hours and always with a little cash in hand to the 'reviewer."
"It does basically make you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff." - Susan Hallowell (above), Director of TSA's Security Laboratory.
More than just a pat-down, the new airport body scan goes the final step in making flying one of the most dubious experiences of our age. In New airport scans could expose travelers we learn that we will soon be expected to expose ourselves to strangers if we wish to enjoy all the pleasures of air travel.
Susan Hallowell (above) took one for the Transportion Security team as she allowed herself to be scanned and the image to be published world wide.
"She stepped into a metal booth that bounced X-rays off her skin to produce a black-and-white image that revealed enough to produce a world-class blush."Her dark skirt and blazer disappeared on the monitor, where she showed up naked -- except for the gun and bomb she had hid under her outfit."
Ah, yes, those guns and bombs we all strap on when heading out to the airport.
Susan allowed that it also made her look "fat and naked, but you see all this stuff." Looking fat and naked is going to be a big hit with Americans, you can be sure.
I don't know about you, but looking at Susan, I also note she looks bald, with some sort of strange blemish on her shoulder and a body that won't be winning any Miss Teenage America pagents soon.
Of course, we won't be doing any real, sensible profiling anytime soon. No. We will all be expected to just have our bodies revealed to all. And recorded too. There's no way this gizmo is going to be put into airports without a recording device attached.
My only prayer is that, if this final insult is installed it will, by itself, put an end to American Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and all other airlines operating in the United States when everyone in the country decides to just stay out of the naked skies.
"Now is the end. Perish the world." - Beyond the Fringe
We tend to sleep through announcements of the end of the world. Our default state is: "Wake us when it's over." As a result we completely missed out on the Niburu flap until it was put to bed by David Morrison at Nasa:
For months, weird stories have circulated on the Internet predicting the close passage by Earth this month of a Planet X sometimes called "Niburu", or in some versions a giant comet. I have even seen it linked to both Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), although why either of these is relevant is not clear to me. This news note is for those who may have heard such rumors and wondered if there was any reality to them. The simple answer is that these are lies. There is no such object.All we can say is "Whew! That was a close one." Still, we'll keep coming back because, as the comedy routine above tells us, "We're sure to get a winner one of these days." The only problem is that it won't be from outer space. It will be homemade.
"Promise, big promise, is the soul of advertising," said a sage long ago in America. American advertising has been following that dictum without letup ever since.
The current craze for bottled water is an excellent case in point. According to an article in this month's Scientific American there is little in bottled water to justify the price and a lot in a lot of waters that puts them just this side of outright buncombe.
"Bottled Twaddle" by Michael Shermer raises a lot of points that tend to prove that "bottled water is tapped out." Americans shell out above $7 billion a year for the clear fluid and pay, according to Shermer, "120 to 7,500 times as much per gallon for bottled water as for tap. Bottled prices range from 75 cents to $6 a gallon, versus tap prices that vary from about 80 cents to $6.40 per 1,000 gallons."
For what? For something that is, often, nothing more than bottled tap water in a plastic container. This from a four year study of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel that examined 1,000 samples of 103 brands of bottled water, finding that "an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle--sometimes further treated, sometimes not."
But is all bottled water of dubious benefit? Well, not all. There is one water that can, it claims, literally SAVE YOUR SOUL!
This would be the strong, pure and thrice blessed fluid that flows from the source at Holy Spring Water. Yes, according to the web site, (and why wouldn't you believe it if you are already buying tap water at $6 a gallon?) this water is, "100% Natural bottled water that has been blessed to remove your venial sins while quenching your thirst. Tastes Great!!!"
Sounds reasonable to us. Click away, order a case, and when it comes be sure to save us a sip. For free.
Photograph by Van der Leun
Brit Hume, who should know, has some insightful things to say about the mindset of media professionals in the United States today. His speech, "The American Media in Wartime," confirms what many already have observed, but coming from an insider it is all the more relevant.
Ted Koppel, one of the finest journalists of our generation, said something the other day that quite astonished me. Ted was an embedded reporter in Iraq, and after he came home he had this fascinating conversation – at Harvard, I believe – with Marvin Kalb. He spoke with real generosity about the American officers and enlisted men that he dealt with, and how able they were and how good they were and how effective they were. But he went out of his way to make a point of distinguishing between them and the policy makers in Washington. About the latter he said, “I’m very cynical, and I remain very cynical, about the reasons for getting into this war.”Cynical? We journalists pride ourselves, and properly so, on being skeptical. That’s our job. But I have always thought a cynic is a bad thing to be. A cynic, as I understand the term, means someone who interprets others’ actions as coming from the worst motives. It’s a knee-jerk way of thinking. A cynic, it is said, understands the price of everything and the value of nothing. So I don’t understand why Ted Koppel would say with such pride and ferocity – he said it more than once – that he is a cynic. But I think he speaks for many in the media, and I think it’s a very deep problem."
Link thanks to Donald Sensing
In the current Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Pollock has an number of insightful things to say about the American role in the middle east. His essay, Securing the Gulf, is most interesting when he talks about the realpolitik implications of "THE OIL." Whether or not the recent war was 'about the oil' was a toxic mushroom in the endless debate for or against American intervention and regime change in Iraq. It still is. And, according to Pollack, with good reason:
America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. U.S. interests do not center on whether gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the UnitedContinued...
Al Capone's mug shot, one of several, from an excellent online gallery, at Gang Rule. Mugs, portraits, and assorted photographs from the decades when gang and mafia rule in New York was unquestioned.
Wild Honey and Gold
Today's Quotation from Today in Literature's Email Newsletter
Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust-of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold-smells of nothing....
- - Anna Akhmatova ("Wild Honey Smells of Freedom"), born this June 23,1889
In an unusually intense blast of carping, even for him, Jimmy Breslin threatened a couple of days ago to "leave" the news business.
Well not exactly. More accurately, Breslin said that because of The Terror that the current Fascist US government is inspiring from sea to shining sea, he was "thinking that it could be time for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore."
Thinking about thinking that it could be... Sigh. No joy here soon. No possibility of a large, restful white space standing in for Breslin's sentimental screeds in my local paper. Well, I guess everyday can't be sunshine.
Still, it is nice to know that Breslin is 'thinking about beginning thinking.' Such is the first step to wisdom.
The cause of Breslin's maudlin despair is that 1) The government is bad because
Continued...
Whitman: How Much Would You Bid?
CBS News | eBay's Bid For Success | June 12, 2003 15:53:46
eBay. Yes, good, old eBay. Your own personal eBay. You've found and snagged those Trolls you had as a kid. You've gotten rid of all that junk you've been moving from house to house for a decade at a premium. You've nailed that stuffed Jackalope for only $468. Great. Now kick the habit and get clean before your are really addicted.
As more and more people are finding out, the web auction monolith built on "trust" currently only trusts the sellers to keep kicking coins into its bloated coffers. Buyers are left to the not so tender mercies of one of the largest and most rapidly growing centers of online fraud in the Infosphere.
Could eBay clean it up? Yup. Will they? Only if their stock price starts to auger into the ground.
EBay began to drift down in overall dependability about the time it hired the
Continued...
"Why must there always be fightn' and killin'? Why can't there be peace in the blogsphere?"
In a move all too typical of "organisations in transistion," Six Apart, creators of the excellent blog publishing system Movable Type, has taken its first tumble on the long slope towards being a successful company.
Flush with cash and with what looks to be the killer app of blogware MovableType, Six Apart last week sought to enforce the clumsy terms of its license agreement against one Kathy Kinsley. Bad idea. Very bad idea.
As Stephen Den Beste at USS Clueless puts it:
Continued...CNN reports: Narrow Use of Affirmative Action Preserved: Law school policy upheld; undergrad program overturned
A close decision, but nobody really expected anything else from the branch of government whose motto might as well be: You Complain, We Decide.
In upholding the broader principle but setting guidelines for undergraduate admissions, it seems to me that the court is keeping with, rather than setting the pace of, the improving state of racial equality in the United States.
Tsunami of Pundit Blather and Spew Warning Issued by National Institute for Mental Health
Continued...
Cowgirl Ready for Red Meat Olympics
We've stopped at the Big Texan Steak House in Amarillo. We have eaten their steaks and tipped their waitresses. We have seen the shrine at the front in which, daily, a new example of "The Monster" 72-Ounce steak reigns on a bed of ice. it is a stunning thing to behold and an even more awe inspiring to imagine eating one. It simply doesn't look possible to fit the steak on the ice into your body. We don't care what size body you come with. Big men have tried and failed. Hungry men have tried and failed -- but they were not hungry for days after.
No, it is no small thing to attempt to eat four pounds of beef in an hour. That's why we were stopped cold by the item in Saturday's Washington Post that chronicled a woman's quest to conquer the Big Beef. Described in excruciating
Continued...Airport Security Remains Porous-Screeners Depart, Officials Alarmed
Dulles International Airport already was losing passenger screeners at a rate of at least one a day, Scott McHugh, the airport's federal security director, wrote in an e-mail to colleagues at other East Coast airports. He said that with fewer workers, the airport was able to screen only 57 percent of checked luggage for explosives."Up to now we have been able to hide this fact from the public (and any terrorist surveillance teams)," McHugh wrote in a June 6 e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.
Solution:If we could all be convinced to just travel buck naked and allow our bodies to be slapped on the belt and run through the scanners, all this would clear up pronto.
"On the Side of Life"
Today in Literature reminds us that today marks the day in 1964 when "the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that found Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer to be obscene. This was three years after the book's first publication in America, thirty years since its publication in Europe, and a hundred years since Comstock began to patrol the mails for such "vampire literature." Though but one judgment in a series of significant decisions—most importantly, those concerning Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Fanny Hill — the Miller ruling is considered landmark for having led the way to the establishment of a new, more liberal standard in censorship."
Reading a book by Henry Miller, from the Tropic books through the Nexus, Sexus, Plexus trilogy has always struck us as the same sort of an experience you get from sitting up all night drinking coffee with a wordly and fascinating friend. As Today in Literature notes, Miller once wrote of one of his books, "If it was not good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life." The same could be said of Henry Miller as well.
Continued...Midday Scan / Sunday, June 22, 2003
Yes, it's the same old song, but it seems so different since Yasser's been gone. Doesn't it?
Quartet resolute on Mideast peace
Israelis kill top Hamas member in West Bank
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Representatives of the so-called Mideast quartet presented a united front Sunday in support of the road map for peace in the Middle East, despite an increase in violence in the region."We have to keep moving forward," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters after meeting with leaders from the United Nations, the European Union and Russia as a World Economic Forum was getting under way on the shores of the Dead Sea.
A roadmap that leads straight to the shores of the Dead Sea? Haven't we been through this movie before?
Time to ramp up opium and marijuana production yet again in Afghanistan and Mexico.
US to Drop Limits on Drug Imports by Poor Countries
VOA News
22 Jun 2003, 15:01 UTC
The United States has agreed to ease restrictions that limit the ability of poorer nations to import patented drugs used to treat life-threatening diseases.
Such as boredom, ennui, and a crawling need for a shot of dope.
D-oh News of the Day, Week, Month, Year...
Amazon.com wild about Harry Potter
Web bookseller gets 1.3 million advance orders
Puh-lease! Wake us when it is all over. In fact, 1.3 million orders seems a bit light
Ellen Petro smoking pipe
by Frank Michael Hohenberger
"Hohenberger was born in Ohio in 1876 and orphaned at five years of age. He spent his boyhood as a printing apprentice and later worked several years on newspapers in Dayton, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, and finally for the Indianapolis Star.
"Composing rooms and newspapers could not hold his attention. In 1917 he left Indianapolis to start a small photography business in Nashville, Indiana, concentrating on the subject matter of Brown County. The next forty-seven years were spent recording the life, customs, and scenes of the hills of Brown County, of other areas of Indiana, of Kentucky, of South Carolina, and of Mexico."
A bit more than a year ago the esteemed Philadelphia Museum of Art tuned 125 years old. In honor of that milestone, collectors and patrons gave a wide range of new art to the museum. Monet, Steigletz, Joseph Stella and dozens of other artists were represented. The web staff of the museum used this opportunity, and these works, to create a flash gallery that is exceptional for its range and its elegant presentation.
The Joseph Stella gouache above is one of the many blooms in this online bouquet.
Experience all of it HERE.
This week's aptly named Number Two on the Los Angeles Time's Children's Bestsellers List:
2. The Day My Butt Went Psycho by Andy Griffiths (Scholastic, $4.99 paper) A 12-year-old boy's bottom escapes and plots a rebellion, complete with the help of the B-team. Ages 9-12
Victor Davis Hanson on War on National Review Online
The brilliant Hanson continues his prescient observations on the course of the war on terror:
If on the evening of September 11th, an outside observer had predicted that the following would transpire in two years, he would have been considered unhinged: Saddam Hussein gone with the wind; democratic birth pangs in Iraq; the Taliban finished and Mr. Karzai attempting to create constitutional government; Yasser Arafat ostracized by the American government and lord of a dilapidated compound; bin Laden either dead or leading a troglodyte existence; all troops slated to leave Saudi Arabia ďż˝ and by our own volition, notContinued...
GREENPEACE AND SIERRA CLUB FUND RAISING UP IN SMOKE IN SUMMERHAVEN
Wildfire Burns 200 to 250 Homes in Southern Arizona Mountain Hamlet
TUCSON, Ariz. June 19 —
A wildfire driven by winds up to 60 mph roared through a southern Arizona mountain community Thursday, burning 200 to 250 homes, a fire official said.
It took less than an hour for the fire to tear through an area of Summerhaven with about 500 homes, burning some and sparing others, said Larry Humphrey, commander of the team directing the fight against the fire.
GROUP HUG FOR BENTON HARBOR DECLARED BY MICHIGAN GOV. JENNY GRAHOLM. COMMUNITY WARMS UP TO COOLING DOWN.
Michigan Gov. Granholm Urges Healing After Surveying Riot-Torn City of Benton Harbor
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. June 19 —
Gov. Jennifer Granholm urged healing and reconciliation Thursday after surveying the damage from two nights of rioting and meeting with leaders in this city plagued by poverty and racial tensions.
"The state must wrap its arms around this community," Granholm said.
Continued...
"Yes, you can play.
ANY NUMBER can play a number,
and that number is always an unknown number.
But if you can play unknown numbers
you can sit in on the session."
A good maxim to live by, among many others, is "Never buy what you sell." Advice lost for years to Bill O'Reilly as ten minutes viewing him will tell you.
The FoxNews 800-pound -canary, O'Reilly, has taken on many an opponent in his nightly mudpit. And, surprise, he always emerges triumphant. His pit, his rules, his mike control. Little wonder. But has he at last gone a rant too far in taking on the Blogsphere in general and drawing the attention of James Lileks in particular?
We don't know if Mr. O'Reilly actually reads the Blogsphere, or if he just gets printouts handed to him by one or the other fawning associate producers, but either way, Lileks calls him on his game...
LILEKS: "And you, Mr. Man of the People, Mr. People of the Man, Mr. Street, Mr. Champion of the Little Guy, Mr. Giving-It-Straight, want the Internet to be patrolled? Note: on most unpatrolled polluted waterway, everything does not go. In such a place things are dumped over the side, and after a moment bobbing unnoticed on the surface, they sink to the bottom."O'Reilly: "For example, the guy who raped and murdered a 10-year old in Massachusetts says he got the idea from the NAMBLA Web site that he accessed from the Boston public library."
Lileks: "Ergo, we should shut down Massachusetts. Or Boston. Or the library. No? Just the internet? Probably so. I live in fear of the day I visit a website that gives me the idea to abuse and kill a child; I’d be powerless to resist such a command, because I saw it ON THE INTERNET.
"And hey, don’t forget that Factor website."
Ouch. That's gotta sting.
And given the speed of the Internet, it will get around and get some of Bill's semi-fans second thoughts about his nightly tirades.
Second thoughts = Channel surfing = Lower ratings.
Mother of Mercy, can this be the end of Bill O'Reilly?
Over on Roger Simon's comment boards the thoughtful and articulate Michael Totten is working his way through the current flavor of Democratic Party Angst:
It's good to hear someone like Totten looking about for a viable Democrat to vote for. I'll be looking too since I too don't know if I want to break a life long voting record of never voting Republican.
Do I want a Democrat to win the next election? In the abstract, yes, but in the real world, it depends. I've never voted for a Republican president in my life, and it would be physically difficult for me to do it. But I can't vote for a peacenik. If the Democrats pick a peacenik in the primary who wishes Saddam Hussein were still in power, I will have no choice but to vote for Bush. I'm not going to get on the wrong side of this issue. I would rather break party ranks.I would choose Joe Lieberman or Dick Gephardt over Bush. I would probably pick John Edwards over Bush, too. I will not vote for Howard Dean or John Kerry, and especially not for Al Sharpton.
Check that. I just lied. I looked into my heart and realized that right now, today, I desperately want to vote for Bush. And I suspect that there are other deep and secret longings among lifelong Democrats like myself. And I suspect that no matter who the Democrats run there will be a goodly number of people who talk the Demo talk but won't walk the Demo walk when the curtains close behind them on election day.
I looked at Totten's list of likely candidates (two) and realized that old and deep truth of electoral politics: "You gotta beat somebody with somebody."
To my mind the Democrats have got Nobody... and they KNOW IT.
Hence, since they still have to beat somebody with somebody, they are trying to beat Bush with Bush.
And that is very, very Zen.
I suspect that a lot of us are going to be having these small satori's from now on.
On 14th Street
On 14th Street.
This week's special at The Sizzler is an extra helping of attention from your waitperson for the evening:
CORONA, Calif. - A family who angered a waiter at a Norco Sizzler restaurant later was served a few dishes they didn't order: a gallon of maple syrup, raw eggs, and rolls of toilet paper across their lawn and shrubs.Continued...Wayne Keller, 37, wife Darlene, 40, and their two children, had their home and mailbox saturated Saturday with smashed eggs and maple syrup. Their yard was decorated with toilet paper, duct tape and plastic wrap.
Police arrested several people in an SUV parked nearby, and grabbed someone darting out of the bushes.
Officers presented the alleged culprits to the Kellers.
"I can't explain how I felt," said Darlene Keller. "I just said, 'Oh, my God. It's the waiter from the restaurant.'"
Corona police arrested the waiter, his girlfriend and his two younger brothers. Police withheld their names.
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
Bonto (Barak Obama – Not The One)You could also middle name it into BHONTO, which could then be seen as a direct descendent of BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again)
NOAA says that shorter-term pollutants from Asia may raise U.S. heartland temperatures by three degrees in about 50 years." -NOAA: China to Warm U.S. Heartland Watts Up With That?
"In a system where everyone else must submit to checks and balances, who provides the check over your power to ruin lives and reputations, if the media are above the law? You'd better come up with a good answer. And fast." - Villainous Company: Palin vs. The Gatekeepers
"If she shoots a lawyer, he's stayin' down." - Assistant Village Idiot: Hive, Not Tribe
How. Great. Is. This. This is what makes those long boring weeks of bad news or lame news worth it. There's always a comedy bonanza coming at some point. And the gloating. Oh Dear Lord, the sweet sweet gloating. I'm not in this for analysis. I'm in for gloating. And I need to be winning to be gloating. You ever try gloating when you're getting your ass kicked? It doesn't play.
It's been a while since I could really, genuinely, deeply gloat. Thank you, John McCain and Sarah Palin, for once again letting me laugh again. And thank you, too, liberals. DKM (Daily Kos Media). Barack "Community Organizer" Obama. Power Glutes Andi. Keef Olbermann. You have played no small role in elevating my spirits and bringing joy into my life again.
I'll say it: it's over. The way Palin grabbed Urkel by the scruff of the neck and shook the fairy dust off his bony ass.... marvelous. All he had going for him was star power, and now it's been eclipsed by her greater Light. Next to her, he looks like any other third rate political hack. Palin's the star. Obama's now just in a supporting role in her cosmic drama. She is the Candidate of Destiny. He is now the second youngest candidate with the oldest ideas. Truly a relic of the past.
Sense of Events: TEOLAWKI still imminent
A beautiful, confident, articulate, independent, accomplished -- and conservative - woman apparently has enraged Team Obama, the mainstream media, and the entire American intelligentsia, as if they got collectively hit by a cruise missile aimed from Middle America.... The danger is not just that Sarah Palin could win McCain the election, but she could expose the entire flimsy structure of doctrinaire liberalism as the hypocrisy—and chauvinism—it has become." -Victor Davis Hanson: Target Palin
The world moves forward in fits and starts, pausing here and there to be overrun by Panzers and commissars, but human beings are clever and keep pushing. The only incurious people in the world work for the newspaper and the TV and the government. Everybody else is always looking around for ways to improve their lot.
Much of this tinkering with the quotidian details of daily life goes unremarked. The average person adopts it, the ivory tower crowd ignores it or execrates it. But whatever it is, it's a fact. It's real. Academics, entertainers, politicians and writers do not live in the world of reality, and show a studied disdain for the trappings of the average person's life.- Sippican Cottage: Something Something Else Happens
"From BDS to PDS, no, Sarah is a girl. She can’t give them PDS. She gives them PMS: Palin Madness Syndrome. In fact, that is what I think we should start calling the press: The PMS Media!" - Palin a news Powerhouse @ The Anchoress
"What then explains the professoriate's desire to teach against their own heritage? Too many things to enumerate here. Ingratitude, envy, vanity, and sloth come to mind. But there are immediate and practical political benefits. One benefit of teaching non-western material that you don't really know -- because you can't read the original language, and the work has had no influence upon your art or culture -- is that you can impress its writers and thinkers into service as political coolies. After all, a lot of track needs to be laid between here and Utopia." - (Originals)
"I hereby propose that future female candidates for high office on the Right must be pre-selected early in life and required to take a vow of celibacy, forsaking family and other obligations and entering into a special society somewhat akin to that of the Vestal Virgins of Rome." -neo-neocon Rules for the female campaign road: let's hear it for the Vestal Virgin
Palin's friends should be less immediately worried about what the Obama campaign will do to her than what the McCain campaign will do. This is a woman who's tough enough to work her way up and through, and to say yes to a historic opportunity, but she will know little of, or rather have little experience in, the mischief inherent in national Republican politics. She will be mobbed up in the McCain campaign by people who care first about McCain and second about themselves. (Or, let's be honest, often themselves first and then McCain.) Palin will never be higher than number three in their daily considerations. They won't have enough interest in protecting her, advancing her, helping her play to her strengths, helping her kick away from danger. And – there is no nice way to say this, even though at this point I shouldn't worry about nice – some of them are that worst sort of aide, dim and insensitive past or present lobbyists with high self-confidence. She'll be a thing to them; they'll see the smile and the chignon and the glasses and think she's Truvi from Steel Magnolias. They'll run right over her, not because they're strong but because they're stupid.
What do the SAT, the Kellogg Company, Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler all have in common? They are all connected by the practice of eugenics in the first half of the 20th century.
Oil prices have slid so far and so fast that the retreat has led analysts to predict further puncturing of what they call a speculative bubble. Many analysts don't see a floor at $100, but rather at levels as low as $70 or $80. "This is start of a fall to $80 crude by the end of the year, maybe as early as September," says Joel Fingerman, principal of FundamentalAnalytics.com, a Chicago-based energy consulting firm.
"If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!" -Fatimah Ali: Philadelphia Daily NewsWe've seen this pathetic threat before but seldom so baldly. Ah, the extortion begins in ernest.
"Combine a child's response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system. No country's politics depends more openly on friendships than America's, yet Obama has not a single real friend, for he rose so fast that all his acquaintances become rungs on the ladder of his ascent. One human relationship crowds the others out of his life, his marriage to Michelle, a strong, assertive and very angry woman." -Spengler - How Obama lost the election.
Chicken-fried bacon is favorite fried fare at Texas state fair contest "Everything in Texas is chicken-fried, and bacon makes everything better so we thought we'd put the two together."
"There are a number of industries that survive solely upon white guilt: Penguin Classics, the SPCA, free range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market. Yet all of these pale in comparison to classical music, which has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance."
"My understanding is that Gov. Palin's town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We've got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year -- we have a budget of about three times that just for the month." -CNN Political TickerMcCain Campaign responds:
“For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and it’s laughable. It is a testament to Barack Obama’s inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin’s executive experience managing a budget of over 10 billion dollar dollars, and more than 24,000 employees.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008
"Still, the weekend offered Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden one of their first opportunities to spend an extended period of time settling into their new marriage. At every stop, the two men greeted their audiences together. As Mr. Biden offered the opening remarks, Mr. Obama stood at his side and looked out into the audience, applauding and smiling. - JEFF ZELENY Reporter’s Notebook - On the Trail, Adjusting to Life as a Couple - NYTimes.comNot that there's anything wrong with that, but please no pictures of the wedding night!
"Keith Olbermann was pulled from St. Paul to anchor MSNBC's storm coverage from New York, with his seat beside Chris Matthews filled by David Gregory. Capus said political considerations had nothing to do with that move." - The Associated Press:
"People in Wasilla are Alaskan tough, so not only does a thing like teen pregnancy not seem like anyone's damn business, but it's also not seen as the calamity so many people in the lower 48 might think it is. This is dangerous country — it's not just the roughneck jobs on cable reality shows. It's real life here." - In Wasilla, Pregnancy Was No Secret - TIME
At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: "Back off these kinds of stories." "I have said before, and I will repeat again: People's families are off-limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."
On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs: "I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired." -- Obama says no place for Palin daughter story - Politico.com
"For the next 15 or 20 minutes, he talked with us about our son, Iraq , his family, faith, convictions, and shared his feelings about nearing the end of his presidency. He asked each of our teenaged sons what they wanted to do in life and counseled them to set goals, stick to their convictions, and not worry about being the "cool" guy. He said that he'd taken a lot of heat during his tenure and was under a lot o