" The victim gasped loudly as blood poured from his neck. His killer held up the head at one point, and placed it on top of the body. " -- The killing of Eugene Armstrong
Year upon year in the world's darkest woods
On the dirt at the foot of the ancient trees,
Tangles and brambles and dead brush increase
Which the sunlight can never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Our ash that descends in our clearest of skies?
Our leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer,
Bringing that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, war shall prevail.
This lesson is written in stone.
No dreams will defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that is burnished on bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
"OH FOR A MUSE OF FIRE!
J M Hanes, in the comments to our Shakespearean homage -- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts picks up our sorry tale of woe, our slo-mo tragedy, with the ever popular Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, aka Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
ACT III
Scene I
[Enter THE KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS,
OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
THE KING: And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from Omlet why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
ROSENCRANTZ: He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession.
THE KING: Yet may true stated what you have observed,
Unwrinkle the body politic in parts.
Seated, second from the left.
While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.*
Cruising in the bright August morning down Highway 5. California's great central valley, north of Sacramento, where the farm towns roll by, their blunt names like an old catechism of your life, "Willows," "Williams," "Orland," "Nord."
Rice fields shimmer in fives shades of green. Enough rice to feed the Orient with a bunch left over for the States. Old and new orchards in whirring diagonal rows. Roadside attractions promising 20 different varieties of olives. White egrets pacing in the irrigation canals. Yellow crop dusters banking and coming in low over the highway.
Heading south towards San Francisco; towards an appointment with an old friend trapped too early in a brain where all the furniture is fading, dissolving, melting into a blurred now and a bright twenty years ago.
The old story. You wonder about a friend you haven't been in touch with for a decade. You meet someone who knows someone who knows him. Or you run an Internet search and find an email of a person who once knew him. And you ask. Most of the time things are fine, but then there's that time when the news is not good. Not good at all.
How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again. *
You get a phone number for his brother and you call. His brother fills you in on the details.
Several strokes stemming from a traffic accident twenty years gone and an operation on the brain five years later. First wife saw what was coming and cleared out, dumping the marriage to become a poet. Right.
He married again and, by all accounts, married well. Had some good years. Was back to his music and his songs. But then the strokes came, and came again, and his mind began to liquefy. The second wife couldn't handle all the care -- could you? -- and placed him, at last, in a home in San Francisco.
One daughter sees him often, the other daughter seldom, the second wife some times, the brother every six weeks, the first wife never.
And so, because of what was, and because you have to be, at the least, a witness to this part of his life and yours, your arrange a visit.
Continued...
Citizens United
My favorite line from the trailer. (An ernest gray haired woman at the fringe of a demonstration in New York City: "When you talk about a dictator, there's pros and there's cons...
CUT TO: Man tied to post in middle east with his back being whipped to the bone.
".... If a dictator provides free health care, I like that dictator. If a dictator provides a free university education, I like that dictator."
CUT TO: Taliban woman being shot in the head in soccer stadium.
BLOGGER: I wish to complain about these documents you palmed off on your shrinking but credulous audience last week.
RATHER: Oh yes, the, uh, the Bush Guard memos. They are full of accurate facts.... What's,uh... What's wrong with them?
BLOGGER: I'll tell you what's wrong with them, Dan. They're forgeries, that's what's wrong with them!
RATHER: No, no, they're just pretending to be forgeries. They contain accurate facts vetted by all experts we could find that agree with me.
BLOGGER: Look, "Kenneth", I know a forgery when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
RATHER: No no they're not forged because they're accurate! Remarkable set of facts, aren't they. Best I've ever made.
BLOGGER: The "facts" don't enter into it. Forged facts forfiet their factualness.
RATHER: Nononono, no, no! They're accurate in the facts from our carefully checked but secret sources! I know they're true because I've reviewed the tapes of myself claiming they're true.
BLOGGER: Look, I took the liberty of examining those tapes when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason you claimed they were true was the fact they'd been NAILED to your head.
(pause)
RATHER: Well, o'course they was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed them to my head, I would have forgotten where I got them from in the first place. Nailed or not, they'll still fly. They'll still Voooooooom!
BLOGGER: "VOOM"?!? Mate, these documents wouldn't "voom" if you strapped four million frothing moonbats on them! They've been trying that over on Kos for days and there is no lift-off. These documents is bleedin' demised!
RATHER: No no! Don't you understand? They're ACCURATE even if they're FAKE! They're pining for a Democratic Administration. Which makes them TRUE LIES.
BLOGGER: 'They're not pining! They're passed on!
These documents are no more!
They have ceased to be!
They've expired and gone to meet their maker! ... Speaking of which...
They're a set of stiffs!
Bereft of truth, they're a pack of lies!
If you hadn't nailed them to your forehead on national television, they'd be compost in a New Jersey landfill next to Jimmy Hoffa.
These documents are pushing up the daisies!
Their hopes of altering our national election are now 'istory!
They and you are off the twig!
They have kicked the bucket, shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain on your career and joined the Hitler Diaries!!
THESE ARE EX-DOCUMENTS!!
(pause)
RATHER: Well, I'd better replace them with another set of true lies I whipped up on my old Selectric over the weekend. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry Blogger, I've had a look 'round the back of CBS News, and uh, we're right out of forged documents with accurate facts.
BLOGGER: I see. I see, I get the picture.
Rather: I got a John Kerry.
(pause)
BLOGGER: Pray, does it talk?
RATHER: Not to the press.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS I'll be in the process of relocating from Laguna Beach, California to Seattle, Washington. In the interim, I'll be driving Highway 1 up the coastline of California, Oregon, and Washington and I don't plan to push it. One thousand miles of coastline is nothing to just zoom past if you've got the chance. (See Laguna Dawn for my observations on part of this route.)
UPDATE: The Getty, Cambria, the Sur, Berkeley, Mill Valley, Stinson Beach, Bolinas, .... currently in Mendocino. The road goes on forever.
During this period, my ability and desire to update this page is likely to be intermittent. In the meantime, I've made a little list of essays and items in various categories that may be of interest to the idle browser.
Omlet | Act 3, Scene 1
SCENE I. A cabin in the Gulfsteam, 40,000 feet over New Jersey.
Omlet
To be or not to be President: that is my platform:
Whether 'tis more nuanced to vote for before against
The 87 billion of outrageous appropriation,
Or to make my case upon the seas of health care,
And by raising taxes get it fully funded? To windsurf: to trap-shoot:
To say "I cannot bring a gun to the debate." Oh end
The heart-ache and the thousand polling shocks
This campaign is heir to, tis a consomme
Devoutly to be reheated. To be elected, to rule;
To rule: perchance to decide: ay, there's the belly rub;
For in decision what results may come
When we have pulled out and hugged Chirac
Must give us all pause: I can't get no respect
That makes worthwhile of so long campaign.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of November;
The Limbaugh laugh, the Clintonian contumely,
The wrath of despising wife, the landslide votes of scorn,
The insolence of Begala, and the spurns
Of all my ambitions to be an aging JFK,
When I myself might my quietus make
With a pump-action? Who would Carville bear,
His grunts and sweating items of "To-Do,"
But that the dread of always junior senator,
That obscurity where I shall sink, from which
No non-Kennedy emerges, freezes me like headlighted deer,
And makes me bear John Edwards' southern drawl,
Than fly off to Nantucket or Gstaad to sport until December.
Thus candidacy doth make mincemeat of my myth;
And thus my native shape of waffle
Is amplified by my pale cast of speech
And my life's enterprise of "It's my ambition, stupid!,"
With view of my face their votes turn awry,
And lose the name of Winner. -- Soft me now!
The fair Teresa! Nymph, in thy checkbook
Be all my ambitions, stubs.
===
SOOTH! The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts, doth continue at Protein Wisdom
Omlet | Act 5, Scene 1
SCENE I. A field in Red Bank, New Jersey. Prince Omlet examines the skull of a famous news anchor....
SOOTH! SCENE III. A lavish hotel room in Cleveland Enter OMLET and JOHN EDWARDS as described by Blogfonte.
===
UPDATETH:
Sooth, fair Instapunditeers, who, upon this plain of Mars
Hath joined good Sir Jeff and I, old Gerard of Gaunt,
To ponder demons from the Democratic depths
That rise with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of our ears do pour
Their leperous distilment. Abide in this abode,
And with keyboards brave and full of wit
Inscribe your scenes in comments that will fit.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death�s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor�s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who�d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They'�d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river�s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we�ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death’s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor’s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who’d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They’d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river’s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we’ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
You know it is time for an emergency reboot of your brain when you read a paragraph like this in the New York Times on the death of Star Trek:
Some people suggest the problem is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, several actors, writers, producers and directors of past "Star Trek" incarnations say, may be to stop making new "Star Trek" stories for a while. -- Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on 'Star Trek'
and your mind instantly translates the paragraph into:
Some people suggest the problem is with the New York Times is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, many editors, writers, reporters and readers of past "New York Times" incarnations say, may be to stop publishing The New York Times for a while.On the other hand....
"It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom. " -- Lincoln
He or she does not yet have a name although that dark fact will emerge from behind a bullet or in the explosion of a coward's car bomb. When their paths intersect we will all know the name and most of us will mourn. That mourning will be fitting and proper. What will not be proper, what will repulse, is that some Americans, and not a small number, will rejoice at this death of an American soldier.
The 1,000th American to die in Iraq will be marked by most Americans as both tragic and yet another reason to continue to crush Islamic terrorism relentlessly, using whatever it takes. When the word of the 1000th death is passed the words of Abraham Lincoln above will live again in the hearts of every American that understands every generation must pull the sword of freedom from the stone.
But because of freedom and what it means, this country will also allow the
Continued..."If you do not join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you dance, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance? And I will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. And if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what's the sin in that? We all begin there. Come on."
-- Robert Fulghum
"The most important sort of disobedience is to write essays at all. Fortunately, this sort of disobedience shows signs of becoming rampant. It used to be that only a tiny number of officially approved writers were allowed to write essays. Magazines published few of them, and judged them less by what they said than who wrote them; a magazine might publish a story by an unknown writer if it was good enough, but if they published an essay on x it had to be by someone who was at least forty and whose job title had x in it. Which is a problem, because there are a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders.
"The Internet is changing that. Anyone can publish an essay on the Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it. Who are you to write about x? You are whatever you wrote.
"Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story. The Web may well make this the golden age of the essay. And that's certainly not something I realized when I started writing this."
-- Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay
Children are easy.
One gun will rule dozens.
Shoot one, the rest will obey.
Children are easy
To keep and control.
No need to water or feed.
Children are easy.
Their tears are quite tiny.
No need to hear them or heed.
Children are easy.
They gather in schools.
It's simple to beat them en masse.
Children are easy.
Their bones are like sticks.
You can snap them in two if you please.
Children are easy,
And much cheaper to kill.
One bullet can blow away three.
Children are easy.
There will always be more
For the bags, for the bags, for the bags on the floor.
Once you understand the Pravadaesque Mindset that marks a New York Times lifer, the paper's capacity to irritate usually subsides into wry amusement. But every so often, the paper describes its own limited mindset so well it is hard to just let it slide. This morning's lead editorial on Russia is a textbook example of denial, incapacity and intellectual insanity: ( Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya ) It leads with:
A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada.It would be difficult for most honest reporters to write a more labored lead, but we aren't dealing with honest reporters here, we're dealing with a New York Times editorial.
To begin with I suppose that if by 'most Americans' you mean those who do not read newspapers, fail to watch television or listen to the radio, who never collect information from the web, and live in caves under the rich soil of Amish country, it might be conceivable that those Americans feel a terrorist attack on children in a school to be a "remote" event -- but only the ones with no children. This sort of shrink-wrapping the vast 'unwashed-unreaders' of the New York Times is a hallmark of the Times editorial page. It is a kind of noblesse distress signal in which the self-appointed and unelected media government distinguishes itself from the rabble. It is unfortunate that, to judge by declining circulation and audience figures, the rabble is also distinguishing itself from the major media.
After cleansing the room of the Yahoos, the editorial whips out the show stopper: "It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada."
Actually it is hard to imagine that there breathes an imagination so dead that it thinks the Chechen atrocity is hard to imagine at all. Imagining it doesn't take more than three brain cells. If, lacking those three brain cells, you still struggle to imagine it, the media is chock full of aids to you imagination in the form of pictures, first hand accounts, and video. Pick up any newspaper or turn on any news station on the radio and television. These aids will be along right after the extensive reports on William Clinton's Big Mac bill coming due. The Russian outrage is many things, but "hard to imagine" doesn't make the list.
What is hard to imagine is that a newspaper which was once an American newspaper could write about such a thing happening and not reflect on what would happen if it the events actually took place in America. But that's what the Times does in the same sentence. Notice how the hypothetical 'happening' takes place "outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada." A curious bit of localization for a newspaper whose offices are over a subway in New York City and only a few blocks from several schools.
Somehow the terrorist killings at Russian schools cannot be imagined by the Times to happen in America, in New York City, where 3,000 died. No, they have to be moved off, placed at a politically correct distance. With that, I suppose, no avid reader of the New York Times will imagine that what was done to the children of Russians will ever, could ever, happen to their own children in the city of New York.
If the readers could imagine such a thing then they certainly might not support the forthright Times editorial board in the one thing it wants out of the entire episode: "Unless Vladimir Putin opens up negotiations with legitimate Chechen leaders, Russia will not be the only nation to suffer more terrorist attacks."
Ah, the New York Times wants -- after the slaughter of hundreds of children -- appeasement and negotiation. On a certain level, it is comforting to known that in a world awash in fear and fascism, the New York Times remains true to the obsessions of its publisher and his editors. What would it take for this to change? It is hard to imagine, but at some future dark day the sight of dozens of the children of New York's media elite lying shot and burned in body bags on the sidewalk outside their private schools in New York City might do the trick.
I wonder whether, if that terrible day should ever come, the editorial staff of the New York Times will use copies of today's editorial to cover the faces of their own dead.
It wasn't in what Bush said or how he said it. Nor was it in what he didn't say. it wasn't in the common touch parts, or the "Memo to America Re: My Upcoming Programs" part. It wasn't in the cheers or the protesters hustled out. It really wasn't in any of that because every part was what was expected, and what was practiced -- over and over again. Smooth and, you will excuse me, not entirely lacking in nuance. Yesterday was Miller Time. Tonight was a Noh Drama. It contrasted well with the D'oh Drama played out last month in Boston.
What it was in was the way in which the erstwhile "opponent" felt so behind, so defeated, so crushed that he felt he had to, he just had to, rush onto the airwaves and froth into the slipstream. Except for his dwindling pack of true believers, nobody watched, nobody listened --except to mock -- and nobody waved goodbye.
If I had any secret doubts that John Kerry has lost this election , and lost it big-time, they are now swept away by his blast of blather in the last hour.
I don't expect Bush or the RNC to back off of Kerry one centimeter for one nanosecond. It is important, for many reasons, that Kerry and the depraved version of the Democratic Party he leads to be crushed into compost so that a new party can grow back in its place. But I do expect Senator Kerry to sleep with Senator Kennedy's fishes.
Now, if we could just figure out how to start a recall election in Massachusetts.
The great British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli once said: "My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me." The inaptly-aptly named 'Wretchard' of Belmont Club certainly fills out that notion admirably.
But it is more than just mere agreement that makes The Belmont Club a force for good in the blogsphere as well as the world. The real drawing power of the Belmont Club is the author's almost flawless melding of scholarship with style.
Many in the blogsphere write well, but few write as well and fewer still better. The prose of Wretchard is, on a day to day basis, clean, clear and spare with just a soupcon of poetry thrown in -- not just in his frequent pointed quotations from the masters. It's a prose that illuminates not only the insights but the great range of his mind.
Continued...
"Say goodnight, Gracie."
"Goodnight Gracie."
"Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
I was looking kind of dumb
With my finger and my thumb
In the shape of an "L" on my forehead "
-- SmashMouth, All Star
In the last few days there have been a lot of cycles wasted by people on the left, right, and center noting how badly the Kerry campaign is doing. To my mind, this is like suddenly discovering gravity.
The Kerry Campaign is doing badly because it has always done badly. Snagging the nomination from eight or nine less-electable clowns doesn't mean you're doing well, it just means you're not doing as poorly as the rest of the pack.
Still, I will admit that the campaign itself has, over the last fortnight, begun to do poorly in a more visible fashion than the performance of the previous year. Usually, they were able to keep the lid on somehow keep the right face on things, but of late this mask has begun to slip and that's a sign of deep existential distress on the inside.
The big question that keeps the keyboards humming at this point is : "Why?" This meditation is usually answered by some pundit or another hauling out the quick fix, the sure tactic, and the smooth move that will set things right and put John Kerry back on the path to the big chair in the oval office. Some have even gone so far as to propose Joe Trippi be brought in from the fields of clover he is currently cavorting in to right the good ship Kerry and send it smoothly into the harbor.
All these answers and suggestions are rank nonsense.
The single and only internal reason that things are now seen to be going badly inside the Kerry campaign is that deep inside the Kerry campaign, in the very core of the candidate himself, the have seen the fiery finger of fate write in glowing and deeply etched letters the single word: LOSER.
That's right -- down in the center where the Kerryites are sifting their statistics and spreadsheets and seeding their spin they already know what most of us are just beginning to sense-- THEY'VE LOST AND THERE IS NOTHING, BUT NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Continued...
Times Square Then Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Times Square Now: Was it worth it? Photo by Van der Leun
Donald Sensing reminds us that history is "what happened when" and why it means something more than "today is the first day of the rest of your life." At One Hand Clapping he reminds us that: On this date in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered almost without conditions to the United States and our allied nations, ending World War II.
I love it when card-carrying Upper Westside Wackos like Donna Leiberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union proclaims "We are not some fringe lunatics, we are the people. We are the mainstream of America!"
It makes me feel good to know that even after years of abuse, Prozac is still working for people like Donna. It confirms my judgment that people like Donna have been so nuts for so long that they actually think the life they lead is normal. I'm all for extending and heightening this delusion for as long as possible so that their crack-up after the looming November Bush Blow-Out will be permanent.
Over the years I probably attended more than two dozen Civil Liberty Union parties and somewhere, to my shame, I probably have a sheaf of cancelled checks. Between the cocaine, the marijuana, and the booze found and served at these little autofornication festivals, I can assure you that at no time did the word "normal" enter my thinking when discussing the parties. Among the many
Continued...Stan at Logic & Sanity: School seized in Russia reads Russian and is translating, summarizing and blogging the details of this unfolding atrocity from the Russian wires whenever a new item surfaces.
Earlier today, the animals who did this released 26 hostages. They still hold and threaten to kill hundreds .... of children.
Here's what the hostages they released look like:
On Loaves, Fishes, and LILEKS (James)
I'm always among the last to be persuaded of the miracles of loaves and fishes to be found in "new" technologies and "new" media [see item just below this one], but during my recent month's break from blogging I took in a lot of arguments about the significance of blogs in this election cycle. Still, with all the citations of this study and the pointers to that study and the constant links to this issue provided by Reynolds I was, due to my innate conservatism on this issue, not quite persuaded. Until today when, at last, LILEKS (James) put paid to this issue in his usual offhand. "oh, by the way," manner.
James Lileks, the Mark Twain of our era, is always at the top of my must read list. He's best taken with the first cup of coffee in the morning. Although he's at the top of my list, I hesitate to link to him since I assume anybody coming here has already been there.
This morning, however, he serves up a textbook example of why blogging matters.
===
Hmm. First, Hewitt's interview with Terry McAuliffe.
HEWITT: I want to start with some very easy questions.
MCAULIFFE: Yeah.
HEWITT: Do you believe that John Kerry took a CIA man into Cambodia and kept his hat?
MCAULIFFE: Uh, I have no idea.
HEWITT: You have no idea that he made that story to the Washington Post and that he made it again in 2004 to the LA Times?
MCAULIFFE: If John Kerry said he did something, I'll take John Kerry at his word.
HEWITT: Do you think that he ran guns to anti-communists in Cambodia which he told the U.S. News & World Report on May of 2000? MCAULIFFE: I don't know. You'd have to ask John Kerry about that. I don't know what he did in Cambodia or didn't. That was a war 35 years ago. I want to talk about this year.
HEWITT: Did he go to Cambodia on Christmas Eve -- your understanding-- in 1968?
MCAULIFFE: I think he probably did and probably George Bush when he was in the Alabama National Guard was driving the boat.
"Now watch this.
"In one instance, it's "I have no idea," and in the other he's quite certain what Kerry did. In McAuliffe's mind, the contradiction doesn't matter -- who'll notice? He's compartmentalizing. The Hewitt interview ceased to exist, or matter, the moment it was over. On to the next engagement. But that's oldthink, brother. If you want an example of how blogging can impact elections, this is a perfect example. Radio host blogs an interview with big-time party strategist. Another blogger uses a camcorder, iMovie and a .mac account to post a snippet of an interview with the same guy on the same subject. A third party draws a connection between the two statements. You can hunt and link and draw your own conclusions. You're no longer the reader, absorbing what the editors have sought fit to give you. You are the editor."
===
Who are you going to believe? Us or your lying eyes?
Lileks, as usual, is the polite Minnesotan in his use of "compartmentalizing." What is really going on is that McAuliffe is lying through his bleached porcelain inlays. He is lying as fast as he can and as hard as he can. He is lying because he knows that his candidate has lied, that his party has bought the lie and that the only slim, razor thin hope, for victory lies in more lying.
The only problem is, as Lileks so deftly demonstrates with one excerpt and one link, is that lies that previously "didn't matter" are now blood simple to expose and distribute.
And with tens of thousands of blogs eager to participate in the exposure of lies and real-time fact-checking it becomes harder and harder to disavow them. Blogs stand McLuhan on his head as a medium that instantly massages messages and finds all the lumps, bumps and blockages.
This current electoral campaign has exposed in harsh and brilliant light the brutal fact that the major media does not now have, nor has ever possessed, a self-policing mechanism. (Spare me the pointers to Dan Okrant, the clean-up of the Jason Blair hoax or any of the numerous other items. These are either desperation moves or post mortem effects -- most likely the latter.)
For a long time it has been obvious that the major media has become, through sloth, attrition, nepotism and cronyism, a self-selected and unelected shadow
Continued...On the Recurring Plague of the Technocrits, the Global Swarming of the Internet, and the Flaming Ozone Holes of the Blogsphere
NOTE: When I initially wrote this response to one of the endless Technology-As-Messiah manifestos that polluted the Net in the boom-boom days of the dot.bomb bubble, I had assumed that the then looming blow-out would put paid to the mouthbreathers who then spewed their gospel on the rubber-tofu circuit of conferences and seminars. Of course, I was wrong.
I failed to take into account that these perverted purveyors of pap had no second careers lined up and were indeed members of the hard-core unemployable. (Which is probably why so many have failed to see any improvement in their personal economies of late.) I did not foresee that their bodies would no be exposed to the elements and recycled by roaches, but that they would simply enter a state of stasis until reanimated by foreclosures on their jumbo mortgages, or the need to put their spawn into useless colleges.
With the advent of the GoogleSpasm, they have all returned to life and are again selling the same old spew in the same old bottles but with a few new fonts on the label.
Watching their tsunami of crapola again infest the Net, it seems appropriate to return to this essay and update it just a tad to acknowledge that the undead spawn of Neuromancer lurch among us again. The Technocrits are back. Time to get out the sledgehammer and sharpen several dozen wooden stakes.
In this besotted age of unremitting technological spasms, we all struggle to maintain our consciousness, social position, phony-baloney jobs and inadequate incomes through rigidly researched and needlessly reiterated blather. The Ponzi schemes that unfold each day in communications and computing can be numbing, yet still personally enriching -- which is why we need to pay attention to who's got the honey pot.
One understandable reaction is to blather: "Are these changes good, bad, or profitable? Should we sell out or buy in?"
The answer is "Both, frequently, and 'SHOW ME THE MONEY!'"
"But how, Uncle Gerard," you ask, "can we buy in?"
My children, nothing could be simpler. Just look around and whip out the cash. You are The Consuming Class, do what you do best. When in doubt, buy the bullshit.
Hypnotic technologies, such as voice mail, Gmail, feature-glutted and overpriced software, fertility drugs, boner pills, Spam, genetic engineering, instant messaging, Gameboy, cruise missiles, online conferencing, Black Tar Heroin and Roofies are making business, dating and life itself more convenient and enjoyable, and many (white) people in San Jose, New York, Boston, Washington, Seattle, Bern and the Grand Cayman Islands healthier, wealthier, and wiser.
So get yours now while the getting is good. With Google on the Big Board, Technocrit is back in play.
Technology is again working hard at trivializing work, atomizing families, and puffing up the economy in utterly predictable ways. Our cool new technologies -- now wireless! with snapshots! -- are also reintroducing every single day age-old forms of muscular tension, wrist damage, sight impairment, mental distraction, goofing off, and spiritual and physical masturbation. You also get useless gadgets you just gotta have to organize a life that has no purpose beyond the next
Continued...The American Left, the Democratic Party, and John Kerry's "message" is that everyone should just back off on this "War on Terror" business and look to their wallets and their health care plans. This group of unhinged allies seems to feel the important things at this time are entitlements and more taxes. Check that-- their only real idea is that George Bush must go. Beyond that, they have no real feelings or plans or proposals whatsoever.
But all their hate and all their rabid insanity comes to nothing, to less than nothing when, looking about the world, you see that the psychopaths of the Islamic religion are capable of this:
School seized in Russia.An elderly woman -- shot. An 11th grade girl -- shot in the back.Details... ~50 children managed to escape at the time of seizure. 11 students and 4 adults hid in the boiler room (from where they were safely led out by the police). Later on, 2 girls managed to escape. They report that the terrorists are acting very aggresively and are scaring the children. One of the terrorists is wounded. The hostages are being kept in the school's gymnasium. The number of hostages mentioned here is 500 . Terrorists have mined the area around the school.
There are about 25 terrorists, 4 of them are women with bomb belts, and they also have 2 dogs. now being re enforced with troops. No more specifics are given.21 year old Kazik brought his sister to school. He tells the journalist what he witnessed.
Around 9 am, an old truck pulled up and about 20 heavily armed terrorists dressed in black and wear black masks and 4 women with bomb belts came out.
Children started to run. Those who were standing closest to the street were able to make it out. Terorrists starting pushing others, and throwing some children through windows (!!!).And elderly woman was shot, and a girl who looked like an 11th grader was shot in the back. She died on the spot.
I've long realized that a small page on the web is not a tool for convincing anyone of anything they don't already believe, but it just stops me cold when -- knowing what these people are capable of, and having been shown it time and time again -- there are still people who are my fellow citizens that actually believe anything other than killing will work with this pathology. Instead, the tens of thousands of Left/Democrat demonstrators are using their time to dance, jump, and posture around Manhattan today. I've heard this lauded as an admirable exercise in freedom and perhaps it is. It's also just sick.
We once would have said that an attack on a school and the threatened killing of hundreds of school children couldn't happen here. Nobody says that anymore. And if it did?
Would that finally wake us up? Would it? And if not that, what, exactly will it take? You don't root out this kind of psychopathology with talk therapy, you quarantine and then cauterize it.
And it will come to that. Yes, it will.
Glenn Reynolds in the Wall St. Journal on why old media can't seem to bail out Kerry's swamped boat.
Ten Bullets from Stephen Green that are shooting .527 holes in the hull of said boat.
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"This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed." -- via Mark Steyn @ The Corner on National Review Online
Small-town residents boo media with McCain On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling. "Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack.I love the smell of tar being heated in the morning.
"There's a photo of Sarah Palin in a stars and stripes bikini, toting an automatic weapon. It says more than any Op-Ed or blog. Hot broad with cool weapon. Every school shooter's dream of womanhood. Alas, the photo is photoshopped, but true in spirit." - Erica Jong: The Mary Poppins SyndromeLest we forget, Jong's one immortal literary achievement was in coining the term "zipless f**k." If only she'd learned enough to zip it.
"Media Bubble, Sept. 2 -- Embattled former beauty queen Sarah Palin* continued to wilt yesterday under the pressure of numerous fair, evenhanded media questions regarding the alleged state of "Alaska." Palin has claimed to be "governor" of the legendary northern land mass, which, while heretofore undiscovered by explorers, was once rumored to contain vast expanses rich with oil, gold, and "eski-mos." -- Treacher
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 of pressure to do what's politically expedient, but was proud to say that he never sold his soul. Sometimes he laughed, and at others he teared up. He said that what he'll miss most after leaving office will be his role as Commander in Chief." -BLACKFIVE: The Reason To Delay Air Force One...
"Get in your news anchor chair or at the wheels of your bootlicker leftie blogs or fire up the presses for your dead-tree dying newspapers and tell us all about it. Todd's not a real Eskimo. Sarah's not a real woman. Trig isn't really her son and all her kids have stupid names anyway. Alaska isn't a real state and being mayor and governor there isn't real executive experience, like milking grant programs with Bill Ayers is. Taxes and the Jihad and good schools aren't "women's issues", lesbian rights and taking away people's guns are what women really want. Women care more about the North Slope staying undeveloped than they do about the price of gas for the mini-van." - That Precious Minority Status
Instant Agitprop -- New Campaign garb now on sale: JesusFish Eats the "Mark of the Obamessiah" @ CafePress
HT: Tim Blair"Rolling onto final, the co-pilot calls for "flaps three". I can see the runway; it is raining ahead, but looks OK. "Flaps full, landing checklist" I call out the items on the landing checklist like a good little non-flying pilot. There is a heavy shaft of rain east of the control tower, but our runway still looks good. Lightning bolts flash east of the airport boundary." -- Flight Level 390: TABIR intersection (N28 25.2 W083 00.2)
Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, I’m looking for the liberal who wants to engage in an honest, free-form, even-playing-field discourse examining, with intellectual sincerity, the achievements of the Governor of Alaska who’s been in office nineteen months, versus the achievements of the House Speaker who’s been in office nineteen months. Leave the bumper sticker slogans and sound bites from Howard YEEEEEAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!! Dean at home, and just compare those two stewardships. Problems fixed…people unified…approval ratings sustained. Then get back to me on which female-selection was cynical, desperate, bald-faced, sneaky, pandering, deceptive, superficial, cheap, calculated and condescending. -House of Eratosthenes
Best Palin Reaction Line of the Day: "The smart liberals are worried. The dumb ones think they've won." - AMERICAN DIGEST
If you think someone is watching you, you're probably right. But this doesn't mean you're not also crazy, according to psychiatrists who say that our surveillance and reality TV society is spawning a new kind of psychosis. They're calling it the Truman Show delusion. - Surveillance Society Sparks Psychosis | Threat Level from Wired.com
