IF YOU ARE AT ALL CONCERNED about the state of the Fourth Estate in the United States, you have probably followed the recent escapades of The New York Times with some degree of interest.
"Some degree" sums up my particular interest in the behavior of this peculiar institution which seems to have self-selected itself as a vehicle worthy of wielding a power we normally reserve for those named by our citizens in elections. Indeed, to some it would seem as if the Times has arrogated to itself, or more precisely to its publisher and editor (The first owing his position to a fluke of genetic lotto, and the latter owing his position to the clever pleasing of the former.), the right to say what is and what is not in our public interest. And from this self-conceived notion, from this reading of the First Amendment to extend only to those who own large media conglomerates, these two men also assume to themselves the right to knowingly risk the lives and well-being of the soldiers and citizens of this Republic at will.
THERE ARE MANY MOMENTS IN MY LIFE, now more than before, when I wish I could hear within myself a clear call to an abiding faith. But I would be a hypocrite to claim that I do. I've listened deeply for a long time, but I just don't hear it consistently. Grace and belief for me seem to be always approaching or alwys retreating and while I wish they would linger longer, they seem born to roam as far as my soul is concerned. I am, however, mindful and grateful that they do seem to arrive when I need them the most.
That said, I understand that many, many people do hear it and live by what they hear. That's why it strikes me that this continuing assault on various icons such as the Ten Commandments by the transnational secularists of this country must be seen as a deep insult by both people of faith and those of good will. It's all part of the unremitting assault on the few remaining islands of our shared nobility that can only be seen as mean-spirited, small-minded, petty, controlling, feeble and nasty.
This week I have been bedeviled by the tricks of the hooks and the hearts of popular music. I keep telling myself that most popular songs are not written to be true, but glib; that they run on what's call 'the hook.'
Distracted by numerous lyrics that all seemed to sending me a secret message, I decided to investigate the functioning of "the hook" and came in my Googling to a song by Blues Traveler from their album "Four."
"Four" is an album I've had for many years (A memoir of a brief, but doomed, May -- September romance some eight years back.) which has a song on it called "The Hook." Looking up the lyrics, I saw -- for the first time -- what the refrain actually says:
"Because the hook brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely."
It's a common problem with the lyrics to pop songs that they are often misheard by the listeners. These ear blips are called "mondegreens." Neo has written about this in an illuminating manner @ neo-neocon: Mondegreens
"All of the victims were shot in their heads
and all but McGowan were shot in their beds,"
Doyle said.
"The beds were undisturbed.
The house itself was undisturbed,"
Doyle said.
"There were no signs
of a break-in,"
Doyle said.
-- No Motive Found in California Murders
ABOVE, THE UNINTENTIONAL "FOUND POETRY" of a local murder in Garner Valley, California. Exceptional enough to be brought to the ever shortening attention span of the nation because the toll was unusually high: David, Father, age 42 -- believed dead by his own hand; Chase, son, age 14; Paige, daughter, age 10; Raine, daughter, age 8; Karen, wife and mother, age 42; Karen's mother, no name or age given in the report.
We learn that a "911 dispatcher didn't hear any voices on the line, but was able to identify the sounds of the telephone hitting the wall and a gunshot." We learn that the father's body was found next to a handgun and a phone. We learn that "this community is in no danger. We are not at this time looking for a suspect." We learn that the town is really quiet and that, "A lot could happen right next door and you wouldn't even know it."
We don't learn if the standard spontaneous shrine of flowers, balloons, stuffed animals and children's
Continued...The progressively more twisted Andrew Sullivan continues his intellectually insane babblings between the postings of "reader email" that increasingly make up the bulk of his dubious output with: "This is a battle between barbarism and civilization. We cannot destroy our moral compass in order to save it."
This is the oft repeated position of this preening popinjay. Oft repeated simply because he no longer has the intellectual oomph to do more than roll out of bed, onto the floor, and engage the keyboard
Continued...IN A HIDDEN VALLEY in the foothills of Utah's La Sal mountains, my old friend and I sat on his stone porch in the fading light and watched the sun disappear behind the soaring red rock of the Moab Wall ten miles to the west. As always from this perch along the fault line between basin and range, the view revealed four different American landscapes: desert, farmland, rolling ranch land and high mountains.
In the pasture to our right, the wranglers were bedding down the ranch's horses for the night. Up along the pine dotted cliffs on our left the last hunting hawks were circling. In front of us the impossible burnt orange of a Moab sunset swarmed up the side of the western sky.
Ezekiel saw a wheel way in the middle of the air.
Little wheel run by faith, big wheel run by the grace of God
-- Traditional
At the far end of the two rows of houseboats, up where they stop and the lake widens, the sun looks like a widening pool of molten gold poured out across the water. And as the sun sinks lower in the sky above Queen Anne hill on the far shore, that gold flows down the canal between the houseboats until the pool of shade from the shore trees behind me absorbs it.
A mallard wheels over me and slooshes down into the the water here in the shadows. It is so quiet I can hear those small ripples slap the sides of the sailboat moored at the back of the house. Across the eight yards of open water that form the "street," they raised the roof-beam on the neighbor's house in the winter and have been painting it for over five months. It's not a trivial thing to paint a large two-story houseboat. It requires long ladders, an indifference to falling, rafts, poles and patience with a
Continued...Whose will decreed this slash of sea
Would frame this sun in gleams of green?
What plan determines stone's decline,
Or shapes in stars, or shadow's sheen,
Or that we track, as clever beasts,
The passing haze of comet's fall,
Or are the glaze of thought on flesh
That sees the need of plan at all?
I know, I know... no plan at all
In comments to another posting, AskMom asks
What pajamas are most suitable for our most or least favorite bloggers and other personalities? We stipulate of course that less than full cover-up is not in the spirit, and try to express through design, fabric and color the essence of the pajama wearer.I shall not divulge here the actual nature of my pajamas except to note that I own five pairs and for some odd reason I cannot find the bottoms to any of them at present. I think I'd best check out the dryer in the basement.I can start by admitting that one of my own favorite pairs is a flannel sock monkey print in Williamsburg Blue. I see Ace in black silk with crossed swords embroidered all over. DailyKos of course wears Hello Kitty in noxious lime green to help him be in touch with his lickspittle gay-friendly little girl vulnerabilities. Neo, maybe some patriotic red white and blue plaid flannel, so impossible for a good liberal Jewish Girl and so right for her now.
I'm not brave enough to put forth any ideas about Gerard here on his own turf. Except to note that Winston Churchill wore a fabulous imperial burgundy wool robe of classic design and stately proportions, with hand turned corded edges and silk lining, and that if writing were pajamas......
Continued...
Harvey Logan: Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.
[Butch immediately kicks Harvey in the groin]
Butch Cassidy: Well, if there aint' going to be any rules, let's get the fight started. -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
"You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'ma get medieval on your ass." -- Pulp Fiction
By rote and by ritual most Americans to assert that they "Support our troops." But as we all know, yet seldom admit, America has more of the known reserves of the world's bullshit than the Saudis have oil. The truth of the matter is that far too many Americans are becoming far too interested in our troops behaving correctly than actually supporting and sustaining them. They blather support out of one orifice while spewing disdain from the other. We hear these clapped-out flatulators daily at work, on the street, and over the tube of the boobs. I don't know about you, but for me these hyperventilating hypocrites are beginning to gripe my hindquarters big time.
The International Center of Photography has a new show up The Unknown Weegee. For those who don't know about Weegee, one of the great American photographers of the 20th Centry, go here. and learn. Yes, there will be a test.
For my part, the most arresting image available on line is this one:
Why? Because I had that Space Patrol helmet. At the time, it was my favorite item in the world and "Space Patrol" was my favorite TV show. Once I got it I would wear it while watching the show.
Time, of course, keeps moving on, but still today whenever I see a particularly strange bit of behavior in others or myself, the first words that pop into my mind are, "Space patrol." And, alas, I no longer have the hat, but I wish I did. It would come in quite handy for things like political conventions.
AFTER A RECENT SERIES OF HIGH LEVEL MEETINGS with ranking Democrats at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, ranking honorary Democrat Osama Bin Laden of Rat Hole, Pakistan, emerged from seclusion with some of the International Democratic Party talking points for the 2006 US election.
The unquiet yearning of Maureen Dowd. Lead sentence in today's NYT column, "When he wants to, Mr. Obama can rouse the crowd to multiple ovations..." (Can He Unleash the Force?)
You'd think an editor would give her a clue, but no.
Daddy, tell me again about New Orleans: "The single biggest thing to be done is the president of the United States needs to put one person, a very high-level competent person in the White House, in charge of New Orleans. And that person -- the president should say to that person, "I want you in my office every morning telling me what you did in New Orleans yesterday." And the next day say, "I want you in my office telling me what you did yesterday. I'm not interested in what you're going to do six months from now; I want to know what you did yesterday. And I want to know what's happening on the ground," the president, "what's happening on the ground every single day." John Edwards, sucking up just as fast as he can
"Much is made this week of conservatives "abandoning" Bush. Some of what is said about it makes sense. Most of it is nonsense.I'm not a conservative, so I can't speak for them. Who I can speak for are people who are not doctrinaire and locked into eternal opposition to someone or something or some party or some nation. People, in other words, who try to navigate the real world as it happens around them, guided by principles but not ossified by them, aware of ideologies and also of their limitations. Such a person's course of actions is bound to look like a drunken stagger when you only watch the walker, not the pitching deck of the world as it goes on around him."
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"Children seem to be 'diagnosed' with lots of things lately. It has become customary for at least one of their parents to be somehow 'enthusiastic' about said diagnosis, sometimes even confessing to having requested or demanded the diagnosis. Said parent is invariably female. Said child is invariably male. The lopsided gender trend is curious, and so is the spectacle of parents ordering diagnoses for their children, like pizzas or textbooks." - House of Eratosthenes
Please study this evidence carefully. The saints of San Diego and surrounding areas in California NEED TO BE WARNED of the MAJOR JUDGMENT coming upon them that will be MUCH WORSE THAN 911. This evidence shows JULY 8, 2008 is hard coded in the Word of God as the next Major Judgment Date that will fulfill scripture just like the attack on the Twin Towers Sept 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina fulfilled scripture . It cannot be prayed away and It will not be delayed. -- !!! 2,492 DAYS !!!
"I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago or when I was a United States senator," said Obama, who is still a senator from Illinois. -- Obama puzzled by Iraq comment frenzy
A woman fell into a tank of slurry as she tried to make "manure bombs" using her stockings, German police today said. The unfortunate woman stripped off her foul smelling clothes and fled the scene naked, along with a female accomplice wearing just her bra and pants, a police spokesman told Reuters. - Cow dung fate for 'manure bomber' | World news | guardian.co.uk
"As Marie-Antoinette is said to have remarked about her starving subjects who were demanding bread, "Let then eat cake," our elected Democratic members of Congress are in effect saying of Americans, "Let them ride bikes." -- It's Time for Rage - HUMAN EVENTS
"500 years ago, oil was not a resource. Neither was uranium. People around at the time didn't know how to use them. Things that weren't resources became resources. Our ability to use new resources made old resources obsolete. Now, no home in the UK needs to burn wood for heat, for example. Or, as Bjorn Lomborg has put it, the Stone Age didn't come to an end because we ran out of stones." - Climate Resistance: Infinite Regress
"Seattle Police opened fire on a suspect in Downtown Seattle this morning who they say robbed a West Seattle bank wearing black shoe polish on his face and a wig." - Police shoot bank robbery suspect Seattle, Washington
So there I was, in the lion's den, calling Joe Lieberman an asshole. And people applauded and cheered. - Kos: Into the tiger's den
Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal: News Well, LT G got the order from his chain-of-command to delete his blog. I guess no longer posting wasn't good enough.Archive survives at the link.
Howard Dean in 2004: "Military experience is vital"
"Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?" McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
"All the News that's Fit to Print"? How about "Yesterday's News, Spun and Bent"? - Roger's Rules - The New York Times catches up with Mark Steyn (sort of)
"Let's assume that talking on a hands-free cellphone indeed leads to higher accident rates. So I ask: What is the difference between talking over a hands-free cellphone and talking to a passenger in the car? I say there is no difference; both can present distractions. Therefore, in the name of public safety, I strongly urge -- no, demand -- that state legislatures immediately act to prohibit all talk in moving automobiles." - Donald Pittenger
Washington DC - In a sweeping 4 1/2 to 3.14159 decision with 1.35841 abstaining, the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling this morning in the landmark Abdul the Party Clown v. U.S case, recognizing the individual rights to gun ownership by child rapists and Guantanamo detainees. The decision was immediately hailed by international human rights activists and child rape organizations..... In his dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said "I totally fucking give up." -- iowahawk: Court Okays Gun Rights for Detainees, Child Rapists
S+ = F- (More Safety equals less Freedom)
"In government economics, supply and demand are irrelevant -- what counts are the feelings of major campaign contributors and large voting blocks. In government economics, you take money based on rate of increase of profits, not on actual profits. In government economics, you claim that a program's funding was cut because you decreased its annual rate of funding increases. In government economics, forcing businesses to increase wages is improving the free market. In government economics, you repeatedly overestimate tax revenues and economic growth and repeatedly underestimate government expenditures, interest on debt, and future obligations. There must be some secret place where government economics is taught, since it doesn't appear in university catalogs. Maybe that's what goes on at Area 51." -- Dr. T @ Coyote Blog: Economic Morons in Europe, but is Congress Much Better?
Obama was introduced by Karen Bass, the California Assembly Speaker. Donors sipped wine and bottled water. Waiters wearing black vests, white shirts and black ties served hors d'oeuvres: endive spears of brie, toasted almonds and truffle oil; tuna tartare with passion fruit ponzu and macadamia nut on wonton crisp; beef short rib skewers with Asian flavors." -- Lynn Sweet: Obama Hollywood fund-raiser. Pool reports
"In many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army." - Unqualified Reservations: OL4: Dr. Johnson's hypothesis
"It's also critical that you avoid the fatal mistake of getting creative and comparing people you don't like to other evil dictators, such as Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. With few exceptions, white people are actually fond of almost any dictator not named Hitler...." - Stuff White People Like
Power has all the usual reasons to hide. Power is delicious, and everyone wants it. To bite into its crisp, sweet flesh, to lick its juices off your lips -- this is more than pleasure. It is satisfaction. It is fulfillment. It is meaning. The love of a bird for a caterpillar is a tenuous and passing attachment next to the bond between man and power." - Unqualified Reservations: OL7: the ugly truth about government
"A listing of books, a Web site, movies and restaurants on Friday with the Weekend Explorer column, about sites in New York associated with the photographer Weegee, referred incorrectly to Lombardi’s Pizza, at 32 Spring Street on the Lower East Side, an area where Weegee lived and worked. It sells pizza only as pies, not by the slice." - Corrections - For the Record - NYTimes.com
"Here we stand. We have squandered great wealth to defeat death -- only to find ourselves impoverished, and turning to death itself for our answers. The succubus we sought to defeat now dominates us, for she is a lusty and insatiable whore. We have sacrificed our humanity, our compassion, our empathy, our humility in the face of a force far greater than ourselves, while forgetting the power and grace and the vision which first led us and empowered us on this grand crusade. Our weapons are now turned upon us; let the slaughter begin." - Crossing That Dark River | The Doctor Is InOn the Oregon Health Plan that will pay for cancer patients to die, but not to live.
Then:
"How tough do we have it, really? Our most threatening menace is a gallon of gas that costs four dollars and sixty cents." -- House of Eratosthenes
Doing the Job American Journalism Won't Do By Counting the Jobs They Will:
Obama Media BJs To Date - "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their "desires, diseases, needs" on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom. - Socialists made eugenics fashionable
It is weird how so many who claim to like Obama hope he is lying.
"And with the loss of transcendentals comes the loss of the human -- not to mention the hero, the saint, the sage. These are our fixed "vertical stars" that have always guided us up the ladder of ascent, but in the Darwinian paradigm, these are all illusions, pure and simple. Richard Dawkins is greater than Shankara. Chrisopher Hitchens is superior to Meister Eckhart. Ray Ingles is on a higher plane than Jesus. " - One Cosmos: Religious Humanism vs. Darwinist Animalism
"You know, I did not want Barack to go into politics because I thought politics was a mean business. And you know, I knew this man that I loved, he was sweet and pathetic, I thought. there was no way....... Lynn Sweet: "The View" ladies dive in to rescue Michelle Obama after she calls Barack "pathetic." UPDATE Obama spokesman Vietor said Michelle said "empathetic.""Empathetic" Yeah, right.
That punk Morgan over at House of Eratosthenes is "Hot Pants -- Upping the Ante". Oh, yeah? He says, "This can't possibly end well." Oh, yeah?
Dukes of Hazard
Wife #2
Wife #1
Girlfriend #49
wear them myself.
"I do have recollections of black women who aren't angry, and each and every single one of them is a person I know from talking face-to-face. Electronic media is a very different thing, because in that forum there are powerful nameless faceless people who get to decide what I'm ready to see. And for reasons I don't quite understand -- or maybe I do, and that's a loathsome thought by itself -- these nameless faceless people seem to think the black woman I'm ready to see has to be angry, or else I have little interest in seeing her." - House of Eratosthenes
This playset is one of the best purchases I have made for my three-year-old. In the past, when we have been stopped at roadblocks, or when during one of Daddy's arrests, he would start crying uncontrollably. Now, after playing with this for the past several months, he is perfectly docile. As an adjunct to this product, I would also recommend that you purchase the Playmobil Armed Standoff Playset, Fisher-Price Little People Battering Ram, and the Nerf Tear-Gas Canister Deployment Gun.
"Looking at Germany, then, Iran sees a country with nothing to counter the pressure of merely an implied nuclear threat. Jihadists see the linchpin of Europe, easy of access and inadvertently hospitable to operations, that will hardly punish those who fall into its hands, and that can neither accomplish on its own a flexible expeditionary response against a hostile base or sponsor, nor reply in kind to a nuclear strike. Thus the German government should be especially nervous about cargos trucked overland from the east." - Mark Helprin - The New Soft Underbelly of Europe
"Spring is in the air! Its the time of year to release your gametes into the water and make baby barnacles. But wait a second, you are a permanent fixture on a rock. Can't move. What is a young, lovestruck sessile she-male to do? Well, if you are hung like a barnacle you don't really have to move that far." -Deep Sea News : Environment Shapes Barnacle Penis
"The easy story is the one right down the hall and the easy story that "speaks to the heart" is the one that speaks directly to the writer's heart. NBC News, I'm sorry you lost a skilled colleague and a well-liked friend but he is not the news. Report his death, cry in private and get back to work. -- And man up a little, willya? It's creepy to see grown up men blathering like schoolgirls. Ew." -- Roberta X
"I hope it was a good idea to appease those Hillfems by partnering with Elizabeth Edwards on my Health Care platform. I'll let you in on a little secret, the health care plan is one of those "throw away" platforms every candidate has. We never really plan on improving or changing it, it's what we call a "filler piece" we can fall back on if we hit a hard spot. See also the Environment. I gotta run Countdown is about to start, hit me back when you get a chance. I left you a message on myspace." - vksempireofdirt.com
"The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance." - Ann Coulter
In Bizarro World, illegal foreign combatants are granted constitutional rights; in Bizarro World, people react to high gas prices and energy shortfalls by refusing to boost domestic capacity. - LILEKS (James) the Bleat
"Do you really think most of the halfwit 'celebrities' who contribute to my blog even know how to write a complete sentence? So really, it's not like anyone noticed when I switched to AutoBlogger anyway."
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, according to pool reports. Uh huh. I hope he also brings a gun permit, a trigger lock, and a good lawyer. And a health care plan. -- JustOneMinute: The Chicago Way
Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk's USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. - Peter Bradshaw @ guardian.co.uk Film
"The Environmental Puritans agree with the ayatollahs on this one point: America is the Great Satan. And Obama echoes that view when he refers to our gasoline consumption, our eating, and our air-conditioning and heating as if they were sins for which we are accountable to the rest of the world.... Let me guess, though, where Obama's thermostat is set. You can't run for president and have people see you sweat."
The end. Who says scrolling is without rewards?
"I am going to stay optimistic. Chistendom can be revived -- not through political action, but by fulfilling the Great Commission with both word and deed. Good people create good culture, from which springs good government. By living the words of Our Lord, we have the hope of becoming good people; therefore, it is imperative that we concentrate all our energies on doing so. It's salt, light, and leaven that will defeat the Conspiracy."
"Pity the nation that reaches a point where it needs a Churchill to save it; but pity even more a nation that, needing a Churchill, fails to find one." - Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun
- "If It Feels Good, Do It"
- Lincoln's Land Without God
- Mondegreen Moments
- "He Wasn't In His Right Mind"
- I have seen your future, Andrew, it is murder
- Contrails
- Snapshot from the Floating World
- Intelligent Design
- Pajamas Fashion Thread
- "RULES? IN A KNIFE FIGHT?": Redrafting the Rules of Engagement in the First Terrorist War
- Weegee's Space Patrol
- "Alley, alley, oxen free!"-- Osama Tosses Turban into the Ring for 2006 American Elections
- In Passing
- "Tweedle:"