Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Later for Traitors. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize. Hold On.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? -- WarGames

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear for Bush Derangement Syndrome's Great Hits. The year was 2005. Evan Maloney was there and he kept detailed video notes: >bt: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act. It’s true! But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009. Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.

I'm on the sidelines when it comes to beating back the tsunami of slander from the Leftoidsphere's recent twitfit of hallucinatory racism and threats of violence coming out of the Tea Party meetings. The fact that former NY Times Drama Queen Frank

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 31, 2010 11:15 AM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Show of Glands

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Question of the day @ KA-CHING!



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 30, 2010 3:58 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
David Mamet on How to Write for Television

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Interested in getting better at writing? I always am. If you are as well this letter/memo written by Mamet to his writing team for the television show, The Unit delivers the goods. Ostensibly "Made for Television" but anyone interested in improving their writing for any medium would do well to mine it for nuggets of gold. Particularly appealing to me is this injunction:

"The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama."

If I were a tattooing sort of guy, I'd have this tattooed on the back of both of my hands and set it to flash in flaming subliminal letters on my monitor three times a minute.

It is the Talmud to the Torah of:

"THOU SHALT NOT BE BORING."

That's a commandment to remember when writing on the various subjects, arguments, concepts and commentary that arise in the current struggle henceforth to be known as "The Thermonuclear Phase of the Culture Wars."

Long ago, a friend of mine quipped, "Better ideas require better arguments," and while that's true it is also dated. As they wind their way

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 27, 2010 12:31 PM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Patrick Henry Redux
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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 24, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Run, Jump, Skip, Hop

askipper.jpgIn my line of work, I have to look at the Internet for many hours a day. As a steady diet this is not good.

As you all know, the Internet makes it drop-dead easy to find at least 30 things that really piss you off before your first cup of coffee cools. I don't care where you're coming from, this axiom (15 Minutes Internet = 30 Things That Frost Your Cookies ) is universal. [See: Godwin's Law / Van der Leun's Corollary for an earlier iteration. ]

So it is always , I have to remind myself, always in my best interest to get up and get out of the house on a regular basis. Normally I try to do this every day and four times on weekends, but "knowing how way leads on to way," hours can pass and my resolve is still waiting to be acted on.

During the weekdays, however, I have a great break clock just across the street from my house. It is probably the best break clock a man can have. Its alarm is made of children's laughter.

Three times a day, the elementary school across the street throws the doors to its playground open and several hundred children blast out onto the blacktop. They're out there right now. Whoops, and shouts, and laughter. Just a second, I've gotta go check....

... tick... tick... tick ....

.... Back now. Great break. I took a walk to the end of the block. Then I walked back again. Then I walked to the corner market where they've had an unusual run on donuts. Only three sad sprinkle-cake donuts left. Pass.

While walking I noticed something that we all notice and that we all forget. When it comes to children and recess, there is no "walk." There's run, jump, skip, hop, dash, sprint, bounce and lope. But there is no walk. I mentioned this to my neighbor who also works in the market.

"I know what you mean," she said. "I love to skip. But, let me see, the last time I skipped was.... ten years ago with my niece... it was a skipping race out on Lopez Island in the summer. I was pretty much laid up for a day after, but I loved it."

She handed me a bag and gave me a look. What could I do? I skipped out of the store and all the way home. It's tougher than I remember it being. But I commend it to you. It's a way of walking that changes your view of the world. Things, well, things don't piss you off so easily if you throw a skip or two into your day.

It's still recess at the school across the street and the kids are not slowing down. How wise they are for people so young.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 24, 2010 2:31 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Today is the 235th Anniversary of "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

Especially appropriate for the present moment, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" is one of the touchstones of revolution then and now. It was originally delivered "in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia." And at that moment it is worth noting that from the point of view of Henry's government, the speech was treason.

Interestingly, the speech itself was not written down or even published until some years after Patrick Henry's death.

The text of this speech first appeared in print in Life and Character of Patrick Henry by William Wirt which was first published in 1816, seventeen years after Patrick Henry's death. In 1815, Wirt wrote to a friend, "from 1763 to 1789... not one of his speeches lives in print, writing or memory. All that is told me is, that on such and such an occasion, he made a distinguished speech" Wirt corresponded with men who had heard the speech and others who were acquainted with people who were there at the time. Wirt wrote to Judge St. George Tucker, who had been present for the speech, that "I have taken almost entirely Mr. Henry's speech in the Convention of '75 from you, as well as your description of its effect on you verbatim."

Tucker's account was based upon recollections and not notes. Tucker attempted a reconstruction of only the first two paragraphs of the speech. Tucker wrote, "In vain should I attempt to give any idea of his speech". While this implies a degree of uncertainty over the content of the speech, the amount of research done by Wirt in the process of creating his text strongly argues that he was able to accurately reconstruct the key points, especially the famous quote itself. It is generally agreed that it ended with, "It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Give me Liberty, or give me Death!



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 23, 2010 9:15 PM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Openly Anti-Semitic President

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Prescient? "A Palestinian woman passes anti-Barack Obama posters that went up on municipal billboards overnight, on June 14, 2009 in downtown Jerusalem, Israel." -- Anti-Obama Posters Displayed in Jerusalem

In retrospect, history’s worst decisions all look obviously flawed. This can sometimes make the past look unreal. Did Chamberlain really think he could cut a deal with Hitler? Did JFK really expect to overthrow Castro with the Bay of Pigs invasion? Yes and yes. Tomorrow’s questions are obvious: ObamaCare and bullying Israel? Yes and yes. -- Outsmarting History

With every passing day it is becoming clearer to me (and I trust clearer to all) that unless it involves Jews who donate to Obama, Jews who (still) support Obama, or Jews that can do some dirty jobs for Obama, that we now have a President who openly hates Jews.

Why? Who can say for sure. It may be a consequence of that little sourjourn he took to Pakistan during his mysterious mid-college walkabout. It may be a consequence of hanging about in those private schools in Hawaii with his odd grandfather and odder still Communist pseudo-daddy. Or it may just have been injected into him during the decades he sat in the Isreal-hating served up in heaping portions in Reverend Wright's racist "black liberation theology" "church." It really doesn't matter. Anti-semitism is the most ancient virus to infect the human soul ** and it has found a host in President Obama. When you see the mushroom clouds over the middle east, they'll have his name on them.

** Excerpt from On the Most Ancient Virus to Infect the Soul @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Anti-semitism is not a sign, a symbol, a bullet or a gas. It is a Virus. It is the oldest known virus to infest the human soul. In those infected, the virus is clever enough to mask it's existence by renaming itself as "anti-Zionism." Through the renaming of this ancient disease as a “political problem,” infected souls can transmit the virus to their friends, families. They can spread their disease at their schools and in their their community, church, or nation. The virus is also transmitted by exchanging infected fantasies with infected ideologues. By changing it's name the disease made it possible for many to deny that they have contracted the virus, and that their souls are chancre-ridden and rotting. This facilitates the current outbreak.
Yes, anti-semitism is a clever virus and this shape-shifting is one of its oldest methods of perpetuating itself. Like other viruses currently feasting on humans, this one always has a pleasure principle associated with it. It feels good to get it and we live in the plague years of "If it feels good, do it." Those whose moral immune systems have been previously compromised by other pleasure-born diseases have souls which are particularly susceptible to this virus.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 23, 2010 2:53 PM | Comments (18)  | QuickLink: Permalink
One Political Jonestown on the Rocks Coming Right Up

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"Soap. Ballot. Jury. Ammo." -- Joan of Argghh!

It's seldom you see an entire American political party united as an enemy of America. We usually leave that sort of thing to places like Iran and North Korea. But to have a real "Axis of Evil" I guess you need at least three entities.

On the one hand, I loathe the leper dance being performed in congress today. This swapping of political fluids is revolting to behold; qualifies for hardcore political porn like I haven't seen in my lifetime.

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 21, 2010 3:23 PM | Comments (18)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Let's Take a Meeting: Running the Numbers [Bumped]

[Bumped and updated to point to the fascinating discussion in the comments.]

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Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan

Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

Total states involved to date: 38

State legislatures needed to convene a Constitutional Convention: 34

State legislatures needed to agree for an amendment to the Constitution proposed in a Constitutional Convention to be ratified: 38

This path to amending the Constitution has never been used, but there's always a first time. In any case, the President has no power to veto any proposal or ratification coming out of the process.

In the nearly 225 years since the adoption of the Constitution, we've never held another convention. Maybe it's time. Maybe that's why so many fear it but it seems preferable to the more contentious way of resolving Constitutional conflicts. We've done that once before... in 1861. Once was enough.

Source



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 20, 2010 10:32 AM | Comments (57)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Welcome Home
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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 18, 2010 1:40 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Baring All for Climategate: I'm in Penthouse this month...

inconvenient-fraud2.jpgBut mercifully not as the centerfold. Now you can read it and not just for the letters. The article is a 2,000 word backgrounder on the implosion of the Global Warming Hoax.


An Inconvenient Fraud? @ Penthouse Magazine

Al Gore and his pals in the science establishment want us to totally change our lives because of a theory that might not even be true. Have the sacred cows of global warming been gored beyond repair?

By Gerard Van der Leun • Illustration by Zachary Pullen

It was good to be Al Gore in the last part of the last decade. In the year 2000 he was the world’s biggest loser. By 2009 he was one of the world’s biggest winners after becoming the master of disaster. Flummoxed by his noninvention of the internet and his nonelection as president of the United States, Gore found a winning hand in predicting the end of the world. In the process, he received an Oscar for his film An Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel Peace Prize, and millions of dollars through his interests in companies that dealt in “carbon credits.” Gore became more of a “Comeback Kid” than Bill Clinton ever was. For most of 2009, it was still good to be King Al. But late in the year, Al Gore’s beloved internet betrayed him.

On November 17, 2009, someone, somewhere, copied some 4,000 emails and documents from a password-protected server at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England and put them up on a free and open server in Russia for all the world to read. Whoever made these documents available was an unknown soldier of the truth. Taking the handle of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), he or she stated, “We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. This is a limited time offer, download now.”

Read the rest @ An Inconvenient Fraud? @ Penthouse Magazine.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 18, 2010 12:45 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Some Things It Seems Are Not for Sale

And while Salinger lived the movie rights to Catcher in the Rye were among them. Here's an interesting Letter of Note: Holden Caulfield is unactable.

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 18, 2010 1:46 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Clever: The Future of Publishing

This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. Enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there's a surprise!).



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 18, 2010 12:59 AM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Obama @ Gettysburg: A new birth of sleazedom?

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Illo from the always sharp4-Block World

In Obama Invited to Give a New Gettysburg Address - Washington Whispers we learn that " Gettysburg is looking ahead to July 2013, organizers of the 150th anniversary of the decisive three-day clash between Union and Confederate forces have extended an invitation for Obama to deliver his own Gettysburg address, we hear. "That would be really cool," says Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau President [and drooling metrosexual] Norris Flowers. "

Later in the comments which contain a lot of projectile vomiting, commentor "John of XX" offers up the text:

President Obama's Gettysburg Address

Two hundred and thirty-four years ago your fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. I have come to dedicate a government expansion bill, as a final solution for those who work all their lives that that nation might pay its bills. It is altogether fitting and proper that they should do this. Let them know their place.

But, in a larger sense, I cannot dedicate...I cannot consecrate...I cannot hallow this bill.

The brave children and health care advertising props, living and dead, who went all the way to Washington for my photo ops, have consecrated it, far above even my power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what your fathers said, but it can never forget what I have done.

It is for us the ruling, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished bill which the health care props who spoke here have thus far so nobly promoted. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from the jobless Democrats we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these Democrats shall not have lost their seats in vain—-that this nation, under me, shall always advance toward a healthier subjection-—and that government of the people, by the statists, for the Democrats, shall not perish from the earth for as long as China allows.


HT: Mushduck for the alert.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 17, 2010 8:47 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"Not a revolution but a coup d'etat" Schneiderman Riffs Off Hanson

brainjazz2abweb.jpgI've often described online discussions and essays as "Brain Jazz." Like a lot of modern jazz one musician (writer) riffing off another can be irritating. But when it works, when it comes together, brain jazz can be transcendent. An example coming off my RSS stream this morning is when Stuart Schneiderman of the wonderfully titled therapist's page "Had Enough Therapy" takes up Victor David Hanson's latest essay Reflections on the Revolution in America and "free associates" on Hanson's theme with Revolution or Coup d'Etat? As readers know I always try to note a new essay by Professor Hanson with a quote or a link in the sidebar. But this morning, Schneiderman takes it, as they say, up a few notches with his own insights. A sample:

As I was reading ["Reflections on the Revolution in America"], a thought popped into mind-- that, after all, is the definition of free association--- and that thought was a book: The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes.

Harvard Professor Pipes wrote a long, difficult, extensively documented tome to demonstrate that the Russian Revolution was not really a revolution. It was not about what Hanson describes as: "the abject poor and starving storming the Bastille." Not at all. According to Pipes the Russian Revolution was a coup d'etat, an overthrow of the government by a small group that arrogated all power to itself in the name of the poor and the starving.

The Russian Revolution was not an uprising of the proletariat against their capitalist masters. It was not a Hegelian rebellion of slaves against their masters. All of that is mythology, well suited for philosophy and literature classes but having little to do with reality.

In the Russian Revolution a small group that thought it knew what was best for everyone took power in the name of the working class and the peasantry.

So, where Hanson calls what is happening in Washington today a revolution, he is more clearly describing a coup d'etat. As long as we understand that a coup d'etat does not have to be violent, but can easily use the mechanisms of government to subvert the system, we have no problem grasping what is going on.
That's just the lead in to a longer reflection on what to call the current "Cosa Nostra" moment unfolding in the capitol.

You might want to read Hanson's Reflections on the Revolution in America before reading Revolution or Coup d'Etat? But either way, they'll enhance your day.

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 17, 2010 1:15 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Climate Strange Report: Potential Gaian-sized fart lurks beneath Antarctica

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The continent that dealt it.

Science News via Wired Science (there's two "trustworthy sources") sends the world to hell today with the latest TEOTWAWKI fear bomb with Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice

"If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas."
Here's how it goes, I guess. Over the vast millennia the suppressed bacteria are building up a gigantic bubble of gas under the ice. Suddenly, due to global warming, global cooling, earthquakes, and a comet strike that ice is thinned, weakened, and the vast continental sized bubble of methane just can't take it anymore and comes ripping to the surface.

"This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends...." Sensing curry in the wind, a scientist at India's Antarctic station, Dakshin Gangotri steps outside and decides to enjoy a smoke. He flicks his Bic and..... kerblooey! The Kali Yuga begins and the world ends with a bang and a whimper.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 16, 2010 1:10 PM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
About that Newsweek Apple: Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes

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"And the face at first just ghostly turned a whiter shade of pale..."

The face of (Muhammad) (Karl Marx) (Rasputin) (Jesus) that so many around the blogosphere are seeing today is, alas, a mere figleaf of their imaginations. Sorry, kids, it just isn't there.

How do I know? I used an ancient reporting technique. I walked to the corner and looked for myself at the real cover on-sale now for $5.95 [Pass]. Nope. No face. Instead, there's just your average highlight on the apple representing either a reflection of one of the main umbrella lights used for portraiture photography, or something dropped in by the Newsweek photoshop jockey making everything nice on the final image.

Now I had some fun with this in the sidebar yesterday, but like many things on the web, "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing." Today, this thing is all over. What people are freaking out about is either a subtle photoshop (which I doubt), or an artifact of pixillation that happens when an image is reduced and optimized for web display. The latter is by far the most likely explanation.

The whole kerfuffle brings to mind the infamous spotting of "Nig" in the Hillary Clinton "Who Answers the Phone at 3AM" spot.

Here's that apple under normal copying from website to website:

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See a ghostly bearded face? Of course you do. Want to see it more clearly still. Here let me hit the same image with a whiff of the Unsharp mask.

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Chilling, what? So, grasshopper, the question for you is: "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?" Answer: Neither. Hie thee to a magazine rack and look for yourself.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 16, 2010 11:49 AM | Comments (13)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Okay, that's it. God destroys the world tomorrow at 12:05 PM EST
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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 15, 2010 7:04 PM | Comments (21)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Presidential Feminine

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Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett: “Obama’s attitude toward leadership is really a very womanly one…” via The Powers That Be where there's a video clip.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 15, 2010 11:29 AM | Comments (14)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Would That Be "Jesus Obama" or "Barack Christ"?

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Just in case you thought the New York Times does not worship the water he walks on. I would only remind the Times of the immortal lyric from the Kingston Trio's Coplas**: "Tell your parents not to muddy the water around us." "Por que?" "They may have to drink it soon." -- As Health Vote Awaits, Future of a Presidency Waits, Too - NYTimes.com

HT: The gobsmacked Big Fur Hat.

** Extra Credit: Spot the racist references in this old hit from the most admired liberal folk group:

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 14, 2010 11:57 AM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Go Green

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Click image to posterize



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 14, 2010 12:51 AM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Law of the Gun

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Click image to posterize



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 14, 2010 12:29 AM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Politically Lethal: Bringing Down the Boxer Gasbag

A Barbara Boxer Killer: Now this is how political advertising should be done. A "CarleyforCalifornia" production. Hang around for the last few frames.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 13, 2010 3:54 PM | Comments (25)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: "Ya might get cold-cocked if you try and cross my path..."

Katz sent this to me to cheer me up. It worked. It'll work on you too.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 13, 2010 1:14 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
American Digest Comment of the Month Year

Created by JWM in Thinking Right: Working in the Green Slime

Go green. Lower quality, higher prices. Get less for your money. Cleaners that don't clean. Paint that doesn't stick to anything. Harsh, retina grating light bulbs full of toxic chemicals. Electric vehicles that ultimately use more energy than they save. Wind powered turbines that destroy acres of land for a minuscule few kilowatts of unreliable power. Equally unreliable solar grids more poisonous than a cyanide farm. And don't forget the endangered species. Outlaw surfing because it might annoy some life form somewhere under water. Forget about trout streams, and surf fishing. Shut down the water for California's agriculture to prevent a negligible risk to a tiny fish while billions of acre feet flow out to sea unused. Don't worry. All your produce is coming from Mexico, Chile, and Peru anyway. Forget about the energy it takes to move it those thousands of miles. In the mean time, tax Co2 emissions until your winter heating bills run higher than your mortgage- in Southern California. And lower emissions standards until the internal combustion engine is outlawed altogether. We'll all get around on high speed railways that don't go anywhere anyone wants to go. There's a great future in bicycles. Made in China.
I gotta put that on a poster.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 12, 2010 12:40 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The New BDS (Beck Derangement Syndrome): He wants to talk about chalktalks but... he.... just.... CAN'T... control... himself...

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Jim Linderman has a nice little collection of interesting books and blogs on vintage sleaze, old time religion, and other charming but harmless subjects. In general I enjoy them. But every so often he just loses it. I think he goes to "Media Matters" for his latest information and that infection may explain his current attack of BDS. Watch as his little red choo-choo comes right off the rails:

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 12, 2010 11:51 AM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
All the Present Day Movie Crapola in One Stunning Trailer
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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 11, 2010 11:50 PM | Comments (31)  | QuickLink: Permalink
A Family in Time

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There's more. Much more.

Big Fur Hat put this up at iOwnTheWorld calling it "Very, Very Interesting" I concur. I've seen it before, years back, and thought so at the time. With every passing year I think more of it and wish I had had the prescience and the continuity to have compiled such a record.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 11, 2010 11:24 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The New Improved Race: AMERICAN

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Enough with the government trying at every opportunity to crawl inside you house, life and mind. Mark Krikorian's idea. My illustration in case somebody needs a demo:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it. Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties. -- Sending a Message with the Census - Mark Krikorian



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 11, 2010 11:17 AM | Comments (17)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Paris is Melting

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"Is that a polar bear on your ass or are you just glad to see me?"

Chanel does climate change, with real icebergs
PARIS — Models in head-to-toe yeti suits picked their way around towering but quickly melting icebergs, sloshing through a deep puddle of Arctic melt in their shaggy fake fur. Call it climate change chic, Chanel style.

Nah. How about we call it demented, drooling, clapped-out, idealess, posturing pile of piffle? With a soupcon of really revolting designs carefully crafted to induce popping flashbulbs and projectile vomiting at fifty meters.

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First day of deer season and she's a hood ornament.
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"I am Merkin Twink hear me roar!"

Wags often remark that gays control fashion and use it to express their hatred of women. Not completely true on either score, although envy for the feminine while yearning for the mud can play a role. Overall, you've got to remember that although fashion goes to great lengths to convince weak souls it's an "art," it's actually a craft elevated to the level of an industry. As such it draws in a lot of creatives but also a lot of businessmen as well. Sexuality varies and nobody who actually knew or knows some of the cigar chomping guys in the schmata trade would mistake them as light in their Italian leather loafers. Make that mistake you you might find yourself cutting your teeth on the curb.

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 10, 2010 7:01 PM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Then & Now

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Any questions?

First seen atThe Diamond Age



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 10, 2010 12:04 AM | Comments (27)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Why Conservatives Often Lose


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Morgan at the House of Eratosthenes spotted this. It deserves to be part of the catechism of losing. I'd also observe that it is the habit of conservatives to bring a calm and logical argument to an ideological gunfight.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 9, 2010 11:21 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Cullman Liquidation: My New Sponsor
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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 8, 2010 11:38 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Expanding My Churchill Collection

In one of my previous lives as an editor and publisher, I caused this elegant edition of Winston Churchill's The Second World War (Six Volume Boxed Set) to be published.

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Every so often Houghton Mifflin refreshes the jacket and box art, but my central concept remains the same: "Stack 'em, box 'em, and make 'em buy them all at once." When I first suggested this format, the sales department opposed it saying it would be "too expensive" on the one hand, and "cut into the declining sales of the separate hard cover volumes" on the other. Such is the genius of sales departments at book publishers. In the end I prevailed and this edition now seems to be a perennial. Amazon sells it for $75 a pop which isn't bad when you consider it's around $12.50 a volume with a spiffy box to keep them in -- and that the hard cover set goes for $416 new (If you can find it) and around $280 used.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 8, 2010 11:30 AM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Call Me Shallow But This Just Makes. My. Day.

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This week's Medal of Freedom Award goes to Vulgar Morality for Death of news -- readership dies laughing edition

The NYT stands at the pinnacle of the global news business.  Yet it too has suffered a terrible decline over recent years.  But if the photo and caption below are any indication, they have just hit on a brilliant new approach to journalism -- call it info-comedy.  The heck with validation.  Who needs editors?  Go for funny --€“ nobody edits funny.

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Posted by Vanderleun Mar 7, 2010 8:21 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Obama at the Bat

You need to watch this. You really need to watch this and then post links or embeds wherever you can and send to all your friends and liberal acquaintances. The demented geniuses at I Own the World told me about this and now I've told you. Go forth now, and tell the multitudes.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 7, 2010 5:20 PM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
When you can look like this acting is not a primary consideration

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Oscar hopeful Sandra Bullock crowned worst actress

Unlike most Razzie honorees, Bullock showed up to collect the award, dragging a cart of DVDs to hand out to members who she accused of never seeing the dud movie. "Thank you for ruining my career with a very bad decision," Bullock told the group, while threatening to read her dialogue from the role "until 4 in the morning."

Well, ex-cuse me but I almost forgot we were having the Academy Awards today until this eye-candy caught me eye with a grappling hook. I don't know if Ms. Bullock will win Best Actress for The Blind Side this evening but she certainly gets my vote for Best Gown of 2010. If one is going to go out for the evening with a high-table lady, this has everything I like. Now I'll be watching.

Update: The hardest working (but still cute in a fedora) linker in Blog Business, Little Miss Attila, brings us Sandra Bullock Has More Class in Her Little Finger Than Most People Have in Their Entire Bodies:



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 7, 2010 4:24 PM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Wolverines Are in the House!
Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 7, 2010 11:57 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Again with the Doctors Redux!

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What can I tell you? I'm having fun with this for a bit. I'll be back to crafting diatribes soon enough.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 4, 2010 6:19 PM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Again with the Doctors! (Updated)

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There's a reason the doctors are kept nearby.

Update: Commenter SteveH sends in a link to this video, Waking Up is Hard to Do by the Laryngospasms from 2008. Put in the present context of the entire country waking up to the rolling horror of Obamacare, the iron here just ooooooozes out of the monitor.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 3, 2010 7:28 PM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Art Rocks
Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 3, 2010 2:43 PM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Dante's Internet

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Via Discovery::Открытие



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 2, 2010 9:57 PM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
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