Bad Americans
Come now, gentleman, your love is all I crave.
You'll still be in the circus when I'm laughing, laughing on my grave.
-- Memo From Turner
The monsters from the id that now control the Democrat Party have transformed that party into a mob of undead extras from The Dawn of the Dead. It's an indecent and disgusting spectacle and I suspect there's more than a few million long-time Democrats who are revolted by it. That certainly seems to be creeping into the polls. No matter the good it once did, the Democrats today present as sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling its country down the drain, to get it back.
Regardless of the race of the Democrats' current leader and failed president, Martin Luther King's dream of judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin has been transformed into a tawdry thing; a dried husk in which they wrap their skeletal remains, a hollow phrase spewed by the ascendent race hustlers of the party and lapped up by their acolytes.
Dear Occupy Punks, This is what real street battles look like....
Continued...
Gary Laison, his wife Diane Laison and Joan Kosloff, all of Philadelphia, take part in the Occupy Philadelphia protest outside of City Hall in Philadelphia. Gary Laison, 75, said: "I think the kids like seeing older people there. I think the sense (that) they are not alone, that they are a part of this span of generations is important to them."
"Suffer not the old King under any name!"
Their infernal machine lops and trims the green upstarts, the single emerald sprouts, the high stalk topped with the blue cornflower down to the level of their dull brown mass. Down there in the dull, down among the dead men, the mass molders and they love to inhale the musk of decay.
Their minds are the godless grave of words muttered by Mao, garbled by Goebbels, and limned by Lenin from which no life or liberty can ever hope for escape and resurrection.
Their secular "green" religion has its bad rap but no hymns. Their "progressive" policies eviscerate all prayers.
Their fantasy of a "fairer world" will become their grandchildren's small and shrunken lives on a nightmare planet where all men, finally equalized, will live like dung beetles on the desolate wastes of what once was.
And yet, like zombies lashed to a dying animal, they persist in their death-in-life existence, seeking only the freedom of an approved and "assisted" suicide as their reward.
They call themselves "progressives" and flatter themselves that their thoughts and actions are "revolutionary" when they are as reactionary as any mob that can be remembered from history.
What happened to all those who, in my youth, marched and sang for "freedom?" How did they become so old, so hidebound, so stuck in the past? When did they become so mired in "Imagine?" How, from once striving so hard against colonialism in all its guises, did they allow their minds to become so utterly colonized by a matted mass of dim and discredited notions?
They chain themselves deep in the pit of pretend, and celebrate their servitude by bending heaven and earth to get you down in the hole that they're in.
They believe that the individual should become the mass, and that the mass should worship its apotheosis; that single one who best reflects their ossified visions on which the anointing oil has long since dried to a brown crust of thought.
They are the monarchists of the masses. They seek a state in which the head that wears the crown may change but where the crown itself grows forever larger.
They no longer "rage against the machine." They are the machine. "Drive them fast to their tomb."
They knew all the right people, they took all the right pills.
They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills.
There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face.
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up in the race.
-- Life in the Fast Lane
The French have an idiomatic phrase -- “nostalgie pour la boue” --which means, roughly, "the yearning for the mud." This compulsive “yearning” is something that seems to invariably come over people whose lives have veered into the fast lane of the secular life; a life without spirit, or, at best, a phony “spiritualism” such as yoga or transcendental meditation. In France they play with “nostalgie pour la boue” as a kind of minor amateur dabbling in the degrading. In America, where anything worth doing is worth overdoing, many who yearn to emulate the French have gone pro.
"Yearning for the mud" in America is a compulsion that comes over people when they have, for complex reasons, a need to immerse themselves in self-degradation. It's usually a mix of drink, drugs, and weird sex until the soul is obliterated by the abused flesh. Why? Hard to say but it is often the case that, when they look at themselves, they can't stand what they see.
This obliteration of the soul and the abuse of the flesh is one of the central tenets in many of our post-modern, secular lifestyle religions. For them the “signo” of “In hoc signo vinces” is the full body tattoo project, an earlobe plug, and the multiple facial piercings with a coke nail as an accessory.
Most people try some of these things for a time in their youth, but soon grow out of it when age and experience get the upper hand. Others grow out of it via deep psychoanalysis and a few trips to the rehab clinic. Still others are simply killed by it, their lives bracketed by dates that are far too close together.
Many, however, never kick this yearning for the mud and were, in the past, thought of as "perverts" but are now more kindly seen as "differently minded." Seeking the safety of number they now live in those urban sinkholes of the soul they laud as "enclaves of Alternative Lifestyles."
Once ensconced there they busy themselves in making bad design projects, bad art, bad fashion statements, bad life decisions and bad politics. Because we are rich and kindly as a culture so we generally let them be despite their endless moaning that they are "oppressed." Once comfortable in their redoubts, however, they think it their duty to sally forth from time to time and infest the rest of the nation. Not content to live their stunted lives among others of similar stature, they think it is incumbent upon them to get all other Americans “down in the hole that they’re in.”
A minority of the last group make a career and money out of nostalgie pour la boue, and are generally known as "pundits," "media personalities, or "celebrities." In reality they’re just perverts with positive cash flow.
An example might be the too often seen Janeane Garofalo whose mind and body bear all the markers of a mud person except for a bone through the nose, and that’s probably on her “To-Do” list for this winter. The fact that this creature is a “go-to” person for comment from her fellow blobfish Bill Maher tells you all you need to know about both them and the audience that tunes them in.
This week if you would see this demographic of spiritual dwarfism in action you have only to tune in to the current cluster of parasites and perverts inhabiting parks in lower Manhattan in search of a free lunch between bouts of free non-love and mutual masturbation.
Down in the mud of the All-American perverts' daisy chain there's a lot of cross-over between celebrity culture and media culture. Indeed, at a lot of levels, it is becoming hard to tell them apart. Both factions live, for the most part, in an insulated bubble of blather that is impervious to personal moral, psychological, spiritual, or political change; one that ruthlessly exacts the penalty of shunning and expulsion from the bubble in the event of any sudden shifts and heresies from any accepted inhabitant. Like junkies in all ages, once the ideological needle goes in, it never comes out.
Alas, this nostalgie pour la boue is starting to bore these creatures and they will, when bored, like junkies in all ages, feel the need to “increase the dose;” to move on to another, more powerful, and more deadly socio-political drug. And this is exactly what they are doing. I'd like to suggest that there's another kind nostalgie going around in this hybrid culture that glories in the mud: nostalgie pour la defaite -- "yearning for defeat." Given the war record of the French in the 20th century, this nouveau nostalgie is also tres Francais.
Nostalgie pour la defaite is that state of the flattened soul when an American, who either came of age in the Vietnam era, or who was taught and mentored by many leftists or liberals of that vintage, yearns for the defeat of America, and acts accordingly in word and deed.
This compulsion is now not only required to keep their residency in their subcultures, but to keep their status in the same as well. The more virulent their articulations of hate of America, the more shrill their calls for the death of host that sustains their parasitic existences, the higher their regard by their peers. Neither children nor even infants are safe from their depravities.
Nostalgie pour la defaite is a perverted form of "confirmation bias." In a way, joining this group is like joining a gang -- once you're in, getting out is not an option unless you seek social and political death. Once articulated, this ideological state is then seen as confirmation that his or her world view -- and that of their social milieu -- is the correct view and correct milieu. To operate otherwise would throw not only all the progressive views, assertions, and actions of the last thirty years of diseased progressive politics and sham social theory into question, but the entire structure of the afflicted personality as well. It is not just life in the fast lane but life inside the lie.
An America that is ascendant rather than retiring, an America whose policies are aggressive and not apologetic, is an America the People of the Lie are simply unequipped to inhabit or report on. They have, quite frankly, an empty tool box when it comes to this task and no raw materials with which to build.
The only America they can support is one that supports them and their lies without question. They want one thing and one thing only -- a blank check for money and means, unceasing regard, and an endless opportunity to smear the lie on all comers.
Our current infestation of American media personalities and American celebrities with Nostalgie pour la defaite rises from decades of beliefs in an America that is best as a "pitiful, helpless Giant;" a kind of "Nostalgie pour la jeunesse perdue" -- nostalgia for lost youth. It is literally the only America they know and their entire professional and personal lives, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Hamptons to Beverly Hills are based on this grand assumption.
They've had Presidents and Presidential candidates that, commuting to and from these locales, have confirmed it to them. Their coworkers in their jobs confirm it to them. Their significant others, drawn from the same chitinous ranks, confirm it to them. The parties they attend, the awards they ceaselessly give and receive like the swapping of spit at orgies, the places they vacation, the books they read and the films they make and see, all confirm it to them over and over again. It is not only the only America they know, it is the only America they can know.
Anything that confirms the Nostalgie pour la defaite is news they can use. Anything that confirms American exceptionalism is not, by definition, news at all. Anything that actually represents American exceptionalism is bad news and must be crushed by any means necessary.
Now several generations of these diseased Americans have been raised and trained to desire that, in all things, America should always lose and become less of an important force in the world. The results of a weaker America do not concern them. It is only important that America become and remain weak and hamstrung. Only then will Europeans and others say nice things about them as they flit about the world.
If America is to become weak, what do they propose in its place? The short form for their vision of the future is "an empowered United Nations."
At which point they step from their Nostalgie pour la defaite back into nostalgie pour la boue -- the yearning for the mud. In the final analysis, it isn't that big a step. The mire is where they feel most at home.
Can they be saved from themselves? Not all. Not even most. The only thing that can save them from themselves would be themselves, and that is a rare transformation. It does happen, just as for some individual junkies the personal addiction can be brought under control “one day at a time”, but most of these bad Americans are stuck forever in their armed cultural hamlets and redoubts. They assure us of the truth of the motto, “Once a bear is hooked on garbage, there’s no cure.”
"We," said my radical young neighbor, smashing my window,
"speak the essential conscience of mankind."
"If it comes to no more than small breakage," I said, "speak away.
But tell me, isn't smashing some fun for its own sake."
How can Nancy Pelosi continue to use up oxygen on the political scene? You must look at her base and degraded base; at the low dregs of humanity that form the foundation of her political support. Is it any wonder that, with supporters such as these her perverted political notions prevail?
I've been here before in The Black Hole of San Francisco @ AMERICAN DIGEST
"These days, the streets of San Francisco resemble the streets of Calcutta." -- Cinnamon Stillwell "Homeless by the bay"San Francisco, America's top open-air exhibit of failed social policies, never fails to illuminate the lies of social utopianism. Although large sections of this city still retain their charm at a distance -- the swooping helicopter pan shot in from the Golden Gate; the brightly painted Cable Car cresting against sunset -- most soon lose all charm in close-up. Instead, strolling through this city has become like taking a long walk through an endless parking lot at The Homeless Depot.
Scene: A clear and crisp dawn in a small side street near Laguna and Hayes. Plantings in all the window boxes on fussily painted facades. A few very small well-kept front yards. Clean curtained windows. All in all a pretty and quiet moment in the city's morning.
Then, between two of the cars on the street and a bulging shopping cart on the curb, I notice a man who has obviously slept rough for at least 200 consecutive days. He is, like some haggard Tai-Chi dancer, turning in a slow pirouette and gazing intently at the ground. Then he lowers himself delicately down into a squat between an Audi and an SUV.
Seeing no real reason not to stroll past, I do and see that the man, pants to his ankles, is slowly relieving himself onto the curb. I note that he has no plastic bag which dog owners use to deposit the deposit. I was to see this behavior twice more in a single day in San Francisco.
And I was in the better neighborhoods.
But now Zombie brings it all back with
Nancy Pelosi's San FranciscoWe here at TLC realize that our fabulous new hit series Sarah Palin's Alaska may not appeal to all our viewers. We understand that a substantial segment of the population has no interest in watching Sarah Palin or taking a tour of Alaska.
And so it is with great pleasure that we'd like to announce a new show carefully designed to appeal to those of you who don't like Sarah Palin, her state, or her values...
Check out Zombie's invaluable collection of the diseased infestations that now "controls" the once and future shining city on hills that was San Francisco: STRONG CONTENT WARNING IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK. DO NOT EAT BEFORE CLICKING. DO NOT ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM WITH YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN.
One of the very mild examples
Apropos of nothing in particular, isn't it surprising -- when looking back on the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger -- just how much of a weakling he turned out to be?
"No place but in this besotted country could some bright young shoeless Arkansan go to Washington with nothing more than the Worlds Biggest Rolodex and some finely tuned Kennedy Body Language only to retire rich as Croseus 8 years later to a triple residency in Chappaqua, Georgetown and some architectural Gewgaw in Little Rock." - D.W. Sabin"
From Sense of Events: Heck, I even miss Clinton! Pass it along.
Take my country, please.
We talk about sealing the border. We talk about not letting the Mexican flag prevail over the American flag. It's all nonsense. The real symbol of Mexican illegal immigration goes unremarked. It's right there in the foreground. It's the Pinata.
The pinata is a bright candy-and-toy-filled container (generally suspended on a rope from a tree branch or ceiling) that is used during celebrations. A succession of blindfolded, stick-wielding children try to break the pinata in order to collect the candy inside of it. -- Wikipedia
I submit that America as The Big Pinata is what all this is about. It's all it ever has been about. This Mexican flag over the American flag hung upside down (Distress!) simply takes our eye off the ball, or rather, the pinata. And since pinatas are normally approached blindfolded, that's not surprising.
The kids above know, even if it is unconsciously, that the pinata is what is at stake here. What illegals from Mexico and every other country want most is unlimited chances to step over the line and take another swing at The Big Pinata. To date our border reality, if not our policy, enables that.
Those Americans who would like to think that there really is a border want the number of chances to take a swing cut back to somewhere below absolute zero. Those Americans who are consumed with the notion that self-esteem is more important than security favor unlimited swings along with policies that feed, clothe, medicate, and otherwise care for those 'wretched masses yearning to get the Big Pinata jackpot.'
Congress seems to be going for a policy which is: "Okay, kids, you get unlimited swings but, damnit, you gotta get in line, sign the guest book, and take your turn. After all, we can't have a horde of party animals just whaling away at the Big Pinata from all directions. Somebody could get hurt. And while you're waiting, could most of you please walk the dog, water the grass, take out the garbage, mind the deep fryer, give our spouses a little satisfaction in the afternoon, and do all those other dirty, little jobs that 'Americans just won't do.' You know, like coal mining."
In the meantime, it's clear that the Pinata Party is going to continue. After all, what can really shut it down? The fun's too cool. The prizes are too rich. And they're not even carding most people.
I know, I know -- a Wall; favored solution of Israel and East Germany. It'll probably happen in some form or another, but -- in the present political climate -- it's not going to happen anytime soon, mano, so be cool.
In America, just the argument about the wall is good for another five years. Then there'd have to be "legislation" for appropriation since no state is going to pay for it. That's at least two sessions of Congress right there. Then we'll have the period in which the various federal agencies will draw up the specs. Then the bidding period. Then the review of the bidding period. Then the review of the bids. Then the discovery that the winner of the bidding process is a company owned by Halliburton. Whoops, back to square one. Then the awarding of the contract. Then the beginning of the construction of a barrier that's what, a thousand miles long? Get back Great Wall of China, here's something else that can be seen from space with the naked eye.
Timeline? Ten years minimum. Fifteen in realistic terms. Twenty in Washington Time.
And guess what? The Big Pinata will still be there and the party will still be going strong, and the people will still keep a coming.
I mean, wouldn't you? If you are a person with an IQ level a few points above that of broccoli, and you want to make some money and have a good life, and you suddenly discover that, oops, you've been born in a Third World oligarchy like Mexico, without the benefit of being born into the Mexican oligarchy, you're walking north, compadre. North is where they're having the pinata party. And you don't care that the party's been walled up inside an exclusive club with a bunch of big armed bouncers manning the velvet rope and checking ID, you're going to get in somehow.
If anyone thinks a wall is magic bullet that puts our immigration problem out of its misery, they are sadly mistaken. As inventive as the means of getting in now sometimes seem (hiding people "inside" car seats, leasing children in order to become an instant familia), they will seem like amateur hour once a wall (physical, electronic, cyber) goes up. Once that's done, we're in for decades of Wile E. Coyote antics south of El Paso. Human catapults. Rent-A-Rocket Packs, Pocket Submarines, the Full Rube Goldberg.
Why? Because we've done everything possible to stop the flood except the one thing that would stop the flood: call off the party and slap the organizers of the Big Pinata Raves into jail, pronto, so they can't organize any more. And, while we're at it, we need to make sure any pinata around is empty. Yes, even if you make it and hit it, you get bubkis. Nothing falls out. After all, when a slot machine doesn't have a jackpot, nobody plays it.
Will we do it? Will we really throw the people who hand out the jobs in jail? Will we stop giving free food, shelter, medical care, education, and citizenship to babies born on American soil no matter the status of their parents? "In the present political climate," no way, Jose.
The stark reality is that for this country to get serious about immigration and controlling our borders, something else other than just a flood of illegals coming in on a daily basis has to happen. Something terrible. Something that doesn't just cost mere money and jobs, but costs lives. A lot of lives. That's the one way, the only way, that anything will be done. And what will be done then will be, well, the most terrible solution to the border problem any can imagine, and nobody wants.
Communist East Germany. Searchlights and the Stasi . With the guns pointed out and Predators high overhead.
And that, my friend, is. not. going. to. happen.
What are ordinary Americans to make of this strange man-child who has, through sloth and design in the media, sloth and inattention among the body politic, and cupidity, corruption and chicanery within his dark political machine, risen to dominate the landscape? What are ordinary Americans to make of this most un-American of all our erstwhile leaders; a man profoundly ungrounded in the American earth? It is a protean question, painful and difficult to contemplate, to which ordinary Americans will give but a partial answer this November.
In the meantime, there will be an ever increasing addition of possible answers and pondering added to the already towering tsunami of non-information available on the subject of Obama. It is by now a commonplace that never has so little been known about so pivotal a figure in our history. In this case partial ignorance leads not to bliss but rather an opera buffa that is sung in the key of existential distress and portends a finale that is not "a comedy tonight," but a Roman Tragedy replete with fire and blood.
Conspiracy abhors a vacuum and we've had more than our share of theories, speculations, dire warnings, and dark murmurings about a leader's life that is, in many ways, less documented than the undocumented Democrats oozing across our southern borders.
- He is /is not a natural-born citizen.
- His mother was / was not a harlot.
- His father was / was not a man named Obama.
- His mentor was a black Communist pornographer/poet.
- His mentor was a crazed, race-hustling preacher on the make in Chicago.
- His mentor was a bitter Red agitator with an sheaf of techniques for destroying the country.
- If we knew his college grades we'd see how brilliant he is.
- We don't know his college grades because he's much less brilliant that he seems.
- He wrote his books.
- He couldn't write a rubber check.
- His books are the accurate transcript of his life.
- His books are carefully crafted legends.
- He's out to rule the world.
- He's just another hack politician in the iron mold of corrupt Chicago pols since time immemorial.
With Obama the best that can be said is, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." We simply do not know enough, even now, to know who this stranger among us is. We sense, dimly at first, but with increasing conviction that he does not mean us well and that he is controlled by some strange amalgam of interior compulsions. The hallmarks of his administration's actions and his speeches seem to be to do many small but insidious things in deep background, a few large and destructive moves in the foreground, give as few details as possible, take no questions, and, if a question is taken, to give no answer. It is an administration that sees no foreign enemies, only domestic ones. Theories about his history and his current character and motives abound as facts fade. The chances are that when he departs the stage most will still say, "Who was that masked man?"
We could ask, in the words of Sinatra, whether this man with the power is "a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn or a king?" But we'd get no answer that would satisfy. We might as well read tea leaves, read auguries from the flights of flocks, divine answers from sheep's entrails, or descend into the subways and read the words of the prophets on the walls between the stations.
Or, in the spirit of divination that has lately gripped the nation, we can simply look at a photograph from a simple time in the man-child's life. As the writer said in Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, "Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school."
Or in the sand on a beach in Hawaii:
A toddler sitting and laughing on the shoulders of his grandfather, who would become the only father figure the child would ever know. Perhaps it was while looking at this picture that Obama or his ghost writer came up with, in Dreams From My Father, “One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather's shoulders as the astronauts from one of the Apollo missions arrived at Hickam Air Force Base after a successful splashdown." The shoulders of the grandfather seem to loom large in the legend.
The photograph holds, as so many people’s photographs do, one of the happy moments. But I’d like to see the next few moments. I’d like to see what happened next after the laugh. I’d like to see what that boy in the background with the stick raised as if to throw it at the heads of the toddler and grandfather in the foreground did. Did he let it fly? Did it strike the laughing toddler in the back of the head? Did an abrupt attack from behind form a lasting impression? Or did it miss? Or was it merely a brief gesture signifying nothing?
One can imagine all sorts of next moments but know none of them. Which is, of course, the problem with the burgeoning field of “Obama Historical Studies.” This man’s personal history is simply a collection of small tokens separated by vast swathes of time empty of data and detail. The one thing we can be certain of is that these empty spaces, these profound absences without leave, are not due to happenstance but due to design.
Later in the dubious “autobiography,” the aptly short-titled Dreams, we stumble across this statement: "I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they'd leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight."
Maybe that’s how it works still. Maybe that's at the root of the grand bargain made between this man and the media and those that voted him power. He keeps his trouble hidden and many decide to just leave him alone and live with him. That would explain the curious silence that soaks sheaves of his erstwhile supporters that are not currently getting checks cut by the Obama Booster Industry. It’s the policy of a profound invert, “I don’t tell so you don’t ask.”
At this point, trying to understand who or what Obama was is like peeling an onion. You unwrap layer after layer and when you reach the core you have nothing; you have the Oakland of American politicians, a man who has no there there.
This is the central fallacy and futility of "Obama Studies." You cannot, in the end, understand a person as carefully crafted as Obama by examining the past. He has no past. He’s the man upon the stair that was not there. You can only understand Obama in the present by looking at what he and his minions do.
Once your attention is directed away from the past and into the present it all becomes as simple as that snapshot from the beach. What one sees is a man of dubious ancestry rising on the shoulders of a previous generation, stalked by a paranoid fantasy , and becoming, as a result, a bad man with an evil intent, supported by a rag-tag collection of apparatchiks, with a megalomaniac design for a bleak future; a man that does not stand with his feet planted in the American soil, but forever in the backwash of the slow Pacific swell on its most distant shore.
But in the end it is also clear that this man is not wholly someone who has been invented by himself or others in the shadows, but by us as a country and a culture. Simply put, this leader who cannot lead is the fruit of our more than 50 years of downward drift and rising degeneracy. In this we are like the happy toddler on the beach waiting for a stick in the back of the head to wake us up or put us down like an old dog; like, as Ezra Pound wrote so long ago, "an old bitch gone in the teeth, a botched civilization."
"What a revoltin' development this is!" -- Chester A. Riley
Tiger Woods, that wily old horndog, finally felt that enough time had passed that he was ready for his "amends that must be made" close-up. Because he is Tiger Woods, a wealthy businessman whose cash flow has been crimped by extra-curricular quim of late, he can afford one of the very best apologies money can buy. And he got it.
With no little rehearsal Woods delivered his ritual mea culpa about as well as could be expected. Smooth, forthright, sanctimonious, and with only a whiff of irritation that his honey-pot gravy train had come off the rails. He'd worked it up enough with professional media coaches that it actually had the flavor of real sincerity to it, even as it ran the standard changes of stars saying they're sorry. I'm sure the whole spectacle cost him a lot in time and money, but, well, "mistaeks wur made," and it had to be done.
If only Tiger had come to me before he drove into a tree I could have just given him my "Standard Apology for 21st Century Schmucks" out of the goodness of my heart. It would have saved him at least $100,000 in speech writing fees and media consulting. And he wouldn't have had to spend weeks sitting around in some half-baked 12-Step Program for Horndogs. I've been honing my "Standard Apology" for years now. It goes like this:
First let me say that I'm sorry I'm saying I'm sorry. I'm sorry because after you hear this apology you'll be sorry too. So I'm sorry for making you feel sorry by having to say I'm sorry.
I begin by noting that at present, as above, I'm sorry. Yes, I am very, very sorry. It was all my fault and I am sorry for it all. I failed, first and foremost, to understand that on tour golf is a game limited to eighteen holes.
Duffers cannot understand the pressures on the pros. It's hard to wind down after an exhausting day strolling on a very long lawn to polite applause. You just somehow have to keep driving, and pitching, and wedging, and putting long into the wee-hours of the morning. No matter how many pars, birdies, and eagles I got, I was always looking for that perfect hole-in-one to round off the round. What began as confusion became compulsion powered by room service.
I am sorry, as always, for what I did. It was thoughtless and rude even though it was intensely gratifying at the time I did it. It wasn't really what I meant or felt in my heart, but was just what I wanted to do. Many have taken my deeds to mean other than what I said they meant after I was discovered. Why, I even meant them to mean other than what they meant when I did them.
Well, the damage those deeds did is done and I can't undo my doing that dropped me the do-do. All I can do is stand here strapped in the pillory of the present as all those whom I have so wrongly (but without malice I swear) harmed cry like the little girly-men they are, especially the girls. Their heartbreak is now my ass ache. I cringe to see them writhe with the bleeding agony of those raw wounds I ripped open by my harsh and unconsidered actions.
Have I said I feel really bad about this? I do. I feel even worse that I, through my abject failure to realize how deeply the awl of my deeds would bore into them, even, yea, down to the living blue-veined bone, that I simply stood by and allowed the burning salt of my senseless screwups to pour without limit into their raw and festering souls. I am, as I said, deeply sorry and feel bad besides.
But even inside the cloistered walls of my expensive institution, I have heard the rising torrent of justifiable outrage; the howls of those whose most sacred, festering and inane values I have eviscerated with the senseless whirring chain-saw of my betrayals.
To them I offer, in deep and abject humility -- since I am, because I did what I did, lower than a cockroach's stool stuck to the bottom of a homeless hermit's shabby sandal in the storm drains of Las Vegas -- my most sincere if unworthy apology.
I have heard the skin-shuddering shrieks of those whose souls have been sliced into bloody gobbets of flesh by my dull-edged errors. Though I am unworthy to feel that pain, I feel it still as if it were a red-hot 3/4 inch Makita drill bit driven into the base of my skull and left there set on "Wash-Rinse-Repeat."
In closing, I come to you today penitent, conscience-stricken, regretful and contrite. I have been deep-fried by your pain and deeply regret my actions. I repent them with every shred of my soul. I am, for having hurt your feelings and bruised your tender buttons, a base and abject man mortified by my cheesy, contemptible, insignificant,. shabby, small, and pathetic being. I know now the low things I have done and I am filled with remorse, melancholy, shame, and self-reproach. If I could have myself flogged fleshless by an flock of Carmelite nuns on Methamphetamine I would so. But I can't locate those sisters right now -- and they would be suspect if they showed up.
But I digress.
I am compelled by my inner idiot and 12-step sponsor to say that I bleed for you, wish only to console you, empathize with you, and open my heart in an anguished lament that my actions, wittingly or unwittingly, have raised upon your soul these unlanced boils of existential angst. It is my hope you will allow me to lance them with my sincerity and bandage them in the saline soaked cloth of this apology.
I come before you today an abashed,
chagrined,
conscience-stricken,
guilty,
shamed,
demeaned,
crestfallen,
humiliated,
penitent,
mortified,
and broken man.
I can only seek, humbly, that one thing that will make me whole again after ripping the flesh of your feelings so senselessly. The single thing that would bring infinite balm to my being would be your acceptance of this, my guilty apology, and your eventual, even at the last ding-dong of doom, forgiveness.
In this simpering sorrytude I dwell in the hope to be one day resurrected to the realm of the acceptably American.
Thank you for letting me share.
Omaha, Nebraska: December 31, 2010 The Reformed Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Mass Progressive Suicides (CIMPS) of December 2009 today released its findings on the tragedy.
CIMPS’ summary concludes:
Continued...Late last year a virulent poem created by Al Gore decimated the Progressive Movement of the United States when 98% of its membership committed suicide after reading it. Contrary to rumors of a putsch by the Conservative Revolutionary Front, it is the finding of the emergency U.S. government in Omaha that it was not LSD in the water supply of Washington, the Upper West Side, and vast portions of Hollywood, San Francisco, and 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue that precipitated the near extinction of American progressives. Neither was it a conspiracy of global oil interests headed by defrocked members of the KGB. The deaths are attributable to the deranged act of a lone poet.
Overwhelmingly hilarious from the twisted but beautiful minds at The Nose On Your Face
Everybody with a blog or access to a blog is ordered, under pain of mockery, to reblog this immediately.
[Note: Reposted because I don't have the time right now to examine the eternal banality of Charles Johnson's prose. But I will get around to it. As for his recent little list of why he left wherever he thought he was, all I can say is, "Door. Ass. Bang."]
The Hockneyesque "Green Sphere Upon the Sands of Solace." From the "What? On the Beach Again?" series. Here we see the questioning autodidact Johnson confronting the existential vacuity of American beachspace with a sardonic Worholian distancing of the self from the mundane spritziness that is the Malibu shell of angst, despair, and desolation. Note that even the small Macintosh-referenced trash icon in the middle distance is in an emptied state.
Mozart: [hesitantly] I never knew that music like that was possible!
Salieri: [uncertainly] You flatter me.
Mozart: No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... ”Salieri."
-- Amadeus (1984) - Memorable quotes
Of late many have opined on the mental state of Charles Foster Johnson erstwhile hotchat master of Little Green Footballs. Words such as "dementia," "quisling," "bull goose looney," "testicular chancre," "slobbering obamallationist," and "schmo" have hurtled about the blogosphere for months. I shall not endeavor to improve upon this brick-bat barrage of blandishments in which Mr. Johnson is repeatedly and heartedly encouraged "to perform self-intercourse with a low-yield thermonuclear warhead."
Nor shall I note that having a "big" "b-log" floating about like a cowchip on a vast sea of Internet sludge is akin to possessing a two-inch penis. Neither shall I underscore those slanderous assertions that Johnson's writing skills are limited to the "Paste" command. I note only that before "Paste" there is always his first tool, "Cut." I shall also say nothing to underscore the obvious assertion in so many quarters that a "Dan Rather Scoop" is now so far in the past that even Dan Rather's lawsuit has run out of Dan Rather gas.
No, too much has been done to malign Charles Foster Johnson, that Howard Hughes of Somewhere Lost Angeles. Instead I propose to consider the one area in which there can be no justifiable criticism of the "artiste" that dwells within the eternal sunshine of his mind, his photography....
Continued...As tanking traffic, revenues and interest metastasize at the once proud but now flaccid Little Green Footballs, czarina Charles ("I'm writing as bad as I can") Johnson takes time out from slander and libel and Christian bashing to post a "News Item" that begs his dwindling clutch of hatchlings to buy their Halloween costumes and candy from his Amazon links:
Continued...0r - The Not-So-Pretty Perversions of Patrick Goldstein and Friends
Patrick Goldstein, Testing Pos for Perversion
The arrest of Roman Polanski for his repulsive crime has caused an eruption of foul-smelling gas bubbles in the media slime ponds where many of what passes for America’s public “intellectuals” wallow.
Foremost among these sources of stench is the chancrous Patrick Goldstein who, like many others who are “intellectually insane” sucks his pay-check out of the fetid swamp of the Los Angeles Times. Like many ill-educated and under-read third-rate scribblers, Goldstein thinks it’s the mark of a “writer” to throw a “lit’ry” reference into his prose slop from time to time. That he either has not read or comprehended the work he cites escapes his notice as he hopes it will escape his readers.
Andrew Sullivan reacts to the unseemly demands of 67% of the American public
I say again, "A raaaaacist is anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal."
It pains me to have to take (mild) issue with other members of the Founding Bloggers, but it does seem to me that today's hope that the Race Card will be tossed out onto the waters of oblivion along with slavery, the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Affirmative Action. Simply put: It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
Why? Because when it comes to the defending the Obama administration's current dog's dinner of legislation, the race card is not just the strongest card in the left/liberal/progressive deck, it is the only card in that deck.
When all you have in the deck is the Race Card, the name of the game is "52-Pickup." The technique then is similar to a spastic Ricky Jay trying to decapitate a duck or penetrate a water melon. For example:
Continued...
Tom Curley: Head Muppet of the Associated Press
[UPDATE: Jules Crittenden today has an informed and balanced view on the entire issue at Jules Crittenden ｻ Professional Issues. I recommend it. ]
It was there only for a brief moment on Wikipedia before the editing gestapo got it, but the truth endures, for now, in the cache:Tom Curley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Curley, an executive battening off the rotting hulk of the Associated Press, had ignored common decency and a direct appeal from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to refrain from publishing photographs of a dying United States Marine. Gates said,
“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”Decency? For the chancre ridden media scum that infest our nation, Continued...
As noted today on Drudge and confirmed on Politico, flag@whitehouse.gov is in fail mode and bouncing all messages back with the neat notice:
Continued...
After our Overlord Class spends $550 million to buy eight jets, look for the US Congress to buy itself a fleet of these next year: BMW 7 Series High Security : 2010
An intercom system with concealed microphones and speakers allows safe communication with people outside of the vehicle without the need to open doors or windows. Additional safety options include an assault alarm, fire extinguishing system with temperature sensor for extinguishing fires in the engine compartment and below the vehicle as well as irritant gas sensors for protecting passengers from gas attacks. If the interior protection system is triggered by excess gas levels, all windows are closed automatically, the central locking system is activated, the fresh air valves are closed and the ventilation system is shut off. An additional internal fresh-air supply system ensures that passengers are provided with breathable air. BMW also offers special options for authorities, governments and embassies. The package provides a range of special features such as flag holders, arrangements for radio installations right through to a gun case with compartments for two machine guns in the center console.What an option package! Still, it could come in handy.
"In my own life, in my own monomanical way, I have tried to take as much money and jobs and positions as I can possibly claw from this country that has given me so much, and is so willing to give me more," Michelle said. "See, that's why I left my dead-end job at a big law firm for a corrupt and high paying career in public service. But let me tell you, the plane is the best bit of gaming the government I've ever done. I can't believe you fools are actually paying for this stuff."
David Vance @ one of my favorites, JammieWearingFool brings us up to date on the woman who would be queen.
That moved me - did it move you? So, how has Michelle been getting on in her role as First Lady? Let's consider those on her staff, shall we?
To put it in context, Hillary Clinton had a staff of three, Laura Bush a staff of one. Long ago, Jacqui Kennedy had one. In these frugal recessionary times, how many has lovely Michelle? Michelle has a staff of...twenty two.
First Lady requires more than twenty attendants Here's what she pays them in this time when all Americans are being called on by the Obamas to sacrifice for the greater good. I note that this information comes to you courtesy of the Canada Free Press, rather than the press of the frothing Obamallatio addicts of America's "Free" Press:
Continued...
"I'm the Doctor. You wait on the Waiting List!" The short and simple annals of the poor often record the keenest insights into what's in store for the rest of us in our Brave New Dystopia. They've been showing up to be on the government, free health-care waiting list for decades. We're next.
Listen to this chilling Obamacare anthem @ Blip.fm | Vanderleun | Dr. Octagon – Waiting List
Here are the lyrics from Kool Keith's 1996 solo album Dr. Octagonecologyst
You enter, step in the room, four, five
My over compressed thoughts and ways make you get live
You are the patient, and i, your black doctor,
Medical bills, insurance, cash in the ceiling.
Dioxalyn fingerprints here ever since
I got my white suit pressed, out the cleaners,
X-ray shades, with hard shoes and some razor blades
Who's the brother that's sick, and needs the operation?
Bullets removed from your head, grand central station
I gotta cut off your ear, first behind your neck
Rip out the stomach, and open rectum's to dissect
Shine the light, inside, roaches crawling in your throat
I have no tools, my hammer's done, my drill is broked
I'm the doctor,Continued...
You wait on the waiting list,
Patients been here since this morning I dismiss.
Receptionist: How do you write about New York Times columnists and editors so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a slug, and I take away reason and accountability.
-- As Good as It Gets (1997) - Memorable quotes
Thomas Friedman, bad writer, world traveler, and all around bon vivant, wants YOU to pay to save the planet. Just Do It
Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change. But it also contains significant provisions to prevent new buildings from becoming energy hogs, to make our appliances the most energy efficient in the world and to help preserve forests in places like the Amazon.Awww, poor widdle Amazon rain forest.
When not abroad fellating Arab potentates or hectoring you to reach for your wallet, this is how Thomas Friedman lives.
The gall of these non-elected, self-selected nattering flatulators is without limit.
HT Sasquatchian @ Planet Gore on National Review Online
Nine.
One to change the light bulb.
One to scream out "Racist society!" to the neighbors.
One to berate the black police officer on the scene.
One to berate the Hispanic Police Officer on the scene.
One to call the (black) Mayor.
One to call the (black) Governor.
One to call the (black) President.
One to begin booking the talk shows.
One to start production on the documentary film.
by GCOTHARN @ The End Zone
There's a lot of brouhaha and rumbles of mutiny being heard around the 'sphere today about Obama's first slide into negative polling territory. Most of those that despise him, and they are legion, are happy for the first time in many months. But I'd suggest they curb their enthusiasm.
It is true that the economy is unlikely to have a miraculous turn-around, and it is equally true that there is going to be some sort of a health-care fiasco foisted onto this perishing republic since the Dems are too dumb and too deep in the mire to "let the kid die." But in all this swirl of endless blather about said health-care bill, the people getting happy about the Obama drift down are forgetting that he's got a hole card. When he flips that card over it says, "Afghanistan."
There's two things that I think about when I think about Obama and Afghanistan.
1) As I have written about before in The Road to a Democrat Led Defeat of America Goes Through Afghanistan, and spelled out in Afghanistan Bananistan: The 10 Point Plan, Afghanistan is Obama's "Get out of bad election results and/or get re-elected free card." He can pretty much use it any time he needs it to become "The man with the vision to bring peace to America." All he has to do to keep the card fresh is to give our forces there just enough rope for them to twist, hang, and die slowly in the wind. If you've been paying attention, that's just what has been taking place.
2) Will Obama be so cynical that he will actually let American troops dies for a cause that he knows for certain he'll end as soon as it becomes politically necessary? Silly rabbit, of course he will. Obama has no love for the American military as he has shown again and again over the years and as he will demonstrate convincingly as soon as it suits his own purposes. This is a man who has no respect of honor and valor since he not only has neither but is, as I have written in some detail, Not Man Enough to Be President. It is a deep tragedy of our moment that our military has as a commander-in-chief someone who not only does not value their sacrifice, but will use it for his own self-serving and cynical ends.
Look for "Obama: The President of Peace" opening sometime next year. Maybe sooner if the daily rushes start to look really bad.
O brave new world that has such outrages in it! For wisdom and clarity on the chump-change AIG bonus issue that has so many pairs of bipartisan panties in a twist, I recommend a sane man,TigerHawk, on two key points:
1) What did they know and when did they know it?
My speculation: The Obama administration, including the president or his political staff, has known about these bonuses for quite some time, and the letters from Liddy to the Treasury were requested by the government to provide cover. I further speculate that neither the Treasury nor Liddy wanted this issue to explode until after the bonuses were paid precisely because they could not afford for the people they need to unwind the losing trades to quit before their work is done....
2) What is to be done.
"You cannot make people miserable and not pay them. You have to choose or they will quit and we will not have the skilled people we need to unwind this mess. So either torture, humiliate, and investigate the hundreds of people at AIG and other financial institutions -- none of whom actually created these problems -- who are struggling through all of this and grit your teeth and pay them, or leave them alone to toil in quiet ignominy and screw them out of most of their contracted compensation. For many people, one or the other will suffice, but not both."
From the Governor's Gazette, Dated November 12 (VIA Blago-Gate Timeline (@ Verum Serum)
"I did not have interpersonal relations with that man, Governor Blagojevich." - Bloodthirsty Liberal
The story that put the lie to the No-O & Blogo Meeting was discovered yesterday. Once discovered it promptly disappeared down the memory hole at News : KHQA. Seeing that it had vanished I searched for it in Google Cache and, sure enough, there it was. For about an hour and then cached page vanished as well. A second story from the same source confirming the meeting also met the same fate.
But, fearing something like the erasure of the cached page, I made a screen shot. Here it is:
Continued...At least he didn't emulate Jimmy Carter by saying, "I'll never lie to you." Indeed, this whole administration is shaping up to be a paraphrase of Mary McCarthy's “Every word he says is a lie, including and and the.” Still they'll look to find a reason to believe.
Local scribbling Seattle schmucks find themselves hoist by their own petard. Run and hide like little girly-men.
Chicago Boyz posts Tit for Tat
after "the Stranger, a leftist rag in Seattle, Wa. decided it would be funny to write a supposed review of local haunted houses in which the scariest houses where those that had Republican campaign posters in their yards. [h/t Instapundit] Presumably trying to be thorough, they displayed the addresses of the houses prominently in the article.and calls for some turnabout:
I figure that turnabout is fair play, so I did some Internet research and found the address of the paperâs editorial director.
Chicago then asks:
"If a reader in the Seattle area would like to swing by and take pictures, we could post those, you know, just to be thorough."Happy to oblige.
1146 16TH AVE E
SEATTLE, WA 98112
Stranger offices
1535 11th Ave. 3rd Floor
Seattle, WA 98122
Once the story made it to Instapundit and other pages, the brave Stranger Staffers redirected the link to their brave expose to Drudge and shut down comments on the subject at "The Slog," the Stranger's blog.
Too late though: Copy of the page with addresses blanked is HERE.
Brave, brave new worlders.
GOP Mom has the details and the documents: From Tony to Barack, Part I
Documented evidence proves that Senator Obama and Tony Rezko coordinated their purchases as well as the relative values of the house and the lot. Significant economic value was transferred between the properties after the execution of the purchase agreements and prior to the closings on June 15, 2005. Furthermore, this transfer fully explains Senator Obama’s reason for buying the extra strip of land. In sum, Senator Obama would not have been able to purchase the house at such a large discount if Rezko had not purchased the adjacent lot.
Remember last week? Last week in Obamaland you were rich and selfish if you made $250,000. This week, O's defined rich and selfish down to 200K.
"Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year." -- Barrack Obama's prime-time infomercial.
Want to bet that's the bottom? Want to bet your bank account, your mortgage payment?
That's got to be the first infomercial where people discovered they were going to actually pay more by buying the product. No steak knives either.
Obama's limit to "I won't tax you" is going down faster than Andrew Sullivan in an asparagus patch.
Reparations by proxy are only the beginning. Obama: "To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.... I'm not optimistic about bring major redistributive change through the courts.... The courts start engaging in a process which is adminstrative." [Emphasis added.]
HT: neoneocon
Obama: Not Man Enough to Be President
Continued...[ UPDATE: Monday - Video: Atlantic editor James Bennet takes a turn in the Fox barrel saying, in essence, "Who knew?." Magazine and article author are just "victims." Atlantic to apologize to McCain, suspend payment to Greenberg, contemplating lawsuit. Details at bottom of post. Scroll down.]
"Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.” - Jill Greenberg
The Atlantic Monthly's current cover by Beverly Hills photographer Jill Greenberg looks like this:
Not really Annie Leibovitz quality, but not even Annie's delivering that these days. ["One sees such portaits, and what can one say but...”Salieri."]
As far as it goes it is workmanlike enough and presents McCain, unlike the Obama covers we are used to seeing, without the halo. Given the level to which the owner and the staff of the Atlantic are in the tank for Obama -- the owner's wife, Katherine Brittain Bradley, is on record in one instance for $28,500.00 to committees supporting Barack Obama-- even the cover-lines are not half-bad if a bit half-hearted. I'd only remark that it is no accident that the Atlantic's editor approved the upper red slash bar with the words "Porn" and "Adultery" in it. Editors, especially those whose paycheck depends on displaying their bias for their boss, love those little gotcha games. I know. I played them too.
But that's not where the Atlantic cover story stops.
It's a question, you see, of the disposition of all the McCain "out-takes" from this shoot. Out-takes are images taken of a subject at a photo shoot that are not used for publication by the client commissioning them. Typically, when you hire a photographer for a shoot -- and I have hired dozens over the years -- the photographer delivers all the film or digital images taken to the editor and art director for their review and selection. In a professional shoot these can easily be dozens if not hundreds of images.
[Greenberg NSFW, children and other living things now on continued page]
Continued...By last Friday, I'd gotten used to the idea that the children of Republican candidates had become, for many in the media and in the dark web of Obamatrons, fair game. I thought with that we had finally reach the bottom of the slime that support Barack Obama. But as always I was wrong. It would seem that for many of Obama's supporters there really is no bottom.
If you know anybody who is still considering a vote for this man, show them this and ask how any decent human being can align themselves with this sort of political machine? No matter how you might feel about Obama, his supporters -- at this point -- have sucked all the honor out of the man and his campaign and his party. It's like watching a monstrous post-modern inside-out version of the Klu Klux Klan ooze out along the edges of the Democrat Party.
Continued...
This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it's a fall, not a flight, but it feels like one until you hit bottom. Unless you keep digging. Which is the job of liberal arts departments. - One Cosmos: The Metaphysics of Envy and the Revenge of the Left
The tsunami of mud dredged up and thrown in the direction of Sarah Palin and her family over the long weekend is, I think, unprecedented. The size of the wave of filth is only exceeded by its velocity. Overall the volume of mud represents just how much Palin is feared by those for whom nothing less than an Obama victory is required for them to keep breathing on Earth.
One of the few other places we see this sort of behavior in nature is when, threatened, a tribe of primates joins together in a hooting display that quickly escalates into the flinging of feces in all directions. As a result we also note that rising above the mud is the unmistakable odor of fear. But there are, as many have noted, deeper foundations of filth on which the rumors and the ranting rests.
Continued...
Just so we all know the new and improved rules. Memorize them. There will be a test.
UPDATE -- From May 19, Four months later to the day:
Continued...
Beverly Hillbilly American Royalty in the Making
"I did not make baby with that woman."
Flashback to 1936:
Continued...LA Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 news jobs
"Once a bear is hooked on garbage there's no cure." -- Gary Snyder
ALL ALONG OUR WATCHTOWERS where our Princes of the Media tell us our views, things are looking very shaky for their latter-day plutocracy. Their ratings tank, their circulation implodes, and revenues auger into the ground like a one-winged Gulfstream. Like the once-popular Yogi Berra Restaurant, people are staying away in droves.
Extreme measures seem to be called for and extreme solutions are tried. Some once-brilliant network exec has a new thought to save the ratings, "sex!" Katie Couric's perky points are whipped out, rubbed with ice-cubes and back lit by the blaze of Baghdad. It doesn't help. Husbands cringe and wives run screaming from the plasma-screen wall. Faced with the continuing disaster, another never-brilliant New York Times publisher has his only idea for the 600th time: "Bash Bush!" Times editors from the last time the Publisher waved his stuffed moose around convene for their 5348th Sulzberger Suckupathon and decide to "save the newspaper" by..... redesigning the web site! Ad sales and staff continue in their mutual suckage. Heroin suppository prescriptions are renewed.
Across town, employees of cable news networks whose viewer-ship has fallen to rival the circulation of "The Nation" ponder a future without houses in the Hamptons, and their forthcoming inability to land jobs as spokesmen for Ginzu Knives at the North Dakota State Fair. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or, as we used to say in the 60s in the drug-drenched pits of Berkeley, "If you are going to have a revolution, get ready to do revolting things."
Backs to the ratings wall, they pull out their thermonuclear weapon, and video tapes
Continued...
My ongoing problem with Alice Walker is not her crappy writing, -- that's easy enough to avoid -- but her crappy thinking. That's not so easy to avoid since, with the rise of the Internet, Idiocracy is everywhere. Indeed, with the rise of the Obamatron, Idiocracy is the new governing principle of the Democratic Party -- and it couldn't happen to more deserving folks.
But along with the fun this brings to the connoisseur of Idiocracy, it also brings pain. One of the constant irritations of the Obama candidacy is the endless stream of the half-talented and the race-hustlers scrambling for a place in the envisioned Obamastration, or at least a hot weekend in the Lincoln bedroom and a ride on the plane.
In their thirst for future favor, ranking members of the Idiocracy such as Walker are now commonly given space in the walking corpses of newspapers. This would be fine except for the fact that although newspapers are dead, the Internet insists on keeping them alive. In my perfect world the rule would be: "If you can toss your crap on my front porch, you can't toss it off on the Internet. I mean, fair's fair."
But the Internet, like life, is not fair. Dead newspapers still insist on putting their idiots online where, like the hidden turds in a bank of stained February snow, they melt out with Spring.
I try to step around these little gifts strewn on my path through the Internet. But every so often, there is a shit sculpture so exceptional that no matter where you go, no matter how you try to avoid it, you still step in it. You step in it because it is so stunningly stupid it is linked everywhere. And then, because it sticks to your mouse, you drag it back to your home page. Sorry about that.
Case in point -- the recent squeezing of that Novelist Laureate of Loonies, Alice Walker.
Continued...
"Just when you think you're out... they pull you back in."
Whether you tuned in to television, radio, or the internet in the last few days it was impossible to avoid the sight and sound of Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright.
Much has been said about Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, but what has not been fully voiced is the gratitude felt by many Americans freshly exposed to his oratory.
So, in my role as a voice for the voiceless, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright for his selfless service to the country.
Seldom in my memory has one man with one single, unwavering, and forceful train of thought done for America what Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright has done.
Almost alone in the 21st century Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright has brought back to life and given voice and face to something most of use believed was lost with the 20th century -- the stone cold stereotype of the angry, bitter, racist and crazy African-American.
So thank you, Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright....
Continued...
Dead man walking.
They shouted at him, as the Spitzers split from the press conference, "Governor, will you resign? Will you resign?" Silly journalists. Any sharp pundit would have gotten up in Mrs. Spitzer's face and asked, "Does this mean you are going to run for the U.S. Senate?" I'm looking for Oprah to do that job when she has the Spitzers on to talk about "the healing process."
These men up north honey sure do make me tired
These men up north they surely do make me tired
They've got a mouth full of gimme, and a handful of much obliged
-- Ella Fitzgerald | Gulf Coast Blues
After hearing Michelle Obama's stump speech four times, New Yorker writer Lauren Collins offers this pearl:
"You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Obama said. "See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!" -- Michelle Obama: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
"Give. Us. Something. Here!" -- The core Obama campaign slogan.
Can we get us something from the government? Yes we can!
Can we get us more from the government than we've gotten already? Yes we can!
Can we get us more of the same service that's given the country the USPS, the Social Security System, Medicare, and a tax code so complex it needs a semi-truck just to move it around town? Yes we can!
OOOOooooo, Cat fight in Kennedyland! Neo-Neocon to Kennedy: "Watch out for those women scorned, Ted." She quotes from a "statement" put out by the petulant women of New York NOW:
Opening somewhere in the midwest soon:
As the 2008 election scandal looms in the background, the inhabitants of Iowa begin to slip into an existentialist void, wherein social taboos are shattered on whims and the line between adult authority and juvenile irresponsibility in campaigning is practically nonexistant. Focusing on three candidates in particular, the Edwards, the Obamas and the Clintons, "The Ice Storm of Iowa " chronicles a brief period of rapid moral deterioration, as the candidates shatter their social "roles" in pursuit of votes, within an environment turned inwards on itself. -- The Ice Storm of Iowa 2008 - Plot summary
The Democratic rivals struggled with an ice storm -- and each other -- as they spent Saturday courting constituencies crucial to winning the nomination and the White House. -- Democrats in Iowa battle ice, each other
This is not to say there is no clear choice here. There is only what I'd call a "sorta" choice.
Franklin Foer's plea of "Guilty... but with an explanation" for the New Republic's Fictional soldier's stories is at Fog of War.
There will be a tsunami of comment on this all over the sphere. This is just an early warning signal.
You can play "follow the flamers" at Memeorandum where the dog pile is only just getting started.
Continued...Remember the fluff published by National Geographic about Judas being simply "misunderstood?" It turns out that NatGeo well understood what they were doing. They were publishing a scam. And took pains to hide their tracks. Here's today's item from NYT (via The Anchoress) Gospel Truth - New York Times by April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of "The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.
In a WaPo triple thumb-sucker today ("quagmire" returns in the first graph), you've got Clintonista John Podesta and a couple of his rollicking sidekicks taking Bush to task for succeeding at the surge. Success in a strategy that has reduced violence and brought a semblance of peace back to large sections of Iraq is.... well.... just not good enough.
Continued...This little kidploitation video has been making the rounds, claiming to be "just a goof."
It ain't no goof. It's a bit of sleazy politics pretending to be "a joke, just a joke."
Now I'm all for down in the ditches dirty political humor between consenting adults. This isn't it. This is getting a bunch of kids to repeat after their parents or their handlers. For many good and solid reasons I am a liberal no more and haven't been for nearly a decade. This little item of political degradation reminds me why I'm not a card-carrying conservative either.
Don't get me wrong. I think Hillary is just a brand extension of the Classic Clinton Con-Job. That doesn't mean I'm going to start enlisting kids to tell grown-ups about it. That's why I'm give the makers of this bit of merde the "Bad Americans" award of the week.
Glass Foer: Separated at birth?
" He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." It's indefensible. Don't you know that? " -- Shattered Glass
I'll soon have more to say about how the entire pile of ever-escalating lies coming out of the New Republic over the Scott Beauchamp incident illuminates the brave new way of treason without consequences in the United States today,
Continued...
"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" Susan Sontag, September 24, 2001
A more cynical person might believe that the only reason Obama is in the race is to make Hillary look like an actual patriot, and is, in fact, working for the Clintons on a nod and wink for 2012. But why would I believe something like that?
Continued...
David McCumber, the current "Managing editor" at the risibly named Seattle Post-Intellligencer feels he got some splainin' to do. Having failed to learn the virtue of silence he blogs a memorable confession in "A ferry captain, the FBI and Benjamin Franklin." in which he states:
"I understand that people have a hard time with the concept that we get to decide what is news and what isn't, and what is fair and what isn't."McCumber is from the Hunter-Thompson-Envy school of journalism and, of course, this is a brain-echo of the Scoop Nisker dictum: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." Alas, McCumber is mired in the Thompson/Nisker/Pacifica/NPR Memorial Tarpits and fails to understand that making news about not liking the news is exactly what is going to happen to him and his ilk in this era. They never thought that not liking the news would come to include newspapers themselves. They thought, for decades, that they were immune. Alas, as we learn in the Holy Book of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, "Nobody is immune from a bust."
Continued...
(Left) One Too Many Lattes and a Thousand Miles Behind: "Franklin Foer, 31, is eager to "produce journalism that people read." (2006) New York Times
The very young editors ** of The New Republic want to spin but they only twist slowly in the wind. ("I think I'm going to be circumspect..." -- NR editor Michael Crowley)
Well, I've got no dog in the New Republic/Weekly Standard fight like Eli Lake or Michael Crowley, so I've no use for circumspection about this endlessly unreeling game of gotcha.
Except to say it was game over and winner The Weekly Standard from the very moment Michael Goldfarb read Scott Beauchamp's obvious fictions and felt the needle on his bullshit meter wrap several times around the pin.
The untold fact of the matter is that, when you're editing a magazine, no matter how "fair and balanced" an editor may wish to be in his or her heart, the stories with the grit and the blood and the atrocity always put out a clarion call that proves hard to resist. Printing "ripping yarns" is why you're in the business in the first place, and there just aren't a lot of those going in Foggy Bottom.
Young magazine editors -- especially those of the ostensibly male persuasion -- always have a soft-spot in their heads for the "man of action war story." This is mainly because, to tell the truth, young male magazine editors today are simply not very manly. In general, they rise out of a culture and an educational background where manliness is discouraged and put down, even as the expectation of it, within and without, remains attached like some phantom limb to the neutered body.
The problem
Let's say you have an inordinate need for cheeseburgers but, like Wimpy, find yourself constantly short of the cash needed to support your corpulence.
Let's say you are stuck in a dead-end town in a dead-end life. All you have to your name is a borrowed bunch of movie equipment and not much skill in making movies.
We've all had experiences with big liars, but this schmuck is currently set to take away the Liar of the Decade Award. And like all who go for the big lie, it's little wonder he can rope in some other sad-sacks to augment his lie. And, true to the pattern of lies and, there's always a misty moment for crocodile tears in order that nobody dare doubt the "sincerity" of the lie. After all, if you can see the liar feels bad, that must mean he's telling the truth. Right? Right.
The latest inch of the slime trail exuding from "Judge and Lawyer" Roy Pearson in his legalized assault and battery on an immigrant Korean couple came yesterday with tears and his latest prop, a wheelchair bound woman:
Continued...
"Jack" Edwards gestures appropriately when announcing his "plan"
It's sometimes hard to know what to think of the sole surviving metrosexual from the Democrats' 2004 debacle, but not always.
Brokow @ Psst, Over Here is tired of reading car butts: "I'm just so over this political bitchfest. Yeah, contratulations, you've spent 10 minutes and $4.95, now you've got some Cool Opinions! And you want the world to know all about it."
I'm not much for joining movements. The last one I joined was the Vietnam Day Committee back in 1965, and that didn't turn out very well for the Vietnamese. Nor for Americans -- except for those who still float fermented in the fetid vats of their long-lost youth today. But I do believe that the effort to yank Rosie O'Donnell off The View by going around the vapid and hapless Barbara Walters and her cynical producers is worth the effort. It goes around it by "following the money" and communicating directly to the products that keep The View's gravy train flowing.
Continued...I was going to join the blogpile on Rosie O'Donnell, but suddenly the voices in my head turned into my mother telling me that "It's not nice to mock the retarded."
"But, Mom," I said, "Rosie isn't retarded. She just played a retarded person in that horrible TV/Hallmark card. And if anyone in the history of our current phase of prehistory ever mocked the retarded it was that performance. She shrunk Rainman down into Dewgirl."
"Typecasting, my son, pure typecasting. I watched that show for three long minutes and you can't tell me that Rosie was 'acting.' Everybody
Continued...
Or, as Editorialists say, "Who? We?"
As the days pass and it becomes increasingly clear that Lewis Libby has had no justice but has been pilloried by "Just us," those Americans still possessed of a shred of apolitical decency might well ask, at the very least, for an accounting by those responsible.
Of course, all those who strutted and fretted out their seedy roles in this revolting saga will look up, like dogs caught rolling in garbage, and shrug a mighty, "Who? Us?"
Whether you paid $500,000 or $5,000,000,000, or $50 for your jihad, you will want to protect it from harm. Military power surges ruin jihadists each and every day and signs of surges are starting to appear in the Anbar and the Diyala regions of Iraq.
Continued...
"Isn't it rich? / Isn't it queer, /Losing my timing this late / In my career?
And where are the clowns? / There ought to be clowns. / Well, maybe next year."
Was it the spouting of "truther" spume like a poleaxed whale? Was it the random eructation of spittle across Barbara Walters' face? Was it the hanging upside down like a fecund moonbat in a cave? Was it the compulsive snatching of testicles long retracted in front of a festival of New York Society doyens?
"The loose-lipped lesbian dropped the F-bomb as Barbara Walters lowered her head on the dais and covered her face with her hand. O'Donnell concluded a rant about Donald Trump by grabbing her crotch and shouting, 'Eat me!'"
Continued...
"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."
Please Come to Damascus
Please come to Damascus
For the for the bullshit
I'm ruling like my daddy did
And I've got lots of goons.
You can wear your burka on the sidewalk
In the souk where Americans will be shopping soon
Please come to Damascus
She said no, I can't long from congress stray.
[Chorus:]
And Bush sang, Hey ramblin' girl
Why don't you settle down?
Damascus ain't your kind of town.
There ain't no freedom,
And no place a free woman can stay.
I'm the number one fan
Of the speaker from Frisco Bay.
ONE SUMMER DAY OUT ON MARTHA'S VINEYARD many summers past, I was chatting with an old Times' hand who had a little cabin on the strand. "The problem with the Times," he said then, "is that they even publish the boring stories. I think we've not only got an ME [Managing Editor], but a BE too."
"A BE?"
"A Boring Editor. Somebody tasked with making sure that there's enough boring stuff in an issue to make it an issue of the New York Times and no other."
The traditon of the BE goes on today, as most of those who no longer read the Times will note from time to time.
A classic example of boring by design and utter predictability is today's Tale of Two Headlines.
I really love newspaper stories that let you know, right away, that you are about to read pure blather. Today's example comes from the always faithful fountain of blather, the Washington Post:
"It was a summer day in 2003, when Iraq was still filled with the half-truths of occupation and liberation, before its nihilistic descent into carnage." ( Anthony Shadid, "Washington Post Foreign Service")To which a commenter at Pajamas Media replies, "Silly me. I thought it was filled with mass graves, torture arenas, frequent attempts at genocide, and psychopathic, delusional leaders. I believe that nihilistic carnage might be an improvement."
YES, THIS YEAR'S OSCARS continue their transformation into the nation's most over-hyped fornication festival. The only suspense to be found in this struggling ritual will be whether or not transparent codpieces will be on display during the endless pre-show preening. But just in case you were distressed that bitches would not be included with all the hos, rest assured they will be represented. Hollywood is nothing if not multi-cultural.
Oscars viewers to hear word "bitches" in songLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - There will be no F-word but the word "bitches" will be heard during the first-ever rap performance at the Academy Awards on Sunday.
At the request of the Academy and ABC, which is broadcasting the Oscars show, the authors of best song nominee "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp" from the film "Hustle & Flow" have substituted less offensive words for the song's profanity-laced lyrics. "As long as the Academy approves it, it's cool," said rapper Jordan "Juicy J" Houston, a member of Three 6 Mafia, which wrote the song for the film and will be performing it. But he said he was told by actress Taraji P. Henson, who performed the song in the film, and will sing onstage with Three 6 Mafia, that the show's producers were letting her keep the word "bitches," in the chorus. "Taraji said the Academy told her she can say 'bitches,"' said Houston....Aaron Rosenberg, lawyer for Three 6 Mafia, said it was a milestone for the Academy to recognize hip-hop's influence on American culture and the group is extremely sensitive to decency concerns after the baring of Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.
"They worked hard to clean it up as much as possible without compromising their artistic integrity," he said.
That's comforting. After all, where would our culture's largest annual display of Bitches, Pimps, Hos and Dicks be without their "uncompromising artistic integrity?"
This year, more than ever, the Academy will bend over backwards.
====
And may God strike me dead
if I'm not telling the truth....
Plane carrying Sen. Kennedy struck by lightning "A small jet carrying U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy from a commencement speech in western Massachusetts to his Cape Cod home on Saturday was struck by lightning and had to be diverted to New Haven."
In his address to the graduates of the redunantly named "Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts," Kennedy said: "In our country today and in nations throughout the world, young Americans are doing
Continued...It would appear that the Washington Post's Arkin is taking six of the best in a real time tutorial about free-speech in the Internet Age, something they didn't cover in in the all "All Good Dogs Go to Heaven" welcome speech to the posh profession of Journalism:
Continued...MANOHLA DARGIS is predictably and dependably on top of the current blather points in her New York Times' review of "United 93." 1) Exploitation! 2) Why was it made?
But that narrow focus, along with the lack of fully realized characters, and the absence of any historical or political context, raises the question of why, notwithstanding the usual (if shaky) commercial imperative, this particular movie was made. To jolt us out of complacency? Remind us of those who died? Unite us, as even the film's title seems to urge? Entertain us?To be honest, I haven't a clue. I didn't need a studio movie to remind me of the humanity of the thousands who were murdered that day or the thousands who have died in the wars waged in their name.
Well, at least she's being "honest" about her needs. Proof again, if more proof was needed, that you don't have to be a clueless moron to work for the New York Times but, since you will mirror the Publisher, it certainly can't hurt your career path. Here's hoping the next time a mass murder goes down in New York that Ms. Dargis and her collegues at the paper have the aisle seats.
=====
ALLAH IS TRACKING THE BLOG REACTION to the film: Bloggers review "United 93"
Cynthia: If I can't sell it, I'm gonna sit down on it. I ain't gonna give it away.
CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, caught blathering "Crap" on tape, and identifying her aide as a "fool" (Well, he does work for the woman. Case closed.), tried to define for CNN and others exactly what message she would allow them to broadcast: "Anything that is captured by your audio when I am not seated in this chair is off the record and not to be used. Is that understood?"
Results? Predictable:
THE STORY OF THE DEMOCRATS' MOLE AT THE CIA, with links to Kerry, Clinton, Berger, the Washinton Post and who know who else, has been done to death and then Drudged. My favorite round up of this tale of "it's treason but for the 'right' reason" is at Flopping Aces' The Democrat Mole In The CIA Fired
I note in passing that my brief essay on Judas: A Saint for Our Seasons seems to have, in some oblique way, anticipated this new Revelation from our post-modern political gnostics.
Other than that, I'd also observe that when the Fourth Estate becomes the defacto fourth branch of government, but exists outside of any checks and balances given the "special exception" of the First Amendment, incidents like this are only going to increase.
And during this week it was announced by the White House that Karl Rove is being relieved of his policy portfolio in order to have more time to work on getting Republicans elected in the coming months. Coincidence? We think not.
**This phrase that pays found @ Gateway Pundit: Today's Culture of Treason: Scooter's Back! & Dana's Pinko Hubby -- an excellent summation of a DC "power couple."
COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A BETTER NEWSPAPER: "The largest slump at a major daily came at the San Francisco Chronicle, where average paid weekday circulation fell 15.6 percent to 398,246 ."
To paraphrase Dickens, "Drive it fast to its tomb. This from Jacques."
EMAIL BRINGS this pocket review of today's edition of the New York Times:
Worth every penny.I'm buying three and putting them away to eBay in ten years under the title, "End Times at the Times."The front page has TWO stories (the lead stories) on gay marriage not being upheld by New York state judges: one piece says it was a shock, the other that it was not unexpected. There three more articles on this subject, and, of course, an editorial inside.
Also on the front page, another 'innocent' terrorist abuse story. The usual Israel bashing piece and a story on the Conservative winner in Mexico (with a huge color photo of the lefty LOSER above the fold).
By the way, the front page "news analysis" of the shocking insult to gays was written by the same reporter who a month ago had a front page story on the state of the Clintons' marriage, based on how many weekends they spent together.
Jesse Jackson Dear Sir: Respectfully, I submit that you should shut the hell up. Looting and lawlessness IS the problem. The National Guard choppers are BEING SHOT AT. The NOPD are BEING SHOT AT. You want to focus on the levee? So do they, but check this out: THEY CAN'T UNTIL THE MOB STOPS ATTACKING THE RESCUE OPERATION.Somewhere tonight, Al Sharpton is abusing his staff for letting Jackson get from South America to New Orleans before him. After the ditch in Crawford, below sea-level is the only new low left to him.I know you're looking at this situation with concern for the racial implications of the deterioration of civilization out here, but this is bigger than whether people are going to be racists after this is over. This is about rescuing the masses i.e. life and death.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and blame your stupid comments on your lack of knowledge of the situation. Don't prove me a fool for doing so.
Regards,
Michael Barnett @ the Survival of New Orleans blog
In which it is demonstrated the Dick Durbin is not an exception, but the rule.
OVER THE WEEKEND it was impossible to miss that, with Michael Jackson on extended leave in his own private Thailand, Dick Durbin had become the current media boy-toy in America. This because of a simple statement he made. To wit, or sans wit if you will, it was "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings."
That simple statement has been parsed from here to eternity so I'll spare you the footnotes. Simply put, as an American today, you either jump into Durbin's rhetorical mosh pit and root about in the muck with him and his fans, or you stand on the heights above and wonder why you don't have some hefty boulders to heave into it. It's a love it or hate it kind of thing.
But whatever it may be on Durbin's part, it is not a mistake, an error, a foolish quip, or a prematurely senior moment. It is, in short, nothing less than a politician doing what politicians do best: following the lead of his masses.
There's been some huffing and puffing in Washington and elsewhere in what is left of the amazing shrinking Democratic Party. This blather usually takes the form of 'the Durbin statement really does not reflect the immense regard and esteem in which the Democrats hold the American troops.' But that's all rank nonsense.
Continued...
Wolcott:"Bring out your dead! "
THE DIM DEVOTEES OF James Wolcott gnawed today on a fresh chunk of gristle from their master of disaster as he drove onto his website in his Blue 1968 Huff. After several days of quoting from others, Wolcott squeezed off one of his own -- if a bit early. In doing so he established once again that it's safer to point than to pontificate.
The hurricane-worshipping Wolcott is clearly disappointed that his hopes for a floating abattoir in New Orleans are not likely to fructify. In the self-referentially titled From Blame Game to Numbers Game, Wolcott bemoans the fact that we are not, after all, going to see deaths from Katrina on or above the levels of 911. Why? Because if we had, Wolcott surmises, we would be shaken from the deadly spell that the RoveBushCheney wizards have had us under for four years.
"Casualty figures are often high-ranged at the outset, dropping as the smoke and water clears. But any number substantially higher than 3,000 dead presents a political and symbolic dilemma for the most avid advocates of the War on Terror (or World War IV, if you're a Norman Podhoretz devotee)."
Stepping quickly around Wolcott's Stop-Me-Before-I-Reference-Again slight against Norman Podhoretz's correct estimate of the situation, its clear that Wolcott's Upper West Side dinner parties are going to be in deep mourning for the thousands of Americans that didn't die in New Orleans.
"If only," they will say, "some of those poor, black people could have taken one for the team and cast themselves into the sewage for
Continued...A TOUCHING PLEA: "You know, some people are stealing and they're making a big deal out of it. Oh, they're stealing 20 pair of jeans or they're stealing television sets. Who cares?... Maybe those people are so poor, some of the people who do that they're so poor they've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once." -- Celine Dion
Continued...A SHORT NOTE CONCERNING the financial benefits to Michael Schiavo that will accrue from the death of his wife.
I've seen numerous comments that the money given to Terri following various settlements has been dissipated in paying for hospice care and legal bills over the years. I have no way of knowing how true that is, but I suspect that it is, in the main, the case. I also note that the defenders of the man who now has to rank as the worst husband in America since Bill Clinton never tire of pointing out that "he turned down a million dollars " to transfer Terri's guardianship to the family. Again, I have no way of knowing how true that is, but if he did it was a shrewd move and, as we observe Michael Schiavo in his television appearances, we can see he is a shrewd man.
What I do have some sense of is how much money Michael Schiavo stands to make if, and only if, his wife dies. It is, for a man, with a fresh new wife and two children, substantial. Having worked as an editor for Houghton Mifflin and as a literary agent, I have some sense of the price the publishing and media worlds would put on his story. It will be significantly more than 30 pieces of silver.
Continued...
Go where desertion is no crime --
Where loyalty is dead
Where sad disaster gives no pain;
There is the Copperhead.
Go where foul scorn is heaped upon
Our noble boys, who go
To stand a wall of fire between
Us and our traitor foe:
Go where bold Grant's revilers are --
Where Burnside is defamed;
Where Banks and Butler -- noble names! --
In scorn alone are named:
Go where patriotic pride,
Honor, and Truth are dead --
Where our success brings but despair;
There is the Copperhead.
-- From "Where is the Copperhead? "
Harper's Weekly, September, 1863
VICTOR HANSON, being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, mentions in passing, "If you go back and look at the Summer of 1864, when people were calling for Lincoln's impeachment, the Copperhead movement..."
Copperheads? That sounds familiar and the poem above has a certain, shall I say, resonance. How familiar and resonant? Well.... read on.
Continued...
Democratic Caucus, circa 2005
"SHREIK THERAPY" as defined by Richard Baehr in "The Democrats sign up with the anti-Semites " @ The American Thinker:
Continued...IN THE WASHINGTON POST'S REPORT,Schiavo Autopsy Shows Severe Brain Damage, the lead to the story by staff writers David Brown and William Branigin reads: "Terri Schiavo died of the effects of a profound and prolonged lack of oxygen to her brain on a day in 1990, but what caused that event isn't known and may never be, the physician who performed her autopsy said today."
Continued...A THREE STEP GUIDE TO COMPREHENDING SIMPLE ANTI-TERROR METHODS
Democrats Beat Quick Retreat on Call to Censure President : "Senate Democrats on Monday blocked an immediate vote on a call by one of their own to censure President Bush for his eavesdropping program.... Democrats, while distancing themselves from Mr. Feingold's assertion that the president "plainly broke the law" in approving surveillance without warrants, said his proposal merited more consideration than a hasty vote."
Okay. Let's consider it. Let's make it very, very simple so that even Rep. Feingold can understand it.
1. If you are in Seattle and you are calling your mother in California, you have a right to expect that that call will not be listened to by the Government under the current laws of the United States.
2. If you are in Seattle and are calling your friend in Paris, France, your call is an international call and you and your friend do not enjoy the same freedom from being listened to as you do if your call is local or state to state.
3. And how do you know what sort of call you are making? Look at your phone bill. Your telephone company makes it easy to spot the international calls. Many even label them "International."
That should be simple enough. Even a Cheese Head could understand it. You'd think.
FILE UNDER: "DEMOCRATS' SPITE KNOWS NO LIMITS" It felt strange to me to actually vote Republican last November after over 30 years as a Democrat, but when I read the endless litany of incidents and speeches and actions of this once great party, I sometimes feel as if I've escaped from Mordor. Today's proof of the continuing psychosis that grips the party is:
Marines at nearby Marine Corps Reserve Center say on Tuesday morning, the director of security at the UAW told them that while they support the troops, Marines driving foreign vehicles or sporting a President George Bush bumper sticker were no longer welcome to park there.I live just north of the Camp Pendleton Marine base in Oceanside, California. Unlike most other towns on the coast of Southern California, Oceanside is a working and military class town. You don't see the multi-million dollar resorts, the endless McMansion developments at $3 million per house, or the curb-to-curb Mercedes. You see Harley franchises, pawnshops, USOs, thrift stores, check-cashing scam stores, and the other items common to a town where people and families are just getting by. And yes, you see a lot of 15 to 20 year old cars in various states of decay. You don't see them because the drivers wouldn't like a brand new Lincoln Navigator, but because they can barely make the payments.U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Joe Rutledge told Action News, "We received a phone call from the UAW, who support us by letting us park down at their facility. They called and said they weren't going to allow or they would turn away some vehicles."
A spokesman for the UAW released a statement to Action News which reads:
"While reservists certainly have the right to drive non-union made vehicles and display bumper stickers touting the most anti-worker, anti-union president since the 1920s, that doesn't mean they have the right to park in a lot owned by members of the UAW."
As U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Lee Cooper explained, "We're very appreciative, but on the other hand, it's kind of discriminating between, let's say a lance corporal going through college can only afford a 15-year-old vehicle and it happens to be a Nissan."
-- WXYZ: Local News -- Detroit
Continued...
PETER SINGER, WHO HOLDS THE MOST IRONIC TITLE IN ACADEME ("Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University",) KEEPS A FAQ that defines the new absolute bottom of "morality" coming in from the academy. If you don't think that the problem of evil in the world is real, listen carefully to this "educated" person:
Q. You have been quoted as saying: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." Is that quote accurate?I bet that you never thought that a newborn baby doesn't "want to go on living," did you? According to the depraved mind of Singer this would seem to be the case.A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term "person" (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.
In this you can see the fundamental argument for freedom of speech. We need to know these thoughts so we can gauge just how deep the depravity of some of our fellow citizens goes.
==
Update: This gem from Axel in the comments:
Singer has his criterion both muddled and backwards. An adult, on average, has already bungled his or her future, whereas a baby, even with hypothesized defects, is full of potential. This is why it is always worse to kill a baby than to push a professor into the path of a runaway septic-tank-pumping truck.
I WAS A BIT TOO HARSH on old Hunter Thompson the other day when I observed in Hunter Thompson: What A Man! Yeah, Right. that he was a selfish bastard for leaving his shot-through-the-mouth corpse for his wife and family to clean up. Yup, too harsh by half. We now learn that his family actually liked having his corpse around as, I guess, a conversation piece as they got snozzled.
According to a bizarre story in the Rocky Mountain News within hours of his death
Hunter S. Thompson still heard the ice clinking.What can one say other than that a man with the back of his head blown out will always, in a sense, control the attentions of a drinking party. I suppose it would be uncharitable of me to note that designating the cheap blend of Chivas Regal as a favored elixir does not speak well of the tastes of the departed, so I won't. Instead, I'd like to reflect on the loving nature of the gathering.The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier.
But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice.
"It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here."
Old memories. "Hey, remember when he..." "And then there was the time that..." Toasts. Clinking ice. Refills on the house. "Hunter, what's up? You haven't touched your drink. Here, let me help you. Oops, leakage. Well, can't be helped I suppose."
The "piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter" is a nice touch, don't you think? The very stuff of which legends are crafted. Of course it would have been much better had the paper been half-filled with "All work and no play makes Hunter a dull boy...," but you can't think of everything when whipping together an impromptu apres-morte tableau.
Present in the house when Thompson pulled the trigger were:
Juan Thompson and his wife, Jennifer Winkel Thompson, were up from Denver at the property known as Owl Farm for one of their weekend visits. It was typical: They went sledding and watched The Maltese Falcon Saturday night. They were with their son, 6-year-old Will.News reports don't say if the 6-year-old grandson was part of the apres-morte drinking party. If not, one wonders where he was and who was taking care of him.
As for Thompson's wife of the moment, she is quoted in a burst of obviousness as saying:
"I always knew that Hunter was going to die before me," Anita Thompson, 32, said of her 67-year-old husband. "I'd accepted that. I just did not know it was going to be like this. I would rather have him back."This yearning, however, did not keep her from finding the beauty of the moment:
After wading through the police officers outside, Anita Thompson recalls seeing her husband's dead body for the first time. "He was sitting in the chair when they brought me in, and I got to hug him and kiss him and rub his legs," she said. "All the anger was gone when I saw him."On the other hand, since she obviously can't have him back, keeping the house will make up for her loss:
Anita Thompson believes she will stay on at the expansive property and famous house that was an ever-changing archive of political, literary and name-your-category items. And she will continue to help administer Hunter Thompson's works.In like, maybe, 50 or 60 years and two to four other husbands."I'm going to keep on working for Hunter," she said. "He wanted this. He made sure that I was in place to continue on. I'll just do my job until I can be with him again."
In the meantime, Prosit! Skol! Have another hit.
What a family! It's dysfunctional enough to make you want to, well, just shoot yourself.
Howard Dean Announces His One-Point Program
for Party Renewal, February 12,2005
EXCERPT FROM 2010's MOST DOWNLOADED BOOK, "THE PARTY'S OVER: How Howard Dean Drove Old Demos Down" by Chief Justice Colin Powell (Random House, A Karl Rove Book, New York, 2009) -- Dean's Rise to Power
In the November 2004 elections the Democrats again failed to get a majority of seats in the congress and the presidency eluded them again as well. As in 2002, their share of the vote fell. Dean had contemplated running a small maple syrup and roadside pancake franchise in Vermont. But then he was rescued by George Soros disguised as the Democratic National Committee.Terry McAuliffe (an employee of Soros) was Chairman, but he could not get enough support in the DNC to keep his socks up. Soros and Moveon.org were having to govern by remote control via Hillary Clinton and their batteries were running low. Bill Clinton was, frankly, just shagged out and no use at all. SorosMoveon first offered Dean the post of sergeant-at-arms if he promised to scream first and take questions afterward.
Dean refused -- he demanded to be made the Chairman of the Democratic Party or he would take his computers and his 50,000 young and buff voters and go home. So Soros, the Clintons, and Kennedy took a risk. On 12 February 2005 the DNC made Dean the Chairman of the Democratic Party. They thought they could control Dean -- how wrong they were.
In the end, Dean did not TAKE power at all -- he was given it.
Mark down Joe Scarborough as one man who is not afraid of "the unwritten blacklist."
"There's a cancer growing at CNN and it's time to cut it out.... One of the top newsmakers in American spent his time in front of the world's most influential people telling them that American men and women in uniform were deliberately targeting journalists for assassination.... One fact is not in dispute, this CNN leader has defamed the honor and integrity of our brave men and women.... It's CNN's Jordan who is the real assassin blowing away the reputations of 150,000 troops some of who don't know tonight if they'll live to see another sunrise... Eason Jordan should be fired."
Trey Jackson's captured the whole segment for viewing at Jackson's Junction: "Eason Jordan should be fired" If you haven't seen it yet, see it now.
And pass it on.
[Click for full image]
Found on the AIM Council on Security and Intelligence web page is this 1994 letter from Susan Shawn Harjo of the Morning Star Institute regarding the ethnic identity of Ward Churchill, once a member of one tribe or another, and now fairly exposed as a fake, a phony and a fraud. (This of course will result in his speaking fees increasing faster than his bookings at colleges around the country and in France.)
Continued..."But of course we support our troops! How can you possibly think of us as bad Americans?"
"Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers. Several hundred students walked out of classes at several Seattle colleges and universities to protest the inauguration of President Bush." -- AP
[HT -- Pool of Thought via Smash @ The Indepundit and Mudville Gazette .]
And who better to give the Michael the tip than our favorite fashionista, Manolo
[For more on bad chins that the compulsion to disguise them see our meditation on the chin of Josh Marshall at Marshalling the Spin with Chin Music Yes, it is a small obsession. What's it to you?]
With the net-wide advent, yesterday, of "certain documents" concerning "certain revolting crimes" of which a "certain pop-star" has been accused, it is clear the world's soul is about to be assaulted by the our news media for what will not only be a very long time, but seem like eternity cubed on a daily basis.
All those involved in exposing us to this disease of the soul know full well what they are about to do, but they cannot control themselves. Dog meet Vomit.
All the honor and credibillity the media garnered from the coverage of the Tsunami disaster will be flushed from the buffers of history within 24 hours after this "certain trial" begins. Grown men and women will consume weeks of their and our lives by discussing the nature of adolescent jockey shorts. Odious practices and disgusting fluids will be repeatedly reported on with the chortles barely concealed.
It will be mainstream media at its worst. It will find a new bottom below the previous bottom that was well below all bottoms known to humanity less than ten years ago. In fact, the word "bottom" will gain a whole new meaning and inflection.
It will also be a time in which the blogsphere finds a new bottom since it is, like it or not, attached to the dying white whale of mainsteam media like a remora with mad-cow disease. The blogsphere will bleat and fume, but it will still follow MSM down into the depths.
Except for this and other small refuges here and there, the deluge of disgusting reports and comments on this "trial" will rise until all are consumed.
In the coming months and years of the looming disgraceful episode, this site and others like it will hold the line for whatever shreds of decency and civilization are left to us.
It shall be the policy and the promise of this site that this brief "Soul Safety Notice" will be the last allusion to and report about the debased and meaningless "trial of the century, so far."
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