“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.” -- The New Yorker


(I've seen cases where it is diminished by 87 percent.) Normally sensible people who do not, as a rule, appreciate being being made fools of stand idly by as someone tells them that a video of some charlatan climbing naked up a scaffolding while applying vaseline to sensitive parts of his body is "the most important American artist of his generation." -- Roger's Rules » Annals of the art world: everything old is new again
What difference does it make what the IRS's politically-motivated audits tell us about the tyranny of the federal government?
What difference does it make that Obama publicly set the tone for the targeting of "enemies"? What difference does it make that this was purposely withheld till after the election? And what difference does it make that Obama has failed even now to fire (for real, not just those on the brink of leaving anyway) anyone involved? -- neo-neocon, Ever wonder what a "real scandal" would look like?

is the IRS scandal. I know why, too. Doing so would force them to admit one of two unpalatable things:
(1) either they think it's okay for the IRS to be used for partisan purposes or (2) they would have to acknowledge that conservatives were right that Obama's administration is corrupt and that big government is a dangerous infringement on individual liberties. They choose silence. -- Bookworm Room , Meanwhile, the view of the scandals from the Left

Butcher Feeds Marijuana To Pigs To Create True High-Quality Meat

Leonard: We did it! 73 is the... Chuck Norris of numbers!
Sheldon: Chuck Norris wishes! In binary, 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001, exactly the same. All Chuck Norris gets you backwards is Sirron Kcuhc!
Raj: Just for the record, when you enter 5,318,008 in a calculator, upside down it spells BOOBIES! -- The Big Bang Theory - The Alien Parasite Hypothesis Quotes
Something tells me the same person who pushed the Tea Party as a target also pushed the anti-Muslim video.
It's the same person who sees Ft. Hood as workplace violence, and views America as a bigger problem in the world than its vile enemies. It's the same guy everyone thinks is cool; the same guy everyone wants to be near. It's the same guy who makes you feel good about yourself, as long as you agree with him, and don't rock the boat. -- Gut Check: Intervention
-- which is why they bay so loudly, to convince us that the night is coming and they have all the power -- and rising on ours. I think in the end we win, they lose. Get up off the floor. This is no time to give up." -- According To Hoyt


Marilyn Monroe photographed by John Vachon, 1953 @ Mme Scherzo.

City-billies are what’s left in dying cities with diminishing populations. They’re the people left behind... the people who can’t leave.
They’re the folks that liberals say they want to help, as they pack up their Subarus and get the hell out of Dodge (or in Hardcore Pawn’s case, Detroit). Hardcore Pawn is a thirty minute tour of the city-billy life: the constant line of assorted folk selling everything from broken computers to beat-up construction equipment in the sprawling pawn shop, reminding you that every city targeted by the helping hand of government ends in abject misery. -- Gut Check: Intervention


Noonan, This Is No Ordinary Scandal: The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.
It's the Sperry label you see at the beginning of the video, but Justin Brands owns it, and Berkshire Hathaway owns that.
That's Warren Buffett's bailiwick. Warren Buffett only buys things that have some strategic advantage someone's missing out on. A "Made in Maine" tag seems to be all you need to sell boat shoes in Japan. Who knew? Then again, Berkshire Hathaway used to make shirts when Buffett bought it. If I was working in one of his factories, I wouldn't buy any green bananas. -- Sippican Cottage: Billy Mays With Acromegaly And A Palsied Makeup Artist
WASHINGTON —Reacting to the number of major scandals currently plaguing the White House, a somewhat confused American populace told reporters Friday that yeah, sure, they’re totally outraged or whatever about what’s currently going on in Washington. -- The O NewsNetwork

Generally speaking, highly trained security dudes
do not want to even consider their idiotic on-camera “talent” charges anywhere near weapons—much less imagine the possibility of their operating one. During one tense moment, I was blithely reminded that “selector is on the left, clip release on the right. Extra clips in the seat back—and above you.” -- Anthony Bourdain, LIBYA
He drinks heavily, and the combination of alcohol and imminent death has a disinhibiting effect. He begins speaking his mind at campaign events. Then he begins rapping his mind. We're not making this up:
"Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain't gonna work, no sir, not those / 'Cause the thing that's the same in every one of these / Is these m-----f---ers there, the insurance companies! . . . Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word--SOCIALISM!"

In the 19th and 20th centuries ordinary Europeans were hurt, not helped, by their colonial empires. Economic growth in Russia was slowed, not accelerated, by Soviet central planning. American Progressive regulation and its European anticipations protected monopolies of transportation like railways and protected monopolies of retailing like High-Street shops and protected monopolies of professional services like medicine, not the consumers. “Protective” legislation in the United States and “family-wage” legislation in Europe subordinated women. State-armed psychiatrists in America jailed homosexuals, and in Russia jailed democrats. Some of the New Deal prevented rather than aided America’s recovery from the Great Depression. -- Deirdre McCloskey. Factual Free-Market Fairness | Bleeding Heart Libertarians
Bob "Rosebud" Butt is credited with inventing the Long Island Iced Tea while he was a bartender at the Oak Beach Inn on Long Island in the 1970s.
The Obama administration may be the first since World War 2 to attempt a new and innovative policy best described as "trust me to lie to you".
If you were astute then you wouldn't believe us. If you were sophisticated you would make the default assumption that the Iran policy was for public consumption, since only rubes and simpletons could have possibly believed that the Obama administration was telling the truth.... What happens when an administration makes dishonesty and untrustworthiness a feature? What occurs when the President conditions us to subliminally think — perhaps in spite of ourselves — that in God we Trust but of Obama we can expect nothing but lies? What then? Well we’re about to find out. -- Belmont Club »

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
-- The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. - Slate Magazine
No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet [But a great deal of benefit is to be had by sharp limits of "expert" bullshit in diet.]
KFC smugglers bring buckets of chicken through Gaza tunnels: Gazans with a hankering for the Colonel's secret recipe can call up a delivery company and get some finger lickin' food smuggled hot from Egypt in just three hours.

My score was around 23,600 points.
Perhaps that is because by attempting to quickly topple the president and short-cut a path the White House, the attackers end up distracting themselves from their own primary mission: discrediting the president's ideology and substantive agenda in the eyes of the public, and elevating their own."" -- Why scandal politics don't work - The Week

There is no “what everybody thinks.” They’re shouting really loudly through the remaining channels to give the impression they’re winning.
But the mirror has cracked from side to side and their doom has come upon them. They know it. That’s why they try to sound so confident and secure. -- VA Viper: Must read: Get Up Off The Floor
"Bush made his share of mistakes, no doubt, but weaponizing the Executive to destroy political opponents was not one of them.
"It is also not fair to say there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. I can complain about them being inept and squishy all day long but the differences are real. Not one GOP congressman voted for the stimulus and only a single poor soul voted for Obamacare, iirc. And that was when Obama's popularity was at its peak, a few months after his 2008 landslide. They didn't need more principles, they needed more voters.
"One way the left got so much done in the last 30 years is, they like to win. They don't worry constantly about the purity of their candidates, and even if they do, they support him anyway. On liberal blogs, you don't find people muttering how they will sit this election out because liberal x said something non-liberal to group y because he wanted their votes. He is their guy.
"Conservatives can bash Bush and say he was "just as bad" and liberals will feel vindicated, but they will never say the same thing about their guy. You mention Carter to a lib and he just counterattacks." -- Posted by: El Gordo inSide-Lines: "Occasionally, I miss the Bush years."
