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July 31, 2009
Mark Menjivar’s inventive exploration of hunger, “You Are What You Eat,” for which he photographed the contents of strangers’ refrigerators.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (1)
Addicted to Left? There is HOPE in Apparatchiks Anonymous1. We admitted we were powerless over the intoxicating dreams of socialism, and that our lives and governments had become unmanageable.[Get the other 11 steps at the link.]
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:22 PM | Your Say (0)
He saw a dirty street and created a sanitation department. He saw a house on fire and created a fire department. He saw sick people and founded a hospital. He started our first lending library. He saw people needing an education and founded a university.
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:45 PM | Your Say (2)
Night of the Buddhist Leeches "A little before midnight that night, I awoke from a dream to a slimy feeling on my right forearm...."Posted by Vanderleun at 3:42 PM | Your Say (0)
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Posted by Vanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (0)
More proof that Washington is just Hollywood for ugly people: Maxine “I bathe in moisturizer” Waters named one of the most beautiful people in Washington, DC. Seriously. For real. Stop laughing.Posted by Vanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (0)
HOD: Clunker Cash Coffer Catastrophe Causes Congressional Consternation, Conservative ContumelyPosted by Vanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (0)
Obama's short-term memory deficit deepens:"Let's look at the record. I've been in office six months. So far my only tax policy has been to cut taxes for 95 percent of working people. I haven't signed a bill that's raised taxes yet." -- President Obama talking to Business Week, July 2009
"In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to tradeoffs or negotiation -- health care for our children is one of those obligations" -- President Obama signing a tax on cigarettes, February 2009 -- Word Around the Net: Comparative Quotes
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)
"I love the kind of photos that Vogue often does of these women in ball gowns in their kitchens, as if they walk around the house that way all the time," Cindy Sherman says. "I thought, Why don't I do it in my studio? I wanted a big dress that looked like it would knock things over as I moved around, surrounded by tripods, lighting equipment, and things like that." Sherman's self-portrait for Vogue. Narciso Rodriguez ball dress. -- Vogue's Annual Age Issue Featuring Ana Ivanovic, Jenny Lumet, Cindy Sherman, and More
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (0)
Gunboat cyberplomacy: The Home Page of the Consulate General of the United States Jerusalem is all Palestinian all the time. "Israel" (Word or nation) is hard, very hard to find. You might say it doesn't exist at all. (HT: Powerline.)Posted by Vanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (0)
After years of effort and operations, Madonna has finally become the person Michael Jackson always wanted to be.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:13 AM | Your Say (11)
July 30, 2009
All ye know on earth about Der Beerputzing and all ye need to know:Much discussion about a sit-down taking place. Not a single word about what was supposed to be said, what in fact was said, what came of it, who feels all warm and fuzzy about it who didn’t feel warm & fuzzy before. All symbolism. No substance whatsoever. I’ve kibitzed before about this strange, strange, strange preoccupation our modern liberals have with the act of “sitting down to discuss our differences.” I’ve listened to decades of this bullshit, and I’ve yet to hear a syllable about what this — let us call it what it really is — ceremony is actually supposed to do. -- House of Eratosthenes
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:02 PM | Your Say (1)
To [Henry] Gates, this translates intoprizing Lincoln because "he wrestled with his often contradictory feelings," and "faced and confronted his own prejudices, and, to a remarkable extent, overcame them." (What a fine guest on Oprah Lincoln would have been!) By combining different African American perspectives on Lincoln, no matter how mutually exclusive; by quoting friends and putative authorities, black and white, all the way from Harvard to The New Yorker; and by ending on a positive bicentennial note, Gates does his best to get right with Douglass. He is ready for his gig on PBS. Nobody's wrong if everybody's right. -- Who Lincoln Was
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (0)
The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mindis that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell-keeping perfect time for eight minute and thirty three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten year olds, in most cases. The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information [...] -- Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (2)
July 29, 2009
Don't even think about the gift shop: Meguro Parasitological Museum | Atlas ObscuraThe ground floor might seem harmless enough - lights flash on oversize maps of Japan to show where different parasites are present - but go up the stairs and things take a more gruesome turn.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:59 PM | Your Say (0)
SEATTLE — Northwesterners more accustomed to rain and cooler climate sought refuge from a heat wave Wednesday, as Seattle recorded the hottest temperature in its history and Portland fell just 1 degree short of its own record-breaker. The National Weather Service in Seattle recorded 103 degrees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking a previous record of 100 degrees, set in downtown Seattle in 1941 and repeated at the airport in 1994. Jay Albrecht, a Seattle meteorologist with the service, said it's the hottest it has been in Seattle since records dating to 1891.
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:14 PM | Your Say (5)
A cop, a professor and the President walk into a bar.The bartender asks the cop “What’ll it be?”
The cop says “the usual.” The bartender hands the cop a bottle of beer then asks the professor the same question.
The professor says “the usual.”
The bartender places a napkin in front of the professor, puts downs an iced glass and pours a bottle of beer into it, then he turns to the President and asks, “and you sir?”
The President says “the usual.”
The bartender picks up the professor’s drink and puts it in front of the President, serves a round of drinks to all the patrons in the bar, and gives the tab to the cop.
-- Via Matthew M @ neo-neocon
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (0)
"I do not know any wayto explain why God's grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it. But neither do I know any other way to explain how a man like myself-tarnished by life, unprepossessing, not brave-could prevail so far against the powers of the world arrayed almost solidly against him, to destroy him and defeat his truth. In this sense, I am an involuntary witness to God's grace and to the fortifying power of faith." -- Whittaker Chambers:Letter to My Children
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (2)
In a 2004 New Yorker article, Malcom Gladwell lamented the sorry state of modern ketchup, although his piece was much less about the condiment's fall and more about its potential rise.... Ketchup, Gladwell pointed out, had the potential to explode in a similar fashion. But five years later, ketchup is in the same place: Supermarkets still feature the same tiny selection, a handful of restaurants make their own, and tiny gourmet producers barely make a nick in the ketchup market. In fact, it would appear that the fledgling company Gladwell wrote about in his article, World's Best Ketchup, has gone out of business — a Google search for the company primarily brings up links to Gladwell's 2004 article, and a phone number for the business has been disconnected. -- The Smart Set: Playing Ketchup - July 29, 2009
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (3)
Climate Money: The Climate Industry: $79 billion so far – trillions to comeThe US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (0)
Wilkins Micawber, Economist:"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (0)
Autonopia:So many of you were out there ready to go voting for the Chosen One, and so many others instinctively thought to themselves “that’s pretty stupid, but at least nobody else will be harmed by it.” This led to a decision, in too many cases, to stay home on Election Day and watch the teevee.... Who's stupid now? -- House of Eratosthenes
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (0)
Boswell:Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest. -- THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:03 AM | Your Say (2)
July 28, 2009
JOHNSON. 'When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.'Posted by Vanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (0)
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Posted by Vanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (1)
"When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off."President Obama's background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure. What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose. -- RealClearPolitics - A Post-Racial President?
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty AssholesPosted by Vanderleun at 1:41 AM | Your Say (0)
July 27, 2009
While albinos in sub-Saharan Africa have faced discrimination for many years, their situation has become far more dangerous in recent years in Tanzania. Albinos in Tanzania are increasingly targeted by those who would kill them for their body organs, limbs and even hair to be used in luck potions by others seeking wealth and good fortune in business and professional circles. According to local residents, witch doctors use the organs and bones in concoctions to divine for diamonds in the soil, while fishermen have been known to weave albino hair into their nets hoping for a big catch on Lake Victoria. -- The Big PictureEvery time I think I've seen or heard of the depths of human depravity, something like this disabuses me. It is beyond my capacity to imagine a punishment suitable for men who do this, and traffic in it. Whatever it might be I'd like to help mete it out.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (3)
Not to be missed: neo-neocon A video on Gatesgate that stands for itselfThis woman, Kelly King, should run for President. She's truly articulate, as opposed to the surface smoothness and careful word calibration of our President. And her affect matches her rhetoric; she burns with the slow fire of the knowledge that she's telling the truth.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:53 PM | Your Say (0)
In which we show, once and for all, that global warming is the bunk:Every time we hear someone huckster bemoan the big bucks Exxon-Mobil pays to fund studies that debunk global warming, we wonder how much the government is spending to “bunk” the theory. Finally, thanks to Aussie blogger Joanne Nova, all the numbers have been compiled in one handy, dandy report. It clearly demonstrates that Exxon’s dollars pale in comparison to what’s being spent by the American government’s global warming research machine. -- Cold cash cures global warming. Cool. | I Hate the Media - Fun with Liberal Media Bias
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:48 PM | Your Say (0)
In Seattle, Global Warming is back, baby! And for this we are profoundly grateful.Posted by Vanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (5)
Saw a good bumper sticker today: Don't blame me, I voted for the American! -- Twitter / Fla CrackerPosted by Vanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (0)
I’ll be ready to concede that “race” — defined, per Obama, Holder, Ogletree, and Gates, as racism and skin color — remains a significant factor in social outcomes when the same proportion of black children as white children are raised in two-parent, married households without greatly lowering the black poverty rate, or when black crime drops to white and Asian levels without proportionally reducing the black prison population. Until we conduct that experiment, though — which is wholly within the capacity of individuals to do — I’ll remain skeptical that the race activists’ favorite “race issues” are predominantly the consequence of white Americans’ atavistic bigotry. -- The Reality of Black Crime - Heather Mac Donald - The Corner on National Review Online
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (0)
"By the company he keeps..."Honestly, does Barack Obama have any close friends who are not race-baiting, anti-white, America-haters? -- Gateway Pundit
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (0)
The Self-Con of ComicCon:Hmm. I wish to tread lightly here. If a wag is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, I can't see how being mean to these souls is appropriate. I do not wish to harm the harmless. They wouldn't care anyway. Their worldview is all about embracing derision. Not strong in the face of criticism, exactly. More like learning to like the taste of sand. -- Sippican Cottage: Slipping From Caricature To Cartoon: ComicCon 2009
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (0)
July 26, 2009
The Parable of the Tribes:Ideological Tribe A: We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained without regard to race, creed, color. Ideological Tribe B: We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained with special regard to race, creed, color. -- Cobb: Professor Gates & The Racial Purpose Driven Life
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:36 PM | Your Say (0)
File under: "So What?"
There's your reason so many black men are in prison: Black on black crime. -- Don Surber Memo to NYT: Half of homicide victims are black
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (0)
If the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall, what other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled? Global warming, you say? You mean it might be harder to model climate change 20 years ahead than house prices 5 years ahead? Surely not – how could so many climatologists be wrong? -- Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:57 AM | Your Say (0)
He Steps. You Fetchit.You see fear in the eyes of white guys around Obama. Brian Williams has his eyes cast down. Tim Geithner has this little head bow, looking at Obama with fear in his eyes while keeping his head bowed down. They look for all the world like Step ‘n Fetchit. -- American Thinker: Indulging craziness
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:16 AM | Your Say (0)
Must see TV: Barack Obama, Talking CrapPosted by Vanderleun at 1:20 AM | Your Say (0)
Among the fictions we accept today as self-evident are those that Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and that they owe obedience to government only if it is their own agent, deriving its authority from their consent. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate these propositions by factual evidence. It might be somewhat easier, by the kind of evidence we usually require for the proof of any debatable proposition, to demonstrate that men are not created equal and that they have not delegated authority to any government. But self-evident propositions are not debatable, and to challenge these would rend the fabric of our society. -- Edmund S. Morgan's Inventing the People (1988)
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:05 AM | Your Say (0)
Progressivism has become a veritable religion of quack goverment.Its policies are always counterintuitive: it preaches leniency as the cure for crime, timidity as military genius, profligacy as the acme of economics, "special education" as the heart of pedagogy, indulgence as oversight, appeasement as diplomacy. As it goes from one disaster to the next, progressivism never considers the possibility that the obvious, rather than its opposite, could be the case. Occam's Butterknife is the only tool in its kitchen.
So everywhere that socialism or communism triumphs, we see the same phenomena: hypertrophy of the bureaucracy, destruction and/or assimilation of organizations outside the State, expansion and widespread delinquency of the underclass, decimation of the working class, decay and disappearance of manufacturing industries, persecution of upper classes and successful minorities, destruction of old cities and production of hideous totalitarian architecture, ubiquitous depression both economic and psychiatric. These effects are not pleasant to anyone, progressive or otherwise. But their production does not slacken. -- Unqualified Reservations: Carlyle in the 20th century: fascism and socialism
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:59 AM | Your Say (0)
The Left is the faction of the professors, the scientists and the scholars, the cognitive elite. It is the faction of the true ultra-rich, the old money, the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and Fords, and their trustafarian hipster junkie grandchildren. It is the faction of the journalists and the bureaucrats, the activists and astroturfers - the wielders of power. And, of course, it is the faction of movie stars and other celebrities, who for all their flaws have climbed a long greasy pole. The closer you get to the top in a democratic society, the more pervasive socialism becomes. -- Unqualified Reservations: Carlyle in the 20th century: fascism and socialism
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:56 AM | Your Say (0)
July 25, 2009
H. Gates, literary moron and "scholar:"I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale. As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? -- Mark Steyn: Obama knows 'stupidly' when he doesn't see it
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (0)
And they got one!The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. -- The American Spectator : We've Figured Him Out
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:50 PM | Your Say (0)
Obama don't know much about history (accidentally on-purpose)Is Obama's specific error about Hirohito important? Not really; it's quite minor. But it's another indication of Obama's view of history: a lot of dramatic images (or, as he said, "notions") and very little detail or understanding of what's going on, or the need to do so. And I suspect Obama is ignorant in the worst way: he's ignorant of the extent of his ignorance. Or perhaps he's not ignorant at all, but purposely twisting the truth. Or maybe each, at different times. -- neonocon @ American Thinker: Obama on Afghanistan: victory is a four-letter word
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (2)
Think the AMA actually represents the majority of doctors? Think again. Health Care Links | The Doctor Is InThe AMA is a bunch of elitist fools who are only interested in schmoozing with the politicians and pretending they are the voice of medicine. They are not, which is why their membership rolls look like the New York Times readership stats. Worthless traitors, as dangerous as they are ineffective.... more than 85% of its $282 million annual revenue comes from sources other than membership dues.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (0)
64% of Californians say illegal aliens strain budget, 25% are confirmed idiots @ I Hate the MediaPosted by Vanderleun at 12:48 AM | Your Say (0)
You Stay Here While I Swim and Get Us Some Universal Health Care by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)The statistics are sobering: the cost of American heath care is rising almost as fast as the cold, briny water bubbling up from our floorboards. So far we have already lost the 8-track player and several Vic Damone tapes, and if allowed to continue these trends threaten to engulf all of us within the Oldsmobile. We must quickly wake up and face the facts: inaction is no longer an option. That is why it is critical for the future of all the occupants that one of us swim off and get us some kind of free health care program. I nominate me.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:46 AM | Your Say (0)
July 24, 2009
The first of the last laughs? Did you hear the one about single payer health care coverage? @ WESTSOUND MODERNIt has been my experience that leaders can overcome many things in the course of their tenure. Laughter of the sort I'm starting to hear from independents and conservative democrat friends who cautiously supported Obama in the hope that he would bridge the differences between conservatives and liberals and usher in a new bi-partisan politics is not one of them however.
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (0)
Poker Faces:It has been said that the true measure of being a successful politician in this country can be boiled down to whether or not one can play five card poker successfully. After witnessing president Obama take what seemed a very strong healthcare and energy policy hand into the final round of betting, ask for four on the final draw, and then wager like he's holding aces full of kings, I'm thinking that perhaps good King Barack is more a Three-card Monte than a poker man. -- I'll take four cards @ WESTSOUND MODERN
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (0)
Pols Picking Your Pocket Again. Those cell-phone taxes to "improve" 911 service? A joke. On you.More than $200 million collected from cellphone users for upgrades to the 911 system has been diverted in the last two years to plug statebudgetholes, keep campaign promises and, in at least one case, buy police uniforms, an Associated Press analysis has found. -- Cash-strapped states raid 911 funds[HT: Surber ]
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:06 AM | Your Say (0)
July 23, 2009
Rant O' the Month: Star-Class Ranter Pat Condell unloads both barrels on leftoid surrender monkeys.Posted by Vanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (3)
July 22, 2009
Note for historians on the current Racialist outrage and embarrassment in Cambridge!The first cannot be properly investigated in the present climate of racial hypersensitivity, so I bequeath it to a future historian of American culture. You can scarcely find a mention of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that does not assure you of his eminence and scholarly distinction. Don't believe it. To call him second rate is a calumny upon respectable mediocrity. He is a desperately pedestrian scholar who, except for the accident of skin color, would be lucky to be teaching at the University of Southern North Dakota, Hoople. Instead he is the Yada-yada-yada Professor of racial grievance &c &c at Harvard. Some future anthropologist will set the record straight.
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:26 PM | Your Say (0)
In the year of the Unicorn:The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.
For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. -- Isaiah 34
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:57 PM | Your Say (1)
Another first for Obama!Obama is the very first president whose campaign persona was a studied lie and a con. In his campaign, Obama presented himself as a different person -- different not only than the person he has become, but different than the person he has been in the past. -- neo-neocon Obama won a mandate -- for what?
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (1)
The Bleat, where Lileks and others "sit upon the ground, / And tell sad stories of the death of appliances."Googling around I find I am not alone. Of course you'll always find lots of posts kvetching about appliances, swearing they'll NEVER BUY IT AGAIN, and the company DOESN'T CARE and next time they're buying the other brand - which has its own 40-page Google result for customers enflamed beyond reason. Things break, some units go bad, people extrapolate. But I found a page that described a recall for an earlier version, due to some units, um, BURSTING ON FIRE. Now. It takes a special sort of perversity for a dishwasher, so concerned with water and its salutary attributes, to catch on fire. -- ｻ Wednesday, July 22
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (0)
July 21, 2009
How to Make a Car Last Three Hundred Thousand Miles Solid advice from Morgan. It's working for me and I've got 180,000 miles to go.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:14 PM | Your Say (1)
And the Pennsylvania resident in the most dire need of an ass-kicking this week isWilliam Nickerson Helps Keeps The Streets Of Haverford Township Free From Peddlers!A man in Pennsylvania named William Nickerson called the cops on a group of 7 kids that were peddling a substance door to door in his neighborhood……..lemonade. According to the report:
The responding officer - who was unavailable, whom Viola would not identify, and whose name and badge number were blacked out of the police report - invoked a township ordinance against vending without a permit. What the officer didn’t realize, Viola said, is that the law doesn’t apply to anyone younger than 16.
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (0)
As US forces withdraw to Iraq bases, Iraqui Army volunteers to go fuck itself.Fadhil told The Associated Press about two occasions in which Iraqi troops turned down U.S. requests to move around the capital until they had Iraqi escorts, and one instance to conduct a raid, which the Iraqis carried out themselves.
“They are now more passive than before,” he said of U.S. troops. “I also feel that the Americans soldiers are frustrated because they used to have many patrols, but now they cannot. Now, the American soldiers are in prison-like bases as if they are under house-arrest.” -- Iraq Col.: Rules for U.S. are like house arrest - MarineCorpsTimes.comWell, okay, let them.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:42 AM | Your Say (0)
July 20, 2009
Say Goodnight Hillary: The Decline and Fall of Hillary Clinton "Goodnight Hillary."Posted by Vanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (0)
Too late to wise up about the "Wise Latina"Trusting the academic records of a race activist - especially when not actually disclosed, but merely attested to - is credulous beyond belief. Behind any Sotomayor is an army of activist professors whose commitment to la lucha is, shall we say, slightly greater than their commitment to the academic integrity of Princeton. At least, in the athlete's case, his coaches and his professors are different people.
This is what is truly remarkable about Judge Sotomayor: at every stage in her career, her success is plausibly and parsimoniously explained by her mere ancestry. In every institution in which she has produced a record of excellence, her biology below the neck is a sufficient explanation of that record. As historians, we cannot even exclude the possibility that she got her Princeton A's because someone helped her with her papers. We have no evidence for this, but we also have no evidence against it - and we are writing history, not conducting a criminal trial. -- Unqualified Reservations: Evidence in current history
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:26 PM | Your Say (1)
"A nation of stunted pygmies ruled by rapacious moles."Conservatism's relentless crusades in the culture wars and demands for federal fiscal sense obscure the cold, hard fact that weâve been nothing more than our governmentâs servants for a good seventy years. One desperate generation sold our freedom and master status in return for the shackles of false security. These men put aside every lesson bred deep in their bones for cheap handouts by mendacious power mongers of the political class. They hung their heads, abdicated their power and offered over their progeny's precious freedom for pennies on the dollar. Brave men died to give Americans the power to control government, craven bastards freely gave it away for soft pats and false promises. - Prometheus' Rock @ Jaded Haven
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (0)
Back to the Moon!If America wants to get back on the right track, scientific space mission-wise, we need to once again pick an inspiring, audacious goal, and man it with the kind of inspirational crew to make it happen. At long last, let us realize mankind's most cherished dream -- sending the entire United States Congress to the Moon by 2010.
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:18 PM | Your Say (0)
The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.
The release of the update - usually scheduled for mid-July - has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess. -- My Way News - White House putting off release of budget update
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (0)
Such a deal! Statement from Agriculture Secretary Tom VilsackThe references to "2 pound frozen ham sliced" are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy "2 pounds of ham" are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound.Meanwhile, this week at the Food Lion of Asheville, South Carolina and elsewhere...
HT: Charlie Foxtrot: The Best Ham Sandwich...Evah!!
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (0)
This -->PAGE <-- is, without a doubt, the most terrifying thing to be found on the Internet. Stare at it for sixty seconds and the horror will overwhelm you. Two minutes and your teeth will explode. Five minutes and you will run from the room with your hair on fire screaming, "I got the fear! I got the FEAR!" HT: Belmont ClubPosted by Vanderleun at 12:03 AM | Your Say (1)
July 19, 2009
In our late canvass half of the nation passionately believed that in silver lay salvation, the other half as passionately believed that that way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to the bottom -- came out empty. Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too -- and didn't arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:42 PM | Your Say (0)
Seems to me it's way too early for his "Bring it on!" moment."I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, 'Well, this is Obama's economy,'" the president said. "That's fine. Give it to me!" -- Obama losing some support among nervous DemsFrom your lips to God's ear.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (1)
Let's face it, Obama is simply far too calculating, committed and cold to ever be thought of as a "flaming asshole." He's something of a different order entirely. But every day in every way this guy is the walking, talking definition of the term:
Biden's "gaffes" are anything but -- they're simply what the administration is really thinking. Truer words have never been babbled. -- Lileks @ The New York Post
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:20 PM | Your Say (1)
Some animals are more equal than others: "Having grown up on a farm, OBAMA Health Care sounds a lot like selective the breeding of livestock." -- @hiphopgrandpa on TwitterPosted by Vanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (0)
The comics industry's fascination with the First Family takes an interesting turn next week with the debut of The First Daughter, which casts the child of a fictional (yet familiar) president as an action hero. The Keenspot Entertainment comic stars Tasha -- not Sasha -- Tasker as the teen daughter of a president who's "inspired in equal parts by Barack Obama and Arnold Schwarzenegger." [!!] While exploring her new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Tasha discovers a secret room, and soon begins to display special abilities.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:53 AM | Your Say (0)
July 18, 2009
Rant of the Month: Whoa! This guy has got it going on. He's hammering every note on the anti-Obama piano. Right down to white riot, "show us the birth certificate," and singing, "Obama and Larry Sinclair had a steamy love affair." I'm sure he's "on the list."Posted by Vanderleun at 10:36 PM | Your Say (11)
When actions have consequences you're not planning on:Dog shit, when travelling through the atmosphere at high speed won'tfollow a pure ballistic path toward the intended target but instead fans out into a wide kill zone, much like a shot gun blast. Unfortunately for a few of the patrons at the sidewalk cafe, and ultimately for the homeowner, the outermost two or three tables at the cafe fell within this kill zone. -- Urban Doggie Style @ WESTSOUND MODERNBe sure to read what happens next. Most satisfying.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (0)
Neoneocon on why most Americans will always respect Walter Cronkite. Especially those of us who saw it live:See the video; it's in the last 45 seconds that Cronkite delivers the official word on JFK's death. He shows his grief and anger by pressing his lips together tightly and doing a repetitive bit of business with his glasses, taking them off and on, off and on. A consummate pro, he never really falters. But it clearly costs him a great deal to maintain his composure:
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (3)
Kindle is evil:If Amazon can remote delete books on your Kindle, and you have no method on the device for backing that data up, since the e-book files purchased from Amazon cannot be transferred to a PC or any other storage device without violating the Digital Milennium Copyright Act and other laws due to the completely closed nature of the Kindle platform, what else is Amazon capable of doing on your Kindle?
It would seem that if it can remote execute instructions and download and delete content on a Kindle, it stands to reason it can inventory ALL content on a Kindle device, such as PDF files, text documents and anything else a Kindle can read. It can also stand to reason that if it can inventory your entire digital library of material stored on that device, that it may even be able to search for key words and phrases and download those to a data warehouse of Amazon’s choosing.
What if someone wrote a work of non-fiction, such as a biographical-tell all of a well-known person or entity, and then sometime down the road after initial publication, the publisher has to redact, retract or change the wording of a book because of litigation or for any other reason? In print, they can issue a second or third printing. The paper books from the initial printings will always be in the hands of the people who bought them, or in libraries. But in electronic form, and in Kindle’s model where the data cannot be externally archived, a publisher can insist on a legal contract with Amazon where they can transparently change editions on you, and you wouldn’t even know it. This could not only happen with books, but with newspapers or magazines on e-subscription.-- JEFF BEZOS IS WATCHING YOU
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (5)
I suspect Barbara Boxer is not a particularly smart woman, and that she is so intellectually deficient (and ideologically obedient) that if anyone were to do to her what she did to Alford (i.e., if anyone had shown her various feminist opinions in order to demonstrate to her that she should not bother to formulate an opinion of her own, because “all of the right sorts of women think in this correct way”) she would not even realize that both her intelligence and her individuality had been dismissed and disrespected. She would just moo and fall in line. And she expects everyone else to moo and fall in line, too.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:41 AM | Your Say (1)
July 17, 2009
She's Sarah Palin and You're Not:You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You don't understand it. Sure, maybe she has accomplished a few things (like the $26 billion dollar natural gas pipeline deal, restructuring Alaskan government, and taking an ice pick to corrupt politicians). But she has no style, no pizzazz -- she just does stuff. But so do you -- and you can't understand why you don't get the same adoration. After all, didn't you go before the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission and not just protest, but elegantly protest -- so said The New York Times -- a 16-story tower a developer wanted to build in your ritzy Upper East Side Manhattan neighborhood? Sarah Palin wouldn't have done that; she's not brilliant enough to understand preservation. She probably would have looked at the jobs the construction would create and given it a déclassé "Hell yeah!" -- American Thinker: Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin Jealous
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:28 PM | Your Say (0)
Orwell's 1984 vanishes from all Kindles: Some E-Books Are More Equal Than OthersThis morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:43 PM | Your Say (2)
"And that's the way it is:"Walter Cronkite November 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009
"We shall not see his like again."
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:43 PM | Your Say (12)
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General." -- Dprogram.netPosted by Vanderleun at 1:49 PM | Your Say (0)
Tide Not Turning: MSM: Foreclosure Filings in U.S. Reach Record 1.5 MillionPosted by Vanderleun at 1:47 PM | Your Say (0)
Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies @ Wired SciencePosted by Vanderleun at 1:45 PM | Your Say (1)
"You lowlife fascists." Jackie Mason on the critics of Sarah Palin:HT: Theo Spark: Loggers (and Rebs) for Palin
As a Palin backer I’d say we are the ones embracing the future — because in 2012, a “back to basics” approach is going to look pretty damn refreshing. -- Morgan @ House of Eratosthenes
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (0)
July 16, 2009
Watch the unctuous and condescending Barbara Boxer get her racist clock cleaned (But not enough) by Black Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO Harry Alford -- a man unhappy to be pushed into the Democrat's traditional plantation. What a shameful political whore she is.Posted by Vanderleun at 2:22 PM | Your Say (5)
- to you. Because every year, the border between the Third World and the First is a little more porous. Here indeed are the seeds of true Atë, though this thorough and Biblical ruin (already taking place in South Africa) may well run another century. No one has yet shown me a magic pill that turns a Third Worlder into a First Worlder.
At least most of the Third World is not an active physical danger to the lives of Americans. This cannot be said of Afghanistan, where Americans (and other Europeans, and yes, Afghans too) are dying every day for lack of Carlyle. More precisely, they are dying because America, the democratic nation, is and will always be completely incapable of doing the one thing it must do to succeed in Afghanistan, which is to rule the country. -- Unqualified Reservations: Why Carlyle matters
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (0)
The example of Britain. Sound familiar? It should.Britain lost her Empire and most of Ireland, and became a political satellite of America. Her industries declined and largely disappeared. Her crime rate rose by a factor of 50 - not 50%. Her aristocracy was decimated by two Continental wars of unparalleled savagery, and permanently destroyed by punitive taxation. Many areas of London and other cities became unsafe by day, and more by night. Her lower classes, generously augmented by the dregs of the late Empire, achieved levels of squalor, ignorance and degradation perhaps unsurpassed in human history. Meanwhile, the Crown and the Lords disappeared as meaningful political entities, the Commons ceased to be a genuine forum for debate and became a parking lot for party hacks, and political power diffused into a vast, shapeless morass of Whitehall bureaucrats, Berlaymont Eurocrats, mendacious talking heads, and professors of incompetence.
And worst of all, most appalling of all - Britons do not feel they have a problem. Quite the contrary. They have never been better governed. The smarter and more informed they are, the more deeply they thank the 20th century from saving them from the evils of the Victorian age. The educated Englishman of 2009 considers himself the beneficiary of two centuries of steadily improving good government, from Castlereagh to Gordon Brown. -- Unqualified Reservations: Why Carlyle matters
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (1)
Sign Me Up:A reactionary is not a Republican, a Democrat, or even a libertarian. It is not even a communist, a fascist, or a monarchist. It is something much older, stranger, and more powerful. But if you can describe it as anything, you can describe it as the pure opposite of progressivism. True reaction is long since extinct in the wild, but it lives in Carlyle - whose writings are now and forever available at a click, though they may be illegal in most states and the European Union. -- Unqualified Reservations: Why Carlyle matters
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (0)
One senses in the air the battle lines being drawn between two world views, the one supported by the Democrats and the other supported by their opposites -- gun owners, Christians, conservatives, small government types, lovers of liberty and upholders of American values over foreign values. There can be no possibility of compromise, for the first world view cannot be victorious unless the second worldview is annihilated. This of course and by necessity means war. Neither side will go down without a struggle -- but one of them will go down. We may as well come out and admit it. What shape this war will take is as yet hidden. -- The Return Of Scipio Enemy Of God. Enemy Of Man.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (0)
The Truth in 2 Steps:First, why are the Democrats doing this? This is the easiest to answer. The Democrats want to make people more dependent on government. They are going to do this by offering something that more Americans now value above all: stability. Americans think they want freedom. What a crock. Americans will whine about their freedom to choose which sports team to root for or which Hollywood gossip magazine to buy. But when freedom requires any ounce of personal responsibility, people immediately wipe their hands clean and want someone else to do it for them.
Second, who is going to pay for this? That's also easy to answer. The achievers. The filthy, disgusting rich. The small business owners. If you are an individual making over $280,000 you will be shouldering even more of the tax burden in order to pay for this government healthcare/redistribution scheme. Don't worry, that's just a starting point. That number will slowly shift downward as Democrats realize they don't have the enough money to fund their dreams and schemes. -- Boortz HT: Morgan who asks "What Problem Are We Solving?"
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (0)
I believe jurisprudence, like cooking, requires many ingredients to make a satisfying meal. In Latina culture we love menudo, the delicious spicy sopa made from simple ingredients. Think of the Constitution as our base ingredient: a bland, tasteless broth of boiled white tripe. Doesn't sound so tempting, does it? Now here's where the fun comes in: all of the cooks gather in the cocina and bring their own special secret ingredients to the mix. Souter salts the pot and Roberts adds Wonder Bread and mayonnaise; Breyer the lox and cream cheese. Thomas drops in fried chicken, and Alito and Scalia spaghetti. Now here comes Kennedy with corned beef and potatoes. Stevens adds the Metamucil. Now we're cooking! Finally, I stir in my special picante blend of Latina legal spices. What started as a boring simple broth is now a delicious crazy justice stew -- that tastes different every time! -- iowahawk
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (0)
Buyer's remorse sets in for Mickey Kaus: Kausfiles : Obama as Health Care Salesman: He Sucks!Obama tells his viewers, to lose weight, and stop smoking, and pull up your socks. Later on he tells people that they are foolish to prefer brand name drugs to generic drugs, and to want multiple medical tests. "If you only need one test, why do you want five tests?" Stop clinging to your tests! You're worse than those people in Pennsylvania. Who knew we were electing a national mother-in-law?
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (0)
Spengler:Michael Jackson's body lies a-moldering in the grave (in fact, it was a-moldering long before it reached the grave), but his adolescent soul goes marching on. The hangover from America's obsession with perpetual youth will last for a decade or more. Judging from the rock-star adulation accorded to Obama, Americans haven't yet learned their lesson, which is: after a certain age, no, you can't.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (0)
July 15, 2009
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:46 PM | Your Say (0)
Well... There's Ted Kennedy, but the man's got a point:Think what you want about George W. Bush, but he did do this: he saved us from a Gore Presidency. Is there a greater smelly stew of vanity, vacuity, ignorance, arrogance, and hubris in Washington than Albert Gore Jr.? This spoiled man-child of a wealthy racist senator, after having lost -- several times, in fact! -- his presidential bid in 2000, proceeded to collect a Nobel Prize (Or was it the Stalin Prize?) for elevating the cartoon show science of global warming into something otherwise serious people actually ponder ("No, we couldn't possibly build a missile shield to keep Kim Jong Il from nuking Seoul or President Haman of Iran from turning Tel Aviv into radioactive wastes, but we can stop the cyclical changes in planetary temperature.") -- American Thinker: Albert -- the Not-So Great -- Gore
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (0)
The shadows are getting longer down there. Farmer's grain silos are casting a dark tail into the next wheat field. That tail is pointing toward the leading edge of the night sky coming from the east. It will not be long until we are underneath the star dome.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:24 PM | Your Say (0)
Earth to the Martians Among Us:It is to the earthlings in this scenario that Ms. Palin is speaking. And when she writes lines like this intentional jaw-dropper in the Washington Post -- "We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil" -- she is quite intentionally signalling that she is ready for war.
That only implies an immediate run for the presidency to people who cannot understand her. Instead, she intends to use her celebrity to champion the views of the many earth-based Americans who have been overlooked -- and whom the Republican establishment will continue to patronize, and overlook, at the cost of their own annihilation.
We are going to have a war, next door in the U.S.A. -- a war between two world views that have become very nearly mutually incomprehensible. One might almost say that it was quietly declared on the op-ed of the Washington Post yesterday.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:04 PM | Your Say (0)
Washington Post asks, Why soak the rich now when you can soak them for more later?The deeper issue, though, is whether it is wise to pay for a far-reaching new federal social program by tapping a revenue source that would surely need to be tapped if and when Congress and the Obama administration get serious about the long-term federal deficit. -- House Democrats Want to Fund Health Care With an Ill-Advised Surtax on the Rich. - washingtonpost.com
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:29 PM | Your Say (1)
I'll let my readers do the jokes on this one.Posted by Vanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (1)
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs on Google: Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspectiveWhat the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? They've already got Android, and nobody wants it. Now they're going to make yet another operating system, this time out of a browser that nobody wants. What's next? A Gmail-based operating system? A YouTube-based operating system? Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours?
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (0)
Time to make RINOs extinct:The head of the RNC, Michael Steele, is himself hardly a conservative and he is as well an incompetent weakling. He and his type have spent so much time "crossing the aisle"and trying to get along with Democrats that they in almost all ways resemble them. A conservative should be occupied in defeating the Democrats, not agreeing with them. Republicans lost the presidency precisely for this reason. -- The Return Of Scipio » The Big Tent Of Sarah Palin
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (0)
Sorry, Grandma, but you gotta go:Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access. -- Dick Morris
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:58 AM | Your Say (0)
July 14, 2009
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:09 PM | Your Say (0)
As a human being,Sarah Palin walks away a success in a way that few people in Washington can contemplate, and few of her detractors could ever relate to. The salmon are biting, the sun is shining, the kids are playing, and the road is rising before her, and she’s going where she’s needed. If that’s the epitaph for good, decent mothers in politics, well, we’re a smaller, meaner nation for it. -- Dan McLaughlin
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (0)
The Immortal Fangio: Now this is how a real man drives a real racing car.Posted by Vanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (0)
July 13, 2009
Barney Frank Bears All
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:07 PM | Your Say (0)
"The State of the Nation" (Artist's Impression)
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:51 PM | Your Say (0)
If it's summer it's time for, once again, the greatest baby picture in the known universe:
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (0)
What's 848 miles long, has 18 holes, and speaks Australian?Posted by Vanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (0)
How to disappear:I’ve helped more than 30 people vanish – people who had problems with ex-spouses, with business partners or with criminals. Normally, it takes me between one month and three to make the necessary preparations. Depending on the case, I charge between $10,000 and $30,000, but I work free of charge for women who are being stalked. -- FT.com / Magazine - First Person: Frank Ahearn
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (0)
You know the terrorists have won when you wake up and discover that:
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (0)
Lawn Order: Criminal IntentThe amusing thing: if my lawn sat atop of my roof, it would be good. On the ground, it's a waste. Yes, the very term "suburban lawn" says it all for some. Everything people once wanted ends up as a sneer-term, shorthand for the RUIN brought about by progress, by the suburbs. -- Lileks
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (0)
July 12, 2009
Michael! Check out Buprinex. It's just like Demerol but even stonier!
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (0)
At noon, seven people lay together on the sidewalk at Seventh Avenue and Pike Street downtown, their upper bodies coated silvery green, their legs covered in gray leggings and adorned with shiny fins.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (0)
"...the splash itself is painted with small brushes and little lines; it took me about two weeks to paint the splash."
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:39 AM | Your Say (0)
So far the main difference between the Bush Era and the Obama Era is that in less than a year the United States has gone from the Gilded Age to the Gelded Age.Posted by Vanderleun at 12:36 AM | Your Say (0)
I wish Frank Rich at the New York Times would quit cribbing off of me. It's embarrassing for both of us:July 10: How Sarah Palin Will Become the Most Powerful Republican @ AMERICAN DIGEST 2010 is a make or break election for the Republicans. And the person in that year that can make and break Republican candidates is now Sarah Palin. She's not only a star, she's the only star the Republicans have or are likely to have.
She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. -- July 11: Frank Rich, She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It - NYTimes.com
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:19 AM | Your Say (0)
July 11, 2009
What can I say, she was beyond fab. (Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker was also entranced.) I was worried about whether Veronika's visit would truly come off or devolve into the dangling conversation that Paul Simon eulogized so movingly, but the worry evaporated as soon as she walked on stage as if straight from the M.G.M. studio. That teal dress, a Christian Cota creation, enhanced her classic Hollywood glamour, her laugh was charming and disarming and everything else that ends in "arming," and Dave couldn't have been more gracious. I loved hearing Veronika describe leaping to the mat at the end of Swan Lake, and the privilege of watching her lace up her ballet shoes did more to convey the elegance and ceremonial power of dance than the too-fleeting clips that were shown. Then she rose into arabesque, and it was as if her body was a wand blessing the Ed Sullivan Theater. She is the daughter of us all, and yet our queen. -- Rhapsody in the Park: James Wolcott | Vanity Fair
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (0)
'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir, (holding up a slice of a good loaf,) this is better than the bread tree.'
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:06 PM | Your Say (0)
I have seen the future. It is murder."All right," the sector commander was saying, "here are your assignments .... Will, you and Randall are most likely to see some action tonight. Three escapees from Pelosi Rehab. Last seen heading northwest. If the weather and the wolves don't get 'em, you two will, right? -- The Southern Literary Messenger
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (0)
Sound Familiar? After the Taxing, Comes the Controlling:Thousands of practical forms and methods of accounting and controlling the rich, the rogues and the idlers must be devised and put to a practical test by the communes themselves, by small units in town and country. Variety is a guarantee of effectiveness here, a pledge of success in achieving the single common aim—to clean the land of all vermin, of fleas—the rogues, of bugs—the rich, and so on and so forth. In one place half a score of rich, a dozen rogues, half a dozen workers who shirk their work (in the manner of rowdies, the manner in which many compositors in Petrograd, particularly in the Party printing-shops, shirk their work) will be put in prison. In another place they will be put to cleaning latrines. In a third place they will be provided with "yellow tickets" after they have served their time, so that everyone shall keep an eye on them, as harmful persons, until they reform. In a fourth place, one out of every ten idlers will be shot on the spot. -- Lenin, How to Organise Competition?
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (0)
More and more, President Obama is ditching his top diplomat when he travels abroad. By the time Obama returns from Ghana on Sunday, the last stop on his latest three-country tour, he will have visited nine countries without Clinton. That's highly unusual for a new secretary of state. Though Clinton has accompanied Obama on several key international visits this year, including Egypt and Trinidad and Tobago, Obama has spent far more time than his predecessors without his foreign policy point person.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (0)
Meanwhile, in the heterosexual paradise known as Iran, gays who dare to exist (or get caught doing so) continue to be executed, to the tune of about 15 deaths per month - with barely a peep of solidarity from the most powerful and affluent gay community in the Western world. -- A-holes and Insects - or Mother Nature Doesn't Care If You're a Good Liberal
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (0)
The only "Bruno" review you need:I think it was Andy Warhol who said that after ten minutes of watching porn he wanted to have sex with everyone, but after an hour he never wanted to have sex again. That pretty well sums up sitting through "Bruno."
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (0)
Why Greens should not be allowed to handle money:Washington appears to be an odd location for a solar plant. While central Washington is, unlike Seattle, actually quite sunny--Howard Trott, Teanaway's managing director, estimates that the location has 300 sunny days a year--it is also home to some of the country's cheapest electricity because of its hydroelectric capacity. However, Trott says, Washington's consumers will favor photovoltaic-generated electricity because it is "very green," and they will pay a premium for it, "which will make us profitable." -- Large Photovoltaic Plant Announced
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)
Okay, here's the plan: "Forget a second stimulus. If they haven't managed to even start paying out the first one. How about a Re-Thinkulus?"-- Jules Crittenden ,ｻ Economic CredulusPosted by Vanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)
July 10, 2009
It's time to play, "That's great, now fix the economy."HT: Don Sensing @ Sense of Events
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:21 PM | Your Say (0)
My new motto: "All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power."- Ashleigh BrilliantPosted by Vanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (0)
Happy Days Aren't Here Again:It wasn't that long ago when President Bush was in office and for four years the economy roared along in an amazing display of manufacturing strength, employment, growth, and stable pricing. There was greater than 3% growth for ten straight quarters: even longer than the previous boom in the 1990s. Household net worth increased by over 10% to a record level in the US. By the end of the boom, wages had gone up - even adjusted for inflation - by 7%. Yet the reporting at that time was always carefully crafted to include a caveat: here's something bad that happened. -- Word Around the Net: COMPARATIVE COVERAGEFeeling nostalgic yet?
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Two emails and counting. Kathryn Jean Lopez @ The Corner on National Review Online writes, "I'm hearing from Alaskans who wish the Palins well but are ready to 'welcome Sean and move on.'"Posted by Vanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (0)
A Farewell to Harms "Palin was bad for the Republicans—and the republic." In which Peggy Noonan confirms she has passed her "Sell By" date.Posted by Vanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (0)
Seattle Needs a EulogyThe rot takes hold early where the lessons of the fathers should be: The left lane is for passing. Protect your women. Keep not too many things, but of the things you do keep, keep them clean and well-maintained. When you make things, make them well and careful. Be respectful and courteous, even if it goes unnoticed - but never if it goes unappreciated. This America is yours - work for it.
Where those lessons are bereft, smaller lessons move in and have the all the heft of dry rot on a swatch of lace, having been eaten through by the weevils: The road is yours to do with as you please. To protect your women is to presume superiority, so leave them take care of themselves. Keep many flimsy and shoddy things, and waste no energy in keeping them kept. Make things if you must, but do it quickly and leave your heart out of it. There is no one more important than you - insist that all others appreciate that. This America is someone else's, and that person is long dead - work against it. -- Andy @ The Dipso Chronicles
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:12 PM | Your Say (0)
"The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." -- De Tocqueville as quoted in The state despotic by Mark Steyn - The New Criterion
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:22 AM | Your Say (0)
July 9, 2009
Hangin' out (oh-so-objectively) with my man Barry! White House Press Corps Happy to Attend Barack Obama's Off-the-Record BBQ - Media - Gawker Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy."You are being invited to attend this event as a guest. Blogging, Twittering or otherwise reporting on this event is not permitted. If you feel that you cannot agree to abide by these ground rules, please don't claim a ticket."Reports of Andrew Sullivan roaming the grounds clad only in a pair of knee-pads are unconfirmed.
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (0)
There'll be no more air cover for God, thank you: Pentagon Denies Flyover of "God and Country Rally" for First Time in 42 Years Because of its "Christian Nature"....Posted by Vanderleun at 1:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Somebody's gotta say it. Why not The Blog That Nobody Reads? "This is becoming a rather silly month news-wise, isn’t it? Everything’s either “Michael Jackson is still dead” or “Why Palin Quit.”Posted by Vanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (0)
Okay, this physical fitness craze has gone far enough: World’s strongest vagina lifts 31 pounds [Well.... if you insist... the photos. But you'll hate yourself in the morning.]Posted by Vanderleun at 5:21 AM | Your Say (0)
July 8, 2009
Magazine cover of the decade!
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Greens to Californians, "You bad. No water for you."California Gives Desalination Plants a Fresh Look - WSJ.com "Eventually, people will have to realize, it's either fish or children," Mr. Lewis said.Posted by Vanderleun at 9:14 PM | Your Say (0)
In the running for media asshole of the day is Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times who wrote in Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times"A majority of young people still approve of Obama's job performance, but a majority of seniors over 64 now don't (54%). Maybe they'll die before the next election."As soon as readers called him on this crap, he evidently went back and, without noting it, changed it to read (parenthetically)
In other numerical revelations, just 4% of Americans say that Wall Street or credit card companies are honest or trustworthy. A majority of young people still approve of Obama's job performance, but a majority of seniors over 64 now don't (54%). Maybe they'll (that is, we'll) all die before the next election.One hopes that the only person to die from all this is Andrew Malcolm, via starvation after being expelled from the rotting corpse of the Los Angeles Times.
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:02 PM | Your Say (0)
As above, so below: Mine Slump Leaves Village With Hut Glut
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:51 PM | Your Say (0)
Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009LOS ANGELES - Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state's remains to its final resting place in a Winchell's Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed 'King of Pop Culture' died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation. The death sent shock waves across the world and sparked an outpouring of grief by rabid fans.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:23 PM | Your Say (0)
How long, O Lord, how long?The only mystery will be how long will the base of Obama's support stay loyal among high-paid stockbrokers, CEOs, lawyers, financiers, academics, and journalists, who have enough money to get hit hard by new taxes, but not quite enough money not to care. -The Tipping Point? - Victor Davis Hanson
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (0)
State Secrets: White House Won’t Reveal How Much Michelle Obama’s European Vacation Cost TaxpayersPosted by Vanderleun at 4:29 PM | Your Say (0)
The Porretto Plan -- Vengeance For Sarah: How It’s DoneHere's how: a simple, easy-to-follow algorithm for making room for good people and the ideas of freedom in American politics once more: 1) Pick a single target. It could be an elected or appointed official, or it could be some spokesvermin who merely flacks for anti-American ideas and policies. Just as long as it's someone you think should be hounded out of the public eye, if not the country....
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:54 PM | Your Say (0)
RealEgate! More fauxtography at The New York Times: How a Minnesota man blew the whistle on the New York Times How metafilter's unixrat figured it out,"I call bullshit on this not being photoshopped."Posted by Vanderleun at 3:15 PM | Your Say (0)
The Virginian points out how Rich Lowry - and most of the rest of the NRO crew - don't get it and are like almost all the pinhead pundits, right, left and center continue to just pull it out of their asses when it comes to Palin:Every talking dick-head on the Right is giving her advice to hit the books, study up, become a scholar, learn how to regurgitate other people’s thoughts. After the last election, you still cling to the belief that this thing called “substance” matters. What universe did you in habit during the 2008 run for the Presidency? What color is the sky there?
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (0)
Contrast and Compare from Word Around the Net: DISCOVERED FERVOR
In the first, the US National Anthem was playing. In the first, he is watching and quiet, but not displaying any emotional attachment to the country being honored or reverence for the situation.
In the second he is showing both with the hand over his heart in traditional salute to nationality and patriotism. In the second, he is at the tomb of the unknown soldier... in Moscow, Russia.
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (0)
The distinguished John Fund @ WSJ joins the swelling army of pundits who are, frankly, just pulling it out of their asses: Why Palin Quit - WSJ.com "All good points, and they lead me to conclude that Ms. Palin mostly likely will not run for president -- in 2012, at least."Posted by Vanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (0)
Cheap at thrice the price: The Cost of Controlling The PressBarack Obama's White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or nearly $5 million a year-and that is for salaries alone. Based on the coverage the President has garnered so far, it is money well spent.... The Obama media machine is up and running, but it could backfire if the media gain some self-respect and tire of being manipulated on behalf of the President's image and agenda.HT: Word Around the Net: who notes:
The thing is, working to get the press to be positive in its coverage and obedient in its actions is like Brad Pitt hiring a specialist to get him girls. Its like paying a redneck to like NASCAR and hunting.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (0)
Just when you think all those "Blonde Jokes" are cruel and have no basis in reality....Posted by Vanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (0)
On "Cream:"I watched them, and knew that I had seen their like before; but not where you'd think. They were operating their machinery, and I had seen men operate familiar machinery before. I've known many men, skilled in the rough arts: masonry and concrete finishing and excavation and demolition and blasting--men past their physical prime, but still tough as nails, and wise; and able to leave any three youngsters in their dust. -- Sippican Cottage: (Let's Listen To Some) Hydraulic License Rock (Again)
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (0)
July 7, 2009
Flight Level 390: The Canyon
Belts tightened, slow her down a little more and raise the forward ice shields. We fly through a bright, sunlit veil into a deep, dark canyon of cumulonimbus clouds. Towering storms on both sides give this sight some, for lack of a better word, reinforcement. Twenty miles ahead is a doorway to the west side of this storm line. Underneath us is a canyon floor of clouds between the storms; it almost looks like you could walk around down there.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:26 PM | Your Say (0)
you bring out the boring white guy in me by Jim Daniels and dedicated to Christina Acosta. you bring out the boring white guy in me
the Ward Cleaver in me. The Pat Boone
in me. The K-Mart in me. The Slurpee
in me. The boiled hotdog in me. The mac
and cheese in me. The Tang in me.
You bring out the Hamburger Helper
in me. You bring out the Twinkie
in me. The Cheez Whiz in me.
You bring out the bowling trophy
in me. The student council in me.
The parliamentary procedure in me.
The missionary position in me.
You bring out the canned vegetables
in me. The Jell-o in me. The training
wheels in me. You bring out
the lawn edger in me. The fast-food
drive-thru window in me. The Valu
Meal in me. You bring out the white
briefs in me. You bring out
the cheap beer and weak coffee
in me. You bring out the 15%
tip chart in me. The sad overweight
weekend golfer in me. You bring out
the ex-smoker in me. The jumper
cables in the trunk with flares
and the red flag to tie to the window
in me. You bring out the Tony Orlando
in me. The canned situation comedy
laughter in me. The elevator music
in me. You bring out the medley
of TV commercial jingles in me.
The Up with People in me.
I've come to a complete stop
at the stop sign. I've got my
emergency flashers on. My doors
are locked, baby,
I'm waiting for you.
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:55 PM | Your Say (0)
And the Disturbing Image of the Day Award goes to LILEKS, JAMES for B&W World's It! Again! for:
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (0)
You know, if Michael Jackson had just manned up and put on another 200 pounds he could have died like a real Elvis.Posted by Vanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (0)
stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party. -- I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin by David Kahane
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:33 PM | Your Say (0)
Zombie Bucks: It's not over. At midnight tonight they're going to dig Jackson up and take him on a world non-dancing non-singing tour. Michael Jackson's Zombie '09 Tour: Viewing tickets, $25. Viewing and Kissing tickets, $50. Operators are standing by! And after the Michael Jackson Zombie Tour '09 is done, the family will part him out and sell the chunks on eBay as "Holy Relics."Posted by Vanderleun at 4:13 PM | Your Say (0)
None of your funny money, California. We've got enough of our own.Big Banks Don't Want California's IOUs - WSJ.com The group of banks included Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., among others. The banks had previously committed to accepting state IOUs as payment. California plans to issue more than $3 billion of IOUs in July.
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:42 PM | Your Say (0)
What would McCain have done?Would McCain have proposed the enormous stimulus bill that he voted against? Would he have pushed a radical overhaul of health care insurance in the middle of the crisis, especially a government option? Would he have cut missile defense funding? Would he have been in favor of cap and trade? Card check? Would he be trying his hardest to put Chavez's lackey Zelaya back in power? Would he have failed to offer strong support for Iran's demonstrators? Would he have given Moscow what it wanted and cut our ability to respond to international crises in order to gain --well, basically nothing? -- neo-neocon: Obamamites say bounces off me and sticks to you
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Dr. Sanity says "Goodbye to all that -- and blogging too."It is sad to realize that many things happening in our nation and around the world right now are beyond any psychopathology that I could have imagined a few years ago (and I could imagine a lot).
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Sarah Palin on "The Future" "Don't know what the future holds. I'm not gonna shut any door. That -- who knows what doors open? I can't predict what the next fish run's gonna look like down on the Nushagak River. So I certainly can't predict what's gonna happen in the next couple of years."Posted by Vanderleun at 1:03 PM | Your Say (0)
Whores to the Elite:Twenty-first century power women do not marry men like Todd Palin. Looks, physicality, practicality, courage even-all these are nineteenth-century virtues that now mean nothing in a post-modern, post-industrial society. The fixer in finance, law, academia, politics, or the media-geek, nerd, wimp, who cares?-is the new Alpha male. He has three things that we are all supposed to crave-power, capital, and influence. If one were simply to draw up a list of the fiercest female critics of Palin and trace their own lineages, one would discover that they either are married to powerful insiders, dated powerful insiders, or are the daughters of powerful insiders. (some feminists these!) Who do this Wasilla PTA mom and her broken-arm, snow-mobiling wannabe think they are? -- Works and Days, What is Wisdom? -Sarah Palin and Her Critics
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (0)
July 6, 2009
Maureen Dowd Sources and Fact-Checking Ability Shut Down!In today’s edition of New York Times cost-saving: Times editors are now strongly encouraging staffers to quit texting on their company cell phones, avoid using the phones entirely when overseas on assignment and never, ever to call 411 with a company phone.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:28 PM | Your Say (0)
Autofellatio runs amuck @ The New York Times editorial room:Meanwhile, at the offices of The New York Times, a meeting was taking place. Eighteen editors had gathered at a table to discuss tomorrow’s news. The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world. [As reported in, of course, The New York Times.]
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (0)
July 5, 2009
The clip that just keeps on giving...Posted by Vanderleun at 10:01 PM | Your Say (0)
"These people don't hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate....What’s alarming is that the need for a female Hate Receptacle exists, even with feminists. But that would explain why Palin haters are so reluctant to give up hating her. It would explain why they’re so resistant to the truth. They don’t want to find out that the lies are lies; they don’t want to be disabused. They need a hate receptacle, and so they need Palin to be the sum of all things they fear." -- Reclusive Leftist Feminists and the mystery of Sarah Palin HT: Rick
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:41 PM | Your Say (0)
'Nobody knows nuttin' about why, but Beltway Democrats and Republicans alike are still scared to death of this woman.' Limbaugh on the Palin Resignation via The Radio Equalizer: Brian MaloneyPosted by Vanderleun at 5:00 PM | Your Say (0)
July 4, 2009
Manufactured beauty always hates real beauty.Maybe there’s another red Naughty Monkey high heel to drop — there’s often a hidden twist in Sarah’s country-music melodramas. -- Maureen Dowd, Now, Sarah’s Folly
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:27 PM | Your Say (0)
Just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world.
The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama – coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends -- would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.-- Melanie Phillips @ The Spectator
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (0)
HUNTER SMITH: With no formal training or instruction, I picked up a camera, notepad, and plane ticket to Tegucigalpa, Honduras where I could report on the change of power that has occurred in Honduras and the possible return of former President Zelaya to regain his Presidency. I felt that there was minimal news coverage coming from this region, and was intrigued when this little democratic country from Central America stood by its actions despite condemnation from the UN and the United States. Here is my experience within this country.
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:31 PM | Your Say (0)
The Democrats have a lot of "first responders" on a wide variety of issues. There are for example, leftist NGOs with established pro-Zelaya positions [in Honduras] who pull in the media and the media in turn pulls in the bureaucrats. It acts like a shot line, which pulls across the thicker messenger line or a succession of thicker cables which ultimately provides purchase to transfer the main cables in a transfer between ships at sea. By this incremental method, even huge vessels can be linked to one another -- and quickly. But the Republican Party, it seems to me, is too dependent on a few established "names". The grassroots don't have an efficient way to pull a messenger line over. Therefore days and even weeks pass before a "name" eventually bestirs himself to respond. By then, it may be too late. Although parts of the conservative system respond quickly, regarded in its totality, the conservative OODA loop is far too slow....
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:28 PM | Your Say (0)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L.MenckenPosted by Vanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Obama Health Reform and Wait Times Visualization (In Lego!)From PoliticalMath, the same fine people who brought you The Obama Stimulus: Predictions vs. Reality
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (0)
Folks on the Right have speculated for months why the Left hates her so -- a hatred astounding in its vitriol, a hatred extending to her handicapped child. We have known for years that the Left is addled by hatred. Those it admires today and in History have also been superb haters. Such hatred has no place in a Republic, but it fits rather well in a tyranny. In fact, hatred is one of the supporting props of tyranny. No tyranny can survive without a continuous outpouring of hatred for some race or some class or some religion.
So why the hatred? Let us make things simple. Sarah Palin is hated because she is a Christian. In her words and in her deeds this is plainly obvious to those who follow Christ. He told us that this would happen to those who followed him -- "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." Notice those who hate Palin. From top to bottom they are pagans and God haters. That is also why they hated Bush. Their hatred had nothing to do with policy.Illustration via Why Did Sarah Palin Resign? Three Possible Reasons And More @ The New Ledger
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:44 AM | Your Say (0)
July 3, 2009
"Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit." -- PJ O'Rourke Interviewed @ Reason MagazinePosted by Vanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (0)
It's easy for your arbitrary belief system to connect itself to the Founders.If the Founders agree with you, you are following in the footsteps of the Founders. If the Founders disagree - they would have changed their minds. Americans have spent two centuries learning to play this blithe little game, great sport of a wonderfully Jesuitical nature, and has allowed each of the various modern American ideologies to craft its own Founders and its own Old Republic. - Unqualified Reservations: Secession, liberty, and dictatorship
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (0)
July 2, 2009
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps,
the people march:
"Where to? what next?
-- Carl Sandburg: The People Yes
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:50 PM | Your Say (0)
"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists of establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." -Ayn Rand (Word Around the Net: Quote of the Day)Posted by Vanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (0)
Apparently, Hitler could not avoid the fact that he believed what he was doing was for the great benefit of Germany. The winner of an election cannot be dissuaded from that belief until he is deposed. Hitler himself is not so interesting as is the ways in which he represents the ambitions of the 20th century. I wonder how different he is from any other such leader, and how different the German people are from us. Yeah, now I do actually wonder. Like most other folks who have studied Hitler's Germany, I scratch my head wondering how London, Washington, Paris and Moscow could have been so blind.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (0)
News from the Unelected, Self-Selected Parliament of Whores:For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and â at first â even the paperâs own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its health care reporting and editorial staff." -- Washington Post sells access, $25,000Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (0)
Virgin-Americans Vow Fight Against Cap-and-Trade's Blood Sacrifice AmendmentThe 87,492 page bill -- official designated as the American Patriotic Renewal Act of 2009 for Carbon Reduction, Energy Independence, Heathy Climate, Sustainable Job Growth, Adorable Puppies, and Earthly Paradise -- is a keystone in President Obama's first year legislative agenda, and was originally anticipated to get swift congressional passage. Instead, it faced a unexpectedly tough vote in the House last week after coal state Democrats complained it would place an unfair economic burden on their home districts. "I am as interested in reversing global climate change as anyone, but I fail to see how increasing taxes and random machete attacks on Ohio coal producers alone will solve the problem," said Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). "Come on people, there are plenty of other industries who deserve machete attacks too."
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (0)
July 1, 2009
Yon in Afghanistan:At over 2,280 meters above sea level (nearly 7,480 feet), the capital city of Chaghcharan has no factories, few cars or motorbikes, and air that is fresh and dry (and thin). Yet these are the lowlands. For about six months out of the year, the mountains around us could just as well be blanketed under a hundred miles of snow. When the snows arrive in about November, the place is socked in. The nearest paved road is about 380km (236 miles) away at Herat. Tens of thousands of people in the surrounding mountains and in this lowland are cut off from the world. There is nowhere to go but here. None of the Afghans have internet access, but there are cell phones. Even the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), run by the Lithuanians, becomes isolated other than by virtue of the gravel airstrip. They sometimes go several weeks without a flight. The place might as well be a spaceship, isolated first by the snows, then by the floods from the melting. This is a common story in Afghanistan. -- Lithuanians on the Moon
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (0)
Your Rulers' Ambitions:It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people's business; we are all inclined to think that we know better; and higher education tends to inflate our vanity and to make us more inclined to lord it over those who are less well-instructed. Never for a moment does a Barack Obama stop to ask whether depriving us of responsibility for our own well-being is demeaning. He and his supporters know that they know better, and their putative wisdom in this regard constitutes for them an absolute claim to rule. The logic unfolding within the progressive impulse requires that there be a class of Guardians empowered to supervise our lives in every particular, and to an ever-increasing degree this is the reality with which we live. -- Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (0)
The Frenzy of the Fruitlovers:Fruit, I now understand, causes within people a diabolical disorientation, and that disorientation spreads into every aspect of humanity. Fruit captivates the attention and leads to painful mishaps. Fruit causes aggression, which leads to war. It inspires prostration and adoration, which leads to idolatry and misplaced allegiances. Fruit flummoxes a man’s ability to reason, impacting his marriage and his daughter’s self-esteem and future lumbar health. Fruit maketh a woman into a blithe-and-brainless spirit, content to bounce from car-to-car like a well-flicked pinball. These people go out into the world. They write books. They teach. They govern nations. They program network television. -- The Anchoress — A First Things Blog
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:23 AM | Your Say (0)
Hanson, Some Hypocrisies Are Not HypocrisiesPresto-the beleaguered, more moral liberal must be given greater leeway, employ sometimes questionable means, since his ends are the more exalted. Yes, Al Gore gets to fly private, and have a few extra rooms in his mansion, but he is sacrificing on the planetâs behalf, and needs a more ample footprint than the rest of us to save us from ourselves. Who cares if George Bushâs Texas ranch house has a lighter footprint than Goreâs mansion, given that Bush thwarted Kyoto and Gore promoted it? Yes, Timothy Geithner skipped a few thousands in taxes, but who wouldnât if you were trying to reformulate an entire tax code to level the playing field? Yes, Bill slipped up with Monica, but Monicas come and go-a womanâs right to chose simply cannot. Yes, Eliot Spitzer had a bothersome desire for young prostitutes, but he was a crusader against Wall Street greed. And yes, the previously mentioned John Edwards was campaigning to the left of Clinton and Obama, and thus his âproblemsâ deserved some sort gestation, given his voice on the behalf of the poor.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:11 AM | Your Say (0)