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September 30, 2009

Michelle Obama's Mirror Speaks

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I realize it’s not protocol, but Mo is just going to have to find a way to let me de-plane first if she doesn’t want these big old butt shots blasted across the internet. Sheeze, especially if she’s going to wear psychedelic panda prints. -- Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Olympic Gold

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (8)

Gutless Disgrace

Recent consternation about incivility in politics
is lost on me. I’m thinking our politicians are much too polite. Our early leaders often worked out differences fighting duels. President Andrew Jackson took office with two bullets still in his body. Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. There’s a place for diplomacy, certainly, but too much isn’t good and we’re way over the limit. -- Tom McLaughlin

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:01 PM | Your Say (2)

Oldest Living Things in the World

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Rachel Sussman: Portfolios: jomon sugi japanese cedar #0507 02 (7,000 years old, yaku shima, japan) Plus, from her blog, The Oldest Living Things in the World: WHAT DOES A 9,500 CLONAL SPRUCE LOOK LIKE? [HT: Kevin Kelly]

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:37 PM | Your Say (1)

Worst Cover of "Hey Jude" in Known Space: Wilson Pickett & The Bee Gees


Starts wrong and gets worse.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (5)

Find the Positive Subliminal Message

Key To Subliminal Messaging Is To Keep It Negative, Study Shows


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Posted by Vanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (2)

Pause.... and Begin Again

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Posted by Vanderleun at 1:34 AM | Your Say (0)

September 29, 2009

Current Tactical Situation in Afghanistan

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The Marines have got them just where they want them.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:57 PM | Your Say (1)

On Obama vs. Expertise

Artful Dodger @ neo-neocon's Obama and Hillary: the spider and the fly notes:
Expertise has no place in power, it is irrelevent and an opposing force. so no one under the despot can have expertise except for the lowest prols who have no other optoins and no way to leverage their expertise except in the service of the power above. This is why these states fall apart -- (at first). Power loves a servant, and an independent capable person is a power of opposition, not servant. So they move incompetents in place. The incompetent owes all they have, since they can't do well on their own. Their morals are easy to corrupt and they know who they serve.... We are completely ignorant of power games of this type as our state is coming out of a meritocracy republic and moving into a kakistocratic oligarchy of elite sociopaths.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (1)

'It Wasn't Rape Rape': Whoopi Goldberg Cements Her Position as the Leading Ignorant Slut on Television


Just when you think this useless POS has reached her bottom, she sinks lower.

Morgan in the comments notes:

This should NOT be a conservative/liberal thing. But as I heard some guy point out on the radio earlier in the week...can't remember who he was...he came up with a great definition. Liberalism, he said, is all about putting humans on par with animals. (For those who love animals, I think what he meant was the most depraved behavior of animals.)

And all the familiar tools of discourse in the liberal toolbox come out. Complicated things are made to seem simple, and simple things are made to seem complicated. Listen to Whoopi splitting hairs...meaningless, meaningless hairs. There's always some other layer that has to be separated and given its own definition. To what end? Did anybody hear one single thing out of her mouth that just might make this any less serious of a crime? Even according to her viewpoint? There wasn't anything...and I think she herself lost track of what it was she was trying to say.

"Hey Whoopi... I heard Dick Cheney drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old too, but it wasn't 'rape-rape'. Your thoughts?" Hehehehe.

These people. How do they get dressed in the morning. Darwin Theory's biggest problem.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:56 PM | Your Say (5)

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." -- Lincoln

"We have so many folk willing to be masters now,
and so blithely certain they'd be good at it. The death panel idea for our health care system... is a bad idea, flat out. But ask yourself what kind of person would agree to serve on such a panel. Merely accepting the position ought to be a cause for immediate revocation of citizenship, but no doubt we will think of them with awe instead. Upright men and women would scorn such people, not bow to them." -- Wheat & Weeds: As I Would Not Be A Slave

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (1)

When the Left Runs Out of Lift

What I am curious to discover is
what happens when [Liberalism] runs out of lift. Because it will. Like Fannie and Freddie, it isn't too big to fail. There's no such thing. I think that one of the challenges of statecraft is to prepare for the Fall of the Inner Berlin Wall; what to do when the fantasy shatters. I think on the day after we'll be confronted with many shattered institutions, completely bankrupted, mere Potemkin shells; out of money, out of ideas, and out of excuses. I am not optimistic about society's ability to handle it because even conservatives, I think, will have difficulty anticipating the thoroughness of it and its probable shocking suddenness. - Belmont Club -- The nine trillion

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (6)

"There is no God, and Darwin is his prophet"

David Warren:

For Darwinist true believers, as for progressives generally, the worst setbacks come in the moments of greatest advance. For here they have, even in the new U.S. president, their ideal, fully evolved authority figure. The man is "frustrated university professor" writ large... Though he is not, technically, a biologist, but rather a politician, Obama's constant hectoring against that grimly discerned Middle-American opposition, "clinging" to their guns and their Bibles, make him the perfect parody of the Darwinoid saint, Chaplinesque ワbermensch, and Great Leader.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)

ObamaKids Prepare for a Decade in Mom's Basement


The dead end kids
The number of young Americans without a job has exploded to 53.4 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time. The number represents the flip-side to the Labor Dept.'s report that the employment rate of 16-to-24 year olds has eroded to 46.6 percent -- the lowest ratio of working young Americans in that age group, including all but those in the military, since WWII.

HT: El Morgan

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (1)

September 28, 2009

Hitler's Darkest Secret Revealed

DNA test shows Adolf Hitler's skull is female.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:02 PM | Your Say (2)

Windows Pain: How sweet it is

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian opines on Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? and loves the pain. But he's a Brit and they all like "six of the best." Check out this subtly psycho-sexual rant:
I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. OK, OK: I know other operating systems are available. But their advocates seem even creepier, snootier and more insistent than Mac owners. The harder they try to convince me, the more I'm repelled. To them, I'm a sheep. And they're right. I'm a helpless, stupid, lazy sheep. I'm also a masochist. And that's why I continue to use Windows – horrible Windows – even though I hate every second of it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.

Translation: "I've been a baaaad boy. Please mistress, can I have some more?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:35 PM | Your Say (1)

"Beneath the trees where nobody sees / they'll hide and seek as long as they please"

Ah, law enforcement -- so rational, so demented.



Homeless Ga. sex offenders directed to woods | ajc.com MARIETTA, Ga. A small group of homeless sex offenders have set up camp in a densely wooded area behind a suburban Atlanta office park, directed there by probation officers who say it's a place of last resort for those with nowhere else to go.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (1)

September 27, 2009

To paraphrase WAPO's Anne Applebaum: Hey, if you can dodge arrest long enough child rape is okay by me

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Schmo writer for WAPO gets down with the "Oh, poor baby" defense: PostPartisan - The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski
He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.... Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system. If he weren't famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.

Really? Read an excerpt from the trial testimony, Anne:
Q. Did he say anything after that? A. Yes. He goes, “Would you want me to go in through your back?” -- The Smoking Gun: Archive

It is beyond my poor powers to express my loathing and contempt for scribes like Applebaum. She should be ashamed but she has clearly long lost all capacity for shame.

Intensifying the reek of corruption wafting from her article, Applebaum neglects to mention that her husband, Radoslaw Sikorski is currently trying to be Obama to pardon Polanski
"I am considering approaching the American authorities over the possibility of the U.S. president proclaiming an act of clemency, which would settle the matter once and for all," said Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski...

You'd think the Washington Post would have guidelines for this sort of obvious conflict of interest. You'd think.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:35 PM | Your Say (16)

The Pith and the Pulchritude that is the Surber

First, the pith: "Time Warner Inc. plans to dump Time magazine. Why not? About half its readers have."


Then, the pulchritude: Ansersy Aguilar, 19, walked in front of soldiers standing on guard a near the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa....


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Posted by Vanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (1)

"The beauty parlor's filled with sailors. The circus is in town."

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The translator broke down
as Mr Gaddafi, the man once denounced by Ronald Reagan as the “mad man” of the desert, embarked on a tirade about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an explanation of his call for a single-state solution called “Isratine”. According to the New York Post, the Libyan translator shouted: “I just can’t take it any more.” -- Absolutely the Funniest Item of the Day CCXV | ninme

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (1)

September 26, 2009

Good Question

"What if Barack Obama and his administration did absolutely everything exactly the way they have done things up to now, but Obama were white? Would all of America be warmly embracing his health care reform?" -- The Dipso Chronicles: That Fish Don't Need Water

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:40 PM | Your Say (2)

Not "God damn America!" but "God dumb America!"

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"The redefinition of marriage will be a done deal.
The ludicrous Roe v. Wade will not only stand, but be extended. State mandated racial discrimination will certainly become further entrenched. More civil rights for terrorists. More restrictions on religion, weakening of the second amendment, more attacks on the Boy Scouts, the return of the Fairness Doctrine (it's latest iteration talks about imposing subjective "community standards" in order to rid the airwaves of national programs such as Rush Limbaugh), and with it, the end of meaningful free speech, at least as far as conservatives are concerned. No Rush Limbaugh unless Randi Rhodes gets equal time. Can you imagine? I am sure that our judicial masters would find a way to make school vouchers unconstitutional, meaning that there is no hope for real reform of the educational establishment, especially for urban blacks and others condemned to being ground up in the liberal education machine." -- One Cʘsmos: Obama and the Shadows of Things that Might Be

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (4)

September 25, 2009

"Iran is convinced that Obama has a little stick."

neo-neocon Iran and the West: the ruthless laugh at the weak, all the way to the enrichment facility

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (4)

Now the Greens Want Your Ass

Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (4)

"Harrison Bergeron"

by Kurt Vonnegut
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....

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (6)

September 24, 2009

The Papa

More info just in on "The Not-So-Great Generation:"
I wonder how many times John Phillips and the other Mamas and Papas (no word yet if they also had "€œDaddy Issues"€) in their oh-so-tolerant hippie haze mocked inbred rednecks in the South? Ah, the Summer of Love generation. I suppose "€œincestual" will now need to be added parenthetically before "€œLove."€ I knew they drank electric kool-aid, but I didn't know about the Electra Kool-aid! -- iOwnTheWorld.com » Blog Archive » California Reamin’

Ah, the rock and roll celebrity lifestyle. There really is nothing like it.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (10)

September 23, 2009

Castroism on the Potomac

"The problem with having the Americans as your allies is that you never know when they'll turn around and stab themselves in the back."....
That Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Raul Castro are plotting, occasions no surprise. That president "Lula" of Brazil is now in with them, occasions a little. But that the whole operation is being done with the support of the U.S. State Department, beggars belief. The Americans are once again stabbing themselves in the back, and cutting their allies' throats, while appeasing their enemies. What more can be said? -- David Warren

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (2)

File Under: "Probably not about what you think it's about"

Navy Reviewing Abuse of Gay Dog Handler

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (0)

File under: "Because people are just no damned good"

A well-deserved time out:
A 19-year-old Licking County man who videotaped himself forcing a toddler to smoke marijuana was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in federal prison for drug and weapons convictions. -- The Columbus Dispatch

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (0)

Billboards have needs too....

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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (1)

The ACORN Exemption

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Posted by Vanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (0)

You are just a child

It has become fashionable
for governments to treat people -- even adults -- like children: children who consume too much, obey too little and remain too fond their imaginary friends. And their betters take it upon themselves to guard their speech, take away their dangerous toys and curtail their choices because they are prone to make unwise ones. And most of all they see to it that we should expect no better our lives but a little welfare gruel and some end of life counseling. Once upon a time mankind saw it as their birthright to wander the fields, swim in the streams and see what was over the next hill. Today we live penned up in dark houses warded by sour matrons and bloodless didacts who are forever seeking to administer their "teaching moments."

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (3)

September 22, 2009

Where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home...

Sippican Cottage: Some Enchanted Place, Part Three

They all have the same stuff, these people with a vapor trail of names and numerals appended to their names and phalanxes of zeroes marching to the horizon in their hidden bank accounts. They have gravel that must be gathered from a riverbank in Elysium. It doesn't even look like little stones. More like dun grey seed pearls spread in a sort of carpet. They always bind it with a steel band that snakes its way all around everywhere outside in a sort of maze, until the snake eats itself and you're back where you started. It never says crunch crunch. It says shush underfoot, and means it. They apply the chloroform early in these places.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (2)

"Yummy Yummy Yummy, I've got love in my tummy...."

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Victoria Rowell (your mom probably recognizes her as Drucilla, from The Young and the Restless, don’t ask me how I know that) came to the Emmy Awards dressed in what appears to be an Obama tablecloth. Hideous Obama Dress | Oddity Central

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (5)

September 21, 2009

Bootstraping Nukes

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"One of the least emphasized interactions between a forward defense and anti-missile capability
is their ability to make actions against a rogue-state nuclear "bootstrap load" credible. Rogue states seek nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them as a way of creating a safe space behind which to arm even further. It is not the first nuke which is so dangerous as much as the succeeding ones that can be built behind them. Like a boostrap loader in a computer, a small, fast-loading piece of code pulls in more libraries behind it until you have vast system staring at you from behind the computer screen. With aspiring rogue states it may be the same. A missile defense preserves the credibility of forward defense because it makes intervention, although unlikely, a feasible operation of war. Without it, any aspiring rogue power can simply acquire one nuke and build away." -- Belmont Club » Choices

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (0)

Old, Old, Old, Old Money

Sippican Cottage: Some Enchanted Place

I stopped the truck, and took a long look at the place in the early morning light, and let me tell you if it was going to be a public building, it should be a morgue.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (0)

De Compos Mentis

In case you still have good feelings about Jimmy Carter, try this factoid on for size: Nuclear football - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia On one occasion, Jimmy Carter left nuclear launch codes in his suit when it was sent in for dry cleaning.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:35 AM | Your Say (0)

All the President's A-Bombs

All Your Nukes Are Belong to Me: Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal | World news | The Guardian
Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.
Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials....
The review is due to be completed by the end of this year, and European officials say the outcome is not yet clear. But one official said: "Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president's weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role."

That should give him something warm and furry to talk about while chairing the UN Security Council this Thursday, what?
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Speaking of which: Obama’s UN Gambit: King of the Universe and the Polls
Obama apparently believes that being flanked by council-member heads of state like Col. Moammar Qaddafi — who is expected to be seated five seats to Obama’s right — will cast a sufficiently blinding spell on the American taxpayer that the perilous state of the nation’s economy, the health-care fiasco, and a summer of “post-racial” scapegoating will pale by comparison.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:47 AM | Your Say (1)

September 20, 2009

The Past is Prologue

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Posted by Vanderleun at 4:25 PM | Your Say (2)

Obama: ACORN Power Teacher and "Old Friend"

Obama Ran ACORN’s Training Classes | Sweetness & Light quoting Social Policy, Winter 2003:
Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (1)

The Glenn Reynolds Quip-Whip Strikes Again

Instapundit HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER: Romney taunts Democrats with memories of Carter. "A Carter-rerun is now looking like a best-case scenario. . . ."

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Breitbart's Next Shoe. Place Your Bets.

Speculation is rife about what Biggovernment.com has loaded in the other barrell after Andrew Breitbart's cryptic announcement in Michael Savage Interviews Andrew Breitbart on ACORN Investigation September 18, 2009

"I also promise a blockbuster next week that's going to come from left field."

"That's about ACORN of course."

"No, I didn't say that."


Some people at Hot Air think it means, "Everybody repeat after me: PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN"

Ace thinks "this September 7th column tipped his hand," and maybe it did: BREITBART: Couric should look in mirror

Patterico reads the column and is putting his money down on the NEA "If I were a betting man, I'd be betting big that the upcoming bombshell will relate to the NEA."

Hummm.... well, since any number can play, I read the column and note the statement:
When the next big scandal hits - and it will, and it most certainly won't come from traditional journalism - all eyes will be on "Pinch" Sulzberger to see if he does his job.

Let's look at that again with emphasis added:
When the next big scandal hits - and it will, and it most certainly won't come from traditional journalism - all eyes will be on "Pinch" Sulzberger to see if he does his job.

So my money's on Pinch or somebody that works for him. Preferably Pinch. We'll see. If I'm right, I'll be coming back here for a victory lap. If I'm wrong I'll do what all responsible bloggers do and just bury it down the scroll.

UPDATE: It seems "The Purple Avenger" at Ace is with me.
The mention of Pinchy boy specifically, rather than the more generic NYT has to be significant. Pinchy's "job" is basically executive level hiring and firing.

We're gonna clean up!

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (4)

Mighty Ochs-Outlet Finally a Little Acorn Grows

The Virginian notes Friday's NY Times coverage of the ACORN scandal and remarks, "For the Times and virtually every other MSM outlet, the story is about the story, not the scandal."

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (1)

September 19, 2009

The Perils of Auto-Translation

Oy! 52 Race Cards in Every Adorn More the Jokers @ AMERICAN DIGEST. Комментарии : LiveInternet - Российский Сервис Онлайн-Дневников

hTeir silence keeps me sleepples for I know:
Within that smoke their ash still falls as snow,
To settle on our flesh like dading stars
Dissolve into sharp sparks at break of day

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:47 PM | Your Say (0)

A New Flag for Israel

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Created by The Vicious Babushka To which we say, "Ketiva ve-chatima tovah."

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:07 PM | Your Say (0)

When the Eagle Has No Claws the Bear Does What the Bear Wants to Do

Russia to modernize and train Cuban military

The chief of the Russian military's General Staff, visiting Cuba, says his country will help Havana modernize and train its military and that Moscow warships will visit Cuba soon, according to reports published Friday.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:52 PM | Your Say (0)

LGF Headline Shocks Blogosphere Left and Right

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Via Is Dan Rather At Helm Of Little Green Footballs? サ The Nose On Your Face

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:31 PM | Your Say (2)

Strange Vehicles I've Ridden

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Top slot has to go to the water-powered Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway on the coast of Devon.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (1)

The Cryptic Cat

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Elusive golden cat caught on film
"Anecdotal evidence suggests that while many villagers and locals may see the cat crossing roads, or maybe raiding domesticates, there are just not that many researcher sightings. We're usually looking for other things." As a result, says Dr Aronsen, there are no direct field studies of the African golden cat (Profelis aurata). Most studies that have been done are based on scat analyses."There is very little known about this felid, what kind of habitat it prefers etc," he says. "It is spread across equatorial Africa, but it is cryptic and we presume solitary, making observations few and far between."

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:24 AM | Your Say (1)

The Atom's First Portraits

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"For the first time, physicists have photographed the structure of an atom down to its electrons. The pictures, soon to be published in the journal Physical Review B, show the detailed images of a single carbon atom's electron cloud, taken by Ukrainian researchers at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology in Kharkov, Ukraine." -- Research - ISNS

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:26 AM | Your Say (1)

September 18, 2009

Oh dear, no "Tuscan" kale... what to do.

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"Considering all the logistics, each tomato she purchased had a carbon footprint of several tons."

There was kale in the famousWhite House garden, but that's Just. Not. Good. Enough!, is it?
Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon: The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens. Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens. "Now it's time to buy some food," she told several hundred people who came to watch. "Let's shop!"
....Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it's hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of "walnut dacquoise" from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris's Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn. -- Dana Milbank - Washington Sketch: Michelle Obama Gets Her Farmers Market - washingtonpost.com

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:56 PM | Your Say (10)

Ships of State Abandon Sinking Rats

Under fire, Democrats abandon ACORN in droves

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (3)

If They've Lost Jay Leno.... "APORN... er, I mean ACORN" ... "ACON... er, ACORN"

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (0)

Alas, not that "Michael Moore"

The White House - Press Office - President Obama Nominates Michael Moore, Carmen Ortiz and Edward Tarver to be US Attorneys

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:00 PM | Your Say (1)

Obama Hope Artist's Studio Tagged with "Acorn-Funded Prostitution Zone"

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The Eastsider LA What's the deal with Acorn, Gary Leonard & Shepard Fairey?
Gary Leonard taking a photo of a sign painted on those easy-to-clean walls of artist Shepard Fairey's Echo Park studio. The sign reads "Acorn Funded Prostitution Zone." Since Fairey is not likely to respond to any questions, all theories are welcome.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:31 AM | Your Say (6)

September 17, 2009

Reminder in Brooklyn Heights

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Posted by Vanderleun at 7:58 PM | Your Say (0)

Obama to Poland

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Being a friend of America just got more dangerous. U.S. Changes Course on Eastern European Nuclear-Missile Shield


Who says he doesn't keep his campaign promises?


Posted by Vanderleun at 2:35 PM | Your Say (2)

This Forthcoming Marriage Will Self-Destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2....

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Now I ain't sayin' she a GOLD DIGGER.... -- Awesomely BAD engagement photos

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (0)

Everything but the Oink

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What is surprising is the staggering array of non-food products that incorporate parts of the pig. Who knew it took pig fat to make automobile paint? Or that hemoglobin from pig blood is used in cigarette filters? Bone ash, Meindertsma found, went into train brakes, bone meal into the coating for aluminum molds, and gelatin from the pig’s skin and bones was deployed by an American weapons manufacturer to help distribute powder to bullets. -- Pig 05049 @ Design Observer

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (1)

Race Carder Judo

Cobb:
The point, my friends, is not to tell the Carders that there is no racism going on, but to explain to them that it is not their grandfather's racism. They'll have to agree, although what is plausibly deniable gets foggy. After all, even the Carders will deny that they themselves are not making stereotypical judgments. -- Effective Resonance Redux - Cobb

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (1)

[LGF] Psycho & The Infinite Monkey Theorem

Very funny but very "inside blogball."



Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. The zoo's scientific officer remarked that the experiment had "little scientific value, except to show that the 'infinite monkey' theory is flawed". -- Infinite monkey theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (1)

Do I have to pick just one?

One Cʘsmos: Jimmy Carter: Miserable Failure, Vicious Anti-Semite, or Just Plain Stupid?
Could it be that the War on Poverty results in only more poverty? Or that government discrimination does not end discrimination? Or that military weakness is provocative to the enemies of liberty? Or that aid to Africa freezes it in a state of dysfunction? Or that pouring more money into a bad educational system makes it worse? Or that subsidizing college increases the cost of tuition?

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Racism is over (if you want it)

"Racist: we lost the word before anyone realized that it is not what one says but what one does that makes one a racist.
Take Seattle for example: a city of NPR adults who say and think all the politically approved things (Hey, didn't you see the tears streaming down my cheeks during the Obama inauguration?) but who refuse to let their white children go to school with black children." -- Ex Seattle-Lefty Speaks

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:15 AM | Your Say (0)

"Oh, the country's in the very best of hands...."

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Posted by Vanderleun at 3:03 AM | Your Say (1)

"Why My Political Views Have Changed Over the Years"

Pat Condell on "Apologists for evil"

HT: Daphne @ Ripping The Left ォ Jaded Haven

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:33 AM | Your Say (0)

@ 7 Years 1/2 of 2Blowards Hangs It Up

"It's been a great adventure, as well as (in web terms anyway) a pretty long one -- Friedrich and I first put our feet in the blogging waters back in, gadzooks, 2002. But over the last year or so my energy for pulling together fresh blogpostings has waned, and I've finally concluded that the time has come to cede the stage." == 2blowhards.com: End of the Line

I know how he feels. Drop by and say adieu.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:29 AM | Your Say (0)

September 16, 2009

No, let's do talk about Fight Club

Stacy McCain, in the midst of his continuing necropsy of the "troubled" and dishonorable Charles Johnson, makes this sage observation:
Say what you will about Pamela Geller, she is not afraid of a fight. And what the conservative movement needs now -- far more than we need ideological unity among intellectuals or would-be intellectuals -- is people who are not afraid of a fight. The Chicago Way has come to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and if anybody in the conservative movement doesn't know what that means, they need to stop hitting the snooze button and wake the hell up. -- The Other McCain: Andrew Jackson's mother advises this response to Charles Johnson's lies

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (6)

Bush on Obama, 2009

File under, "Now you tell us!" Of Barack Obama: This is a dangerous world, and this cat isn't remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you. -- Power Line - Bush Speaks, Maybe

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:07 PM | Your Say (1)

Why, oh why, did he say "You Lie"?

Anne Coulter, as usual, cuts through the crap:
There are a number of theories about why America's greatest living statesman shouted "You lie!" at that juncture, but mine is that Wilson said it because Obama told a big, fat stinking lie. -- Ann Coulter : Liberal Lies on National Health Care: Joe Wilson Edition!

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (0)

The Plain and Simple Truth About Birthers vs. Truthers

neo-neocon points out the obvious -- Birthers and truthers are not equal
The two sets of allegations are hardly equivalent, and speaking of them as though they balance each other out on some sort of scale of paranoid fringe beliefs is a nothing less than a moral outrage.

Read it all and get your head straight on this issue.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (0)

Little Green Footballs Splooge Tracker

Blogwars Fans Rejoice: For those that are following Charles Johnson's hate-changer game at Little Green Footballs Fluidoz's Blog has created an invaluable resource. As he says,
Just some notations on the blogwars. From a non idiotarian(sp?) stance. I have been following the LGF meltdown and am linking some highlights here.

Invaluable. That's Fluidoz's Blog for all your LGF tracking needs.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (0)

The Audacity of Hos

Jon Stewart kicks it up a notch.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political HumorHealthcare Protests
Source: The Great Ace

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (3)

I love it when the ever astute Mickey Kaus saves me from having to write about that insufferable prat Jimmy Carter

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Kausfiles : @kausfiles: Sex, Racism, and Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter cites racism as anti-Obama factor. Instant reaction: Kiss of Death. Gift to the GOPs. Remember the Carter era of smug moralizing? Anyone want to go back to that? ... P.S.: A good example of how, if the MSM wants to tilt against the Republicans, it's often too wedded to its own conventions--e.g., the desire to 'make news' with an ex-Pres.--to be effective. ... No sophisticated campaign propagandist would say, "OK, let's throw Jimmy Carter at them. They'll be reeling!"

jimmy-cartertattoo.jpg
File Under: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:00 AM | Your Say (5)

Kayne West: "Not Quite as Accomplished as Obama"

Acorns and Asshats - Cobb
'Jackass' is the word I hear that Obama has used to describe Kanye West, the airhead often defended as the most intelligent hiphop artist on the planet. Myself, I think West is a bullshit artist but not one quite as accomplished as Obama. After all, West's demographic is only marginally cultured and educated, whereas Obama has people as intelligent as Andrew Sullivan licking his behind. There's not much to say here. West is a crashing boor and Obama threw him under the bus.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:40 AM | Your Say (1)

September 15, 2009

The Only Way to Win in Afghanistan

Does the President have the stones or the sand to win? I don't think so. Captain's Journal
Force Projection is necessary. We must go after them where they live, where they traffic their supplies, and where they recruit and train. We must shut down their logistics, kill their fighters, and cause them to live in fear. We must cause them to stay on the run such that they have neither the time nor supplies to construct or emplace IEDs. Only then will they be so preoccupied with staying alive that they forget the population. Then we will have won. IEDs will no longer be a problem because the Taliban aren't a problem. They go hand in hand, and one will not be defeated without the other. We cannot first defeat IEDs and then the Taliban -- just like it was in Iraq. -- Herscherl Smith @ The Captain's Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:46 PM | Your Say (0)

Andrew Sullivan's Bong Hits Keep Heightening Accumulating

The "Everybody Does It" Defense:
Blogging feverishly to drive his justice-rigging dope bust off his own front page, Andrew Sullivan's moved on to items that count current marijuana busts. Noting, entirely without a smidgen of whiff of irony, "The contradictions keep heightening." (I note for the record that normally "contradictions accumulate" -- except of course when you're blogging high.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:36 PM | Your Say (2)

"Incivility is a consequence of non-punishment." -- Porretto

In a comment on Victor Hanson's The Rise of the Uncouth Francis Porretto notes...
Incivility is a consequence of non-punishment. Incivility, after all, has its own pleasures: that of venting one's feelings, and that of seeing despised others quail before one's words and gestures. When the old Gentleman's Code prevailed in common society, such acts and words would be sharply rebuffed, sometimes to the point of blows. Compared to the Americans of yesteryear who enforced that code, we're a milk-and-water bunch indeed.

And of course we have the observations of Thomas de Quincey:
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:54 PM | Your Say (1)

"Racers" Neoneocon coins a very useful new word

neo-neocon The racers

For the sake of convenience,I've decided to call people like Maureen Dowd, who see hidden racism in every complaint about Obama, "racers." If I could sum up the underpinnings of their position, it would be a riff on Descarte's proof of existence: "I think, therefore I am." For racers, it goes something like this: "I think, therefore it is." Such thoughts don't require logic or evidence -- just a gut feeling, a hunch, and to racers that makes them real.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:15 PM | Your Say (0)

De-Institutionalizing the 2 Party System

Let's face it: there are only two main parties,
but millions of emotionally disturbed people. What are they supposed to do, form their own party? Some of them do, but you have to be both crazy and stupid to think that the Green Party or Reform Party will ever go anywhere. -- One Cʘsmos: About Those Right Wing Fascists

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:23 PM | Your Say (5)

The New Ozymandias

hand-of-atacama5.jpg


The Hand of the Desert in Atacama
The last thing you would expect to find in the middle of the driest desert on Earth is a a work of art. But that’s exactly what you’re gong to see, if you happen to be traveling through the Atacama Desert, in Chile. The Hand of the Desert (La Mano del Desierto) is an 11-meters-tall sculpture, in the shape of a hand, rising up from the desert. It was designed and created by Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrzabal...

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (1)

Things That Go Scratch in the Night

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From now on I'm searching my bedroom with a flame thrower every night:
Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night. "I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw," said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China. -- Snake with foot found in China - Telegraph

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (5)

The Always Trenchant Jim Treacher....

Commenting on the four-day-old BigGovernment.com: I don't want to say Andrew Breitbart is a genius, but the last guy with a launch this successful was Neil Armstrong. -- ACORN couldn't look worse right now if Kanye West was wearing one of their t-shirts

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (1)

Andrew Sullivan takes another big bong hit and asks...

"What's so awful
about a nuclear stand-off between Iran and Israel in the Middle East? It is not necessarily a stable situation in a region when one country - and one country alone - has nuclear weapons in a region like the Middle East." -- Obama pushing Israel to war?

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (1)

Split Screen Peace & War

Zutphen.jpg


Christopher Taylor's fascinating exhibit:
I found a lot of pictures comparing Europe during the World War almost seventy years ago and what those areas look like now. With a little cutting and pasting, I created these composites -- Word Around the Net: NOW AND THEN

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (1)

They don't make urban disasters like they used to...

dark-tide.jpg


The Boston Molasses Disaster,
occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. A large molasses storage tank burst, The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft high, moving at 35 mph, and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft. The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet.
Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.
-- La Wik

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (0)

September 14, 2009

Annual MTV Video Degenerates' Night Out Does Not Disappoint

Usually just normally degraded, the show this year featured an extra "I am exceptionally degenerate" performance by professional freak Kanye West.

Kanye West ruins Taylor Swift's big MTV acceptance speech as he storms on stage What a man. You can see him and the rest of the refuse at the link. It's really quite a line-up but West and his thing are clearly in another class of their own.


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The "power couple" of the evening made it usual MTV stench just a bit more pungent. "The rapper wore a shiny shirt and Caterpillar boots, accessorizing with a bottle of cognac, while his other half opted for a racy Lycra snake-print catsuit." Very special people with very special needs.

And of course Jay Leno rewarded this shameful fool with a special guest slot so he could slobber about his late mother.

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:52 PM | Your Say (1)

Daphne's new and improved Afghanistan policy:

Islam Is The Problem @ Jaded Haven

Acquiring cell phones, Indian porn, billions in squandered foreign aid and the attention of our elite Marines in a landscape covered by roadside IED's does not make one functionally modern. These people haven't even figured out how to build a basic outhouse or use something other than their left hand to wipe their ass and we're going to help them build a dynamic economic engine based on our liberal democratic platforms of rule of law and capitalistic theory? Give me a break, when they aren't smoking hash and drinking chai, they spend hours each day on their knees, heads pointed towards Mecca or indulging in their favorite sport of Allah endorsed child rape, that is when they aren't instructing their fair charges to detonate themselves in the local market. It's time to go Ghengis Khan on their foul ass or cut bait.

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:31 PM | Your Say (4)

Who's a raaaaacist?

"A raaaaacist is anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal."

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:02 PM | Your Say (1)

Mark Your Calendars!

gview_004.jpg

"OUR TIME HAS COME"

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:53 PM | Your Say (0)

September 13, 2009

Newsweak's "Profit Plan" -- Milk Our Remaining Fools for More!

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Next Week: Same cover but with an Asian baby? If it wasn't for dentists and ACORN offices, nobody would by this shit.


At Newsweek it's never "Our covers are creepy Newspeak. Our copy is crap. Our way-new design dreadful. Our attitudes are moronic and all we do is printed on coated toilet paper." Nope. It's that there are fewer and fewer people dumb enough to subscribe so we'll dump more by doubling the cost.
Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years, the magazine's top executive said Friday. Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters. -- Newsweek Shifts Focus to Fewer, Higher-Paying Subscribers - washingtonpost.com

Long, long ago Newsweek was a great magazine gig. These days it's just another roach motel for hacks, flacks, and whacks where the slugs check in but they don't check out.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:51 PM | Your Say (7)

Tickle Torture: O Come On Andrew You Butch Bitch, Spill It. Dump the Dish. You Know You Want To!

The coyly titled "In the News" @ The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan whines,

Readers well know that I have never failed to address even personal matters on this blog, which is why I hope you understand that it's clear and binding legal advice that prevents me from commenting. I'm sorry about this, it's frustrating for me, but I hope readers understand.

You know, if Andrew was just married to an American citizen, his visa problems would be all over.... It's the not knowing that is the real torture for your loyal readers. Besides, the case is over, case closed, you won, you're safe. C'mon, Andrew, open up.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (1)

Althouse Leaves a Mark on the Not-So-Secret Shame of Maureen Dowd

Terse and to the point Althouse: "But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"
"Maureen Dowd lets us listen in to what's ringing around in her head. Why is she not ashamed to let us hear that? Because she somehow really thinks that what comes from her own brain does not come from her own brain. That's not just unfair — as her statement reveals she knows — it's crazy."

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:35 PM | Your Say (0)

I move we rename "trigger" talk "The Pull-My-Finger Option."

CNN Key senator rejects "trigger" for public health insurance option "The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option," Collins told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, "because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option."

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:39 PM | Your Say (1)

Vampire Cops: Of course it's a "federal program"

phoenixcopwithblood.jpg
Phoenix Police Department Detective Kemp Layden, of the DUI Squad


First, they come for your breath. Then they come for your blood:
BOISE, Idaho – When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he'll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver's arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.

"I was looking at people's arms and hands, thinking, 'I could draw from that,'" Dowell said.

It's all part of training he and a select cadre of officers in Idaho and Texas have received in recent months to draw blood from those suspected of drunken or drugged driving. The federal program's aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.

If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training.

And of course we will all hear, "If we can save one life, it's worth it."

Via: Power and Control: The Police Will Be Sticking It To You

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:36 PM | Your Say (7)

Back Where It All Began

FREAK:

DOW JONES 9605 SEPT 11, 2009

DOW JONES 9605 SEPT 11, 2001

Seen on the DRUDGE REPORT 2009

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (1)

Aftermath


Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama's spending in 'tea-party' demonstration

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:48 AM | Your Say (0)

"Hubris-laden charlatans"

Obama's Rhetoric vs. Common Sense

Even those who can believe that Obama can conjure up the money through eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:42 AM | Your Say (1)

September 12, 2009

Andrew Sullivan's "Get Out of Jail" Free Card

One of former attractions of journalism was to be intimate with the brick thrown into your window, the gun shoved into your face, the sap applied to the back of your head; to know the smell of sawdust on a gym floor, to be familiar with groping for a dime amid the lint in your pocket for that phone call to the city desk; and to know the sour taste of bad coffee served at the cut-rate greasepit. This was the price of admission into a brotherhood, or so we were told. If today that's changed to the point where a US Attorney will act to keep you from getting busted, then life has gotten easier for journalists, the question is, has it gotten better? In the Andrew Sullivan incident, the citation for pot possession is in itself trivial; it's a third-rate bust. What is potentially serious is the burden that it places on Sullivan himself. Who can blame others if they believe he now acquired a debt of gratitude towards the US Attorney and his bosses? Who can blame the bosses of the US Attorney for thinking they now have a marker on Sullivan they can call in some day? And worst of all, who can blame those who think that justice is after all, not blind: that some are more equal than others? None of these forebodings are necessarily valid. I don't know if calls were made or favors were asked. Come to that, I never actually saw what was inside the envelopes I watched handed out at press conference. For all I really know all they contain is empty air. But it's the doubt that corrodes. -- Belmont Club サ Quid

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (1)

September 11, 2009

"The shadow of September 11...

thefallingmancut.jpg


... will mar man's dreams until the day when we regain our boldness and set foot on other worlds; when humanity can once again distance the old evils, if only for a moment, carrying only such malignancies as are left dormant in their hearts. In all likelihood it will only be for a moment, because man pursues man with the hunger of a demon. Half the human race seeks something to love and the remainder seeks them as something to rule. The men who rushed up the stairs were our better angels; and their day is done. Not so us. We have miles to go before we sleep. -- Belmont Club サ The ashen alabaster city

Betraying our dead
We've forgotten what we owe our dead and what we owe our children. We've even forgotten who attacked us.

9/11, Remembered In Old Screengrabs
Like a growing number of others in a time obsessively concerned with the “digital divide”, I went to my desktop computer to get more information. Unlike many others, though, I made screen captures of the sites as I visited them.

Let It Rain @ Jaded Haven
Look at these men and remember their deaths. Look at their faces and remember their lives. Take a good, hard look at our country's finest sons and feel proud that we were the home of such brave and selfless men.

LILEKS Friday, September 11th
Right after the towers fell, people who'd never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasn't happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, there's still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldn't stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.

Flight 93

The only part of the American national security establishment that successfully defended America on 9/11 was the portion of the reserve militia on board Flight 93, acting without orders, without hierarchy, without uniforms or weapons, by spontaneous organization and action.

Google remembers 9-11, too -- by doing nothing;
On 9-11, Google celebrated in their own special way. Heretheir 9-11 logo. It's funny. It seems to be eerily similar to the logo Google uses for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. What a coincidence. I guess it's important to remember the Persian New Year and the 50th anniversary of Legos, but not 9-11.

Fouad Ajami: 9/11 and the ‘Good War’
Those were not Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their financiers were Arabs, and so were those crowds in Cairo and Nablus and Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. Kabul had not sufficed as a return address in that twilight war; it was important to take the war into the Arab world itself, and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw. He had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a lesson was made of him.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (3)

September 10, 2009

"Obama's Health Care Plan Will....!"

This video, Obama Youth Regiment, made the rounds during the campaign. Listen to the repeated assertions about what the "Obama Health Care Plan Will Do" at the end of the video (around 1:50). Very creepy and prescient in light of subsequent events.


Posted by Vanderleun at 6:32 PM | Your Say (6)

Computer Modeling

astronomycosmosblackholedrawing.jpg


"I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all." -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars"

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (6)

Government Control Freaks Please Note

-Murphy Laws Site - Technology Laws

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:47 PM | Your Say (1)

But No Laxatives, Okay?

Two Things You Need To Levitate a Mouse: 1) Strong Magnet 2) Sedatives

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (0)

The TEOTWAWKI Call

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"That $100 million I spent on MoveOn.org and the American trade unions was the best investment I ever made." -- Doug Ross has the rest of your vast global conspiracy RIGHT HERE!

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:33 PM | Your Say (1)

Sharpen Up


Via Extend Your Razor's Life with a Pair of Jeans - Saving Money - Lifehacker

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (0)

Noted in Passing

An ounce of Moldberg is worth a pound:
(The whole point of electing Democrats is to allow the permanent government to do its thing. When you vote for a Democrat, you are saying: I am tired of politics. I am loyal to the permanent government and trust in its prudent guidance.) -- Unqualified Reservations: The Honduran rebellion - or, State's invisible world displayed

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (0)

Most Heartwarming Pictures on the Net Today

Christopher Taylor does us all a solid at Word Around the Net: Picture of the Day


fawnhorse.jpg


Yes, that little thing near the horse's head is a tiny little deer, maybe a week old at most. She's pretty safe with horses though, they'll tend to be careful around small things and try not to step on them or kick them.

More pix at the link.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)

The Anchoress has her priorities straight

"No, I did not watch Obama's speech. Tepid political theater is no match for a good ballgame. And if I have a choice between looking at Nancy Pelosi or looking at Derek Jeter, who do you think I'm going to choose?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:38 AM | Your Say (0)

September 9, 2009

Ellen DeGeneres' career continues to degenerate...

Fox says DeGeneres is new 'American Idol' judge

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:53 PM | Your Say (0)

"Disneyland isn't perfect. It's just the happiest place on Earth."

Bill Whittle continues his streak of knocking them out of the park with the current 10 minutes of video at
Pajamas TV - Afterburner with Bill Whittle - A Tale of Two Revolutions: The War of Ideas & the Tragedy of the Unconstrained Vision

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:49 PM | Your Say (1)

Brunk Dlogging the Dead

Stephen Green is at his finest in Pajamas Media サ Drunkblogging the Big ObamaCare Speech
5:56PM Give me my plan or people will DIE!
5:57PM Obama just praised the town hall protestors. You know, the Nazi liars? And now Ted Kennedy wants you to pass this bill that doesn't exist yet, because he was quite popular and very large and had hardly killed anyone at all, personally, since 1969. Also, great hair for a dude who was like 107, right?
5:58PM Self-reliance! Love of freedom! Skepticism of government! And socialized medicine! Sing it with me now: One of these things is not like the other...

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:13 PM | Your Say (1)

Friedman is so cute when he's being butch.

iowahawk: What Good Is Democracy If It Doesn't Give Us the Stuff I Want? by Thomas L. Friedman [ed note: Found! Beneath a pile of New York Times junk bonds in a 43rd Street dumpster: first draft of Tom Friedman's latest OpEd tour de force]
Likewise, it is no accident that Thomas Friedman stands poised to overtake all of eastern Maryland with his stately gargoyle-capped suburban manor. Within the imposing walls of Friedman's Forbidden City, he has learned well the lessons that vaulted him to supremacy on the Times OpEd Page Security Council: global progress requires a visionary, charismatic, ruthless, mustachioed ruler, willing to impose unpopular measures on his household staff to insure that the bannisters are free of fingerprints and the pools remain at the correct pH.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:17 PM | Your Say (0)

Liberal Fascism, New York Times Style

Jonah Goldberg finely fisks the flabby Friedman in Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist - Jonah Goldberg
If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman's intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are "drawbacks" to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these "drawbacks" pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it's the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn't picky in this regard).... Friedman lives in a liberal democracy but has his nose pressed up against the candy store window of a cruel, undemocratic, regime and all he can do is drool over the prospect of having the same power here. It's disgusting.

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FREE OBAMA!

Camille Paglia's love affair with Obama is not too dimmed. It's time instead to blame the Democrats for Obama's fall. Too late for Obama to turn it around? | Salon
By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (5)

09/09/09

"Not only does the date look good in marketing promotions, but it also represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101." -- Live Science I'm going to stick around to make sure that's true.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (0)

Mr. President, we must not allow a puff piece gap!

The Tingle is Gone - Victor Davis Hanson
Proof of all this is not just the waning polls and the grassroots anger ofhoi polloi, but a strange and sudden end to last fall's elite-left puff pieces that used to run the gamut from women dreaming of seducing Barack, desire to change the law to allow him to begin governing almost immediately in November, worry over a Bush coup to abort the dreamy Obama presidency, and all sorts of personal testaments about how suddenly the world will be a utopia. That entire genre of liberal therapeutic Obama musings in print and on the screen has quite incredibly simply vanished.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (1)

Notes from a Septic Culture

Everything's Broken:
Embrace your inner serial killer with these lifesized, hacked up male body parts. Custom made for horror-style realism, with lots of blood and guts. Made of durable latex foam. This item is handmade and may vary slightly from shown. PLEASE NOTE: This item is a Special Order and may take 2 to 5 weeks for delivery. Please call us for availability if you need this item sooner. -- Axed Up Body < Halloween Props < Fright Catalog, Inc.
Next year, women and children. Depend upon it.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (1)

"GO TO HELL, BASTARDS!" [signed, "Angry Mission Impossible Fan"]

A man with a plan:
So I'd take the letters and send them in manila envelopes to the various postmasters at various locations throughout the Bay Area, with a small note attached saying, "Please mail these for my kids." The postmasters would shrug and drop the letters in the mail slot. This way the TV station would get letters postmarked from all over the place. -- The Mission - Maggie's Farm

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September 8, 2009

Read It and Weep

"Human history tells us something important about human nature, and what it tells us is altogether unflattering: The things that are most reliably demonstrated to be bad ideas, are the ones we try the most often. That’s just the way it is." -- Morgan @ House of Eratosthenes

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:50 PM | Your Say (0)

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so doth Sullivan return to the penis....

As readers know, my position is simply that no parent has a right to permanently mutilate a child for no good reason. Scar tissue should be a personal choice. -- The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

More piercings coming right up for Andrew!

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:41 PM | Your Say (1)

On Neo's Reading List and Now on Mine

neo-neocon Everything old is new again: Raymond Aron and other intellectuals of the anti-Left

Aron's subject is the bewitchment -- the moral and intellectual disordering -- that comes with adherence to certain ideologies. Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are "merciless towards the failings of the democracies" but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines? Aron's title is an inversion of Marx's contemptuous remark that religion is "the opium of the people." He quotes Simone Weil's sly reversal of the epigraph, "Marxism is undoubtedly a religion. in the lowest sense of the word -- [I]t has been continually used "as an opiate for the people." In fact -- and fortunately -- Weil got it only partly right. Marxism and kindred forms of thought never really became the people's narcotic. But they certainly became -- and in essentials they still are -- the drug of choice for the group that Aron anatomized: the intellectuals.

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New York Times: We're Just Like Bill Gates, Only Broker

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This is a display ad that came up today on @ The New York Times - Home Delivery. I note that even with the "savings" a year of this poison rag still costs north of $700.00. Pass.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:44 PM | Your Say (0)

Remembering Michael

LIVE FOREVER a sensitive proposal at The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
MJ Sperm Bank Memorial No longer will our genetic heritage dictate our ethnicity, age, gender, or even the genetic disposition we pass onto our offspring, MJ demonstrated how keenly this can be manipulated. The MJ-Sperm Bank Memorial unites his global audience and allows for free exchange of specimens and facilitates fertility tourism in a country of relaxed donor laws. Allowing for this global community to become a global family. The memorial is a celebration of MJ love of children and enabling for their manufacture. -- By jjwh (London)

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On Being in Japan

The machine of Japanese society is oiled by holiday snaps and boxes of seaweed crackers stamped with the silhouette of Hello Kitty.Before I lived here Ireadthat the Japanese spend the same equivalent of their GDP on omiyage as America spends on law-suits and litigation. In this sense, the commodity of 'being somewhere' has far greater value for Japanese society than the mere personal. If we in the West were offered the chance to swap all our law-suits and lawyers for seaweed crackers, I hope we'd at least consider it. -- Daniel Rourke @ 3quarksdaily

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Things That Make You Go Hummmm.....

Marginal Revolution: Sentences to ponder
"The Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education is not itself listed in the Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education."

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Torture and Truth

We should demand the release of every last memorandum and paper on the extent, nature, and effectiveness of the former Administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques, because America is not the Vatican, and the American people are entitled to know not only what was done, but whether it was effective. We are entitled to facts, and truth, and to gauge how we balance those acts and those results against the alternatives. If that embarrasses the Republican or Democratic Parties, so be it. The alternative is a politicized war over every last foreign policy action, and the last time we tried that gambit, it ended with smoking craters in the Northeastern United States. -- Christopher Badeaux @ The New Ledger

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Eyes Wide Shut

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Why you should never look down while riding a roller coaster.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (0)

Mean Green Killing Machine

On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.
A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont. -- Robert Bryce: Windmills Are Killing Our Birds - WSJ.com

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September 7, 2009

Government's Gonna Get Health Care Medieval on You

[HT: Bookworm Room]

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:11 PM | Your Say (0)

Obama Junior: Who Knew? They All Knew.

Ron Radosh: Lessons of Van Jones

Finally, we must raise the question of who vetted him, and how could the president not have known Jones’ views? Of course, the White House did know. Valerie Jarrett made it clear that they recruited him because they were familiar with his record in Oakland, and they wanted him in the White House. If Jones knew, Obama knew. When a candidate for a government job fills out a form, either the FBI clearance form or the one given candidates by the administration, they are asked if they have done anything, said anything or been involved in groups that could prove embarrassing to the president.... Up until now, Jones’ defenders have said that he held a rather low level, unimportant job. Now, Sirota is claiming just the opposite. Of course he is correct. Jones had access to a nine billion dollar budget; his job was a major one.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (3)

Even "free" it would cost too much.

The Agitator is Just Curious
So for consistency's sake, Michael Moore's new film [Capitalism: A Love Story] won't be advertised, marketed, or otherwise promoted by crass capitalist machinations, right? And I assume we'll all be able to see it for free?

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:32 PM | Your Say (0)

The Israel Test

“Either the world, principally the United States, supports Israel, or Israel, one way or another, will be destroyed. There are no other realistic choices. And if Israel is destroyed, capitalist Europe will likely die as well, and America, as the epitome of productive and creative capitalism spurred by Jews, will be in jeopardy.” -- What’s Israel Got to Do with It? by Clifford D. May on National Review Online

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O "La Géante" (The Giantess)!

Charles Baudelaire meets Julia Fullerton-Batten Enchanté!


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Repeat after me: "nanoplasmonics" and "spaser"

"Laugh while you can, monkeyboy!"
If you're into buzzwords, nanoplasmonics is one you ought to know about. Nanoplasmonics, we're told, is the next big thing--the field that will allow us to sense and manipulate the world on the smallest of scales....

What's needed, says Mark Stockman at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, is the nanoplasmonic equivalent of a transistor and he has come up with a device that can do the trick.

His device is the nanoplasmonic equivalent of a laser. He calls it a spaser (Surface Plasmon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). In a spaser, a surface plasmon plays the same role as a photon in a laser. -- arXiv blog: Plasmonic Laser Heralds New Generation of Computing

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (1)

Hue's Next?

"Mr. Jones is a colorful character. He is an empirically black man who according to the yellow press was actually a red. He was an expert on green jobs, but he swore a purple streak as far as the You could Tube." -- Gladly Lerne, Gladly Teche: A Certifiable Larynx

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (2)

Packing It In

The Barrister @ Maggies Farm brings up The Collyer Brothers and says, "Get educated!"

Well..... okay.

Police and workmen removed 103 tons of garbage from the house... Items removed from the house included baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, 3 dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child's chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, 8 live cats -- Collyer brothers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Barrister is right. Fascinating.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:31 AM | Your Say (1)

Lucky I don't need it....

Clinic for internet addicts opens in US
reSTART has been opened outside Seattle, the rain-soaked north-western town where high-tech companies are as common as cattle are in Texas. It claims to be America's first residential detox centre for internet addicts. For a little over $14,000, up to six people at a time can spend 45 days sweating out their insatiable urge to be umbilically connected to cyberspace. Think cold turkey as experienced by heroin junkies, and you get the general idea.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:22 AM | Your Say (0)

Somebody yelled "Attack!" and there I stood with an arrow in my back.

Doug Ross hits the bullseye with Yobie Benjamin: Idiot With a Word Processor
Yobie Benjamin's Goebbels-like attempts to obfuscate Obama's statements are more than mere spin: they are patent lies. Although, to be fair, this sort of public fabrication isn't entirely unexpected from the dying newspaper business, which is defending its last spit of turf like Custer at Little Big Horn.


Posted by Vanderleun at 12:18 AM | Your Say (0)

September 6, 2009

Headline of the Holiday Weekend

Strange jellies of the icy depths


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Posted by Vanderleun at 11:59 PM | Your Say (1)

Cartoon Laws of Physics

X. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead. -- The QQQ Files

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:32 PM | Your Say (0)

"Yes we can. Can what? Don’t be a fool to ask."

Belmont Club, Digging our own graves
Revolution is fun when you can talk about it at the cafe afterward, or have your bruises treated at a first-world medical facility. It is less fun if you eat only one meal of corn grits a day and have to watch your teeth fall out in a secret police cell.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:27 PM | Your Say (0)

September 5, 2009

How to Win in 2010

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:03 PM | Your Say (4)

If you're not getting any stimulus $$$, you're just not the right person in the right place: Sex offenders living under Miami-Dade bridge may get help from federal stimulus cash [HT: Katz]

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:33 AM | Your Say (1)

September 4, 2009

Brainwork!

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“I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.” -- Holmes Sign of the Four @ Explorations

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:33 PM | Your Say (0)

Off the Reservation

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As I listened to myself speak about representing blackness, I realized how incoherent I became. Nothing I could think of made sense. I was completely outside of that box, spiritually, which was different. I've always been outside of the black box mentally. By this I mean to say my communion with black Americans has always been there in spirit but my mind goes from place to place. But this particular morning, I found myself at a loss to say where the particular spirit of black America is at this moment in history. I haven't been paying attention, and I find it difficult to bother. Not because I don't care about that branch of humanity, but because I see blackness as a box that I don't live in. For me, it is a prior address. -- The Long Black Tail - Cobb

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:16 PM | Your Say (0)

The United Steaks Of America

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Via the always kind and gentle, if not utterly vegetarian, swissmiss

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:02 PM | Your Say (3)

OAS: Obama Arrangement Syndrome

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The persistence of halos. This hot shot from the White House photostream where they still believe!


Neoneocon proposes a new term: Obama Arrangement Syndrome; "the tendency to make excuses for our new President."

The phrase originates with “Terry Gain,” who writes: …at least six months ago I coined the term…OBAMA ARRANGEMENT SYNDROME . The syndrome requires that people interpret or ignore events in a manner that reinforces their preconceived, and rigid, notions about Obama.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:36 PM | Your Say (1)

How I Spent My Blogging Vacation

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.... but it does not rule my life!

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (0)

Orwellian

In America of 2009 the following are "true":
The Arabs invented the printing press, and spurred us on to the Enlightenment and Renaissance. Muslims in Cordoba advised the brutal Christians to show tolerance during the Inquisition. Slavery ended in America without violence. The Berlin Airlift was a worldwide effort. The Americans liberated Auschwitz. There are 57 states. FDR was President in 1929 and gave television addresses. We can either drill offshore or inflate our tires properly.
There are no terrorists or a war on same, but only overseas contingency operations and man-made catastrophes. Those who object to health care are ungodly, and the nation's children must go to school and see the messiah address them en masse on state-run television screens. Nazis, brown shirts, a mob, insurance lackeys, Brooks brothers elites, etc. all go to Town Halls. Doctors chop off limbs and gleefully take out tonsils for profit. George Bush is our Emmanuel Goldstein whom we must hate collectively each morning for a couple of minutes. -- Works and Days » Not This Pig

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:50 PM | Your Say (0)

Sweet Little Lies

Rule 5 Fodder: Please do not watch this sexist & gratuitous video which was placed here only because it shares the same title as this post.

Nowadays — we have the quickening. And I do not think things are staying the same. The lies being told are so much more brazen. We can have a “public option” on our national healthcare, with no rationing. Nobody has any reason to oppose His Glorious Wonderfulness’ ideas, other than their own unapologetic racism. Hollywood celebrities are the wisest among us. Unplug that coffee pot, or the planet might die. Keep importing that oil from the states that sponsor terrorist acts against us, or else Fluffy the Polar Bear won’t have any chunks of ice waiting for him as he swims around, and Fluffy just might drown. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:28 PM | Your Say (2)

Crusing with Van Jones and Meg Whitman

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (0)

In Which Peggy Noonan Starts Looking for a Warm, Damp Towel to Clean Herself Up


Cue ZZ Top's She Wore a Pearl Necklance:
"The president's biggest potential long-term problem in terms of the public part of the presidency became obvious to me only during the past week.... He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool." -- Peggy Noonan: Coruscating on Thin Ice - WSJ.com

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (5)

"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."

While politics is ostensibly about governance, suggesting that it does something constructive, in reality is often an activity for its own sake. In other words, the purpose of politics is to serve politicians. Recent news, excerpted after the Read More, provide examples of politicians engaged in the crazy pointless things. We have "Green Czars" who believe 9/11 was a conspiracy; legislators who play solitaire on their laptops while session is in progress; bankrupt government agencies; health care that is really about empowering the taxman; and our favorite North Korean Dear Leader creating a second source of fissile material, as if one were not enough. In order to keep doing these bizarre things, politicians need power. Why? So they can get more power. There doesn't have to be a reason for their activity, only an apparent reason. The real goal of many government "reforms" and initiatives may simply be to help politicians get their hands on more authority.For what purpose, one might ask? Why do people play solitaire? Simply because. -- Belmont Club » Solitaire

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (0)

September 2, 2009

The Age of the Feuilletons

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"We must confess
that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. The reported on, or rather ‘chatted’ about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. It would seem, moreover, that the cleverer among the writers of them poked fun at their own work. Ziegenhalss, at any rate, contends that many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. Quite possibly these manufactures articles do indeed contain a quantity of irony and self-mockery which cannot be understood until the key is found again. The producers of these trivia were in some cases attached to the staffs of the newspapers; in other cases they were free-lance scriveners. Frequently they enjoyed the high-sounding title of ‘writer’, but a great many of them seem to have belonged to the scholar class. Quite a few were celebrated university professors." -- Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (0)

Silent Lunch

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Children would be happily chattering away at normal levels, then new age, Enya lite music emanating from the stage speakers would assault the senses. The lunch workers would hold their arms overhead, fingers shaped in a V of peace, followed by a loud round of sibilant shushing. As the children ceased speaking, the ladies would stalk the aisles, telling the few brave whispering souls to be quiet and these women weren't being polite about the demand. Two of the harridans looked unkept and hungover, their faces etched in perpetual scowls as they fussed our small children into unnatural silence. -- Shut Your Pie Hole @ Jaded Haven

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Sign of the Times

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What's Wrong With This Sign?

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:41 PM | Your Say (8)

Why Western Civilization Needs the Refining Fire STAT!

Poodle Doodles: The poodles transformed into pandas, horses and even snails at 'creative grooming' dog shows


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Posted by Vanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (0)

Good News: Norman Mailer is Still Dead

Until he is forgotten, Mailer should be remembered not only in a fool’s cap and bells but also in a scoundrel’s midnight black. For in an age crawling with intellectual folly, he was one of the reigning dunces, even his best works were shot through with adolescent fatuities, while the worst of his words and deeds were stupid and vicious without bottom. One is torn between wishing that his memory would disappear immediately and wanting his remains to hang at the crossroads as a lasting reminder to others. -- The Naked Novelist and the Dead Reputation

For my own take on Mailer when he lived, see The Naked and the Senile Dementia

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (1)

Short and Sweet Review

The Friends of Dalton Trumbo "The new documentary “Trumbo” unites two of the most unbearable groups of zealots in the modern world: Communists and theater people."

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (2)

'And yes, I am still wearing fur, but I've made up with that guy from Peta.'

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Take it off, but put it on the bed. Naomi Campbell models a sable coat... 15 years after Peta anti-fur advert

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Posted by Vanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (2)

Status: Senator Edward M. Kennedy -- "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

After days of non-stop evaluation, adulation, and reflection NPR, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and Captain James T. Kirk collaborate on a final wrap-up on the current status of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.


"There was no doubt that Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had died if anyone listened to NPR in the days after his death late on Aug. 25 from brain cancer. Between Aug. 26 and 30, NPR ran 53 stories.... But on that first day, in the 23 on-air stories, only one mentioned the name Mary Jo Kopechne and 5 mentioned Chappaquiddick." -- Too Much Kennedy - NPR Ombudsman Blog : NPR

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (1)

And now for a lie so large it could fill the Grand Canyon with drool

National Security Adviser Says President Obama Is Having Greater Success Taking Terrorists Out of Commission Than Bush Did

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:17 AM | Your Say (2)

September 1, 2009

Megan McArdle Schools Michelle Goldberg


Watch Michelle Goldberg's face as McArdle decimates her argument.

HT: Moe Lane who noted "Megan McArdle’s moment of supreme awesomeness."

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:38 PM | Your Say (5)

That Old Bible, Meryl Street

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"The filmmakers mounted Streep on platform heels, stretched her out, and put her together with the compact Stanley Tucci (as Child’s loving husband, Paul). Like a tall ship in full sail, Streep leans, tilts, and billows. Odd explosions of air—whoops, exclamations—come hurtling through the passageways. She runs out of breath, and then settles, mysteriously, like an old Bible that italicizes ordinary words, on a single syllable." -- David Denby -- and Julie & Julia review : The New Yorker

Fine, but she's still not off the hook for Mama Mia.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:32 PM | Your Say (1)

Great Spontaneous Photo Essay

Cathy saw it and Cathy got it. This is what blogs were made for: Looking Up: Joy in the Rain


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"The rain pattered on my windshield. The park visitors ran for their cars. I continued to read the newspaper until I saw the following through my rain-splattered window. She was a football field's length from me. Still, you couldn't miss her joy in rain."

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (2)

If you don't know how to do it, I'll show you how to walk the dog.

"I'm the guy with the night shift," Obama told one television interviewer. "[Bo and I] go out and we're walking and I'm picking up poop and in the background is the beautifully lit White House. It's quite a moment." -- CAPITAL CULTURE: The poop on White House dog Bo

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (1)

American Digest Regretfully Announces a Sponsor

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Posted by Vanderleun at 6:08 PM | Your Say (0)

The Major Maxim of Our Time

The Bigger the Government, the Smaller the Citizen. -- Dennis Prager

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:06 PM | Your Say (3)

UPDATE: WWF Condems Unauthorized Ad One Good Reason to Never Give One Red Cent to the World Wildlife Federation

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AdFreak: 9/11 was nothing, according to new WWF ad
Just in time for the anniversary of 9/11 comes this tasteless, nightmarish print ad for the World Wildlife Fund, showing dozens of planes headed for lower Manhattan.

UPDATE: Ad is bogus. WWF - WWF Strongly Condemns Unauthorized Ad Campaign -
“WWF strongly condemns this offensive and tasteless ad and did not authorize its production or publication. It is our understanding that it was a concept offered by an outside advertising agency seeking our business in Brazil.

HT: Sharp-eyed commenter Mike Jackmin

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (3)

Must See TV

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"Don't let them get to you. The facts are on our side." Bill Whittle gives you 15 exceptional minutes -- Afterburner with Bill Whittle - Bill Maher, Barack Obama and the Truth About American Exceptionalism

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:00 AM | Your Say (3)

Because Ben & Jerry Couldn't Rename It "Penis"

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To celebrate the passage of legislation legalizing gay marriage in its home state of Vermont, Ben & Jerry's is renaming its Chubby Hubby ice cream "Hubby Hubby" for the month of September. -- AdFreak: Ben & Jerry's celebrates gay marriage in VT

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (2)

Civilization Fall Down Go Boom

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70 Years Ago: Full-scale war in Europe began at dawn on September 1, 1939,
when Nazi Germany used her newly formed Blitzkrieg tactics and military strength to invade Poland, to which both Britain and France had pledged protection and independence guarantees. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany and British troops were sent to France, however neither French nor British troops gave any significant assistance to the Poles during the entire invasion, and the German-French border, expecting the Saar Offensive, remained mostly calm. -- European Theatre of World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (1)