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January 31, 2010

This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post

This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention,
but really only has very little to do with the topic of the blog post. This sentence claims to follow logically from the first sentence, though the connection is actually rather tenuous. This sentence claims that very few people are willing to admit the obvious inference of the last two sentences, with an implication that the reader is not one of those very few people. This sentence expresses the unwillingness of the writer to be silenced despite going against the popular wisdom. This sentence is a sort of drum roll, preparing the reader for the shocking truth to be contained in the next sentence.
This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.....

Much more typical incendiary blather @ Coyote Crossing

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:18 PM | Your Say (1)

"So does such an editor exist today? Equal parts editor, rewriter, muse, slavedriver, and nursemaid? I doubt it."

Maxwell Perkins:

"In a decade of excellence he published the first novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920), Ernest Hemingway (1926), and Thomas Wolfe (1929). In each instance against the desires of his bosses at Scribner's, who didn't "get" what Perkins saw in these writers. He single-handedly took the raw talent, the ego, the alcoholic dysfunction of all three and formed complete and often prolific voices. He also discovered J.P. Marquand, Erskine Caldwell, and James Jones. That, Intrepids, is a nose for talent." -- Velociworld

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (0)

The Ghost Party

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"The Republican Party was dominant from 1861 to 1933.
The Democratic Party was dominant from 1934 to 1980, the Ghost Party has been dominant ever since. To say this requires accepting many oscillations and digressions between the two non-ghost parties.
What I wish to argue is that there is now a genuine third party of significant size and great volatility. It is really the Independent Party but it refuses to become an official party. The members of this party are registered, in most states, as Democrats or Republicans but they vote their own Ghost Party platform and candidates." -- Michael Phillips: Two/three parties

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:09 PM | Your Say (1)

Lie? Bullshit? Or Both?

Sunday Morning Services: One Year On, President Obama Still Can't Find a Church - Big Journalism

Obama quit Chicago's embattled Trinity United Church of Christ months before taking office in 2008 and has not formally joined a new one in his new hometown. But sources familiar with the president's personal life say Obama remains a faithful Christian while in the White House, practicing his beliefs regularly in private with family and the aid of his BlackBerry.
Yeah. Right. Look, there's nothing wrong with being godless, but at least have the stones to front it, okay? This continuous slow stream of crapulation is getting tedious.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (6)

Swift Justice: KSM Has His Day in Court

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INT. NYC COURTROOM – DAY (JULY 30, 2014, 9:00 AM) After three years of procedural delays and another 18 months of jury selection, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is set to begin.
Alan Dershowitz: Your honor, the defense would like to enter a motion for dismissal.

Judge Schwartz: On what grounds, counselor?

Alan Dershowitz: The accused was never given his Miranda rights, the arresting authorities entered his domicile without a search warrant, he was denied counsel and held in harsh conditions in an overseas prison for over three years, all his confessions and self-incriminating statements were extracted there under torture rendering them inadmissible and this entire proceeding unconstitutional.

Judge Schwartz: Anything else, Mr. Dershowitz?

Alan Dershowitz: Yes, your honor. My client maintains his innocence.

Judge Schwartz: Motion to dismiss granted. The defendant is free to leave. The jury is dismissed. Court is adjourned.

-- Dan Friedman NYC

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (4)

January 30, 2010

Freedom on fire

Freedom is no more than a piece of combustible paper:
a forbidden book, a speech draft in longhand, a film no longer printed on combustible stock but still setting minds aglow. All tyrannies in recorded history have sought to burn, confiscate and banish that paper or other media that carried the ideas of liberty, and to burn or banish the authors. Nowadays, such tyrannies exist primarily in Dar al Islam and in its lesser franchises of elective dhimmi socialism (abbrev. dhimmisocialism) in Western Europe and Canada and in nascent forms in the United States and Australia. -- From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 14 (イ): Freiheit 451 | The Brussels Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (0)

Obama as a "Catcher"

"Soft pornography" never quite struck me as so powerful a corrupting force,
as a novel which exalts the worst kind of self-pitying adolescent narcissism, and holds it up as an ideal, through adulthood to a senile old age.
The book has had a remarkable and, to my mind, infernal influence on society, owing in part to its author's literary skill in the manipulation of colloquial language, in part to the emotional and even hormonal power in that peculiar explosion of sex and ego that is adolescent narcissism itself. The proof is in the pudding, and the fact that Catcher in the Rye went on to inspire at least three celebrity assassins (Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley Jr., and Robert John Bardo), along with who knows how many "little league" psychos and suicides, speaks to its real power.
Indeed, one cannot look through the list of President Obama's strange and demented policy czars without spotting so many Holden Caulfields, nor escape their ever-presence among the talking heads of MSNBC. And in watching the president's State of the Union address this week, I had the distinct impression of a man whose big-government vision rests less in Marxism than in the faux-naïf of "a catcher in the rye." -- davidwarrenonline.com - NEWSPAPER COLUMNS

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (21)

Reporter Caroline Graham Has Had It with the UN

UN is as UN does: Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate Haitians - while UN staff have wi-fi and a bar
Never, in more than 20 years of covering disasters, has the void between the might and power of the Westernised world and the penniless and pitiful people they have been mobilised to ‘save’ been so glaringly obvious to me.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (2)

Welcome to Porn for the Blind

Porn for the Blind
is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites. This service is provided free of charge. You can help! Record a description now.

Hey, don't blame me. I'm just the reporter here. Blame David Thompson's Friday Ephemera.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (2)

January 29, 2010

Cereals from Hell. Premiums from Heaven

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God forgive me but I actually made my mother buy a box of this. It wasn't easy. But I had to have this cereal in order to get this baking powder powered atomic submarine:
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To my strange mind at the time, this submarine was the best cereal premium ever offered.... until these:
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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:21 PM | Your Say (15)

"Is it just me or are people starting to laugh at the claims made by Obama?

"It has been my experience that leaders can overcome many things in the course of their tenure. Laughter of the sort I’m starting to hear from independents and conservative democrat friends who cautiously supported Obama in the hope that he would bridge the differences between conservatives and liberals and usher in a new bi-partisan politics is not one of them however. This sort of self deprecating sour humor, the "I can't believe they screwed me again" attitude that I'm seeing will quickly enough turn to disgust and then anger." -- WESTSOUND MODERN

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:37 PM | Your Say (2)

The Declaration of Intent

Obama's speech was far more partisan than the State of the Union speech traditionally is. It amounted to a declaration of intent.
He has made next Fall's election an ideological plebiscite pure and simple. If the Democrats hold on to real power after next November, the United States will experience a fundamental change, with trust in central planning and government control of most aspects of the economy and our lives. The people done Obama dirty; we have repudiated the Savior; and we will be made to pay. We will get the changes he wants to give us whether we like it or not. He ran center-left. He has governed hard left. He now promises to change: to go even further left.
Prepare for the fight of our lives. Obama and the ravening wolves have enormous public funds to spend, and will make deals and promises as needed. Those who live off tax and spend will be told to fall in line and support the new United States, and stop asking questions and getting in the way. The alliance between the tax eaters and the ravening wolves will be strengthened. -- Jerry Pournelle

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:24 PM | Your Say (1)

Hey, All He Did Was Chop Her Head Off

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"Moderate Muslim" Hassan and his "dominating" wife.

Muslim Muzzammil S. "Mo" Hassan takes the "blame the victim" defense to places you never thought it could go: Man accused of beheading wife claims abuse
The cable TV executive accused of beheading his wife in Orchard Park last year now claims he was the one humiliated and abused. Through his new lawyer, Muzzammil S. "Mo" Hassan claimed Friday that he was a "battered spouse" who was left emotionally out of control by the constant abuse his wife inflicted on him.
Hassan's lawyer, Frank M. Bogulski, called the legal defense the first of its kind in the country.
"The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship," Bogulski told a reporter afterward. "He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him."

These are the times that make you want to behead lawyers like the aptly named "Bogulski." I mean does it ever happen that these shysters enter these pleas and the judge just looks at him and says, "Hey, Bogulski, go fuck yourself and the client you rode in on?" [HT: Jihad Watch]

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (4)

Birth of a Meme: The Blame Duck President

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Buh-buh-buh-Bushwick?

Blame Duck:neo-neocon minted it back at the beginning of December, 2009. Every day in every way it becomes more and more self-evident.

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

President Princess Fairy Pants

Regarding our current Blame Duck President:
"Bush could very easily have said well look, he could have stood there in the 2002 State of the Union and said look, I inherited this al Qaeda mess from Bill Clinton, because he didn’t have the guts to take out the guy in Afghanistan when he could have. He could have stood there in 2003 and said well look, I inherited this unfinished Iraq business from my predecessor who just wanted to fly over and bomb the no-fly zone once in a while, and that’s unfinished business that I “inherited”. Obama will still be blaming everything on what he “inherited” in years and years to come. It’s time to man up. You’re the president. Nobody forced you to be the president. You wanted the job. Man up or get the hell out of the way. But to stand there blaming in this cheesy, tacky, finger pointing at a guy who’s been gone now for over a year just makes you look Princess Fairy Pants. It’s pathetic." -- Mark Steyn @ The Hugh Hewitt Show
[HT: Maggies Farm]

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (2)

January 28, 2010

"Is there anything more rodent like than taking credit for another’s accomplishments? "

Let me blame Bush unless I can steal from him:

"As we take the fight to al Qaeda, we are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as president. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home." -- Personally, I Blame Bush « WESTSOUND MODERN

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (6)

January 27, 2010

I still can't get enough of last week's news...

how about you?


Posted by Vanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (3)

Kidnapped Word

3. Organic Real Definition: Contains carbon.
Agenda Monkey Definition: 1. The word on the side of my canvas grocery bag that helped me get invited to wine tastings by the elitist metrosexual sock puppet I met on the bus. 2. Well, it costs more, so it's better, right? 3. Of or relating to items whose importance magnifies exponentially with the number of people listening to you talk about it. 4. Of or relating to common food items that you wouldn't otherwise think to bring up in conversation, but has suddenly become important to share with everyone in earshot. Recommended Daily Utterances: 12 -- The Dipso Chronicles: Everyone Gets a Stick and Unlimited Whacks at This One

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (1)

Sakau Buzzed: Going Nowhere Slow

Fingerlynn is a chain-smoking, wiry mother of four.
She is timeless in the way that characters in myths and fairy tales are timeless. She laughs in a single deep hah. This gunshot laugh is often followed by a punch to my shoulder: not a good natured “ol’ chum” punch but a serious, bruising jab. She is in a tiny minority of adult Pohnpeian women whose body can be described as “athletic” (as opposed to “diabetic”). Her dark, small eyes are beautiful like a ferret’s. She is my best friend, and every night we head for the Try Me First (Eat Me Later) sakau market to argue with each other about oral sex. -- Nowhere Slow: Try Me First, Eat Me Later — The Bygone Bureau

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (0)

"Gleichschaltung"

Gleichschaltung: meaning “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”,
is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce.
One goal of this policy was to eliminate individualism by forcing everyone to adhere to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible using an invasive police force.
In Germany it was called 'right thinking,' in Russia it was 'having a party mind,' in the US it is being 'politically correct.' -- Comment by Artfldgr @ neo-neocon

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (2)

Shoot the Moon

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White House won't fund NASA moon program
NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there, if President Obama gets his way.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (8)

Mars Does a Drive-By

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Best Display of Mars From Earth in 6 Years on Wednesday
On Jan. 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than any other time between 2008 and 2014. A mere 60 million miles away, the red planet will be a great target for backyard telescopes, and will appear bright to the naked eye as well. From the ground, Mars will look like an orange star almost as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The view will actually be best on Friday, Jan. 29, when Mars will rise alongside the first full moon of the year, directly opposite the sun.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (3)

January 26, 2010

Meanwhile, it's no more Mr. Niceguy @ Velociworld

Do we really have thirty six more months of this complete and total fuck-up ahead of us?
I am dismayed at the thought. I feel like that fellow in Quest For Fire who hung suspended from a tree, one limb already lopped off and roasting on the fire, waiting for the cannibals to finish him off.

The good news is: the GOP has a plan. The bad news is: the GOP has a plan. I'm sure the plan is to marginalize any true fiscal conservatives as "unwinnable," while they craft a superior platform based on a kinder, gentler sigmoidoscopy of the public fisc. The Anthill of Davids (Brooks et Frum) will undoubtedly break off their fellatiatory daisy chain to murmur their huzzahs. John McCain might even run again, but without that damned chillbilly, who really should be busy breeding chinchillas, fecund, strumpet daughters, and the occasional idiot manchild.

A spending freeze. Indeed. Probably should start with that F-22 Raptor, eh? And mebbe sumdat missile defense. CIA? Whoo. You bastard offspring of Angleton are truly screwed. You made me look bad. The Bush middle-class tax cuts expire when? This year? Hello, Betty. -- Velociworld: Nineteen For Me

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:41 PM | Your Say (0)

Handy Hint

Next time you lose your phone charger,

don't buy another one. Go to a hotel and say you think you lost it there. It's the #1 most left behind item at hotels, so most places have a big bin filled with every phone charger imaginable. -- Shhh! Share the secrets of your trade/ Lifes little easter eggs.. : AskReddit

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Sometimes the facts are all you need (or want) to know

Man caught at airport with 44 lizards in pants

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:23 PM | Your Say (3)

Through the gap...

The Electric Jet punches the gap at turbulence penetration speed.
The ride goes from smooth to moderate turbulence in a second. Rapid sequenced lightning flashes illuminate the area around the aircraft; they are miles away but seem to be underneath us. Night ops around storms are always scarier than daylight ops. There are white caps in my coffee cup. -- Flight Level 390

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

Blinded Him with Bureaucracy

About that "non-terrorist" terrorist:
Police arrived to find Woodson wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying an assault rifle that bulged beneath his green, military-style jacket, the story says. As a police officer questioned him, he ran out of the store and into a neighboring trailer park, according to the article. Police ultimately subdued him with paper spray -- USATODAY

"That's right, sir. Just fill out these 17 forms and return to the back of the line and...."

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:19 PM | Your Say (0)

"Against Obamamania before it was cool to be against Obamamania"

October 19, 2008:
Barack Obama also reminds me of many lawyers I have dealt with in my career. He's the smooth talking lawyer on TV who will get you "the settlement you deserve." ... He is a paper lawyer who fools only his own clients. -- Leキgal Inキsurキrecキtion: Where Have You Gone, Obamamania?

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (3)

From the State of the Union Address

Leaked via Christopher Buckley in The Audacity of Oops @ The Daily Beast
I called in the smart folks in my administration, many of them educated at Harvard, and I put it to them directly. I said, “Is this my fault?” And to a person they said, “No, sir! No way!”

I said to them, “Well then, whose fault is it?” And they said, “It’s the bankers, Mr. President. The scum-sucking, stimulus money-accepting, bonus-awarding, self-regarding swine who inhabit the street of shame and infamy, the harlot’s den known as Wall Street.”

I said to them, “And what are we going to do about them? We can’t hang them all. We don’t have enough rope. And anyway, rope is expensive and I’m trying to cut the deficit. Ideas, people. I want ideas.”

So tonight I can announce to you, my fellow Americans, the creation of a bipartisan commission to study how to kill the bankers in an efficient and hemp-sensitive manner.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (11)

Organizing America?

Christopher Taylor on the Obama Machine:
"Vote yes on greater economic damage and fiscal irresponsibility! Its the Democrat way! When taxes are being raised, Democrats are winning."
-- Word Around the Net

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (1)

Do Not Muddy the Water Around You

Barack Obama: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” But would you settle for a mediocre one-term president?

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (6)

January 25, 2010

The Race Hustling Scam

Question of the Day: What impact does being called "racist"€ have on a private citizen? Let's analyze the Left's favorite, overused weapon. « HillBuzz
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have built a multi-million (if not billion) dollar extortion industry on this -- though usually their targets are corporations with deep pockets, and before they start shouting about RAAACISM!, they give the CEOs a chance to "hire Jackson and Sharpton as high-paid consultants to teach racial diversity and sensitivity classesâ€".  If a company bawlks at the shakedown, Jackson and Sharpton mobilize the ACORN, SEIU, Alinsky crowd and astroturf protests at every important office of the company, busing in angry demonstrators from who knows where.  Part of us thinks there are just shifts of these people forever on call, housed in warehouses playing poker and Guitar Hero until the RAAACISM! signal lights up and they all lickety-split it into the always-idling vans and buses, their protests signs forever lined up and prepped for instantaneous use.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:15 PM | Your Say (0)

Found

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Minimal:
This weekend I sat down to design an invite for the season premiere, and had so many ideas that I wound up creating 8 different posters. -- LOST Posters ォ Mattson Creative

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:53 PM | Your Say (1)

Illusions of Mars

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This image looks remarkably like groves of trees
growing among Martian dunes. But, the trees are an optical illusion. They are actually dark streaks of sediment on the downwind side of the dunes. They were created by escaping gas from the evaporating carbon dioxide ice below. The bottom of the ice melts into vapor and moves toward holes in the ice, carrying dark sediment along with it that is then deposited when the gas escapes -- Strange Places on Mars

There's a long, long history to illusions and Mars. Once there were canals with, perhaps, strange ships guided by strange beings. Strange and passing strange. But we looked and drew what we thought we saw. Now we have "photographs" to tell us what we think we see.


canals-of-mars-625x625.jpg

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:19 PM | Your Say (0)

"Mechanized Insects"

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New York City. 1951.
It was the portrait of Magnum photographer Dennis Stock, although most of his face remained in shadow. It won its photographer Andreas Feininger ‘LIFE Young Photographers Contest’ in 1951. Stock holding a Leica SM camera vertically to face and looking through a seperate TEWE viewfinder (which balanced the photo for compositional reasons) symbolizes the transformation of photojournalists into mechanized insects. -- The Photojournalist « Iconic Photos

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:04 PM | Your Say (0)

More in sorrow than in mockery:

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"It's the lobotomy, stupid."

Please join me in a moment of silent mourning for the death of the last three brain cells of James Carville.
"Democrats would not be playing the blame game with one another for the loss or for the healthcare debacle if they had only pointed fingers at those (or in this case, the one) who put Americans (and most of the world) in the predicament we’re in: George W. Bush" -- FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Democrats need to learn the blame game

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:17 PM | Your Say (9)

Now Playing for the Rest of Eternity @ Hell's Metroplex

John Edwards Has a Sex Tape

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:30 PM | Your Say (4)

The Friends of Barack Obama? Few and Very Far Between It Would Seem

Less than a week after the Brown election,
we've already heard more good things from friends of the previously-unknown Brown than we've heard about Obama from his friends in the more than two years he's been in the spotlight. In fact, if it weren't for Obama's shady friends -- the ones he suddenly wasn't all that friendly with, or whose dirty deeds he hadn't really known that much about after all, such as Ayers, Rezko, and Wright -- we'd think him nearly friendless. -- neo-neocon Scott Brown vs. Obama: with friends like these...

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (0)

Mythical Monsters #1: The O'Biden

Youtube always shows you the middle frame in the video clip as a static image. Most of the time that's innocuous. But every so often it is frightening:
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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (0)

Sign O' the Times

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Created by OP's World: Sums Up The Past Year, Nicely [HT: Dipso]

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)

January 24, 2010

Brave New Look

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Update: Breaking @ Exurban League Taking populist tack, White House unveils new 'Evil Obama
The new, angry Obama was unveiled in a speech in economically depressed Lorain County, Ohio. Walking onto the stage with pyrotechnic flash-pots blazing, the president shouted, "I was sent to Washington to kick ass and chew arugula. And the White House organic garden is all out of arugula."

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (2)

Add Andrew Sullivan and You've Got Bookends

Riehl World View: Chucky's Got A New Johnson
If I see the words gentle and bearish used to describe CJ one more time, I'm going to think people are trying to tell us something. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that, or anything.
A bearish, gentle-voiced, ponytailed man ... a geek’s penchant for self-education

And don't even think about slings or spit-roasting.

Be Afraid Charles Johnson. Be Wery Wery Afraid -- Jwh in the comments gives this dark warning:
"Teh johnson moved into a gayted community because he's worried about all those right-wing nuts. It's the bannnnned, Charles- the dark, and faceless legions of the bannnnned. They obsess on you night and day. They stalk your blog while you sleep. They long to push your ten-speed over. They want your ponytail for a trophy."

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (4)

Bumper Strip of the Month

DON'T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR PALIN.

-- Seen and reported by Bookworm Room

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (5)

January 23, 2010

SCOTUS Ruling in ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Made Simple

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Or in a bit more detail:

You owe it to yourself to watch this video.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:42 PM | Your Say (0)

Vote the Fantasy, Eat the Excrement

There was never any objective, factual basis for believing that President Obama
would be any other way than what we are seeing. Apparently, a large chunk of Obama's voting base consisted of people who invented some sort of counterfactual, reality-immune fantasy in their head and then voted for that fantasy when ticking "Obama"€™ on their ballots. I'€™m sure there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made of President Obama, but the fact that the real President Obama doesn't correspond to naive, irrational voters' fantasies doesn'€™t strike me as one of them. -- The Disillusioned Center-Left's Case Against Obama: He's Just Not Living Up To All That Stuff We Made Up About Him In Our Heads « Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:09 PM | Your Say (0)

In passing...

Watching Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid trying to pass the healthcare bill is like watching two dwarves trying to pass a grapefruit. It's neither appetizing nor entertaining but somehow you can't quite look away.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:57 PM | Your Say (0)

What if?

What if Obama simply doesn't know how to manage things?
Can't win a war, can't reform intelligence, can't contain entitlements, can't fix the economy, can't do anything practical? Just like maybe he couldn't manage the Annenberg Foundation or edit the Harvard Law Review? It's no crime, but it means that he will sooner or later either become a figurehead surrounded by Democratic "wise men" or go charging around like a bull in a china shop. -- Belmont Club » Magic

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (3)

Sex Addiction Considered as a Crock

As the New York Post headlined, Woods' sex addiction treatment
will involve something called "Disclosure Day." On that day he will be required to tell his wife about each and every time he betrayed her. In detail...

I have it on very good authority that such a practice would never be permitted in AA. It is not one of the traditional 12 steps. Even if you stretch things and class "Disclosure Day" under the step of making amends to those you have hurt, that step also says that you should not do so when you will be hurting the other person.

Can any sensible person really imagine that Elin Woods wants to hear all about her husband's sexual escapades. Isn't this a clear case of adding insult to injury? -- -- Had Enough Therapy?: Is Tiger Woods a Sex Addict?

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (5)

Screw your “pre-existing condition”

If you're far far more likely than the average person to need payouts,
but you still think that insurance companies "shouldn't be allowed to" refuse you an $X/year insurance plan, what are you saying? Essentially you're saying you have the right to get something for nothing. You have the right to pay less for a contract than it's actually worth to you. You have the right to demand that other people give you way, way more money than you're giving them. Equivalently, that insurance companies (which, remember, are groups of people) -- any group of people that happens to be associated as an "insurance company" and that you decide to approach -- are required to subsidize you upon demand. But that is absolutely, positively, utterly freaking flat-out ridiculous. If that’s what you think, my only question is, what the hell is wrong with your head? Are you an idiot?-- Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (0)

“Linguistic extortion has zero influence on me.”

"We also see the pernicious effects of PC

in the latest Pentagon white paper on the Ft. Hood massacres, in which Hasan is not identified as an Islamic zealot acting out religiously-driven extremism. PC (which serves a variety of purposes from stifling free expression to claiming some mythical higher moral ground through gratuitous censure) ends only when we collectively shrug, and sigh, "Linguistic extortion has zero influence on me." -- Hanson, Works and Days » Post-election Thoughts

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (2)

January 22, 2010

Wii -- The Early Years

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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (0)

A is A

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"The greatest of your philosophers [Aristotle] has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself ... a leaf cannot be a stone at the same time , it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

"All the disasters that have wrecked your world came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it was to make you forget that Man is Man."

"To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free. You must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.

"The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath: I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."-- Atlas Shrugged
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From THE SECRET ORIGINS of Steve Ditko's Mr. A.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (4)

January 21, 2010

Alternate Ending

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Via xkcd By Randall Munroe

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (0)

Michelle greets the little people visiting Big White!

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Michelle Obama.... left


Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: One Happy F-ing Anniversary
We selected a black and white metallic tweed bathrobe number by Moschino with 4 pockets trimmed in black bias tape. It was accompanied by a matching cap sleeved dress under the robe. We couldn’t decide whether to  pair it up with our  winter “Hot Chillys” long johns or our black pole dancing boots. I was leaning towards the Chillys, but MO went with the boots.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (3)

David Caruso: An Actor So Bad You Just Can't Stop Watching

Yeaaaaaah! One-liners without limit or mercy. See if you can bear it until the end. Give me a count on how many times the glasses go on or off.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (10)

First Name George

The son of a Kenyan economist with a Harvard degree. The middle name Hussein. A strong mother. A biracial upbringing. A yearning to know more about his past. The determination to be a leader. We know this as the Obama story. -- Obama’s Kenyan Half-Brother Recalls Life of Drugs, Redemption - Bloomberg.com

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (0)

Losing Means Never Learning

Liberals never, ever learn anything
because they never, ever lose elections. When they win, of course The People Have Spoken — when they lose, it must have been Diebold tampering with the machines. Fear. Bigotry. Latent traces of racism. Angry voters having a temper tantrum. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:41 AM | Your Say (0)

"It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter ...

...and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me." -- John Edwards says he's father of Rielle Hunter's child

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:27 AM | Your Say (1)

The Achievement of Obama

May this gift keep on giving: "Merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years." -- Ann Coulter : That Old Obama Magic is Back

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:21 AM | Your Say (0)

January 20, 2010

The Agony of the Hillary

You can about feel the tension warping the fabric of space-time
around the deep stare she bores into her own mirror image as she absorbs the ignominy that is the title of "Secretary of State." How can it sit with her that she'd have to off, not just the President, but also Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd to fully ascend the presidential line of succession? Hell, what does it mean when Robert Born-At-The-Close-Of-The-Fucking-First-World-War Byrd outranks you? -- This is Too Easy | finem respice

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:40 PM | Your Say (2)

Watcher Nominations: Light on Scott Brown Edition

But just wait until next week....

Council Submissions

American Digest - Bring. It. On.

Bookworm Room - A perfect statement about the balance of power between government, citizens and business

Joshuapundit - Pat Robertson, The Devil And Me

Rhymes With Right - Getting It Right On Palin

The Glittering Eye - The Triumph

Right Truth - Here Come the Orphans

Soccer Dad - Rachel’s tomb and the protection of jewish holy sites

Mere Rhetoric - Government Labor Protections And Welfare Policies Keeping French Youths Jobless, Alienated

The Colossus of Rhodey - Harry Reid, “light-skinned” and “Avatar”

The Provocateur - Some Thoughts on Dr. Chacko’s Dismissal

Wolf Howling - Wailing & Lamentations

Non-Council Submissions

Submitted By: American Digest – Sippican Cottage - Quincy Market (Election Day)

Submitted By: Bookworm Room – A New Conservative Lesbian - Obama’s ‘Enabling Act’ trial balloon

Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Seraphic Secrets Haiti: No One But the Israelis Has Come to Help - Guardians Report In: HS1 Larry Berman

Submitted By: Right Truth – Fore-Left - The Ties That Bind – Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

Submitted By: Soccer Dad – The Muqata - Israel’s emergency response

Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric – Danger Room - Visualizing the Underwear Bomber’s Online Life

Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – Common Sense Political Thought - My health care anecdata

Submitted By: The Provocateur – American Spectator - The Scott Heard Round the World

Submitted By: Wolf Howling – YouTube - Martin Luther King “I have a dream”

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:18 PM | Your Say (0)

QOTD

"There Is No Such Thing as a Liberal.
Rather, there is only a harmonious, mixed-up fusion of Baby Democrat and Mommy State." -- One Cʘsmos in an eructation of laconic pith.

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

And the 3 Remaining Reasons for ObamaCare Are:

-- To Smarties, Details Don't Matter « Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (0)

January 19, 2010

Oh, Snap!

The sulking's starting early in the Aspergers-addled brain of Charles Johnson Massachusetts Prepares to Drink the Tea "Anybody want to talk about Coakley vs. Brown? [Sigh.] It’s looking like right wing tea party candidate Scott Brown will ride to victory on a wave of Fox News-fueled populist anger." Aww, poor widdle puddy-tat. That's the kind of cutting-edge analysis reptiles have come to expect.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (17)

January 18, 2010

Ads That Make You Look for the "Never Click" Option

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Posted by Vanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (2)

January 17, 2010

New Essay @ the Best Commercial Pilot's Page on the Net

Sample: Flight Level 390: The Quiet Time

Earlier, I did a mini pre-flight looking for landing gear safety pins, torn tire tread, and new dents in the fuselage. She looks good for her age. Most of her skin imperfections are pilot caused (a few of mine are here), i.e., hard landings, mostly appearing on her belly. A new airliner will have absolutely smooth skin on the belly; an older one... Not so smooth.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:25 PM | Your Say (1)

It's the Lying, Stupid

Victor Hanson gives the lie to Obama in €œLet Me Be Perfectly Not Clear

The American people are losing confidence in Team Obama because quite simply they are tiring of being lied to, and treated like children in need of Ivy-League Platonic guardians..... almost immediately, Obama, again, in Platonic fashion, began to say things that could not be possibly true. Remember the categories.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:22 PM | Your Say (0)

Shot from Guns

Michael Yon: "The artillery shots are not like a normal rifle bullet
wherein the projectile is crimped to brass that contains gunpowder.  Instead, the 155mm projectile is selected and the fuze is set.  On the ultra-accurate (and expensive) GPS-guided “Excaliber” projectile, the coordinates are set in the fuze using a handheld electronic gadget that is placed over the fuze like a little snowcone, which wirelessly transmits the data to the guidance system.  There is no exaggeration saying that an Excaliber round could destroy a parked car twenty miles away on the first shot.  The accuracy is incredible, given all the unpredictable winds and other factors the round will encounter during it’s flight through the sky – which literally could be shot on from a crystal clear mountain, taking the round far higher than the summit of Mt. Everest where it could pass through winds going different directions and at very high speeds, snow, and then down through a hailstorm and finally through rain.  Imagine the quick temperature changes from a hot-shot in the desert up to airliner altitude.  The tracking and guidance computer must be able to handle all that – and fast -- after being shot from a cannon." -- Spitting Cobra

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (3)

January 16, 2010

Noted in Passing

Velociworld: Where are the Musselmen?

I do not see any Muslims racing to the task of helping the poor benighted souls of Haiti. Never mind the poorer nations. The oil-rich kingdoms of Arabia and the Emirates, the cash-flush mullahs of Persia, the beneficiaries of American aid like Egypt and Lebanon are all absent from the game. As we knew they would be. No one looks for help from a Moslem. They refuse to even help themselves.
The sad truth is, Islam does not succor the infidel. In fact, their raison d'etre is to make life a fucking living hell for the infidel. That is why Islam is not a religion as we know it, but a vile concoction of dogshit blatherings, a merciless cult constructed upon an evil edifice of cruelty.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:14 PM | Your Say (10)

The Last Decade Of Liberalism In 40 Quotes

So much drooling insanity that it's hard to pick a favorite, but for right now, in view of the Haiti tragedy, I'm going with:
"7) I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own." -- James Wolcott, Vanity Fair Contributing Sissy -- | Right Wing News

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:28 PM | Your Say (8)

Ah, the good old days!

Remember the good old days when the glossy magazine covers competed for the most worshipful image of the new global colossus?
If you were at the Hopeychange inaugural ball on Jan. 20, 2009, when Barney Frank dived into the mosh pit, and you chanced to be underneath when he landed, and you’ve spent the last year in a coma until suddenly coming to in time for the poll showing some unexotically monikered nobody called Scott Brown — whose only glossy magazine appearance was a Cosmopolitan pictorial 30 years ago (true) — four points ahead in Kennedy country, you must surely wonder if you’ve woken up in an alternative universe. The last thing you remember before Barney came flying down is Harry Reid waltzing you round the floor while murmuring sweet nothings about America being ready for a light-skinned brown man with no trace of a Negro dialect. And now you’re in some dystopian nightmare where Massachusetts is ready for a nude-skinned Brown man with no trace of a Kennedy dialect. How can this be happening? -- The Obama Agenda on the Precipice by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

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

January 15, 2010

Toilet Paper: Over is Right, Under is Wrong. Case Closed

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In "Essential Life Lesson #1," Current Configuration finishes off the over vs. under dispute for all time. (with scientific illustrations) [HT: Morgan the Purse Dog Man]

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:26 PM | Your Say (12)

The Loathesome: "All of them feminized, sensitized and diversified."

President Obama, appearing at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,
joked to the thousands of journalists in attendance, “Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me.” The line got a laugh … and then … in an insult to journalism, thousands in the crowd clapped and cheered, in affirmation of the truth. There was no shame for them. Quite the contrary, they reveled in it. The new mainstream media was on display for all to see in one giant, embarrassing ensemble. -- Secrets of TV news: Confessions of an anchorman | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

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

Danny Glover: Haiti Happened Because We Didn't Make a Pact with Satan GAIA!

'Knom-Sane?' Nobody ever said Danny Glover was a 100 watt bulb. He's happy to prove it here with the greenwhacko answer to Pat Robertson's Satan theory. If you listen closely you can hear the bad craziness fighting to get past the drool: "“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?"


HT: Tim Blair who listens to this crap so you don't have to.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (2)

Nostalgia for the Mud

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"These incredible and edgy-designed chandeliers are made by a Dutch sculptor named Hans van Bentem. They are made for a company that handcrafts giant beautiful crystal chandeliers for a select museums. The chandeliers are handmade from high quality Bohemian crystal to fit the customer's personal taste." -- Beautiful crystal chandeliers as sculptures in various shapes | This Blog Rules

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (2)

Moral Courage

Whittaker Chambers left the communist movement
at a time when he thought it was going to win. Solzhenitsyn defied the Soviet totalitarian state when it looked impregnable. That is the difference between moral courage and moral cowardice. -- "Affirmative Action" Quotas on Trial by Thomas Sowell -- Capitalism Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (4)

The Green of Envy

Efforts at redistribution

invariably are framed as win-win or part of a broader altruism, when in fact it is merely taking from the rich just as Stalin expropriated the Kulaks..... As Greg Mankiw noted, health care reform would lose its impetus if it were revenue neutral; the redistribution isn't a side benefit, its the main point. -- Falkenblog: The Age of Envy

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (0)

"Nothing against zoos, but a zoo is not an appropriate model for a city"

What we see in most new cities
and redeveloped areas in older ones – is a kind of architectural zoo, in which the buildings, like animals never intended by nature to share the same ecosystem, live in proximity with one another but remain isolated for their own good, and for ours. Lions over here, penguins over there; Frank Gehry here, Jean Nouvel across the street. Each building is a unique gesture seeking to embed itself in the observer’s memory like a built logo. Together, they constitute an assortment of architectural “collectibles” related only by proximity, bearing little sense of the collection as a whole. -- The View From Rome

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:51 AM | Your Say (2)

January 14, 2010

White House: "The computers ate our governing"

White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government
A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office. This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama.
Well, it is a step away from blaming Bush.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:46 PM | Your Say (5)

Back in the USSA: Welcome to Kulakistan, Suckers

Come and keep your comrade warm.

"It has dawned on the financial press that the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession never will come back, and the US economy's previous source of employment recovery -- small business -- is as crushed as were the kulaks under Stalin." -- The Unemployment Disaster and the 2010 Elections -- Spengler

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (0)

"ReAnimated!" Obama Allows Electricity to Reach Bolts in Biden's Neck

Joe Biden update: He meets on transparency today. But the meeting is closed | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (0)

White House Iron Chefs had to use “body double” veggies.

The food in the White House garden has been deemed toxic.
They knew this last year, so the whole scene of picking food from the White House garden was as fraudulent as President Obama’s promise to put the health-care debate on C-SPAN. The problem stems from a previous administration’s having used sewage sludge for fertilizer. Which means it will never be certified organic. Before you commentators start typing up anti-Bush screeds, the previous administration was the Clintons. Yes, one vainglorious administration passed on their agricultural legacy to another. The irony is almost as funny as a Joe Biden gaffe. -- "Les légumes du mal"€™: Michelle Obama's Toxic Garden - Big Journalism

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:06 AM | Your Say (1)

January 13, 2010

No Cadillac Tax for Cadillac Makers

Here's how it works in a nutshell: "if a Teamster and an unrepresented worker have the same high end policy, the Teamster won’t be taxed but the other fellow–poor sap–will. " -- Obamacare: Corrupt Deal With Unions Exacerbates Societal Schism サ Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog
"Unions tentatively struck a deal Tuesday to exempt collectively bargained healthcare plans from a tax on high-cost plans expected to be used to help raise revenue for the healthcare overhaul," CongressDaily reports. "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger met with House Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi Tuesday, a day after labor leaders met at the White House to express their opposition to the excise tax. … Exempting collectively bargained plans would appease unions that often offer expensive health plans in lieu of higher wages. The deal could also help Obama avoid breaking his promise not to tax those earning less than $200,000" -- 'Cadillac' Tax Deal In The Works - Kaiser Health News

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:09 PM | Your Say (0)

What Family Doesn't Have Its Problems?

My recent suggestion that we chuck Granny's ash filled urn into the nearest bayou was met with shocked silence by my mother. My stepfather chuckled." -- Shades Of Me ォ Jaded Haven [That Daphne is so, well, "southern."]

I'm thinking.... Tibetan Sky Burial would be just the thing for Daphne's granny. -- Tibetan Sky Burials Are Super-Creepy


Tibetan-funeral.jpg

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:39 PM | Your Say (1)

Zombieland

Imagine living in a fetid hellhole of unspeakable squalor.
No jobs, a hunter-gatherer economy, basic sanitation and potable water nearly impossible to find unless you are a member of the vanishingly small ruling elite. A civilization so dispiriting and pathetic it makes a cannibalistic African kleptocracy seem inviting. Now layer a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on top of that, annihilating up to 5% of your entire population. -- Velociworld

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

FLOTUS Reflects

Lady M gave herself an A-,
and the reporters kicked it up to a solid A , in recognition of the fact that her “great-great-great grandmother was actually a slave.” White guilt is still a potent force around this town: it still has the power to make people act stupidly. -- Michelle Obama's Mirror

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

The Bug

"There seems to be a bug
in the human nature hardrive however that is causing us, the desendents of a people who were able to author such paradigm shifting documents as the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution and then use it to reach heights unimagined, to revert to our medieval default mode of feudal collectivism." -- High Noon: ォ WESTSOUND MODERN

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:47 PM | Your Say (0)

Most Revolting Image on the Internet

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God help you if you CLICK THIS LINK, because I cannot.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:52 PM | Your Say (2)

Why Ace Rules!

Today's top item at Ace of Spades HQ entire:

Beck. Palin. Apocalypse.

Palin on Glenn Beck right now, for the full hour. She's the Gatekeeper, he's the Keymaster, and there is no Dana -- only Zuul.

Paul Begala just suffered a spontaneous prolapsed rectum.

What can I say except: "Gozer the Traveler will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (1)

Coakley tests limits of how much warm excrement Mass. Democrats will eat...

Coakley blames Brown camp for negative tone Well, of course that's what this over-stalked politool would say.

At any moment I'm getting ready to read, "Left Over Al Franken Votes Being FedEx-ed to Massachusette"

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:14 PM | Your Say (0)

Attorney General Coakley's Thug Identified as Michael Meehan, Democrat Handyman

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Coakley, Meehan, McCormick

Item: Hot Air Video: Coakley associate shoves Weekly Standard reporter; Update: Photo of assailant in which Ed Morrisey identifies the attacker as:
That would be Michael Meehan of Blue Line Strategic Communications, who has worked for John Kerry, Maria Cantwell, and was sent to Massachusetts by the DSCC to handle "messaging" for Coakley.
and asks:
You know, a state Attorney General should be the person to enforce the law -- especially, as this photo shows, she witnessed the assault and battery.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (10)

Twenty Four Million New Socialist Men = War

If the U.S. slides into a double-dip recession,
it is entirely possible the Chinese economy could crash with it, creating a pressing need for just the sort of distraction a war of conquest provides. Under that scenario, the war could begin as soon as 2011. Even if the U.S. recovers, it's hard to see how the war can be delayed beyond 2020 or so without creating an unacceptable risk to internal stability. The longer Peking waits, the more likely it is that those excess males will start some serious aggro inside Chinese borders.... Nevertheless, some major war within the next ten years seems almost certain. Because even if the Chinese government were composed of angels, I don”t think there’s any historical instance of coping with an excess of unmarriageable males that large without a war. -- Armed and Dangerous

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (0)

The Bread Line

Seeing and Being Seen: Hay Pan — The Bygone Bureau
I peeked over the heads of the people in front of me. Inside, no one was moving. Elegant pastries and cakes were displayed in the window at the front of the bakery, but everyone seemed to be keeping an eye on the bread bins at the back of the tiny shop. I knew that the bakers had dumped fresh bread into the bins when the line lurched forward, like we were all passengers on a stalled subway that suddenly began to move. Six or seven pairs of greedy hands quickly emptied the bins as soon as they were filled, leaving everyone else to wait for another ten minutes or so. The victorious shoppers hustled out of the bakery, holding their bread bags protectively.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (2)

Where's Martha?

Another in a series of strange, slanting hit pieces on Coakley in the Boston Globe of all places:
Coakley leaves quickly, hurrying through a reception downstairs, passing up the refreshments, shaking maybe a few hands on the way out. On the front steps, she rubs elbows with city councilors and School Committee members. She gives the mayor a comradely hug and a peck on the cheek. Then she is gone. “Do you know where Coakley went?’’ a man asks. -- Campaign’s brevity shapes Coakley image on trail - The Boston Globe

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:50 AM | Your Say (0)

January 12, 2010

Reid adds 'skin lightening therapy' to health reform bill

"It's not fair that the path to the Oval Office is blocked for my darker-hued friends,"
Reid said Monday. "Skin-lightening therapy will open the corridors of power to a new generation of African-American leaders. And thanks to my amendment, this treatment will be free at last." -- Scott Ott's crappleface: | Washington Examiner

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

Meanwhile, the brain of James Fallows turns into sopping wet mush...

In a strange and striking way
there is an inversion of recent Chinese and U.S. roles. In the switch from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the U.S. went from a president much of the world saw as deliberately antagonizing them to a president whose Nobel Prize reflected (perhaps desperate) gratitude at his efforts at conciliation." -- The Google news: China enters its Bush-Cheney era - James Fallows
Once the Bush Derangement Syndrome goes in, it never comes out.

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

Google Gets Tough on China

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered

-- combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. -- Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
We hope they mean it and are not just posing.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:07 PM | Your Say (0)

Global Warming Consensus Reaches 130% with -50% Against

"It's official: the consensus for Man-made Climate Change is now over-unanimous."The People's Cube

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:40 PM | Your Say (0)

I just can't shake the feeling there's something fundamentally un-American about the president.

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-- HARD GEEK

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Factory Direct. To the Parking Lot.

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I've often wondered what's up with all the cars made but not being sold. Here's the answer in pictures worth a million cars.
Automakers are facing trouble across the world due to global recession. Thousands of unsold cars are parked in factories and wharehouses waiting for delivery to customers and dealers. -- Unsold Cars Due To Global Recession | Weird Pictures, Wonderful Things

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:01 PM | Your Say (0)

Gay Marriage Explosion Coming to China

The one-child-per-family policy of the 80s has consequences:
More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses by 2020, says the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. -- BBC News - China faces growing gender imbalance

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (3)

Thirty minutes before twilight.

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Captain, you are cleared to start number one.
The aircraft's twin red beacons are blasting the jetway every two seconds with bursts of red light as our tug begins the push. I tell the co-pilot to turn number one. She opens the pneumatic start valve and the APU starts pumping air to the starter motor. I used to love keeping my side window open and listen to the rushing air turning the mighty V2500 engine until the ignitors threw a match into the burner cans; a loud WHOOMF would follow ignition... Only a couple of seconds to get the side window closed before the noise level would hammer your left ear drum. And that is why my high frequency hearing is going away... Was it worth it? Absolutely! -- Flight Level 390: Stable and Warm

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:11 PM | Your Say (0)

Vintage MOD Ethnic Cleansing Dress

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Via Regretsy – Posh-stika

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (3)

"I’m madder than a tranny who’s run out of duct tape!"

"From what I can make out,
at least "her"€ resume is better than some of the losers who work for the Teleprompter Kid. S/he was even voted the 2004 YWCA's "Woman on the Move"-- hell, I'€™ll say!... “It sucks to be first,” s/he told one reporter. -- ED ANGER: @ Weekly World News

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)

The Unhealthy Obsession

Re: Harry Reid's Negro Problem - And Ours - Mark Steyn
To those of us who find identity politics repugnant, it would seem to confirm that an unhealthy obsession with "anti-racism" eventually becomes so condescending it's indistinguishable from racism — or, at any rate, the micro-classifications of apartheid — to the point where bigtime Dem honchos are sitting around saying, "What we need here is a clean octoroon." "Well, this high yaller from Chicago might do the trick." I mean, in what sense are Harry Reid's remarks any different from this?

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (1)

Crime down? Let's look at "ready availability of intoxicants, contraception, and automobiles."

"I'm arguing a more general case that subsumes Levitt/Dubner.
That is, that modern life makes juke traits more dangerous to reproductive success than they used to be. Automobiles are a good example. Before they became ubiquitous, most people didn't own anything that they used every single day and that so often rewarded a moment's inattention with injury or death. Ready availability of cheap booze and powerful drugs means people with addictive personalities can kill themselves faster. Easy access to contraception and abortion means impulse fucks are less likely to actually produce offspring. More generally, as people gain more control over their lives and faster ways to screw up, the selective consequences from bad judgment and the selective premium on good judgment both increase." -- Eric Raymond, Beyond root causes

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (1)

One Thing

Kevin Kelly @ The Technium on The 2-Billion-Eyed Intermedia
"The most important way the Internet has changed the direction of my attention, and thus my thinking, is that it has become one thing. It may look like I am spending endless nano-seconds on a series of tweets, and endless microseconds surfing between Web pages, or wandering between channels, and hovering only mere minutes on one book snippet after another; but in reality I am spending 10 hours a day paying attention to the Internet. I return to it after a few minutes, day after day, with essentially my full-time attention. As do you.
We are developing an intense, sustained conversation with this large thing. The fact that it is made up of a million loosely connected pieces is distracting us. The producers of Websites, and the hordes of commenters online, and the movie moguls reluctantly letting us stream their movies, don't believe they are mere pixels in a big global show, but they are. It is one thing now, an intermedia with 2 billion screens peering into it. The whole ball of connections — including all its books, all its pages, all its tweets, all its movies, all its games, all its posts, all its streams — is like one vast global book (or movie, etc.), and we are only beginning to learn how to read it.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (1)

Clinton: "... if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions..."""

News this morning coming out of Tehran: A remote-controlled bomb detonated early Tuesday in Tehran, killing a Tehran University professor of nuclear science... Brutally Honest: Things that make you go hmmm

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (0)

January 11, 2010

Democrat Talent Show: Turning that ol' time dialect on and off

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:52 PM | Your Say (2)

Deceptive Appearance

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Our planet appears quite peaceful and serene from the Earthrise view.
This is a figment of perspective. Beneath the clouds, beneath the seas, is turmoil. Life on this planet is consumption and creation. The animal and plant consume, yet they create: muscle, fiber, energy. That is the order of things. The wolf will not live with the lamb. No number of seminars and treatises from the pouch of academe will make this so. No number of usurpations from the public fisc by the government suzerains will make this so. And no number of pop lyrics will make this so." -- Velociworld: The Marsupial Class

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

Headline of the Year So Far

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:57 PM | Your Say (0)

Smarter People Got No Reason... Smarter People Got No Reason.... Smarter People Got No Reason to....

"They got little Smart cars /That go beep, beep, beep. They got little Smart voices / Goin' peep, peep, peep"

Why did the media go easy for so long on Edwards (and his complicit wife)? Why is Harry Reid still majority leader?
The answer is that those on the Left are moralists, smarter people who pass up their own personal agendas to help the community. They think of society, not self, and so when they err, they do it under stress, in accidental fashion, and with no lasting significance -- €”not like their selfish Neanderthal cousin conservatives, for whom transgression is a valuable window into their flawed souls. Bushisms became a media pastime, but no one suggests that a President who says Cinco de Quatro, or 57 states, or references the "Austrian"€ language is a Dan Quayle wrestling with potato. -- Works and Days » The Way Our World Works

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (1)

And today's "No Shit Sherlock?" Award goes to the AP and Mark McGwire

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Putz or Schmuck?


Mark McGwire admits using steroids

Really? Truly? For sure? Who knew? What a scoop! What an admission! Sound the alarm! Ring the bells! Shoot off the distress rockets! What BREAKING NEWS! If this is the best the legacy media can do for "news" they might as well bone up on their auto-erotic asphyxiation in the closet techniques and hit the rope. Nobody's gonna cut 'em down.

Seems to me that if somebody wants to break the home-run record, they should do it the old-fashioned way using Babe Ruth methods: Babes, booze, cigars and skill.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (4)

January 10, 2010

The Purpose of PC

Theodore Dalrymple:
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. -- HT: Brett McS

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:45 AM | Your Say (7)

January 9, 2010

Your Parallel Parking Issues Are History

I want one of these just for working around the house. And then I'm taking it DOWNTOWN.

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:30 PM | Your Say (2)

Equality Marches On!

"True equality will be achieved
when mediocre people of all races, creeds and colors will reach high levels of power regardless of their abilities. So in about 60 years, we've moved from needing an exceptional athlete such as Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier in baseball, to needing only an inexperienced politician with no executive ability leading the nation. That's progress!" -- Peschel commenting in The Question That Dare Not Speak Its Name @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:50 PM | Your Say (1)

Is the New Vanity Fair Cover Racist?

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Vanity Fair is not racist,
just opportunistic and sleazy. And yes, I stopped playing that ‘whup-ass’ game a long time ago, and got some better friends. -- Acting White: Acting White: TWA (Tiger With Attitude)

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

January 8, 2010

Age of Miracles and Wonders Continues

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What on earth is this? Concrete, that's what.
Scientists in Hungary developed this, using pre-formed blocks of concrete with fiber optics run through the material. Called "Litracon" the material allows light to pass through the building material, which can carry light as far as 20 meters.
Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block,€ explained its inventor Áron Losonczi. €œShadows on the lighter side will appear with sharp outlines on the darker one. Even the colours remain the same. This special effect creates the general impression that the thickness and weight of a concrete wall will disappear.€
-- Word Around the Net: Picture of the Day

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:28 PM | Your Say (5)

Pundits Be Damned

Nominally conservative commentators
have been busily trashing the TEA party movement, the most dynamic and exciting thing to happen to American politics in more than a century. Of course, any member of the Punditocracy is a member of the Establishment Elite, and must remain cognizant of what the E.E. expects of him: that the defense of the E.E.'s supremacy overrides all other considerations. All the same, to lay waste to such magnetic figures as Glenn Beck, Sarah Heath Palin, and Michele Bachmann, and to deride the persons who admire them as simpletons who lack understanding of the "nuances" of politics and governance, is destructive to GOP fortunes. If preserving the perquisites of its fatcat kingmakers trumps all prospect of breaking Democrat hegemony and turning Washington back in a conservative direction, then the Republican Party truly has obsoleted itself. -- Francis W. Porretto - Eternity Road

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)

No Mercy at Little Green Footballs

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This Just In:

Little Green Footballs records it's 8,000,000th comment. Charles Johnson reneges on promise to release sycophants' families. Tells them to keep typing until fingers bleed and bone is exposed. - KURU Lounge: Around the moronosphere 1/7/10

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (1)

The GOP as a Pizza Chain

What the GOP Can Learn from a Pizza Chain by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online

The GOP’s troubles over the last decade have a lot to do with the fact that Americans didn’t stop liking what the Republican party is supposed to deliver. They stopped liking what the GOP actually delivered.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:42 AM | Your Say (0)

January 7, 2010

Avatar: The Sequel

In the sequel, directed by Paul Verhoeven,

the "Star People" (dressed in leather trench coats and knee-boots, to the dulcet strains of Wagner) return to Pandora, drop tactical nukes from orbit as the ultimate in daisy-cutters, spray the 22nd Century's equivalent of Agent Orange on the rest of the planet, and strip mine the place for every picogram of "Unobtanium" ore they can get. In a fit of pique, Mother Pandora telepathically convinces the primary gas-giant to compress itself and ignite, thus wiping out all life on Pandora, including the hated "Star People." -- The Smallest Minority [HT:Exurban League]

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:13 PM | Your Say (7)

Climate Fraud? Check please!

That'lll be ten trillion dollars, please.
Cha-ching! Shall I wrap up that planet or do you want to eat it here? Ten trillion buckarooneys is why all those green fraudsters jetted into Copenhagen, and that's why they kept going for a while even after Climategate ripped open their fraud for all the world to see." -- Pajamas Media サ Global Warming as Climastrology

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)

"If Only"

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Seen at EagleSpeak: If only . . .

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (0)

January 6, 2010

Robot Theater: A Day in the Life of Media Matters

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (0)

Before the Fall

"Unchecked hubris always incurs nemesis that leads to destruction.

In Obama's case, we are witnessing such a sequence. His hope and change speeches are no more empty of substance than they ever were. But now the studied accentuation and Rev. Wright inculcated cadences are shopworn, the allusions tired and transparently the work of twenty-something speechwriters who ran out of clichés around March. The blame Bush continues, but it now is monotonous and sounds like the proverbial three-year-old's sob." -- Works and Days » Bush Did It! And, Really, Bush Did It! And Bush Really Did It!

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:20 PM | Your Say (0)

"Wise Latina" Too Dumb to Avoid the White House's "What Not to Wear"

Sotomayor Says White House Even Picked Out Her Clothes

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:07 PM | Your Say (2)

First 2010 Watcher's Council Nominations

The Watchers' Council has made its nominations for the best postings of the first week of the new decade. Here's looking at you:
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Council:

•Joshuapundit - 58% Of Americans Want The Crotch Bomber Waterboarded - And the Left Is Outraged!
•Wolf Howling - Knee JERK Reaction Of Progressives
•Soccer Dad - The Very Model Of A Modern UN Bureaucrat
•The Colossus of Rhodey - Is This 'Hypocrisy'?
•Bookworm Room- San Francisco: America's homegrown anarchic totalitarianism
•American Digest - Lowballing Death: Keeping the Northwest 253 Numbers Down
•The Razor - Firing Napolitano Not Enough to Make America Safer
•Right Truth - Jihad vs Terrorism Today
•The Glittering Eye - Facing Chinese Mercantilism
•The Provocateur - Inside the mind of Dr. Anna Chacko
•Rhymes With Right - Talk about Insincerity
•Mere Rhetoric - Iran To US: No Visa For Kerry, Please Consider Yourself Officially Humiliated

Honorable Mentions

•LawGambit - Just Another Wannabe Lawyer

Non-Council Submissions

•Submitted By: Wolf Howling – Jules Crittenden - Damn The Naughts
•Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Michael Yon Into Thine Hand I Commit My Spirit
•Submitted By: Soccer Dad – Media Backspin - 10 Significant Articles From the 'Noughties' Decade
•Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – Powerline - John Brennan's disgraceful performance
•Submitted By: Bookworm Room – Big Hollywood - EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Military Blogger Michael Yon Detained, Handcuffed by TSA in Seattle Airport
•Submitted By: American Digest– NeoNeoCon - Avatar: The War Against Humans
•Submitted By: The Razor – Radical Islam.Org - CAIR: Empowering Muslims to Ignore Terrorism
•Submitted By: Right Truth – Michelle Malkin - Airline security idiocy of the day: Milblogger Michael Yon handcuffed, Joan Rivers blocked
•Submitted By: The Glittering Eye – Villainous Company - The Official 2010 Villainous Company Banned Bloggers List
•Submitted By: The Provocateur – Bernard Goldberg - And What Exactly Is Wrong With Profiling
•Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric – Mudville Gazette - Taliban Kill 8 CIA Agents in Afghanistan
•Submitted By: Rhymes With Right – The Next Web - Google Blocking Negative Search Recommendations On Islam – Why?

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:54 PM | Your Say (1)

The 8 C-SPAN Lies of Barack Obama

VIA Breitbart.tv -- The C-SPAN Lie? See Eight Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations.

Perhaps Barack Obama
is perhaps the last gasp of nostalgia; the last hurrah for the Kennedyesque indulgence of electing someone for his charisma and personal beauty. Deep down in their hearts a considerable number of those who voted for Obama knew he would never conduct the health care negotiatons on Cspan or even keep them safe. But there was something hypnotizing about the possibility of magic; something compelling about the prospect of getting something for nothing; something touching in the hope that if you truly, truly believed in hope and change from an associate of Tony Rezko and the Blag, that you would really get it. -- Belmont Club サ Lie to me

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (0)

New Codes Released by Obama TSA

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Via The genius of Mark Scott @ Liberalguy: Sound Judgement.......

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

Hitler on The Big Lie: "It would never come into their heads..."

"All this was inspired by the principle-- which is quite true in itself --

that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." -- From neo-neocon's Pelosi's been reading her Goebbels

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (1)

Parsing Pelosi

Speaking of the Health Care Bill: "There has never been a more open process for any legislation," Pelosi said at a press conference.

In December HillBuzz asked How sick is Nancy Pelosi? and offered a diagnosis:

We haven't noticed the Parkinson's signs in Pelosi. We do, however, see them in Dr. Utopia -- who makes us think of Muhammad Ali and how he behaved at the very beginning of his own symptoms, before he made an official announcement. With Pelosi, our gut says she’s more likely to have Alzheimers.
Once our friend mentioned that, it makes a lot more sense.], it makes a lot more sense. We've known two people who suffered with forms of dementia, but have never known an Alzheimer's patient personally. We are speaking seriously, not joking at all, when we say that yes, truthfully, it does appear Pelosi is suffering from something that addles her, clouds her judgment, makes her say ridiculous things, and causes her to lose her train of thought and act erratically.

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:49 AM | Your Say (4)

January 5, 2010

"Is there anything our “educated classes” can’t fuck up, any reality they won’t deny?"

In a word, No.
"I think race- and class-blind meritocracy bought us about 60 years (1945-2008) of tolerably good management by Western elites. The meritocracy developed as an adaptation to the escalating complexity of 20th-century life, but there was bound to be a point at which that adaptation would run out of steam. And I think we’ve reached it. The “educated classes” are adrift, lurching from blunder to blunder in a world that has out-complexified their ability to impose a unifying narrative on it, or even a small collection of rival but commensurable narratives. They’re in the exact position of old Soviet central planners, systemically locked into grinding out products nobody wants to buy." -- Eric Raymond @ Armed and Dangerous Escalating Complexity and the Collapse of Elite Authority

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:23 PM | Your Say (3)

Security My Wild Irish Ass!

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli air security expert, had it right in 2002 when he said: "The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people." -- A no-fly list? Count me in - Jonah Goldberg

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:18 PM | Your Say (1)

Useful Images

"While the president is the head of snake, the body are the legislators." -- Commenter Sadie @ neo-neocon's "Releasing Gimo detainees: the courts'€™ usurption"

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (0)

"Always nice to write without a purpose in mind. "

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"You could count on Jack for that last one,
since he went through a pack of Marlboros every two hours. What's that? Oh, Jack's in California now, retired, pool, couple of dogs. Still a Marlboro Man. Couldn't get him to quit if they'd put a firecracker in every filter and they blew a hole in his lips when he got to the end. He tried to quit now and then, but we knew how that ended. He'd get up, walk over to the machine, put in two quarters, a dime, a nickel, and cank-chank. Jack was one of those guys who spanked the pack on the back of his hand after he bought it, too. The sight of him rapping his hand with a fresh pack, a look of complete resignation on his face, tells you all you need to know about Jack." -- from Lileks who, even though he's taken the no-rant pledge, still manages....

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (1)

Every Day Brings One More Reason to Love Michelle Obama's Mirror

It's the only way to get inside the Obama White House living quarters. Here, let me demonstrate:
"Historic news continued to be made. No, not the undie-bomber. I’m talking about the historic appointment of the first transgendered person to a real important federal position. Some of course, would question whether that honor belongs to Mr/Ms Simpson.
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"But Bruno said that she will not be disputing the title. In a further statement, Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stated that she felt Mr/Ms Simpson’s appointment showed that the system worked perfectly. If by “perfectly” you mean our first, historic transgendered assignment was not accomplished with the use of exploding underpants." -- Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: We’re Ba-raack

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (1)

Armed Prophets

“It is necessary,
therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovations can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: That is to say, whether to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayer or can they use force. In the first instance they always succeed badly and never compass anything, but when they can rely on themselves and use force; then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered and the unarmed ones have been destroyed”. -- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (0)

Mr. Gobley: Seeking the Divine in the Mundane -- and Celebrating It

Still

Tonight as i lay in bed
i heard life going by

ghost train of memories
panes of light in parallax
in the mind's shuttered eye

lost love
the arc of a home run
in a softball game

fumbling for car keys
on a winter night

smells:
the Adirondacks
barbecue
the diaper pail

and suddenly:
the heaviness

pinned to the earth
as the comet of memory
whispered by

i saw that we exist
for the briefest
of eternities

and are gone
in a flash
that does not end

-- Mr. Gobley

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:39 AM | Your Say (0)

January 4, 2010

TSA Screws 10,000 in Newark

"Best ever! Fuck with us still more!," beg thousands stranded for up to 27 hours at airport. "We'll do anything you say forever and ever, masters!

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:54 PM | Your Say (0)

Well, of course they do.

New scanners break child porn laws. As to agents patting down children, let's not go there just now.

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

America the Laughingstock: It's What Happens When Your President Is a Clown

"At international airports in Lebanon, Syria and Libya, all on the list, there were no visible changes in screening." Spotty enforcement for new US air screening rules

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:47 PM | Your Say (1)

"Nigeria says new security measures for passengers flying to and from the United States are unfair and amount to discrimination"

And your point is?

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (2)

Socialism is a Social Disease

The most onerous expression of idolatry in the modern era

was the communist conceit that the scientific ordering of society can eliminate uncertainty. Scientific socialism was supposed to eliminate economic crises and war; instead, it brought about 100 million deaths and reduced once-prosperous countries to penury. Seventy years after its founding, the entire value of the industrial plant of the Soviet Union and its satellites was less than its scrap value, taking into account the costs of environmental cleanup. The life expectancy of Russian men has fallen to only 55 years, and the most frequent cause of death is alcoholism. Russia and its former satellites have such low fertility that their populations will fall by between one-third and one-half by mid-century. Europe's nanny-state version of social democracy is a low-grade version of the same infection. -- Spengler

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (3)

Restricted to One Carry-On? Okay!

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

Prepare Yourself to Strike Back

Terrorism doesn't care a fig for the denunciations of intellectuals.
Intellectuals are easy to cow and terrify. What they fear most is the thousand suspicious glances; the parted curtain looking down from every window; the telephone call made just after they leave; the revolver in the drawer in the little old lady's house. Then the terror goes the other way because every shadow, every sound, every look acquires pervasive menace. The blade often cuts both ways. -- Belmont Club サ Killing the chicken to frighten the monkey

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

Rich and Lazy Zip Codes

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Closer examination

of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.
The recovery.gov site reports that $373,874 was spent in zip code 97052. Unfortunately, this expenditure created zip jobs. But $36,218 was credited with creating 5 jobs in zip code 87258. A cool hundred grand went into zip code 86705, but didn’t result in even one person finding work. None of these zip codes exist in New Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter. -- Stimulus Funds Went to Nonexistent Zip Code Areas [Updated]

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (3)

January 3, 2010

Another Fair and Balanced Review of Little Green Footballs

And the hits just keep on coming: Shine My Shoes, Bitchman by Daphne @ Jaded Haven

Charles Johnson is a douchebag, his site is lousy and the current crop of non-banned commenters have crawled so far up his stinking ass the place reeks of idiot sycophancy. The internet already knows he can't take a decent picture or write a solid sentence. He should take up a new hobby, shoeshine boy sounds about right.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:58 PM | Your Say (3)

Iron Chef: Michelle Obama to Appear Tonight

Ah, fame!

Tonight the battle for America's FLOTUS' belly begins on Iron Chef America!

Coming next year: Guest appearances on "What Not to Wear" and "The Biggest Loser."

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:23 PM | Your Say (3)

The God That's Failing

"As people freeze to death in Chicago, our president has donned some silly-looking shorts to go out and play golf. As the Florida citrus crop is nearly destroyed by the cold spell Obama takes his daughters out for some shaved ice." -- Had Enough Therapy?

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (1)

LinkSink

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Who says there's no good news? Presidential Approval Index rating of -18 Daily Presidential Tracking Poll - Rasmussen Reports™

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (0)

The Wisdom of the Sycamore: a photographic essay

Sycamores are impervious to shifting sands.
Sometimes, the Negev Desert winds cause a shifting of entire dunes, uprooting the sagebrush, the brushweed, and the other desert flora. The stiffest sandstorms, desert winds, and hifting sands don't affect the Sycamore, because it sends its deep, mighty, and far reaching roots deep into the sand - sometimes hundreds of meters - all the way down to the water table. -- Lazer Beams
[HT: Dan Friedman]

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:35 AM | Your Say (2)

January 2, 2010

In Stunning Reversal, Charles Johnson Claims Caucasian Ancestry

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Where's the birth certificate, Charlie?

Jowls dropped all over the LGF comment stream as both commenters reacted to Little Green Footballs - 'Is This Racist, Charles Johnson?' in which Johnson walks the cat back from his Darwinist/DNA ledge by claiming:
"It apparently escaped this wingnut’s notice that I’m white."

Johnson's parents, A. Sullivan-Johnson and B. Frank-Johnson of Washington, D.C. would not comment but instead released a Certification of Live Birth issued in Hawaii from an undisclosed hospital on an undisclosed date. This afternoon, however, NAAAJBM (The National Association of African-American Jazz and Blues Musicians) released the following statement, "We told you that boy had no chops."

Sara Palin's spokesperson, reacting to the photograph, said only, "Not fit to lick let alone shine."

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (4)

Most Terrifying Prediction for 2010

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Up from the vile morass of Morgan's 50 Predictions for 2010 pops this sign of the Endtimes:
43. They’re going to breed an even smaller dog. It’ll be informally known as a “pocket puppy.” They’ll make special sweaters for stupid girls and women who can tuck several pocket dogs away along the length of their arms. And she will have music wherever she goes… -- House of Eratosthenes

But... no.... NO!... THEY'RE ALREADY HERE!


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"Mr. Pluffy" at home with Morgan F.

UPDATE: In a girly-man fit of pique, Morgan has sent in this obvious fake picture and claims it is him. Since it can clearly be seen that the photograph was taken in the Jurassic this is clearly not the case. We're sticking with the certified portrait with "Mr. Pluffy."


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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (17)

January 1, 2010

Visitor 5,000,000 to American Digest Came From Chicago

Whoever it was clocked in at 3:43 today from the blogroll @ the insightful Chicago Boyz. Thanks Boyz! Thanks Visitor!

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:57 PM | Your Say (4)