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May 30, 2010

Prepare to Take Linktation

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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (1)

May 28, 2010

Weekend Linktification

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Posted by Vanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (5)

Headline of the Week Award to Doug Ross for

Can't You Feel the Powerful Thrusts of the Obama Recovery?

I note that this either beats or works in tandem with "Did you plug the hole, daddy?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:19 PM | Your Say (1)

Dear Monica Sestak, I've got your "options of service" right HERE!

White House Used Bill Clinton to Ask Sestak to Drop Out of Race - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, asked Mr. Clinton last summer to explore “options of service” on a presidential or senior government advisory board with Mr. Sestak, the White House said in a statement. Mr. Sestak said no and went on to win last week’s primary against Senator Arlen Specter.

Always use a user when you want to use people.

Bonus comment to the above: A mentally ill man name Attanasio demands this from the New York Times:
How about balancing the books by digging up, or slinging, dirt on the Republicans? There should be a lot yet to write about Bush, Cheney, Palin, Limbaugh, McMahon in Connecticut, etc. Let's go, NY Times. How about some "fair and balanced?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:56 PM | Your Say (0)

On Peggy Noonan: Say not "media whore" but rather "media courtesan!"

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Oh look at that baby bear, isn’t it cute?
Let’s take it home. That would be another decision along the lines of what I’m talking about; on par with what Noonan did when she inferred that Obama had grace. These are not good decisions. Their appeal is based on emotion, and emotional appeal can only be based on the immediate moment because there is no way to chart or predict where emotions are going to be further down the road. Also, they must be inherently narcissistic. It’s all about me. The stubby ears, the big brown eyes, the li’l pug-nose, everything that tiny bear cub has must be there to appeal to me, me, me. Just like when President Obama gets in there, He is going to do what I, I, I want Him to do. -- House of Eratosthenes

Update: Always worth revisiting is the classic Noonan takedown: "You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. "

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (2)

Editorial Haiku by the Master

Obama's psychotic detachment from America? Tens of thousands of words spewed by all the usual pundit suspects left and right, but the center column, top, of Drudge does it all. Pay attention, boys and girls. This is how it is done in the Age of the Net:


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2 pictures. 14 words.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (5)

May 27, 2010

This is one of those times when one wants to say "Fuck Hillary," but since there is no known human being who will, one has to simply say, "Hillary go fuck yourself."

"The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] -- whether it's individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms," Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institution, where she was discussing the Administration's new National Security Strategy. -- Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

This is from a slag who is still asking people to help pay down her campaign debt:
Clinton asks. "Hillary's campaign still has a few vestiges of debt that I know she would like to see paid in full. Will you reach out today to help Hillary this one last time?" Clinton hosted a similar fundraiser in earlier this year, and writes he would "like to do it again." As of March 31, the Clinton campaign was still in debt to the tune of $771,000, down from $845,500 owed at the end of December 2009. Clinton's e-mail list itself is one of her strongest fundraising tools. The campaign raised just over $169,000 during the last filing period by renting out the list to the campaigns of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, Florida gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, and Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado. -- CNN.com

BTW: The Clinton's have made well over $100M off the country with many more millions to come. I wonder how much of their "fair share" they've paid.
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Posted by Vanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (10)

Death of the Postmodernist Dream

Al Gore will continue to channel from his Montecito hilltop
the latest green consensus of the international academic community. But fairly or not, neither he nor it will be listened to all that much: He has made one too many millions off his hysteria, and professors have fudged one too many publicly funded studies. The result is that almost at once both have lost the people’s trust. A volcano, not hot weather, shut down European air travel. The Sierra Nevada is still buried under snow in late May. At least this year, a wet, cold state of California is not going to blow away, as Energy Secretary Chu warned not long ago.

It is fine and good to invest in wind and solar power, and other alternative energy sources — if for no other reason than to drain the swamp of the oil-rich Middle East — but soon Americans will be paying a fortune for gasoline and electrical power. As gas hits $4 a gallon, they will want more oil drilling, more coal mining, and more nuclear, hydro, and natural-gas energy, not less. Green mongering is not what it was just a few months ago. -- Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online

And good riddance. Drive it fast to its tomb.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:21 PM | Your Say (0)

The Nanny University

Every year brings, it seems, one more reason for me to loathe what my alma mater has become: Berkeley Asks Freshmen for DNA Samples - NYTimes.com
Instead of the usual required summer-reading book, this year’s incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, will get something quite different: a cotton swab on which they can, if they choose, send in a DNA sample. The university said it would analyze the samples, from inside students’ cheeks, for three genes that help regulate the ability to metabolize alcohol, lactose and folates. Those genes were chosen not because they indicate serious health risks but because students with certain genetic markers may be able to lead healthier lives by drinking less, avoiding dairy products or eating more leafy green vegetables.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:17 AM | Your Say (2)

May 26, 2010

In local news...

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This homemade bumper sticker was spotted in the parking lot at SeaTac International Airport." | IHateTheMedia.com [HT: iOwnTheWorld]

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (1)

LinkLines

Stacy McCain's Rule 6: Don’t Be a Complete Douchebag AKA "The Johnson."

Korea Heating Up: "South Korea is learning an obvious and ancient lesson that seems increasingly difficult for governments to assimilate in this day and age: being kind to the cruel doesn’t work; you only end up being cruel to the kind."neo-neocon

Palin as a "damsel in distress?" | Daphne ain't buyin' it.

Roadtown:"a monorail in the cellar, farmland on either side, and a path on the roof for cyclists and roller skaters." | Futility Closet

One scream, 200 movies -- "the Wilhelm scream" featured in The Science of Horror-Flick Screams

"SUBJ HERE IS STABBED IN BACK, REFUSING TO ANSWER" | Drug-Induced Hallucinations: Overtime

"Hypertext Marx-up Language" | WONDER-TONIC

In case of diaster sometimes Doing Nothing is the smartest thing you can do.

Liberalism: A form of "middle class secular messianism"

Pyongyang'd Again: "While it is true that the leaders of North Korea are insane, it is not helpful to leave matters there." | RealClearPolitics -

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:39 PM | Your Say (4)

OK, Here's the Plan

That Rodger, he's such a kidder:
"Why don't we give President Obama the nicest Father's Day gift of all; the identity of his father?It's so simple.

1. Secure just one of many cups, glasses, bottles, or straws from which Barry has publicly sipped ...

2. Get a similar sample from a known Obama Sr. relative, like step-brother George in Kenya ...

3. Send the samples to the DNA lab of your choice.

-- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (1)

Das Is Culch

Dad's dead,
in some strange place among strange men. He wasn't even here when he died. The timber and the blueberries and every other damn thing they did to keep body and soul together around here played out and dad breathed his last on a rusty boat dragging what-all to god-knows-where. They sewed him in his canvas bag and slipped him in the ocean like a card trick. -- More @ Sippican Cottage

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

May 25, 2010

Flights of fancy

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In response to that campaign to draw cartoons of Muhammad,
a bunch of Pakistani Islamic groups are proposing a global law banning blasphemy, with death penalty to violators. Certainly the most amusing thing about our modern world of Internet and transcontinental airlines is how the liberal pieties keep crashing to each other ever faster when there is no more separation of anything and everything is instantly global. Perhaps an enlightened dictatorship would be the answer. And of course, as I have said many times before, our liberals and especially the left don't really have any real objections to death penalty and even torture, provided that they are liberally applied to the right (in several senses of that word) people. -- The Fourth Checkraise

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:46 PM | Your Say (0)

Obama: I'll keep on insulting all you whores until morale improves.

In one sense, the press, or at least some members of the press, have only themselves to blame. Obama treats them with contempt because he knows that when big tests come, they've always been on his side. There's no reason for him to think they won't be there in the future. "Most of you covered me," he told the media elite at the 2009 White House Correspondents' Association dinner. "All of you voted for me." -- Fawning press now gets cold shoulder from Obama

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:39 PM | Your Say (3)

New Guinness Record by Killer!

Remember our friend the Lockerbie bomber, Al Megrahi? The one who got a “get out of jail free” card back in August of 2009 because he only had three months to live, max?.... He's lived the longest of any prisoner released on compassionate grounds because of terminal illness! -- neo-neocon The continuing saga of Al Megrahi

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

There Ain't No Free [Apple] Lunch

The Open Source movement and Creative Commons
both derive from the Internet's essential freedom, a leveling that allows designers and filmmakers and singers and craftsmen and any number of writers, activists, politicians, artists, and entrepreneurs, many of them amateurs, to develop and disseminate their ideas. Imagine what the Internet, and our lives, would be like if, after inventing the Mosaic Web browser back in 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina not only required users to buy it but required payment for every click or download or page view. Try to imagine how a privatized, monetized Internet might have developed, and you can't, because its evolutionary path would have been so different. Apple's iPad apps may be ingenious. They may be fun and entertaining. They may be useful. What they can't be is free of Apple's control. -- The iPad Revolution | The New York Review of Books
Updated with a dash of Lileks: "Ah, if only the iPad was capable of accessing something outside of Apple's control, like the Internet. Then it would be perfect."

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (2)

Shame in the UN Hitchens? Surely You Jest

When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability,
every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn—to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency—that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an "international community." How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly. -- As the international community stands by, Tehran comes closer to unveiling its nukes. - By Christopher Hitchens

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:51 AM | Your Say (0)

May 24, 2010

The rogue states are parasites.

The pathetic pretensions of regimes
like the ones in Iran and Venezuela to some kind of world leadership have been cruelly exposed. The governments of these countries are parasites on the global economy and far from representing alternatives to the global model, they are entirely dependent on capitalist success. When the global capitalist system is booming, the price of oil goes up and Venezuela and Iran have the cash for subsidies at home and adventures abroad. When the hated global system goes bust, Venezuela and Iran go broke. The leadership of these countries are like adolescents criticizing the bourgeois habits of the parents they sponge off. -- The Top Ten Lessons of the Global Economic Meltdown - Walter Russell Mead

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:07 PM | Your Say (1)

What Do the North Korean People Really Want?

"They say that they want a war."
He meant Götterdämmerung, known locally as OPLAN 5027.  This was North Korean code-talk for the end of the system, a war that was worth the risk because the survivors would live with hope and ChocoPies, and without rising before dawn to attend criticism sessions. -- Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto (Part 4) | The New Ledger 

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (1)

2 Dangerous Thoughts

Neoneoncon's compulsive commenter, ArtfIdgr packs them in:
Want to go back to where I explained how Feminism is Eugenics, and how open borders was to "hide the decline?" -- neo-neocon on » The welfare state'€™s dirty little secret is out

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (4)

May 23, 2010

Dear Wikipedia,

Did you design geniuses come to work with the express idea, “Let’s see what small change we can make that will irritate billions every day?” Or did you just kick back behind three roofies, a pack of smack, and ten bong hits and throw darts marked “Search” at an interface digram? -- KA-CHING!

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (3)

May 22, 2010

History Faw Down Go Boom

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For someone who has lived in Greece and occasionally visits Germany,
it becomes increasingly clearer each year why the European Union won't work. Germans work and create wealth. Yet under the present system, they do not receive commensurate psychological rewards -- and increasingly insufficient material compensation as well.

And history shows us that an unhappy Germany is a very dangerous thing indeed....

If it should choose, Germany could go nuclear in six months, its arsenal reflective of a country that makes Mercedes and BMWs. That is not so wild an idea in an age when unstable nations like Iran and North Korea boast of their arsenals and their aggression, while others such as Turkey and Brazil flaunt U.S. faculty-lounge sermons on non-proliferation. -- Works and Days ｻ The New Old German Problem

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (4)

May 21, 2010

Best Drudge Headline of the Year

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[HT: Daphne ]

This should be emailed to every member of the risibly named "White House Press Corps" just so they understand, yet again, what miserable whores they are.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:39 PM | Your Say (5)

If this keeps up, half the states are going to be boycotting the other half

17 States Now Filing Versions of Arizona's Immigration Bill ALIPAC has documented the following 17 states are following Arizona's lead in response to citizen pressure.

ARKANSAS, IDAHO, INDIANA, MARYLAND, MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, MISSOURI, NEBRASKA, NEVADA, NEW JERSEY, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, PENNSYLVANIA, RHODE ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:01 PM | Your Say (8)

Gone With The Broken Wind of Obama

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Faced by the linked yet separate crises in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia the Obama administration is acting like it was shot through the central nervous system, acting in uncoordinated jerks.
The alliances with Korea and Japan and the special relationships with Israel and Britain lie almost forgotten like neglected toys on the floor of a spoiled child distracted by his latest bauble. Gone are the heady prospects of Grand Bargains with the Muslim world kicked off by dramatic speeches in Cairo. Gone is the idea of a swift drawdown from Iraq; or of a comprehensive solution in the Middle East. Gone is the promise of catching Osama Bin Laden. Gone is the notion that Europe, which once hated America because of George Bush, would turn like a blossoming rose to Obama. In their place are half-finished begun threads without closure: a growing Hezbollah menace in Lebanon; a defiant Iran; a belligerent North Korea; a buffoonish but menacing Chavez; a drug war on the southern border; an Eastern Europe with the shadow of the Russian bear growing ever longer across it. -- Belmont Club ｻ Rudderless

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

Advanced Techniques in Journalism

How Facebook's (flawed) privacy settings can help your reporting
Get past the awkward and dark predetermined searches like "I hate my boss," "I lost my virginity" and "I'm not a racist but" … and look at what youropenbook.org presents to us as journalists.... And while as a user you should be freaked out and proactive about your personal settings (and more conscious of what you are posting!), as a journalist this is presents an incredible, unfiltered opportunity to access your community on a diversity of topics.

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

Shocked, SHOCKED!

Although he stayed in the race and beat Arlen Specter, Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania says he was offered a bribe to drop out of the race by the Obama administration.
Previously, in the Colorado senatorial race, Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff was offered a job at the Obama white house if he'd drop his race against Michael Bennett as well, according to the Denver Post. Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder seems indifferent to these charges for some reason. The Democrat-controlled congress seems disinterested in an investigation as well, almost as if they don't consider bribery and an attempt to manipulate elections to be a problem when one of their guys does it. Holder is at least consistent: he didn't have any problem with Black Panther voter intimidation either. -- Word Around the Net

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (0)

Will there be a New Mexico Boycott?

ALBUQUERQUE - Gov. Bill Richardson has directed the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department to start reporting violent juvenile criminals who are foreign nationals to federal immigration authorities.
The agency has not been reporting them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2006, when then-Secretary Mary-Dale Bolson suspended a state regulation requiring CYFD to do so, according to a copyright story Tuesday in the Albuquerque Journal. -- Gov. Richardson to CYFD: report illegal criminals to feds (12:44 p.m.) - Las Cruces Sun-News

Boycott? Only if anybody notices:
Left wing wunderkind, Bill Richardson, Democrat and waiting-for-indictment corruptocrat, lame-duck governor of New Mexico, has ordered the state department of children's and family services to begin reporting illegal immigrant children to ICS. Oh the horror of it all! Reported by the NY Times, right? Well, no. Reported by the Washington Post and the LA Times, right? Well, er, ah, no. But the Associated press picked it up and broadcast it to the world, right? Uh, well, no. Sissy Chrissie Matthews is feeling a vibration all the way up to his prostate gland, right? Well, not so's you'd notice, but then with that guy... American Thinker Blog: Dem governor cracks down on illegal children [HT: Curmudgeonly]

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (1)

May 20, 2010

Have a brain freeze for free

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Courtesy of William M. Briggs, Statistician who has been calculating "The Probability of Monkeys Typing Shakespeare"
The universe is roughly 14 billion years old, which is about 4.4 x 1017 seconds. It now becomes tricky. Do we only accept a monkey's efforts that are of the correct length, which we then compare with the Bard? Or, more fairly, do we throw out the stream of characters that do not match the matching stream of Shakespeare? Do we, that is, let the monkey continuously start over until he gets it right?

Well, it just doesn't matter. The number 10-12,000,000 is so mind-bogglingly small that it is never going to happen. Even if we let a barrelful of monkeys type 100 characters a second, they are never going to finish.

And so we conclude what we already knew: randomness isn't enough to make a Shakespeare; something more is needed.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:23 PM | Your Say (5)

QOTD (So far)

"Have you ever wondered why it is most men and women who have had long, passionate, productive careers in, oh, engineering or policework or architecture or soldiering seem delighted, when the time comes, to hang up their kit and grow roses for the rest of their lives? But politicians, judges (and doctors) cling on to their jobs with their fingers and toes until they mummify in place?" --- S. Weasel [ Word Around the Net: Quote of the Day ]

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:18 PM | Your Say (9)

May 19, 2010

No Homophobia for Oil!

Homophobia Defender Ousted: Energy Department announces that Jonathan Katz will no longer be assisting in oil spill efforts
Jonathan I. Katz, a professor of astrophysics at Washington University in St. Louis, ''will no longer be involved in the [Energy] Department's efforts'' at addressing the oil spill continuing to spread in the Gulf of Mexico, a Department spokeswoman relayed on Monday night, May 17. The news came after what the spokesperson, Stephanie Mueller, termed ''controversial writings'' – which included a ''defense of homophobia'' – spread out over the web on Monday, writings of which she said the Department was unaware when it sought his assistance.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (8)

Welcome to the Machine

In the workplace, you don't get to pick your company.
In the workplace, you do not get a trophy just for showing up. In the workplace, the boss gets to scream at you as a perk. Probably your first day on the job. Your boss, who doesn't have an iPad, isn't on Facebook, and doesn't know how to text. Your boss, who doesn't particularly care for Lady Gaga. Your boss, who probably has a night-school degree.

If you're a recent grad and you think you're going to hate your bosses, wait till you meet your coworkers. You're going to be working with people who believe in UFOs. You're going to be working with people who play in REO Speedwagon tribute bands. You're going to be working with people who participate in French and Indian War re-enactments every summer. They're going to try to get you to join, mon beau chevalier. You really have no idea how awful this is going to be. -- A Lament for the Class of 2010

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (7)

Where are the ugly galaxies?

I have yet to see a technically well-done astronomical photograph which is ugly.
I have seen ones that are ugly because they have been technically poorly done—indeed, most of my own photographs other than of the moon have ranged from ugly to boring, but this is a function of technical inaccuracy (out of focus, not long enough exposure, lack of tracking, etc.) rather than of any ugliness in the subject. It appears that astronomical objects range from neutral to beautiful. -- Alexander Pruss

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (4)

Dumb Cosmopolitans

The Fourth Checkraise: Projections
As cosmopolitan and worldly as our chattering classes imagine themselves to be, they can't even conceptualize the notion that the vast majority of people on Earth reject practically the entire liberal worldview, so rather than acknowledge this and its unpleasant implications, they blithely imagine that the exotic Other not only shares their views on every SWPL class status shibboleth but is actually far ahead of them in their implementation. I mean, seriously, what do they think that immigration laws and the sacred right of foreigners to enter the country at will in unlimited numbers and not to be stopped and questioned by the police really are in China or Mexico, or for that matter, pretty much anywhere?

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (1)

Just One of Those Days

"A gentleman passing through the United States, on the Union and Pacific Railroad, was one morning telling the guard about a relative of his lately committing suicide.
‘Very sad, indeed,’ replied the guard, ‘but the most determined attempt at suicide happened the other day down Sacramento (California) way. A young man went down to the beach when the tide was out, with a long pole, sharpened at one end, and a hook in the other; he had also a rope with a noose in it, a phial of poison, a pistol, and a box of matches. He drove the pole into the sand, and climbed up it until the tide had risen high enough to drown him, when he swallowed the poison, set his trousers on fire, put the noose round his neck, and then fired his pistol. The bullet, instead of entering his forehead, grazed the top of his head and went through the rope; the rope, being weakened, snapped, and dropped the unfortunate man into the sea, which, of course, put the fire out, and swallowing some sea water made him vomit the poison, and in two or three minutes he was washed ashore alive, and only suffering slightly from the effects of his immersion.’ " –- Tit-Bits Dec. 3, 1881 [ Futility Closet]

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

QOTD (So far)

"Graduating from college. It isn’t as hard as it used to be, it just costs more." -- Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog

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

On second thought, there may not "Always be an England"

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Word Around the Net

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (2)

May 18, 2010

"The Wussification of the Workplace"

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The men who built the Empire State Building stood on bare planks to work in the sky;
paradoxically, they were grounded in reality, not theory. They did not have to concern themselves with tones and timbres; nor did the educated architects who dreamed up skyscrapers. One suspects that if either the man on the beam or the one with the blueprints had been approached by a tanning-booth-bronzed-and-manicured corporate bureaucrat, and asked to enumerate their “goals” as part of their “performance review” they both would have hooted at him in derision. “My goal,” the first would say, “is to not fall. It’s to stay alive so I can pick up my pay, have a beer with the wife, raise the kids and get into heaven a half-hour before the devil knows I’m dead.” -- The Anchoress

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:13 PM | Your Say (5)

File Under: Comments we never responded to.

My name is Charles Johnson. I am a supervisor at the Las Vegas sewer sanitation department. I will hire you at minimum wage to clean sewer filters with a rake and a bucket. Please respond to this post for more info. -- Ben’s Video Resume | Resumewritingexplained.net

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

QOTD

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"Am I on drugs or something? Why am I wearing this Moschino bed spread? Why can’t I move my eyebrows?"
-- Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Big Food, Big Prints

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (7)

"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."

-- Garrison Keillor, apparently describing his politics

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (6)

The tyranny of denial

An accusation of "denial" is serious,
suggesting either deliberate dishonesty or self-deception. The thing being denied is, by implication, so obviously true that the denier must be driven by perversity, malice or wilful blindness. Few issues warrant such confidence. The Holocaust is perhaps one, though even here there is room for debate over the manner of its execution and the number of its victims. A charge of denial short-circuits this debate by stigmatising as dishonest any deviation from a preordained conclusion. It is a form of the argument ad hominem: the aim is not so much to refute your opponent as to discredit his motives. The extension of the "denier'€ tag to group after group is a development that should alarm all liberal-minded people. One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment -- the liberation of historical and scientific enquiry from dogma -- is quietly being reversed. -- Prospect Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (3)

May 17, 2010

"Nature loves an oil spill...."

This one is incidentally not very large.
Even if the oil is leaking at several times the 5,000 barrels a day that the media keep repeating from an obviously flawed U.S. government estimate, it represents such a tiny trickle into the immensity of the Gulf of Mexico as to be almost worth ignoring. Nature could easily better that, and even man has achieved far more impressive oil spills. True, many photogenic birds and dolphins have got in the way of the slick, but compare that to what the average hurricane takes out.

By the numbers: this is less than the millionth part of a cubic mile, in a bath of cubic miles by the million.

Okay, it all floats to the top, but that is the silver lining. The sun shines on the happy microbiota that just adore hydrocarbons, and multiply quicker than (insert politically incorrect ethnic reference here) at the prospect of a free lunch. They in turn create dining opportunities all the way up the food chain. Nature loves an oil spill, and the only bad news is when it's over. -- David Warren

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (5)

May 16, 2010

Write this down: Gun-free zones are a felon's playground. Ban gun-free zones now.

The choice is clear:
Gun control as forced by the Chuck Schumers and Michael Bloombergs of the world is complicit in every violent crime committed. Conversely, gun control a la Ted Nugent is putting the second shot through the same hole as the first shot, where innocent lives are saved and recidivistic maggots come to a screeching halt, felled by the lovely ballet of good over evil we call the "Double Tap Center Mass Boogie." Learn it, know it, love it, shoot it. Good guys should live, bad guys, not so much. -- NUGENT: My gun control - Washington Times

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (4)

New Facebook Slogan: "You’re Zucked!"

Jason Calacanis defines Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook:
Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Asperger's-like entrepreneur, I told Zynga CEO Mark Pincus that Zuckerberg would try and slit his throat. I knew this because I watched Zuckerberg screw over his users again and again in terms of privacy, and I heard about the stories of him screwing over his former employers at ConnectU and his early partners at Facebook. -- The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand @ The Jason Calacanis Weblog

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

Flight Level 390 is 6

Six years at altitude and still writing about life on the airways. I fly about 430,000 miles annually; that would be 2,580,000 miles since I began this poor little blog. I have safely carried 260,000 passengers to their destinations without denting aluminum... Knock on wood. -- Flight Level 390

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (0)

And Westport, Ct's numero uno "'Green Teen' Finalist for Arctic Ambassador"

... is Gregg Bonti!
A sophomore at Staples, Bonti comes from a family of environmentalists for whom conserving energy is second nature. Always conscious of reducing their carbon footprint, Bonti and his family wrap Christmas presents with newspaper, recycle cans, bottles, newspapers and plastic, carry aluminum water bottles, turn off lights and keep the thermostat down to sweater temperatures in winter. The self-acclaimed ambassador of his "blended" family, Bonti "looks forward to working with the team and would be cautious when it comes to observing the polar bears in their habitat." -- Westport Patch, CT - Nine 'Green Teen' Finalists in Arctic Ambassador Competition

This way to the vomitorium, ladies and gentlemen.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:28 AM | Your Say (11)

Meanwhile, inside Austin city limits....

The clutch of cerebral midgets sitting on the Austin City Council decided
that official travel by city employees is off limits to the hostile land of racist Arizona. My local six pack of quivering idiots worked themselves into a frothy, indignant snit over fears of racial profiling. Excuse me, but are they planning to send the Parks and Maintenance Department brown worker bees off to Phoenix for a mowing conference?

I should mention that this is the same elected crew who built a riderless light rail system that's run a gazillion dollars over budget and who also just agreed to build a twelve million dollar animal shelter. Twelve million dollars for dogs. Does this strike anyone else as a sign of decadent obscenity?

These morons were happily busy dialoging with the city of Phoenix on how to handle our out of control homeless population a couple of months ago, despite building a fancy multi-million dollar bum facility a few short years back, one that remains perpetually empty except when the temperature dips below freezing. Come to Austin, Get Panhandled ought to be our official motto. Our burgeoning homeless population would rather sleep under a highway bridge than set foot in that ridiculously expensive, blazing icon of liberal ideology made manifest at taxpayer expense in beautiful downtown Austin. I'm guessing the un-liberal Phoenix city council decided to save their citizens a few bucks, plus some major street corner annoyance, by handing out one-way bus tickets to Austin five years ago. -- Mindless Decadence ｫ Jaded Haven

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:15 AM | Your Say (1)

May 14, 2010

Do We Deserve a Mosque at Ground Zero?

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The second attack on the World Trade Center is coming.
It will stand 13 stories high, cost $100 million dollars and include a mosque. Known as Cordoba House -- the name echoing an early caliphate that, of course, subjugated non-Muslims -- it will be located two blocks away from where our magnificent towers crashed and burned, easy wafting distance for the Islamic call to prayer.

Maybe we deserve such a mosque at Ground Zero. It will serve as the perfect monument to post-9/11 America, a shining reproach to a nation that long ago capitulated through loss, or worse, absence of will. Not that it will be widely seen that way. Aside from the torment and seething of survivors, both family and professional family of the 9/11 dead, aside from blog noise and tabloid venting, the phony narrative of Cordoba House as a kind of healing outreach center -- pure deception -- appears ready for chiseling into stone. And that's not because Cordoba's flimflamming Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf obfuscates everything negative about Islam (jihad, for instance), and promotes everything antithetical to Western liberty (Sharia), often with jarring Western references. ("To Muslim ears," he writes, "Sharia law means ... the conditions necessary for what Americans call the pursuit of happiness.") That is, it's not only the efforts of Imam Rauf that are the problem. It's because nearly nine years after 9/11, we are still stupid enough to buy them. -- Diana West > Home - Do We Deserve a Mosque at Ground Zero?>Diana West

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:17 AM | Your Say (9)

May 13, 2010

Bad Americans! No Doughnut for You!

BigMommy.jpg


Created by Exurban League

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (6)

Tale of a Top Floating to the Top

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"Professor Kagan's story is not so different than those of countless other Harvard Assholes;
born precocious, a budding intellect nurtured by a crib full of Swedish monochrome creativity blocks and gender-neutral Balinese finger puppets, at age 3 she earned admission to Hundred Acre Wood Academy, one of the Upper West Side's most selective Ivy League feeder preschools. From there it was off to Leon Trotsky Prep where she distinguished herself as captain of the state champion Feminist Theory team. She displayed a promising raw talent for academic Asshole bullshit, but it was not quite yet up to Harvard's exacting standards. Still, she would not be dissuaded in her quest for the coveted brown brass ring of Harvard Assholicity. She persevered, honing her bullshit at Princeton and Oxford, two less selective junior colleges that sometimes offer a backdoor path into Harvard. And then, the long awaited call to 'The Show' -- the famed Asshole Big Leagues of Harvard Law School, where in three years of intensive study America's most promising young Assholes are taught everything there is to know, about everything worth knowing.

"Despite her underprivileged background Professor Kagan rose to the challenge and graduated magna cum laude, an honor reserved for the top 89% of Harvard Law alumni. Although her diploma fully qualified her for any conceivable position in the known Asshole universe, she took her first paying job in the charitable sector -- teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, a lonely academic legal bullshit outpost in the harsh intellectual wilderness of the American Midwest. Her Asshole missionary work and softball skills quickly drew the attention of then-President Bill Clinton who, despite his Yale degree, was wise enough to see that she had 'the right stuff' to serve as his Assistant Deputy White House Under-Under Subsecretary for Minority Elderly Women's Domestic Pet Policy. Her leadership in that critical office was nothing short of revolutionary, increasing its bullshit report output by 15% while introducing colorful pie charts...." -- iowahawk: Invisible Assholes

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:44 PM | Your Say (4)

May 12, 2010

Vote for Me and I'll Set You Free

Make me the Minister of Snark! Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog has opened the voting for When Snarks Attack: 6
Please hie thee there and vote for me! I ask so little of you all but I need this honor: This is a special edition of my world famous Snark Attack Awards. What’s special about it you ask? Well today I am proud to announce the first ever, and only ever, “Minister of Snark” Award. This special award is given to the MOL who, in the opinion me and millions of other MOLs who have emailed or tweeted me, has succinctly and completely captured the Obot mindset in the fewest words possible

VOTE HERE FOR GERARD

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:36 PM | Your Say (5)

May 11, 2010

"This tune we’re too busy to hear will not be played again"

"Kids can keep you up all night
but it’s all worth it. Domestic animals give love freely to the least deserving, but their lives are short and their ends are often brutal. And it’s worth it. It is all worth it. Every day, even a sad day blurred by headaches and filled with business meetings, is magical and infinite. This dance, this particular proton dance, will never come again. This tune we’re too busy to hear will not be played again. Never forget to be thankful for your life."

Life is Beautiful – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:59 PM

Bad Global Idea #346,769

"We are building a world in which the wealthiest nations on the planet, from Norway to New Zealand, are all but defenseless, while bankrupt dysfunctional squats go nuclear. Even with inevitable and generous submissions to nuclear blackmail, how long do you think that arrangement will last?" -Mark Steyn (via Word Around the Net: Quote of the Day )

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (1)

Got Religion?

Environmentalism does indeed tell its adherents “what to eat”
(pesticide-free organic food, preferably grown nearby to cut down on trucking) and “how to travel” (by public transportation or, better yet, bicycle). But it also lays down rules on nearly every aspect of life in a consumer economy: how to wash your clothes (seldom); how to wash yourself (take a shower, not a bath, and use a low-flow showerhead); how to light your house (with fluorescent bulbs); how to choose your TV (look for the Energy Star logo!); how to go to the bathroom (with high-efficiency toilets and recycled paper); how to invest, clean, sleep, and dress (in environmentally friendly companies, with nontoxic chemicals, on sheets made of “sustainable fibers,” and in clothes made of the same); and even how to procreate (Greenpeace has issued a guide to “environmentally friendly sex”). -- The Varieties of Liberal Enthusiasm by Benjamin A. Plotinsky, City Journal Spring 2010

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:10 AM | Your Say (4)

"And the aggrieved Mexican-American students? ...

"... Most in the press got Ms. Nunez'€™s ad hoc commentary wrong.
It does not really matter that Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, or that it is rarely celebrated in Mexico. The key to her heart were the lines, "We don't deserve to get disrespected (sic) like that. We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July." Aside from the grammar, note the sense of hurt and disrespect that comes naturally to Ms. Nunez from the display of an American flag. Note especially the false moral equivalence. Ms. Nunez surely must be an American citizen. And yet she apparently feels the greater pride in the display of the Mexican flag, a symbol of a nation that her own ancestors fled; while suggesting that her own national holiday is in fact a foreign one. Or as another student Jessica Cortez put it more explicitly, "It's disrespectful to do it on Cinco de Mayo. They can be a patriot on some other day. Not that specific day."(Note the use of "they"€). -- Works and Days » Shall We Laugh or Cry at Morgan Hill?

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:56 AM | Your Say (7)

The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund,

All the bodies had died in a similar way,
from blows to the head. However, the short deep cracks in the skulls appeared to be the result not of weapons but of something rounded. The bodies also only had wounds on their heads, and shoulders as if the blows had all come from directly above... -- Atlas Obscura

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:29 AM | Your Say (0)

May 10, 2010

Profiles in Hybridization: Chaz Bono Becomes First Legal Hollywood-American

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“Before I hit puberty, I always walked around with my shirt off. I can finally do that again—and it’s awesome!”


As a Hollywood-American, Chaz has got it all: Single mom, absent father, a distinguished history of rehab, cats and tats, dogs and dick!
People Magazine just reported recently that Chastity Bono, the only daughter of the late Sonny Bono and Cher, has been granted a gender and name change from a judge in Santa Monica, California. The legal change comes during Chastity’s sex-change transition to male, which started over a year ago, after his/her 40th birthday. “Chaz” came out as a lesbian in 1995. The sex-reassignment procedure is actually a process which takes place over a roughly 5 year span. Chaz had her breasts removed last year, but isn’t talking about what’s “down there,” saying that she/he’s “keeping my privates private.” Chaz also has been taking testosterone. Chaz currently lives with girlfriend Jennifer Elia, 34, along with their 2 dogs and 4 cats. -- Chaz Bono Becomes A Man, Legally

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:47 PM | Your Say (23)

In which I employ a rambling and recursive technique in prose to assure Little Miss Atilla that my previous rambling and recursive headline which read, "In which I use one of those disturbingly long and prolix blog headlines that are infesting the sphere

...to reflect that while I love Newsweek sinking out of sight I'm sorry the editor isn't going down with it..." will not be repeated for the remainder of the day at the very least.

Rest easy, Little Miss Attila.

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:22 PM | Your Say (1)

Pilots Like Captain Dave Are Why You Can Nap During Takeoff

Flight Level 390: Ascent from Paradise
Sterile cockpit procedures are in effect as I mentally review the engine failure tactics for a max loaded A321 on a warm day. For the tenth time, I pick up the weight and balance form and re-read it asking myself if it looks correct. Does it make sense? Yeah, it looks good. When we are number five, I ask the co-pilot to light-off number two. The APU will stay ON for this take-off providing cooling air for the passengers, so that we may use all of the engine bleed air for thrust.

Both engines turning, checklists done, flight attendants and pax are alerted that we are next for the runway. I remind the co-pilot that he is flying a 321 with a very long fuselage... Watch the rotation rate. It sounds ridiculous, but when the crew is liable to fly a 319, 320, and 321 on the same trip, it helps to vocalize the type of aircraft at the end of the runway.

The tower controller clears us for take-off....

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (2)

It Will End with Guns and Fire

This is a long twilight war, the struggle against radical Islamism.
We can't wish it away. No strategy of winning "hearts and minds," no great outreach, will bring this struggle to an end. America can't conciliate these furies. These men of nowhere—Faisal Shahzad, Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born renegade cleric Anwar Awlaki now holed up in Yemen and their likes—are a deadly breed of combatants in this new kind of war. Modernity both attracts and unsettles them. America is at once the object of their dreams and the scapegoat onto which they project their deepest malignancies. -- Fouad Ajami: Islam's Nowhere Men - WSJ.com

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:01 PM | Your Say (1)

Organ Farms Have Arrived in Europe. The US is Next.

Belgian Doctors Euthanized Disabled Patient and Harvested Her Organs -- Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog
Taking the organs was the easy decision. Once you've pulled medicine into the forbidden zone of active killing, finding self-congratulatory justifications becomes a most desirable quest.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (0)

Okay, now Ann Coulter is just being mean.

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“Ruth Bader Ginsbug Will No Longer Be Known as ‘The Pretty One.’.”

HT Curmudgeonly

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (9)

Never Forget

"Most people who vote Democrat and who claim liberal views are quite sane and down-to-earth. It needs to be pointed out to them -- repeatedly -- that the party they vote for is now run by crazies who like pizza taxes." -- -- Don Rodrigo in Side-Lines: Most Polite "Go Fuck Yourself" Letter of the Week

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (1)

May 9, 2010

Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling

WASHINGTON— In a decisive and vulgar 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld the constitution's First Amendment this week, calling the freedom of expression among the most "inalienable and important rights that a motherfucker can have."


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-- America's Finest News Source

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:03 PM | Your Say (2)

Privacy? That's So 20th Century.

Every time Facebook changes their privacy policies, well-meaning folks try to explain how to retain as much of your previous settings as possible . . . and every time, Facebook's defaults have changed further towards exposing everything. There's money in that information, money that Facebook is determined to obtain. Privacy? The inevitability of zero-privacy is Facebook's unspoken motto. -- Facebook's business model ｫ Quotulatiousness

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

Study: Global Warmists Really Are Nuts

Now a gathering of shrinks in Auckland has turned up another side effect of warmenist worry: sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder are increasingly falling victim to Al Gore’s Disease. According to a report from The Royal Australian and New Zealand Collage of Psychiatrists’ Congress:
“Climate change related obsessions and/or compulsions were identified in 28 per cent of patients presenting with obsessive compulsive disorder. Their obsessions included leaving taps on and wasting water, leaving lights on and wasting electricity, pets dying of thirst, leaving the stove on and wasting gas as well as obsessions that global warming had contributed to house floors cracking, pipes leaking, roof problems and white ants eating the house.

“Compulsions in response to these obsessions included the checking of taps, light switches, pet water bowls and house structures.” -- COMPULSIVE OBSESSIVE WARMING | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:19 PM | Your Say (2)

Most Polite "Go Fuck Yourself" Letter of the Week

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Barry "Putz" Popkin

Dear Prof. Popkin:
I propose that all articles and books advocating that government intrude into people's private choices be taxed at very high rates.  Socially irresponsible producers of such "junk" scholarship churn out far too much of it.  As a result, unsuspecting Americans consume harmfully large quantities of this scholarship -- scholarship made appealing only because its producers cram it with sweet and superficially gratifying expressions of noble goals.  These empty intellectual "calories"€™ trick our brains -- which evolved in an environment that lacked today's superabundant access to junk scholarship -- into craving larger and larger, even super-sized, portions of such junk.
The tax I propose would reduce Americans'€™ consumption of this mentally debilitating, university-processed junk that serves only to inflate its producer's egos and consulting fees while it makes the rest of us intellectually flabby and clogs our neural pathways with notions that are toxic to each individual who reads it and to the entire body-politic. -- Open Letter to Prof. Barry Popkin

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (6)

May 7, 2010

In which I use one of those disturbingly long and prolix blog headlines that are infesting the sphere to reflect that while I love Newsweek sinking out of sight I'm sorry the editor isn't going down with it...

God, it's such a relief
to finally give up that stupid facade of objectivity and tell you how I really feel. It's like I was trapped in some sort of circulation prison with that clueless 55 slightly upscale middle America demographic. Sure, they brought home the Lipitor and Viagra accounts, but did you know they actually voted for Bush? Seriously, I'm not kidding! For the last 8 years I've tried sending them and you signals that I wanted out. God, I think I must have run 100 covers on Barack and Jon Stewart trying to let you know I was available. -- iowahawk: I Need Some Me Time

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

I am ETHANOL! Destroyer of CARS!

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may soon make it possible for gasoline mixes to include up to 25% ethanol.
Ethanol already has proved to be more polluting, less efficient, and more expensive than just gasoline and government subsidies to produce it is causing food shortages worldwide. That doesn't stop lefties in government from pushing it, though. And auto manufacturers have tested half the engines being manufactured so far and they've got some bad news for supporters of this new plan:
More ethanol will confuse exhaust control systems and make engines run too hot, destroying catalytic converters, automakers say. It can also damage engine cylinders, they say. For some car owners, “you will be walking, eventually,” Mr. Jones said.

The Ethanol Industry claims its all just a big oil scheme to stop their product from being used, but the oil industry could care less - seeing as they tend to own most of these outfits. Its the auto makers warning that this would destroy cars. -- Word Around the Net: WORD AROUND THE NET

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (8)

30 Dead from Floods in Nashville? And you hear.... Crickets.

"As you may have heard, torrential downpours in the southeast flooded the Tennessee capital of Nashville over the weekend, lifting the Cumberland River 13 feet above flood stage, causing an estimated $1 billion in damage, and killing more than 30 people."

Nashville had all of the elements of Katrina, except for the "narrative" bits: no helpless population, no incompetent governor, no hopeless mayor, no looting, no screeching about FEMA, and most important, no Republican in the White House. Instead, it offered a community that banded together, took on the task, saved its neighbors, fought back the floods and is now getting on with its life. -- Big Journalism

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (1)

"All of this inspires one obvious question….

.... Is there anyone else currently in America, who the counter-terrorism community has been tracking, who has also spent time in terror training camps in Pakistan?
How much do you want to bet the answer is most certainly yes?
Any chance the Obama Administration might want to scoop up those potential Jihad terrorists BEFORE they park a bomb in another American city? Fat chance of that when the Administration can’t even admit that the Ft. Hood Jihad Terrorist attack had anything to do with Jihad terrorism. -- Founding Bloggers

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (0)

May 6, 2010

William M. Briggs, Statistician says "I'm Sick of All These Climate Skeptic Deniers!"

There are a lot of people out there -- unqualified, un-degreed, un-peer-reviewed people --
who actively reject the consensus among climate skeptics. These people are rank deniers. These bold casuistry mongers should cause us grave concern. If they can refuse to admit something so obvious as the inaccuracy of climate models, who knows what else this temerarious rabble would deny? -- William M. Briggs

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:44 PM | Your Say (0)

What's the difference between a CLIMATOLOGIST and a COSMETOLOGIST?

A COSMETOLOGIST knows when she's putting lipstick on a pig.

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

Bitter Clinger

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1. Found God

2. Bought Gun

3. Built Bomb.

HT: Rush Limbaugh caller

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (1)

Newsweek. Dead, Dead, Dead. But Pretending to Be "For Sale"

Drive it fast to its tomb:
Ever since its recent  "reinvention" as an "opinion leader" Newsweek was too poor and too lazy to any real reporting any more, so it offered the same tired collection of Washington and Manhattan bylines you can read, or hear, or see, everywhere else, as if the bylines mattered instead of the news  — the eternal second banana to Time really had no further reason for existence.  Except, as Carr notes, to support its editor, Jon Meacham. -- "We Are All Socialists Now" Newsweek Goes On the Block - Big Journalism

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (5)

"He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. "

Reality intrudes on the dream:
"Ever committed to preserving the dignity of Black men in a world which constantly stereotypes them as violent savages, I viewed this writing as yet one more opportunity to fight "the man" on behalf of my brothers. That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for.

It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn't care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night. -- SpeakEasy HT: The Fourth Checkraise: Community-based reality

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (8)

May 5, 2010

Let's Review

With The Anchoress

So, the Gulf may have to deal with as much as seeping into it, every day, for a while.

And…the Obama government exempted BP from an impact review last year.

And…President Obama, who hates big oil, big coal, big energy, was on the receiving end of more money from BP than anyone else in politics.

And…the President’s party is fundraising off of the disaster.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:51 PM | Your Say (0)

Nuance: The New Stupid

This headline is popping up all over the media today on an article supplied by Associated Press: NY Car Bomb Suspect Cooperates, But Motive Mystery -- Breath of the Beast

Or, as Gagdad Bob remarks in the comments: "Readers and Viewers Flee MSM for Other News Sources, But Motive a Mystery"

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (1)

Answer: A Party of Quislings Led by a Traitor

In reality, the bomber hated George Bush and was strongly opposed to the war on terror. And this would make his intellectual fellow travelers who, exactly? -- Had Enough Therapy?: Terrorism Comes to Times Square; Bloomberg Fails to Lead

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (1)

"They"

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In the aftermath of the Times Square attack President Obama warned against the threat from “they”.
“Around the world and here at home there are those who would attack our citizens and who would slaughter innocent men, women and children in pursuit of their murderous agenda … They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life.”.... Given this language an historian from the future, seeking to reconstruct the great upheavals of the 21st century might reasonably conclude that the evil "they"€ the President refers to are the heartless managers who foreclosed the mortgage on this ordinary American, and that somehow this Faisal Shahzad was driven to an irrational deed by an intense pang of loneliness or perhaps alienation. A minority interpretation among future historians would probably argue that "they" refers to some other entity because the whole narrative is written in code. But the proposition that newspapers were written in code is so preposterous that only a few crackbrains will believe it.  The entire saga of the catastrophe of the early 21st century will probably remain an unsolved mystery to those who pick over the ruins of a mysteriously vanished civilization. -- Belmont Club » The Newspaper of the Mysteries

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (3)

Fertilizer

"You almost have to feel sorry for the trendy left;
they were already smacking their lips in anticipation of the failed Times Square bomber being a white right-wing loser, the next Timothy McVeigh, who would have been an endless cornucopia of agitprop against their political opponents. And then the guy turned out to be yet another Islamist. What a bummer. The stupid old reality just doesn't agree to jibe with the liberal fantasy of how it should be. Although looking at the guy's picture, I give it an over-under of five years until his young smirking face begins to share space on progressive T-shirts with Che Guevara and Mumia Abu-Jamal. The feds are probably still keeping him incommunicado in a secure location, so unfortunately all those present and future cat ladies with a pile of "no war for oil" and "keep your hands off my uterus" buttons on their shirts and big canvas handbags will have to wait a while before writing him love letters, so excited about the fantasy of this edgy and radical rebel against the Bushitler regime who would treat them like a real man that it's a minor miracle that they don't slide off their chairs." -- Ilkka @ The Fourth Checkraise

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (0)

May 4, 2010

Opting Out

Daphne on Leaving The Reservation @ Jaded Haven
A silent tide is sweeping across the country among family men of a certain age.... Many have served our country, in war zones, with distinguished honor. They gladly earn their bread while supporting complete strangers who don't, can't or won't work. They span the spectrum from blue collar workers to successful entrepreneurs. A number of these good men have been sniffing the wind for the past two years and they're calling it a day. Bolt holes are being created, money is being transferred out of the market and into solid commodities, debt load is being reduced with an eye towards further economic collapse. Politics have become meaningless to this breed, they're done, disgusted, fed up with whole cesspool. These men are looking at American life in a whole new way.

"You take off your insignia. Escape
is just a simple matter
of melting into the landscape."

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

A Web Page Called "NEOCON WTF"!

Seriously: NeoCon WTF

Neoneocon needs to launch crippling litigation.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (3)

Obamunists Unhappy It's a Pakistani

America is a country with a considerable number of enemies
nearly all of whom would sue it for defation should it mention their names. One of the fundamental problems with this investigation -- and concerns over who is handling it -- revolves around the problem of who the perpetrator will turn out to be. Unless it happens to be an alien from another dimension, an arrest will explode one of several cherished political world views. If the perpetrator turns out to be a Tea Party male that will be one thing; if it turns out to be an American of Pakistani origin, that will be another. Nobody will be happy. And being happy is the whole point of things today. -- Belmont Club » The Gorgon'€™s Stare

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (2)

arizone.jpg


[HT: The Homchick Report]

Available HERE.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (3)

May 3, 2010

I love this headline:

Progressive Supporters Of Human Smuggling Turn Violent In California @ Founding Bloggers [Let's see: windows smashed, businesses trashed. Was there anything like that in the Tea Party demonstrations last month? Did I miss something?]

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (0)

I love this headline too:

Racing Arizona From Three O'Clock AM wherein we learn, "You can't have a nanny state without also having a police state."
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Posted by Vanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (0)

Aftermath

"Starting with Iraq, the American military has militarized large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the name of pacification. And now America is engaged in a grand strategic withdrawal from responsibility in the region, leaving behind men with weapons and excellent reason to use them.... Like Alice in Wonderland, the US administration is trying to play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs. If only the hedgehog would hold still, Gates complains, Washington could hit it with a flamingo." -- Spengler

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:42 AM | Your Say (4)

from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's As Breathing And Consciousness Return

"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make!" -- Unqualified Reservations

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:06 AM | Your Say (2)

May 2, 2010

Doug Ross, Sleuth: "Exclusive Photo Gallery: What's the Carbon Footprint of Al Gore's New Mediterranean Villa?"

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Eco-Gangster #1 and his moll by a new crib? Doug Ross, Super Shamus, is on the case:
Last week that Al and Tipper Gore greatly expanded their carbon footprint with the purchase of their fourth luxury home. The 'global warming' business has been very, very good to the Gores.

See them all at Doug's Exclusive Photo Gallery

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:23 PM | Your Say (1)

Jewel's Jewels

"The New Alpha Pussy is the Beta Male."

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (1)

President Smart-Ass

The secret to the Obama annoyance is snotty lecturing.
His tone of voice sends us back to the worst place in college. We sit once more packed into the vast, dreary confines of a freshman survey course -- €œRocks for Jocks, €œNuts and Sluts, Darkness at Noon. -- At the lectern is a twerp of a grad student—the prototypical A student -- €”insecure, overbearing, full of himself and contempt for his students. All we want is an easy three credits to fulfill a curriculum requirement in science, social science, or fine arts. We've got a mimeographed copy of last year's final with multiple choice answers already written on our wrists. The grad student could skip his classes, the way we intend to, but there the s.o.b. is, taking attendance. (How else to explain this year's census?) -- P.J. O'Rourke, A Plague of "A"€™ Students

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:26 PM | Your Say (1)

Beyond Debka: Most Flipped-Out Rumor About the Oil Spill Yet

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US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig | EUTimes.net
A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States.
You like conspiracies? Chow down on the whole report. And... well... Obama did order SWAT teams onto the rigs.... and does anyone know where any of our Los Angeles class attack subs are this week? We have 45. They can't all be bobbing around under the polar ice-cap, can they?

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:01 PM | Your Say (8)

Gorism

Al Gore's purchase of a $9 million Monticito mansion
"is emblematic of the decline of liberalism over the last thirty years. Collate the anti-capital rants of a zillionaire currency speculator George Soros, the green sermons from a late Ted Kennedy who stopped a wind farm from marring his vacation home's views, a John Edwards of "two nations"€ fame constructing a Neroian Golden House, a Tom Freedmen warning of the consumer habits that lead to a hot, flat earth from a 10,000 square foot English-style estate of the sort that 18th-century English barons built after successful careers in the Raj, the comic case of Jeremiah Wright moving to a mostly white golf course to dream up more sermons about "white folks' €™ greed runs a world in need" or a $5 million a year earning Obama -- with all his expenses picked up by the government -- lamenting out loud why rich people seem to want ever more money they don'tt need. Some spread the wealth around.

"We can call this malady Gorism -- €”living not merely at odds with your zealotry, but living entirely against your zealotry -- €”and it seems to reflect a few assumptions of the modern progressive elite that are not mutually exclusive.... --Works and Days » Thoughts on Gorism

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:31 PM | Your Say (0)

Rimshot!

When I told my 17-year-old daughter Obama was involved in a sex scandal, she asked "Who's the lucky guy?"

I'm SO damned proud of her.

Via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

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

Best. Idea. Ever: 'This way to San Francisco!'

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Considering California's prevalent sanctuary cities -- and a proposed boycott of Arizona by San Francisco -- HillBuzz asks a wonderful question: What if conservatives put up billboards in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada pointing the way to San Francisco for illegal aliens? So I took a crack at illustrating the idea and added free shuttle buses to boot. -- Doug Ross at the Photoshop

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (0)

"Glee" is Busting Out All Over

Slate the Butch Pixie:
Disney's popular website Pixie Hollow just welcomed a new fairy to its mystical ranks -- and surprise! It's a boy. Pixie Hollow is an online world where kids can create their own Tinker Bell-styled fairy personas, interact with each other, and play enchanted "talent games." Up until now, kids could only don a pair of virtual wings and flit around Pixie Hollow as female fairies -- but all that's all changed now that Disney has introduced its first fairy-dude to the formerly all-girl world: A boy by the name of Slate. -- Disney 'Tinkers' With Gender in Online Kids' Game

File under: "The Pussification of the American Pixie."

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (2)

Lifestyles of the Rich and Compulsive

Candy Spelling on why she needs a colossal 17,000-square-foot attic:

We've collected a lot of stuff, and I wasn't sure where to start. So, I studied storage areas in hardware stores, hotels and big box retailers to figure out the best way to keep the original floor plans, architectural drawings and charts that show what's connected to what and how to find the wiring for every piece of equipment in the house. I have almost a hundred different kinds of light bulbs (for everything from koi pond reflectors to French lampposts), plus unique duplicates of every carpet, wall covering, upholstery fabric, stone, and paint used in the house. Everything is labeled, and I even wrote stories about some of the rare items, such as the tale of how I found the silk for our entry hall walls.

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:18 AM | Your Say (2)

May 1, 2010

More right-wing hate

There's more right-wing hate emanating from Arizona.
Nasty state authorities are actually enforcing the law with respect to illegal immigrants. Can you believe it?  And this just in: a police deputy shot an suspected illegal immigrant in the stomach with an AK47  . . . .  no, wait, I got that backwards. It turns out that the suspected illegal immigrant -- one of a gang hauling bales of marijuana along a smuggling corridor in Arizona --  was toting the AK47. It was he who shot the deputy sheriff, not the other way around. Silly me. How did I get that wrong? -- Roger's Rules

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (0)

"Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others"

"I'm 100 percent for alternative energy, but just not in Nantucket Sound," Mr. Parent said.
"€œThere's no guarantee that the electricity will be cheaper. And once you put those windmills out there you can never take them away." I love the way that he can put this sentence together without a trace of irony. And then he inadvertently summarizes other problems with renewables -- of COURSE the electricity won't be cheaper == it may be ten times more expensive to put those plants out there and build transmission when compared to a modern, efficient coal plant. But since the environmentalists have made it impossible to build coal plants.... -- Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » The Onion On Renewables

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:26 AM | Your Say (0)