You gotta see it because The Anchoress says it is wonderful, and The Anchoress does not lie.
Tania Cagnotto of Italy competes in the 1m Womens Springboard Diving at the Stadio del Nuoto
A must see collection of how people get into the swim: Dive right in @ The Big Picture
Left, Michael Crowley: Still a poster-boy after all these years.
As the dew dries to crusted smegma on the Obama rose, we need to find better metaphors for the Obamallationist media that's looking for a way to rinse the acrid taste out of their morning-after mouths.
Yes, with every passing day spin is getting more and more difficult and desperate for those that stapled their scrotums to the axles of Obama's juggernaut. To paraphrase their jug-eared idol,
Continued...
'Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall....
"I'm the Doctor. You wait on the Waiting List!" The short and simple annals of the poor often record the keenest insights into what's in store for the rest of us in our Brave New Dystopia. They've been showing up to be on the government, free health-care waiting list for decades. We're next.
Listen to this chilling Obamacare anthem @ Blip.fm | Vanderleun | Dr. Octagon – Waiting List
Here are the lyrics from Kool Keith's 1996 solo album Dr. Octagonecologyst
You enter, step in the room, four, five
My over compressed thoughts and ways make you get live
You are the patient, and i, your black doctor,
Medical bills, insurance, cash in the ceiling.
Dioxalyn fingerprints here ever since
I got my white suit pressed, out the cleaners,
X-ray shades, with hard shoes and some razor blades
Who's the brother that's sick, and needs the operation?
Bullets removed from your head, grand central station
I gotta cut off your ear, first behind your neck
Rip out the stomach, and open rectum's to dissect
Shine the light, inside, roaches crawling in your throat
I have no tools, my hammer's done, my drill is broked
I'm the doctor,Continued...
You wait on the waiting list,
Patients been here since this morning I dismiss.
Receptionist: How do you write about New York Times columnists and editors so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a slug, and I take away reason and accountability.
-- As Good as It Gets (1997) - Memorable quotes
Thomas Friedman, bad writer, world traveler, and all around bon vivant, wants YOU to pay to save the planet. Just Do It
Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change. But it also contains significant provisions to prevent new buildings from becoming energy hogs, to make our appliances the most energy efficient in the world and to help preserve forests in places like the Amazon.Awww, poor widdle Amazon rain forest.
When not abroad fellating Arab potentates or hectoring you to reach for your wallet, this is how Thomas Friedman lives.
The gall of these non-elected, self-selected nattering flatulators is without limit.
HT Sasquatchian @ Planet Gore on National Review Online
Nine.
One to change the light bulb.
One to scream out "Racist society!" to the neighbors.
One to berate the black police officer on the scene.
One to berate the Hispanic Police Officer on the scene.
One to call the (black) Mayor.
One to call the (black) Governor.
One to call the (black) President.
One to begin booking the talk shows.
One to start production on the documentary film.
by GCOTHARN @ The End Zone
Like you, I tire of the tendentious bullshit swirling about health care these days. The subject has become like a media-powered Sawsall being plunged into my eyes at every click on the great wheel of the web.
Gleaming in the current center of "the converstation" (dispicable term, what?) is the breathless contention some people think is an argument: "Why these Democrats and assorted Obamallationists can't even explain what is in it!"
Bullshit. Of course they can explain what is in it. They wrote it. They simply don't dare to do so. It would blow the gaff. Wide-open and to smithereens.
To know what's in the health-care bill, just take a lesson from that kindly old mass-murderer Lenin. It's a simple case of "Who -- Whom?" A classic as explained here from when Time was a magazine and not a lump of irrelevant woodpulp:
Marxism was posited on the ideas of a single absolute truth, the predestined victory of the cause, and the fallibility and expendability of the individual. Therefore it lent itself to the suppression of dissenters and the extermination of opponents. Lenin, with his knack for hortatory pungency, reduced the past and future alike to two pronouns and a question mark: "Who—whom?" No verb was necessary. It meant who would prevail over whom? And the question was largely rhetorical, implying that the answer was never in doubt. Lenin and those who followed him would prevail over "them," whoever they were. -- The Specter and the Struggle - TIME -- Jan. 04, 1982"Who—whom?" Who shall be forced to give up the health care that they like (most Americans), and whom shall receive health care they (supposedly) ain't got -- for free -- at a cost to everyone else of trillions in dollars and immeasurable quantities of freedom and privacy and security.
Who (shall give)? You and hundreds of millions of others. Anyone who has a job, or makes things, or owns things that can be taxed. And then have a fee for this or that levied (for the common good). And then taxed again.
Whom (shall receive)? The poor shall be marched to the front of the line; their ragamuffin children with protruding bellies on their shoulders for the photo-op. But right behind them will come.... the slackers, the lazy, the whacked-out, the grifters, the hustlers, the useless, the career recipients of endless government hand-jobs, the hard-core unemployable, the 17% of crack whores that do not work for the government, and a few million others that form the hard, adamantine core of Obama's and the Democrats' aptly named "base."
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," is what's going on here. Except this time the add-on is "Even if you don't need it or want it, because little Susie the crack whore does. P.S. We're gonna slip in some language to pay for her abortion too, just because it will piss you off."
That's the bottom line and that's all it is. Little wonder they don't dare explain it, but I for one wish they'd cut the crap for once. It really is getting hard to breathe. If not, maybe we can at least get an industrial sized bullshit snorkel out of the deal. We'll need it.
There's a lot of brouhaha and rumbles of mutiny being heard around the 'sphere today about Obama's first slide into negative polling territory. Most of those that despise him, and they are legion, are happy for the first time in many months. But I'd suggest they curb their enthusiasm.
It is true that the economy is unlikely to have a miraculous turn-around, and it is equally true that there is going to be some sort of a health-care fiasco foisted onto this perishing republic since the Dems are too dumb and too deep in the mire to "let the kid die." But in all this swirl of endless blather about said health-care bill, the people getting happy about the Obama drift down are forgetting that he's got a hole card. When he flips that card over it says, "Afghanistan."
There's two things that I think about when I think about Obama and Afghanistan.
1) As I have written about before in The Road to a Democrat Led Defeat of America Goes Through Afghanistan, and spelled out in Afghanistan Bananistan: The 10 Point Plan, Afghanistan is Obama's "Get out of bad election results and/or get re-elected free card." He can pretty much use it any time he needs it to become "The man with the vision to bring peace to America." All he has to do to keep the card fresh is to give our forces there just enough rope for them to twist, hang, and die slowly in the wind. If you've been paying attention, that's just what has been taking place.
2) Will Obama be so cynical that he will actually let American troops dies for a cause that he knows for certain he'll end as soon as it becomes politically necessary? Silly rabbit, of course he will. Obama has no love for the American military as he has shown again and again over the years and as he will demonstrate convincingly as soon as it suits his own purposes. This is a man who has no respect of honor and valor since he not only has neither but is, as I have written in some detail, Not Man Enough to Be President. It is a deep tragedy of our moment that our military has as a commander-in-chief someone who not only does not value their sacrifice, but will use it for his own self-serving and cynical ends.
Look for "Obama: The President of Peace" opening sometime next year. Maybe sooner if the daily rushes start to look really bad.
A few days back Amazon snuck in the back door of everybody's Kindles that had purchased a copy of a certain edition of 1984 and deleted it. (Yes, Amazon has the keys to the backdoor of all their Kindles, and apparently they thought they had the right to just come into your electronic library and take something back. Oh sure they credited you for it, but that's not the point is it?)
For details on this dumb move and why there's a lot of evil potential in Kindle, see Jason Perlow's JEFF BEZOS IS WATCHING YOU.
Amazon has been at some pains to keep the Kindle's rep pure and at greater pains to hide sales figures. Both of these items suggest that Kindle is not the iPod of print that Amazon want's everyone to believe. I know I don't. This latest move of Amazon Dumbth was brimming with irony since the title was "1984." Very damaging stuff since it's easy to make this sort of theme into a meme that will not die, and it has become that. I had a conversation about it with a colleague just this evening over dinner.
Now I'm back home and I have to say I am impressed not only with the speed of Amazon's apology, but with it's straightforward tone as well.
Barack Obama, President of the United States, could learn a lot about how to salvage a sinking brand from Jeff Bezos, President of Amazon. This is how to apologize. No weasel words. No "calibrated" words. Just "I was wrong / We were wrong / We'll use what we've learned to do better."
An Apology from AmazonThat is how a full human being says they're sorry. Presidents take note. Or not. Preferably not.Jeffrey P. Bezos says:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
Obamallatio ™ I'm just putting this up to stake the claim for future generations of wordsmiths. Obviously a subset of fellatio involving the media, the credulous, the brain dead, the foolishly optimistic, and Andrew Sullivan. Let's work on the definition together, okay?
Googling about I see that the oddly named Swampthing in Korea@ Fark comments typed the term out on 2009-01-22 @ 07:34:20 AM
Okay, now the Obamallatio is getting creepy....I'm putting that down to the "million farkers typing randomly write obamallatio sooner or later" theory. I, however, have trademarked the term for use on extra-small condoms and dental dams.
Error slut Alessandra Stanley is at it again at the New York Times with An Appraisal - Cronkite’s Signature Mix of Authority and Approachability. Now there are corrections and corrections, but by any order of magnitude this is a whopper.
Correction: July 22, 2009 -- An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.I'll give her a pass on the "editing error" of UP vs. UPI since that's laid off on some functionaries at the times that are laughably referred to as "editors." The rest of the roster, however, is just down to the kind of sloppy drivel that Stanley has become infamous for. I'd call for a special Dumbth Award with oakleaf cluster for getting the date of the moon landing wrong 3 (Three!) days before the 40th anniversary of same, but it is all too typical of this Timesian's bumbling career of error.
Craig Silverman @ CJR sums up her recent career score in Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong with
Stanley has been responsible for nine corrections so far this year. By my count in Nexis, she had fourteen corrections in 2008, twelve in 2007, and fifteen in 2006. Averaging just over a correction a month is not something to be proud of. But that’s still better than before she attracted so much attention. Stanley had twenty-three corrections in 2005, the year everyone noticed her predilection for error, and twenty-six in 2004. Perhaps the decline in corrections between 2005 and 2006 was in part due to the attention focused on her.But it goes beyond that when we reflect that the correction itself references an "editing error." With an error rate such as Stanley's you have to ask if there was any editing oversight at all on the story? Slim to none would be my guess.
This also raises into high relief the "fact based reality" of a lot of Times stories. After all, it cannot have been news to the newspaper that Walter Cronkite was, for many years now, on the way out. It cannot have escaped the people responsible for obituaries at the Times that they'd best keep their files up-to-date and factually bulletproof. Are these files kept in a New York Times fact lock-box so that scribblers such as Stanley can't access them? Is Wikipedia blocked at the Times much as Twitter is blocked at the White House? Or has the culture of lies, misdirection, "unnamed sources" that have no names, Obamallatio ™, and obfuscation set in so deeply at the New York Times that they just don't give a damn any longer?
I suspect it is the latter. Maureen Dowd avoids it all by just pulling her pungent quotes from "unnamed sources" out of her email or her ass. Maybe Stanley should do the same. The lingering question about her continued employment turns the crude question "Who do I have to blow around here to get a job" on its head to become, "Who does Stanley have to not blow at the New York Times to get fired?"
Obama: We haven’t selected a permanent church home in DC….my Faith and Neighborhood Initiatives Director Joshua DeBois, he has a devotional that he sends to me on my Blackberry every day. That’s how I start my morning. It’s got a passage, a scripture, in some cases quotes from other faiths to reflect on.
Desire Grover is making sense out of Gates' stupidity.
Chris Rock explains it all for you. Pay attention. There will be a test, you intellectually insane moron.
Mugshot Moment: Gates is ready for his close-up.
In Defense of Readers "The best readers are obstinate. They possess a nearly inexhaustible persistence that drives them to read, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in."
From a $500 million treasure ship to an epic kegger party in Peru 4000 years ago there's a lot of Sexy News from the World of Archaeology
World's dumbest amusement park ride: Pedal-Powered Monorail in New Zealand
The Return Of Scipio envisions The Coming Dialogues Of Melos "World peace -- or even peace over a substantial part of the globe -- is a very rare thing."
Dateline: Beijing -- Internet Adds 12th Website
Will designer brains divide humanity? Why should they be any different from natural brains?
Higher than Everest: Everest revealed from above in British balloonist's breathtaking panoramic shot of world's highest peaks
Newest bogus restaurant suit: Man sues Claim Jumper, claiming condom was in his soup
Sippican Cottage sez I Finally Located A Real Good Country Song. Indicator For Genre: Everyone Involved Is Probably Dead
Lowering the Bar: Man Has Perfectly Believable Story About Why He Was Naked In a Cemetery
On advertising "Any economy which charges ever less for ever more intrusive ads will eventually be successful not in creating wealth but in driving the readers away, until the only ones left to heed the ads are all the other ads." [Found on the wonderful blog this is a working library Recommended. ]
Good news. You're immortal.Bad news. You live forever as a small clump of jelly.
Attempted Suicide-by-Cop: You just know that this ends badly. Very badly.
When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a tell-tale sign. He prefaces it with "let me be clear" or "understand this." -- Power Line - Obama's Ethics
[Full image in PDF Bumperstrip format suitable for sticking is HERE. PDF @ 3.5 Megabytes.]
"Let me tell you how it will be....
Here's one for you nineteen for me....
Don't ask me what I want it for,
If you don't want to pay some more...."
As someone wise put it to me today, after watching the shameless fellatio festival called a Press Conference, "Can you imagine a claim any more cynical and absurd than that the government will control costs by finding and eliminating inefficiencies?"
Continued...
Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just spontaneously combusting? Seven-Month Investigation Turns up 15 Incidents of Fiery iPods @ Wired.com
Backgrounder with documents: Here's the details that prove "It's not the flaming iPod, it's the cover-up." Apple Downplays Fiery iPod Incidents @ KIRO Seattle
This one goes out to all those who had big dreams for Obama and are now, like Ann Althouse, waking from that dream into the nightmare. Ann's almost there even though she's burying the lede deep inside Althouse: David Brooks: "Liberal Suicide March.". C'mon, Ann, you can do it. It takes a big hair babe to admit when she was wrong.
Heart also went big for Obama and every sued the RNC for using "Barracuda." They too may be having buyers' remorse now or when their way-new taxes bite them in their big hair sometime next year.
From, not without irony, the lyrics to "These Dreams:"
There's something out there
I cant resist.
I need to hide away from the pain.
There's something out there
I cant resist.
The sweetest song is silence
That I've ever heard.
Funny how your feet
In dreams never touch the earth.
In a wood full of princes
Freedom is a kiss.
But the prince hides his face
From dreams in the mist.
These dreams go on when I close my eyes.
Every second of the night I live another life.
These dreams that sleep when its cold outside.
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away.
Earth to Althouse and Heart: "Wake up and smell the agenda!"
I just caught myself wondering....
What if you could put a mental web-cam inside people's heads and run a search for secret, unspoken thoughts that began, "Those goddamn (ethnic slur)'s..." or similar pattern?
Would the frequency of such thoughts be up or down from the recent past in this new 'post-racial' era?
Boyle bumps Obama: It's over when the fat lady sings:
The stakes were particularly high for NBC, which airs the most-watched show of the summer, "America's Got Talent," at 9 p.m. This week, the reality hit includes a heavily promoted interview with "Britain's Got Talent" singing sensation Susan Boyle.
Sources said that NBC demonstrated reluctance to carry Obama's news conference live. Faced with the prospect of only one or two major broadcasters -- CBS and ABC -- covering the event, the White House moved its start time to 8 p.m. -- Most will carry Obama press conference; time shifted after NBC balked
Hot? Chinese? Urine Luck!: Is this the world's most crowded swimming pool?
Coming Soon: The Blackberry-Only Twitter, "Thumber."
Beyond the capacity of the mind to boggle: Bailouts could cost U.S. $23 trillion
President chomps cheeseburger, BIG NEWS. President goes out for ice cream, BIGGER NEWS! President eats fish eggs of endangered species with top Russian thug, ... not news, move along, nothing to see here.
The President: One hundred and eighty-three days ago the Democratic Party, and my personal body slaves the hack media, brought forth on this continent, a new Won-derful, conceived in Hawaii (so I am told), and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal but some are more equal than others.
Now we are engaged in a great boondoggle of bills, testing whether that nation, or any nation so confused and so eviscerated, can long endure trillions of dollars in debt while the slacktard half of the population pays nothing in taxes for their government cheese.
We are met on top of a 1,018 page health-careless boondoggle bill. We have come to dedicate a vast portion of that bill's gob-stopping debt, as a final resting place for those who previously worked their whole lives that free enterprise might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should fleece them.
But, in a larger sense, we can not fleece -- we can not bamboozle -- we can not steal -- enough with this boondoggle bill to pay for our addiction to free shit from Uncle Sam. The entrepreneurs, living and dead, who struggled to build up their businesses and capital, have not socked away enough for our poor power to tax or extract.
The rich and sorta-rich will note, and long remember how we tax here, but they can never come up with enough cash to pay for what we enacted here.
It is now for you, the vaguely solvent but earning less than $250,000, rather, to be dedicated here to paying for the unfinished make-work which they whom we have fleeced hairless have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for you to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored and bankrupt rich we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of taxation -- that you middle class schmucks here highly resolve that these rich shall not have been taxed into the poorhouse in vain -- that the working class and the middle class of this nation, under Me, shall have a new birth of oppressive taxation -- and that punitive government taxation of the people, by the armed might of the state, for the people who can't get their ass in gear but need an ever expanding bag of goodies from Me, shall not perish from the earth.
-- for Apollo
The moon marked out the edge of heaven.
On this, our scriptures all agreed.
The moon was fixed, it could not fall.
The moon would fill our final needs.
The songs we'd learned were of the moon,
A fitting subject, known to all,
But the songs we sang were of the Earth,
And those that lived before the Fall.
These songs of forests flowing round
The Earth's four corners warmed the frost
That killed our gardens, coming early,
To remind us all of what we'd lost.
"Why wander yearning for the moon?"
We'd ask of stones and ancient trees.
Their silence sang back in the night,
Of lands where all free choices freeze.
"Tranquillity", they promised us,
"Is the highest peak you will attain.
Tranquillity, where your bones will rest
Forever in the airless rains."
Our numbers grew, as did our tongues,
Beside brown rivers, on ancient plains.
We made more gods, we built up walls,
We fashioned towers of dirt and rain.
Within those walls we planted fruit
And flowers bordering roofless rooms,
Wherein we sang the centuries down,
Observing all the phases of the moon.
In time our towers turned to steel,
And their foundations into fire.
The rooms we made were sealed as stone,
And in those rooms we rose much higher.
The moon grew monstrous as we ascended;
In our window it grew larger than the world.
We lowered our ladder gingerly,
Stepped down, a bit of cloth unfurled.
We named the place Tranquillity.
A fitting gesture, all agreed.
We photographed ourselves on site,
Tossed away some junk we did not need,
And left, returning to that place
Where we'd begun beside the plains,
Boasting our footprints would endure
Forever in the airless rains.
Sometimes at night, we still look up
And see the moonrise scrape the sky.
It is the same, yet not the same,
And we know why, yes, we know why.
The faux-conservative's answer to both Paris and Perez Hilton, Meghan McCain, showed up for an interview with that clarion tuba of Gay media, Out Magazine looking a bit more, er, "fulfilled" than she has of late.
We note the glow in the cheeks. The Mona Lisa "knowing" in the eyes. The tell-tale swelling of the breasts that literally bends the pink triangle out of space and time. The thickening of the abdomen that no "SILENCE=DEATH" slogan can quite obliterate.
In the spirit and tradition of Andrew Sullivan, I feel it is my DUTY to ask if she is with child or with cheeseburger. And if the former, is there proof that the father is not Levi Johnston?
And if true, when will we get to see THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?
Like Sullivan, I'm just asking.
And don’t just keep it to yourself!
Send the link to all of your very best friends!
And make sure you don’t miss further instructions! Join the Bureau’s effort today because, you know, this future isn’t that far off!
A public service message from The Health Administration Bureau
HT: No Moss Here - What you can expect from ObamaCare.
[Via email today. Hey, it's new on the Web if it is new to me. Okay?]
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete.
In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years....
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.
I hope that works but I also wonder, "If there's such a thing as a shotgun marriage, can there also be a shotgun divorce? Mossberg owners want to know."
Lift-off of the Saturn V rocket, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr, along with 6,700,000 pounds (3,039,000 kg) of fuel and equipment into the Florida sky, bound for the Moon, on July 16th, 1969.
The rocket was rising faster, slanting a little, its tense white flame leaving a long, thin spiral of bluish smoke behind it. It had risen into the open blue sky, and the dark red fire had turned into enormous billows of brown smoke, when the sound reached us: it was a long, violent crack, not a rolling sound, but specifically a cracking, grinding sound, as if space were breaking apart, but it seemed irrelevant and unimportant, because it was a sound from the past and the rocket was long since speeding safely out of its reach—though it was strange to realize that only a few seconds had passed. I found myself waving to the rocket involuntarily, I heard people applauding and joined them, grasping our common motive; it was impossible to watch passively, one had to express, by some physical action, a feeling that was not triumph, but more: the feeling that that white object’s unobstructed streak of motion was the only thing that mattered in the universe.
What we had seen, in naked essentials—but in reality, not in a work of art—was the concretized abstraction of man's greatness. -- Ayn Rand
Velociman writes for me when he says,
Once upon a time we were a great nation that strived for the stars. No more. Now we are ashamed of glory, because some fucking crackhead might feel neglected if we don't dote upon her, and slather her with our largesse at the expense of the Great Things. -- Velociworld: We Choose To Go To The Moon
I'm still hoping we don't get to the point where Charlton Heston will speak for all of us: You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
... but every so often I gets my doubtins'.
Or, "Gosh, he has rediscovered the 20's and Hugo Gernsback." -- Chuck
Sixteen provocative minutes with "the man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate." -- Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' | Video on TED.com Recorded June 2009.
"Check out this image: see that tiny speck of light, inside the blue circle? That's Earth, as seen from the vantage point of Saturn. We are so much smaller even than that." -- Discovery Space: Twisted Physics: In Praise of Insignificance
Continued...
"I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation," she said over lunch in her downtown office, 40 miles from her now-famous hometown of Wasilla — population 7,000 — where she began her political career. "People are so tired of the partisan stuff — even my own son is not a Republican," said Mrs. Palin. -- Palin to stump for conservative Democrats - Washington Times
Humm, sounds like Governor Palin may be casting an even wider net than I supposed the other day in: How Sarah Palin Will Become the Most Powerful Republican
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
-- Longfellow
Rasmussen Presidential Approval Ratings since the Inauguration taken on the 9's of the month:
01/22/2009 +30
02/09/2009 +14
03/09/2009 +6
04/09/2009 +5
05/09/2009 +7
06/09/2009 +8
07/09/2009 -8
Interesting that on 6/9 it stood at +8 and now one month later it stands at -8.
But what, you ask... what, Uncle Gerard, does it mean?
What does it mean? As one Johnny Worthington says when you google "It don't mean shit,"
"Seriously... It don't mean shit... It's all in the marinade and spices bitches!!!"
A colorful man that Johnny Worthington, who seems to be a fellow off in Brisbane, Australia more than half in love with beer, but he does have a clue to the strange world of the polling universe.
A little night music from my channel at Blip.
Set List:
♫ Bob Dylan – Forever Young
♫ Van Morrison – Queen Of The Slipstream
♫ Bob Dylan – What Was It You Wanted
♫ Gretchen Peters – American Tune (live)
♫ Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Grandpa Was a Carpenter
♫ Eva Cassidy – People Get Ready
♫ The Band – Ophelia
♫ Bryan Ferry – A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
♫ Yardbirds – Stroll On
♫ You Got Another Thing Coming
♫ Talking Heads – Life During Wartime
♫ Natalie Merchant – Carnival (LP Version)
♫ Richie Havens – I Was Educated by Myself
♫ Ben E. King – Stand by Me (Single/LP Version)
♫ David Bowie – Heroes (1999 Digital Remaster)
♫ America – A Horse With No Name
♫ Roll Me Away-Bob Seger-(Lyrics and Song)
♫ Linda Ronstadt – Life Is Like a Mountain Railway (2006 Digital Remaster)
♫ Van Morrison – You Don't Pull No Punches, but You Don't Push the River
Hidden here is a photograph of the moment before a public execution in Yemen, that cool pool of advanced civilization on the Gulf. It's from Photo Journal's Pictures of the Day, and although not explicit, it is all the more terrible for it.
A man convicted of a heinous crime receives a public execution. "Pour encourager les autres." You might think it's hard to look at, but for the assembled Yemenis it seems, from the cell phone cameras held up to record it, just another day in old Arab Culture Land.
I ask myself what I think of this moment and the assembled men gawping in the background. I want to say something deep and insightful. Something I could go on about for several hundred words. But if I am honest with myself I really think something very blunt and much more concise. I think, "Democracy? Freedom? Prosperity? For these people? Why bother?"
No, I don't know exactly what that means, but I think I'll soon find out.
Continued...Today's news from last November. Cutting edge then. Cuttinger edge now.
go straight to Reclusive Leftist's "Feminists and the mystery of Sarah Palin."
Read the whole thing and that includes the comments. It will give you insight, food for thought, and genuine UnObamabranded Hope.
What? Are you still here rather than THERE?
Click to enlarge
"This starry night sky sparkles above the Black Hills of South Dakota and the United States' Mount Rushmore National Park. The historic site features enormous sculptures of four US presidents; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, carved into the southeast face of granite cliffs. Above the monumental symbols of the country's independence and early history, the night features stars of a familiar constellation to northern skygazers around the world, an asterism known as the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major."
Takes your breath away, doesn't it? It should.
The brilliant Chris Muir hits it out of the park in today's Day by Day.
More and more Gibbs, as can certainly be seen here, is proving to be the very model of that modern Obama apparatchik; a model updated for our era into the very glass and form of a Little Hitler reigning secure in the White House Dwarf Cavern.
We all know the contemporary type of "Little Hitlers." We meet them whenever we have to interact with people whose positions do not rest upon doing a good job but upon pleasing some master above them. Most often we see them in Government bureaucracies where rules are not announced to you until you break them. At which point you are instructed, in the patient smarmy tones reserved for pre-schoolers, to "fill out the proper form" or "obtain the proper documents," and then come back to wait in the longer line in the next building.
This is essentially what we see oozing out of the Gibbs creature in this clip. The same sort of small bureaucrat smarm packaged in one who has ascended to a status far beyond anything he hoped for while pleasuring himself to pictures of Janet and/or Michael Jackson in his adolescence. Instead he can now pleasure himself by
Continued...
Click to enlarge
In a land where neuters, unicorn riders, and moonwalking molesters are deified and canonized, we can forget that there are real men still walking the American earth. Here's one. Do you think she was glad to see him?
"A construction worker, suspended from a crane, rescued a woman who fell into the Des Moines River in downtown Des Moines Tuesday. A man who also fell into the water died." -- Photo Journal
And then, for the man reaching out his hand, Jason Oglesbee, and the others involved in the rescue, it was back to work on Wednesday, "We have a bridge to build here," the supervisor said as his men went about their business. -- Des Moines Register
Rush Limbaugh: "This represents a successful assault on prosperity."
U.S. job losses spike in June, dampen recovery hopes WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut far more jobs than expected last month and the unemployment rate hit a nearly 26-year high of 9.5 percent, underscoring the likelihood of a long and slow recovery from recession.
BREAKING! The White House today announced that Sir Paul McCartney will open for President Obama's "Happy Days Are Here Again" tour.
Iraq takes a step toward sovereignty - The Big Picture - Boston.com
An Iraqi soldier gestures toward the camera at a checkpoint in central Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 30, 2009.
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- Untying the Knot
- Arcs of the Divers
- Gatesgate Moves MSM From the Tank to the Toilet
- Freedom's Walk
- Redistributing the Health
- "Presidents was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
- Rewriting "As Good As It Gets"
- Thomas Friedman: Fatter Footprint Than Al Gore
- How many Black American Princesses does it take to change a light bulb?
- Puzzled over health care? Ask Lenin's question, "Who -- Whom?"
- What Obama Can Do to Reverse His Negatives in 2010
- How to Apologize
- American Digest Word Mint: Obamallatio ™
- Fact Checking? At the New York Times? Shirley, You Jest.
- The Blackberrian Faith of the President
- "Uppity Blacks vs Blue Collar Whites: Shame on Prof.Gates"
- "I support the President but I am against all his policies." At Last, A Bumpersticker to Bring Us Together!
- Dear Professor Gates, Watch and learn how not to get your ass kicked by the police!
- Henry Louis Gates, Academic Fraud, Race Hustler, and Now Official Dickwad
- Racism, Obama & Health-Care Free Reading List