hack hack

In reference to the NYTraitors, Hugh Hewitt asks:

Does anyone in MSM have the courage and the skills to ask whether Eric Lichtblau is a partisan anti-Bush/GOP hack dressed up as a "journalist," willing to write stories that assist terrorists so long as they hurt Republicans?

The answer is obviously not. That would be the pot calling the kettle black.

forget big oil

Dustbury drops the dime (quite a few dimes, actually) on "Big Ink".

Expect no protests in Berkeley.

not quite 95 theses

gratitude & hoopla points out the trends of idolatry and indulgence selling in the modern church.

super, man

Mish Mash probably won't be seeing the new Superman movie, for some... unusual... reasons.

must the show go on?

Lileks waxes Seinfeldian (or perhaps Rooneyan) about the old theatre saying "the show must go on":

Why? I’ve never figured that one out. I mean, the show should go on, if that’s a sensible decision, but must? The founding adage of the theater world seems based on a reluctance to refund the ticket price.

Texas' next governor

The Hedgehog Reports a survey of the relative popularity of Texas' next gubernatorial candidates:

Rick Perry (R) 35%
Carole Keeton Strayhorn (I) 21%
Chris Bell (D) 20%
Kinky Friedman (I) 19%

That's definitely the order I'd rank them, but I'll be happy as long as Kinky loses.

flag burning

A couple of days ago, Congress voted not to pass an anti-flag-burning amendment. I agree with that decision, because if the flag were protected in that way, it would diminsh the freedom that it stands for.

Beyond that, Wizbang points out one benefit I hadn't thought of:

"The flag-burners serve a very valuable public service. How else can they so quickly pronounce themselves as ignorant, hateful, irrelevant a******s than by publicly burning a flag? It saves a huge amount of time in weighing whether or not they are worth our time and attention in debating them."

I'm for baseball

After a winding discussion involving soccer, imperialism, temper tantrums, and the Suez canal, No Pasaran pegs both the nanny state and the professional whiners:

...it’s called the leftist world view... that stages ‘programme seasons’ for specific social issues dear to a few activist types to engage in social engineering, and the endless supply of social epedemics that change weekly. It’s the one that nannies itself to death on the operating assumption that people are too stupid and immoral to think for themselves, or at least to think the way he’d like you to.

It’s all evidence of what therapists call the “power under” position in an abusive family relationship, and it’s created by learned helplessness. In this case that helplessness is with a oppressive culture so concerned about guiding if not controlling every little thing in your life that it tells you how to sort your trash, how to talk to your neighbors, and convince one the person one should feel the greatest guilt over everything from methane emissions to feelings of pre-sexualized 4-year-olds who may or may not be gay.

It’s quite clear who’s oppressed, and made stupid in the course of it.

A) commerce d'initié

Q) How do you say "insider trading" in french?

PARIS (AFX) - Noel Forgeard, the co-chief executive of Airbus parent company EADS, said he first learned about production delays for the A380 superjumbo project in April, even though the delays were only announced publicly this week.

The news came as a shock to investors and analysts who follow the company, especially because company officials had said the A380 programme was 'on track' as recently as May...

However, Forgeard said he was unaware of the A380 problems when he exercised a large number of stock options in mid-March, generating a profit of at least 2.5 mln eur. His three children also sold EADS shares at the time, as did a number of other EADS executives.

quiz

I generally don't like to hop on the quiz meme bandwagon, but this one that Dustbury found is a little more relevant than most - the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz. My score:

Greed:	Low
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Very Low

I'll admit most of the 'wrath' is aimed at bad politics and bad drivers. And my readers probably guessed the 'sloth' bit by my obvious lack of consistency in maintaining a well-written blog.

Now please excuse me while I go get some popcorn & DrPepper...

pro-ana wrecks ya

As much as the UK's Guardian gets it wrong on the political front, this article about anorexia and the female body image makes an excellent suggestion (after a mildly suggestive introduction):

These (ultra-thin) women, and their figures, have become an ideal, something to aspire to, for millions and millions of women - and even if you don't actually want to be as thin as Posh, even if you think she is far too thin, the reality is that she has shifted the goalposts for every single one of us. If we are going to keep on putting pictures of these women in every paper and magazine, while they are so desperately underweight, we have got to remember to put big health warning stickers on them. You know - "Warning! This photo may seriously, but in a perniciously subtle way, screw with the inside of your head!"

Puritans

This interesting description of Puritans cast them in a better light than they are usually afforded.

NASCO

Thirdwavedave wonders if the NASCO international highway program is the reason for North American governments reluctance to take border control seriously.

'Cuz hey, why build a wall if you're just going to build a highway over it in a few years?

The Big Picture

...it's not pretty, but it's not yet finished.

In this poorly titled article (found via Miss O'Hara), American Thinker 'gets' much more about the current jihad than most people do, but misses a couple of points as well:

Conventional wisdom these days is rotten to the core. Every one of its articles of faith is at loggerheads with reality. It is grounded in the failed ideology of the left, which can neither solve a problem nor win an election but which still dominates the Democrat Party and most of our cultural, journalistic and political elites... The left has yet to assimilate the collapse of communism. People who didn’t learn anything when the Berlin wall came down aren’t likely to learn much from the destruction of the twin towers...

The most important example of this problem has to do with the ongoing war in Iraq which is responsible for most of the President’s political difficulties. Iraq poses a problem for the President only because conventional wisdom is holding his presidency hostage.

Iraq is not a political liability because there is or has ever been any realistic prospect of failure there. The “insurgency” has been a deadly nuisance, but it has never mounted a real challenge to us or to the government we are sponsoring. The mass hysteria of the left notwithstanding, the terrorists and dead-enders have never been poised to take over Iraq any more than ants have ever been poised to take over my kitchen.

Agreed. Totally.

People aren’t frustrated with Iraq because they accept the hysterical prophesies about doom and disaster there. They are frustrated because President Bush has failed to establish any clear link between what is happening in Iraq and our strategic goals in the absurdly misnamed Global War on Terror. (Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt proclaiming a Global War on Naval Aviation after Pearl Harbor.)

Despite the spot-on criticism of the name of the war, I think people have a somewhat wider variety of reasons for being "frustrated with Iraq".

The conventional understanding of how history unfolds is still fundamentally Marxist. Conventional wisdom views every human conflict as pitting oppressors against the oppressed. The oppressed struggle to throw off the oppressor’s yoke; the oppressors fight to keep that yoke firmly in place. Cultural factors such as religion are invisible. Religion is the opiate of the masses, mere cultural superstructure obscuring the material realities that shape societies and individuals. International law and the institutions that administer it are vital because they provide principled restraints on the oppressors.

This view of history makes both September 11 and the war that followed it utterly incomprehensible. The scum that turned passenger jets into cruise missiles and screamed about Allah as they crashed into their targets weren’t poor or oppressed. They weren’t protesting against neo-colonial exploitation of Middle Eastern oil wealth or globalization or anything else the conventional mind might understand.

They were self-consciously opening a new offensive in the 1370 year old war between Islam and the unbelievers... They didn’t do this out of desperation. They did it because they believed, with considerable justification, that the West is no longer Christian enough or tough enough to resist Islamic competition.

If we cannot convince the Islamic world that they grossly underestimated us, the offensive they began may very well lead to the destruction of our civilization. As long as the Islamic world sees no reason to fear us Muslims will attack us and, when they acquire the means to do so, they will destroy us.

Scary thoughts, but probably correct.

Throughout the 2004 election campaign (Bush) hammered the theme that the example of a prosperous, democratic Iraq would transform the Middle East from a hot bed of implacable enemies into a place that poses no special threat to the United States. This is what he meant to convey when he talked about the “forward strategy of freedom.”

The idea that we can turn enemies into friends by introducing them to the joy of free elections and backyard barbeques is dangerously naïve. The foundation of that idea is pure conventional idiocy. It assumes that our difficulty with Islam arose because Middle Eastern Muslims see us cooperating with their autocratic governments to oppress them. It supposes that we can solve that difficulty by rejecting the oppressors and bringing relief to the oppressed.

However, that idea may at least be useful to the extent that:

1. it demonstrates to the mullahs' potential minions an attractive alternative to suicide,
2. it shows that "the West" - i.e. America and its real allies - are committed to that ideal, and
   
3. it helps "convince the Islamic world that they grossly underestimated us".

Our enemies in the Middle East don’t hate us because their politics are autocratic and they don’t hate us because they are poor. The roots of their hatred are invisible to conventional eyes because they are theological.

Christendom and Islam have been bitter enemies since the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 A.D. In all that time, hardly a century has gone by without some major bloodletting between Christians and Muslims. Equally bloody conflict has been been the experience of other neighbors of the dar al Islam, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, animists, and others. Expansionist Islam has battered the borders of Christendom whenever it has had the means to do so. In our own time, oil revenue has given it the means.

Muslims attack us because they can. That won’t change anytime soon, regardless of what happens in Iraq over the course of the next few decades. Doing what we can to help Iraq become freer, more prosperous and more peaceful is noble and probably worthwhile. Claiming that renovating Iraq is a sufficient answer to the challenge of September 11 is delusional.

I don't remember anyone claiming it is a sufficient answer, but it is a much more achievable answer than immediately plunging into yet another Crusade. (I'll admit it might eventually become something like a crusade, but just how much support would that have had?)

The Iranians apparently believe that their proxies in Iraq have us fully occupied and that we lack the will to shift our focus eastward. Why wouldn’t they? They have goaded us by openly sponsoring and supplying the “insurgency” that has murdered so many Iraqis and Americans. So far our leaders haven’t even mustered the courage to issue a strongly worded protest.

On the home front, our most influential newspapers are acting as Al Qaeda’s intelligence service and the Bush administration is too flaccid to stop them or even punish them. Prominent Democrats agitate for a “redeployment” that would prevent our troops from killing terrorists at the same time it would encourage terrorists to kill us. Nobody in the Bush administration is willing to point out that this is either treasonous or drooling stupid...

George W. Bush tried to fight a war that even the conventional left could love. Predictably, he satisfied almost nobody. The next time Republicans go to the well to select a leader for the nation they need to find somebody with the independence of mind, and the courage, to give the editorial page of the New York Times precisely the attention it deserves. This is the essential prerequisite for both political success and successful policy...

For better or worse, Republicans are stuck with the burdens of power because the Democrats are stuck on stupid trying to win American elections as the anti-American party.

Texas redistricting

(update: perhaps i've overreacted. this decision is being hailed as a mild republican victory. but some of the language used in the article still strikes me as worthy of ridicule.)

AP via Yahoo:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the pro-Republican Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and freed all states to draw new political boundaries as often as they want.

The court, however, said that part of the new Texas map failed to protect minority voting rights, a small victory for Democratic and minority groups who accused Republicans of an unconstitutional power grab in drawing boundaries that booted four Democrats from office.

In other words, the Supreme Court strengthened the Democrats' 140-year-old unconstitutional power grab by aiding the reconquistadorks' unconstitutional power grab.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, said Hispanics do not have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosing in south and west Texas under the state's plan.

So now the gringos will not "have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosing in south and west Texas under the state's plan". That sounds fair...

The plan's "troubling blend of politics and race — and the resulting vote dilution of a group that was beginning to achieve (the federal law's) goal of overcoming prior electoral discrimination — cannot be sustained," Kennedy wrote.

1) As opposed to the "troubling blend of politics and race" that is the Democrats' stock and trade?

2) Discrimination and blending of politics and race cannot and should not be sustained, so why is Kennedy blending politics and race by discriminating between voters?

Justice Antonin Scalia complained that the court should have shut the door on all claims of political gerrymandering in map drawing. (However,) Justice John Paul Stevens took the opposite view.

"By taking an action for the sole purpose of advantaging Republicans and disadvantaging Democrats, the state of Texas violated its constitutional obligation to govern impartially," he wrote.

So? By always acting for the sole purpose of advantaging Democrats and disadvantaging Republicans, the DNC violates its self-claimed obligation to govern impartially.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Stevens.

See also: By always acting for the sole purpose of advantaging Democrats and disadvantaging Republicans, the MSM violates its self-claimed obligation to report impartially.

By always acting for the sole purpose of advantaging union (mob) bosses and disadvantaging industry, unions violate their obligation to help workers.

By always acting for the sole purpose of advantaging Islam and disadvantaging "infidels", Islam violates its moral . . . well, everything.

"The League of United Latin American Citizens is prepared to go to court next week to present its redistricting plan to the district court", president Hector Flores said at the group's annual convention in Milwaukee. "The decision was a victory for all underrepresented groups and gives hope that the face of Congress will change in the midterm elections", Flores said at a news conference.

It's not a "victory for all underrepresented groups" if it creates a new "underrepresented group" in the process.

The Old Gray Mare Deserves The Death Penalty

The
American
Government
MUST
silence
the
treason
of the
NYTraitors
using
the
rule
of
law,
before
someone
silences
them
without
using
those
rules.

"hey who you callin' arrogant?"

For one, the NYTraitors.



Thanks to The People's Cube for the image.

weed-b-gone

...and also those who spread the multi-culti fertilizer.

Traffic in Hydera? Bad!

Via theosebes, here's a video clip showing traffic "flow" in Hyderabad, India.

I might have to stop complaining about Houston and Dallas traffic...

environmentalists, think globally

...starting with China, which (as of press time) is still on the globe.

red flags about the rainbow flag

The American Daily has some interesting insights into some of the origins of the waves of attacks by "polymorphously perverse beings".

Saddam's WMD

The only thing they'll end up destroying is the last shreds of the illusion of MSM credibility.

satellites

explore "earth's rings" with this cool java app. you can click and drag to change the 3d view, and click on each satellite to get info on it.

---

update: "that depends on what the definition of 'planet' is..."

pop go the weasels

...or at least psssssssss:

"the only way they (DNC Democrats) gain support from the electorate is when they keep their mouths shut."

domestic terrorist cell discovered

muslims? left- or right- wing extremists? no.

environmentalists.

NYT's new slogan

"By Traitors, For Idiots"

up is down, black is white,

...and from people who live the motto "ignorance is wisdom", calming is infuriating.

one man's burden

This poor guy is suffering from a bad batch of blood-sucking parasites, but you can help cure him...

Meow'n Kampf

These pics are just silly...

Yet More Inconvenient Truth

or, "Why Can't Algore Quit While He's Behind?"

boring boring boring

even mindless sports and violence is boring today!

greens

Until tonight, it had been at least 15 years since I've eaten collard greens.

After tonight, it will be at least 15 years until I eat collard greens again.

Tom Parker for President

via sprucegoose, Tom Parker has been sworn in as Chief Justice Of The Alabama Supreme Court:

At his swearing-in-ceremony, Tom Parker said,

"May we (as judges) boldly proclaim that it is God - Jesus Christ - who gives us life and liberty. May we, as justices who have taken oaths to our God, never fear to acknowledge Him. And may the Alabama Supreme Court lead this nation in our gratitude, humility, and deference to the only true source of law, our Creator."

Earlier he had said in front of the guests gathered, including defeated Justice Jean Brown who had voted to remove Moore and Parker over the 10 commandments issue,

"The very God of Holy Scriptures, the Creator, is the source of law, life, and liberty. It is to Him, not evolving standards or arbitrary pronouncements of judges (mere men), that the leaders of every nation owe their ultimate allegiance."

Barbarians

At home.

David Parker... is a father of a first grade child in the public school system in Massachusetts. He objected to his son being taught about homosexuality and asked the school to notify him in advance of any pro-homosexual teachings so he could pull his son out of class. He then refused to leave the school office until the administration agreed to his request.

The school called the police and had him arrested for "trespassing". He went to jail. Since that time his family have faced a smear campaign. This escalated until his 7 year old son was assaulted on the playground by eight to ten children. This happened on the anniversary of the imposition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The school authorities admit that the attack was planned and premeditated!

Isn't this a "hate" crime? Why have we not heard about this? Where is the media?

Abroad.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker went missing... in Yusufiya, 12 miles (20 km) south of Baghdad.

(Their) bodies also had been desecrated, and a visual identification was impossible -- part of the reason DNA testing was being conducted to verify their identities, the sources said."

According to Reuters, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official, said the bodies of the soldiers showed evidence of "barbaric torture."

The area surrounding our soldiers was so booby-trapped that it took twelve hours to recover the bodies; the road leading to the site was also set up with bombs. In fact, the mutilated bodies themselves were booby-trapped...

Miss O'Hara sums it up:

"Evil cannot be reasoned with. It must be utterly destroyed, until the very dust of its remains is indistinguishable from the ashes of hell it was birthed in."

new measurement

IGST has discovered the shortest possible unit of time:

"Islamosecond: the gap between a terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia."

today is trash day

...and I also need to take out my garbage.

Obscene Profits

and it's not the "Big Oil" bogeyman this time...

assaulty dog

In St. Louis:

"A Wentzville woman accused of striking another woman in the head 30 times with a dead Chihuahua puppy has been charged with two misdemeanors."

...and in related news: upon hearing this story, Howard Dean proposed legislation to require Federal Dog Registration and Concealed Canine Permits.

Catch XXII

Theodore Dalrymple (via IGST) points out the fundamental flaw of Islamism:

"The problem is that so many Muslims want both stagnation and power: they want a return to the perfection of the seventh century and to dominate the twenty-first, as they believe is the birthright of their doctrine, the last testament of Allah to man. If they were content to exist in a seventh-century backwater, secure in a quietist philosophy, there would be no problem for them or us; their problem, and ours, is that they want the power that free inquiry confers, without either the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that guarantee that free inquiry."

That seems to parallel the fundamental flaw of the reconquistadorks - wanting the benefits of being American without being American.

oldie but goodie

My apologies to the blue dogs out there, but here's a really funny clip from an old Bob Hope movie. :)

via Mish Mash

to clarify

From the Grand Stand clearly explains some things about the First Amendment -

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

- that many groups seem to have forgotten.

irrefutable evidence

A vast majority of Congressional Democrats want America to lose the War on Terror, and have voted accordingly.

Conversely, real Americans want Congressional Democrats lose their War on America, and should vote accordingly.

eyes on brains

Dinosaur CBS lashes out at that upstart internet again, this time in an article titled "This Is Your Brain Online".

If the network was as "fair and balanced" as they claim, they'll follow up with "This Is Your Brain On B.D.S.", featuring interviews with Rather, Mapes, Kos, Moore, Dean and the DNC...

but I wouldn't hold my breath...

shifting of blame

Sarx has a very interesting post pointing out a common theme between astrology and genetics - shifting of blame. It looks to me like the same theme can be found in Genesis 3:12-13...

smells like victory

Mary Katharine Ham says:

I loved newspapers. I loved the dusky marks on my fingers that proved I had spent the morning educating myself. I loved the elevator in the old downtown building that carried us from the roar of the press room floor up to the quiet buzz of the newsroom.

It had a metallic smell, and a reddish carpet blotched with ink, and looked, for all the world, like a giant ink pad to a 7-year-old.

Now, rewritten to fit my experience:

I loved computers. I loved the plastic residue on my fingers that proved I had spent all saturday educating myself. I loved the old radio shack tape player that stored my programs with a sound somewhere between a bumblebee and a chainsaw.

It had a electronic smell, and a gray-green screen filled with dots, and looked, for all the world, like an intelligent etch-a-sketch to a 13-year-old.

new ratings

Forget about G, PG, R, NC17, etc., NYO suggests a few more useful movie ratings:

(I took the liberty of editing the actual numbers - every designation in the article ends in -13)

RH: Revisionist History. Contains characters, dialogue and historical conclusions that bear no resemblance to what actually occurred. Sometimes designated OS, in honor of Oliver Stone.

PP60: Product Placement. Contains images of toys, cell phones, luxury automobiles or other brand-name consumables that may be inappropriate for easily suggestible children under the age of 60.

CF2.4: Conventional Family. Traditionally gendered husband and wife, with 2.4 kids. And a dog. View at your peril.

VP: Vanity Project. May contain OTTA (Over-the-Top Acting), or depictions of MSwFD (Movie Star with a Fatal Disease.) Sometimes rated LD/DA/FaC: Last-ditch desperate attempt for comeback by a fading movie star who’s cut his/her fee to appear in a low-budget film. Occasionally rated VI, for Very Important; somewhat less frequently rated OC-17, for Oscar Contender.

IAAF-911: It’s All America’s Fault. Any post-9/11 film with political overtones, wherein we learn that the real threat isn’t Al Qaeda, but a middle-aged white guy working for a sinister corporation (or the C.I.A.) and somehow involves Big Oil.

SS99: A so-so film that got much better reviews than it deserved, mainly because it was better than 99 percent of the rest of the dreck reviewers are forced to sit through every rear. Lord, take pity on their souls.

PD: Pretentious Dissembling. The critics think it’s a boring, badly executed disaster film; the director insists it’s an allegory for the failures of the Bush administration in every human endeavor. May also be rated RS-O (Red State Offensive) at the producer’s discretion.

PM: Post-Modernist. Reconceptualizes the context and social construct of archetypal themes and iconic, beloved characters. Translation: No, Batman isn’t gay. But he sure acts like it.

FP: Franchise Potential. Warning: Viewing this mindless film in a theater will set off an irreversible chain of events leading to a sequel. Particularly offensive to cineastes that are repulsed by films with Roman numerals in the title.

3M: Murder, Mayhem, Misogyny; or Mutants, Morons, Malevolence. Whatever.

RP18: Reviewer-Proof. Contains language, sequences and story elements that will offend the critics, delight the audience and infuriate competing movie studios—resulting in a slew of copycat films 18 months later, all of which will fail at the box office.

D2DVD: A Renter. Otherwise, may lead to fidgeting and an abrupt exit from the theater. In extreme cases, viewers have been known to beseech the heavens: Why can’t Hollywood make better movies?

From Genesis to Romans

Make that "From the Genesis to the Romans"...

Thanks to a comment from Paul (or Liz) on this post, the blanks have been filled in on a part of history that I knew must exist, but never knew just how. Here are three sources that illustrate how Noah's descendants became the nationalities we know today.

After The Flood - by Bill Cooper
The Table Of Nations - by Tim Osterholm
The Timeline - at MustardSeed.net

more inconvenient truth

Tom Harris points out some of the many lies in Algore's upcoming snooze-a-thon.

Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as "global warming pollution" when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball...

In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity's three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere's CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere's total CO2 content (750-830 GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth's oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT -- making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.

...and there's three more pages where that came from.

If Algore really wants to stop global warming, he should personally stop producing so much hot air.

turning the phrase

two great paragraphs from lileks today, on two barely related topics:

from the bleat - rough surf warning:

"The little time I spent on the internet consisted of random clicking on various blogs, most of which were unreadable Serious Deeply Concerned and Troubled accounts of things that Ought to make the Murcanpeeple Angry, but don’t, because they’re all fat-bottomed idiots who run Bill O’Reilly transcripts through the shredder and roll the pieces into small, informative suppositories. Whatever. Thaaaat’s right. Everyone who doesn’t want impeachment is an idiot, just like everyone who didn’t think Bill Clinton personally dragged dead boys onto train tracks to cover up his coke ring was a Commie-Nazi who probably believes Vince Foster killed himself and Ron Brown wasn't shot down by Chinese spaceships. When I’m in this mood the entire Internet is annoying, and I should just go sit outside and throw grapes at the squirrels."

from the screed - a "captured document" from an alqaeda leader:

"Finally, patience is our ally. We need not defeat the Americans, only outlast them. Have they not abandoned every battlefield they ever entered? Besides Germany, Japan, Korea, Kosovo and Afghanistan, of course. But just as they left Somalia when their “Democrats” took power, so will they leave Iraq when the criminal Zionist Bush regime is replaced by a slightly less criminal, albeit equally Zionist, Democratic regime. The Democrats wish to quit the war and return to their important issues, such as permitting men to marry, have a child with the cloning of cells, and then abort it. Such a people cannot fight; they can only beseech the United Nations to send Danes to frown from great distances. And I need not remind you that no one was ever killed by a 226 kilogram laser-guided Dane."

Aunt Jemima

She deserves a better tribute than an inaccurate syrup bottle. The conclusion of this account of her claim to fame is a good start:

Often we are led to believe that government protects us from danger, or that government solves our problems and permits us to lead happier, freer and more secure lives. But in fact, government never does anything for us that we cannot do for ourselves. For the very best government of all is self-government. Those of us who would be free must always remember that liberty and self-government are one.

by jove?

One comment on this post claims that:

"the Roman god Jupiter... is a form of Japheth, the eldest son of Noah"

I had never heard that before, had you?

two things

...are still certain, and the Senate makes sure it's still a double-whammy.

fill in the blank

Something, Justice, and the American way.

one mouth, two ears

er, two years.

who'd have thought that from such inauspicious beginnings would grow such an... inauspicious... blog.

i do want to thank my readers for reading, linkers for linking, and commentors for commenting here.

in the future, i'll do my best to keep this site as... inauspicious... as ever.

---

update: oh well

ferrofluid

interesting videos of an interesting material

Haditha Hoax

Discerning Texan is gathering the facts behind the lies. Rathergate pales in comparison to this slander.

proto calls

forget the "elders of zion", it would be interesting to discover the protocols of the knights of "the avalon table"...

absurd & surreal

For a long time now, my favorite type of humor has been absurd and surreal humor (though I dislike the vulgarity and profanity found in much of it). Some examples of the more famous of this type of comics are:

Monty Python
Douglas Adams
Mitch Hedberg (whose jokes I collected earlier)
Homestar Runner

and here are some examples of absurd jokes:

Two fish are sitting in a tank, and one turns to the other and says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"

Q: What do a grape and a chicken have in common?
A: They're both purple, except for the chicken.

Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.

But recently I've started to have a sneaking suspicion that there was something not quite right about that kind of humor. Today I found the Wikipedia entry that pinpoints why.

further proof that the world has too much free time on its hands

just in case you were wondering which color of lego bricks best reflect infrared light, this guy has done the research...

proof that the world has too much free time on its hands

Some people play RPG.
Spme people work at RPG.
Some people play RPS.
Some people use RPS at work.

(some links via Mish Mash)

update: Some people die in RPG too.

June 8

good riddance to bad rubbish. (and a belated good riddance to more rubbish.)

update: woohoo, make it a three-fer!

p.s. instead of "ding dong the witch is dead", i prefer "another one bites the dust" as the theme song for the day.

DIY

random projects with step-by-step instructions

...or mini-buttons with the help of this web app

...or mini-fonts with this web app

the pot calling the kettle mean-spirited

So Ms. Clinton calls Ms. Coulter's comments "mean-spirited", hm?

Did she have anything to say about Galloway's comments? Or perhaps Hevesi's? No? Maybe she found Ahmadinejad's comments mean-spirited. Or Chand's? Khomeni's? How about Letterman's snide jokes about Ms. Coulter? No? Perhaps she admitted that some of her own previous statements were mean-spirited...?

(insert sound of crickets chirping)

When asked about this odd pattern of selective denouncement, Ms. Clinton responded, "Define mean-spirited".

He never met a meta he didn't meta...

or: Deep Thoughts about Wikipedian Collectivism.

mostly excellent

Here are some pics of scenes deleted from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure". Notice especially the bogus final report scene.

Oy!

must'a been holding the work order upside down...

Ann Coulter's book

Townhall has the first chapter:

Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious,” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as “religion.”

Under the guise of not favoring religion, liberals favor one cosmology over another and demand total indoctrination into theirs. The state religion of liberalism demands obeisance (to the National Organization for Women), tithing (to teachers’ unions), reverence (for abortion), and formulaic imprecations (“Bush lied, kids died!” “Keep your laws off my body!” “Arms for hostages!”). Everyone is taxed to support indoctrination into the state religion through the public schools, where innocent children are taught a specific belief system, rather than, say, math.

Liberal doctrines are less scientifically provable than the story of Noah’s ark, but their belief system is taught as fact in government schools, while the Biblical belief system is banned from government schools by law. As a matter of faith, liberals believe: Darwinism is a fact, people are born gay, child-molesters can be rehabilitated, recycling is a virtue, and chastity is not. If people are born gay, why hasn’t Darwinism weeded out people who don’t reproduce? (For that, we need a theory of survival of the most fabulous.) And if gays can’t change, why do liberals think child-molesters can? Pedophilia is a sexual preference. If they’re born that way, instead of rehabilitation, how about keeping them locked up? Why must children be taught that recycling is the only answer? Why aren’t we teaching children “safe littering”?

We aren’t allowed to ask. Believers in the liberal faith might turn violent—much like the practitioners of Islam, the Religion of Peace, who ransacked Danish embassies worldwide because a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed. This is something else that can’t be taught in government schools: Muslims’ predilection for violence. On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the National Education Association’s instruction materials exhorted teachers, “Do not suggest that any group is responsible” for the attack of 9/11.

If a Martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation’s official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law. And not just in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it’s actually on the books, but throughout the land. This is a country in which taxpayers are forced to subsidize “artistic” exhibits of aborted fetuses, crucifixes in urine, and gay pornography. Meanwhile, it’s unconstitutional to display a Nativity scene at Christmas or the Ten Commandments on government property if the purpose is to promote monotheistic religion.

read the rest, step 1 and step 2

The only problem, Ms Coulter, is that portraying your opponents as "godless" does not make you "godly"...

unbelievable

NO apology can be sufficient to let this scumbag off the hook.

wake-up call

better late than_n_n_zzzzzzzzz

stormy weather

it really does take a village...

Haditha notes

I prefer to link to other blogs, rather than copy-pasting their content, but this post about the latest Iraq headline deserves repeating in full:

For those following the Haditha "massacre" story, I think we'd be well advised to keep in mind the following:

1. Our enemy routinely commits atrocities such as the slaughter of civilians

2. Our enemy stages atrocities and claims they were the actions of coalition forces

3. Our enemy is fighting a propaganda war

4. Our media routinely get suckered by enemy propaganda

5. Our military personnel have been accused of every atrocity imaginable, only to have the "evidence" presented by our seditious media turn out to be nonexistent or fake

6. Our military personnel do not target civilian noncombatants, including children

7. Every one of our military personnel has been well-drilled on the My Lai Massacre and the actions of Lt Calley's platoon - it is part of military training, and serves as a strong cautionary tale for our armed forces

8. Our military personnel are professionals, accustomed to Iraq tours, and seasoned under fire

9. The Uniform Code of Military Justice is far more effective at punishing lawbreakers than the American judicial system, which is why the American military wants to use it to resolve the cases of terrorists captured on the battlefield

10. The American military is more trustworthy, more honorable, and more dedicated to American values than the media covering this war

In the end, I think we'll all find (yet again) that the real story is far, far different than the media is presenting.

two questions

...that just might be related:

• whaddya mean i'm getting less traffic?
• whaddya mean i'm supposed to post something?

apologies for the sparse posts. will try to remedy the situation soon.

p.s. is there a vitamin supplement to boost motivation?

22 years later

plus two minutes:

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the English Department, they were dragging the Aeron chairs out of grad student cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big flat screen monitor, in preparation for the Two Minutes Snark.

The next moment a hideous, grinding noise from the university Mac G5, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big monitor at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Snark had started. As usual, the face of Jeff Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience.

Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago nobody quite remembered), had been one of their own, a member of the Modern Language Association with a solid vita and faculty parking priveleges, almost on a level with Stanley Fish himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary blogging activities, had been condemned to sabbatical and had mysteriously escaped and become a stay-at-home dad.

The programmes of the Two Minutes Snark varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure...

read the rest