Victory Soap v. 2.0

Is it just me, or is the whole little contrived "controversy" about the new Muslim congressman wanting to be sworn in office on a Koran instead of a Bible just so much more manipulative bullshit? Even atheist and agnostic congresspersons (and I'm sure there are a few) think nothing of putting their hands on a Bible for a minute while they rattle off the ceremonial words, but suddenly along comes Keith Ellison (who has a double-helping of specialness in the minds of our race-obsessed media, because he's Of Color™ too!) and suddenly only Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran is good enough for this little petty party. (I wonder if anyone's worked in the Sally Heming angle yet. Oh, I'm going to hell...)

You know, normally I am all for tradition these days, but I'd be willing to give up the whole swearing-in-on-a-Bible thing just so nonsense like this can't happen anymore.

Via Kathy Shaidle.

Charlie Rangel's bringin' the sexy back to the Capitol:

January 4, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - Rep. Charles Rangel has evicted Vice President Dick Cheney from his office in the Capitol, and the Harlem heavyweight is moving into the prime digs today, The Post has learned.

They went all Ty Pennington on the joint:

Gilded letters were freshly painted atop the office door yesterday proclaiming "Ways and Means Committee" - confirming that the office now belongs to Rangel, the House panel's new chairman.

And,

Capitol workers expunged the last traces of Cheney and brought in Rangel's plush furniture.

And the hold music will be changed to the theme from Superfly.

(Via it comes in pints?)

These people just can't help making total fools of themselves, can they?

I find it so reassuring when Our Dear Democratic, Progressive, Tolerant, And Did I Mention Democratic? Leaders drop their masks and admit that they think that no woman is fully human unless she has had a man put his seed in her and borne his spawn.

You know, I get sick of hearing about things too. Kathy Shaidle is sick of hearing about Nature Nature Nature (damn, I think, looking at my favorite color combination that I happened to wear today -- oh well, I'm an autumn, so those colors look good on me). I am sick of hearing about the wonders of childbirthing and how we-uns should all get in the stirrups and shoot five or six out for the cause of Fambly, and if we don't we are selfish old shrews who will destroy Western Civilization and the Muslims and their twenty children per wife households will take over the world. Never mind that Western Civ is currently too weak-willed to do what it really takes to save itself* -- it might upset The Chillllldren™! Hey, "Senator" Boxer, and all the rest of you waving your stretched-out-from-all-the-kids love canals in my face as proof of your moral superiority, you know what you can do? You can all suck on my shrivelled-up, dusty, unused spinster twat.

*Hint: large explosive devices, various objects both sharp and blunt, and a complete shutdown of immigration from certain countries as well as complete deportation of certain foreign nationals (the nice and the not-so-nice both -- it's too bad, but haven't you heard we're in a war?), are all involved.

Update: I've never seen all of Rosemary's Baby (Mia Farrow gives me hives) or It Lives! -- though it makes me think of Florence King's parody horror-movie plot: Umbilicus Rex, about a fetus that eats up his father's penis during intercourse. It's true that the idea of growing a new life inside me and all of that held zero appeal for me, but that's because I've never wanted children. Not because I thought they'd break all my things or cause me emotional pain, but because I just never had any interest in family life. I always really did prefer my own company to that of any other person, though I had friends I liked well enough. But when the parents had driven them home I always did feel that bit of relief that I was alone with myself and my books and my notepads full of very bad fantasy stories again. I suppose I had observed that having children meant never getting to be alone, but this was only the occasion for me to be relieved that I didn't want to have any kids. As for romance, the precursor to any child-making activities, I had very little interest in that as well. The Seventies did have something to do with that -- who would want to date any of the smarmy, greasy creeps that men had mostly become in the Me Decade? Not me.

Incidentally, I did watch Mary Tyler Moore and Police Woman, but despite the fact that both shows portrayed single career women, they also showed these women doing the conventional agonizing about their relationships, or lack of them, with men. It was always assumed that one day Mare would get married, quit her job at the station, and have a passel of kids in a nice Minneapolis suburb -- she was that kind of character. Pepper's future was a little harder to place, but maybe that was because Angie Dickinson looked like one of those women who smelled like cigarette smoke no matter how much they bathed and perfumed themselves. I decided that she would quit (or be forced out of) the force when her secret drinking became not-so-secret, and end up either joining AA and getting a PI license (and a new show, more noir than Police Woman), or face down in a ditch somewhere in Los Angeles clutching an empty flask of Gilbey's vodka.

PS: I watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof all the way to the end and realized that no one ever talked about the real reason Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor's character) was so antsy in the pantsy: she didn't just want to have sex, she wanted to have her husband's children. Her "no-neck monsters!" comment was a slap at her sister-in-law, who had after all had a hand in turning her children into brats. So all this is to say: I don't have anything against children either, it's the parents I can't stand.

I haven't had anything to say about a number of blogworld hot items. One such is the Duke "rape" case. Now I will: I guess that there is now an equivalent to that driving-while-black scenario -- call it "partying while white." Because you know, of course, that one touch of the demon liquor (and the sight of a stripper-of-color) turns those wimpy white boys into sex-crazed Viking hordes.

That being said, maybe from now on college partiers will refrain from hiring strippers. It's not "fun" or cute or boys just being boys -- it's sleazy and rather sad, and no, you are not in fact as cool as Otter and Bluto. While injustice has definitely been done (especially to the one accused who wasn't even there), I can't help thinking that if drunken revelry hadn't become a necessary part of college life in the minds of Americans this wouldn't have happened.

Cicero: “To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child."

Once upon a time it was discovered that the history we were all taught was full of slanted viewpoints and doctored myths that had been complacently accepted by earlier generations, and that this would no longer do, so a proclamation went out across the land: uncover the truth about the past and teach our children to look unflinchingly upon the bad as well as happily upon the good of what our forefathers did so that we could forge a better culture as free as possible from lies and cant.

Then along came a Bad Fairy, who envied the truth-seekers their academic reputations and as well all those nice, fat research grants. The Bad Fairy's problem was that she didn't have the patience or frankly the talent (she was a bad fairy in more ways than one) to work to obtain a good reputation as well as all the sweet, sweet cash. So she figured out a way to get these things anyway: she put a spell upon the land that made everyone exchange their own clear native tongues for politically-correct speech, a language where every word offends everyone else in a different way. Soon all the people had done so many horrible things in the name of Political Correctness that it was obvious that they had outdone their ancestors in narrowness and idiocy. The only way to avoid having to confront this truth about themselves was to pretend the past never happened. And so history was once more taught as it had been in the bad old days: as a compendium of slanted viewpoints and doctored myths.

(Via Tom McMahon.)

Kathy Shaidle thinks Dinesh D'Souza may be "on to something" when he criticizes Western liberal culture for being decadent and therefore being the cause of Muslim hatred of the West. She focuses on the decadent-liberal-culture part, and I have no quarrel with that, having fulminated against the Slutting of the West in my blogs for some time now. But I think she's wrong this time about why "conservative bloggers" (many of whom can better be described as "economically and socially libertarian non-pacifist bloggers") are so angry at D'Souza. I don't read a whole lot of blogs these days, so I may have missed the "conservatives" fuming at D'Souza for trashing Hollywood. Most of the blogs I've read are pissed off not because D'Souza is such a priss and is frowning at their fun boobies-'n'-beer lifestyle, but because (apparently -- I haven't read the book and am depending upon reviews, of course a biased source) he claims that all we have to do is put our clothes back on and go back to church and the fanatical jihadists will leave us alone.

See, I find this unlikely to have much of an effect, to say the least. Muslims, as has been repeated ad nauseum everywhere, had no trouble attacking pious Christian and Jewish communities back in the day, and the sight of Orthodox Jews -- whose lifestyles are barely distinguishable from the average devout Muslim, except for the number of wives per male -- davening at the Wailing Wall isn't known for causing warm approval in Muslim hearts. Middle Eastern Christians are possibly more overtly devout than Western ones, but they don't seem to get a special pass when Muslim terrorists are in a killing mood.

And so on. I do agree that the people who want to thrust our freewheeling, barely clothed way of partying on a world that isn't interested in it is a mistake; for example, all those "and now all the women will wear bikinis instead of burkhas" celebratory declamations on blogs after we took down the Taliban just made me cringe in embarrassment. On a side note, fascinating as it was, I didn't approve of the way National Geographic hunted down that woman whose adolescent photograph had appeared on their magazine years ago. Yes, I was relieved to learn she was still alive and as safe as anyone living in Afghanistan could be. But it was the occasion for too many of my fellow citizens to cry over her -- look, she's so work-worn! She has to wear a burka! Why is she so old-fashioned? (She spoke favorably of the restrictive rules that governed her life -- people in the West can't understand how such rules can be safeguards in a culture like hers.) And so on... all of which ended up sounding very patronizing.

And so on. But D'Souza's mistake comes down to ignoratio elenchi -- "irrelevant conclusion." Yes, Western culture has become decadent, flabby, and definitely in need of a severe overhaul. No, doing so won't stop Muslim fanatics from wanting to convert, subjugate, or kill the infidels everywhere. Cleaning ourselves up will benefit us spiritually and morally, but we'll still have the enemy to contend with. By the way, it is useful to note that apparently being a Muslim doesn't mean you don't get to have all sorts of decadent fun, as long as you don't get caught.

John Kerry seems a little jealous of all the attention Jimmy "Dhimmi" Carter has been getting, so he's decided to upstage the senile old coot and openly suck up to one of our enemies in front of God and everybody. Oh, and that "left hand" of Khamenei's is so a fake -- the real one is shoved up Kerry's ass, the better to manipulate the Lurch-like senator in fine puppetmaster style. I supposed I'd better start looking up burqa patterns on the internet.

(Via Ace of Spades, who seems uncharacteristically to have been failed by words. The antics of Our Betters on the left have that effect on a lot of people.)

I came upon this dismaying comment on one of Steve H.'s posts, on the subject of penis piercing:

"Do not be so quick to dismiss the pierced-penis brigade...I know of at least one (hetero) Naval officer with that particular addition to his body."

Jesus Jumping H. Christ on a pogo stick. Anyone in the military who pierces his penis or does any of the other decadent body modifications currently in style should be given a dishonorable discharge. I don't care how brave they were previously -- doing something so stupid (shoving a ring through your genitalia is stupid, do I have to list the reasons why) indicates a serious problem with their ability to resist the pleasures of the moment, which can lead to breaches of discipline which the military can ill afford.

And did I say "decadent"? I meant it. People don't get their peepees mutilated for looks -- it's not like we go about with our pudenda as exposed as our ears. (Yet.) They do it because it's supposed to enhance sexual pleasure. Apparently being part of a generation whose sex drive is turned up to eleven isn't enough. I really don't know how anything gets done these days. No wonder so many people on tv look haggard and exhausted.

I might -- just might -- give tattoos a pass, since they are "traditional," at least for members of the armed services. (And only certain kinds of tattoos on certain locations -- butterflies and "tribal symbols" across the ass aren't part of this tradition.) But the rest is nothing but rebellious faddishness indulged in by the spoiled, arrogant youth of the West. Military training is supposed to cure that sort of thing.

You know, it only takes a second to look things up on the internet.

You would have to have a heart of stone to read the account of pResident Chimplerburton and the Evil Reporter-Crushing Tractor without laughing.

(Via Tim Blair.)

You can block referrals from a website that criticizes your nasty little diatribe against supporters of the war in Iraq as well as deleting dissenting comments and threatening to go to the commenter's employer and attack his hard drive. Nuanced!

Their willful ignorance is going to get us killed.

Update: nobody said a word about how I misspelled "ignorance" as "ingorance" and didn't catch it until now. Maybe I should apply a stylesheet that has a larger font.

So I guess good Muslims can't do anything except sit very quietly and twiddle their thumbs towards Mecca? All we have to do is give a little shove, people...

I haven't said anything on my blog about the Amanda Marcotte foofaraw, because I really didn't care all that much. But I don't want all my gentle readers to miss the comment I did make over at Charles G. Hills' site concerning a weirdly (and wrongly, I mean come on) sympathetic note of support from the Conservative Princess:

First, no one has silenced her. Second, no one has -- oh well, someone already said it. So, she's free to be herself again, but she's lost a cushy job putting out bland congrats for hairdo boy, and she's complaining? Let's just say that against all odds Edwards kept her, how free does anyone think that this woman would be to engage in her lubricious rantings? Talk about being censored -- she'd be turned into a bland nobody in no time and then forgotten like a housewife with 2.4 children -- something I thought was the chief fear of every progresso-feminist gal in the land. Proof that liberals can't think, and that righties who engage in sympathy for the devil experience a similar level of brain damage. I can't even seem to find my nano-violin, myself.

And this marks the first time in possibly history that I've agreed with the smarmy Jim Henley about anything. Chalk one up for the books.

Update: I forgot -- all this is to obscure the real question, which is: what on earth was Edwards thinking? I find it hard to believe that there aren't a jillion less disgustingly foul-mouthed liberal bloggers out there who would have served his campaign -- which whether he or anyone else likes it must play to the class that doesn't like naughty language as much as any rightwing campaign -- just as well if not better than this woman could have. From the few samples of her writing that I have been able to force myself to read before the boredom coma threatened to make me faceplant my keyboard, Marcotte is nothing special in the prose department. Heck, Edwards could have told any one of his employees -- or their kids -- to knock up a blog and copy-paste pabulum. A blog isn't anything special, after all -- it's just a form you fill out and press "submit." Obviously he is as surrounded by idiots as everyone else, which enabled the Kos/Pandagon crew to get their hooks in, however briefly and farcically.

Oh well -- it is all to the good, if by "good" you mean anything that makes the current crop of Dems and their supporters look like a bunch of morons. And I do mean that.

Thanks again, Fox Television, you assholes.

(Whether we like it or not, the ability to be funny, as opposed to being the butt of the joke, is essential for success in these here United States. As long as the general public -- no matter how conservative they actually are themselves -- think of "conservative" as being synonymous with words like "uptight" and "humorless," we can continue to expect liberals to run the show. I don't make up the facts, I just report them.)

I would like you to know what the news media considers important news:

ST. PETERSBURG - The notes under the door. The incessant phone calls. The impassioned pleas, all begging for a piece of the story.

It wasn't reporters in search of secret intelligence involving the war in Iraq.

The subject: St. Petersburg's Jennifer Mee, a 15-year-old who started hiccuping four weeks ago today and has yet to stop.

I kid you not:

Representatives from ABC's Good Morning America called Jennifer's home 57 times on Sunday and slipped notes under her hotel room door, her family said.

The article subtly makes the family look like a bunch of dumb hicks. Then again, they are from my state (Florida), so they may well be. Still, that doesn't make their plight any more interesting or vital to the fate of the nation, and is frankly not even a moderately interesting "human interest" page nine filler. Come on -- The Today Show? Ellen DeGeneres? Inside Edition? I can just imagine the scintillating wonder of the interview:

Matt Lauer or somebody: "So, Jennifer, tell us about yourself."

Jennifer Mee: "Well hic I'm from hic St. Petersburg Florihicda, and I can't stop hic hiccupping."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "Okay... tell me how it started."

Jennifer Mee: "Well hic um... they just hic starhicted one hic day."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "And they won't stop?"

Jennifer Mee: "hic No."

Matt Lauer or somebody: "How does that make you feel?"

Jennifer Mee: "I'd hic realhicly hic like hic them hic to sthicop."

I'm on the edge of my seat. You?

Excuse me, but isn't there something else kind of important going on somewhere? Like a war or something? I know "life goes on" and all that but this is ridiculous.

(Via Dave at Garfield Ridge.)

Remember when the career of academic was so respected in America that "professors" were commonly considered to be wrinkled maniacs with crazy hair and coke-bottle eyeglasses who refused to drive cars because the ancient Greeks didn't have them? James Lileks has unearthed prime evidence that the ivory tower is as close-doored and clueless-inhabited as ever. The only thing that has changed is that the current generations lack our ancestors' robust sense of confidence in themselves and therefore don't dare make fun of idiots like this, because "--he's got a PhD!!!" That and a quarter will get you a gumball -- oops, no, they've gone up to fifty cents.

The Darwin Award candidate of the year is the "antiwar activist" who plans to become a grease spot on the pavement at a planned anti-war demonstration near the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.

(Via Girl On the Right.)

What was that sound you heard? And why do you suddenly feel a little lightheaded? Could it be that a large portion of the self-important "right wing" blogging communitards have just sucked the oxygen out of the air with this giant priss-out in response to Ann Coulter's "unnacceptable use" of the word "faggot" to make fun of Senator John "Brylcreem" Edwards?

Well I've already slammed Coulter for being a lackwit and making conservatives look bad (because whether we like it or no in the minds of the news-spawn she "represents" us), but this is ridiculous. Excuse me, I have a statement to make.

FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOT FAGGOTTY FAG FAG FAGGOT.

There. Am I touching you now? How about now? Now? I'm not touching you. Not touching you. Am I touching you now?

(As I said on the KiSP website, fortunately hardly any of the blogging prisspots are real conservatives, because WE can laugh at ourselves. As for Ann? All is forgiven! But only because I want to piss these people off.)

A few days ago I heard something on the news (in passing, probably in the break room at work where they have a big flat-screen tv -- I never watch the news at home if I can help it) about the summit they had or possibly still are having down in South America somewhere, the one Bush was supposed to attend. (May already have attended. I told you, I don't watch the news.) Anyway, what I heard was this: the congerie of countries called "Latin America" apparently "feels" that the US of A is "ignoring" them.

Right. We probably are. And you should thank your lucky stars, Latin America. Try to stop feeling for one second and think: do you really want us to pay attention to you?

It takes two to participate in oppression -- meet at least half the reason Muslim women are little better than slaves: their own sisters. As long as stupidity and ignorance are tended like the rarest of orchids by idiots like this woman, Muslim women will never be free.

Don't believe me? Well, here's a sample of this female's opinion -- or something -- on Lord of the Rings:

Identify sources, which propagate destructive Messianic ideology and address them, e.g. Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, which can imbue children and teens with the “hate” ethos. For example, in Lord of the Rings, free peoples of the West and North enter an all-out war with the terror-inflicting forces of the South and East, in Middle Earth (Middle East?) (ad nauseum -- Ed.)

No, Middle-Earth, you stupid bitch. God forbid you take five minutes to look up the provenance of that term -- but since it has fuckall to do with The Only Knowledge One Should Know (ie, Allah's Guide to Proper Penis-Washing and Fingernail Paring, aka the Koran) she probably never will.

PS: I fail to see the progressive tendencies Kathy found, but then I found reading any more of this nonsense painful in the extreme.

A nice little pad going for $1200 per month in New York City, or a cell in Guantanamo? How to tell? One clue: an apartment in New York would have a view of a brick wall or a concrete garbage shute instead of the sky.

(Read more about the chagrined tears of those who lost out on this sweet deal at Tim Blair's blog.)

Dear Lady who came in the bathroom at the Michaels store while I was in the midst of relieving myself: I really don't care to have your husband (or whoever it was you were calling "honey" on your Very Important Cell Phone Call) hear me piss.

Next time someone does that (it will be tomorrow, I am sure) I must remind myself to cut a real loud one, and then announce very loudly "Oh, sorry, I'm taking a HUGE dump and I always FART when I do!"

See what you get for apologizing?

Via Kathy Shaidle.

Ladies and gentlemen:

The word you mean when you want to flog your moral worth is conscience, as in "I would never vote for Hillary Clinton for president, because I have a conscience."

The word you are misusing, is "conscious." That word indicates a physical state of awareness of one's surroundings: "The hippy was still conscious after smoking vast quantities of marijuana." Saying "I have a conscious" is INCORRECT. It is as if you said "I have an awake."

Use these words correctly from now on, or I WILL KILL YOU.

I haven't said much about the war and the current effort of the Enemy Party (aka the Democrat Party) to derail it because party politics is more important than the fate of Western Civilization, etc., because I've been too disgusted for words. Kim Du Toit can still come up with a phrase or two. But it's this sentence in one of the articles he linked to that stand out for me:

The Iraqis’ greatest fear (contrary to what those in the U.S. who are opposed to the war-effort seem to want everyone to believe) is that the Americans will abandon them.

(Emphasis mine.) And the realization came to me that this is just the way we do things in America these days. Haven't you heard (or had) this conversation before? The child begging his parents not to get a divorce, only to be told that it's "for the best" -- the best for them, that is. The woman begging her midlife-crisis-affected husband not to leave her, only to be told that he was bored with their marriage and felt he deserved some excitement after working all his life. The relationships thrown in the trashcan because the intense, initial rush of romantic feeling had faded away as all intense, initial feelings do.

I used the divorce analogy for a reason. Did we think that the way we governed our personal lives wouldn't spill over into the way we relate to the rest of the world? Not at first -- I am old enough to remember when the idea was that all this "liberation" would in some vague way spread out across the world to free every man, woman, and child from whatever oppressed them -- if you were dissatisfied with your marriage, getting a divorce was supposed to somehow, in a kind of butterfly-wing effect, loosen the grip of a dictator in Tanzania; where on the other hand, trying to work through a bad marriage in order to give your children at least a stable home life was the same as promoting fascism.

But toying with the institutions that hold a society together is the pastime of the rich and decadent. People who are a bit less insulated from the chaos of the universe are not as inclined to play games with their own lives. This is the stumbling block that our "progressive" elite keeps encountering, and trying with increasing ineffectiveness to ignore: the idea that other cultures take seriously the things we have discarded as "outmoded" and "backwards." Not just things like family and marriage, but things like honor and the value of keeping ones' word. We gave the Iraqis our word that we wouldn't leave them in the lurch when we got bored of war and wanted to go back to our toys, but some of us had our fingers crossed behind our backs. Unfortunately those people seem to be the ones in charge these days.

So I've mostly given up attempting to encourage support for the war. At this point everyone who can possibly be convinced has made up their mind one way or the other. When those of us who survive the next attack (and there will be a next one, and another, and another), we can comfort ourselves playing the "I told you so" game. We like games.

Update: I thought I'd add -- when we ran away from Vietnam like a toddler who'd burnt his fingers on the stove, we thought we had taken a pretty bad psychic hit. But the contempt mostly was self-inflicted -- if the Vietnamese ever thought we were lowly worms for cutting and running and leaving them holding the bag, few of them have said so. But this time we'll be giving the ex-girlfriend treatment to Arabs, who react rather differently to being treated like shit. The difference could well be akin to that of the ex-girlfriend who you always felt guilty about betraying because she was just such a nice, self-effacing person, and the psycho-ex-girlfriend who comes to your house and boils your pet rabbit. Oh, and you'll also have people like me, who are sick and tired of having their lives disrupted because of your lousy relationship skills. Get ready for some fun!

I have a question: why is Nancy Pelosi (no senatorial titles for you, lady) walking around Syria in a headscarf and long black robe? I could understand if she were in Saudi Arabia, where women who show so much as a flash of ankle run the risk of getting whipped out of the public square (close eyes to briefly dwell on the pleasant thought of Pelosi screaming and running down the street as mad Arabs with camel whips chase after her), but it was my understanding that Syria was a fairly secular society as Arab fascist dictatorships go. This is leaving aside the question of what Pelosi, who has plenty to do on these shores or so I thought, is doing in Syria in the first place.

(Via Instapundit.com.)

Apparently the Brits don't really care that some of their fellow British are being held hostage by the Iranians. They just don't care. I don't get it. How can this not bother them? I didn't give a hoot about Middle East politics or anything like that in 1979, but our own Iranian hostage "situation" just made me sick. This was despite the silliness of my youthful "political" ideas back then (I was against Reagan, for instance, even though in 1980 I was still too young to vote).

Well guess what, selfish, uncaring, heedless British people: I no longer care about you. See that grave over there with the new headstone? The corpse of my Anglophilia is buried in it.

(Via Garfield Ridge.)

It is always a shock to upper-middle-class urban liberals when they venture into what they call "other cultures" expecting to find the sort of freethinking, unquestioned acceptance of the ideals they themselves hold, only to find out that minorities are much more socially conservative than upper-middle-class urban liberals. (And black or not, the young woman in the story is more a part of white, upper-class liberal culture than she is American black culture, or else she would have known full well what to expect when she "came out" to her fellow students.)

(Via Sondra K.)

The first rule of Right Club is - you do not talk about Right Club.

You see, this is what makes people mock the so-called "blogosphere": the way people form their little groups with their little rules and get their little panties in little twists when someone offers an opinion that doesn't follow their little clique's rulebook. Case in point: in the comments to this post on yet another instance of trash-radio talk show host Don Imus crapping on himself and getting in trouble for it, I dared to utter the Forbidden Thought that maybe Imus isn't a victim we should care all that much about, considering we otherwise encourage his sort of shit by continuing to make his profession (saying stupid things on the radio) such a lucrative one:

The real problem is the popularity of this sort of trash-talk radio. Until that garbage is no longer popular, we’ll have Imuses all over the place.

This brought upon me the ire of a person calling himself Hog Whitman:

Beats the hell out of having Al Sharptons all over the place. Imus is a person of fairness, generousity, and solid character. I know Don Imus, I’ve worked with Don Imus, and believe me: Don Imus is no rascist. (sic)

By the way, here is what this "person of fairness, generosity, and solid character" let fall from his yap that started the whole thing: of the Rutgers' women's basketball team's black members, he entered into this exchange:

"That's some rough girls from Rutgers," Imus said. "Man, they got tattoos ..."

"Some hardcore hos," said McGuirk.

"That's some nappy headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that," Imus said.

Hm. You know, I can't stand Al Sharpton, but he may just have a legitimate complaint here. Grant you, he is being an idiot about it as usual, but it's the sort of idiocy that gets him eyeballs, and any new "protect fragile minorities from any slight or hurt" rule that is put on the books in the future will be there in large part thanks to the rank stupidity of people like Don Imus.

And his fans. My next rejoinder, to this Hog person, was this:

Then why is he in trash-talk radio? No, I don’t think much of the genre and nothing you can say will make me like it, or much admire the people who get famous because of it. Surely someone as wonderful as your friend can find something better to do.

The existence of Al Sharptons are part of another love-affair Americans have; on the one hand we love freaky minority characters with weird hair. If he had a normal haircut no one would listen to him. On the other hand, those of us who are liberal love to be chastised by minorities. We’ll pay good money for them to tell us we still suck. In the Middle Ages we had flagellants who would go about whipping themselves for real and imagined sins, but at least participation was voluntary for the general population. Liberal race-flagellants won’t be happy until we’re all bleeding.

I guess I used too many big words, but he managed to grasp the idea that I didn't think much of talk radio, and I mentioned the word "liberal," which is like a red flag to a certain kind of rightwing bull. I got this considered, intellectual response:

Has anyone ever told you argue just like a drooling libtard? WTF is “trash-talk radio” and what does it matter? Do you even have an idea, or is it just anything you don’t like? FYI: most radios now come with tuning dials and on/off switches. The technology is amazing. Check into it. It’s a lot easier than trying to censor the airwaves and impose your blue-nosed puritan values on the general populace.

If you want to respond to this, please do, but answer some questions first before you head off on another nonsensical tangent, mmk?

1. I said Imus was fair and generous. He is. He’s raised millions for charity, and contributed millions more of his own, not to mention most of his spare time. If you can find a case where those funds have discriminated against any race, please state it. Nevermind, you can’t.

2. Where did I even REMOTELY suggest that you should like “trash-talk radio”, or that you should “admire” Imus? Would you please answer that one? Oh wait, you can’t.

3. I never said Imus was my friend or that he was “wonderful”. You said that. As I stated; he may be all kinds of other things, but he’s not a rascist. (sic) And FWIW: “wonderful” is a word that aging women and homos use. I’ve never used it to describe any man, woman, or anything outside of The _________ World of Disney.

4. Have you changed your dosage levels recently? (it’s a rhetorical question)

As I read that over now, I think the most bizarre thing about that comment is the strange criticism of the word "wonderful." WTF?

By the way, if you read through the comments, you'll see that I wasn't the only person to dismiss Don Imus, and a couple of other "right wing" celebrities (Bill O'Reilly, for example). But for some reason I was the only person who got singled out for special attention. Was it because I didn't make enough noise about TEH AWFUL PC RULZ BOO? I thought that sort of thing was a given, and that we didn't even have to mention in every time the subject came up, but it's apparently part of the right-wing blogosphere rosary ("...and on the third day, he was taken up in to court, and slapped with a hate crime citation"). Apparently you're supposed to chant your conservative bona fides every time you criticize a right wing hero, or else someone may "cleverly" ask you how you feel about Air America (which, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in the real world and not the freaking blog CAVE is or was a pathetic attempt of the so-called liberal leftwing media to create a "leftwing talk radio" channel that would be just as popular as rightwing talk radio, only they forgot that no one wants to hear a bunch of politically correct nerds try to make fun of Bush without insulting women, the handicapped, or ethnic minorities), and then call you a "troll" when you don't catch that he was "just curious about how you felt about them." Uh huh.

Let me tell you this, my children: this conservative doesn't grade fools and idiots by what political "side" they are on. Whether you're a lefty or a rightard, if I see you saying or doing something stupid, and am sufficiently irate about it, I am going to tear you an equal-opportunity asshole. If we want people to come to the conservative side (not the "right" side), we need to quit sobbing about what otherwise WONDERFUL people are the folks spewing shit like "nappy headed hos." I don't care how much Imus gave to charity. The company I work for that just laid a bunch of us off gives loads of money to charity. Bill Gates, who everyone hates, gives boatloads of money to charity. But I should suck Imus' dick because he gives? Excuse me if I decline.

Belated update on this post on the British people apparently not caring about their kidnapped sailors -- then again, what was to care about? (Alternate title to this post: Money Trumps Honor.)

This is what makes the constant effort to appease and coddle the feely-weelings of poor little Muslims so ridiculous: time and time again they produce a representative who gives evidence that when they were handing out feelings of entitlement and fat egos, Muslims got more than their share. The latest example is that of a so-called "Muslim leader" who is miffed about plans the Russian Orthodox church has about building a memorial on the site of the massacre of Beslan children by Muslim terrorists. But he's not upset because this memorial would remind everyone about what Muslim terrorists are capable of -- he's upset because "it would hijack a national tragedy."

No, really. Here's the statement:

"It is not acceptable to present this tragedy as the tragedy of followers of only one religion," Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis, said in a statement.

Yeah, it was too bad all those Muslim children were killed. What, Beslan is a majority Christian community? Never mind....

Muslims are the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. If you give them the attention they want, like all attention addicts, they won't go away -- they'll just act up even worse the next time. Want to bet if this memorial thing goes forward it gets put on the attack list of all Muslim terrorists in the area? Never mind that it's a memorial to murdered children. They're only dhimmi brats -- they don't count.

(Via Hoystory.)

Dear Would-Be Blogger Behavior Controllers: go fuck yourself with a broken keyboard. I'll write whatever the hell I want on my own goddamn website, and I am the one who makes the rules around here.

(The above-linked post of Althouse's is too long, but she's a lawyer so I guess she feels the need to argue and analyse everything. I on the other hand think that some things just aren't worth discussing. Kathy Shaidle's pithy, one-sentence dismissal of the blog nannies is perfect.)

There is certainly madness in the air today. Work was a perfect bitch (I responded in kind, hitting "reply all" to one of those stupid chain emails that gets passed around at work, so I could send the Snopes.com link debunking it -- it was the "John Hopkins Medical Center Says All This Stuff Will Kill You!" one), and then I got home, and to my everlasting joy -- okay, to my amusement, I got the first nonsensical hate email I've received in years. Here's the whole thing:

You are the perfect moral argument for abortion. If you were black, you'd be the perfect moral argument for lynching, and if you were Jewish, you'd be the perfect moral argument for Auschwitz.

Beautiful sentiments! And who was the brave, brave soul who sent this out? "Anonymous Remailer (Austria)." Funny names parents are giving their kids these days.

Anyway, on to other things... re the recent Don Imus scrapplefest, mark this as the first time in history I've ever agreed with anything Howard Stern has said. Quoted by Udolpho, the Stern says Imus is "apologizing like a guy who got his first broadcasting job. He should have said, 'Fuck you, it's a joke.'" It's not like his grovelling has done any good. At least a Stern style reply would have afforded us the amusing spectacle of seeing Sharpton and Co. splutter and fume, their self-righteousness confronting the brick wall of don't-give-a-shit.

Update: Kathy Shaidle's One-Step Program for PC-holics:

The only solution is to refuse to apologize to professional victims, ever. Even if they're right. I can't think of another way to cut off their food supply.

Sounds like a plan!

The new excuse I've been seeing around the blogtopia from bloggers of (I guess, I can't see into your monitors) non-color is "I didn't know 'nappy-headed' was a slur."

Oh negro, please.

I guess these people don't come from the south, or from the city, or are under the age of thirty, or were otherwise raised in a bell jar. I thought it was common knowledge that anything black people chose to call themselves ("niggah," "yo' ole' nappy-headed fool," "bitch ho," etc.) as a "term of affection" -- or at least in mere joking around -- was still verbum non grata (or however you say it) when it came to white people. This has been the way ever since at least 1969, when we were taught to chant, in the experimental school I went to for second grade, "Black is Beautiful!" Anything having to do with the physical appearance of black people that was anything other than carefully worded approval was banned. And words like "negro" and "colored" were stricken from the Acceptable Use dictionary. With all the fawning over cheesy pop-culture of the sixties and seventies that is so fashionable now, and that in fact permeates Hollywood, are you trying to tell me that you don't know this?

What the feminist movement has descended to: the notion that making your husband happy = female subservience to the evil Oppressive Male. This sort of yapping is usually followed or preceded by blog posts and essays that might as well all be titled "Why Won't That Male Chauvinist Pig Go Out With Me?"

Oh yeah -- I heard about the mass murder by a "lone gunman" (I am really starting to hate the word "gunman") earlier today. And my first thought was "how the hell can one guy walk around an area full of grown adults, killing at will, with no one stopping him until several people are dead?" Then I read Steve H. and found out what the brief news segments I've read haven't bothered to mention. "Gun free zone," eh? Well, it wasn't today.

Update: a hero, in the old-fashioned sense that we have mostly bred out of people these days. (Via Tim Blair.)

People wonder why so many apparently meekly lined up for their "execution style" deaths. I don't -- I've had the same public school education everyone else has. Americans are taught to line up and obey authority from the cradle. Only the fast-fading grip of our native orneriness and individuality keeps us from doing this in every aspect of life, but I notice that nowadays we only remember our freedom to act when it has something to do with our personal pleasure (who we have sex with, what we watch on tv, etc.) When it comes to life-and-death situations, we form orderly groups. This can be a good thing -- when there's a fire in a building, the evacuation line is the last place you want people to do their own thing -- but as we can see in situations like this one, it can also cause people to rotely follow the only authority in the room, even if he's the one about to kill them. I'll write more on this later.

I am beginning to think that we should just shut down all of our universities for a period of time. I think we can get along without them for at least a few years. Private labs can offer spots for all that important "research" that supposedly goes on in these places, and all those unemployed academics can do something useful for a while, like get jobs picking fruit (as opposed to giving these jobs to illegals). All the students with "nothing to do" can find something to do, like join the military. All the "learning" that universities are said to provide can mostly be done at home, with a library card. And do we really need more badly-written term papers? As for no more college sports -- excuse me while I bite back my yawns of concern.

Anyone think my idea is a bad one? Do you really think we should let these society-undermining sheep factories continue on their merry way to oblivion, dragging us with it?

(Via a commenter on Mean Mr. Mustard.)

So much in this article on campus killer Cho is simply ridiculous, but at the top of it has to be the idea that he went into psychotic rage because of the "mixed signals" American girls send to males. Do we really have to dig up that old canard ("Your lips say no but your eyes say yes, you hussy!")? The most shameful thing about this is that it is my fellow females saying this, including the usually robust Camille Paglia. Note to Ms. Paglia: spree killings fueled by psychosis shouldn't be included in the male behaviors to be admired.

It is obvious -- to me, anyway, who is no expert, just someone who has known more than one psychologically unstable person -- that Cho was one of those withdrawn, disconnected sociopaths who just snapped as these people sometimes do. Most of them just grow up into the "weird neighbor" who does things like threaten to set fire to your dog if it doesn't stop peeing on his fence, but sometimes they just go haywire. Since they are generally able to "function" in society, there really isn't much we can do about them except to stay vigilant. But vigilance takes effort and personal responsibility, so it's easier to just blame vague societal forces for "driving" the killer. Much in the same way the killer did.

(Via Instapundit.)

I was going to drop this subject, because I've said all I can think of to say and my head's getting a little bit sore from beating on a stone wall, but Ace of Spades found this interesting tidbit, about an instructor at a school in Boston apparently getting fired after daring to "re-enact" (the article's words) the Virginia Tech massacre to show how the killer could have been stopped. There's not a whole lot of information in the article, and there might be more to this than a simple, typical example of academic PC bullshit. Or it could be that, as someone who held "pro-gun" views in bluer-than-blue Boston, this teacher was on the radar of his college's academic board for a long time, and they finally found an excuse to get rid of him. You know, in the name of the V-Tech dead.

Well, there must be at least a few students at VTech (you know, the unimportant ones who are still alive) who must be thinking "Shit, all I have to do is get shot to death and I can get my fucking degree."

This post was inspired by the great Jim Treacher.

What the fuck is going on here? I am so glad I no longer watch television -- I might have come across this made for TV gem and vomited up my skull.

And I thought the Seventies, with all of its "After School Special" movies about kids with the Problem of the Week ("This week: Johnny gets hooked on marijuana!"), were bad.

Well I'm sitting here and I came across this post on Protein Wisdom about some poor Asian A+ student who has been chosen as the nation's sacrificial goat to atone for the Virginia Tech killings. But I'm not going to write about that (what's the use? and everything that needs to be said is in the PW post anyway): I'll just focus on the advice of one commenter to another who is worried about his daughter getting indoctrinated by the PC-BS going on at her PS:

When you’re [sic] daughter gets to college, have her aim for the business classes. Much less moonbattiness there.

Well that's all very well and good if the daughter is interested in business courses, but what if she's in the position I was, in love with history, literature, and the humanities -- all fields of study which have been infested and poisoned with political correctness and multicultural rot? I must say that the teachers I had in the few business-type courses I had to take (an Intro to Economics course for my "core" studies, and a business statistics course when I was trying to be practical -- that is, when I was disappointed at the way my rambling, unfocused college "career" was taking me and was trying to pin myself down to something that would get me a better job) were among the most down-to-earth and sensible instructors I had. But I find business studies to be dreary and boring, though not difficult to grasp -- but the dreariness and boredom made it difficult for me to concentrate, and if the teachers had been dull drones I'd have made F's instead of the A and B I did get in each course. I will say this, though -- most of my teachers in the other, more airy courses that I preferred were also good, though they were often a bit more "odd" than the business instructors. Yet for the most part discipline and a concentration on the practical requirements of learning a subject were kept in focus despite all the different "cultures" of the students in a community college in South Florida.

True, a degree in literature or humanities won't lead directly to a great job in upper management, but not all people are meant to be upper managers. I finally got my Associates Degree years ago, and did most of the work for the Bachelors until I threw in the towel (for now), but I haven't been on a campus since 2003. And I graduated high school the year Reagan was elected. I hear more and more horror stories of this sort, and I think it's really unfair that the only way for a sensible student to escape the claws of the multicultists is to go into business or the army -- not everyone is meant for those paths, and art and literature are important to society as well as business and the military.

In this post on guns and the attitude towards them, Grim quotes a liberal intellectual, who says of our country's "deeply troubling" relationship with guns:

American society, in the absence of an encompassing and stable traditional culture, has embraced the gun as a substitute for that absence, and created a vast cultural ideology we can call "gunism." Paradoxically, this highly destabilizing object became viewed as a baseline and an icon that could somehow sustain us in a new form of nontraditional society.

Blah blah blah. What a perfect illustration of the mushy thinking most liberals engage in these days! Liberals think that civilization is built on words and can be sustained and protected by words. This is because most of them are quivering bundles of sensitivity who nurse the psychic wounds they received in high school when they were called "nerd" and "dork" by their fellow students. To liberals, words have magical power, especially when you call them "laws." That's why whenever something bad happens, their response isn't to change any behavior of their own but to scream for more laws to be written to stop any future bad behavior. This also explains pacifism -- "We'll just talk about how much we disapprove of war, and people will stop fighting!" In the meantime, practical people with guns are busy doing the actual work of trying to keep the barbarians at bay.

I haven't posted much on the issues of the day because I just haven't been able to summon enough contempt. There are so many things.... the needlessly twee and toddler-aimed "memorial" to Flight 93, the mewling illegal alien coddlers (my favorite argument so far is the sobbing calls -- mostly from, alas, Christians -- to "remember that these are human beings" -- as if calling them "aliens" meant that we think Mexico orbits Alpha Centauri!), a Democratic majority clearly bent on staying in power even if it means selling out the country they are trying to stay in power over, an addled administration trying to please everyone while actually pleasing no one, the "peace" (of the grave) "movement" (which considering the people at the forefront of that cavalcade of trash might better be termed a bowel movement), and so on.

So much stupidity, so little time... Here for your consideration, then, is this delicious little item from our friends across the pond, who are experimenting, for no good reason, with doing away with traffic signs in several of our cities:

European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren -- by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs.

Beautiful. I'm so glad that I never did go on a second trip to Europe with that friend who wanted to rent a car instead of taking trains and taxis like a normal tourist. The rest is a paean to moony ideals of somehow getting people to be more considerate and sociable by putting their lives in increased danger. Hm, actually, that just might work... And if you didn't know you were reading this in a German publication, you'd know it after reading the assertion that "[a]bout 70 percent of traffic signs are ignored by drivers."

Via Tom McMahon's news links.)

"... you keep all your money in a big brown bag inside a zoo..."

This is hilarious: that deranged "Truther" guy that put out that "Loose Change" movie (claiming that Bush and Co. actually blew up the World Trade Center, because... well, there's never been a real coherent reason given, has there?) used to be one of the idiot comment trolls over on Little Green Footballs.

Remember, folks, this is the person who is currently the darling of the Bush-hating set. If Napoleon had had enemies like this, we'd all be speaking French.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Update: semi-related -- this clever cartoon mocking a recent BBC show on the "dangers" of Wifi (and it also mocks the scientific know-nothingism of the news media in general -- "shut up, four-eyes, we're informing the public and letting them decide" -- heh). (Via Instapundit.)

You know, sometimes I wish that Bush/Cheney/HitlerburtonCo would just announce that they've declared martial law, suspended elections and all other freedoms indefinitely, and that all critics of the government will be rounded up and thrown in detention camps. Just for fun. Just to see how many pretend-leftist pseudo-dissenters would pop a cork.

And to see how many would line up and start goose-stepping.

Oh for fucking Christ SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU STUPID SHRILL HARPIES. So the name the "Rivermen" didn't sit well with the little weakminded cunts "female athletes"? ASK ME IF I FUCKING CARE I DON'T.

Jesus... this is what a century (or whateverrr) of feminism has brought us -- crybaby girlies who can't even stand to even be reminded that icky MENS EW GROSS THEY SMELL AND R LOUD exist. But you had better open those wallets, guys! Or you won't get any sex. HOW MANY MINUTES BEFORE THAT "UNCERTAIN PERCENTAGE" DECIDES "fuck it, I'm going gay"???? Not too many more. At least you can give it in the ass as well as get it.

(Via "Lenin's Tomb," whose proprietor probably regrets linking to this now.)

I'm so glad I didn't have a kid. Apparently you can't tell them "no." Oh, this is only pre-K teachers? You think it will stop there? Remember, this is America. Nothings stops anywhere.

Hillary Clinton is giving away all her stuff! Well -- what else would "shared prosperity" mean? After all, she's a lot more prosperous than I am -- I'm sure she wouldn't want me to feel all "on my own" because I don't have any nice furniture from the White House.

I'm laying aside a couple of Hefty bags. Who wants to lend me their pickup truck?

(Via Scott Chaffin.)

You know, I'm going to disagree with the anti-nanny-staters over at Dr. Helens on their conclusions about this napping babysitter story. The comments are all along the lines of "these things happen" (toddlers escaping from an adult's care and getting injured -- or in this case killed -- before the adult was even aware that they were gone), and that society has become too overprotective about kids, yadda yadda. I agree that society has become too neurotically overprotective about kids, at least about anything they may do that makes grownups feel bad (drug your kids to the eyeballs so you won't have to worry that their poor performance in school and discipline problems are your fault, wrap playgrounds in foam rubber and then keep the kids inside anyway, etc.); I disagree that there was nothing wrong with the babysitter taking a nap while two toddlers were in her care.

It would be one thing if it had been the mother. Mothers of toddlers get a pass because they haven't slept since they've given birth. However, if you aren't the parent of the child you agree to take care of, it is generally understood that you have an extra layer of responsibility -- and that since you don't tend this child 24/7, you should have had enough rest to be able to handle your responsibilities. The news story gives very few details, so we don't know if the girl (who was eighteen, not all that young) had some compelling reason for being tired -- such as she was working other jobs or studying for a test, or the parents of the children had been over-using her services. But that still wouldn't absolve her of the responsibility for the children, and no matter how much she may have needed the money if she was too tired to stay awake she should have called the parents, and if she was already working other jobs etc., she should not have been babysitting in the first place. I don't know what sort of charges should be levelled, but let's not start blatting on in a kneejerk way about "the nanny state" in this case.

(Via a rather misleading post of Instapundit's -- he made it sound as if someone got in trouble for letting some kids take a nap.)

Why are people so fucking stupid these days? Yes I am irritated today -- I woke up in a bad mood, and this sort of thing doesn't help. This is an addendum to this post of mine, on that babysitter who apparently (the brief news article didn't give a whole lot of details) decided it was okay to go to sleep while overseeing two toddlers, because see, she'd put them to bed and everyone knows that toddlers don't wake up when other people are sleeping.

Anyway, Brendan Loy has jumped on the "oh, it's just a tragedy, not anyone's fault" nannystatism blah blah bandwagon. Meanwhile there are two dead kids and the entire subject of job responsibility is left pissing in the wind. Hey, okay -- from here on let's not get upset if pilots show up drunk on flight days -- after all, they drink at home, why not on the job too? And I think I'll just go to work in my pajamas and sit at my desk all day reading blogs on the internet, because there's no reason to hold anyone at their job to any higher standard.

Let me spell out my objections in simpler terms for you tragedians: a babysitter has been hired to work, not invited on a sleepover. Just because it's only a couple of children and she was in a house didn't mean she didn't have to take as much care to stay alert as airplane pilots or truck drivers or even us office flunkies have to be at our jobs. It's about job responsibility, not sticking it in the Man's eye and letting kids be kids.

As for a fitting fate for this babysitter, I don't know if she should be jailed, but she should certainly be blacklisted from ever being hired to watch anyone's kids. Too bad if that hurts her feelings. She's at least alive to feel.

Old hippie vs. new hippie: this is hilarious on so many levels:

From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.

The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."

But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.

Of course he's never seen anything like this crowd. Denial is a river running through Hippie Heaven. Looks like the SS What Goes Around Comes Around just docked. All aboard!

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Question: what is it about politics that contributes to the formation of some of the most hideous words in the English language? I'm talking here about the word "cloture," which sounds like something to do with congestive heart failure, not whatever petty bit of political machinating it actually refers to. And how the hell do you pronounce it? "Clot-yer"? "Cloe-toor"? I refuse to turn on the tv or click on the video link to find out. Because I don't really care, I just wish it would go away.

Other ugly or stupid words often used when speaking of goings on in DC: filibuster and gerrymander. The first sounds like it describes a fat man blustering foolishly (and so at least sounds like what it is), the second a variety of slimy amphibian.

I don't know why I'm not Supreme Dictator of the World yet. Probably because I'd end up killing all the idiots who put me in power, because their rank, pathetic stupidity would piss me off, and then I'd have to start all over again. Much better to simply show that even though I am no intellectual heavyweight I can at least be proud of the fact that I am a tad smarter than both the pinheaded conspirators behind the inept Rathergate memo farce and the anencephalic cue-balls who still believe in them. A couple of these paragons of devolution appeared in the comments to this post, which made fun of the fact that today's smart liberal doesn't know how to do simple research before he opens his yap. Lord knows rightwingers have their favorite quotes that they repeat ad nauseum (if I have to read that Orwell "rough men" passage one more time), but at least when someone corrects them if they got the author wrong they say "thanks, I didn't know that"; they don't start going off into tangents about how All you humans and your stupid, stupid minds! How dare you contradict me! Old debunked "revelation" about George Bush that no one who has a full-time day job even remembers, much less cares about anymore, etc.

Anyway, here is how I would have kept the press in a tizzy of happy accusation, the Bush administration looking more nonplussed than ever, and the rightwing blogosphere in a state of perpetual (well, more than usual) irritation from knowing something was wrong but being unable to prove it -- from my comment over at WILLisms:

...all the so-clever minds behind this stupid human trick had to do for the truth of the matter to remain forever in dispute would have been to pick up an old manual typewriter (which were still in widespread use in the early seventies -- the typing class I took in junior high used manuals) at a garage sale or a thrift shop and type the memo up on a piece of old paper using an old ribbon.

So easy a cavewoman could do it. But not the Big Brains at Evolved Progressive Humanoid Central.

Update: I check in later, and find this incisive, brilliant response to my comment:

MS Word was developed to produce documents that were identical to those produced by the IBM Selectric.

Right -- before MS Word came along the programmers and users of older wordprocessing software like WordStar and Wordperfect could only weep in jealousy at the beauty of documents produced using electric typewriters.

WTF? This Conservapedia comparison of their services to that of Wikipedia chugs along just fine until the very last item:

16. We do not encourage anti-intellectual editor names that are attracted to Wikipedia. For example, the Wikipedia administrator who initially deleted the entry about Conservapedia uses the name "Nearly Headless Nick." The Hartford Courant observed that another editor posted under the name "The Ostrich." These names send an inappropriate anti-intellectual message for an encyclopedia.

Well, the first nickname is a character in a popular children's book, and so perhaps not indicative of the high intellectual mojo that this Conservapedia site obviously wants to demonstrate, but I am not sure why "The Ostrich" is supposed to be an anti-intellectual nickname. I could understand a nickname like Bubba69, or JessicaSimpsonsHooters, but "The Ostrich"?

(Via Tom McMahon's news feeds.)

Democrats are stupid! And their mothers dress them funny.

(It's a precautionary measure, so I don't get linked by CNN.)

The again, considering what wankers so many of the descendants of those Irish immigrants turned out to be, maybe we should have put them all back on their boats. (This is what happens when people try to use cheap sentimentality to tug at my "heartstrings." Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Or thereabouts. I've been in a kind of uninspired funk lately, as should be obvious from the quality, or lack thereof, of my posts over the last few weeks. Be that as it may, a thought still does surface every now and then in what is left of my brain. Sometimes I am able to lasso these thoughts and tie them down long enough so as to compose an actual nubbin of an idea around them. I will demonstrate:

Several rightwing (for want of a better term -- many of these people are actually about as "rightwing" as Angela Davis, the definition having been applied to them solely on the basis of their not wanting to submit to Islam right this moment) bloggers have been spouting off on how they regret voting for Bush, he isn't what they thought he was, and they are even having second thoughts on the War on Terror. The reasons for this seem to consist mainly of 1) the immigration thing, upon which Bush and Co. are admittedly obstinately wrongheaded (is Bush really that afraid of his Mexican sister-in-law?), and 2) many of these bloggers really do seem shocked that a war in the chaotic Middle East, which P.J. O'Rourke called "God's monkey house," would get a little messy.

But I don't really care about all of that. What stands out for me are all the former Bush supporters who say "I regret voting for him." Well, really, what does one say to that? It's hard to qualify the depths of idiocy... Does anyone but me recall the special crew running against him? It's not like we had anyone better. Anyone that had a likelihood of winning, that is. In the first contest it was basically Bush, or Gore. Just say to yourself "President Gore." Hurts, doesn't it? And then there was the second go 'round, where we had a choice of Bush, or John "Seared! Seared!" Kerry. We literally had no choice but to vote for Bush. He's no oil painting, but he's not completely insane like the other two. (Though at least Kerry has kept relatively quiet, and hasn't gone about the country selling disaster-porn snake oil like Gore has.)

Spare me the mea culpas. I'm not impressed. You all knew what you were doing.

Update: here's more from Mark Steyn:

Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever.

In almost all respects Bush is really a Democrat, old-school style. In fact, if it hadn't been for the World Trade Center attack, what would have distinguished his administration from Clinton's, except for more decorum? (Bush seems to have well and truly left his frat boy days behind him, at least, and also doesn't give off that skirt-chaser vibe that makes Clinton so bad-boy attractive to women and men alike -- in fact I'm beginning to think that a major reason so many liberals despite Bush is because they aren't sexually attracted to him.)

Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings has a few trolls who are real pieces of work. One of them had been busy slamming Southerners. The discussion was actually about the Democrats' current complaint -- that calling their party "the Democrat Party" instead of the "Democratic Party" was an insult. This reminded me of the way Arabs are always screeching about the most ridiculous things, that no normal person would get insulted over:

So are you saying that Democraticistics are as anal-retentively touchy as Arabs are?

Mr. Clever Troll responded with:

As opposed to Southerners?

Here is what I said in reply:

Oddly enough, both cultures are honor/shame cultures. Florence King pointed out that the South had such a checkered past that it evolved cultural attitudes to compensate for its basic lawlessness -- sure, there was slavery, so the way to be a good person was to be kind to slaves. And so on. So despite the fact that you meant it as an insult, I do acknowledge that there are elements of Southern American culture that are similar to traditional Arab culture.

Which is why, considering how much compassionate, progressive, liberal Northerners hate the South and use it as their all-purpose whipping boy for everything that is bad about America, it is so odd that* they are willing to give Arabs (and other Muslims from similar cultures) a pass on their behavior.

If only American Southerners were all sexy exotic foreigners instead of lumpish, Northern-European-descended white people. Oh, and no blacks ever seem to actually live in the South and participate in the culture here; they're just trapped in "virtual" slavery, what they all really want is to move to cool, non-prejudiced places like New York where the n-word is unknown and they can live in peace and equality. (I had earlier pointed out that the most egregious examples of racism I'd ever seen had come from people from up north. Troll didn't like that much.)

Okay, I'm really out of here now. Don't forget the fundraiser!

*I forgot to put that in the original post too. Oh well, it's an old post.

Glenn Reynolds gives a normal, non-partisan, even-handed and cogent interview on the benefits and liabilities of the political use of the internet to Mother Jones magazine. Mother Jones' comment hordes react like a cage full of monkeys to the sight of a rival monkey. These are people who think that you're a fascist if you... agree with them on most things, actually. The difference between Glenn Reynolds' libertarian tolerance and the nutty ideals of the moonbattish left is only a few millimeters thick. Maybe he wants less government interference than the left does; at the end of the day they are still shoving us down the same slippery slope. Still, I'd rather have Reynolds' ilk running the country (at least no one will be forced to get the immortality implants and the titanium genitalia) than the drooling retards who have taken over the Democrats. (The fact that these idiots are also calling Reynolds "racist" is so hilariously stupid it's not even worth commenting on.)

(Via Mr. Bingley commenting at Coalition of the Swilling.)

Maybe instead of flying all over the world telling everyone else what to do, Al Gore should try to focus a little more on his own contributions to the environment.

By the way, I can't but help to see this whole thing as a deliberate slap at Daddy and his giant ego: not just the drugs and the speeding, but the fact that Gore Jr. did it all in a Prius -- or "Pious" as people are starting to call it. Gosh, didn't know those things could get up to 100 miles per hour.

(Via a commenter over at Tim's. By the way, Tim Blair's blog is where I get all my news now, except for local news of the weird which I get from Local6.com. Who needs CNN or Fox? Not me.)

That comet can hit right about now.

They acknowledge that for some furries, there's a sexual aspect, but most say the adult-themed furries aren't the majority.

"A furry is a person online who pretends to be a humanoid animal, is the essentials of it," furry MCA Jabberwocky. "Because, hey, it's fun. We're human. We know what humans are like. Why not be something else."

Stop it.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

Noted political blogger James Capozzola died earlier this week. I hadn't read his blog, Rittenhouse Review, in years, basically because he was one of those political bloggers and such things really bore me. As I said here, I vaguely remember getting into a some sort of argument with him over something that I can't remember anymore, the link is on one of my dead blogs, I think. I had forgotten about him, and didn't harbor any ill will. But other people don't think like me... according to some of his weird fans, he didn't just die of an unspecified "illness" -- the Republican party killed him because he didn't get all the free money and computers and special Health Potions that us Republican bloggers get. These people are crazy.

Slow news week/the war is boring controversy: a Catholic Church document states that Protestants are still not Catholic, and for some reason Protestants are angry about it. So what was the whole point of that whole Reformation thing then?

(Via Kathy Shaidle. Also, join the battle here. Remember: it's no fun unless blood is drawn. Or something like that.)

I have had my problems in the past with Peggy Noonan's often-maudlin columns, but this latest one is the first of hers that I can't bear to finish reading. It is just that bad. I can't even read the excerpt Kathy featured. When I got to paragraph number three, and this:

He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands.

-- it was all over. Lincoln had a crazy wife, and presided over the American Civil War. LBJ was famous for being a bullshitter, among other things. If an American president sent Noonan an email asking her to give him her bank account number so he could deposit $2,000,000 in it for "safekeeping" would she consider it?

The rest devolves into "everything Bush has done has been a failure blah blah blah," which does indeed make her sound like the Chimpyburtler Impeachanista contingent. I'm no fan of many of Bush's ideas, especially the immigrant-coddling (and was that "failure" such a bad thing? did she want that to succeed? -- and as for Iraq, what "failure" is she talking about? did she really think it would be easy?), but we need to stop moaning about what a "failure" he is just to make ourselves feel better for voting him into office. As usual, it's all about the ego and wanting to feel good about ourselves. Why can't we grow up?

One of the most bizarre things about the way Our Betters have decided to rule the world is the way they are apparently eager to return Western society to its most miserable modern decade -- the Seventies. Clothing styles and decor are once again leaning towards the hideous; we have a set of enemies even more dreary, boring, and psychotic than the Soviets; zombielike hippiefreaks are all over the place; and Western educational establishments are doing that "history and facts and stuff are boring, man" dance and focusing school curricula on the dreary, petty, tawdry problems of the present. When I was in high school, we'd sit around and "rap" about our feelings, got lectures about drugs (the same ones the British kids are going to get today, only they'll get PowerPoint presentations instead of mimeographed handouts that the kids would sniff to get high when the teacher turned her back), and had a girl who was sent to a reform school when she was caught taking speed tell us about her experiences there. Then we'd go to biology class where we'd be shown slides of diseased penises and had the Fetus, Would You Keep Her/Him Or Vacuum It Out? talk. People wonder why I stayed in my room until I was eighteen. This is why.

The only people who were happy in the Seventies were rich "former" hippies, and Arab oil sheiks. Well what groups of people are the ones no one dares say "boo" to nowadays? If you will make yourselves into doormats, people, don't be surprised when you get walked on.

PS: at first I had "gays" as part of that group but then it occurred to me that gays were pretty miserable in the Seventies. That was when they were "out" but not yet "proud," and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a movie or a play filled with miserable homos sitting around lamenting their crappy lives (Boys in the Band, everything Tennessee Williams wrote, etc.). And disco was inextricably bound with both "crap" and "early death from cocaine overdose." I think I forgot this because nowadays you mention the Seventies to any gay person born after, say 1978, and his/her eyes will light up and he/she will sigh "Oh, I just love the Seventies!" Of course they did, they didn't actually have to live through gonorrhea and only three network tv channels (and a few UHF channels that came in snowy half the time). But they refuse to believe me when I tell them those years were the pit of hell.

Michael Moore is upset at CNN about "errors" in a report it did on his latest fictudrama, "Sicko." I can't really add to that. Well, except for this.

Here's a story for the kiddies: people who like to get dressed up in animal costumes ("furries") and go to the woods and have sex with each other are being attacked and beaten by people wearing Teletubby outfits. The meetings are arranged online -- with the "Teletubby" posing as a "furry" and enticing their intended victim into waiting for them.

All of these people need to be horsewhipped.

(Via Dan Collins guest-posting, or maybe permanently posting, on Protein Wisdom.)

Somewhere a nature-'n'-primitive-people-lovin' activist's head implodes:

Fears that one of the world’s rarest creatures had been driven to extinction have been allayed by a tribesman who told conservationists he had recently eaten one.

Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, a little-known, primitive mammal that lays eggs, lives in Papua New Guinea. Only one specimen, found in 1961, has ever been seen by scientists.

But fresh evidence that proves the echidna, which was named in honour of the naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is still alive has been found during an expedition by zoologists. Seven people told the scientists that they had seen the spiny creature, which is a relative of the platypus.

One of the villagers said that he had trapped one in a snare and eaten it in the jungle, being unaware of how rare and sought-after the echidna was. “It was delicious,” he said.

I blame George Bush.

(Via Machinery of the Night.)

Looks like the brainwashing worked. I'd just like to know -- how did they ever keep from losing it down the drain?

The bullet missed us -- this time.

Full confession (like this one is going to be a big surprise): I read the Harry Potter novels and quite enjoyed them, though they were not as well-written or solidly put together as The Lord of the Rings. They were more on the level of the Narnia books, maybe. I also thought the movies (the ones I've seen -- one, two, and three -- they're up to the fifth book now? No? I don't pay much attention to movies) were fun romps with mostly non-painless acting (the sprinkling of British acting vets helps, as at least older British actors know how to appear in something non-highbrow without telegraphing how IRONIC everything is and how they're really IMPORTANT ACTORS who are only doing this fantasy kids gig because they NEED THE MONEY TO PAY FOR THE MALIBU HOUSE -- excuse me, I got a bit off the track.

Anyway, I like the Harry Potter series, but when I moved I gave the books away, because I was tired of carrying about so many books, and they'll be in print for years anyway. BUT -- I refuse to read the final novel until EVERY LAST ASSHOLE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE QUITS JABBERING ABOUT THEIR IMPORTANT NOTIONS ABOUT IT.* And for God's sake, will the last person who knows that the "magic" in Tolkien's world did indeed have obvious and heavy costs and that said theme was in fact one of the central themes of Lord of the Rings please go to Miss Megan McArdle's column (on the Grauniad? WTF?) and set her straight? On second thought, never mind. These people are the ones with "minds of wheels and metal" that Tolkien was talking about -- there isn't any way of communicating with them. Mention "sense of wonder" and they think you're talking about admiring a skyscraper.

One more thing: her "thesis," such as it is, falls apart almost immediately, in the first paragraph:

Why are books about magic so exciting? The lure is almost tautological: magic is compelling because it allows us to imagine doing the things we cannot ordinarily do.

In what way is this "almost tautological"? A tautology is something that is always true because it can't ever be untrue. So is the "lure" of "books about magic" always exciting because they "allow us to imagine doing things we cannot ordinarily do"? I can tell you right now they aren't for me -- I'm not interested in being able to do magic myself, that's not why I read books with magic as one of the plot devices. (You might as well know: I read them for the same reasons I read anything else -- to be entertained by a story with compelling characters and interesting events.) So her "tautology" falls apart on those grounds.

But maybe she doesn't mean that at all. Maybe she means to use "tautological" in the sense of "needless repetition." But she isn't repeating herself here -- she isn't saying "books about magic are exciting because they're exciting." Or maybe she is -- the rest of her column is a boring digression on how magic makes no economic sense, or something -- I couldn't be bothered to read the rest, after that opening. I think she just threw a big word in there because economists = logical and people who read fantasy (and don't worry about how magic fits into a capitalist economy) = fluff-minded dreamyheads who need to be led by the hand to the dinner table.

By the way, why does an economist pre-order a book that will be available for quite some time to come? Fantasy fan that I am, I didn't put myself on any stupid "pre-order get it hot off the press" list because I know I'll be able to get it off the shelf six month or six years from now when I finally have money to buy books. I suppose I can understand the need of some people to avoid learning the ending, because no one knows how to shut up anymore, but I do believe the New York Times already blew the lid off the book, so that ship has already sailed. Anyway, I always look at the end of books first.

*Except for mine, of course. Mine are always important and worth reading.

Like that's a surprise. Anyway, here's an example of what passes for thought in Maher's head:

"Does anybody doubt that if [Clinton] had been president when [Katrina] hit, the people, you know, the actual people of New Orleans, would have been better off? I mean, he would have first of all, that's okay. First of all, he would have read about it before it happened. You know, fag stuff. He would have been down there before it happened. He would have not slept for a week. He would have stayed up working on it. That's who he was."

What the hell does he mean "he would have read about it before it happened"? The fuck? Clinton got special newspapers printed in the future? He had a trio of precogs in the White House basement? (They should have told him that tent in Libya only had a goat in it, then; and maybe they should have warned him about being more discreet in his indiscretions, you know? I'm just saying, they must have been some bargain basement precogs.)

Then there's that bit about him not sleeping for a week. I believe it -- Bubba's insomnia was legendary, it's probably to blame for half the stupid decisions made during his administration. (That "let's go right to gays in the military, it's surely the most important thing on the American peoples' minds" wackiness was probably the product of way too much caffeine.) However -- what the hell good would it have done for him to go without sleep over Katrina? Maher has rocks in his head.

(More stupid stuff here.)

Next time, try not to say things like "the hard right fanatics have claimed the label 'conservative,' [and] seized 99% of the radio & TV airwaves" when complaining about how conservative politicians have supposedly let you, a "Republican in the tradition of RR and GWB who understand political realities and who both had/have genuinely 'Big Tent' mindsets and methods," down. (I am quoting a commenter calling himself "Embarrassed Con" on the Hog On Ice site, but I'm not going to link to the actual post or comment thread, because said site's proprietor, Steve H., is as skittish as a colt and has a tendency to delete posts and comments he feels are getting too much of the wrong attention.)

Update: just to make my meaning a bit more clear, I believe this "Embarrassed Con" person to actually be a lefty troll. There's just something about someone who thinks Fox (not to mention the rest of the tv channels) to be "hard right" that is just too off. Even the most fervent conservative Bush-hater and Fox News despiser doesn't think the entire media has been "taken over" by "hard right fanatics." He should have stuck to radio.

Islamic Rage Boy objects to being called "Islamic Rage Boy."

Well, here's another reason to say "I'm not a feminist." Works for me, anyway.

(Via Small Dead Animals. NSFW, probably.)

What on earth has happened to Silent Running? I haven't read them in quite a while, and now they're moaning about imaginary "moderate" Muslims being persecuted by us mean old infidels, and banning people from their comment boxes for disagreeing.

(The title, by the way, is from a line of dialogue from Ghosts, a play by Ibsen about a guy who gets syphilis... sometimes I think the urge to be loved for one's cosmopolitan tolerance, even in the face of death, is a kind of disease of the human brain.)

Update: and apropos to this, I find problematic this call for us in the West to study the problem that is Islam and its followers, so we know just what we are up against and especially so we can counter the pretty, sparkly idea of "diversity" (I recently read an article in Family Circle magazine about the "best towns for families" wherein one was praised for its "diversity" -- families "from five countries" lived there, no mention of what countries -- and how one father opined that living in such a place would teach his children to be "more compassionate") that is being sold to us. Not problematic in itself -- anything that helps people to realize that Islam isn't "just another religion, a lot like Christianity and Judaism, they have a special book and a holy day every week" is fine by me. But who is going to take the time out of their "busy" lives (filled with watching American Idol, ferrying kids to and from the ten thousand outside-the-home activities that are apparently necessary these days, grocery shopping, etc.) to do so? Not Mom and Dad Ordinary, who are sure that that nice Muslim couple -- well, there's another lady, maybe she's a sister? -- down the block are just as harassed by every day life and unable to find an extra minute in the day to sit down and finish wiring that bomb vest. And they especially aren't going to run the risk of being called "racist" despite their qualms when their daughter comes home with a list for "Muslim Day" at school including a pattern for a head-to-toe burka that all the female students are going to have to wear that day. Of course, if a similar paper asking for her to wear a knee-length skirt and blouse that covered all of her torso for "Baptist Modesty Day" were in question they'd scream like plucked macaws, but Baptists don't cause that frisson of "foreign, and therefore somehow superior, and enticing" that Muslims do.

YMMV, but this is a nation where people regularly sign their lives on the dotted line without reading the miles of tiny printing so they can get this house or that car, and then they're expected to regularly perform the mental gymnastics needed to suppress the realization that they've signed their financial lives away for five or thirty years. See, they really, really wanted that house, car, boat, whatever. And too many of us likewise really, really want to be loved and admired by the rest of the world, and too many of us are willing to sign away our lives for that badge of approval. What we really need to be emphasizing is the fact that we won't just be signing away our own lives this time.

Read this now: I have reduced my dream of visiting all 50 states in the Union to just 49: I will never ever ever step foot in the state of Oregon.

I now feel free to admit I've always felt a certain repulsion towards (or should that be "against"?) Oregon, or at least Oregonians. Not a very strong one -- I've met few in person because few of its denizens seem to want to leave its pristine, picture-perfect coastline, its incomparable forests, its intensely artistic and cultured cities where all the tvs are turned to Ovation and Trio and the people all talk in perfect iambic pentameter and only drink free-trade organically-grown coffee. The science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin lives there, and though she was once one of my favorites I have had my difficulties with her later works and can't help thinking that some of the problem is that she's lived in the Better Than You state for so long.

And once I was watching some true-crime show on A&E or one of those channels and the subject was this woman who had been convicted of killing her boyfriend. The relationship had gone sour and devolved into mostly drunken fights, but there were (at least according to the not-so-subtle hints the show gave out) more holes in the case than in Swiss cheese.

I can't remember any of the names yet most of the facts remain in my mind. The girlfriend was from the midwest somewhere -- some place where people don't emote on cue, and strike others as bland and rather standoffish. This, one eventually realized, was a major strike against her. The woman was perhaps not of the most sterling character, but something about her struck a sympathetic chord in me. (You know I am usually not sympathetic to convicted murderers.) Anyway, apparently the two had gone on a long night drive to some coastal park to talk and make up, but (this is the testimony of the woman) they couldn't really mend their differences. Naturally -- both being alcoholics by this time -- both had been drinking. The boyfriend decided to take a walk to clear his head. The woman decided to wait for him in the car. The walk was along those high cliffs they have over there. (Great for tossing Republicans, meat-eaters, and other heretics off of, hey?) The woman was deathly afraid of heights -- something that the boyfriend's family corroborated. Anyway, the woman's testimony was that she waited for hours, but he never returned. Sometime later they found his body up the coast, and it was decided she had somehow pushed him off the cliff.

Actually, I can see how she might have done it. She claims she wouldn't go along the cliff walk because of her fear of heights, but it was dark, and she might have been persuaded for some reason. (To seek him out when he took too long to get back? Because he coaxed her to "just walk a little way, you won't see how high it is in the dark"?) Anyway, say they were out on the cliff walk together. And let's say either an altercation developed and she shoved him accidentally off the cliff, or -- I can tell you as a person who is also deathly afraid of heights this is quite a common occurrence -- he decided to tease her a little and pushed her closer to the cliff edge than her instinctual fears would bear. (We all know that to one who does not have them the fears of another can seem so silly, so easily cured if the fearful one would just relax. And admit it, guys -- you like to make your women just a little bit afraid every now and then, just to reassure yourself of her need for you.) I can see her striking out-- and then crawling back to the car alone and terrified to make up her frankly unconvincing (though not, because of that, necessarily untrue either) story about waiting all night in the car.

In any case there were no witnesses and no particular evidence of foul play (after all, a man + a few beers + an argument with a girlfriend + a cliff in the dark doesn't need any help to end up with a body in the water) and they had to let her go. She went back to her own home state. But the boyfriend's family wouldn't let go. Understandable under the circumstances -- but remember, this is Oregon. They found some helpers among the police and the state prosecutor's office, and they concocted a plan to lure her back into Oregon for a trial. And here is where I come to believe she's more sinned against than sinning -- even though she must have known how much the boyfriend's family hated her, she trusted whatever they said and came, and ended up being convicted (not of first degree murder but something lesser like manslaughter, or killing while not Oregonian) and serving time. I can't believe it's simply a case of the overweening pride of a criminal mastermind who thinks she got away with it coming back to gloat over her victim's family's grief and getting hoist by her own petard. I remember there being something about the family that I didn't like while watching the interviews. I couldn't put my finger quite on it, but I got the impression that they had never treated the woman as quite one of them. True she and the dead man weren't married, but apparently that hadn't caused the friction. But it seemed to me that they felt their son and brother had taken up association with someone not quite of their exalted level. And that they were the sort of perfectly nice people who are never mean to anyone they think of as beneath them, but that they will never let that person forget it for one instant. And if you dare to cross them in any way they will stop at no subterfuge to make sure you pay... Fan of Florence King though I am, her sympathy for female murderers usually leaves me nonplussed, but this time I know how she feels.

Anyway, that, and now this story of how they are ruining the lives of children forever for mere fooling around, is why I will never set foot on the soil of the state of Oregon.

(Via Kathy Shaidle. By the way, if anyone knows about the crime above, feel free to tell me in the comments. It was featured on one of those A&E crime shows a couple of years ago.)

What's "dath," Precious? Is it crunchable? Is it tasty?

Via Kathy Shaidle. Whose new blog will, I hope, be accessible at work -- I am getting bored reading the same three sites over and over.

Two more weeks, two more weeks...

I'm doing it wrong, apparently -- what I really should be doing is blaming my misfortune on America and asking why the president won't fix my life. I mean, that's what all the other losers honest, upright citizens who just want a Fair Shake do. And while you're at it, Mr. Prez, they'd like pots of gold to be left on their doorstep. And for their pick to win American Idol.

Mr. President, why did you let me miss my rent payment? Mr. President, why did you let me get in over my head in debt? Mr. President, why won't you pay my bills? What's wrong with this country????

(Sits back. Waits. Odd -- no one has appeared at my table to offer me so much as a free day at Disney World. My God, the world is ending! ABANDON ALL HOPE.)

I saw a recent example of this attitude in the Orlando Sentinel a few weeks ago. Crime has gone up in certain neighborhoods here. Whatever the reason for the crime rise, a group of local families egged on -- I mean, um, compassionately recorded and photographed -- by a Sentinel reporter wrote a letter to President Bush asking him to help stop crime in Central Florida. The article was accompanied by a picture of sad-faced little Hispanic kids standing in front of their apartment block holding up the letter. A letter. To the President. No really, how could he refuse to fly in with his special Super Pres suit on -- these were sad little Brown Children!

We will never get anything fixed in this country until we quit thinking of the president as being the only grownup in the land.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Could someone explain this trend to me -- which I have noticed building for some years now, first in the fashion-forward ethnic thug community, and now (several just rolled past the window) apparently it has spread to the young, white, and dumb community: full (or at least mostly) grown young males on tiny little kid bikes? At first -- back when it was black or Hispanic thugs (BTW, you are a thug if you dress in thug-wear -- I don't care if you just got offered a scholarship to Harvard) doing it I thought they had just stolen some little kids' bikes, but I just saw a tribe of white guys roll past, knees up around their white-boy 'fros. (Another peeve: why are today's teens so unimaginative and unoriginal? They all look like the same drips I went to high school with, right down to the faded black t-shirts with "ZOSO" and "Skynyrd" on them, and horrid hair -- either greasy lank locks or gigantic balls of frizz.) Maybe stealing kiddie bikes and riding them in public where girls can see them is the new cool? Don't they realize they look like clowns on those tiny bikes? I don't see how their hard-dude reputations don't suffer when they're wheeling around town like some cracked troop of Shriners. All they need are fezzes.

Saying something horribly wrong is not brave, it is simply being horribly wrong. Evil, even. It's nice to see that this Neil Clark person has even ticked off the anti-war contingent, if the comments to his post are any indication. If you wondered what anti-Iraq-war position could be too revolting for most of the crew against the war, here's an example. Then again, peace babies, did you think that your movement could be free of extremist freaks? You're always slamming us "warmongers" for really being closet Nazis because of the occasional kill-'em-all bigot sputtering about "sand niggers," so don't be surprised when you're judged by the worst among you.

(Via LGF, and a lot of other blogs. Oh, and speaking of "stupid blog names," WTF is "comment is free"? That sounds dorky -- or as the British say, twee -- as hell. And it makes no sense. Comment is free? Don't they mean commentary is free? Commenting is free? It's not even good grammar.)

Are billboards and other advertisements for food and restaurants and grocery stores that can be seen by Muslims (as well as everyone else) hate crimes if they are not taken down for Ramadan? How about commercials on tv? How about if I stand across the street from a mosque and eat a bag of potato chips?

I can understand prohibiting eating at one's desk in the office for reasons of neatness and decorum (we used to periodically get memos about this at work back when there were more than a handful of us rattling about the place), but to avoid offending some anal-retentive religious person? Christians are always having frankly anti-Christian stuff shoved in their faces 24/7, and if they dare complain, are basically told to put up with it or else. Hell -- Jews are told to put up with a number of them being killed by people who don't like them every year, because fighting back means they're not being nice. You know what? It's time we told the members of the whiniest religion on earth (it starts with "I" doesn't it?) to put up with stuff they don't like or else go back where they came from (or in the case of converts, where they really belong).

As for me, I'm thinking of holding an anti-Ramadan -- for the forty days and forty nights, or whatever the hell it is, I will eat whatever the hell I want all freaking day, where God and everybody can see me.

(P.S.: yes, that "disclaimer" makes no sense at all, so either it's not a disclaimer, or the person who wrote it is subliterate.)

Natalie Solent recounts the story of a woman left alone to give birth (when she had been told it was dangerous to do so) all by herself in a toilet in a hospital, while nurses refused to help. In Britain. She wonders: "How do we get our nerve back?"

The answer is you don't; nerves don't grow back. They're dead, Jim.

My youthful Anglophilia is just about gone and events like these are helping speed it on its way to oblivion. I'm glad I got to go to England when I was just out of high school, before the zombies took over. I will admit, I've been slogging through Mark Steyn's America Alone, and it's been a hard go not because he's a lousy writer (though the book is spready, and could really be compressed into a few of his columns) or because I disagree with him (I agree with just about everything he says), but because I simply don't care about Europe anymore. How can I care about people who don't care about themselves? The few actual live humans who still live in that hollow charnel house should leave before it collapses and takes them down with it.

This is a trip down memory lane... Robert Fisk has been under the radar for a while, and I had figured that his minders had finally got tired of replacing the gnawed-through leather straps and those 3am calls about some crazy old man wandering the streets of Beirut in nothing but his socks and finally had him committed, but here he is, back to his old, far-too-easily-parodied twenty-dumb-questions style of column-scribbling. This time he's decided (better late than never) to jump on the 9/11 Truther bandwagon just as it's run out of gas. Time to fisk the Fisk:

where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon?

Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled?

Why did flight 93’s debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field?

Sometimes all you can do is stare in wonder at the moral voids some people inhabit. Behold one Bill Richardson, Governor (!) of New Mexico and candidate (!!) for president's claim that the US leaving Iraq right now will make everything hunky-dory, sunshine, unicorns with baskets of chocolate... How does he know this is the right move? Well, he's "negotiated successfully with many regional leaders, including Saddam Hussein"! Well, isn't New Mexico where they have all those bizarre New Age places? It just goes to show you that crystals are bad for your health. (Ably fisked by AOG, who has a lot more patience than I do.)

I have a suggestion for the next time some "unexpected" attack on our country ends up with a swath of devastated urban area and dead bodies: don't clean it up and make it all tidy like we've done to the World Trade Center zone and the Pentagon. Instead, leave the ruins and corpses where they are so that every day we will be reminded of the atrocity committed against us. I'm serious -- apparently the rush to let us get back to "normal" after September 11th has worked a little too well.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Update, 9-12-07: or perhaps not. Still, this doesn't change my theory that our instinct to clean and tidy things up right away is counterproductive. You can see it in the bored, irritated reaction of too many people to the idea that fighting our enemies means we'll have to get our hands dirty. (Also via.)

The problems with this puling, lackwitted sibling complaint disguised as an exposé of the shocking fact that the Naval Acadamy at Annapolis is -- gasp! shock! -- part of the military, start with the very first line:

I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, “Wow, you must be smart.”

Me me, I I, me me, I I. And it goes downhill -- if that's possible -- from there, continuing in the vein of "I was uncomfortable" with her brother's decision to enter the academy, and "I allowed" her brother to make his own decisions about his own life. It's always about them, their feelings, their ego, their overwhelming need to be the center of attention at all times, the alpha and omega of existence. This is the end result of decades of self-esteem culture, as is the kindergarten-level grasp on reality and fourth-grade-level writing style. (Not to mention one glaring mistake that I can't believe made it through the editing process without being vetted: "...everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was." If one must use this gossip-column cliché, at least use it correctly: it's "oohed and aahed.") This paragon of our educational system is majoring in Political Science, a.k.a. "all you have to do is watch CNN and read TIME and Newsweek." It's Journalism Lite, today's MrS degree for girls who want to be known as "real smart" and "up on current events" at their future doctor husbands' dinner parties.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

Update: from Ace's comments -- I swear I did not read this before I wrote the above. What can I say, great minds think alike.

Hm...

Starter kids, so you can see if the whole parent thing is for you:

"I was a Mom for like, two seconds." That's what Andi says to me today, her enormous kohl-rimmed blue eyes crinkling as she recounts her drive-through parenting. "It was literally an entry-level child-raising."

Her own parents raised her until she was 20, and she didn't want to condemn another generation to that hell. Andi returned Parker to the maternity ward almost a year to the day after she had given birth to him and vowed to be his mother forever.

"Oh, my God, it was so easy," she says, exhaling loudly. "I realized, I can get out of this, and he can get out of this, and we can get on with our lives.... It's true. I wouldn't have had him if I didn't think I could get out of it."

Parker was unavailable for comment.

Apparently it's "Talk Like A Pirate" Day. So what. Pirates were thieves, rapists, and murderers. Why the hell should I want to imitate them? I'd rather talk like a British Navy captain.

Do I have to be conservative all by myself here?

I say build a chain of bacon strips and wrap it around the whole site. Then dare him to cross.

Or: will anyone have the stones to make a citizen's arrest? It's time.

Update on My Life In Bearded-Spock-Land: former Hah-vahd president Larry Summers was shooed away from a speaking engagement at Columbia U by frightened, delicate females... excuse me, stalwart guardians of the Rights of Women to Complete And Total Equality With Men, lest he make some poor woman burst into tears (or throw up). But they're going to let Ahmaninejad speak. For some reason I don't think the fact that he runs a country where women can get arrested for showing a bit of ankle will be mentioned. (Via Tightly Wound.)

I don't think that Christopher Hitchens comes well out of this.

And oh, yes, he's an alcoholic all right. If, as a commenter claims, Hitchens drinks because "he finds people boring," instead of for the enjoyment of the drink itself, that's classic alcoholic behavior. Alchy's usually get religion in the end unless their brains go first (well, it must be admitted that sometimes both things happen), so Fr. Rutler wasn't proselytizing or uttering clerical wishful thinking, just common sense.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Someone by the name of Mike H(f)uck(head)abee is apparently running for some kind of political office. His campaign is apparently aimed at people with the IQs of paste. I just removed an off-topic spam comment on one of the blogs I maintain from some void-skull who pasted a link to this Mike Hu(nt)ckabee's blog. Then I wandered over to said blog and left the following comment:

You know what. Spamming random blog comment sites is not the way to get votes. I will ban the IP address of anyone who leaves any of your links in any of the comment threads of the websites I run, and I will pass the word far and wide that your campaign is inept and your followers incredibly stupid.

It hasn't shown up yet so they'll probably delete it from their moderation queue (all the other comments were fawning fanboy offers to give him blowjobs and have his babies). Anyway, you have been warned. I wouldn't vote for this guy -- the five seconds I spent on his site assured me he is just another bland cardboard cutout in a suit.

For a brief, shining moment in the musical history of France, they produced composers such as Delibes and Debussy. Fast-forward to the 21st century.

And what the hell is it with the French and accordions?

I must beg to differ with The American Princess: Bruce Springsteen is by no means "a fantastic songwriter and a great musician" unless we are to rewrite the standards of musical excellence to include "singing" that brings to mind nothing so much as a bout of extra-intense straining on the toilet, coupled with dull sub-folk-rock clangor and pretentiously overblown lyrics that attempt to marry the dull and seedy lives of northeastern urban provincials to half-baked Rimbaudish poetical stylings. One might well ask "where is the Tristan und Isolde of late-Seventies thud-rock?"

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Update: I've never actually read any Rimbaud, but I've always heard that he appealed to the macho-male contingent of the American male pseudo-intellectual brigade which is why I threw his name in there. And what do you know, I was right. Remove all that pansy stuff about longing for the "aged ramparts of Europe" and black cold pools in scented twilight, grind everything down to a teenager's vocabulary, and you have everything Springsteen has ever written.

Last update, then I am done with this nonsense: what is it with rabid fans of whoever? I write that I cannot stand so-and-so's music, and I get lectured on how "unfair" I am for my dislike for reasons I never gave in my post. And then I get a list of songs and lyric samples as if, because I parodied the title of one of said singer's songs for the title of my own post, my problem was really with that one song despite what I actually wrote in the post. In short, why can't Bruuuuuce Fans read?

Here's the thing: I do not like Bruce Springsteen. I do not like him on my record player. I do not like him on my radio. I do not like him on cd; I would not like a dvd. I do not like him with my eggs; I cannot drink from enough kegs. I will not "instead" listen to "just this song"; I will not, WILL NOT play along. I won't take him in a box; I don't care how much he rocks. I don't like the music he plays; I don't like the words his songs say. I don't like the way he sings; nor his band nor anything. I do not like this Bruce Springsteen!

I'm apparently unemployed because of slavery.

Hey man, I just find these things on the in-tard-net, I don't make them up:

We can only hope you understand that in a country in which the legacy of slavery has sentenced a colossal swath of the population to unemployment[...]

Well, she didn't say what segment of the population made up this "colossal swath," so I can only assume us white girls get to play! So where's my reparation money, bitches?

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

In the Bearded Spock universe, criticizing the Democrats for using sick children to flog their socialist "a doctor in every pot" health plan, is actually attacking the children. Of course, what really irritates these people is the fact that anyone with half a brain saw through this ploy to the relatively wealthy business owner complete with high-priced suburban home that actually provided the sick children. As many sensible people -- cough, excuse me, fascist child-molesting rightwing haters -- have pointed out, the family in question apparently chose not to avail themselves of many affordable health plans, and have tried to pass this off as "we couldn't find anything we could afford."

I've been reading a lot on blogs and so on about the scary juggernaut that the Democratic party is turning into, but this sort of reaction isn't that of winners -- it stinks instead of desperate loser flop-sweat. You know, lefties, it's kind of hard to convince people that you're the righteous, ethical ones when you're busy pissing on our heads and telling us it's raining.

(First link via a commenter at Tim Blair's, the rest of the links via Kathy Shaidle and Mark Steyn at the Corner.)

Update: (via Kathy) we're here, we're queer, get used to it! On a side note, when pondering the seeming paradox of gay-bating progressives we should recall the sort of treatment homosexuals received in that star example of the communist way of life, the Soviet Union. GLBT's who throw their lot in with leftists should especially keep this in mind.

Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, for his amazing knack for driving people who would otherwise lead calm, unruffled lives into spasms of teeth-gnashing, incandescent fury. I used to be one of them, but not anymore. Instead, I'm just going to sit back and watch the fun. Lots of links here, and here. As one commenter says here, who wants to bet he flies over to Oslo in his private jet to pick up the prize?

Update: who could forget the dreaded scourge of ManBearPig?

Another update: speaking of Nobel Peace Prize shenanigans, read the last segment of this story. (Via Instapundit.)

Michelle Malkin has further revelations about the Frosts, the Democratic spokesfamily for the supposed need for more taxpayer-funded health entitlements. It turns out they are the kind of "buy now, think about how to pay for it later" people that I am quite familiar with, having been one for too many years myself. I'm still crawling out from under the life-wasting results of my years as a big spender with a tiny income. I will say, though, that at least I didn't make the mistakes these people made. I rent, so there is no house to lose to foreclosure, and after my last new car was repossessed I didn't drive for nearly four years. I'm much more realistic about my needs and goals, and I didn't go to the government for handouts. This apartment I now rent is income restricted, but it's the most expensive apartment I've lived in yet -- and I plan not to renew the lease when it comes due in May. And there is just me and two cats -- I have no children to be responsible for.

Anyway, enough about me. Let me tell you about my family. My father was kind of a "lovable goofball" like Frost père -- he would rather party, hang out with friends, and go to bars than work hard (one reason he became a teacher was the hours, and the summers off, when he'd find odd jobs until the county implemented all-year pay for teachers in the public school system). But you know what? He managed to hold down a steady job (he was contracted to the school), and though we didn't have a lot of luxuries we always had enough food to eat and clothes to wear and the entire family was insured via his insurance. And we had one house, one car -- which was used, and which my parents kept until the thing literally fell apart, whereupon they bought another used car -- and until my parents bought a tiny black and white for their bedroom, one television. And both I and my sister, after (for me) one year in a private school, went to public school. We were expected to do our homework and make the best grades we could. Of course there was no internet to screw around with, no video games, and television was mostly for grownups except on Saturday mornings, and there weren't very many channels anyway. Our house wasn't worth a lot of money either -- it was a broken-down old 20s "Boomer" wood frame that ended up succumbing to termites, and it didn't have any air-conditioning. My parents weren't at all concerned with coddling me and my sister -- we had a huge shade tree in the front yard to cool the house, and if we got hot we could turn on the fan. They had no trouble saying "no" to our requests for toys and other things that cost money if we couldn't afford it -- when it came to credit I think my parents had a Sears card and an American Express and an account with Fingerhut.

And even today it is still possible to live the life of a "lovable goofball" complete with wife and kids and still live within your means if you are willing to forgo the fancy cars and the private schools and the huge, swollen modern home. Fewer and fewer people are willing to do this, though, because more and more people are spoiled brats who think they are entitled to live the luxe life on someone else's dime.

One more thing: the Frosts' insurance shenanigans remind me of why I got out of the insurance business. I got so tired of hearing Entitled-Americans bitch, moan, and complain about having to pay for their own mistakes. So they had two at-faults and three NAFs and a reckless driving on their record -- why couldn't they get the best rate anyway? And so they missed their last two payments and had their insurance canceled and waited past the thirty-day mark which meant a whole new policy had to be rewritten instead of just reinstating the current policy, which of course meant they'd have to put a new down payment instead of just making up the payments they'd missed. Unfair unfair! And why is insurance so high in Orlando? Why should they have to pay higher rates because rates had gone up across the board? And so on. You know what? When I went for insurance recently I didn't bitch and moan at the cost. I just got a few quotes, and went for the cheapest one which would still give me sufficient coverage. People have the mistaken impression that they can get what they want by screaming and crying, because this is probably how they were raised -- coddled by overindulgent parents terrified of not being their offsprings' "friends." The customer is always supposed to be right, but that notion came from a time when the customer was a grownup who had a lick of sense, not babies who think the world owes them a living.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

One more thing: screaming "that's mean!" does absolutely nothing to advance the debate, never mind solving the problem. All it does is make the one screaming it look like a child who has been told something he doesn't want to hear. Again. And so what if it's "mean" to point out these facts, some of which are yes, very hard to hear? How many times can I say it: Life. Is. Not. Fair. Life, in fact, is often "mean" and even cruel. I can tell you there's one place where everyone has no problems: the cemetery.

I am always right: desperate for the warm bath of flattery he bathed the world in, Bill Clinton's admirers will do anything to get him back in the White House. And after Mother there is Daughter, who I am sure will spawn no matter what her personal inclinations. Get used to the idea of a perpetual Clinton presidency.

I have so far this past week seen two -- that's two -- movies where a major character stands in the middle of a road and is promptly introduced to wheeled disaster of some sort. This annoys me on several levels not related to the quality of the movies themselves (one was quite good, the other quite bad). In other words: dear filmmakers, please think of some other way of getting your characters in trouble that does not necessitate them contravening basic human nature. One tenet of which is people do not stand in the middle of the road, thereby making themselves available to be hit by the next high-speed vehicle that comes along. They just don't. Unless they are very very drunk, a state which neither movie established to a sufficient degree. Otherwise the scene is just a lazy way of setting up an action scene.

The fact that news anchor Rick Sanchez is not living in a dumpster behind a Winn-Dixie in Miami. I practically grew up with this human car crash on my television and kept expecting his next fuck-up to be his last. Shit really does float.

Jesus, don't toady, people. It's embarrassing.

America-hating commie hippies are stupid: they can't even password-protect their event calendar.

...if by "better people" you mean in the eugenical, eliminate-the-"inferiors" sense. That's how they do it in New Zealand. Check out the comments for further proof that socialism = brotherhood.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has gone completely nuts:

THE (sic) Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.

I mean, that's really bringing the crazy. I've cracked a history book or two, and I'm pretty sure that the British Empire left anything we've ever done in the dust. Then again, maybe I'm wrong -- maybe we're just waiting for the final design to be approved for King George W. Bush II's crown. I don't follow politics much these days.

(Via.)

Let me just say that despite my experience at Ikea I also love self-checkout lines at stores, for the same reason Rachel Lucas does. My first real job was as a cashier at Publix, and I (usually) have no trouble getting my purchases coded in. The only problem I've ever had is getting the attention of the human employees whenever I ran into a glitch.

PS: when are socialists going to present arguments in favor of their positions that don't reek of mothballs? Everything the guy says assumes that people have no higher ambition than to work at one job at one place for all their lives just like their fathers before them. Hey, lefties, this isn't the 19th century anymore -- minimum wage employees are allowed to move up the ladder to higher salaried positions.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Really, I'm sick of this: today's liberals are so obsessed with not being mistaken for Haters!™ that they can't even read straight. Note to Jim Henley (whose cutesy liberal sincere/snark shtick wore off on me long ago): your self-righteous diatribe and a quarter won't even get you a phone call these days. And your "correction" -- where you stand by calling Steyn a "douchebag" for, well, I don't know, daring to reveal something about Muslims that clearly makes you uncomfortable makes you look even more like an idiot. (Via Ace of Spades.)

PS: by the way, concerning that whole treating of Islam as some sort of race -- has no one checked the birthrate of white girls that go Muslim and marry? I'll bet it's higher than that of their non-Muslim counterparts. Or is that racist to speculate that people might base their childbearing decisions on something other than their skin color?

Next Day Update: if only our leaders were as dismissive of these past-their-shelf-lives loons. (Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Now in me news: one of the HVAC units outside my window (not the one connected to my a/c, at least) is making a hideous loud rattling noise. That's just great. This sort of thing never, and I mean never, happens when the office is open. It always happens at 3am, or on Sundays and holidays.

Just sticking this here update: guess what -- right after I called the emergency maintenance number (for the aforementioned hideous loud rattling noise outside my window) the noise stopped. Someone must have turned their thermostat up -- or else I have special psychic powers that really would have been convenient in many other circumstances previous to this. I'm not getting rid of my microwave just yet... (And yes, I know which unit it is -- I went outside and checked.)

And a little later...: it started up again. Grr.

This is just plain shitty. Is there some reason we stopped tar-and-feathering people?

Because I refuse to subject myself to crap like this:

"This isn't the worst thing that will happen to you today."

Said to me by a woman working behind the counter for a major airline as I checked my bag today and complained that the instructions on the self-check-in screen were confusing and flashed off before I could figure out what I was supposed to do next.

But travelers put up with bullshit like this all the time in order to get where they are going and not get arrested by security. And as long as they do, the bullshit will not only continue, it will get worse. People are garbage -- if you give them the slightest leeway in letting them think they can get away with murder, ninety times out of one hundred they will take that chance. As for me, if I ever do go to Europe again it will be aboard a cruise ship, norovirus or no. At least a virus doesn't insult you to your face and expect to get a tip.

I'm not leaving my apartment until January 6th. It should be semi-safe by then.

My eagle eye spotted this little grammar mistake in yet another pity-stroking article about Katrina "victims" fucking up their lives:

“What am I supposed to do — leave my daughter and my grandkids on the street?” said an emotional Priscilla Mercadel, 57, whose eyes were red from sobbing last week.

Is it any wonder that the media is so easily taken in by nonsense that a normal person (that is, not a "journalist") wouldn't accept as gospel from a four year old, when they can't even use the English language correctly? "Sobbing" is something you do with your vocal chords. The sentence should have read "...whose eyes were red from weeping" or "... whose voice was hoarse from sobbing." This sort of thing crops up all over the place and it drives me crazy.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

More superior nuanced humanity from the so-called "liberal" side of the brain pan as this... person finds a silver lining to the manufactured global warming "crisis": at least all those parts of the country that are full of rightwingers will get flooded. Just in time for Christmas, visions of drowned or displaced and homeless red-staters dance in the heads of progressives... That'll teach 'em to vote for Republicans! (Via Instapundit.)