Monday, May 31, 2010

Pegging The Irony Meter

Internet addicts guilty of starving baby to death

A South Korean couple were convicted Friday of abandoning their newborn daughter, who starved to death while they addictively played an online game raising a virtual child.
Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea —
A South Korean couple were convicted Friday of abandoning their newborn daughter, who starved to death while they addictively played an online game raising a virtual child.

The husband, a 41-year-old taxi driver, and his 25-year-old wife were sentenced to two years in prison, but the woman's term was suspended because she is pregnant.

The couple played at Internet cafes on average 10 hours every day and bottle-fed their baby only once a day, prosecutors said in an affidavit.

The girl, who was born prematurely and weighed 5 pounds (2.25 kilograms), was often fed rotten formula and was beaten when she cried out of hunger, the affidavit said.

They found her dead when they returned to their home in Suwon, just south of Seoul, after an all-night gaming session last September, the ruling said. They hid at a relative's home after a autopsy found the baby died of malnutrition.
And now, the rest of the story.

Bums Beat 'Backs On Balk, 5 - 4

Couldn't resist.

And.

Exodus: History Shows Again & Again

The “Exodus 1947,” a ship filled with Jewish Holocaust survivors who wanted to immigrate to Palestine, after it was seized by the British Navy in a deadly struggle at sea and brought to Haifa in July, 1947.The New York Times
History, & several videos of yesterday's piracy.
Click image above, leads to 1947 actuality.
And an extra-obvious video, just because.

Our Boys & Girls Died So Boss Hogg Could Run Your Life & Wave His Dick At You While Walking Tall

The AP story: Drooling compensators want to be able to wave their rods around very publicly.
"It is time for the sworn protectors of liberty, the Sheriffs of these United States of America, to walk tall and stand up for our Constitution and Bill of Rights," proclaimed Larimer County, Colo., candidate Carl Bruning in his campaign literature.

The retired Air Force pilot is running against an incumbent, Sheriff James Alderden, who himself is popular with the gun rights supporters for refusing to enforce a Colorado State University gun ban.

But Bruning even goes further by vowing to never enter the names of concealed-carry permit holders into the statewide database.

In Orange County, Calif., Oath Keeper Bill Hunt said California needs strong sheriffs to stand up to the federal government in the modern day wars over water, and to stick up for citizens who have a hard time getting concealed weapons permits.

Hunt, who is running a credible campaign in the large county, said it will only take a strong presence from the sheriff, and possibly lawsuits, not some sort of armed standoff.

"Leadership is meeting with the other agencies in government and letting them know it if they are outside their jurisdiction," Hunt said.
That's leadership America can get behind. Let's see if we have this right: The sheriff is to enforce imaginary Constitutional limits on other gummint agencies, & the concealed carry permit holders will enforce actual law w/ a little street justice?

The commies lite of Think Progress add context, by which we mean point out what a sad collection of pin-dicked loser asshole weirdos these "Oath Keepers" are.

Just Fucking Imagine

Andrew Sullivan suggests a use for your mind:
Just imagine if a flotilla of anti-Tehran activists were attacked in international waters by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and that the Guards killed 16 or more of the civilians. What do you think Commentary would be saying then?

Cultural Criticism

This is a tough one. Leftists mocking "our" troops as too weak to whip a dinosaur?
Or conservative reinforcement? Jesus rode a dinosaur, why can't G.I. Joe?

This just in: It's apolitical crap, unless you think the deliberate foisting of crap on suckers to divert them from actuality is a political act. In which case you'd be absolutely correct.

To The Past, Quickly

One-time Laura Bush lap dog Andrew Malcolm embedded a pair of Kate Smith videos & signed off today's hard work w/ this:
And may God bless all free men and women in uniform. Happy Holiday.
If Andrew Malcolm gave a gawd-damned shit about the noble fucking dead he wouldn't be suggesting that a happy holiday be had, he'd be in America's parks & backyards overturning grills & screaming at the real Americans how they're lazy parasites not fit to lick the shit-stained boots of the noble dead. Most of whom died in vain, it seems, as no one in America is free from the national security state or the rent-collecting elites.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

PIRATE ATTACK IN MEDITERRANEAN!!

Oh, sorry. Wasn't pirates after all, it was the Israeli Navy. Hard to tell when your flotilla is in international waters. Heh heh.

Report: At least 10 activists killed as Israel Navy opens fire on Gaza aid flotilla

Over 60 pro-Palestinian campaigners wounded after six-ship convoy sailing for Gaza Strip ignored Israel's order to turn back, Turkish news reports. IDF confirms two commandos also wounded.

[...]

The Israeli navy was operating under the assumption that the activists manning the boats would not heed their calls to turn around, and Israeli troops were prepared to board the ships and steer them away from the Gaza shores and toward the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

Please do not pee on our leg & tell us this isn't piracy. We'll be expecting the U.S. Sixth Fleet to take the appropriate action immediately, as the USN does w/ Somali pirates.

If It Weren't for The Internet We Could Ignore This Rot

The World's Greatest Music Contest - and you just missed it

Contest? Why not just have a fucking war? Been done w/ soccer. And are we somehow mistaken to believe that the Ay-rabs & Moose-lims have turned Europe, from Iceland to the Urals, into a mandatory burqa zone? Doesn't look it here, but for all we know Al-Jazeera is running the whole thing.

Twilight Of The Amazing Blue Ribbon 400

Desperate for material, we thought this might be amusing enough. Then we got to the LaRouche people.
One banner read: “Wagner: Loved by Nazis, Rejected by Humans.” Another said: “L.A. County: $14 Million to promote Nazi Wagner, Layoffs for Music Teachers.”

The protesters identified themselves as supporters for [sic] Lyndon LaRouche, the eccentric political activist and frequent presidential candidate who once led the U.S. Labor Party. The group handed out fliers published by the Schiller Institute, an organization founded by LaRouche’s wife, Helga.

The fliers denounced Wagner’s anti-Semitic personal views and criticized the county for rescuing the opera company. “Does Los Angeles County have nothing better to do … than bail out L.A. Opera, so that it can celebrate the monstrous sexual fantasies, and the cult of violence, of that vile anti-Semite, Wagner?” read the flier.

Stephen Rountree, who serves as chief operating officer of L.A. Opera and president of the Music Center, said in a statement that “dialogue is good and we welcome all conversations” in connection to the “Ring.”

In December, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a $14-million loan to the opera company, which at the time said it was $20 million in debt. The loan is intended to help keep L.A. Opera afloat through mid-2010.

[...]

Brittany Gash of Inglewood was attending “South Pacific” at the Ahmanson Theater but stopped to survey the action. “I think the ‘Ring’ Festival is a sham,” she said. “I consider myself a music lover, but I don’t think Angelenos can relate to this production. It’s not an accessible piece for the public.”
All praise to Wotan, for creating commonsense real Americans who can get behind "South Pacific."

Joke: Combine "accessibility" & "mentally handicapped." Also, laugh at "Brittany Gash."

Time To Start The "Pull Out Now Like Your Father Should Have" Campaign?

Don't Ask. Don't Even Think Of Asking.

From the pp. of Boy Commandos #1.

This Yr.'s Eurovision Winner

Our boys died so the Euros could come up w/ this stuff? And then they rub our noses in it on Memorial Day.

Enjoy Decoration Day. Get Out There & Decorate A Grave!

While you're stuffing your fat American face this wknd., don't even give a thought to the now-one thousand Americans (not to mention all the non-Americans) who have died for nothing at all in Afghanistan.

And just forget everyone else who has died in vain. Or who's been murdered to serve corporate interests. You already have? Good for you. You're a real American. Patriots keep their minds & mouths shut.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Yesterday's Funny Pages

Annals of Lassitude

We had great plans to be awake by noon today, & then to hit the hills for hiking. Managed to rouse ourself about 1400.

Then, adding to injury, our ilk was insulted in a national forum.
Christ Jesus, Goldberg is now too lazy to watch TV.
AHEM!
Who isn't?

Future Vehicular Homicide

Lay-tar: Credit, courtesy & context.

Bovver Boys Back In Blighty

Similar to our own U.S. of A. Teabaggers,
Following the British National party's poor showing in this month's local and national elections anti-racist campaigners say some far-right activists may be turning away from the ballot box and returning to violent street demonstrations for the first time in three decades.
sore fucking losers who didn't like election results, but our TEA Partiers are such punk-ass chumps they're too cowardly to do anything.

Is America not the land of the six-gun? Look at the effeminate English, under the tyranny of gun regulation, but willing to use their bare hands to show the welfare moochers/Moooslim hordes what for. Our T.P. people could get in their SUVs w/ their guns & go on down to Lazy Town, if they weren't such fraidy-cats.
In undercover footage shot by Guardian Films, EDL spokesman Guramit Singh says its Bradford demonstration "will be huge". He adds: "The problem with Bradford is the security threat, it is a highly populated Muslim area. They are very militant as well. Bradford is a place that has got to be hit."
This reporter has never been so ashamed for his country. It's painful to think, but comparing the real Britain's firm resolve to our sad sack tea partiers, we have to ask if This Great Nation Of Ours™ would have been better off if Abraham Lincoln hadn't freed us from Queen Victoria's cruel reign.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Our Shrinking American Heritage

Had you asked us, we couldn't have told you if the Mercury brand still existed. Not that we know anything about automobiles (or anything the hell else) beyond what we see/hear on the screen or in the cyberspace. Central to our point, as we've not seen a tee vee advert for a Mercury w/in living memory.
"Mercury is a brand that has lost its meaning in the American automotive marketplace and it isn't worth trying to change that," Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl said in a statement.
Probably not a good idea to re-imagine the Cougar right now, even if they remembered it.
Mercury, a mid-range brand designed to sit between the basic Ford brand and the luxury Lincoln brand, has been flailing for a while. Mercury's sales peaked in 1978 at more than 580,000 vehicles and have been declining ever since (2009 sales were only 92,000 vehicles).
To the best of this reporter's recall, the only thing Mercury ever did of any interest was the breezeway roof.
Watch the scarf, Isadora!

Another Possible Future Victim Of The Vast Liberal Something-Or-Other Bemoans His Imagined Potential Fate (We Suppose While Barely Holding Back His Tears)

They've been reading the future for years now. (At least since the call to invade & occupy Iraq, & continuing through the current certain knowledge of Obama & his Hitlero-Socialist plans for the doom of America.) And always accurately, so why shouldn't we believe Rush Limbaugh when he gets his Whiny-Ass Titty-Baby on?
"I fear that all I have accomplished and all the wealth I have accumulated will be taken from me, to the cheers of the crowd. I know I am hated and despised by the American Left."
Limbaugh's falling into the same dungeon where Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin & her true believers are imprisoned. They & their supporters should realize it is not hatred, but pity & schadenfreude the American Left (if we may presume) experiences each time the prime practitioners of the "piss off liberals" ideology open a microphone or hit share on their Facebook page. We (the American Left) can't despise you if we're laughing at your absurdities.

Do the shrinks have a term for paranoia on the behalf of others? Perhaps Proxy Paranoia, or Althouse Syndrome:
It doesn't make sense to talk about whether he sounds paranoid. We're not seeing the hate mail and threats he receives. We don't know the security precautions he needs to take. Who knows what it would be like to be a sane man in that position? But he should also see that he has been able to build his media empire and speak freely, attacking government officials over the public airwaves for 15 hours a week, year after year. They haven't stopped him.
Haven't stopped him? Haven't tried to stop him, have "they?" We're very, very curious as to how Ms. Althouse thinks Limbaugh may be stopped. Were he to be caught w/ a live boy or dead girl & lose his gig it would certainly be the result of his being "stopped," wouldn't it?

And we've saved the best for last. Did you notice Mr. Limbaugh's admission that he neither creates nor produces his wealth, but merely "accumulates" it? Go up there & look.

We can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh's asteroidal mass somehow helps him to "accumulate" wealth.

Bastards: Never Trust Anyone Under ThirtyForty!

Today's College Students are Heartless Narcissists, Study Says

A new study suggests that compared to college students in the 1970s, today's college kids are forty percent less likely to show signs of empathy. The study was presented this week at the Association for Psychological Science in Boston, and it was based on a review of 72 studies conducted between 1979 and 2009. Survey questions gauged student responses to statements like "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me"; and "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective." Today's students, the authors said, did not fare well. Researchers have spun a number of theories explaining the self-centeredness of the so-called "Me" generation, pointing fingers at the media, social networking, and video games. "Many people see the current group of college students… as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history," one of the authors stated. An unrelated study suggests that whether or not students are selfish, they're definitely not prepared for the workplace. According to a York College survey, most graduating seniors are not ready to deal with the realities of a 9-5, and instead think that "they're entitled to become, let's say, president of the company within the next two years."
Read original story in Live Science | Friday, May 28, 2010

Democracy In Action

Whitman Spending Half Million a Day

Meg Whitman (R) "has spent an astonishing $33.8 million in the last eight weeks alone on her quest to be California's next governor -- burning through cash at a rate of about $500,000 a day," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

In contrast, Jerry Brown (D) spent just $259,000 -- or about spent $3,900 a day -- over the same period.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

103 - 101

Even as jazz happened:

Jazzbos

Went west to see a film today; on the return trip jazz broke out at the Farmers Market, where we had stopped only because we didn't feel like preparing food.
Quintet Leader Elliot Caine
These cats have suffered, & they let the audience know about it. We got there in time to catch the last couple of numbers, both of which involved some fine wailin'.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Annals Of H-8erdom

This killed us:
Hey, loser: YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING CRATER. Get a job, free loader.

The Latest Indignity In A Life So Filled W/ Them That We'd Lose Count If We Didn't Keep A Detailed List

Power outage (What does that mean, really?) at Wrigley Field, stopping tee vee coverage of the Dodgers-Cubs game.
Keep it up, America. Just keep it up. You'll be sorry. All of you. Bastards.

Entire Liberal Media Edifice Brought Down By Guilty Plea

Perhaps we should wander to Twitter to see if Big Boy Breitbart is apoplectic yet.

Breitbart's boy band, The Four Fuck-Ups,
pleaded guilty Wednesday morning in federal court to entering real property belonging to the United States under false pretenses.

Magistrate Judge Daniel Knowles III sentenced Stan Dai, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan each to two years probation, a fine of $1,500 and 75 hours of community service during their first year of probation.

James O'Keefe, as leader of the group and famous for posing as a pimp in ACORN office videos, received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service.
Too bad. Would have loved to see O'Keeffe's daring hidden camera exposé of rape in the Federal Prison System. Or his first hand documentation of prisoner life at Guantanamo.

Food Truck Our Ass, It's Still A Roach Coach!

We find ourself in the block under discussion at least once a month (our commie-socialist credit union is there) but you can bet your last organic, free-range ostrich drumstick that we've never set foot in such food-for-weaklings spots as Koo Koo Roo, Organic to Go or Toshi's Fresh Asian, now all history.
Photo by polaroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
The people above are in front of the building named Variety, seen here.
Sadly, as are seldom awake before most squares have already finished their lunches (What's the fucking rush? Stop & smell the flowers, sheep.) we've never arrived in time to enjoy the possibilities of eleven trucks at once. Only one, which has been serving for late lunchers for yrs., long before the advent of trendy fucking food trucks. What can not be appropriated & upscaled?

<shouty>It's as if nothing were sacred!</shouty>

Sisters

To coin a phrase, we have had our fun (& plenty of it)

Too Late, Too Late Vol. 5 (1927-1964)

by Various Artists

but this sounds like real fun, & we're only sorry we're too old to be in on any of it.
At a March 6 party sponsored by the group's Ohio University chapter, attendees engaged in sex acts, used plates as "missiles" during food fights, vomited on carpets, defecated in urinals, and tried to tear off the clothes of a female bartender, according to a letter written by the director of the West Virginia art center where the formal was held. In her April 6 letter to the sorority, a copy of which you'll find below, Abby Hayhurst, head of the Parkersburg Art Center, reported that catering staff witnessed "a couple engaging in sexual congress, while surrounded by a cheering throng," and that a bathroom sink was broken as a result of "one of your members and her date attempting to have sexual relations on it, an act which was witnessed by the event's caterer, who walked in on them."
Other fun had by America's privileged young ladies:
[I]nebriated sorority sisters and their guests attempted to "urinate on our artifacts," defaced restrooms, and vomited "throughout our building." Describing the museum as a "place of education and inspiration for visitors," Rhonda Miller noted that, a day after the formal, staffers were "still finding hidden bottles of alcohol and new places where students had vomited from having too much to drink." Miller, the museum's private event coordinator, wrote that she even had to stop one young man as he was preparing to relieve himself on the side of a "priceless and sanctified" slave pen. The pen, pictured above, was moved from a Kentucky farm and reassembled in the museum's second-floor atrium (slaves were imprisoned in the two-story log house prior to their auction).
Don't miss this letter, either.

From The In-Box

Microsoft may not be as crummy as some would say. They certainly have this shit figured out.

TEA Party People: This Is What Happens When Big Gov't. Wants To Get You

Responding to another false equivalence, the Black Panther Party
& the TP
are compared & contrasted in the PuffHo:
Jefferson's poor grasp of history and sloppy analysis reaches new, disturbing heights when he suggests that BPP and Tea Party paramilitarism are the same. He writes:
Where the Tea Party and the Black Panther Party appear to connect most perfectly is at their hips, where they keep their guns. The Second Amendment -- and the arsenals it allows -- is a cornerstone of both organizations, and for very similar reasons: fear of governmental authority. Paramilitarism was always at the forefront of the Black Panthers' operations, mostly because they thought, rightly, that the government was out to destroy them. Factual or not, many Tea Partiers believe they are in similar danger...What is the difference between actually, wholly believing the government is after you and the government really being after you?
This question astounds me. The difference is as stark and clear as being eight months pregnant and awaken by gunfire in the middle of the night to find your fiancé's limp, bullet ridden body lying next to you as BPP member Deborah Johnson did in 1969. This versus living in a world of conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions. Johnson was one of the survivors of the FBI's counterintelligence campaign (COINTELPRO) that claimed the life of several BBP members including her fiancé, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark. Their murders were one of the worst acts of violence against the BPP at the hands of police, who in Chicago and elsewhere had partnered with the FBI to target a broad array of civil rights groups and people, including Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yes, pin-dicked lard-asses "taking YOUR country back," do let us know the very instant the "health-care takeover" involves nationalized insurance cos. & a single-payer system. And have your survivors contact us after the FBI has pried your substitute weiner from your cold, dead (& pudgy) fingers, Fred Hampton & Mark Clark style. Or stand around waving a sign.

Tee Vee Host & Bastard W/ Flying Daughter Dies At 97

The New York Times has a more detailed obit of recently deceased bastard Art Linkletter.
But in 1969, his 20-year-old daughter Diane jumped to her death from her sixth-floor Hollywood apartment. He blamed her death on LSD use, but toxicology tests found no LSD in her body after she died.

Still, the tragedy prompted Linkletter to become a crusader against drugs. A son, Robert, died in a car accident in 1980. Another son, Jack Linkletter, was 70 when he died of lymphoma in 2007.
The low-information parental unit personified.
"Life is not fair ... not easy," Linkletter said in a 1990 interview by The Associated Press. "Outside, peer pressure can wreak havoc with the nicest families. So that's the part that's a gamble."
Don't play the blame game w/ Art Linkletter! It wasn't him! Outside agitators! Why does a shit like that get to be ninety-fucking-seven? Further refutation of the imagined existence of a gawd or anything else.

Sex & Dopes & Rock & Roll & "Natural Law" Catholicism‽

Tuck's Daily Caller on occasion offers something besides the AP, original work that may be matching parts of the PuffHo for inanity. Today's example:
My friend Stephen Catanzarite and I are trying to form a nonprofit organization to study and celebrate popular culture, with a special emphasis on rock and roll, from a conservative perspective. We think that rock and roll is a dynamic source of spiritual and humanistic value, and a powerful celebration of love and the natural law. I am the author of the forthcoming “A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Stephen is the author of the great book “U2 Achtung Baby: Mediations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall.” We want to launch a website, a journal, and have an annual conference at Georgetown University. We want to challenge the left on its own turf.
Bring it on!! Huh huh.

Some credit will be given for this section, 'though it's all part of the nonprofit, put your money where your mouth is pitch:
For all their complaints about victimology, conservatives are world-class whiners when it comes to popular culture and the arts. Oh, Hollywood is so socialist! Publishing blackballs the right! Britney Spears is corrupting our children! They tsk-tsk and tut-tut and outright blast, then sit back and wait for the next outrage. And they don’t even bother to listen to Britney’s music, some of which – the album “Blackout” – is brilliant. Conservatives have set up their own successful publishing houses, but the books all have that same, well, sameness. Obama the Communist. The Outrageously Outrageous Politcially Correct Politics of Outrage. The Death of the West Parts I-XX. I’m all for the free market and these writers getting rich – hell, I hope “A Tremor of Bliss” makes me rich. But there has to be room for something beautiful, something different, something forward-thinking. The next Elia Kazan needs to be supported.
You can not get any more forward thinking than "the next Elia Kazan." Or can you: Whittaker Chambers, anyone?
I want to make a documentary, “Whittaker Chambers’ Washington.” It would be a walking tour of the spots in my hometown of Washington, D.C., made famous in Chambers’ classic book “Witness.” I thought I could bring a fresh interpretation to this timeless story by viewing it not only as a towering work of anti-communism, but as a religious text, comparable to Dante and St. Augustine. It’s exciting, because these days the technology has made it possible to make a cinema-quality film for $10,000.
Stripped down documentary film making at its finest. We've no idea what renting "cinema-quality" gear costs these days, or how long the Chambers fan wants his film to run, but $10,000.00? US?
Frankly, we are tired of having to get our music news from the likes of Rolling Stone, with its leftist agitprop and narcissistic resentments, and our movie reviews from Entertainment Weekly, while National Review and the Weekly Standard ignore what for many people is the poetry of their souls and soundtrack of their lives, as well as the culture.

Is it really possible to be both a consistent and coherent champion of the conservative mindset and an unabashed (or at least only somewhat-abashed) fan of ‘the Devil’s music’? Rock and roll is, after all, purported to be the music of “rebellion” set to the “rhythm of sexual intercourse,” and its chief practitioners are most often associated with both the agitations and agitators emanating from the leftist-most edges of the political spectrum. But after more than sixty years of growing up together (for rock and roll and the modern conservative movement share a genesis in post-World-War-Two America) is it not possible, and even likely, that these two potent, culture-shaping forces will have become, if not wholly-reconciled, at least conversant with each other? What if the presumption that rock ‘n’ roll is rebel music is, well, wrong? What if it is a modernist art that, at its best, reinforces spiritual and political conservatism? Imagine if that paradigm were to be dismantled.
Indeed, no one would mock you for not being one of the kewl kidz any more, right? We're a little surprised he take the "In a world gone mad w/ political correctness, the real rebels are the spiritual & social conservatives of Catholic Rock!" route, but decided his sales pitch should be based on his desire to squeeze the remaining life from a 70-yr. old genre, a task started by Pat Boone that was essentially accomplished by the time the first Eagles album cast its twanging, nasally harmonious shadow over the musical landscape.

Republican "rock":

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

No Assembly Required

Was awake (& up) early enough to make a purchase at the Sidewalk Mall, conveniently located several steps south of the front gate.
Previously: no sides, no damn good.
Post cleaning & moving.
Probably requires a sprayed-on coat or three of black enamel, but what's the hurry?

Total Negativity

Four things we will never click, let alone peruse.
Not in a million yrs.

25th Century iPod©™®

From Buck Rogers (1959).
How many songs you think that fat iPod holds? Will it handle Gas Music From Jupiter?

10th Amendment Up-Date

The nation’s founders built state capitals in remote areas, to avoid possible tyranny. But with fewer reporters aggressively covering state politics, Richard J. Tofel says corruption will increase precisely because government is so far away.
Those who care, click.
The numbers certainly support David Simon’s concerns: The American Journalism Review reported last year that the number of full-time reporters assigned to state capitals had dropped by one-third in six years, to an average of just seven reporters per state. With the business of the press having deteriorated further since the AJR survey, the numbers today are surely worse—and the continuing gridlock and irresponsibility gripping state governments from Sacramento to Albany are indicative of how problems can mushroom in the dark when scrutiny declines.
We can add that most great metropolitan television stations have closed whatever statehouse bureaus they had, though that trend started in the '80s. Not to imply anything positive about tee vee news coverage, of course.

Going Postal, U.K. Style

Teacher tension.
The married father of two hit the boy with a 3kg dumbbell while shouting: "Die, die, die."

But the jury accepted his barrister's claims that his pupils had driven him over the edge and he did not know what he was doing when the youngster – now 15 and a known troublemaker – told him to "fuck off".

[...]

"If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. There are lots of teachers who are ticking timebombs. I know teachers who, because of stress, can't hold a cup of coffee or are too frightened to cross the road."

[...]

Harvey, who now faces a disciplinary hearing, will not be allowed to work with children again.
Good. Now he can take it out on adults. But will he be allowed to work w/ dumbbells again?

From The Golden Altar Of Incense Prayer

Monday, May 24, 2010

No Direct Or Indirect Affiliation

Reminded by.

Is That Pony Made Of Cotton?

Sg't. Stryker* Would Want Us To Bayonet Chuck DeVore

From California, land of the lotus-eaters.
"Ask yourself this question, Jack Bauer fans: Which person would Jack want as his U.S. Senator?" the announcer says. "Barbara Boxer, a Guantanamo-closing, tax-raising, big-government growing ultra-liberal who reads Miranda rights to foreign terrorists? Or Chuck DeVore, a U.S. Army Reserve intelligence officer, who likes Guantanamo Bay as it is, thinks foreign terrorists should have an interrogator, not a lawyer, and supports lower taxes and smaller government?"
Where does Cap't. Hook stand on this?

*Vicious, irksome propaganda aside.

Nation Of Sheep
Tell Me Whatcha Gonna Do
When The Commies & The Homos
Come Looking For You?

Not to blowtoot our own ancient & now-quite rusty horn or anything (Pertinent lyrics @ 1:45, save yourself the suffering.)but this, from the typewriter of Jack Paar, is a hoot & a half:
There used to be a time when it looked like the Communists were taking over show business. Now it's fairies. They operate a lot alike, actually; both have a tendency to colonize. Just as there used to be no such thing as one Communist in a play or movie, now there is no such thing as one fairy. Where you find one, you usually find a baker's dozen swishing around. I had a little game I used to play when I was an actor in Hollywood, back in the days when Communists or Communist sympathizers were nearly as plentiful in the film capital as yes-men. If I spotted someone in a picture who was a Communist or leftist, I could usually pick out several others. They always came in sets. Now I play it a different way. When I hear that some fairy is producing or directing or acting in a play, I can often name some of the rest of the cast, even if I've never heard it.
Pardon us, we have to read the rest of it.

Sarah Palin's Low-Info Candidate
(For The Low-Info Voter)

Would a Tom Tancredo-like Civic Literacy Test for candidates be a good idea? We have to speculate if Ward can even (as suggested by Tancredo) spell "vote."

Via.

A Thousand Words

From The NYT, but why bother? Everything one needs to know:
Hold it, just one quote & note:
“The foundation of libertarian thinking is private property as a limit on state action,” David Bernstein, a libertarian law professor, explained to Talking Points Memo, the popular political blog. “So if a private business chooses to discriminate, a typical libertarian would say that’s a business owner’s right to do so.”
That's worth some words, as it demonstrates so well that the principled philosophy these fools so nobly espouse is ass-backwards. 180° wrong. Which side is reality-based, & which is deluded?

And for self-flagellators only (You won't be able to take this, weaklings!):
The forces of big government are entrenched and enjoy the full arsenal of the administration's money and influence. Our leaders in Washington, aided by the unprecedented economic crisis of recent years and the panic it induced, have seized the moment to introduce breathtaking expansions of state power in huge swaths of the economy, from the health-care takeover to the financial regulatory bill that the Senate approved Thursday.
We do not want to hear "health-care takeover" until the insurance cos. have been nationalized & the National Guard is occupying their headquarters & summarily executing the executives. Nor do we want to hear about the "unprecedented economic crisis." We would, however, pay to hear Mr. Brooks' death rattle.

UPDATE: Refutation of paranoiac fool Brooks at PuffHo.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

We Are, By Nature, A Boring Sort

Also observed, though un-recorded: lizards (2) & a water snake. Heard the frog we mentioned below. Saw no mountain lions or rattlers, despite posted warnings. No ticks attached themselves to us, either. All in all, could have been much worse.

Not only saw but shot some hawks. (We assume. Could've been crows, dark & the same approx. size, but these birds were not making crow sounds.)
It is not easy catching these bastards in flight; we s'pose we could blame the equipment.
We were able to get a few cliffside.
To one's right & up when leaving Bronson Cave by the east.
Other cliff dwellers.

Take Me To The River

Went hiking, & Boy Howdy! Do our lower extremities ache. (As expected.) We were hoping to spot a frog that had been croaking, but didn't even manage to capture the croaks.

From Maine To Nevada, America Loves Titties!

Maine topless coffee fire suspect mad at waitress

| Published: 05/22/10 at 6:39 PM | Updated: 05/22/10 at 8:18 PM
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A state investigation says a man suspected of burning down a Maine coffee shop that featured topless waitresses was mad at his girlfriend, who was having an affair with the owner.

The state fire marshal’s office released an affidavit Friday alleging 48-year-old Raymond Bellavance Jr. used gasoline to start the fire in June 2009 because the woman, a waitress, was in a sexual relationship with Donald Crabtree, owner of the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop.

The affidavit says before the fire, Bellavance made statements that he was going to burn the shop. He confronted his girlfriend two hours beforehand.

Bellavance, who is charged with arson, made his first appearance in district court by video Friday. His bail was continued at $200,000. His next court appearance is July 27.

Nev. woman accused of stealing wine while topless
| Published: 05/22/10 at 7:14 PM
MINDEN, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada woman is accused of stealing a bottle of wine from a store while she was topless and intoxicated.

Brandi Smith, of Gardnerville, acknowledged her behavior was “mind-boggling” during an appearance Wednesday before a judge to face charges of indecent exposure, felony drunken driving and burglary.

Authorities say the 41-year-old was arrested May 10 after stealing a $20 bottle of wine, then driving to a nearby fast-food restaurant, where an off-duty sheriff’s deputy kept her in the vehicle until other deputies arrived.

A preliminary test revealed a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 percent, nearly twice the legal limit.

A records search found Smith has two prior convictions of driving under the influence in California.

She was in jail on $5,000 bail.

For What It's Worth

We lived at 8497 in 1973.
From a not un-swell collection of arty shots of celebs whose images were well managed, unlike today's public train wrecks.

This one is so managed it's mystifying.

Sunday No More Color Uras

At last. (Now the search for further childish irritation begins.)

Out Of The Western Sky ...

The L.A. Tribune does its part to pimp the new, restored, etc., "Stagecoach."
On his commentary track, western scholar Jim Kitses argues against ex post facto analyses that place Wayne at the center of what is clearly structured as an ensemble piece. Only recently bumped up from B movies, and still saddled with the flop "The Big Trail," Wayne languished near the bottom of the payroll, banking barely a third of top-billed Claire Trevor's salary. But Ford gives Wayne a star's introductory flourish, a dramatic dolly-in whose focus blurs before resolving itself on Wayne's relatively unlined features. Framed against the soft-focus backdrop of Utah's buttes, he looks less like a rugged son of the frontier than a vision born of heat haze.
Read the rest if you give a shit. Just don't confuse us w/ anyone who does.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Harry Reid's Chickens

Chicken costumes banned at Nev. polling places

By MARTIN GRIFFITH | Published: 05/22/10 at 7:30 PM | Updated: 05/22/10 at 8:43 PM

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Voters dressed in chicken costumes won’t be allowed inside Nevada polling places this year.

State election officials on Friday added chicken suits to the list of banned items after weeks of ridicule directed at Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden.

The millionaire casino executive and former beauty queen recently suggested that people barter with doctors for medical care, like when “our grandparents would bring a chicken to the doctor.”

[...]

Under the new rule, chicken costumes will be banned along with political buttons, shirts, hats and signs within 100 feet of polling places.

Washoe County Registrar of Voters Dan Burk said such a costume would be an “inappropriate and obvious” advocacy message against Lowden.

Lowden campaign manager Robert Uithoven hailed the decision.

“I think voters will be spared the Harry Reid carnival and that’s a good thing,” he told The Associated Press. “I think most voters are going to the polls thinking about far greater things than Harry Reid’s chickens.”

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the Nevada Democratic Party has been sending the volunteers in chicken costumes to Lowden events and he was unaware of any plans for them to show up at the polls.

“Maintaining fair elections is an important thing and we respect the decision that has been made by election officials,” he said. “I certainly can understand why that would be a sensitive issue for her since she has been called out on her concept of bartering chickens for checkups.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/22/chicken-costumes-banned-at-nev-polling-places/#ixzz0ojEvQRW7

Papers Or Jail

Embedding disabled, may be going soon, so looky!

Fat boy in the Col. Sanders suit is the Arkansas cop-killer who got his as well. And took his 16-yr. old son down w/ him. Let's hear it for parent's rights!
In an Internet broadcast dated May 6, Jerry Kane talks about New Mexico police arresting him in April at a "Nazi checkpoint where they were demanding papers or jail."
Imagine!
Material on the website promoting Kane's foreclosure-advising business displays classic rhetoric experts say is associated with anti-government groups. Topics discussed on the site include microchips inserted into people's bodies, plots involving the H1N1 vaccine and the contention that U.S. dollars don't constitute real money.
You know who else is worried about fiat currency?
Shilo Stigen
May 19th, 2010 12:34 pm

Praise God that he's as pro-life as he is! I STRONGLY recommend that anyone who is not familiar with the Paul family's position for the gold standard and against fiat currency and the Federal Reserve that you do some research on it. The truth is that those who control the pro-abortion media and propagate the pro-death mentality that we Christians grieve, those very same people and organizations are members of and friends with those powers that control the US monetary printing press. We Catholic Christians understand that abortion is murder, and rightly so; also consider that inflation is theft. The theft that we Americans suffer is on such a grand scale, yet so subtle, it is hard to see how grievously it affects our country. Yet consider: How many of the 50 million+ abortions that have occurred in the US since Roe v Wade had FINANCES as a major factor involved? We all know that most abortions occur in impoverished communities, but why are those communities impoverished? Among several factors, our crash-and-burn fiat currency has wreaked havoc on our country, from the Great Depression of the 30s to today. Please understand that being pro-life was ONE significant factor in Rand Paul's primary win: being anti-fiat currency was another. Praise Jesus, And go Rand Paul!
That's who!

Where is that loony left, anyway?
Examples of these politically-motivated attacks from extremists seem to be increasingly common. Just this year, John Patrick Bedell opened fire at the Pentagon; Joe Stack flew an airplane into a building; and the Hutaree Militia terrorist plot was uncovered. Last year, James von Brunn opened fire at the Holocaust memorial museum; Richard Poplawski gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban"; and Dr. George Tiller was assassinated. In 2008, Jim David Adkisson opened fire in a Unitarian church in Tennessee, in part because of his "hatred of the liberal movement."
Green Eagle also on it, wondering about coverage (lacking) in the you-know-what media & providing background.