If that 'stache weren't filled w/ gawd knows what sort of decaying ick, he might have sniffed it earlier.
Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.
Has begun? St. Nick on a stick, Friedman, where've you been for the last few months, in some foreign clime talking w/ your imaginary cab drivers?
But why* do we pay the slightest bit of attention to someone who can type a string of shit like this:
George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it.
George W(orst) Bush was not "elected," Friedman. And no one called for a military "family intervention" against him, even though there should have been. (We note again how our military continues to fail us.)
More foul objectivity is encountered:
a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world.
Do those who promote false equivalencies, & are so blind to begin w/ they don't notice what's going on right under the mustache beneath their noses get special exemptions because they're married to wealthy heiresses, & not anonymous? Lot easier to talk big under your legal name when you'll never miss another meal or anything else, ever, huh Tom?
And we haven't noticed Mr. Friedman ever paying or accounting for his numerous idiocies, wrong-headed bullshit, war-mongering & so on. So what fucking difference does anonymity make, if the paid & nonymous are never called on anything?
*Really. What is wrong w/ us? It's not as if our slandering has any effect on anything.
From the American Police Force site. We're a bit worried about their International Ops. This must be a joke of some kind. Though we'd like to know how this Serbian logo fits into Int'l. Conspiracies, the Knights of Malta, & al.
Maybe this is, if not a strictly commie plot, at least a Russki threat. But can this
You may remember a guy named Barack Obama, who came from nowhere (And nobody knew anything about him!) to suddenly be elected president.
Now someone else about whom nothing is known wants to come from nowhere & run everything. Who is she? And which mysterious, conspiratorial figures are controlling her? NO ONE KNOWS!
The big mystery, even to those who once worked closely with the former VP candidate: Besides Vincent, who is working with Palin to keep her brand alive?
Good question. Who is this woman? Rumor has it she was a governor of a low-population state for a yr. or two, but we can't even confirm that.
Palin's bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: "The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot."
Many big lecture venues are subscription series, "and they don't want to tick people off," said our source. "Palin is polarizing, and some subscribers might cancel if she's on the lineup." Other lecture buyers are universities, which have a leftist slant, and corporations, which dislike controversy.
"Palin is so uninteresting to so many groups -- unless they are interested in moose hunting," said our insider. "What does she have to say? She can't even describe what she reads."
And don't you just love that the gossip page of the NY Post has to attempt shots at universities, "which have a leftist slant, and corporations, which dislike controversy." Ah. No rightist slant at corporations, merely a desire to avoid controversy. And no rightist slant at the Post, either.
Today is Wednesday, Sept. 30, the 273rd day of 2009. There are 92 days left in the year. The UPI Almanac. Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 30, 1809, the Treaty of Fort Wayne (also known as the Ten O'Clock Line Treaty) was signed by Indiana Territory Gov. William Henry Harrison and representatives of four Indian tribes. (Under terms of the treaty, the Indians sold some 3 million acres of land to be used for US settlements.) On this date: In 1452, the first section of the Guttenberg Bible, the first book printed from movable type, was published in Germany. In 1630, John Billington, one of the first pilgrims to land in America was hanged for murder -- becoming the first European criminal executed in the American colonies. In 1777, the Continental Congress -- forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces -- moved to York, Pa. In 1788, the Pennsylvania Legislature elected the first two members of the U.S. Senate - William Maclay of Harrisburg and Robert Morris of Philadelphia. In 1791, Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute" premiered in Vienna, Austria. In 1846, Boston dentist William Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time as he extracted an ulcerated tooth from merchant Eben Frost. In 1924, author Truman Capote was born in New Orleans. In 1927, Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees hit his 60th home run of the season to break his own major-league record.
In 1938, after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, "I believe it is peace for our time."
Seventy years ago, in 1939, the first college football game to be televised was shown on experimental station W2XBS in New York as Fordham University defeated Waynesburg College, 34-7. In 1946, an international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes. Sixty years ago, in 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end. In 1954, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned by the Navy. In 1955, actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, Calif. In 1962, black student James Meredith was escorted by federal marshals to the campus of the University of Mississippi, where he enrolled for classes the next day. In 1966, the Republic of Botswana declared its independence from Britain. In 1984, Mike Witt of the California Angels pitched a perfect game in a 1-0 victory over the Texas Rangers. In 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up. In 1991, the military in Haiti overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first freely-elected president. In 1992, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals reached 3,000 career hits during a game against the California Angels. The United States returned most of the Subic Bay Naval Base to the Philippine government after more than a century of use. In 1993, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck southern India, killing an estimated 10,000 people. In 1997, France's Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the systematic persecution and deportation of Jews by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Ten years ago: Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered a top-level investigation of accounts of mass killings of Korean civilians by U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri in 1950. A major leak at a uranium-processing plant in northeastern Japan exposed dozens of people to radiation. German novelist Guenter Grass won the Nobel Prize in literature. The San Francisco Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last baseball game at Candlestick Park (3Com Park); the Dodgers won, 9-4. In 2003, the FBI began a criminal investigation into whether White House officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer. Five years ago: President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry met at the University of Miami for their first debate, with Kerry accusing Bush of a "colossal error in judgment" in ordering the invasion of Iraq and the president noting that Kerry had voted to authorize the military action. Bombs killed some three dozen children in Baghdad as US troops handed out candy at a government-sponsored celebration. The House followed the Senate in decisively rejecting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Vioxx, the heavily promoted arthritis drug, was pulled from the market by its maker after a study found it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes. One year ago: Congressional leaders and President George W. Bush rummaged through ideas new and old, desperately seeking to change a dozen House members' votes and pass a multibillion-dollar economic rescue plan. Wall Street regained hope as the Dow industrials rose 485 points. More than 200 people were killed in a stampede of pilgrims at a Hindu temple in Jodhpur, India. J.L. Chestnut Jr., the first black lawyer in Selma, Ala. and a prominent attorney in civil rights cases across a half century, died in Birmingham at age 77. Today's Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Roberts is 83. Author Elie Wiesel is 81. Actress Angie Dickinson is 78. Singer Cissy Houston is 76. Singer Johnny Mathis is 74. Actor Len Cariou is 70. Singer Marilyn McCoo is 66. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is 64. Pop singer Sylvia Peterson (The Chiffons) is 63. Actress Victoria Tennant is 59. Actor John Finn (TV: "Cold Case") is 57. Rock musician John Lombardo is 57. Singer Deborah Allen is 56. Actor Calvin Levels is 55. Actor Barry Williams is 55. Singer Patrice Rushen is 55. Actor Vondie Curtis-Hall is 53. Actress Fran Drescher is 52. Country singer Marty Stuart is 51. Actress Debrah Farentino is 50. Rock musician Bill Rieflin (R.E.M.) is 49. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is 49. Actress Crystal Bernard is 48. Actor Eric Stoltz is 48. Rapper-producer Marley Marl is 47. Country singer Eddie Montgomery (Montgomery-Gentry) is 46. Rock singer Trey Anastasio is 45. Actress Monica Bellucci is 45. Rock musician Robby Takac (Goo Goo Dolls) is 45. Actress Lisa Thornhill is 43. Actress Andrea Roth is 42. Actor Tony Hale is 39. Actress Jenna Elfman is 38. Actor Ashley Hamilton is 35. Actress Marion Cotillard is 34. Actor Mike Damus is 30. Tennis player Martina Hingis is 29. Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Moceanu is 28. Actress Lacey Chabert is 27. Actor Kieran Culkin is 27. Today In Entertainment History In 1950, the Grand Ole Opry was first televised by Nashville station WSM. WSM-AM had been broadcasting the Opry on radio since 1925. In 1955, actor James Dean was killed in the collision of his sports car with another automobile near Cholame, California. He was 24. In 1960, "The Flintstones" made its debut on ABC. In 1965, Donovan made his American TV debut on "Shindig!" In 1967, John Lennon and Paul McCartney appeared on "The David Frost Show" to talk about the virtues of transcendental meditation as taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1982, "Cheers," with Ted Danson and Shelly Long, made its debut on NBC. It ran until 1993. In 1984, "Murder, She Wrote," starring Angela Lansbury, premiered on CBS. Thought for Today: "You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself." — Sam Levenson, American humorist (1911-1980).
We see that The NYT is again followingour lead. Our own Chicago Times has been following the action as well.
Seems to be a consensus that new water-saving regs have resulted in unexpected pressures in parts of the water system. All we ask is that the pipes hold out another thirty yrs. or so, when we have plans to be dead. Maybe that long haul to the neighborhood well will be what does us in.
We were worried for a moment, but it will be "civilized."
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:
No advocatin' goin' on here, just move along. Indeed, why even look/click there? We'll let you have the whole thing for exactly what it's worth: A laugh.
Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.
They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.
They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.
They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.
They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag.
They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.
They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.
So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?
Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?
Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?
What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, “I’m not interested in victory”) that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent with their oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?
Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?
We're not so sure what nation is surviving if a coup is preferable to the very easily dismissed "political whims" of elections, democracy & stuff.
Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.
Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?
Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.
Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.
Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”
In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.
Another plea from the not extreme at all right-wing to be done w/ democracy because people didn't vote the way that John L. Perry, White House worker for two unnamed Presidents, thought they should have. If that's what "wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility" means, & that's the only translation we can come up w/.
Is The NYT's health insurance plan so awful that an assisted care facility can't be found for David Brooks? Perhaps the mainstream media can unite to build a facility just for pundits, a lovely, sunny, green place where George F. Will can rant & rave about the dangers of dungarees to the caste system, & Brooks can, as he did yesterday, lament the passing of
The old WASPs [who] were notoriously cheap, sent their children to Spartan boarding schools, and insisted on financial sobriety.
Alas, the Spartan boarding schools of yore! Worse than the Cultural Revolution's reëducation camps, though not quite as severe as Pol Pot's, if memory serves.
But no more, reports a saddened Brooks.
Chain restaurants went into supersize mode, offering gigantic portions that would have been considered socially unacceptable to an earlier generation.
Because going to sleep hungry has always been humanity's secret desire. And he marches on, to a resounding finish.
Over the past few months, those debt levels have begun to come down. But that doesn’t mean we’ve re-established standards of personal restraint. We’ve simply shifted from private debt to public debt. By 2019, federal debt will amount to an amazing 83 percent of G.D.P. (before counting the costs of health reform and everything else). By that year, interest payments alone on the federal debt will cost $803 billion.
These may seem like dry numbers, mostly of concern to budget wonks. But these numbers are the outward sign of a values shift. If there is to be a correction, it will require a moral and cultural movement.
Our current cultural politics are organized by the obsolete culture war, which has put secular liberals on one side and religious conservatives on the other. But the slide in economic morality afflicted Red and Blue America equally.
Brooks & ilk: Never happy unless they can stake out (imaginary) moral high ground.
If there is to be a movement to restore economic values, it will have to cut across the current taxonomies. Its goal will be to make the U.S. again a producer economy, not a consumer economy. It will champion a return to financial self-restraint, large and small.
It will have to take on what you might call the lobbyist ethos — the righteous conviction held by everybody from AARP to the agribusinesses that their groups are entitled to every possible appropriation, regardless of the larger public cost. It will have to take on the self-indulgent popular demand for low taxes and high spending.
A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible. But this sort of moral revival is what the country actually needs.
Moral revival. Meaningless boiler plate. Self-restraint. Keep in pants & all that.
Get a job flipping burgers, Brooks, at least then you will be producing something. Can we get David Broder into the pundit home too? He could give Brooksie some really swell bi-partisan ideas.
Some eleven hours after we noted it, Sully follows us.
But this is Ratzinger's real view: that the sex abuse crisis was basically a liberal plot to discredit the Church, rather than what it was, an international conspiracy for the molestation of children, enabled by the Vatican.
Quicker to the punch was Shakesville. (Do they have the shakes?) We'd heard, but ...
[Trigger warning.]
And:
[Commenting Guidelines: Please take the time to make sure your criticisms are clearly directed at the Catholic Church leadership and not at "Catholics," many of whom are themselves critical of the failures of Church leadership.]
Politico surveys the GOP base and finds Palin-mania still strong. I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.
Can't let well enough alone, can he? Was he even in these United Snakes in the 1980s? And what was this "loony left of the 1980s?" "Loony" simply because it opposed Sullivan's political man-crush, Ronald Reagan? Were Iran-Contra, Central & South American death-squads (Catholic anti-commies killing commie Catholic nuns: Tough call for Andy?) the October Surprise, & so on lunatic inventions?
Sullivan scrambled off the Bush branch as it broke away beneath him, but he clings to the rotting trunk of right-wing belief as if his life depended on it. When confronted w/ the grim reality ("Before his nose.") of Bush's & Cheney's idiocy & ineptitude he couldn't deny it, but we can't expect a reëxamination of the wondrous age of Ronnie from him, or many others; it's so much easier to let it slip into the misty golden blur of legend becoming myth. Politically expedient, too.
On the most cynical level, the "loony left" could even be a stab at Malkin-style objectivity: "Waaaah! Libs do it too! Don't forget!"
Today is Tuesday, Sept. 29, the 272nd day of 2009. There are 93 days left in the year. The UPI Almanac.Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 29, 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church. [More proof of Gawd's love. — Ed.] On this date: In 1758, English Adm. Horatio Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk. [Was he an admiral at birth? — Ed.] In 1789, the U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men. In 1829, London's reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty. In 1901, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi was born in Rome. In 1918, Allied forces began their decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line. In 1923, Britain began to govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. In 1936, in the presidential race between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Alf Landon, both parties used radio for the first time. In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders concluded the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. In 1941, the Babi Yar massacre of nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children began on the outskirts of Kiev in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine. In 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship Nelson [Coincidence? — Ed.] off Malta. In 1954, New York Giants centerfielder Willie Mays made a running catch with his back to home plate on a 450-foot blast by Cleveland Indians batter Vic Wertz in Game 1 of the World Series. It is widely considered to be the greatest catch ever made.
Sound Bite:Sportscaster Jack Brickhouse makes the call. In 1957, baseball's New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds before moving to San Francisco for the next season. Fifty years ago, in 1959, the 29th Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, proclaimed his country's new constitution. In 1963, the second session of the Second Vatican Council opened in Rome. Thirty years ago, in 1979, Pope John Paul II began the first papal visit to Ireland as he arrived for a three-day tour. In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area. (To date, the case remains unsolved.) In 1988, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking America's return to manned space flight following the Challenger disaster. In 1992, Brazil's President Fernando Collor de Mello became the first Latin American leader to be impeached. Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced he was returning to the Los Angeles Lakers less than a year after he retired because he had the AIDS virus. Ten years ago: Vice President Al Gore abruptly moved his presidential campaign headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tenn., to get "out of the Beltway and into the heartland." The Associated Press reported on the killing of South Korean refugees by U.S. soldiers in the early days of the Korean War, beneath a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun Ri; The Associated Press quoted ex-GIs as saying "hundreds" were shot dead in late July 1950. (In 2001, after its own investigation, the U.S. Army affirmed that killings had occurred, but said they were not deliberate.) In 2000, Israeli riot police stormed a major Jerusalem shrine and opened fire on stone-throwing Muslim worshippers, killing four Palestinians and wounding 175. Five years ago: A video surfaced showing Kenneth Bigley, a British hostage held by Iraqi militants, pleading for help between the bars of a makeshift cage. (Bigley was later killed.) The privately built SpaceShipOne rocket plane hurtled past the edge of earth's atmosphere, completing the first stage of a quest to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. In 2005, John Roberts was sworn in as the nation's 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released from 85 days of federal detention after agreeing to testify in a criminal probe into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity. In 2006, Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he'd sent to former House pages. [Punishment: He's found himself a radio gig. — Ed.] One year ago: On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 777 points after the House defeated, 228-205, a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, leaving both parties and the Bush administration scrambling to pick up the pieces. Today's Birthdays: Actress Lizabeth Scott is 87. Actor Steve Forrest is 85. Musical conductor Richard Bonynge is 79. Actress Anita Ekberg is 78. Actor Eddie Barth is 78. Writer-director Robert Benton is 77. Singer Jerry Lee Lewis is 74. [See "Entertainment History" below. — Ed.] Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is 73. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is 67. Actor Ian McShane is 67. Jazz musician Jean-Luc Ponty is 67. Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, is 66. Television-film composer Mike Post is 65. Actress Patricia Hodge is 63. TV personality Bryant Gumbel is 61. Rock singer-musician Mark Farner is 61. Rock singer-musician Mike Pinera is 61. Country singer Alvin Crow is 59. Actor Drake Hogestyn is 56. Broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill is 54. Former child actor Ken Weatherwax (TV: "The Addams Family") is 54. Olympic gold medal runner Sebastian Coe is 53. Singer Suzzy Roche (The Roches) is 53. Comedian-actor Andrew "Dice" Clay is 52. Rock singer John Payne (Asia) is 51. Actor Roger Bart is 47. Singer-musician Les Claypool is 46. Actress Jill Whelan is 43. Actor Luke Goss is 41. Rock musician Brad Smith (Blind Melon) is 41. Actress Erika Eleniak is 40. Rhythm-and-blues singer Devante Swing (Jodeci) is 40. Country singer Brad Cotter ("Nashville Star") is 39. Actress Emily Lloyd is 39. Actress Natasha Gregson Wagner is 39. Actress Rachel Cronin is 38. Country musician Danick Dupelle (Emerson Drive) is 36. Actor Alexis Cruz is 35. Today In Entertainment History September 29 In 1902, Broadway impresario David Belasco reopened the Republic Theatre under his own name. Fifty years ago, in 1959, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" made its premiere on CBS.
["Mainstream Media's First Beatnik!" &, obviously, your editor's first role model. — Ed.] In 1976, Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shot his bass player, Norman "Butch" Owens, while trying to shoot at a soda bottle with a .357 Magnum. Lewis was charged with shooting a firearm within city limits. [Nice birthday party there, Jer! — Ed.] In 1977, James Brown's band walked out on him in Hallendale, Fla., complaining that he underpaid them. In 1985, "MacGyver" made its debut on ABC. Twenty years ago, in 1989, Zsa Zsa Gabor was convicted of slapping a police officer during a stop in Beverly Hills. Thought for Today: "If you want work well done, select a busy man — the other kind has not time." — Elbert Hubbard, American author and publisher (1856-1915). [Fuck you six ways to hell, corn-pone American ninny. — Ed.]
America eats its young. Those it doesn't chew up & spit out eventually have to kill (or at least seriously numb) themselves in order to function in the death-worshiping society of anguish, fear & pain that is This Great Nation Of Ours™.
Slatenow notes that some can no longer get the job done w/ the Death Culture's obliviant (Did we just coin something there? Just because Chrome™ spell check doesn't recognize it doesn't mean it's never been used before, natch, but, hey!) of choice, Demon Rum.
(Alright, does anyone care if that's what Slate typed, or is the important thing here what we may believe or make up? Does it make a dime's worth of difference? We're just getting at implications here.)
The implication being that older Americans, having boozed for their thirty to forty yrs. on the production/consumption treadmill to death & final oblivion, can no longer handle the recommended daily allowance of Victory Gin, & as the current American situation requires so much more numb obliviousness (Especially for those who realize their guilt in worsening the situation by having contributed to, produced for & allowed this worst of all possible worlds.*) that they're back on the weed.
And why not?
In 2001, a team of researchers from the Harvard Medical School found that smoking marijuana causes a transient, fivefold increase in risk. (Exercise, sexual activity, and bouts of anger can cause similar short-term risks.)
Hell, since we never exercise, & neither sex nor rage has killed us yet, maybe we'll take up this reefer stuff.
*OK, not the absolutely worst of all possible worlds, but bad enough as it is for we, the spoiled.
Just call us Washington Independent West. We suppose "thief" would work too. (We don't want to work, which explains this.) Now ask us if we give a flying fuck at a rolling dough-nut what anyone calls us.
Today is Monday, Sept. 28, the 271st day of 2009. There are 94 days left in the year. The UPI Almanac.Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 28, 1909, satirical cartoonist Al Capp, the creator of "Li'l Abner," was born in New Haven, Conn. On this date: In 490 B. C. E., the Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon. A Greek soldier named Phidippides ran more than 26 miles to tell Athenians of the victory and died after his announcement. His feat provided the model for the modern marathon race. In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England to claim the English throne. In 1542, Portuguese navigator Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived at present-day San Diego. In 1781, American forces, backed by a French fleet, began their successful siege of Yorktown, Va. In 1787, the Congress of the Confederation voted to send the just-completed Constitution of the United States to state legislatures for their approval. In 1850, flogging was abolished as a form of punishment in the U.S. Navy. In 1892, Mansfield University was the home team for the first night football game at Smythe Park in Mansfield, Pa. In 1920, in baseball's biggest scandal, a grand jury indicted eight Chicago White Sox players for throwing the 1919 World Series with the Cincinnati Reds. In 1924, two U.S. Army planes landed in Seattle, having completed the first round-the-world flight in 175 days. In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty calling for the partitioning of Poland, which the two countries had invaded. In 1967, Walter E. Washington was sworn in as the first mayor-commissioner of the District of Columbia. (He'd been appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.) In 1972, Japan and Communist China agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations. In 1974, first lady Betty Ford underwent a mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland, following discovery of a cancerous lump in her breast. In 1982, the first reports appeared of deaths in the Chicago area from Extra-strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. Seven people died and the unsolved case resulted in tamper-proof packaging for consumer products. In 1987, a federal appeals court declared Boston public schools officially desegregated after a 13-year effort. In 1989, deposed Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos died in exile in Hawaii at age 72. In 1992, a Pakistan jetliner carrying 167 people, including three Americans, crashed into a hill southeast of Kathmandu, Nepal, killing all aboard. It was Nepal's worst air disaster. In 1993, U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton was the administration's lead witness in congressional hearings on the proposed national healthcare program. As the power struggle in Russia intensified, the Interior Ministry sealed off the parliament building. Opponents to President Boris Yeltsin were holed up inside. In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord to transfer much of the West Bank to the control of its Arab residents.
Ten years ago: The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether a state can give visitation rights to grandparents when, after a divorce or some other family split, the children's parents say no. (The court later ruled that Washington state went too far in allowing grandparents and others to seek court-ordered visits against parents' wishes, but it stopped short of giving parents absolute veto power over who gets to visit their children.) In 2000, capping a 12-year battle, the government approved use of the abortion pill RU-486. Ariel Sharon, leader of Israel's hard-line opposition, sparked new Israeli-Palestinian clashes by touring the Temple Mount. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau died at age 80. In 2001, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution to require all members to put a stop to financing and training of terrorists within their borders. Five years ago: The price of oil topped $50 a barrel for the first time in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. An earthquake measuring magnitude 6.0 rocked central California. Kidnappers in Iraq released two female Italian aid workers, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, and five other hostages. Award-winning fashion designer Geoffrey Beene died in New York at age 77. In 2005, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury on a charge of conspiring to violate political fundraising laws. (The charge was later thrown out. Delay is awaiting trial on money laundering and conspiracy charges.) The U.S. Treasury unveiled the new $10 bill, which features splashes of red, yellow and orange. In 2006, in a move boosting support for the Afghan government, NATO voted to dramatically expand operations in Afghanistan. In 2007, the U.S. Senate joined the House of Representatives in defying a veto threat from President George Bush to approve an expansion of the child health insurance program. The bill would spend about $35 billion to expand health insurance to more than 4 million children. One year ago: President George W. Bush urged Congress to pass a $700 billion rescue plan for beleaguered financial companies, saying in a written statement, "Without this rescue plan, the costs to the American economy could be disastrous." [That's the AP. The Reverend Moon's UPI says: "U.S. congressional negotiators and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson agreed on a $700 billion banking industry bailout plan. It gave the Treasury unprecedented authority, including the ability to buy a range of troubled financial assets." — Ed.] Chinese astronauts aboard the Shenzhou 7 returned to Earth after completing their country's first-ever spacewalk mission. Austrian 16-year-olds voted for the first time in parliamentary elections under a law adopted in 2007. Today's Birthdays: Actor William Windom is 86. Actor Arnold Stang is 84. Actress Brigitte Bardot is 75.
Singer Ben E. King is 71. Actor Joel Higgins is 66. Singer Helen Shapiro is 63. Actor Jeffrey Jones is 63. Movie writer-director-actor John Sayles is 59. Actress Sylvia Kristel is 57. Rock musician George Lynch is 55. Zydeco singer-musician C.J. Chenier is 52. Actor Steve Hytner is 50. Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo is 45. Country singer Matt King is 43. Actress Mira Sorvino is 42. TV personality Moon Zappa is 42. Actress-model Carre Otis is 41. Actress Naomi Watts is 41. Country musician Chuck Crawford is 36. Country singer Mandy Barnett is 34. Rapper Young Jeezy is 32. World Golf Hall of Famer Se Ri Pak is 32. Actor Peter Cambor is 31. Writer-producer-director-actor Bam Margera is 30. Actress Hilary Duff is 22. Today In Entertainment History September 28 In 1958, Dore Records released "To Know Him Is To Love Him" by The Teddy Bears. In 1968, Janis Joplin's manager announced Joplin would leave Big Brother and the Holding Company in November after fulfilling current obligations. Joplin said she and the band "weren't growing together anymore." In 1975, 40,000 people got to see Jefferson Starship and Jerry Garcia and Friends perform for free in San Francisco. "Jerry Garcia and Friends" ended up being the Grateful Dead, who had not performed together in more than a year. In 1988, singer John Denver offered the Soviet Union $10 million to put him on a Soyuz spacecraft. In 1991, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis died of pneumonia, respiratory failure and a stroke. He was 65. Garth Brooks became the first country artist to have an album debut at No. 1 on the album charts, with "Ropin' The Wind." In 1995, Bobby Brown was caught in gunfire outside a Boston bar. Brown was unhurt, but his brother-in-law-to-be was killed. In 2003, legendary Broadway and film director Elia Kazan died at his home in New York at the age of 94. Thought for Today: "The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else, was to be indifferent to that difference." - Al Capp, American cartoonist (1909-1979). [To offset hideo-fascist Capp, here's Gertie Stein. — Ed.] A thought for the day: U.S. writer Gertrude Stein said, "... the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic."
Doesn't Dracula always have spiders, snakes, rats & the like crawling over him? Frankly, we're a more than a bit surprised there are no cobwebs coming out of His Satanic Majesty's ears. We suppose that thing on his cheek is just the corruption of Catholicism oozing from him. Ah, the gift of mystery.
Today is Sunday, Sept. 27, the 270th day of 2009. There are 95 days left in the year. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, begins at sunset. The UPI Almanac.
Today's Highlight in History: On Sept. 27, 1939, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.On this date: In 1779, John Adams was named by Congress to negotiate the Revolutionary War's peace terms with Britain. In 1825, the first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England. In 1854, the first great disaster involving an Atlantic Ocean passenger vessel occurred when the steamship SS Arctic sank off Newfoundland; of the more than 400 people on board, only 86 survived. In 1928, the United States said it was recognizing the Nationalist Chinese government. Fifty years ago, in 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev concluded his visit to the United States; Vice President Richard Nixon presided over the farewell ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. A typhoon battered the main Japanese island of Honshu, killing nearly 5,000 people. In 1964, the government publicly released the report of the Warren Commission, which found that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Thirty years ago, in 1979, Congress gave final approval to forming the U.S. Department of Education. In 1987, mudslides in slum areas of Medellin, Colombia, killed up to 500 people. In 1990, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Supreme Court nomination of David H. Souter. In 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked, 7-7, on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced the United States would unilaterally eliminate tactical nuclear weapons on land and at sea in Europe and Asia. In 1994, more than 350 Republican congressional candidates gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to sign the "Contract with America," a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the House. AP Highlight in History: On Sept. 27, 1996, the Taliban, a band of former seminary students, drove the government of Afghani President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, captured the capital and executed former leader Najibullah.
In 1998, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit his record-setting 69th and 70th home runs in the last game of the season. Ten years ago: Sen. John McCain of Arizona officially opened his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, the same day former Vice President Dan Quayle dropped his White House bid. Tiger Stadium closed in grand fashion after 87 years as the Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals, 8-2. In 2001, an armed man went on a shooting rampage in the local parliament in Zug, Switzerland, killing 14 people before taking his own life. President George W. Bush announced plans to bolster airline security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Five years ago: President George W. Bush asked Congress for more than $7.1 billion to help Florida and other Southeastern states recover from their lashing by four hurricanes. A Justice Department audit said the FBI had a backlog of hundreds of thousands of hours of untranslated audio recordings from terror and espionage investigations. In 2005, Army reservist Lynndie England was sentenced to three years behind bars for her role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. In 2007, soldiers fired into crowds of anti-government demonstrators in Yangon, Myanmar, killing at least nine people. One year ago: China marked its first spacewalk as astronaut Zhai Zhigang floated outside the Shenzhou 7 for 13 minutes. Today's Birthdays: Author Louis Auchincloss is 92. Former Illinois Sen. Charles Percy is 90. Actress Jayne Meadows is 89. Movie director Arthur Penn is 87. Actress Sada Thompson is 80. Actress Kathleen Nolan is 76. Actor Wilford Brimley is 75. Actor Claude Jarman Jr. is 75. Author Barbara Howar is 75. Producer Don Cornelius ("Soul Train") is 73. Golfer Kathy Whitworth is 70. Singer-musician Randy Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) is 66. Rock singer Meat Loaf is 62. Actress Liz Torres is 62. Actor A Martinez is 61. Baseball Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt is 60. Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is 59. Rock musician Greg Ham (Men At Work) is 56. Singer Shaun Cassidy is 51. Rock singer Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind) is 45. NBA player Steve Kerr is 44. Actor Patrick Muldoon is 41. Singer Mark Calderon is 39. Actress Amanda Detmer is 38. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is 37. Rock singer Brad Arnold (3 Doors Down) is 31. MLB pitcher Jon Rauch is 31. Rapper Lil' Wayne is 27. Singer Avril Lavigne is 25. Today In Entertainment History September 27 In 1935, 13-year-old Judy Garland signed her first contract with MGM. In 1942, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra performed together for the last time, at the Central Theater in Passaic, N.J., prior to Miller's entry into the Army. In 1954, "The Tonight Show" made its debut on NBC with host Steve Allen. In 1964, the Beach Boys made their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." In 1972, singer Rory Storme of Rory Storme and the Hurricanes killed himself in an apparent suicide pact with his mother. He reportedly couldn't accept that his band didn't enjoy the same success as other bands from the Liverpool scene. In 1980, the Stray Cats were signed to Arista Records in Britain. In 1986, bassist Cliff Burton of Metallica was killed when the band's tour bus skidded off an icy road in Sweden. He was 24. The Beatles [Might we say, the Beatles' cover of the Isley Bros. — Ed.] song "Twist and Shout" re-entered the pop charts after it was featured in the movies "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Back to School." It eventually rose to number 23. In 1987, the variety show "Dolly," starring Dolly Parton, premiered on ABC. It was canceled after one season. In 1989, Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. agreed to a $3.4 billion cash buyout by Sony Corp. In 1998, Phil Hartman's voice was featured for the last time on "The Simpsons" as Troy McClure. Hartman was killed by his wife in a murder-suicide the previous May. Five years ago, NBC announced that "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno would be succeeded by "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien in 2009 Thought for Today:"A man who is afraid will do anything." — Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964).
The Forces Of Repression & Reaction (personified as they are so well & so often by Kathryn Jean Lopez, typing & editing hard for NRO) think hanging onto Andrew ("Internet Juggernaut") Breitbart's coattails will finally cause something to ... thing, um, reform the world, crush ACORN ... really hit the big, you know ... well, ah, really, something. (Note: Try to find something to introduce/type about this load of un-founded hope. Gaah!) Oh, fuck it. Here:
Something happened as folks on the right sat around waiting for Sarah Palin’s next Facebook post, wondering who the next Ronald Reagan would be. Something happened while folks debated death panels, what Rush Limbaugh said at noon that MSNBC or Rahm Emanuel is up in arms about. Something happened while the president of the United States planned his strategy for getting a Washington his party runs to sign up for his health-care revolution.
The stuff of which media revolutions are made happened.
Do go on. This is fascinating. How did they make it happen?
[A] cartoonish pimp-and-prostitute sting operation. A guy and a gal with a hidden camera and a website willing to publish.
Two stereotypes made flesh enter offices, one of them carrying a cane. Some offices tell him & his "ho" to leave, some call the police, some play along, hoping either to be on Candid Camera, or not to be beaten about the head by an obvious asshole w/ a cane.
We'd call that incontrovertible proof of the evil that ACORN does, as so thoroughly documented by Ms. Lopez' friends:
For as long as I can remember, the Right — most notably the Capital Research Center — has been writing about ACORN. And, for as long as I can remember, ACORN has gotten government funding anyway. For as long as I can remember, churches naively gave them money anyway. As recently as this summer, we exposed the ties of the Democratic party and its nominee to this community-organizing organization, its radical anti-capitalism and its voter fraud.
So, cartoonish sting operations it is. Unable to pin down any proof of ACORN's voter fraud (Where, oh where was the Bush Admin. during this radical anti-capitalist organization's reign of terror, its draining of our treasury, its thieving from the very collection plates of the churches?) at least "they" (In Lopez' word: "we." Huh?) did expose ties to the Democratic Party, which, despite its name (In the Lopez/Breitbart Bizarro World, it means its opposite.) is democratic, & favors expanding the franchise. In Lopez-Land, registering people who may not see a reason to vote Republican is not democratic, but egregious voter fraud.
The Left rules, you could still argue. But that’s in spite of being Left. Barack Obama ran for president downplaying his left-wing ideology and record, instead talking vaguely about “hope” and “change” and even invoking Ronald Reagan.
More of America than not knew damn well what "change" they wanted. Lopez' typing is rather vague to suggest that Obama said anything about Reagan beyond giving lip service to the myth of the "Great Communicator."
You’ve seen the tea parties. You saw the march. Now you’ve seen inside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Andrew Breitbart, born and raised online, has been a longtime collaborator with web wonder Matt Drudge. Always a behind-the-scenes mover, he’s come out of the shadows a bit with his own websites, Breitbart, Big Hollywood, and Big Government — taking the Rules for Radicals and Radical Change and running with them.
Unlike, say, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, we are amused by the non-stop tales of what seems to be The World's Most Dangerous Book & the horrors it's allowed far left bomb-throwers (Nobody throws bombs any more, do they?) to perpetrate against real AmeriKKKans by undercutting their vote & being mean. Ms. Lopez lists what we trust & assume are some of this Alinsky feller's RADICAL tactics.
“Target Your Villain.”
“Adapt and Innovate.”
“Embrace the Attacks.”
“Fight Small, Win Big.”
Wow. Really? Scary.* Also post-Victorian is our amusement at the gibbering from "the other side of the World Wide Web street: Andrew Breitbart didn’t write the book, he did the deed." Many other examples abound (What, you can't Google something yourself?) of "the other side of the WWW street" crowing loudly that they, too can apply these rules, as if the other side of the river Styx hasn't been going by them since Tail Gunner Joe was on about the lists of invisible communists (or invisible lists of commies) he had right there in his suit pocket.
Last in ha-ha is K-Lo's crush on BB ("born and raised online"). We're wondering if it's merely a rebound from Mittens Romney's disappointing failure to create a stronger AmeriKKKa for a then-admiring K-Lo, or if her leaving the post of NRO Editor in these trying times (Why is she still there? It's fall now!) has her hoping for the Washington Editor-in-Chief gig at BB's Big Government. Could be perfect for her, all sorts of Punk'd/America's Funniest Home Videos action (Moral decay must be shown in order to decry it, to paraphrase Cecil B. DeMille, & it brings the eyeballs in.) giving her an opportunity to condemn sluttery, moral decay, & the taxation of fruit "juice" & soda. Good luck to you, Kathryn Jean, & don't let the door hit you when you finally leave.
*NB: Being weeeelll over ten, when we type "scary," there is mockery afoot. If we're ever actually frightened, as opposed to disturbed, worried or irritated, we'll let you know.
"As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice," write the authors. "For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground."
The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.
"Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American," write the authors. "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals."
[Repair Califonia has] an interesting coalition. On the conservative side of the pendulum, we have the Orange County Lincoln Club; on the liberal side of the pendulum, we have the Courage Campaign, [a gay-marriage group]. We have minority representation through a group like the William C. Velasquez Institute, which represents Latinos. We have a lot of good government groups -- the New America Foundation. Someone from our team speaks with someone from the New America Foundation probably once a day. And then we have a lot of the state's political leaders. We just left the L.A. City Council where they endorsed a constitutional convention. But we also have Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a gubernatorial candidate [San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom], and a lot of other people.
They have our signatures & votes. After we fix the Golden State, it's on to shutting down the Electoral College, making "czars" & the Fairness Doctrine totally constitutional, & rounding up the gun owners.
Bachmann touched on the priorities of Republicans if they retook Congress in 2010, to “pass repealer bill after repealer bill,” to prevent the creation of a one-world currency, and to pull the government back from the “36 percent of private business profits” that she claimed it now controlled. And she said Michigan residents were “depressed enough” without Gitmo prisoners being relocated to state facilities where they could inspire more terrorists.
“This is where they learn conversion to Islam!” said Bachmann. “In the prisons!”
No, Shelley, they "learn conversion to Islam" from the society that puts them in the prisons in the first place.
