Jim O

2012-01-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

Is "transphobic" now a word? If so, when did that happen? And what exactly does it mean? Based on its Greek and Latin roots, it should mean fear of crossing, or fear of going beyond. Just like "homophobic" should mean fear of sameness. Somebody should be fixing these poorly-derived neologisms.
P.S. Blogger's spellchecker advises that it be broken up into two words: trans phobic. How does that help?

The Year in Quotes

2011-12-26T13:59:00.001-05:00

"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill." Bayard Marin

"Hope I'm not a toad. :) i'm a very fit fun classy guy." Christopher Lee

"My daughter was born on a tragic day, and she went out on a tragic day," John Green

But our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people. Hillary Clinton

"We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." Paul Krugman, who continued to blame the Tea Party even as he admitted that the shooter was a madman.

"There's everything to connect this to partisan politics and talk radio and cable TV except evidence. There's just none of that." James Carville

"I'm in a good place now. I'm taking care of myself and my constitutents. ... I emphatically can do the job." David Wu

"There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer." Hillary Clinton

“I can’t be remorseful for something I don’t think I did.” Tom Delay

"Why don't you leave this to the boys, sweet cakes?" Ron Frankin

"You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House, we have a Senate, we have a President." Chuck Schumer

“I’d like another glass of wine.” Valerie Jarrett

"Justice has been done." Barack Obama

“I know her very well, and she would be very comfortable with the decision that I made. I have every intention that she’ll be there for launch. I’ve talked to her doctors about that. I obviously weighed time I could spend with her over time I could spend with NASA and my crew.” Mark Kelly.

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” Robert Gates

"It would be uncivilized to try to push and shove, and what good would it do anyway?" Kojo Saeseki

"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon" Barack Obama

"Listen, all these rights are legislatively created. They didn't come down on tablets from the top of a mountain." Chris Christie

"As the Recovery Act funds that saw through many states over the last two years are phasing out and it is undeniable that the Recovery Act helped every single state represented in this room manage your budgets, whether you admit it or not." Barack Obama,

“I always use the word extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” Chuck Schumer

"But I did not not break the law, and I never, ever thought that I was breaking the law." John Edwards

"Now some of you may be thinking about Ron Paul – I promise you his followers are the biggest a-holes of them all." Mark Levin

"There’s just no other word for her." Bill Maher I can think of plenty of words for him.

“That’s the question. How we got from Antigone on her knees crying over the loss of her dead brother to Snooki, crying over the loss of her cellphone.” Colin Quinn

"I thought I was gonna have plenty of cool phones and stuff." Barack Obama

“Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven — as we have sometimes pretended.” Raul Castro

"... most conservatives are wildly stupid." Keith Olbermann who went to the ag school at Cornell so that he could claim to be an Ivy Leaguer

"Well, it's a falsifiable prediction." Glenn Reynolds. Well, I hope that my death falsifies it to my satisfaction.

"The robots can only do so much. Eventually, people will have to enter the buildings." Takeshi Makigami

"And yeah, I hear that she wants to now engage in more multi-dimensional storytelling, versus, I guess, just the straight-on reading-into-that-teleprompter-screen storytelling. So more power to her. I wish her well with her multi-dimensional storytelling." Sarah Palin

"It looks like an atomic bomb went off in a straight line." Brian White

"Anti-immigrant is one thing, anti-illegal-immigrant is quite another. It's like saying that because you don't like people breaking into your home, you are anti-guest." "Voltaire"

“To twerps demanding I cover Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal: Whole thing appears to be faked. Sometimes it pays to wait for the facts.” Howard Kurtz. He says he meant "tweeps"

"Congressman Anthony Weiner was stalked, set up, smeared, and this was coordinated to protect Clarence Thomas from scrutiny." Somebody at the Daily Kos called "Stranded Wind"

"The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: 'This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don't know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That's it.'" Anthony Weiner

“So, I was with some doctors last night and one of them said and ‘You know, we keep saying, why did he do it?' He has a lovely wife. Why is he doing it? This is not my theory. That it is a result of Viagra and what is the other one?” Barbara Walters

"He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him. This man doesn't take a day off." Mrs. You-Know-Who

"The other thing that happened though, this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. If you see it when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate." Barack Obama, in response to a question from Ann Curry about why unemployment remains stubbornly high.

“He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled healthcare, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the State of Israel. All he’s got to run on is being a Democrat and indicting the other fellow.” David Mamet

"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously." Barack Obama Jared Monti was killed in action.

“Imagine how we would feel if there it had been 24 American soldiers killed by Pakistani forces at this moment.” Dick Durbin, who has an uncanny ability to express the anti-American side of any event as soon it occurs, before the smoke clears, even though he purports to be a representative of the United States government. And get re-elected! He is a truly unique talent.

"I guess the joke is on him." Chris Wallace

“[E]mboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell's first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.” Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

“I just started to remember more.” Herman Cain

"That would make him the highest-paid historian in history." Mitt Romney

“Now, sitting next to Gore is taxing. In fact, it’s unpleasant.” Bob Woodward

"We have entered an uncertain moment with North Korea." Michael Breen

"She marries more hot blonds than Charlie Sheen." Mark Simone

"Hey guys, you made it." SFC Rodolfo Ruiz

"First of all I’d like to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift." Newt Gingrich

"There is a certain laziness about me." Barack Obama

2011-12-23T15:14:00.000-05:00

The most annoying phrase of the millenium so far: at the end of the day.

In the Mail

2011-11-15T20:03:00.003-05:00

If this is fake, how did he do it?

Day Tripper

2011-09-21T19:58:00.000-04:00

To my knowledge, this is the only Beatle appearance on television featuring Go-Go dancers:

In the Mail

2011-09-13T02:57:00.000-04:00

Cagney and Hope, or, how's that Hopey - Cagney stuff workin' out for ya?

2011-09-11T18:34:00.000-04:00

A jobs program for lawyers. Jonathan Weil notes how companies bailed out by TARP are now suing each other. In at least one case, the the litigatants are both majority-owned by the taxpayers. And Freddie Mac is suing the IRS! That means you, Mr. and Ms Taxpayer, are paying the lawyers for both sides. And these lawyers make better money than most of us do. What a great country.

2011-09-06T18:48:00.003-04:00

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee refuses to reputiate Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa's "take out those son of a bitches" command, delivered in front of the Presidential seal, immediately before Obama replaced him at the podium:

White House spokesman Jay Carney takes the same position:

By the way, I am alone in believing that Jay Carney is the dumbest ox ever to occupy the position of White House Spokesman? This guy doesn't even know that the Teamsters quite publicly split with the AFL-CIO just a few years ago, after a long history of hostility between the two. He has moments like this seemingly every day:

The Week in Quotes

2011-09-05T15:52:00.001-04:00

“There’s no doubt we’re being persecuted. But while I was sitting in my conference room, while agents blocked the door to my office, I decided two things. One, we were going to try and fight this in court. Secondly, we were going to give this issue visibility.” Henry Juszkiewicz

"You can’t design a defense to stop me." Michael Vick

“I don’t claim to be a journalist. I hold myself to higher standards of transparency and disclosure.” Michael Arrington

"The Tenth Amendment . . . That's the slave amendment." Jesse Jackson

"[I] pulled our country back from the brink." Barack Obama Of what? Prosperity? Civility?

"As a result of heavy Guard fire, they've asked for a cease-fire. ... A cease-fire with a terrorist group doesn't make any sense. We want them to leave the border region before any dialogue can be held."
Hamid Ahmadi

"This is a man who has devoted his life to the public domain, whose passion is politics, who is committed to the left. How could he stay out of the supreme confrontation when we have Nicolas Sarkozy in front of us and a categorical imperative to beat him?" Pierre Moscovici His passion is politics?

"Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong" [sic]. Jimmy Hoffa, the speaker immediately preceding the President of the United States at a Detroit campaign rally

“I’ve seen Detroit prove the cynics and the naysayers wrong.” Barack Obama

“I support him more than 100 percent.” Karen Porter, a Detroit resident who has been unemployed for three years

The Month in Quotes - August, 2011

2011-08-30T14:48:00.002-04:00

Sharia law has nothing to do with this at all. It's crazy. It's crazy. … So, this Sharia law business is crap. It's just crazy. And I'm tired of dealing with the crazies. I mean, you know, it's just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background. Chris Christie (he said it in July, but I didn't hear it till this month)

Governor Christie would have you believe opposition to Mr. Mohammed was sheer bigotry. . .. It's a narrative Christie fans would like to help cement. It's not true. For the record, Sohail Mohammed is not just an attorney. He served as a board member for an Islamist organization, the American Muslim Union. Andrew McCarthy

"And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what's real, of who's accountable, of who is not accountable, of who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't." John Kerry, with the clarity he usually displays when speaking extemporaneously

"This is a Tea Party downgrade." David Axelrod

“I believe this is without question the Tea Party downgrade.” John Kerry, one hour after Axelrod. They all get the same talking points memo, and follow its instructions. Remember "culture of corruption"?

"When I left I met quite a few soldiers and policemen in hiding who said they had been told to kill the population or be killed by the security forces. Sometimes we would be hiding in the same house." Gaëtan Vannay

“If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy. You have damaged your own race.” Michael Nutter

"The model they innovated in that effort was transported whole cloth into the climate debate. And some of the exact same people — by name, I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists, to pretend to be scientists, to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.' Bulls--t! 'It may be sun spots.' Bulls--t! 'It’s not getting warmer.' Bulls--t!" Al Gore A list of names? Remind you of anyone, Al?

"It's like the old days. It's bringing the community spirit back. Even though it's a sad way to do it, it's bringing the community together." "Ariom"

"You dream about it but when it finally happens it's kind of surreal." Jim Thome

"The Tea party can go straight to hell." Maxine Waters

“You don’t want to know. Let’s just say it was me and me. Hell of a way to go, right? Greg Schiano

"Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?” Admissions Office, Elmhurst College

"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." Drew Carey

"It is a tragic irony that papal economics mimic those of the Church’s socialist opponents." Richard Epstein, who knows a lot about economics, but little about religion

"Who likes wet people?" Michelle Bachmann

"You are a liberal Democrat who advocates the Democratic Party’s positions on gay rights, abortion, and feminism. Which branch of Islam comports with your position on these issues?" Scott Johnson

"So… who had Vermont in the “State Hardest Hit By Irene” pool?" Brendan Loy

"We're not Manhattan, but we have human lives here in Vermont, too." Peter Shumlin

2011-08-30T10:51:00.000-04:00

Liberal With Sanity Mickey Kaus: Top 10 Things Obama Could Have Done Differently But, Mickey, if he'd done them, he wouldn't have been Obama.

2011-08-28T19:48:00.001-04:00

Jonathan Weil on Warren Buffet's idea of shared sacrifice.

2011-08-25T19:52:00.001-04:00

If you think democracy is disappearing on this side of the Atlantic, listen to Pat Condell explain what's going on over there.

2011-08-24T13:55:00.001-04:00

The first line of a story entitled "U.S. To Deny Taiwan New F-16 Fighters" by Wendell Minnick in Defense News"

"Bowing to Chinese pressure, the U.S. will deny Taiwan's request for 66 new F-16C/D fighter aircraft, a Taiwan Ministry of National Defense (MND) official said."

Does China ever bow to American pressure?

In the Mail

2011-08-15T18:47:00.000-04:00

2011-08-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

Can you recall a bad movie that had Gene Hackman in its cast? I can't.

2011-08-08T18:27:00.001-04:00

Here's what happens during a mob panic, like the one today on Wall Street. The mob behaves irrationally, doing the exact opposite of what each individual member of the mob would do if he or she stopped for a minute to think.

OMG, said the media all weekend after Standard and Poors reduced Uncle Sam's credit score on Friday evening, the stock market will crash on Monday! And it did. US debt, also known as bills, notes and bonds, became riskier investments because of S&P's pronouncement the US was less capable of paying its debt than it had been before.

Now, what is a stock market crash? It's what happens when most of the people in the market want to sell. To make the sale, they have to take less for the stock. Supply and demand. No Nobel Prize in economics needed.

But what did those panicked sellers do with the money they got in return for their devalued stocks? They purchased US debt with it! Oy!

When I was about 4 or 5...

2011-08-02T14:40:00.001-04:00

I thought that, when they played a record, the artists were actually at the radio station's studio, performing the song.

I also thought that the Ray Charles Singers had something to do with Ray Charles.

I thought that Ozzie and Harriet was what would come to be known as a reality show, sort of like Jersey Shore without the R rated stuff.

I thought that that the Olympic Games had been going on every four years continuously since about 400 BC, with occasional breaks for world wars.

I thought that Mississippi was a young woman: "Miss Issipi."

I didn't understand why nuns never got pregnant, like wives did.

I couldn't figure out why I wasn't Jewish, since Jesus was.

I just assumed that the Dodgers were coming back to Brooklyn, sooner or later.

2011-08-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

Akoto Ofori-Atta: What killed the R&B groups?

2011-07-26T16:49:00.001-04:00

More cajoling from our president last night. Ergo, another denunciation of tax breaks for "corporate jets." When will somebody remind him to his face that the accellerated depreciation for them was a part of his vaunted stimulus package. I mean, I want to yell at my TV when whenever he says it. It must poll well.

2011-07-24T11:47:00.001-04:00

I was going to post that it would not be long until the someone on the left would blame conservatism for the slaughter perpetrated in Norway this weekend by madman Anders Breivik. But first I figured I'd better check the usual left-wing sites to make sure it hadn't happened already. Of course, it had. The first place I looked was the Daiky Kos. There it was. By "Leftcoastbreakdown." And the author makes the inevitable Hitler comparison, beginning with the very first sentence.

Predictable.

2011-07-18T15:53:00.002-04:00

From Right Wing News: Why it's tough to be a conservative blogger.

2011-07-14T09:01:00.003-04:00

Western Journalism offers a great example today of how the Soros-funded Media Matters for America manages to lie without actually making any one single false statement. The MMIA attack clearly implies that when Fox News ran a story with the headline “Cambridge, MA set to Pay Gay Employees More Than Straight.” it failed to advise its readers that the extra pay is to make up for gay partners' inability to take advantage of the Federal tax deduction for married couples. But it did. In the very first sentence of the story.

The attack dog writes that Fox “excerpted an article from The Daily Mail, which has a similarly misleading headline. However, the Daily Mail article clearly explains that the city is offering gay employees a stipend to offset a federal tax that does not apply to straight employees.” The Daily Mail “clearly explains” this, so, obviously, Fox doesn’t.

It must take a lot of practice to lie so well.

The year in quotes, first half

2011-06-26T22:01:00.001-04:00

"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill." Bayard Marin

"My daughter was born on a tragic day, and she went out on a tragic day," John Green

"We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." Paul Krugman, who continued to blame the Tea Party even as he admitted that the shooter was a madman.

"There's everything to connect this to partisan politics and talk radio and cable TV except evidence. There's just none of that." James Carville

“I can’t be remorseful for something I don’t think I did.” Tom Delay

"Why don't you leave this to the boys, sweet cakes?" Ron Frankin

"You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House, we have a Senate, we have a President." Chuck Schumer

“I’d like another glass of wine.” Valerie Jarrett

“I know her very well, and she would be very comfortable with the decision that I made. I have every intention that she’ll be there for launch. I’ve talked to her doctors about that. I obviously weighed time I could spend with her over time I could spend with NASA and my crew.” Mark Kelly, who has become one of my favorite guys.

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” Robert Gates

"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon" Barack Obama

"Listen, all these rights are legislatively created. They didn't come down on tablets from the top of a mountain." Chris Christie

"As the Recovery Act funds that saw through many states over the last two years are phasing out and it is undeniable that the Recovery Act helped every single state represented in this room manage your budgets, whether you admit it or not." Barack Obama,

“I always use the word extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” Chuck Schumer

"Now some of you may be thinking about Ron Paul – I promise you his followers are the biggest a-holes of them all." Mark Levin

"There’s just no other word for her." Bill Maher I can think of plenty of words for him.

“That’s the question. How we got from Antigone on her knees crying over the loss of her dead brother to Snooki, crying over the loss of her cellphone.” Colin Quinn

"I thought I was gonna have plenty of cool phones and stuff." Barack Obama

“Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven — as we have sometimes pretended.” Raul Castro

"... most conservatives are wildly stupid." Keith Olbermannwho went to the ag school at Cornell so that he could claim to be an Ivy Leaguer

"Well, it's a falsifiable prediction." Glenn Reynolds. Well, I hope that my death falsifies it to my satisfaction.

"The robots can only do so much. Eventually, people will have to enter the buildings." Takeshi Makigami

"And yeah, I hear that she wants to now engage in more multi-dimensional storytelling, versus, I guess, just the straight-on reading-into-that-teleprompter-screen storytelling. So more power to her. I wish her well with her multi-dimensional storytelling." Sarah Palin

"It looks like an atomic bomb went off in a straight line." Brian White

"Anti-immigrant is one thing, anti-illegal-immigrant is quite another. It's like saying that because you don't like people breaking into your home, you are anti-guest." "Voltaire"

“To twerps demanding I cover Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal: Whole thing appears to be faked. Sometimes it pays to wait for the facts.” Howard Kurtz. He says he meant "tweeps"

"Congressman Anthony Weiner was stalked, set up, smeared, and this was coordinated to protect Clarence Thomas from scrutiny." Somebody at the Daily Kos called "Stranded Wind"

"The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: 'This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don't know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That's it.'" Anthony Weiner

“So, I was with some doctors last night and one of them said and ‘You know, we keep saying, why did he do it?' He has a lovely wife. Why is he doing it? This is not my theory. That it is a result of Viagra and what is the other one?” Barbara Walters

"He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him. This man doesn't take a day off." Mrs. You-Know-Who

"The other thing that happened though, this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. If you see it when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate." Barack Obama, in response to a question from Ann Curry about why unemployment remains stubbornly high.

“He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled healthcare, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the State of Israel. All he’s got to run on is being a Democrat and indicting the other fellow.” David Mamet

"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously." Barack Obama Jared Monti was killed in action.

"I guess the joke is on him." Chris Wallace

2011-06-24T03:55:00.000-04:00

About introverts. All true.

2011-06-08T13:46:00.000-04:00

Everybody knew that the Taliban was originally an instrument for Pakistani colonization of Afghanistan. Everybody knew that al-Qaeda forces were being sheltered in the Pakistani frontier town of Quetta, and that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was found hiding in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani Army. Bernard-Henri Lévy once even produced a damning time line showing that every Pakistani “capture” of a wanted jihadist had occurred the week immediately preceding a vote in Congress on subventions to the government in Islamabad. But not even I was cynical enough to believe that Osama bin Laden himself would be given a villa in a Pakistani garrison town on Islamabad’s periphery.
Christopher Hitchens.

2011-06-07T11:57:00.002-04:00

This should be it for my congressional representative, Anthony Weiner. He won't even tell the truth when he claims to be coming clean. This is what he said between crocodile tears at yesterday's confessional press conference in response to a mostly-inaudible question about whether he coached one of the young women involved in Weinergate to lie:

"At no time did I or any member of my staff try to do anything to cover anything up. She did reach out to me and express what — how she’d been set upon, and I expressed my apologies to her. But there was no coaching of any sort going on. And it was basically me saying what I’ve said here today, which is how deeply sorry I am for what happened."

No coaching going on, huh? Check out TMZ's report:

Weiner put on a full court press, urging [porn star Ginger] Lee to lie about their relationship. On June 1, he emailed her: "The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: 'This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don't know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That's it.'"

No matter who the 'she' was in Weiner's response to that question, his answer was a lie. He tried to cover something up. There was "coaching" of some sort going on. How can anyone be foolish enough to take Weiner's word for anything anymore?

2011-06-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

Once again, this time on the issue of Paul Revere, Sarah Palin proves more knowledgeable than her smug, elitist critics. Remember 1773!

2011-05-24T13:10:00.000-04:00

Command Economist Barack Obama:

"American taxpayers contributed to that process of stabilizing the economy. Companies havebenefited from that, and they're making a lot of money, and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products."

Yeah, that's how it works, Mr. President.

2011-05-23T08:58:00.001-04:00

From the AP story about the death of songwriter Joseph Brooks, who was awaiting trial on charges of rape:

Brooks was found with a plastic dry-cleaning bag around his head and a towel wrapped around his neck, [police spokesman Paul]Browne said. A hose attached to a helium tank was hooked up to the bag, he said. It was not immediately clear how long Brooks had been there.

The medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

I suspect pancreatic cancer

2011-05-20T11:42:00.000-04:00

2011-05-12T13:22:00.000-04:00

Remember Bushisms? That smirking Slate column by the smug Jacob Weisberg that ridiculed the President's command of the language? Well, the joke's on them. They cancelled the column just as the the supply of malapropisms suddenly increased, i.e., when the Presidency changed hands. Latest example:

.
"Internationally, we've gone through a Teutonic shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come."

Just a slip of the tongue, says the USA Today story. Really? You're talking about a guy who knows so little Teutonic history that he thinks there's a language known as "Austrian."

But wait, there's more. The White House issues a written transcript of Obama's remarks, making what the staff seems to believe is the obvious correction:

"Internationally, we've gone through a **Teutonic [tectonic] shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come." Tectonic?

Wanna try again?

2011-05-08T18:13:00.000-04:00

Proof that Osama's not dead!!

In the Mail

2011-05-07T08:13:00.000-04:00

News from the mother country

2011-04-27T09:32:00.001-04:00

Kareoke Bust!

2011-04-03T22:39:00.000-04:00

I think Bruce Handy has discovered the secret behind Donald Trump's hair.

2011-03-02T10:53:00.002-05:00

Yesterday,Eric Holder , according to Josh Gerstein, responded this way when asked by Rep John Culberson (R., Texas) at a congressional hearing why Holder's Justice Department dismissed a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers, even though the government had already won the case by default.

The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.

"Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia—which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black.

(emphasis added by me.)

All four of Eric Holder's grandparents were born in Barbados. Ever been there? It was nothing like rural Alabama in the 1920's. It has a much different history than that of the American south.

Like Obama, Holder is not a descendant of southern American slaves, but continually implies that he is. It has its benefits for him. One of those benefits is to allow him to exude moral superiority over those who ask him tough questions.

You can't win with Holder. Ask tough questions about race, and you're doing "a great disservice." Don't ask, and, I suppose, you're a coward.

Others are annoyed that he used the phrase "my people" to mean black people, not American people. It's not the usage per se that bothers me. It's what it confims to me about the way he governs.

2011-02-22T18:42:00.001-05:00

When I hear how the 14 Democrat state senators that fled Wisconsin are so brave

I'm reminded of this:

2011-02-21T19:53:00.000-05:00

J.P. Friere:

Unions have come to rely on the public sector because government employees are easier to organize, and managers less resistent. Who's going to put up a fight over an organizing campaign with a politically active union when taxpayers are paying the bill? If the union wants nicer benefits, it's easy to cave in, tax dollars and budgets be damned. It's good for campaign coffers.. . .

Public-sector unions rallying in Madison aren't even taking a hit for their political activism, given that their protest is made possible by paid sick days, negotiated for them by their collective bargaining units who, it must be said, donate to the very people with whom they negotiate.

If public sector unions want the right to collectively bargain over who gets my money - fine, as long as I get to sit a the table, too. Politicians, especially those designated "D" have, not a conflict of interest, but an interest all-but-indistinguishable from the union bosses on the other side of the table. Enough.

2011-02-19T15:44:00.000-05:00

When I heard of the indimidating behavior of the teacher's unions ans their bussed-in hired crowds in Madison Wisconson this week, I wondered whether the Tea Party would ride to the rescue. Looks like they're on the way. It has disadvantages in this dispute, of course. Tea Party members don't abandon their responsibilities to their employers (as, in the case of the teachers, the people of the State of Wisconsin) by calling in "'sick" so that they can ('for the children' of course) barge, mob-like into the halls of a democratically elected government to intimidate those freely elected by the people from doing their jobs.

It can't require the employers of the members of the Tea Party to to withhold some of their salary and turn it over to Tea Party leaders, like the public employees unions can and do. And Tea party members can't blatantly disrespect The National Anthem without attracting media attention, like some people can:

But I think they can win anyway.

2011-01-28T09:02:00.000-05:00

I'm heading for Florida for the weekend. In the meantime, I have the same request as this church:

2011-01-20T16:18:00.001-05:00

The winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is honoring the man who is imprisoning the the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Think about that.

2011-01-06T19:42:00.000-05:00

Is she drunk? I mean, really.

2011-01-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

From Breitbart: the 10 most underreported stories of 2010.

2011-01-04T18:30:00.001-05:00

Gerry Rafferty, another victim of alcoholism, is dead at age 63. His biggest hit:

2011-01-03T20:10:00.002-05:00

In the aftermath of the slaughter in Egypt,threats against Coptic Christians are spreading across Europe. And yet we continue to hear that the real problem is Islamophobia.

Why would anyone want to kill John Wheeler?

The Year in quotes, Fourth Quarter

2010-12-22T11:50:00.001-05:00

"I am on trial, but on trial with me is the freedom of expression of many Dutch citizens. ... "I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it" Geert Wilders

" ...So I don't—I, I—I'm worried about this, it's why I have fantasized—don't get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. ..." Thomas Friedman

''It's not convenient to accept an interview now, there are lots of police at my home.'' Liu Xia

"This prize belongs to everyone, everyone who is Chinese and has been fearless in defending their dignity." -- Liu Xia

"Anyone who didn't see this guy coming wanted to be rolled." M.Simon Rockford

“There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” Barack Obama

"This may be the only shovel-ready project in America." Dick Cheney

"You send another goon to my house and I'll take you out." Carl Paladino

"It means all the world to us to know that there are prayer circles out there and people who are keeping the spirits clean around us." Michelle Obama

“When you’re out of work and you can’t buy a home or you lost your home and you can’t pay your bills… sometimes that organizes [people] around kind of a tribal attitude and issues of race become more prominent.” You know who Yeah. Who among us hasn't thought during this recession "if it weren't for those people of that other race, I could afford a house"? I am really getting weary of this guy.

“What [Republicans] do is find candidates, usually stealth candidates, that haven’t been in office, haven’t served or performed in any kind of public service. My opponent [Murray] is typical, frankly.” The despicable Jim Moran, Democrat Congressman from Virginia, about his opponent, 24-year Army Veteran Patrick Murray

I think this is a big difference between liberals and conservatives. You know, I don't think conservatives are bad people. I think they have a hard time being empathetic to people who are not like them at all. Bill Maher

“Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” Juan Williams

"I can tell you this: For the first time in my life, I am absolutely thinking about it." Donald Trump The first time, huh?

"This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order." P.J. O'Rourke

"Muslims killed us on 9/11." Bill O'Reilly

"I'm too busy ending two wars." Julian Assange

"I could smell weed in the outfield. It was crazy. I was looking at the cops a couple of times during the game." Josh Hamilton

"I suppose it is possible to go around believing this." Christopher Hitchens

"This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." Peggy Noonan

"Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States." George Soros

“If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” John Tyner

“We have to start coming to the realization that Bristol Palin is invincible. She can’t be destroyed. She’s like a no fun version of Charlie Sheen.” Jimmy Kimmel

“This is an outrage. They had ample time to do it.It is incredible to me that the so-called reformers and sheriffs of Wall Street went with same old, same old.” Jim Cramer

"It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going." Al Gore, after finally getting a clue.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." Al Gore, who's evidently begun to attend Politicians Anonymous meetings.

"Most Americans, they’re just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us. And that means because it’s a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we’re going to compromise. This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify." Barack Obama I didn't know that. Did you?

"We're asking Hispanic and African-American drivers to racially profile their . . . Hispanic and African-American passengers - those that they feel, or they believe, could put their lives in danger." Fernando Mateo

“I’m not a lesbian. I’m not even kind of a lesbian.” Oprah Winfrey Well, she and I have something in common. But what's so bad about being a lesbian, Oprah?

“He was not born here. That’s my belief. I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go — within 10 minutes — to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, ‘See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.’ The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn’t answer anything. And why? Because he’s hiding something.” Luke Scott Well, Luke, I'll meet you half way. When people act like they have something to hide, they almost invariably have something to hide. But that doesn't mean that what they have to hide is what you assume they have to hide. Google [Saddam Hussein WMD].

"Anybody that has ever invaded Afghanistan has come out the loser. And I have serious doubts that we will prevail in Afghanistan, that is, to meet the present goals that we have set for ourselves.My belief is that we will constantly reduce our expectations or our goals lower and lower and lower, until we can finally get out without serious embarrassment. But I don't think we have the capability or the will to actually prevail militarily over the Taliban. That seems to me to be an almost hopeless case." Jimmy Carter, who knows a thing or two about losers.

“What I say to the American people is that… thousands of people are working 24/7, 364 days a year to keep the American people safe.” Janet Napolitano What about leap years?

"The Gitmo detainees already go out of their minds when addressed directly by a female with her whole face showing. Just think how these 12th-Century dip$#!+s will react when they get their butts kicked by some gay dudes. It’ll just add to the humiliation." Jim Treacher, looking on the bright side

When everything is evidence of the thing you want to believe, it might be time to stop pretending you're all about science. Ann Althouse

2010-12-08T18:53:00.001-05:00

While I come down on the conservative side of most issues, I deviate - somewhat - on the permanent abolition of the estate tax, known by its detractors as the "death tax."

Mainstream conservative thought (assuming "mainstream conservative" is not a self-contradicting term) posits that, since the dead person's money was already taxed as it was earned, it shouldn't be taxed again upon death.

To that I say - why not? If it is not taxed again, it will go - untaxed - to persons who did no more to earn it than did the average American taxpayer. It seems to me a rather painless way to pay down the deficit that is owed by all of those taxpayers. We've got to the the money from somewhere. Why not from people who would never get to spend what they earned anyway?

But, opponents say, it would only be a drop in the bucket if we confiscated a big percentage of the estates of the super-rich. Well, one drop is better than no drops. And I think society has a valid interest in preventing the creation of a super-elite class based solely on the inheritance of fabulous wealth. Elimination of the estate tax for the ultra-wealthy is counter to the American ethos of self-reliance, and it threatens to aggregate too much power in the hands of too few. Do we really want the heirs of George Soros or Bill Gates to wield that much economic power over the rest of us?

But, opponents say, it destroys small businesses by forcing the kids who worked with their parents to build a business to sell it just to pay the tax. You know, like family farms and so forth. True. So, set the exemption high enough that small businesses would be immune: five million, ten million, whatever. If RFK Junior or Jay Rockefeller had not been forced to wait until the tax man was paid before they got their mega-millions, no small businesses would have been saved.

Driving home from work this evening, I heard a nationally-syndicated conservative radio talk show host say that if the majority owner of the New York Yankees hadn't died this year, while there is no estate tax, the Steinbrenner family might have been forced to sell the team. And he said it as if that were a bad thing! I couldn't care less.

2010-12-07T10:54:00.001-05:00

Here is how 42 U.S.C. 1395y(b)(7)(A)describes the beginning date for a certain requirement of the Medicare Law:

On and after the first day of the first calendar quarter beginning after the date that is 1 year after December 29, 2007,...

Did anyone on Capitol Hill except for the congressional aide (or lobbyist) who wrote that nonsense read it before it was enacted?

2010-11-24T14:02:00.001-05:00

Rep. John Duncan of Tennessee argues that the Air Marshall Service is a waste of money:

2010-11-23T21:05:00.000-05:00

Keir Cutler on Shakespeare

2010-11-09T07:20:00.002-05:00

Those MSN articles I see when I sign on every morning are getting worse and worse every day. This morning, an article promises to disclose "6 Money Saving Tips from Billionaires." So I read it to discover that all six "tips" are things I do already. So do you. Unless you're a billionaire.

2010-11-01T10:34:00.001-04:00

Bill Wilson in the Washington Examiner:

Having failed to deliver a death blow to the industry, Obama’s new strategy is apparently death by a thousand cuts – some of them very deep cuts. Consider a little-known requirement of “Obamacare” called the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR).

Under this new mandate, insurance companies must spend no less than 80-85 percent of their premiums directly on reimbursements for clinical services or “activities that improve health care quality.”

But what happens to the other 15-20 percent of premiums? And who determines what constitutes an “activity that improves health care quality?”

Obviously, that remaining pot of money is where private plans have historically paid operational costs and realized profits – but strict new definitions being forced upon them by the Department of Health and Human Services threaten to cut into that percentage.

For example, if this new mandate is implemented, money that is currently spent on anti-fraud measures will no longer be classified as an “activity that improves health care quality.” That means plan providers will be faced with a choice – either cut profits voluntarily or let the thieves do it for them.

2010-11-01T10:26:00.002-04:00

Jonathan Weil on the conflict of interest the Fed has created for itself through TARP:

It’s a classic Catch-22. If the Fed exercises its rights as an investor, it undermines its credibility as a supervisor. If it doesn’t, it’s abandoning its duty to minimize taxpayers’ losses. This shows why the Fed shouldn’t be allowed to hold mortgage-backed securities of this kind in the first place.

In the Mail

2010-10-29T09:44:00.003-04:00

I'm on the mailing list of some left wing sites, just to keep tabs. Here's what the Daily Kos is sending around to their minions this morning in a hapless attempt to inspire them: 40 inspirational speeches in two minutes.

They must know things are loooking bad right now - for them.

2010-10-28T11:46:00.003-04:00

Once again, Al Gore proves that he can't possibly believe what he says about global warming. The only other explanation is that he's an abject moron.

2010-10-23T14:08:00.002-04:00

As a couple of the guys on my blogroll would say, what's in my head:

Chinese Professor

2010-10-23T12:34:00.000-04:00

2010-10-10T09:30:00.002-04:00

Heartwarming tale: I can't wait until you die

2010-10-07T10:12:00.011-04:00

Roy Halladay's game last night inspires this little rantlet on annoying phrases associated with baseball:

No-no (as a reference to a no-hitter). First of all, it sounds goofy. Unmanly. Can you imagine a manager like, say, Ralph Houk, the World War Two hero who died this year, saying, "Hey, my pitcher just threw a no-no!" Yuck. Furthermore, it makes no sense. What function is the second "no" serving? Are the two no's supposed to represent no runs and no hits? Bullfeathers. A pitcher is credited with a no hitter even if he gives up a run: for example Darryl Kile, Joe Cowley, George Culver, and Dean Chance. One guy , Ken Johnson, actually lost a game despite throwing a no-hitter!

"Die hard" (as in "die hard Yankee fan") What is that supposed to mean? Lesser fans than the speaker would be more likely to die when their team doesn't win? C'mon. Nobody has the right to claim to be "die hard" fan, except maybe Cubs fans. Almost as annoying is "big," as in "big Mets fan." How big? 6'5"? 260?

"Ground rule double" This phrase is annoying in that it is almost always used incorrectly. A ball that lands deep in the outfield and then hops over the fence or wall is a double in every professional baseball park in the world. It's not an inside-the-park double, but it's just a double. It has nothing to do with the ground rules of the park where it is hit. You might as well call a fair ball hit over the wall a "ground rule" home run. Now, there are true "ground rule" doubles. For example, if a ball gets lost in the ivy that covers the fence at Wrigley Field, that qualifies. That's a ground rule!

2010-10-05T09:13:00.002-04:00

For once in my life I agree with Katrina Vanden Heuvel: Declaring a cease-fire on Hitler analogies

2010-10-01T10:07:00.006-04:00

Joe Sobran has died. He was a brilliant thinker and a great writer. More importantly, despite his pleasant, soft-spoken manner, he was absolutely fearless in his self-expression. I disagreed with some of his more unusual beliefs, but I admired the way he backed them up. On one unorthodox opinion - that the works of Shakespeare were in fact written by Edward DeVere, Eighth Earl of Oxford - he completely convinced me.

I emailed him a few times with questions about columns he'd written. He never failed to reply, answering me with patience and good humor. I'll miss him.

P.S. Here's an example of that fearlesssness for which he paid so dearly. I wouldn't sign on to every word of it, but I admire him for his courageousness in saying it. And here's Joe's lighter side.

2010-09-28T18:47:00.002-04:00

Wow! I always admired his longevity as an NFL quarterback, but I had no idea he'd ever do this: Oakland Raider George Blanda: Passes At Age 83

In the Mail

2010-09-19T09:56:00.002-04:00

Obituary. Apparently, this is genuine. I would have loved to meet Hal before he left.

Harold L. Groves

Harold L. Groves died at home on Thursday, August 26, 2010, from a stroke aggravated by congestive heart failure. He was born in Kennedy, TX, on May 12, 1933. However, he spent his raucous school days in Vallejo, CA.
Hal joined the Air Force in 1953 earning his wings and officer's commission in 1955. He earned his BS degree in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and his MBA from Auburn University. He was an F-4 fighter pilot during the Viet Nam War, escorting bombers down the Red River valley to Hanoi, earning him the right to be called an AF River Rat. He was also a member of the Order of Daedalians. He retired from the Air Force in 1981. He then worked for The Boeing Company in Seattle, WA, for 14 years before retiring again in 1995 and relocating to Myrtle Beach, SC. Hal was an avid golfer, though he believed that it was the equipment more than skill that contributed to the success of the game.
Hal is survived by his wife, Ginny Levsen, his best friend, James Dean, his "adopted" daughter, Jian Qin, and many generous and loving friends and family, especially his final caregivers, his niece, Lois Finch, and his sister-in-law, Dorie Geniesse. He is also survived by his loving Newfoundland dogs, Keefer and Bacchus, and two cats, Santa Fe and Rebel.
Visitation will be on Monday, August 30th, from 5:00to 6:30 PM at the funeral home followed by a funeral service at 6:30 PM. Golf apparel will be more than acceptable at both the visitation and the service. Hal will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA, at 9:00 AM on December 9, 2010, with full military honors.
In lieu of flowers, Hal has requested that donations be made to your local animal shelter or to any candidate running against Barack Obama in 2012.

h/t Pete

2010-08-27T09:51:00.001-04:00

How ABC News is covering the Mosque controversy.

2010-08-23T09:18:00.003-04:00

Toby Harnden: Does Obama want to be re-elected? Harnden is serious.

It seems highly unlikely that Obama will decide not to run in 2012. But he might well be calculating that a embarking post-presidential role as the leading global thinker in the post-American world as a Republican successor enters office is more attractive than being sullied by the political compromises and manoeuvrings necessary to win.

2010-08-15T22:32:00.003-04:00

"Ranger" commenting at Just One Minute:

The left has said relentlessly that the Confederate . . . flag must be expunged from public view because it is a hurtful symbol to many in society. Mind you, there were no laws being broken in [its] display, but it was a deliberate provocation, an act of one group declaring their dominance over others.
And yet, when the exact same point is made about "Cordoba House", the left brushes it [aside] as if it is not only an irrelivent argument, but actually a disingenuous one.

2010-08-15T22:24:00.000-04:00

Paul Sperry: Under New American Management Al-Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat

In the Mail

2010-08-15T11:16:00.003-04:00

The year is 1910
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a
century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:
*********************************
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30.
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A..

To which I would add:
The national debt was $2 Billion, which seemed like a lot at the time, I suppose, although it's only one-twentieth of Warren Bufett's net worth.

2010-08-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

A happy ending in Multnomah County

2010-08-07T09:09:00.001-04:00

Andrew McCarthy: A preview of the Ground Zero Mosque.

In the Mail

2010-08-02T12:52:00.002-04:00

Via my niece: Pat Condell:

BTW, if you've watched more than a few of Mr. Condell's Youtube postings, you know that he can hardly be described as a Christian Fundamentalist.

2010-07-29T10:29:00.002-04:00

Jonathan Strong of the Daily caller: Political operatives on Journolist worked to shape news coverage The first two paragraphs:

Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it.
Two of the administration’s chief economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, the vice president’s top economist, and Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, were members of Journolist until they began working officially for Obama.

And it gets worse from there. Just because you're paranoid . . .

2010-07-28T14:13:00.001-04:00

Caddell and Schoen: Our Divisive President.

2010-07-28T12:05:00.002-04:00

Trever Louden looks at the membership roster, only partially disclosed right now, of Ezra Klein's defunct JournoList. He concludes:
JournoList was not just a bunch of “liberal’ journos with too much time on their hands.
It was a network of high level opinion makers, united by a “progressive” vision for America. They believed that their superior judgment and insight obligated them to present Americans with a view of reality that they would be too stupid and reactionary to grasp unaided.
At least a few, perhaps many, were committed Marxists who saw journalism, not as a profession, but as a revolutionary tool.
This disgraceful episode should dispel forever the “progressive” lie that the American MainStreamMedia and its “liberal” core, can be trusted to uphold the objective standards of their profession.

2010-07-27T11:47:00.002-04:00

If only Barney Frank were as careful with our money as he is with his own! From the New York Post's report of Barney's recent visit to my neck of the woods: Rep. Barney Frank causes scene demanding discount

Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island's popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday. Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn't have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, "Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation."

2010-07-25T16:08:00.001-04:00

Wow!

White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber

In the Mail

2010-07-24T23:52:00.000-04:00

Same as it ever was

2010-07-24T07:52:00.002-04:00

Music by the Talking Heads. Lyrics and vocals by Politzoid:

Bottom Story of the Day

2010-07-21T22:10:00.001-04:00

DOJ: Prosecutor firing was politics, not crime

In the Mail

2010-07-21T22:04:00.001-04:00

Reagan, Cash and Hope

2010-07-21T21:59:00.001-04:00

What happened the year you were born.

"Call them racists"!

2010-07-20T09:10:00.007-04:00

So, it turns out there was a large, secret cabal in the media working to bury unfavorable stories about Obama during the 2008 campaign, like the Jeremiah Wright thing. And it seems to have included reporters who were claiming objectivity. [Update. Actually, there's no evidence of that, at least not so far.] Just 'cause your paranoid, doesn't mean there isn't really a conspiracy!

Let the spinning begin! When the left gets caught being leftist, they spin like nuclear-powered dradles.

This must be what Breitbart meant by these tweets.

Update. Here's an example of the spin, from MMFA. Liberal Journalists were just "talking to each other." Well, someone remind MMFA of what they were saying:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It's not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright's defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

2010-07-15T23:03:00.005-04:00

Officer David Salgado of the Phoenix police force has sued to overturn the Arizona immigration law on the grounds that it will force him to engage in racial profiling. Of course, the law specifically outlaws the violation of anyone's civil rights (see page 4), but, you know . . .

Anyway, you have to give Officer Salgado credit for taking the initiative and going out and hiring a lawyer with his own money to force the state to do what he thinks is right. As AFP notes:

Salgado, a Mexican-American Phoenix resident, told reporters: "I'm not a politician, or an activist."
"But when the law was passed, I took action because I felt it was my duty to do so," he added, in explaining why he brought the suit.

Oh, sorry, wait a minute. One of the stories about the suit says that it was "also filed by an advocacy group called Chicanos Por La Causa." Maybe they're splitting the cost. Two questions, though. How do(es) Chicanos Por La Causa get the money to pay its (their) share of the lawyer's fee? And what exactly is La Causa that these Chicanos are por? Actually, forget those questions. It would be racist just to ask, wouldn't it?

2010-07-14T20:20:00.003-04:00

Suppose, a month or two ago or so, you were a Chinese apparatchick who knew this policy was about to be implemented:

The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide.

So, knowing this, you're talking to the Obama administration's Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor,Michael Posner, and he's telling you what a human rights problem the USA has because of Arizona's new immigration law. According to Mr's Posner's subsequent description of your conversation:

“We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session and as a troubling trend in our society, and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination. And these are issues very much being debated in our own society.”

I mean, how did you keep yourself from laughing in his face?

2010-07-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

The St. Louis Tea party's response to the NAACP.

2010-07-11T09:04:00.002-04:00

As my buddy Pete points out, the death of the mega-talented Harvey Fuqua has gone almost unnoticed. It aint as easy as he made it look:

2010-07-08T13:18:00.002-04:00

Andrew McCarthy explains why he opposes Elana Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court, in no uncertain terms.

2010-07-07T09:01:00.001-04:00

"This type of conduct" seems to be making a comeback. It was quite common here in New York in the 1970's. Hope and change.

2010-07-03T14:35:00.002-04:00

Bill Clinton at Bob Byrd's funeral:

"He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected," former President Bill Clinton said of Sen. Robert Byrd.
"And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done come and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that's what a good person does."

Man, I'd almost forgotten what an inexhaustible supply of baloney is contained within the heart and soul of this man. Fleeting association? Fleeting? Actually, the KKK had gone out of existence in West Virginia until Byrd, on his own, revived it in the 1940's, and became its local Grand Kleagle. It would be less of an obfuscation to say that Al Capone had a fleeting association with the Chicago mob. And he spent the rest of his life making it up? I guess the rest of his life didn't begin until after 1964, twelve years since he first succeeded in his goal "to get elected." That would be the year he served as one of the leaders of the Senate filibuster of the Civil Rights Bill.

In the Mail

2010-06-30T08:35:00.000-04:00

2010-06-28T15:25:00.002-04:00

Lawrence Solomom: Avertible Catastrophe. I guess that's the English spelling. If this is even partly true, Obama is toast. Read the whole thing, especially this:

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.
A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

2010-06-28T07:31:00.002-04:00

Today's MSN Home page features the 'Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of All Time." Eight of them are baloney, and, IMHO, two of them are true. The two true ones appear consecutively.

2010-06-26T12:34:00.002-04:00

Via Casting Pearls Before Swine, an article by Andrew Cline that gets to the heart of the problem with our Commander-of-Everything-in-Chief.

We don't know where we're going, but follow us anyway!

2010-06-25T12:46:00.003-04:00

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it... ." Nancy Pelosi

"What has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny—our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there. We know we’ll get there." Barack Obama

"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works." Chris Dodd

2010-06-21T11:51:00.004-04:00

More evidence, as if any were needed, that we are being ruled by a man with no respect for law, if the law gets in the way of his agenda. Unlike the Jones Act, federal immigration law is just a nuisance to be avoided. Kyl gets to the point at about 3:17:

In other words, Obama won't enforce the law as written, because he wants to force others to change how it's written. But it's his job to enforce the law as written. Impeachable? Well, I suppose it's neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor to willfully neglect your duties.

Update: The Obama White House is calling Kyl a liar.

In the Mail

2010-06-11T12:56:00.001-04:00

Of Mosques and Men

In the Mail

2010-06-02T08:33:00.000-04:00

2010-05-31T17:52:00.001-04:00

Bill Dance, America's best fisherman:

2010-05-31T17:28:00.004-04:00

50 Yahoo Answers Fails Actually, it's the questions that are the failures.