Monthly Archives: July 2009
New Music Friday: Billy Talent-The Navy Song
This song is not new, but Billy Talent does have a new album out now. Check out this Billy Talent classic.
Acapella Thursday: “Hallelujah” By The MSU Accafellas
Insanely good – especially for a dorm hallway. They start off a bit slow but hold on.
The Left Permanently Hoisted On Their Own Petard
When Obama won last November it warmed the Beast’s cold, hard, shrivelled NeoCon heart. The Beast was born in 1961, grew up and came of age under succesive Dem Presidents and decades of Dem control of the congress. So unlike about half the current crop of voters, he knew what it was like to live under Lib hegemony. And he also knew that all it takes to turn the public off to Liberals is a good dose of life under their control. And all those Obama voters were about to find that out as well.
Which is where L’Affair Gates comes in. The left is stuck having to defend this guy but to do so they have to espouse beliefs and attitudes the regular public find quite odious. The sweet, puffy, populist confection of leftwing ideology disguises a bitter elitist pill at the center.
The Gates affair is the most recent in a series of popularity-sapping public revelations. It is not unlike the Ricci case. No matter how you try to gloss over the result, both boil down bad behavior stemming from indefensible liberal attitudes and policies.
With Ricci you have the indirect racial quota system – what some would call “Reverse Racism”. Qualified firefighter candidates were not promoted after they passed a test because they were the wrong color. How do you defend that?
Now we have Gates, a privileged Harvard Prof with powerful connections of the “Don’t-you-know-who-I-am” variety who screams racism at the drop of a hat and verbally abuses a cop for just doing his job. Seriously, how do you defend that either?
Eugene Robinson takes a stab at it today.
…for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Crowley’s version of the incident is true — that Gates, from the outset, was accusatory, aggressive and even obnoxious, addressing the officer with an air of highhanded superiority. Let’s assume he really recited the Big Cheese mantra: “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
I lived in Cambridge for a year, and I can attest that meeting a famous Harvard professor who happens to be arrogant is like meeting a famous basketball player who happens to be tall. It’s not exactly a surprise. Crowley wouldn’t have lasted a week on the force, much less made sergeant, if he had tried to arrest every member of the Harvard community who treated him as if he belonged to an inferior species. Yet instead of walking away, Crowley arrested Gates as he stepped onto the front porch of his own house.
This is where it gets fun. Mr. Robinson appears to think that the commoners have to take crap from their betters. He’s forced by circumstance into the unhappy position where he has to argue in favor of arrogance and bad behavior. This is the “Uppity is not a crime” argument. Having nailed this plank to the tree, he wobbles out to tack on another, and attempts to link Gates event with the Sotomayor hearings – another big PR loser for the Libs.
The odd and inappropriate line of questioning by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about Sotomayor’s temperament was widely seen as sexist, and indeed it was. But I suspect the racial or ethnic power equation was also a factor — the idea of a sharp-tongued “wise Latina” making nervous attorneys, some of them white male attorneys, fumble and squirm.
Is a man of Gates’ station entitled to puff himself up and remind a policeman that he’s dealing with someone who has juice? Is a woman of Sotomayor’s accomplishment entitled to humiliate a lawyer who came to court unprepared? No more and no less entitled, surely, than all the Big Cheeses who came before them.
Hello? Are you really arguing that it’s our job to take your crap because you’re so much more important than us? Did you really just use the word ‘entitled’? Speaking of playing the Race Card – who remembers the Sotomayor hearings as a referendum on her temperament? The Beast remembers her problem as one of philosophy, her predisposition to favor racial/sexual spoils of the Ricci variety. Is mister Robinson serious when he suggests Sotomayor got ill treatment from Republicans at her hearing because she embarrassed white lawyers before her bench? If anything, this just another example of how predisposed the ethos of the permanently offended are to sift racial nuggets out of the sand and then shriek about them. All race, all the time.
Finally, Mr. Robinson performs a deeply disingenuous thought experiment.
Yet Gates’ fit of pique somehow became cause for arrest. I can’t prove that if the Big Cheese in question had been a famous, brilliant Harvard professor who happened to be white — say, presidential adviser Larry Summers, who’s on leave from the university — the outcome would have been different. I’d put money on it, though. Anybody wanna bet?
Put the Beast down for a big chunk of that action. You wanna scream at a cop in public and ignore repeated warnings to calm down – you get pinched, White or Black. To even begin to make this argument, one has to ignore a fundamentally embarrassing fact – Gates was wrong when he initially screamed ‘Race’ at officer Crowley. Crowley was not in that home because gates was black, Crowley was there because he had to be. A break-in was reported. The caller didn’t even know what color the two men forcing gates’ door were. She told the 911 dispatcher she thought one ‘might be Hispanic’.
The American people as a whole hate the race card. They resent false accusations because they understand how pernicious and unfair such accusations can be. Now the left is stuck defending elitist arrogance, false accusations, racial spoils and injustice. You got to feel for them.
The Legend of Tim Tebow
If Barack Obama balled himself up into a mass traveling forward, and he were to be met by Tim Tebow, stretched out forming a barrier, who would win the confrontation? Such are the the metaphysical conundrums that try men’s brains.
University of Florida quarteback Tim Tebow has, well, got his share of good press lately. He is a Heisman Trophy 
winner, a national champion, and, as I think I might have heard once or twice, a devout Christian.
Tebow was born to missionary parents in the Philippines, grew up home-schooled, devotes his summers to helping kids and preaching to prisoners, and is being lauded as the greatest college football player of all time. When he was in high school, ESPN did a special on him entitled Tim Tebow: The Chosen One. But now, on the precipice of his senior season at Florida, he has publicly admitted – in answer to a question put to him – that he is “saving himself for marriage.” Superman on the field/Jesus everywhere else.
Now at first I called bullshit. Wasn’t Tebow counting the time in January when FOX announcers Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis could be heard through their microphones gagging on Tebow’s cock? But then I figured that this kind of action must not count. Brennaman said that “if you’re fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it.” The broadcast also brought up the pre-game quote from Oklahoma cornerback Dominique Franks, who said Tebow would be no better than the fourth-best QB in the Big 12. Said Brennaman: “[It is] probably the most ridiculous statement ever said.” Late in the game, after Florida’s victory was secured, Tebow was flagged for taunting Oklahoma’s players, a horrible and bush-league move. Even after Tebow earned a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for his juvenile actions, Brennaman responded: “That might be the first thing he’s ever done wrong.”
Almost all of the sports media is predictably expressing fake outrage that the question regarding Tebow’s sexuality was even asked (while profiting from the hits their web rants are generating). But Tebow himself has never been shy about proclaiming his Christian faith. In fact, he is probably the most ostentatious, celebrity Christian in America today. So the question is surely relevant.
The narrative on Tebow is that he is perfect, the gridiron equivalent of Barack Obama. He is the greatest on the field, and God’s untarnished vessel everywhere else. This is a man, after all, who spends his summers chopping away at the penises of poor, young Filipino boys.
On the Friday of a weeklong trip to the orphanage his father’s ministry runs in Southeast Asia, Tebow assisted with the care of locals who had walked miles to the temporary clinic that the ministry helped organize. More than 250 people underwent medical and dental procedures, some of them from “Dr. Tebow,” who has no formal surgical training.
“The first time, it was nerve-racking,” he said. “Hands were shaking a little bit. I mean, I’m cutting somebody. You can’t do those kinds of things in the United States. But those people really needed the surgeries. We needed to help them.”
Ok, so the Chosen One sometimes has to taunt the enemy, just like Jesus casting out the money-changers, and occasionally he is called upon to slice and dice the members of poor, young boys who know no better, but apparently “really needed the surgeries.” Fair enough… I guess.
But please, oh please, spare me the notion that Tim Tebow’s fundamentalist, extreme fanatacism is more contributary to the world than I, or you, or the OU football players are. Please.
The Beast Has Caught “The Oink”.
The Beast kinda wondered what H1N1 felt like, and now he knows. It feels like a nasty head cold.
There are several different flavors of Swine Flu – the Beast appears to have caught the mild form, the kind that manifests itself like a moderate flu. But lordy, it came on fast! The Beast felt fine Friday night, then woke up six hours later sick!At first he thought it a summer cold, however there is no summer cold circulating here in Southern NH. But there is swine flu. Some other people in the neighborhood have it too, the woman at the gas station across the street described exactly the same symptoms yesterday.
The Oink is supposed to last seven days. This is day three, with a moderate fever, no chills and mostly just stuffiness mixed with fatigue and some sweatiness. The Beast thinks he was exposed last week while doing cardiac rehab at the local hospital.
Taking no meds except for some jolts of Medicinal Alcohol of the Candian variety. Actually, yesterday was worse, so the peak may have been passed already.
Dave’s Quote of the Day
“I am pleased that he [Obama], too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment”
- Race baiting and hopelessly oppressed Harvard professor Harry Lewis Gates speaking in response to his “invite” to the white house by “I need another Rev. Wright” Obama
New Music Friday: Florence and the Machine- Kiss with a Fist
and Dog Days are over. Critics Choice winners at the Brit Music Awards.
Da evil businessmen at Goldman Sachs give a 23% return to da government on eight month loan.
Here is the news for what it is worth to all the populist middle class people who don’t pay any federal income tax anyway.
July 22 (Bloomberg) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s repayments to the government of last year’s bailout money, including an agreement today to repay warrants, generated a 23 percent annualized return for U.S. taxpayers.
Goldman Sachs agreed to the Treasury’s request for $1.1 billion to repay warrants the government received when it invested $10 billion in the New York-based firm last October. The payment is in addition to $318 million in preferred dividends.
That 23 percent return compares with the 42 percent surge in Goldman Sachs’s share price since October, and the 5.1 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Goldman’s decision follows criticism of the bank by lawmakers who questioned its decision to set aside a record $11.4 billion to pay employees in the first half of the year.
The company’s warrant transaction “was the best deal for taxpayers yet,” said Linus Wilson, a finance professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Peanut butter and raisin sandwich
I have since been corrected in the maladjusted assumptions I once held in regards to the pbr sandwich but have also managed to turn a few people on to this underrated and unknown delicacy. My father is a pastor and many nights I remember him coming home late from meeting with people, the hospital or wherever his calling had taken him. He would often be hungry and tired after a long day and I would sit and talk with him (the night owl that I am) as he prepared his well known late night snack of a sliced apple, a glass of milk, and a peanut butter and raisin sandwich as we talked about his day.
Are you bored?
If you are, this should help kill a couple hours or so.
I have to admit there were many of these I had never seen before. Then again, I am not yet a hopeless youtube junkie. But I’m getting there.
Do as I say, not as I do! Obama and his signing statements.
Democrats irked by Obama signing statement
By ANNE FLAHERTY (AP) –
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has irked close allies in Congress by declaring he has the right to ignore legislation on constitutional grounds after having criticized George W. Bush for doing the same.
Four senior House Democrats on Tuesday said they were “surprised” and “chagrined” by Obama’s declaration in June that he doesn’t have to comply with provisions in a war spending bill that puts conditions on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Read the rest of this entry
Hurry up, then wait. . . an ironic prelude to our future health care system
There is something very disconcerting about a system that would allow money intended for economic growth to be put into signs that tout their own majestic agenda. No, I’m not making that up. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is spending $60,000 of its stimulus money on $2,000 road signs to highlight projects funded by the massive economic recovery package. The signs will have the logo of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and are meant for high visibility projects. Personally I think the Act should have its own Facebook page so that it can tell all of its ‘friends’ what a marvelous job it is doing.
But such frivolity highlights why an increasing number of Americans are growing skeptical of a government run health care “option.” Worse, Obama knows this and has put his efforts at overhauling the system into high gear. In a manner that is a mirror reflection of the aforementioned American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the passage of health care reform must be done with speed. But as with the stimlus, signs should be created; ones that say STOP! or YIELD, or HOLY SHIT, HAVE WE REALLY THOUGHT THIS THROUGH?
When the 1000 plus page stimulus flew through Congress, few bothered to actually read it and find out that it was festooned with liberal government programs that made the New Deal look downright sensible. And this is why it flew through with such great speed. Why bother bringing a program to the people that the pesky talking heads on the Sunday news shows will expose as a fraud? Why bother defending that which is indefensible?
But already, people are starting to notice that what is aging in Congress is not fine wine but stale bread. When David Broder of the Washington Post has questions about your proposals, perhaps you ought to take another look at what is being rammed through Congress. Among Broders observations:
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the Democrats that they were about to bust the budget. None of the bills he had seen contain “the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”"And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs,” he said. . .
. . .All this left Obama facing a choice. He could encourage his congressional allies to push ahead quickly with plans that pretty clearly are badly flawed and overly expensive. Or he could ask them to reconsider and step up to the structural changes that could deliver the kind of reform voters want — and might actually be able to afford.
On Friday, Obama urged lawmakers not to slow down — even as doubts grow about the path they are on.
Ramming through health care at a break neck speed is absolutely what should not be done. It won’t address rising costs. It will result in rationing. And it will belie all of Obama’s signature quotes on health care thus far. When he says “you can keep your doctor,” or “if you like your current coverage, keep it,” Obama demonstrates that he has a flawed understanding of the way government works. Or does he? I think Obama just might understand that bureaucracies don’t operate for profit and will invariably hold sway over the entire market. Nothing he has done thus far has convinced me he doesn’t seek anything less that complete transformation of the power of the federal government. The details of how that will be accomplished are secondary. Thus the need for quick passage.
With Obamacare passage, we will surely be a few short years from the health care rationing and waiting that plagues other western nations. It will do nothing to address rising costs and will undermine the ability of people to make sound economic choices. But as long as the signature is on the Bill by Labor Day, we can all hail another “historic” moment by our President. And then we’ll wait until the bill comes due.
Dude, Where’s My Budget Report?
Obama and company have pushed back release of the midsummer budget report from July to August, probably around the time Congress leaves for summer recess. Gee, wonder why?
Well, it’s probably got nothing to do with politics. Certainly it’s not related to Obama’s foundering Health Care juggernaut, or the increasingly unpopular Cap And Tax scheme.
After all, this is the most transparent administration in history, isn’t it? They’re not going to hide anything. They’re probably just too busy keeping all their promises to squeeze out a budget report. Yeah, that’s it – and he’s been pretty busy knocking over all those straw men who want us to do ‘nothing’, too. You know those guys – Obama’s always talking about them:
“There are those who say we should do nothing about releasing a budget report. I respectfully disagree…”
Um, ok, maybe not the best example but you get the gist of it.
Why is Mark Sanford Now Begging for a Bailout?
SC governor Mark Sanford has been well-known as what is called a “bootstraps guy.” As in, people don’t need government help, they need to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sanford had emerged, in fact, as one of the premier advocates of smaller, less active government. He of course infamously tried to refuse federal bailout money, and made enemies throughout the South Carolina Republican Party by ridiculous stunts and asinine negotioting ploys, all revolving around his belief that the smaller the government is, the better.
So why is Mark Sanford now pleading for some higher official to come and save him from himself? Sanford asserts that he is wretched and feeble, and that unless he receives this help, he has no hope. Sanford has implied that he was too weak to have remained faithful to his wife, was too clueless and deluded to understand his actions, and is still way too helpless to possibly right the ship without a bailout from the higher-ups that would give him an injection of much needed capability to control his own actions.
Sanford is publicly grovelling “with a humble heart” and “a contrite spirit.” He has announced that God is now working to change him from the weird, filandering, nut job that he was, to … something better than that I guess. What Sanford has so far become in this process is a pathetic, blubbering, infantile embarrassment.
Sanford is firmly in the camp of contemporary evangelicalism, with their histrionic and bathos-soaked redemption rituals. Thus, this 47-yr. old, uber-successful, highly powerful, multi-millionaire father of four thinks nothing of weeping and pleading in public, provided he peppers his teary expressions with all the vocabulary of melodramatic 
Christian self-healing. In fact, his appearances and correspondence are demeaning to his status as a husband, father, and man. He summons his religious mentors and emerges from the resulting assembly spouting Scripture. He issues stream-of-consciousness public updates on the state of his heart, his marriage, his heart, his job as governor, his heart, his thought process, and his heart. Always, and unabashadly, his heart.
If Mark Sanford is so flaccid and pitiful that he must prostrate himself before God and the television cameras, all the while begging for someone — or rather, Someone — to cleanse him and heal him and improve him and please make it so that he won’t have sex with strange women and lie about it to his wife, then surely, at the very least, he is not worthy to lead a state of four and a half million people.
Dave’s Quote of the Day
“Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush,” reports Fox News. Abu Ali is obviously dangerous, so when he requested some light reading material for his individual quiet time — two books titled “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” — the prison denied the request, saying that the books contain material “potentially detrimental to national security.” Maybe someone should alert the CIA that the author of these books is still on the loose. In fact, he has robbed several large banks, swindled two car companies, and runs various other Ponzi schemes through surrogates he calls “czars.” He is approximately 6′ 1″ tall, is of dubious origin and has used several aliases (Barry Soetoro, Barack Hussein), and his last known residence is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC.
- The Patriot Post
Can Watson Do It?
59-year old Tom Watson, who last won a major golf championship twenty six years ago, is the outright leader at The Open Championship heading into tomorrow’s round. If he can hang on, he would become the oldest major champion by more than a decade.
I distinctly remember a day many years ago when my family went to Sunday evening church service (Baptists are big on going to church twice on Sundays) and I ran in to see my friends, shouting “Did you see that chip shot by Watson?!?”
The day was June 20, 1983, and I had just watched Watson hole a difficult chip shot on the 17th hole that enabled him to win the US Open over Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach. I was 10 years old. Tomorrow morning I will seat my 37-year old self in front of the television and see if I can witness that same golfer accomplish a similar feat, but one made many magnitudes harder by the passage of time. Watson tees off at 9:20 EDT.
New Music Saturday: Phoenix-1901
I think this album- Wolfang Amadeus Phoenix- may be one of the best albums of the year. It has certainly grown on me.
Friday Night Punk- Green Day
It’s Gay Pride Weekend in San Diego edition!!!
“Minority”
Not a particularly “gay” song, but the video is a bunch of proud weirdos parading around the streets of San Diego, so it seemed only fitting. They need more drag queens, though.
My mobile office
Must figure out a way to blog full time, especially when your office can be anywhere you want it to be!
Obama’s Girly Pitch – The Greater Significance
Obama attempted to throw the first pitch at the All Star Game Tuesday and muffed it pretty bad. They must have know he’d blow it because Fox chose to cover the event with a very odd camera angle that didn’t even show where the ball landed.
Unfortunately the crowd erupted with jeers and O&Co were forced to try to explain how the spectators were reacting to anything other than his pathetic effort. O&Co partisans on chat boards and blogs we kept pretty busy over the past few days trying to argue the throw wasn’t of the “My arthritic granny coulda done better” variety. Now they’ve sunk to the “Can’t you reich wingers come up with anything better to waste your time on?” level (expecting a similar sneer from Phooey).
In response, The Beast admires like the way Matthew May framed the event:
This president happens to be a dissembling charlatan and his awkward, cringe-inducing traits were on full display once again.
The White House obviously had a metaphorical gun pointed at the Fox Sports camera crew, making sure their man was not embarrassed by what would have been a bouncer to the plate — which Albert Pujols happened to be stationed upon and not behind.
It had to have been the only ceremonial first pitch ever filmed as if the camera were a fan wedged uncomfortably in between two fat guys in the stands squabbling over nachos, unable and unwilling to make any sudden movements.
But the overprotection of President Obama sure made a contrast between President Bush taking Yankee captain Derek Jeter up on the latter’s admonition to throw the aforementioned ceremonial pitch on the mound and not in front of it.
Ouch!
“It’s funny because it’s true!” – Homer
I think Obama’s girly throw resonates in a manner similar to Gerald Ford’s portrayal as a Klutz back in the 70′s – the jeers stick because the meme reinforces a general perception: Ford as an affable bumbler, Obama as a public relations-crafted creature of purest artfice. We are served up countless stories of Obama The Fit, replete with topless beefcake shots, B-ball victories, etc. So when he gutterballs at the Bowling alley or girly-pitches at a game (despite the best efforts of TV to provide cover) he looks extra silly, because he fails to be in reality what he was sold as in the media.
Just as he pretended to be Moderate to get elected with a wink and a nod to the left (asked why Carrie Prejean was pilloried for espousing the same stance as Obama on gay marriage, Mickey Kaus said “Because unlike Obama, they know Prejean isn’t lying about it.”). He shows up at the game costumed as a baseball player, throws a pathetic pitch, gets cover from the press and then his fans try to argue he didn’t suck. As the great philosopher Groucho Marx once opined: “Who ya gonna believe; me or your lying eyes?” Ha.
Lots of pols throw out a crappy first pitch. Lots of Presidents trip and fall – some probably did it more often than Gerald Ford. So why did Ford take so much guff? For the same reason Obama catches extra hell for looking good on the screen but underperforming in reality; it’s a full-motion metaphor.
Softball coaches fired because of idiotic administration
I hold out hope that there will be a year when I don’t have to read about public education administrators that make boneheaded decisions that clearly serve no educational purpose and instead actually hurt kids. Alas, I suppose I’ll have to wait until next year.
In Maryland, Walkersville High School girls softball coach Brad Young had a little June celebration at his home. The pool party and cookout was attended by players and a few parents who brought beer. Naturally, alcohol is prohibited at ANY school function and the simple misunderstanding led to a softball coach and his J.V. coach being dismissed from their coaching duties. Oh, by the way, the coach didn’t even take a sip.
Young and team parents said none of the students at the party drank or had access to alcohol. The letter Young received from the school system does not allege that any students drank or had access to alcohol at the party. None of the adults at the party were intoxicated, the parents and coach said.
The simple truth of the matter is that zero tolerance policies are rules that are created and enforced by complete morons. The intent of the alcohol ban, while noble, is designed to keep teachers and coaches from being intoxicated in the presence of their students and players. And yet the rule has been twisted to prevent well-intentioned parents from celebrating a good season. And why? Because goody-goody administrators (who are not even puritanical and have no religious motivation) feel like they should montior the examples that other law abiding staff sets for the kids. Nevermind the fact that the best example an adult can set is that it is okay to imbibe in an adult beverage responsibly and in moderation.
Ultimately the policy and all such inane rules like it, serve only to punish the very people it intends to protect. The young ladies on the team now have to find a replacement coach to attempt to guide them to another 2A western region title.
McNally described Young as a “great role model for those kids,” and “a mentor who gives 150 percent” for the students-athletes in his charge.
“It wasn’t an intentional violation,” NcNally said. “The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
McNally, along with Glade Valley Athletic Association softball coach Ken Sowers and Sarah Tuck, whose daughter Karson was named county player of the year, described Young as a coach who goes out of his way to assist student-athletes with college applications and scholarship opportunities.
Military Considering a Ban on All Smoking
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
This was the phrase that dates from WWII, when American GI’s were told to take a break when a wait was unavoidable. Now, a Pentagon recommendation seeks to snuff out all GI smoking, including by those involved in an active combat zone. The recommendation suggests that smoking first be banned at all service academies, that sales of tobacco products be banned at military installations, and that a Pentagon “tobacco czar” be created to begin the process of purification.
Several things spring to mind. First, to read the report itself is to realize what a silly, liberal, do-gooder group formulated the document, and to then ask: “How on Earth have these people been given such a prominent role in defense policy?” Second, it shows just how deluded and detatched modern Western society has become that they see a soldier in a combat zone and immediately worry whether he’s hiding a pack of Marlboro’s under his body armor.
But the loudest siren to scream from this report is the danger posed by government control and financing of health care. Whenever the feds pay, they then assert the prerogative to control. Whether it is AIG, General Motors, congressional mandates, or health care, to fund is to dominate. Obviously the federal government is not going to cease funding military health care, nor am I calling for that. And it is quite plain that eventually, the federal government will control all health care for each and every one of us. But this situation highlights the dangers to be fought.
If government is going to insist on controlling the auto industry and the banking industry, they have a duty to try to minimize the political pressure they will bear on these now quasi-private entities. Yeah, I know, the notion is laughable. But when government controls all health spending, why can’t they ban smoking? Why shouldn’t they? In fact, why shouldn’t they ban all unhealthy behavior? Eating fast food, riding motorcycles, sunbathing, drinking alcohol, grabbing a hot dog and a beer at a baseball game. After all, for each example (and thousands of others), an economic case could be made that those who engage in such behavior are costing us money!
The answer to this problem could be that government needs to have less power over private actions; but in this, the Age of Government Control, such a notion seems quaint. So the remaining viable option is for governments to practice self-restraint (again, I know the very idea is laughable). There must be a lobby, or at least a voice, for the idea that government should allow certain unhealthy behaviors, knowing full well that it will cost society money, in the name of maintaining a free society.
In the meantime, woe to the political bureaucrat who tries to force a military officer to confiscate smokes from his bloody and battered soldiers. If there be any warrior spirit left to us, let us dismiss this bout of mindless frivolity.
Teen Falls Into Open Manhole While Texting
And in our “We Grieve For The Future Of Humanity” Department:
Alexa Longueira Suffers Deep Cuts, Bruises After Landing In Raw Sewage, Blames DEP For Leaving Hole Unattended
Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness.
She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer.
“It was just really gross and it was shocking and scary,” she said. “Because of their careless mistake I got hurt.”
Longueira has deep cuts and bruises and said she now has nightmares about falling, But she also did admit she was texting at the time.
“Regardless of whether I’m texting or not if there was a cone there I’m going to see a big orange cone,” she said. “I walk that sidewalk every day, I don’t expect a big hole there.”
This story hasn’t spawned any coherent thoughts, just a series of fragments.
- Surely they meant to use the non-sexist term “Service Entry Portal”.
- This is the newest sign that Darwinism is still going strong.
- Funny, she looks like such a bright girl!
- We’ve found the text she was composing at the time: “OMG! Here cumz a big black thingy in the gr”
Speaking of “Bubble-Headed Teens”, this one’s for Dave:
“Daddy’s a ‘Litigator’ – those are the scariest kind of lawyer. “
Sotomayor Enters Confirmation Process with Miers-Like Numbers
Senatorial primacy might not be enough to push Supreme Court appointee Sotomayor through to confirmation after all. From the website NOW Hampshire:
Sonia Sotomayor will begin her confirmation hearings next week with some of the highest levels of public opposition of any Supreme Court nominee in the last two decades, according to a new poll by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation.
In fact, only one nominee had a higher level of opposition: Harriet Miers, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005. Miers later withdrew her nomination under questions about her qualifications from both the political left and right.
Sotomayor even underpolls torpedoed left-wing lightning rod Robert Bork:
No other recent nominee, not even Robert Bork, whose own nomination under President Ronald Reagan was scuttled, faced public opposition this severe. In the last poll taken during the Bork confirmation fight, thirty-eight percent wanted to see him confirmed versus thirty-five percent who did not.
Thanks to her terse one-paragraph ruling in the Ricci case and her “Wise Latina” pronuncements, the public perceives Sotomayor as a racial spoils system/affirmative action fan. This bad for her because affirmative action has never been very popular with Americans in general. Her Ricci ruling has been generally viewed as unjust and, while the public might not know or care about the finer points of Judicial philosophy, they expect their judges to be fair.
Bush took a huge hit when he nominated Harriet Meyers, which he only partially recouped by replacing her with Roberts. As Obama’s approval numbers continue (albeit slowly) to drift downward , one has to wonder what a failed Supreme Court pick will do to him. He needs a genuine victory, and soon.
One way he won’t get it is by sliming Frank Ricci, the firefighter at the center of the original case. Sotomayor supporters (led by the liberal activist group People For The American Way – who declined to comment) have begun piling up opposition research on the man, sending emails to reporters urging them to probe his “Troubling History”. The Politics of Personal Destruction (a phrase coined by a Democrat) have served liberals well in the past, but in this case wreaking havoc on a person as sympathetic as Ricci isn’t going to make Sotomayor look any better.
Schoolgirl knee socks
The fact that this blog actually received three visits today from the search term “schoolgirl knee socks” actually kind of disturbed me. I wonder how many we’ll get now. Who actually googles that term? Maybe I’d rather not know…
Dinnergate Scandal: WaPo Fesses Up.
So it turns out that the preeningly pristine Washington Post got caught selling “intimate” rubber chicken dinners with Administration officials and liberal Think Tankers to anybody willing to pony up $25 grand who needs a favor or two!
Here’s the marketing flyer – click to expand:
Apparently it never occurred to to the WaPo execs that selling access to politicos was an ethically iffy proposition, but after the above flyer was leaked to Politico the hammer came down big time. Many lame excuses and outright denials ensued.
Now, WaPo Ombudsman Andrew Alexander has set the record straight. And he’s not mincing words:
The Washington Post’s ill-fated plan to sell sponsorships of off-the-record “salons” was an ethical lapse of monumental proportions.
The crash occurred July 2, when Politico.com disclosed details of a Post flier seeking underwriters for the first dinner to be held July 21 at Weymouth’s District residence. The damage was predictable and extensive, with charges of hypocrisy against a newspaper that owes much of its fame to exposing influence peddlers and Washington’s pay-to-play culture. The Post’s reputation now carries a lasting stain.
Wow. Fortunately this is an isolated incident. I mean, it’s not like the white house hosted a secret, off the record barbecue for reporters on the 4th of July or anything…
Dave’s Quote of the Day
“Man is a being capable of subduing his emotions and impulses; he can rationalize his behavior. He arranges his wishes into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts. What distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he adjusts his behavior deliberately.”
- Ludwig von Mises
Your messenger did not know that Barry had it in him!
Always knew that Nick had it in him. Hell he is French – But Barry?
Feel free to add your own caption!
The Obama Magic Show
The Beast found this piece in todays Boston Globe, of all places! Maybe it’s the specter of economic death that’s inspiring them down in Beantown, but we’re getting some good stuff alongside the usual boilerplate mass-lib claptrap. On the other hand, the Globe might have discovered that the other half of the electorate has change in their pockets too and might actually buy a paper that’s not totally hostile to their worldview.
We all know by now that Obama loves to say one thing and then do the very opposite. His fluency with the language allows him to get away with this, but the days when he could dig himself out of a political hole by smoothly reciting a speech off his teleprompter are rapidly coming to a close. Even the press is noticing. Alex Beam of the Globe maps this out beautifully:
It is inevitable in modern American politics that each new president inaugurates his own brand of bushwa – rubbish, lies, eyewash, whatever you choose to call it – that reminds one of nothing so much as the previous guy’s bushwa. Mr. Obama is no exception. Consider:
Soon after taking office, Obama & Co. rebranded George Bush’s “war on terror,’’ choosing to call it instead “overseas contingency operations.’’ There is a history here. In 2005, Bush’s people tried to rename the WOT, suggesting instead the delightfully Rumsfeldian “global struggle against violent extremism’’ (GSAVE!) or “the long war’’ (nice movie title) when discussing, well, the war on terror.
Those never caught on, and there is no reason to believe the jaw-cracking “overseas contingency operations’’ will either.
Remember, this is the guy who told us he could no more repudiate Reverend Wright that a member of his own family. Then he repudiated Reverend Wright. If the Beast was a family member he might be nervous.
Obama’s public pronouncements are magic shows – call attention to the right hand so nobody notices what the left hand is doing. Another feat of oratorical legerdemain:
The Bush administration oversaw “bailouts’’ of its fat cat friends on Wall Street. The people-friendly Obama administration continues to throw money at its bankrupt pals, but prefers to talk about “rescuing’’ failed companies and the American economy. Neither phrase softens the blow to the taxpayers footing the bill, the Los Angeles Times noted sardonically: “We suggest they call the package an ‘iPod,’ because everyone will pay for an iPod.’’
Et tu, LAT? This is the kind of magical thinking that tells us dropping $1 Tril on government managed healthcare will save us money.
Everyone knows that healthcare reform will be a hard sell, so the administration has its neologisms at hand. The New York Times recently revealed that instead of “managed care,’’ the Obama-ites will be pushing the coinage “evidence-based care.’’ Likewise they plan to avoid the term “rationing,’’ but alas no usable circumlocution has yet emerged for a system that aims to, well, ration healthcare.
I have a not-terribly-original idea. Why don’t we call healthcare reform “iPhone’’? Nobody objects to paying for an iPhone, and people are more than happy to wait in line to buy them. Like Canada’s healthcare system, iPhones have a single service provider, AT&T. I’m phoning my congressman: Vote for the iPhone!
Returning to the original statment that Obama says (A) and then does (-A), witness this beauty:
Remember signing statements? Those were the dastardly little postscripts George Bush attached to legislation that he didn’t completely approve of. Signing statements ignore the “fundamental principle’’ of the separation of powers, the American Bar Association huffed. On the campaign trail, candidate Obama was asked, “Do you promise not to use presidential [signing statements] to get your way?’’ “Yes,’’ he answered. “I taught the Constitution for 10 years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We are not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.’’
That was easy!
Less easy is explaining away his six signing statements so far, an impressive one-a-month clip. “Signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system,’’ Obama now says, “at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections.’’
Marvelous! What’s next – sawing someone in half?
Get Nailed: The World According to Lenny Dykstra
Lenny Dykstra filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy today.
A little more than a year ago Dykstra was being profiled in the New Yorker, sharing his stock-picking wizardry with Jim Cramer’s acolytes and generally being regarded as a financial whiz whose business acumen was hidden behind a tobacco-chewing exterior. But just as our economic system wasn’t as healthy as it appeared in the best of times, Dykstra’s finances weren’t quite as good as they appeared on the outside.
For Con Club readers, it has actually been 2 years since I first discussed Mr. Dykstra’s burgeoning “empire”. Of course, what sounds to good to be true, probably is.
The 46-year-old Dykstra, a former World Series champ with the Mets and spark plug with the Phillies, faces upward of 20 suits from creditors coast to coast, most related to The Players Club, a problem-plagued magazine he launched last year.
Among those claiming they were stiffed by the player known as “Nails” are a pair of private jet rental companies, his brother, aLas Vegasprinting business, a former lawyer and several former employees.
Dykstra’s wife is also suing him for divorce, and his $18 million California mansion is in foreclosure.
Lenny is known for his risk taking both on and off the field. Although all the financial details have not been released, some have speculated that his penchant for “deep in the money” calls may have helped lead him to this point.
Lenny made it look easy when things were going up. I don’t necessarily disagree with his strategy, it has a time and place for some people, but he touted it as nearly fool proof. He twisted the risk into “only the amount you paid for the call” which is 100% accurate. However, the amount you pay for a DITM option is quite a lot. True, it is less than the stock itself, but it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to lose 100% of your money in a stock. It is far more likely that you’d lose 100% of your capital in a DITM option.
Who knows? Maybe he is just following in Donald Trump’s footsteps.
In Lenny’s own words, to those who question where the world according to Lenny is going next, “Fuck them. We will see who is laughing, yeah, when you want a loan.”
Lenny, you may want to rethink that statement.
Gives New Meaning To “Clean And Jerk”
From Smitty at The Other McCain:
Tatiana Kozhevnikova
A name to remember, if you’re ever in Novosibirsk:
A Russian woman has set a new world record, lifting a 14-kg. glass ball with her vagina muscles. Tatiata Kozhevnikova of Novosibirsk, aged 42, has been exercising her intimate muscles for fifteen years, and has already made her entrance into the Guinness Book of Records as the possessor of the world’s strongest vagina . . .
Hat-tip to Fear and Loathing in Georgetown.
UPDATE: The Web site where she advocates “intimate fitness.”Intimidating fitness might be a better description. Are you worthy of the Olympic-caliber vajayjay?
This snapper should come with a warning label, methinks.
‘Thanks So Much For Going Up Next To The Fish And Getting The Interview’
A good Media “Heh” moment via NewsBusters:
How brave of Kate Snow. Not only making the trek to Flyover Country North, but even getting close to some yucky fish. That seemed to be Diane Sawyer’s attitude in congratulating Snow for snagging an interview with Sarah Palin.
The soon-to-be-former Governor of Alaska invited Snow out for some salmon fishing. At one point the intrepid ABC reporter observes to Palin: “you have some fish guts on you.”
Back in the studio, Sawyer saluted Snow’s guts. DIANE SAWYER: OK, Kate. Thanks so much for going up next to the fish and getting the interview.
The closest these chicks have come to fish is a smoked fillet at the Four Seasons, obviously. Messing with meat while it’s alive is a task for the servant class.
The Era of Transparency
Immediate caterwauls will include, but not be limited to:
“Obama Derangement Syndrome!”
“You’re projecting!”
“How dare you!!”
But the truth is what it is.
Yet another missed story for the mainstream press, and even the conservative blogosphere, has been the crafty strategy by which the Obama White House pushed the most radical economic bill in 75 years in the very same week that they were advancing the most radical health care restructuring in a century. A layman might have advised that the administration tackle these issues separately — each of them is larger than any domestic issue the previous seven administrations (at least) even tried to tackle –to allow sufficient time to debate each initiative. But then the layman would be assuming that President Obama and the monolithic Democratic control of Congress would desire such debate. It couldn’t be more obvious that their goal is precisely the opposite.
Without exaggeration, the Cap-and-Trade bill and the health care reform are two of the ten or so most significant bills of the last half century. And they are coming to a head at the same time? Choose your historical analogy– Divide and Conquer, a two-front war, Shock-and-Awe.
This would all be lauded as great strategy (if anyone were noticing) but for one messy detail. To pass each bill, the President has employed an egregious lie, and one that cuts at the heart of democratic deliberation.
On Cap-and-Trade, the tradeoff is fairly straightforward.
Should we limit economic growth by X percent in order to attempt a reduction in carbon emmissions by Y percent?
But now the Obama administration, with a healthy assist from Nancy Pelosi, is asserting that passage of a massive energy tax-hike will amazingly create millions of jobs. This is outlandish.
Likewise on health care, the basic choices aren’t that complex. Do we want to limit the choice of insurance provider and individual preference, ration and restrict procedures and medications, as well as increase taxes, (at least on the wealthy) to ensure universal coverage? Now there are many other issues (like the effect that socialized medicine will have on research and development, the need for rationing, the projected costs 40 years hence, and others), but this is the basic immediate question.
And on this question, as with Cap-and-Trade, the President has crafted a major, but politically astute, lie.
Instead of choosing between freedom of choice and low taxes for the insured vs. all-out coverage for the uninsured, he has pitched the idea that his government health plan will somehow increase care and even more astonishingly will decrease federal spending. So instead of an honest economic question: “Do you want to spend $1.6 trillion to create this new plan?” President Obama has concocted a decidedly less honest question: “How would you like to create a huge new program… and get paid for it, besides?!”
In both the Cap-and-Trade bill and the health care plan, Obama isn’t just fudging on costs or overpromising the benefits or sowing fear with alarmist rhetoric, though he is surely doing all of those. No, on these two massive issues he is fundamentally misstating — lying about — the core economic tradeoffs involved in the decision. He is, in short, trying to fool the public into creating pivotal, sweeping, and largely irreversible change based on false precepts.
Funny, the “New Foundation” of hope, change, a different kind of politics, and transparency smells as rotten as ever.
Headbangers Ball: Metallica-Master of Puppets Live
YouTube – Metallica – Master Of Puppets live Seattle 1989.
I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since my first Metallica show.
They might be treading water in Auckland, but they will be eating popcorn at Machu Picchu.
It just might be good to be an Inca again, well better than it has been…
The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire. A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that “the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries.”
Your messenger wonders if the AGW movement, headed up by wealthy white fat-cats like Al Gore, is just another attempt by “the man” to keep the little brown people down…
The new study is called “Putting the Rise of the Inca within a Climatic and Land Management Context” and was prepared by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an English paleo-biologist working for the French Institute of Andean Studies, in Lima. Alex led a team that includes Brian Bauer, of the University of Illinois, one of today’s top Inca-ologists. The study is being published in Climate of the Past, an online academic journal.
Alex spends a lot of time in Cuzco and he told me the other day that the report “raises the question of whether today’s global warming may be another opportunity for the Andes.”
Sure people like Gore and his buddies complain about the idea of Wall Street being under water; but aren’t they really worried about poor people in Peru making big money selling ethanol corn grown up-slope in the Andes? Yep, think of all of those Inca descendants driving those huge flex-fuel trucks made by Chevy and Ford from their corn profits. Go ahead Al – stop the world from warming and keep the Peruvians poor.
The author of our little story makes this observation…
Core samples from glaciers and from the mud beneath lakes in the Andes, the Amazon and elsewhere have built up a history of the world’s climate and the message is crystal clear. It is that changes have taken place in the past, during the six or seven thousand years of our agriculture-based civilizations, that are just as big as the ones we are facing from today’s CO2 warming.
Ok, Ok, Ok I follow this, except this part: “…the ones we are facing from today’s CO2 warming.” Really now? Couldn’t it just be that since our good old planet goes through these changes with regularity that this change is well – a regular one? In any event it is comforting that we survived before. I mean I guess it is.
…finally, there is the role of natural variability in changes now being observed. Nobody disputes that the climate, independent of human activities, changes. The question is to what extent changes now underway can be attributed to natural variability. “So far, in the 21st century, global warming has stabilized and no one really knows why,” writes Dr. William Cotton, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “None of the ‘known’ climate forcing mechanisms can explain the discrepancy.” We know too little about natural variability of the climate to confidently make predictions, he insists.
then just what do you know?
Cover Songs: Antony and the Johnsons-Crazy Right Now
For some reason I like this interpretation of the song Crazy Right Now originally performed by Beyonce.
Get Real Baby: When Will the Realist Start Getting Real?
The New Republic
Washington Diarist by Leon Wieseltier
The Long Arc
Post Date July 15, 2009
I am not an Iran expert, unlike almost everyone I meet, but I find it hard to imagine that the young men and women suffering the blows of the Basij would not welcome our support, that they are in the streets with angry thoughts of Mossadegh. If these events have shown anything, it is that their enemy and our enemy are the same.
His little essay explains in a very simple way why Obama’s approach with Iran is wrong.
On a rainy day in 1993, I sat with my parents at the opening ceremonies of the Holocaust Museum and heard President Clinton, who was doing nothing to stop the genocide in Bosnia, suggest that the genocide in Bosnia must be stopped, because never again can we allow genocide to occur. My mother laconically whispered that “he talks about Bosnia as if he is somebody else.”
If all of us support the dissidents but the president does not, the dissidents have an American problem. If none of us support the dissidents but the president does, the dissidents do not have an American problem. And either way, the president is “meddling.” Obama’s parsimonious performance in the first weeks of the rebellion in Tehran, the disappearance of his eloquence and his championship of change, was an attempt by the president to impersonate the rest of us, to be just another saddened consumer of tweets and feeds. Hence his refrains about “bearing witness” and “the world is watching.” That is uplift for a demonstration, or a vigil. Witnessing and watching are varieties of passivity. The rest of us witness and watch, because we can do little else.
I could go on, but I guess the horse is dead. I just am amazed that any conservative on this blog could believe Obama has the right approach. I just might have enough time now – I feel a PG Rant coming on in the very near future! 
Son Of “What Americans Know About The Politics Of Other Countries”
A little vicious for this site, The Beast continues his series of national slurs back on his original blog. A tidibit from the post:
India
1. Geography
India depends from the crotch of Asia and Africa like a half-descended testicle. It’s climate ranges from fetidly hot to bakingly hot. Life in India is somewhat akin to life inside a bamboo steamer that occasionally runs out of water. India is a land of deadly mountains, lethal deserts, pestiferous cities, malarial swamps and predacious jungles. In that sense it is not entirely unlike California with a dash of Louisiana. India swarms with deadly diseases, malignant parasites, dangerous insects, poisonous reptiles and vicious predators. India is also overpopulated, leading one to consider the possibility that as bad as these vermin are, the Indians must be worse.
The Sage
Steve
E the Wise
DFV the Scribe
hairybeast
Mo K.
Sting the Away
Rudy
Voice of Reason
Anthony Rogers
Vérité
Isaiah's Cry
danagall
Hal Jordan
The Rat
Aquinas Shrugged
jackcurtis
a west texas view
pino
Cultural Limits
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Short Little Rebel
AWOL Civilization
SeePamBlog
rogueoperator
provider4many
jimmullen1
thomaspaine2nd
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weeicemon
Daniella Nicole
