Saturday, July 31, 2004
JENNTIGONE:
This play, the latest assault on Our Noble Leader by those "freedom"-speaking appeasers of Old Europe, opened in Paris to wild acclaim by the usual liberal suspects. It revises Jean Anouilh's update of Sophocles' Antigone, to refer instead to the Bush family. The vile French critics praise it as the MacBird of the new millennium.
In a masterpiece of miscasting, the producers tried to appeal to younger audiences by giving the title role to Jessica Simpson. This forced much rewriting, since her French is more like Homer Simpson's. Often the king recites her lines as well, prefaced by "you'd probably say that....", followed by her "Oui." This makes much of the confrontation between them a monologue. That slows down the play since the actor is now 78, but at least they got a winner of their own Legion of Honor to play the part, longtime French favorite Jerry Lewis.
Jenntigone is clearly intended to be Our Noble Leader's daughter. He himself, called Georgipe here, is already dead before the play begins. The Paris audience burst into wild applause when the Chorus recited his totally tasteless story. Georgipe had bombed a city, then found out later this had killed his own father, who was there secretly negotiating oil contracts. Worse, a blind blogger revealed to him that in a drunken stupor when young, Georgipe had sex with his own mother. Horrified, his mom committed suicide, while he castrated himself and resigned. The author of the new version defends this change, saying the self-blinding in Sophocles was just a euphemism, much like the one in Matthew 5:29:
Jenntigone is not arrested for burying her brother, but for speaking up for her Uncle Jebice, who had challenged Chenéon for their party's nomination. As punishment, he was exiled to Guantanamo and the same punishment was proclaimed for any that defended him. Chenéon goes to great lengths to persuade Jenntigone to retract her endorsement, but cannot persuade her. She is unimpressed by his defense of his ruthlessness:
Today both Sophocles and Anouilh must be spinning in their graves. If this leftist wet dream were staged in America, the subversives behind it would all be visited by the Secret Service, and warned seriously that putting on such corrosive fantasies means the terrorists have won. If a play in Paris had attacked Muslims the way this insults Our Noble Leader, the French would have shut it down as hate speech. But to them, W is fair game for any vicious libel. Meanwhile, negotiations are under way to produce it in Germany and Palestine. Their jealous hatred of us for our freedom knows no bounds.
This play, the latest assault on Our Noble Leader by those "freedom"-speaking appeasers of Old Europe, opened in Paris to wild acclaim by the usual liberal suspects. It revises Jean Anouilh's update of Sophocles' Antigone, to refer instead to the Bush family. The vile French critics praise it as the MacBird of the new millennium.
In a masterpiece of miscasting, the producers tried to appeal to younger audiences by giving the title role to Jessica Simpson. This forced much rewriting, since her French is more like Homer Simpson's. Often the king recites her lines as well, prefaced by "you'd probably say that....", followed by her "Oui." This makes much of the confrontation between them a monologue. That slows down the play since the actor is now 78, but at least they got a winner of their own Legion of Honor to play the part, longtime French favorite Jerry Lewis.
Jenntigone is clearly intended to be Our Noble Leader's daughter. He himself, called Georgipe here, is already dead before the play begins. The Paris audience burst into wild applause when the Chorus recited his totally tasteless story. Georgipe had bombed a city, then found out later this had killed his own father, who was there secretly negotiating oil contracts. Worse, a blind blogger revealed to him that in a drunken stupor when young, Georgipe had sex with his own mother. Horrified, his mom committed suicide, while he castrated himself and resigned. The author of the new version defends this change, saying the self-blinding in Sophocles was just a euphemism, much like the one in Matthew 5:29:
Mais si ton oeil droit est pour toi une occasion de chute, arrache-le et jette-le loin de toi; car il est avantageux pour toi qu'un de tes membres périsse, et que tout ton corps ne soit pas jeté dans la géhenne.There are many other changes. The new king, Créon, is now named Chenéon. Antigone's sister Ismène is now Barbe. The nameless guard who drags Antigone to the king is now called Cendrecroft. The most startling variation for the sake of political correctness is to Créon's son Hémon, who was engaged to marry Antigone. In this version, they still plan to wed, but in Massachusetts, since the boy has now become Chenéon's lesbian daughter, Marie.
Jenntigone is not arrested for burying her brother, but for speaking up for her Uncle Jebice, who had challenged Chenéon for their party's nomination. As punishment, he was exiled to Guantanamo and the same punishment was proclaimed for any that defended him. Chenéon goes to great lengths to persuade Jenntigone to retract her endorsement, but cannot persuade her. She is unimpressed by his defense of his ruthlessness:
Il faut pourtant quil y en ait qui mènent la barque. Cela prend leau de toutes parts, cest plein de crimes, de bêtise, de misère… On prend le bout de bois, on redresse devant la montagne deau, on gueule un ordre et on tire dans le tas, sur le premier qui savance. Dans le tas!He finally convinces her to give up by telling her what the CIA files show about how Uncle Jebice had even been conspiring against her own father. But as she turns to leave, and he tells her to resign herself to disillusionment and just be drunk and happy, she rebels again, asking him:
Quel sera-t-il, mon bonheur? Quelle femme heureuse deviendra-t-elle, la petite Jenntigone? Quelles pauvretés faudra-t-il quelle fasse elle aussi, jour par jour, pour arracher avec ses dents son petit lambeau de bonheur? Dites, à qui devra-t-elle mentir, à qui sourire, à qui se vendre? Qui devra-t-elle laisser mourir en détournant le regard?So at the end he has her carried off to Guantanamo as well. She beats the rap by suicide, downing an entire bottle of whiskey. Her fiancée Marie kills herself with one of Chenéon's duck-hunting rifles. The king's wife Lynndice takes her life as well:
Et puis elle est passée dans sa chambre, sa chambre à lodeur de lavande, aux petits napperons brodés et aux cadres de peluche, pour sy couper la gorge, Chenéon.I hate to see this abuse of literature. I confess that, like Hegel (who translated the play twice), I've always liked the noble and dutiful Antigone, who followed a Higher Law and ignored mere mortal statutes. I regret that part of her final scene in Sophocles, translated by Banks as "I, a bride, to Acheron belong", was reduced by Anouilh to "O tombeau! O lit nuptial! O ma demeure souterraine!…" The original had inspired me in younger days to name a jazz-rock group Bride of Acheron. Perhaps the classical reference to one of the rivers of Hades was too obscure, and no big record label ever bought the self-produced album, Sketches of Space. (I played guitar, and no, there are no copies available.) Now the group would probably be confused with the latest pair of films by Quentin Tarentino, who put himself on my blacklist for being one of the judges that gave Michael Moore's propaganda a film prize in France.
Today both Sophocles and Anouilh must be spinning in their graves. If this leftist wet dream were staged in America, the subversives behind it would all be visited by the Secret Service, and warned seriously that putting on such corrosive fantasies means the terrorists have won. If a play in Paris had attacked Muslims the way this insults Our Noble Leader, the French would have shut it down as hate speech. But to them, W is fair game for any vicious libel. Meanwhile, negotiations are under way to produce it in Germany and Palestine. Their jealous hatred of us for our freedom knows no bounds.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
REPORTING ON THE DUTY-FREE PARTY:
I made some quick notes on The Ketchup Consort's acceptance speech.
He said "I was born in the West Wing". Yes, and he still thinks he is living in some liberal Hollywood script. Note that when he talks about health care as a right he says "we will make it so." He was no doubt inspired because he thought Jean-Luc was a fellow Frenchman.
He said "you can't go home again", yet admits that at least he went back to his ideological home, when as a child he rode his bike into communist east Berlin.
One very good bit of news is his statement that "I will appoint an Attorney General who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Clearly this means he won't be appointing She Who Must Not Be Named to that job.
He said "We will add 40,000 active duty troops. ... We will end the back-door draft of the National Guard and reservists." That's right, he'll replace it with an open up-front draft of poor, uneducated young people, thus reducing their unemployment the hard way.
More liberal hypocrisy is his crack that "It's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families." On one hand they all condemn the lenient results of legal entanglements by the Bush children (and Jeb's as well), yet here they complain by implication that the girls are not treated well. You can't have it both ways.
He asked what does it mean when poor people are sleeping on the doorstep of the White House itself? Obviously, it means the Secret Service isn't doing their job, and they need to get right on top of this.
Finally, his line that "I want to pray humbly that God is on our side" makes me recall the old saying that God always answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is "No."
I made some quick notes on The Ketchup Consort's acceptance speech.
He said "I was born in the West Wing". Yes, and he still thinks he is living in some liberal Hollywood script. Note that when he talks about health care as a right he says "we will make it so." He was no doubt inspired because he thought Jean-Luc was a fellow Frenchman.
He said "you can't go home again", yet admits that at least he went back to his ideological home, when as a child he rode his bike into communist east Berlin.
One very good bit of news is his statement that "I will appoint an Attorney General who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Clearly this means he won't be appointing She Who Must Not Be Named to that job.
He said "We will add 40,000 active duty troops. ... We will end the back-door draft of the National Guard and reservists." That's right, he'll replace it with an open up-front draft of poor, uneducated young people, thus reducing their unemployment the hard way.
More liberal hypocrisy is his crack that "It's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families." On one hand they all condemn the lenient results of legal entanglements by the Bush children (and Jeb's as well), yet here they complain by implication that the girls are not treated well. You can't have it both ways.
He asked what does it mean when poor people are sleeping on the doorstep of the White House itself? Obviously, it means the Secret Service isn't doing their job, and they need to get right on top of this.
Finally, his line that "I want to pray humbly that God is on our side" makes me recall the old saying that God always answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is "No."
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
THE DAINTY DÉMODÉ:
One minor irritant of my business trips is hotels which leave a morning copy of USA Today at my door. This predigested pablum of many colors is the literary equivalent of Kiddy Meals. Just like those hockey pucks on a bun, this bland headline feed is so calculatingly inoffensive that it seems to be missing any real meat. No surprise that their first try to add some jalapeños to their gruel proved too scary for their taste buds.
In a fit of temporary insanity they were inspired, by the artificially pumped-up box office receipts of Michael Moore's latest propaganda piece (profiting from many good conservatives who go only to laugh at his tin foil hat excesses), to hire the Zeppelin With A Camera to comment on the Republican National Convention. The mind flounders for a suitable comparison -- perhaps Dr. Laura as an analyst (no pun intended) at the Stonewall Democrats Convention?
Their toe in the deep water has already been scalded. As a parallel to the Viewfinding Blimp, they chose to hire, to comment on the Democratic Convention, a more moderate colleague of mine who happens to share my own initials. Even that mild mannered wordsmith was way too spicy for their oatmeal. They have dropped her, unpublished, after she submitted her very first column. To add insult to injury, they are replacing her with Jonah Goldberg, the same editor who in 2001 wrote the National Review's defense of dropping her old column.
Naturally, the liberal snark artists are gushing over their keyboards about this, more than anything since that poor talk show host's treatment for his helpless addiction. It didn't even bother World O'Crap to admit that the USAToday editor was "a little obtuse". TBogg, who usually specializes in aesthetic criticism of her neck, piled on with a snipe at her personal hygiene. Jesse Taylor of Pandagon, glowing from recent free publicity in the Wall Street Journal, blames My Daily Reader For Grown-ups for its own stupidity, saying if you hire her "you get something that's the written equivalent of a battery acid enema. It's the way these things work." Media Matters drags up her old material in asking rhetorically "Why was she hired in the first place?" Functional Ambivalent refers to her as "P.J. O'Rourke with Tits" (an image to scare small children with).
I love to say I told you so, and this is karma at work. She made her bed with the moderates, and should have expected them to turn tail and rend her when they caught heat from the "politically correct". NR canned her after 9-11, when she advocated invading Muslim countries and forcibly converting them. I, of course, just wanted to "kill them all and let God find his own", but she wimped out, and still got tossed. Now what some call "McPaper" has dropped her for "difference of opinion over editing", when she actually seemed to be trying to pull her punches. It did her no good with those cowards, after she began by calling it "the Spawn of Satan convention", a reasonable critique which they have chosen to ignore.
They might have made a good case for objecting to her inaccuracy. Here's part of that rejected column:
However, the real reason for removing her was not sloppy research, or her pepper mace style, but the radical shift obvious in her ideology. They wanted a crusty conservative, but instead got a budding libertarian -- one who now apparently wants to privatize almost the entire government. Some conservatives may object that she is "selling out" to the ultra-free market advocates, reducing the state's ability to encourage Righteous Values, just to make sure they stay in Our Noble Leader's coalition. I, on the other hand, always praise "selling out" anything, as the very essence of capitalism. My problem is that she doesn't go far enough.
Look at Iraq, where private contractors helping in interrogations will go free, whereas the members of our military are being persecuted to appease worldwide pressure from wimpy liberals. If our entire force there was private, they could apply all the pressure they needed. Police accused of "abuses" get raked over the coals by Internal Affairs, but when are private prison companies held to account? This is not anarchy, but corporatism. Leave the Law in place, but let the private sector provide the Order. That way it will be cheaper, and there will be more of it -- and more order is just what I want to see. Mealy-mouthed compromisers who only want to slash 95% of the government will continue to suffer the consequences of their moderation, until they join us in the brave new total corporate world of tomorrow.
One minor irritant of my business trips is hotels which leave a morning copy of USA Today at my door. This predigested pablum of many colors is the literary equivalent of Kiddy Meals. Just like those hockey pucks on a bun, this bland headline feed is so calculatingly inoffensive that it seems to be missing any real meat. No surprise that their first try to add some jalapeños to their gruel proved too scary for their taste buds.
In a fit of temporary insanity they were inspired, by the artificially pumped-up box office receipts of Michael Moore's latest propaganda piece (profiting from many good conservatives who go only to laugh at his tin foil hat excesses), to hire the Zeppelin With A Camera to comment on the Republican National Convention. The mind flounders for a suitable comparison -- perhaps Dr. Laura as an analyst (no pun intended) at the Stonewall Democrats Convention?
Their toe in the deep water has already been scalded. As a parallel to the Viewfinding Blimp, they chose to hire, to comment on the Democratic Convention, a more moderate colleague of mine who happens to share my own initials. Even that mild mannered wordsmith was way too spicy for their oatmeal. They have dropped her, unpublished, after she submitted her very first column. To add insult to injury, they are replacing her with Jonah Goldberg, the same editor who in 2001 wrote the National Review's defense of dropping her old column.
Naturally, the liberal snark artists are gushing over their keyboards about this, more than anything since that poor talk show host's treatment for his helpless addiction. It didn't even bother World O'Crap to admit that the USAToday editor was "a little obtuse". TBogg, who usually specializes in aesthetic criticism of her neck, piled on with a snipe at her personal hygiene. Jesse Taylor of Pandagon, glowing from recent free publicity in the Wall Street Journal, blames My Daily Reader For Grown-ups for its own stupidity, saying if you hire her "you get something that's the written equivalent of a battery acid enema. It's the way these things work." Media Matters drags up her old material in asking rhetorically "Why was she hired in the first place?" Functional Ambivalent refers to her as "P.J. O'Rourke with Tits" (an image to scare small children with).
I love to say I told you so, and this is karma at work. She made her bed with the moderates, and should have expected them to turn tail and rend her when they caught heat from the "politically correct". NR canned her after 9-11, when she advocated invading Muslim countries and forcibly converting them. I, of course, just wanted to "kill them all and let God find his own", but she wimped out, and still got tossed. Now what some call "McPaper" has dropped her for "difference of opinion over editing", when she actually seemed to be trying to pull her punches. It did her no good with those cowards, after she began by calling it "the Spawn of Satan convention", a reasonable critique which they have chosen to ignore.
They might have made a good case for objecting to her inaccuracy. Here's part of that rejected column:
...they love the troops so much, they don't want them to get hurt defending America from terrorist attack. "Support the troops," the signs say, "bring them home."The truth is that a majority of all government employees work for local government, and one-fifth or more of those are in the jobs she considers okay. At the federal level, the percentage is even higher, so that "5%" is just naive wishful thinking. If only it were that small....
That's my new position on all government workers, except the 5% who aren't useless, which is to say cops, prosecutors, firemen and U.S. servicemen. I love bureaucrats at the National Endowment of the Arts funding crucifixes submerged in urine so much -- I think they should go home. I love public school teachers punishing any mention of God and banning Christmas songs so much -- I think they should go home.
However, the real reason for removing her was not sloppy research, or her pepper mace style, but the radical shift obvious in her ideology. They wanted a crusty conservative, but instead got a budding libertarian -- one who now apparently wants to privatize almost the entire government. Some conservatives may object that she is "selling out" to the ultra-free market advocates, reducing the state's ability to encourage Righteous Values, just to make sure they stay in Our Noble Leader's coalition. I, on the other hand, always praise "selling out" anything, as the very essence of capitalism. My problem is that she doesn't go far enough.
Look at Iraq, where private contractors helping in interrogations will go free, whereas the members of our military are being persecuted to appease worldwide pressure from wimpy liberals. If our entire force there was private, they could apply all the pressure they needed. Police accused of "abuses" get raked over the coals by Internal Affairs, but when are private prison companies held to account? This is not anarchy, but corporatism. Leave the Law in place, but let the private sector provide the Order. That way it will be cheaper, and there will be more of it -- and more order is just what I want to see. Mealy-mouthed compromisers who only want to slash 95% of the government will continue to suffer the consequences of their moderation, until they join us in the brave new total corporate world of tomorrow.
Friday, July 23, 2004
THE PURLOINED DRAFT:
[An update of Edgar Allen Poe.]
At New York City, just after dark one gusty evening in the summer of 20--, I was enjoying the company of my friend C. Auguste Duspin, in his little back library, No. 43, Rue Dubyuh. I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of The Clenis, and the mystery attending the murder of Vince Foster. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Karl R---, the Guru of Our Noble Leader's campaign.
We had been sitting in the dark, and Duspin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon R.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Duspin, "we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark."
"That is another of your odd notions," said the Guru, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities."
"Before I begin," R. prefaced himself, "let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one. A certain draft of a document of the last importance, has been purloined from the President's office. The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt. He is a former advisor to The Clenis himself, Sandy B-----, who is now in the hire of our arch-enemy, the French master spy, John K----."
"How is this known?" asked Duspin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Guru, "from the nature of the document, and from the appearance of certain results which arose from his employing it as he must. I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain proposal in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable. Frankly, it is a politically feasible plan to reinstitute the military draft, to provide sufficient troops for the next stage of the Forever Crusade. Under the cover of a call for 'national service', it requires every high school student to become a federal serf as a requirement for graduation."
"And you are worried that K. will steal this idea?" suggested Duspin.
"Au contraire, we contrived at length to see that he did just that. Following B.'s advice, he promulgated the whole thing as part of his campaign, just as we wished. Our problem is that he has now backed off from that, and buried any references to it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"We dare not rely only on Diebold or on the Florida Secretary of State," elucidated R. "Our intention is also to split the opposition as before. K.'s support of this tool of empire endangered his support from anti-war and anti-draft remnants of the sixties, not all of whom so besotted their brains with drugs as to be unable to remember to vote. Many of them could be driven to a protest ballot for Nader, the Greens, or the Libertarians, by a little prodding by us on that issue. But now he has hidden his stance away, perhaps luring them to an 'anybody but Bush' vote."
"Why, this support of his, and the delightful effect which you forecast, is known," I promoted. "Indeed, I myself have praised its benefits in vote splitting on my own web site in February, and in comments at The American Street in April. The very strategy you describe was working, since the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft had then denounced K.'s support of conscription in their May-June issue."
"True," R. regretted, "but you acted too soon. Technically, K. still had an opponent for his party's nomination, some infiltrator from the Vegetarians, who sought to make up for his long and only recently repented advocacy of compulsory pregnancy, by a militant opposition to compulsory militarism. His followers raised sufficient stench that K. had to cover his tracks. If you visit the links to the K. site mentioned by you or COMD, you get only 404 messages saying 'You have requested a page that has a broken link or is not on the site...' We have no way to prove to the splinter draft denouncers that K. is following our lead on this issue."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Duspin. "K., I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these denunciations, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said R., "but then he's a liberal, which I take to be only one remove from a fool. And now, Duspin, what would you advise me to do?"
"You have, of course, an accurate description of the URL of the deleted web page?"
"Oh yes!" -- And here the Guru, producing a memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud an address.
"Why, nothing could be simpler!" Duspin exclaimed. Grabbing a wireless-ready laptop from the nearby table, he entered http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/100days/communityservice_high.html as a Google search, then clicked on "Show Google's cache of" that same address. Voila! On the screen appeared a copy of K.'s deleted page "Plan to Require Service for High School Students".
"This is wonderful!" cheered R. "If he denies he is for this, we show this page to the peaceniks."
"Contrariwise," I schemed, "if he says he changed his mind, we attack him to the moderates, for more flip-flopping . Any way you look at it, he loses."
The Guru grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house, to fire the next shots in his war. In his wake, Duspin suggested we should all make early reservations for Our Noble Leader's victory party on election night.
[An update of Edgar Allen Poe.]
At New York City, just after dark one gusty evening in the summer of 20--, I was enjoying the company of my friend C. Auguste Duspin, in his little back library, No. 43, Rue Dubyuh. I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of The Clenis, and the mystery attending the murder of Vince Foster. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Karl R---, the Guru of Our Noble Leader's campaign.
We had been sitting in the dark, and Duspin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon R.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Duspin, "we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark."
"That is another of your odd notions," said the Guru, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities."
"Before I begin," R. prefaced himself, "let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one. A certain draft of a document of the last importance, has been purloined from the President's office. The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt. He is a former advisor to The Clenis himself, Sandy B-----, who is now in the hire of our arch-enemy, the French master spy, John K----."
"How is this known?" asked Duspin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Guru, "from the nature of the document, and from the appearance of certain results which arose from his employing it as he must. I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain proposal in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable. Frankly, it is a politically feasible plan to reinstitute the military draft, to provide sufficient troops for the next stage of the Forever Crusade. Under the cover of a call for 'national service', it requires every high school student to become a federal serf as a requirement for graduation."
"And you are worried that K. will steal this idea?" suggested Duspin.
"Au contraire, we contrived at length to see that he did just that. Following B.'s advice, he promulgated the whole thing as part of his campaign, just as we wished. Our problem is that he has now backed off from that, and buried any references to it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"We dare not rely only on Diebold or on the Florida Secretary of State," elucidated R. "Our intention is also to split the opposition as before. K.'s support of this tool of empire endangered his support from anti-war and anti-draft remnants of the sixties, not all of whom so besotted their brains with drugs as to be unable to remember to vote. Many of them could be driven to a protest ballot for Nader, the Greens, or the Libertarians, by a little prodding by us on that issue. But now he has hidden his stance away, perhaps luring them to an 'anybody but Bush' vote."
"Why, this support of his, and the delightful effect which you forecast, is known," I promoted. "Indeed, I myself have praised its benefits in vote splitting on my own web site in February, and in comments at The American Street in April. The very strategy you describe was working, since the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft had then denounced K.'s support of conscription in their May-June issue."
"True," R. regretted, "but you acted too soon. Technically, K. still had an opponent for his party's nomination, some infiltrator from the Vegetarians, who sought to make up for his long and only recently repented advocacy of compulsory pregnancy, by a militant opposition to compulsory militarism. His followers raised sufficient stench that K. had to cover his tracks. If you visit the links to the K. site mentioned by you or COMD, you get only 404 messages saying 'You have requested a page that has a broken link or is not on the site...' We have no way to prove to the splinter draft denouncers that K. is following our lead on this issue."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Duspin. "K., I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these denunciations, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said R., "but then he's a liberal, which I take to be only one remove from a fool. And now, Duspin, what would you advise me to do?"
"You have, of course, an accurate description of the URL of the deleted web page?"
"Oh yes!" -- And here the Guru, producing a memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud an address.
"Why, nothing could be simpler!" Duspin exclaimed. Grabbing a wireless-ready laptop from the nearby table, he entered http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/100days/communityservice_high.html as a Google search, then clicked on "Show Google's cache of" that same address. Voila! On the screen appeared a copy of K.'s deleted page "Plan to Require Service for High School Students".
"This is wonderful!" cheered R. "If he denies he is for this, we show this page to the peaceniks."
"Contrariwise," I schemed, "if he says he changed his mind, we attack him to the moderates, for more flip-flopping . Any way you look at it, he loses."
The Guru grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house, to fire the next shots in his war. In his wake, Duspin suggested we should all make early reservations for Our Noble Leader's victory party on election night.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
ASKING DADDY FOR HELP:
Iran's conservative-dominated Parliament approved a draft bill Tuesday that would allow abortion in the first four months of pregnancy if the woman's life is in danger or the fetus is malformed.Why would the Mad Mullahs start getting liberal right now? Fear, pure and simple. They've heard Our Noble Leader promising to investigate whether they helped the 9-11 highjackers. Knowing the low standard of proof required by his number two for links to those terrorists, they think their preemption is planned. Of course they're right, but not until after the re-selection in November (December at the outside). They aren't foolish enough to believe that their regime change could be deterred by getting liberals on their side with this jump to the left. No, they are trying to impress a target that George might actually listen to. Isn't it striking how similar their new law is to the position on this issue of former President 41?
AND THE HORSE HE RODE UP ON:
AWolf of alone points to this evidence of outsourced anti-Americanism:
The White House biography of the cat says the true source of its name was "former Texas Ranger baseball player, Ruben Sierra, who was called "El Indio"." Of course pointing that out will give a whole other group of Bush haters an excuse to attack over the name of the Presidential feline. Perhaps George should rename it "Nolan".
AWolf of alone points to this evidence of outsourced anti-Americanism:
Angry youths here on Friday burnt an effigy of US President George W. Bush, not because they are anti-American but because he has named his cat India. Members of the Prathikarana Vedi assembled before the Kerala Assembly saying that Bush calling his cat India was an insult to the country.These haters of Our Noble Leader are truly desperate to attack him for something, but in the Hindu haven they know his war on Islamic terror is popular, so they had to make up something else, even if it was silly. Those leftist rabble rousers won't care that India is actually a name people use here with no ill intent.Google is so full of entries for the country that finding an example took way too long, but the first one I located should be right up their perverted alley, namely India Allen. She was Playmate of the Year for 1988, hardly a sign that she was hated by anyone except the Andrea Dworkins of the world.
The White House biography of the cat says the true source of its name was "former Texas Ranger baseball player, Ruben Sierra, who was called "El Indio"." Of course pointing that out will give a whole other group of Bush haters an excuse to attack over the name of the Presidential feline. Perhaps George should rename it "Nolan".
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
KNOW YOUR FOE:
A Republican lawmaker says it was inappropriate for a GOP office to display a bumper sticker declaring: "Kerry is bin Laden's Man. Bush is Mine." Kentucky Rep. Anne Northup said she found out about the stickers over the weekend and doesn't want any more distributed. "What campaigns need to center on, debates need to center on and the party needs to focus on are ideas," she said.This just shows that even the good guys can elect intellectually unastute people to Congress. Why doesn't she understand that this is a very clear idea: The Ketchup Consort is not on our side.
Bill Garmer, chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said the sticker equates a decorated Vietnam veteran with Osama bin Laden - "one of the greatest enemies of the United States."This too is an obvious failure to think things through. There were plenty of decorated Vietnam veterans who were enemies of the United States. They just happened to have been in the North Vietnamese army -- or in some cases, they fought against Ho's hordes, but then went back home to France and became one of the appeasers of Old Europe.
FAREWELL FREEDOM:
Those awful liberal Greens have been chipping away at it for years, but now it looks like Germany is seriously considering imposing speed limits on the entire autobahn. What's the point of even having my Porsche if there isn't some place I can legally cruise at 120 and up? Picture a highway patrolman's boot stomping on the human face forever. If this happens, then the terrorists have definitely won.
Those awful liberal Greens have been chipping away at it for years, but now it looks like Germany is seriously considering imposing speed limits on the entire autobahn. What's the point of even having my Porsche if there isn't some place I can legally cruise at 120 and up? Picture a highway patrolman's boot stomping on the human face forever. If this happens, then the terrorists have definitely won.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
HEARSE OF A DIFFERENT CHOLER:
President Robert Mugabe's government has banned the colour red from Zimbabwe television because it is the symbol of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC encourages its supporters to flash football-style red cards, to tell Mr Mugabe that he is no longer wanted on Zimbabwe's political field. ...They can't fool me. This is just a petty effort by one more Marxist dictator to keep the media from reporting the results of Our Noble Leader's upcoming November landslide.
Zimbabwe Television workers, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, confirmed the incident. A producer said they were under instructions "not to give unnecessary publicity to the opposition" by using the colour red on screen. ... The ZTV is the sole broadcaster and independent broadcasting is banned in Zimbabwe.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
THE VICTORIA'S SECRET (TM) CANDIDATE:
Dear Mein President:
All you need to win this election "big time" is remember that wisdom of Madison Avenue: SEX SCANDALS SELL. Whose hearings got more TV viewers, Oliver North the arms trader, or Clarence Thomas the video viewer? See what an accusation of erotic interests can do?
The American masses adore the very same sexual references they piously denounce. After 9-11 denizens of bars across the country were shouting, to use the current liberal euphemism, "Cheney those mother-cheneying terrorists!" This is why those photos from Abu Ghraib won't hurt us. If we'd just put the Iraqis on the rack, sure, but posing them to illustrate the Kama Sutra only arouses prurient public panting.
We applied this lesson well with The Clenis. We didn't repeat that boring method used to drive out our only Grecian Veep to make room for old "not-a-Lincoln". Instead of accusing the Arkansas Travailer of taking bribes, we tossed titillating tales of Oval Office oral orgies -- something so exotic and almost unknown in the Red States as to guarantee maximum attention out there.
This year's Democrats are also following that maxim. Why did The Ketchup Consort choose The Breck Boy as his "running mate"? You can see everytime they're together -- the hand holding, the tight whispering, the starry-eyed gazes into each other's faces. They're trying to straddle the sexual divide. Officially they oppose "modern Massachusetts monogamy", but notice that they were the only two Senators who didn't even show up to vote on it. It's not that they want people think they are actually experimenting with "sexual diversity". They just want people to wonder about it. Those poses are calculated conversation pieces.
Karl's current plan is for Bigus Dickus to simply announce later this year that his health precludes his running again. That's too dull. You could liven it up by having him taken to a hospital with "chest pains" which he got while nude in bed with his wife. We wouldn't have to say they were copulating. Let the tabloids jump to that conclusion on their own. It would produce hours of raptly watched hypocritical pontificating.
But even that doesn't go far enough. To get real drooling voyeurism and gigantic ratings, let him be carried off with those pangs from a bed he was sharing nude with another man. This would get more coverage and undercut the far rightists from calling his ticketectomy a sell-out to moderates. They'll be shouting instead to apply Leviticus 20:13, preferably with stones.
Who can we get to be discovered beside him by the ambulance crew? It should be a Log Cabin Republican, thus justifying their endorsement of you again. They'll be bragging about how far you've brought them into your administration. Let's demand that The Second Lady find one of her many "artistic" friends to serve. It's only fair for her to pay for undercutting the Homogeneous Hearth Amendment just before its defeat.
To replace your Number Two, I repeat that the most obvious choice is ME. There would be no complaints from the compulsory pregnancy caucus, as there would be with anti-life wimps like Colin or Rudy. And unlike them, I am a proven team player you know for certain will stand aside for your brother's nomination in four years. This year the press would gush all over themselves about your bold choice, reviving that old slogan "W is for Women".
But I'm willing to go still further to guarantee voters will be distracted by their inner demons instead of pondering their pocketbooks of pawn tickets. At some airport in October we'll arrange for a small accident. One of this candidate's bags will fall open before photojournalists prepared to snap shots of a collection of sex toys.
Once again, we don't have to say they are mine -- let the tabloids do that. Certain favored religious spin artists like Robertson can be prompted to denounce any attack on this discovery as leftist hypocrisy, saying she's a devout young woman (yes, I am old enough to run, thank you for asking), using Yankee ingenuity to eschew the liberal climate of singles bars and extra-marital liaisons. Of course, someone else will have to actually buy all those high-tech bedroom props for this scene, since I've never been short of willing partners myself.
For the rest of the campaign the media will talk of nothing else. Jobs? Health care? Schools? Who cares? There's a sex scandal to write about. The old saying will be proved again: If you get them arguing about the wrong question, then you don't need to worry about their answer. Four more years, then eight of Jeb, then eight of Jenna -- a little T and A is not too high a price to pay for establishing a dynasty.
Dear Mein President:
All you need to win this election "big time" is remember that wisdom of Madison Avenue: SEX SCANDALS SELL. Whose hearings got more TV viewers, Oliver North the arms trader, or Clarence Thomas the video viewer? See what an accusation of erotic interests can do?
The American masses adore the very same sexual references they piously denounce. After 9-11 denizens of bars across the country were shouting, to use the current liberal euphemism, "Cheney those mother-cheneying terrorists!" This is why those photos from Abu Ghraib won't hurt us. If we'd just put the Iraqis on the rack, sure, but posing them to illustrate the Kama Sutra only arouses prurient public panting.
We applied this lesson well with The Clenis. We didn't repeat that boring method used to drive out our only Grecian Veep to make room for old "not-a-Lincoln". Instead of accusing the Arkansas Travailer of taking bribes, we tossed titillating tales of Oval Office oral orgies -- something so exotic and almost unknown in the Red States as to guarantee maximum attention out there.
This year's Democrats are also following that maxim. Why did The Ketchup Consort choose The Breck Boy as his "running mate"? You can see everytime they're together -- the hand holding, the tight whispering, the starry-eyed gazes into each other's faces. They're trying to straddle the sexual divide. Officially they oppose "modern Massachusetts monogamy", but notice that they were the only two Senators who didn't even show up to vote on it. It's not that they want people think they are actually experimenting with "sexual diversity". They just want people to wonder about it. Those poses are calculated conversation pieces.
Karl's current plan is for Bigus Dickus to simply announce later this year that his health precludes his running again. That's too dull. You could liven it up by having him taken to a hospital with "chest pains" which he got while nude in bed with his wife. We wouldn't have to say they were copulating. Let the tabloids jump to that conclusion on their own. It would produce hours of raptly watched hypocritical pontificating.
But even that doesn't go far enough. To get real drooling voyeurism and gigantic ratings, let him be carried off with those pangs from a bed he was sharing nude with another man. This would get more coverage and undercut the far rightists from calling his ticketectomy a sell-out to moderates. They'll be shouting instead to apply Leviticus 20:13, preferably with stones.
Who can we get to be discovered beside him by the ambulance crew? It should be a Log Cabin Republican, thus justifying their endorsement of you again. They'll be bragging about how far you've brought them into your administration. Let's demand that The Second Lady find one of her many "artistic" friends to serve. It's only fair for her to pay for undercutting the Homogeneous Hearth Amendment just before its defeat.
To replace your Number Two, I repeat that the most obvious choice is ME. There would be no complaints from the compulsory pregnancy caucus, as there would be with anti-life wimps like Colin or Rudy. And unlike them, I am a proven team player you know for certain will stand aside for your brother's nomination in four years. This year the press would gush all over themselves about your bold choice, reviving that old slogan "W is for Women".
But I'm willing to go still further to guarantee voters will be distracted by their inner demons instead of pondering their pocketbooks of pawn tickets. At some airport in October we'll arrange for a small accident. One of this candidate's bags will fall open before photojournalists prepared to snap shots of a collection of sex toys.
Once again, we don't have to say they are mine -- let the tabloids do that. Certain favored religious spin artists like Robertson can be prompted to denounce any attack on this discovery as leftist hypocrisy, saying she's a devout young woman (yes, I am old enough to run, thank you for asking), using Yankee ingenuity to eschew the liberal climate of singles bars and extra-marital liaisons. Of course, someone else will have to actually buy all those high-tech bedroom props for this scene, since I've never been short of willing partners myself.
For the rest of the campaign the media will talk of nothing else. Jobs? Health care? Schools? Who cares? There's a sex scandal to write about. The old saying will be proved again: If you get them arguing about the wrong question, then you don't need to worry about their answer. Four more years, then eight of Jeb, then eight of Jenna -- a little T and A is not too high a price to pay for establishing a dynasty.
Friday, July 16, 2004
PORK BARREL IN THE SKY:
Mythical Spanish knight Don Quixote, famed for charging at windmills he mistakes for enemies, is to ride again on a cosmic mission to save the world.
The European Space Agency has given high priority to a Spanish project which aims to attack an approaching asteroid to see if it can deflect a space body that may in future be on a collision course with earth.
Two spacecraft will set out -- one named after the valiant knight of Cervantes' classic tale, the other after his long-suffering servant Sancho.
Sancho will circle the chosen asteroid while the other spacecraft -- aping its literary namesake -- smashes headlong into the target.
En esto descubrieron treinta o cuarenta molinos de viento que hay en aquel campo, y así como Don Quijote los vió, dijo a su escudero: la ventura va guiando nuestras cosas mejor de lo que acertáramos a desear; porque ves allí, amigo Sancho Panza, donde se descubren treinta o poco más desaforados gigantes con quien pienso hacer batalla, y quitarles a todos las vidas, con cuyos despojos comenzaremos a enriquecer: que esta es buena guerra, y es gran servicio de Dios quitar tan mala simiente de sobre la faz de la tierra.
¿Qué gigantes? dijo Sancho Panza.
THOUGHTLESS PHRASE OF THE DAY:
The AssPress doesn't seem to be spending enough for editors.
The AssPress doesn't seem to be spending enough for editors.
The Philippines worked Friday to meet the demands of kidnappers holding a Filipino truck driver, announcing it was withdrawing the head of its humanitarian mission in Iraq and a further 10 troops.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
KNOW THYSELF:
AWolf of alone points to this Ethical Philosophy Selector, purporting to tell whose views you are closest to. My score on this quiz was no surprise:
I tried again, out of curiosity, to see what the quiz would say if answered the way a typical fuzzy-brained liberal would. And the winner was:
AWolf of alone points to this Ethical Philosophy Selector, purporting to tell whose views you are closest to. My score on this quiz was no surprise:
Your Results:I was delighted to see the first two, at least as those two thinkers are usually pictured, and this quiz seems to follow the conventional wisdom. But that third one -- Sartre? That existentialist communist? Either this part of the quiz is nonsense, or as Rick Blaine said about the waters in Casablanca, "I was misinformed."
1. Thomas Hobbes (100%)
2. Nietzsche (92%)
3. Jean-Paul Sartre (79%)
I tried again, out of curiosity, to see what the quiz would say if answered the way a typical fuzzy-brained liberal would. And the winner was:
Your Results:She is a "philosopher of education and feminist ethics" and a former professor at Stanford, who "has raised 'a flock of kids' (10 to be exact) and stayed married to the same man for 48 years." Well, at least that tells me whose works to stay away from. This article about her does cite one point I agree with her on:
1. Nel Noddings (100%)
Academics sometimes remind her of a man psychologist Carl Jung once described: Upon hearing suspicious noises from the cellar, he rushed to the attic. Finding nothing unusual there, he assumed the grumblings were his imagination.That reminded me of a cold scalpel applied to one philosopher by cartoonist Jeff Jones in an episode of his comic Idyl. It was titled "Aristotle". A woman walking finds two large oil cans. She says "Barrels! I wonder if there's anything in them." She lifts the lid off one and says "Nothing in this one." And in the last panel she just walks away, leaving the other barrel untouched.
CAUSE FOR ACTION:
Once again the liberal parodist Mad Kane has attempted a musical defense of the Democratic ticket. Now she's trying to prop up John The Tortious with a song, to the tune of "Moon River", about the alleged virtues of plaintiff's attorneys. It starts
As a proud defender of our wonderful corporations, whose shoes we are not worthy to bear, I could not let this paean to ambulance chasers go unchallenged. Therefore I drafted one of my own, telling the true story, to the tune of "I'm On My Way" from "Paint Your Wagon". I call this "The Barratry Ballad":
Once again the liberal parodist Mad Kane has attempted a musical defense of the Democratic ticket. Now she's trying to prop up John The Tortious with a song, to the tune of "Moon River", about the alleged virtues of plaintiff's attorneys. It starts
Trial lawyersYou can find the whole leftist rant at "Ode To John Edwards" a/k/a "The Trial Lawyers Song."
Go that extra mile,
To see that all those vile
Guys pay.
As a proud defender of our wonderful corporations, whose shoes we are not worthy to bear, I could not let this paean to ambulance chasers go unchallenged. Therefore I drafted one of my own, telling the true story, to the tune of "I'm On My Way" from "Paint Your Wagon". I call this "The Barratry Ballad":
Gotta claim here.
Gotta tort.
Write your brief up
And go to court.
Who am I suing?
I don't care.
Who'll I bankrupt?
Not my problem.
All that counts
Is someone's gonna pay
Who're my clients?
Stupid fools
Who can't even
Tie their shoes.
Read directions?
That's just not their way.
Pour hot coffee
In your lap?
Come and see me.
We will slap
Suits and see what
Jurors have to say.
Lose kids to an
Unlocked gun
'Cause they thought it
Looked like fun?
My suit'll really
Make the maker's day.
Eat fast food till
You are fat.
My lawsuit will
Get back at
Those who let you
Have it your own way.
Whose fault was it?
Who's the richest?
What's their tie-in?
Cash to grab.
Is that just? I'm
Not prepared to say.
How will I win it?
Jolt the jurors.
How do I move them?
Tears and lies.
My hired experts
Do this every day.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
ART ABUSE:
Checking out appeasing French blogs on this Bastille Day, I found that Phersu has found a new way to attack Our Noble Leader, by misusing a classic painting. I've posted a copy of the overly symbol-laden picture, and explained how he performed this vile assault, at Le Mot Injuste.
Checking out appeasing French blogs on this Bastille Day, I found that Phersu has found a new way to attack Our Noble Leader, by misusing a classic painting. I've posted a copy of the overly symbol-laden picture, and explained how he performed this vile assault, at Le Mot Injuste.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
LA GUERRA DE LOS GATOS:
There's good news from south of the border.
Marta was counting on riding a burst of gushing publicity about women in politics, which she expected would follow The Ketchup Consort's selection of She Who Must Not Be Named as his Veep candidate. Unfortunately for her plans, Heinz-Kerry instead picked The Breck Boy. Yes, most Democrats said that's what they wanted, but that was only because Mrs. The Clenis refused to run. Polls consistently had rated her higher among the party serfs than anyone who was actually campaigning in the primaries. Our would-be first African-American First Lady could ignore having her own stalking horse upstaged by a refugee from a Dockers ad, but not by another woman with an eye on the throne for herself.
So if the voters reject Our Noble Leader for The Francophone Weathervane this fall, then Terry Of The Scarves will be able to look at the portrait unveiled this year in the White House, and say of her rival, in the words of Robert Browning,
There's good news from south of the border.
La primera dama de México, Marta Sahagún, anunció ayer su retirada definitiva de la carrera por la presidencia de México en 2006, después de varios meses de controversias por su excesivo protagonismo político.I warned about this Señora Defarge on March 4 in "Forget Gay Marriage -- The Consorts Are Coming!!" The Mexican First Lady's conniving to follow her husband in office was well under way. Why has she backed out just now? The answer lies in Pittsburgh.
Marta was counting on riding a burst of gushing publicity about women in politics, which she expected would follow The Ketchup Consort's selection of She Who Must Not Be Named as his Veep candidate. Unfortunately for her plans, Heinz-Kerry instead picked The Breck Boy. Yes, most Democrats said that's what they wanted, but that was only because Mrs. The Clenis refused to run. Polls consistently had rated her higher among the party serfs than anyone who was actually campaigning in the primaries. Our would-be first African-American First Lady could ignore having her own stalking horse upstaged by a refugee from a Dockers ad, but not by another woman with an eye on the throne for herself.
So if the voters reject Our Noble Leader for The Francophone Weathervane this fall, then Terry Of The Scarves will be able to look at the portrait unveiled this year in the White House, and say of her rival, in the words of Robert Browning,
Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,The death in question may be only political, but is no less real. As an added bonus, this torpedoed the ambition of another Amazon. Oh, she fired parting shots about "las acciones retrógradas, misóginas y machistas", but the party is over for Marta. No matter that he was not the one calling this shot, we all owe a quick Gracias to JFK II for sparing us from that nightmare.
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.
Monday, July 12, 2004
IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO MUZZLE A MUSE:
The usual idiots at the ACLU are incensed at the city of Portland, Maine, for requiring sidewalk painters
The usual idiots at the ACLU are incensed at the city of Portland, Maine, for requiring sidewalk painters
to obtain a $75 permit to set up an easel. "The city says it is worried about congestion, but it's a red herring," said Doug Emerson, a Portland photographer. "It's an issue of control."He's absolutely correct. One more local government has seen the wisdom of following the original source of all those philosopher's footnotes.
Plato wanted to ban artists because he believed their work was only mirror images - an appearance, but not reality and truth.That point comes from a review by Jeanette Winterson, acclaimed by liberals for her lesbian novels, which brings us to why this noble stand against the liars with paintbrushes is happening at the local level. When otherwise sound thinkers get to the national capitol, the flattering attention can easily warp their judgment. A case in point is our Second Lady. Associating with all those "artistic types" as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993 got her confused about priorities.
Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife and the mother of a lesbian, said yesterday that states should have the final say over the legal status of personal relationships. That stance puts her at odds with Vice President Dick Cheney on the need for the constitutional amendment under debate in the Senate that effectively would ban gay marriage.She's obviously still following the old memo, about supporting the former Senate Majority Leader on his state's rights stand. Fortunately out there in Real America the Podunk pols ponder Plato not pundits. His real target in that passage from Chapter 10 of The Republic was not graphic artists but wordsmiths.
...we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.Putting his prescription into practice, when some unpatriotic rebel decorated his yard with a sign reading "BUSH MUST GO!" and "Dump emperor George W",
someone complained about his sign to the Village of Great Neck. A code inspector showed up. Shortly after, a "notice of violation" arrived from the village ordering him to take the sign down....They wimped out later under pressure, but they tried to squelch such subversion. Likewise the city of Boston is showing the liberal elitists who really runs things at the grass roots.
The party designer is all lined up, the $1,000-a-head guest list is rounded out with Ben Affleck, Billy Baldwin, and Sean Astin, and the superchic Louis Boston is finalized as the setting. But there's one thing this convention bash won't be doing, and that's rocking into the night. Not in Boston.But local officials are not just blindly obedient to rules. They can exercise discretion when merely technical violations are clearly in the national interest.
The city denied its application to let the Red Hot Chili Peppers play until midnight. They have to quit at 11. And they're not the only ones being told they can't go late. Parties around the city are being turned down for requests to go into the early morning during the week of the Democratic National Convention.
Just after the dawn's early light of July Fourth, he stationed a disc jockey and a concert-size subwoofer on his glorious mountain perch overlooking Mendocino County -- and ignited a star-spangled spat. Piffero's 9 a.m. burst of patriotic words and music in Ukiah was so loud that the brave heard it in their homes several miles away, priests closed church doors so parishioners would hear their Sunday sermons, and a furious nurse named Alea Waters jumped out of bed and drove her station wagon 1,000 feet up the mountain -- where she successfully issued a citizen's arrest for disturbing the peace. ... The issue of Piffero's criminal record was settled Wednesday when District Attorney Norm Vroman decided not to file a misdemeanor disturbing-the-peace chargeIf you're going to make music, make sure it's a joyful noise in praise of Our Noble Leader. There is no such thing as a poetic license to prevaricate about the only President we've got.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
"BUT I GREW AND I BENT"
No doubt you've already read how Ray Bradbury, who wisely doesn't feel the same way about censorship of movies as he does about books, is demanding an apology from Michael Moore for ripping off the title of his best novel. Now it seems he's not the only artist upset at the Blimp With A Camera.
No doubt you've already read how Ray Bradbury, who wisely doesn't feel the same way about censorship of movies as he does about books, is demanding an apology from Michael Moore for ripping off the title of his best novel. Now it seems he's not the only artist upset at the Blimp With A Camera.
Rock legend Pete Townshend has launched a scathing attack at film-maker Michael Moore, saying he has been "bullied and slurred" by the director. ...Of course not, or it would never have been used as a theme song for a TV show by that great patriot Jerry Bruckheimer, who showed in his Profiles from the Front Line how to make a documentary that supports Our Noble Leader's preemptions.
"He says that I refused to allow him to use my song Won't Get Fooled Again in his latest film because I support the war. I have never hidden the fact that at the beginning of the war in Iraq, I was a supporter. But now I am less sure we did the right thing. ...Won't Get Fooled Again is not an unconditionally anti-war song."
...a commander readying the troops lectures on Iraq's leader: "Saddam Hussein is a criminal and a thug." Not many people would argue with this commander's assessment of the Iraqi dictator, but this statement is given right after an image showing troops in Afghanistan, implying that there is an inherent connection between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and Saddam Hussein. ...Despite the great help that story reports the Pentagon gave to the producer then, his proposed adaptation of the Jessica Lynch story didn't come off like it was first rumored:
This link was also incorrectly made by an American soldier searching a foreign ship attempting to unload in Iraq. He said, "I don't feel funny going through anyone's personal stuff. They wiped out how many people's stuff at the World Trade Center?"
The movie starts with a shot of the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. We then see a fleet of blimps crashing into Cinderella's castle and blowing everything up. Then we hear a voiceover by Kiefer Sutherland (or some other actor with a creepy voice) telling us about how Iraq attacked America, just like it did on 9/11, and this is why we went to war with Iraq. ...But His Bruckhighness still supports our troops. He even sent some of his employees to Iraq to help.
We cut to Private Lynch (played by Anna Kournikova) lost and ALONE in her truck in the middle of the desert. As she checks her map, a wave of French and Russian soldiers come running over the dunes to attack. Behind the troops in a floating chariot pulled by robot unicorns is Saddam Hussein (played by Sir Ian McKellen). Hussein declares, while eating a baby, that the Hyper Bomb Mark IV is his and that George Washington was a child molestor. ...
CBS has announced that the United States Military has approached the team from "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" to help with the search for traces of Iraq's known biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. ...L. Paul Bremer III said. "They are professional, smart, and they always get their man. And the best thing is their speed: normally it only takes them about an hour to solve the crime."Townshend must recognize true patriotism means support for the President, who was no doubt inspired in his own personal life by the songwriter's own recovery from addiction. He even let Bruckheimer use old Who songs as themes for both of his CSI shows. He saw that Jerry knows just how to help George: he just follows the script and "becomes part of the machine."
...William Peterson, who plays Gal Grissom, the head of the Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigation Unit [said] "As the CBS website proclaims, my team solves crimes from evidence most average people would never think exists. Which is quite appropriate for Iraq."
Thursday, July 08, 2004
RELIEF FOR THE WEARY:
You've probably memorized it by now: the infamous "Miranda" warning you see given to arrested criminals on all the TV cop shows. Well, here's some legal info for you. Those warnings are not to protect the wrongdoers, they are to protect the police. Once the officers read those rights, they can ask any sort of manipulative, sneaky, downright intimidating questions they want -- and they do.
Now the Supreme Court, nipping at the hand which appoints it, is saying that even terrorists have all sorts of legal rights. How long before the "Justices", having thrown off their reins, start requiring all that same legal mumbo jumbo for the Mad Bombers What Bomb At Midnight? Well, a great opportunity has arisen to preclude any worries from that front. Our soldiers and Homeland Security types can have a "query the thugs in jail" pass by giving them more than a mere Miranda warning. All they have to do is print and give out copies of a new, convenient (and cheap) text of the entire Constitution. Let them claim they don't know their rights then.
You've probably memorized it by now: the infamous "Miranda" warning you see given to arrested criminals on all the TV cop shows. Well, here's some legal info for you. Those warnings are not to protect the wrongdoers, they are to protect the police. Once the officers read those rights, they can ask any sort of manipulative, sneaky, downright intimidating questions they want -- and they do.
Now the Supreme Court, nipping at the hand which appoints it, is saying that even terrorists have all sorts of legal rights. How long before the "Justices", having thrown off their reins, start requiring all that same legal mumbo jumbo for the Mad Bombers What Bomb At Midnight? Well, a great opportunity has arisen to preclude any worries from that front. Our soldiers and Homeland Security types can have a "query the thugs in jail" pass by giving them more than a mere Miranda warning. All they have to do is print and give out copies of a new, convenient (and cheap) text of the entire Constitution. Let them claim they don't know their rights then.
A villager in the Indian Himalayas has sought recognition from President George W. Bush after copying by hand the US constitution in a book only two centimeters (three-quarters of an inch) long ... it took him 196 hours and 25 minutes to write down the US constitution in the 124-page book that weighs 2.17 grams, or three-quarters of an ounce.
PYROTECHNIC PULCHRITUDE:
Gaze in shock at a photo of the Suicide Bomber Barbie, as found at the well-named die puny humans. On June 30 I wrote in "La Sauce Pour Le Jars" about Paul Johnson's resoundingly rightist new history of art. A bête noire of his is what he calls "fashion art". He refers to Picasso, but this model has to be an even better example. It is always difficult to tell if modern "art" is intended as a joke or not. Let's hope this is one, however sick. Judge for yourself from the typical modernist jargon at this site:
Gaze in shock at a photo of the Suicide Bomber Barbie, as found at the well-named die puny humans. On June 30 I wrote in "La Sauce Pour Le Jars" about Paul Johnson's resoundingly rightist new history of art. A bête noire of his is what he calls "fashion art". He refers to Picasso, but this model has to be an even better example. It is always difficult to tell if modern "art" is intended as a joke or not. Let's hope this is one, however sick. Judge for yourself from the typical modernist jargon at this site:
Simon Tyszko's Suicide Bomber Barbie conflates Western commodification with Palestinian desperation. Religious and capitalist dogmas struggle within Barbie's idealised form, in an artwork of potent incongruity.
DON'T TRUST A CHILD WITH A LOADED SYLLOGISM:
Mealy-mouthed "moderate" Matthew Yglesias shows how a Philosophy course is a terrible thing to waste. In "Fusionism" he attacks rightists and libertarians by mockingly quoting:
Mealy-mouthed "moderate" Matthew Yglesias shows how a Philosophy course is a terrible thing to waste. In "Fusionism" he attacks rightists and libertarians by mockingly quoting:
Meyer contributed to an unfortunate tendency among conservatives toward theoretical maximalism, as in his casual reference to "the totalitarian implications of the federal school lunch program."Ignoring this absolutely correct point of Meyer's, he then tries to prove how "even-handed" and boringly "un-extreme" he is, by also bashing the left:
You sometimes catch liberals arguing that federal funding of Catholic schools is the leading edge of total social disintegration even though it's been done for decades in Canada without ill effect.Hang on there, Mattie, you're not really holding up Canada as a model? That openly collectivist icebox where socialized medicine only hangs on because it's too cold for most germs, which tries to sabotage American business by letting their subversives undercut our prescription drug prices, which was legally recognizing same-sex entanglements even before howling Howie's Vermont? Those figure skating pot smoking phonies have been in total social meltdown for years, and proved it most recently when "Voter turnout in the 2004 election was lower than in any national election since Confederation in 1867." Their experience could only be an argument against vouchers, not against opposing them. Try to think these things through next time, Mattie.
OUR SISTER WAS LOST AND IS FOUND:
Once there was a country that was very sad. All the big corporations had given up producing work of which a man or a woman could be proud, and had learned to live by manipulating the government to give them an ever larger share of the peoples' taxes.Does this dark, dreary, dystopia bring to mind any epic novels of how terrible things would be in America if all the good people just gave up? That's right, Julia, who usually just posts silly liberal propaganda at her own blog, Sisyphus Shrugged, is channelling the spirit of the late Alys Rosenbaum. Like the original, she celebrates capitalism and gives us a hero:
From the ranks of the people rose an entrepreneur whose spirit rose against this waste of human potential.But that is not the only model she uses in this tour de force. She also recalls the work of Douglas Adams:
(I'm sure the small-l libertarians would have done something about it, but they were sent off in the first ship with the phone sanitizers and the marketing consultants.)Her brave businessman proceeds to make a movie to question how bad things have become, and it happily becomes a popular success. Unfortunately, she casts this whole tale in the form of a parable, calling it "Sam Adams Shrugged: a fable of modern times". The format means that she never names the bold film maker, or the masterpiece of cinema he puts out. Well, she can't fool me. It is obvious that she can only be referring to Mel Gibson and his wonderful The Passion Of The Christ. Go read her piece for yourself, and welcome this prodigal daughter to the supporters of compassionate corporatism. Perhaps soon she'll be endorsing Our Noble Leader.
FENESTRATION IN GEORGETOWN:
When the first JFK ran for President, he still faced the rumor that had helped defeat Al Smith -- that if he won, he would build a secret tunnel from the White House to the Vatican. The next Catholic nominee of a major party, JFK The Sequel, won't have to worry about that charge, judging by the efforts coming from there to deny him communion for insufficiently supporting the fetal position of Pius IX and his successors, as opposed to those of Augustine, Aquinas, and the Church's Council of Vienne in 1312, who all held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was "formed".
The symbolism of that hidden access to a foreign land where his real allegiance lies is still valid, however. Political Wire has pointed to an article about The Ketchup Consort's home at Washington, usurped like his bride from a late Republican colleague. This shows where his heart really will go on to:
When the first JFK ran for President, he still faced the rumor that had helped defeat Al Smith -- that if he won, he would build a secret tunnel from the White House to the Vatican. The next Catholic nominee of a major party, JFK The Sequel, won't have to worry about that charge, judging by the efforts coming from there to deny him communion for insufficiently supporting the fetal position of Pius IX and his successors, as opposed to those of Augustine, Aquinas, and the Church's Council of Vienne in 1312, who all held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was "formed".
The symbolism of that hidden access to a foreign land where his real allegiance lies is still valid, however. Political Wire has pointed to an article about The Ketchup Consort's home at Washington, usurped like his bride from a late Republican colleague. This shows where his heart really will go on to:
The entrance to the large, landscaped garden is through French doors.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
I FOUGHT THE LAW....
So it's going to be John The Tortious as the Ketchup Consort's Veep wanna-be. Does this mean that JFK II wants still more money from the ambulance chasers? No -- he will shortly be stuck with no more for his campaign than what he can extract from the taxpayers (a trap we lured silly liberal idealists into setting up years ago). Is it to steal Southern votes by stealth? No -- polls show Johnny Eddie the animatronic Ken doll won't even carry his own state. Is it to inflame the class war with the Toothy Carolinian's "bash the corporations" rhetoric? No -- his voting record shows that to be campaign castigation uncountenanced in his actual voting record, where, like his running mate, he casts his ballot where the lobby is. It means they've decided to compose this campaign from Carteresque carping about "justice" and "rights". Expect to hear a lot about Abu Ghraib and those poor huddled asses yearning to breathe for free in Guantanamo.
Very well, we can take up the fight on that ground.
So it's going to be John The Tortious as the Ketchup Consort's Veep wanna-be. Does this mean that JFK II wants still more money from the ambulance chasers? No -- he will shortly be stuck with no more for his campaign than what he can extract from the taxpayers (a trap we lured silly liberal idealists into setting up years ago). Is it to steal Southern votes by stealth? No -- polls show Johnny Eddie the animatronic Ken doll won't even carry his own state. Is it to inflame the class war with the Toothy Carolinian's "bash the corporations" rhetoric? No -- his voting record shows that to be campaign castigation uncountenanced in his actual voting record, where, like his running mate, he casts his ballot where the lobby is. It means they've decided to compose this campaign from Carteresque carping about "justice" and "rights". Expect to hear a lot about Abu Ghraib and those poor huddled asses yearning to breathe for free in Guantanamo.
Very well, we can take up the fight on that ground.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." --William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.We speak only figuratively, of course, but you know what surveys show about how little people trust lawyers, so we'll brag that Our Noble Leader not only isn't an attorney, but that he showed how typical an American he was when he was rejected for law school even at his home state's University. That proves how the legal establishment saw even then that he wouldn't play their silly games, like the Supreme Court has been doing lately. Would he have ever ruled that flag burning is okay, or that sodomy couldn't be banned, or that Eve and Hillary could wed? Of course not. He probably wouldn't even have bought into that phony Swedish "sociologist's" theories and said "separate but equal" was unfair to those of the colored persuasion.
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, "the law is an ass, a idiot." --Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (ch. LI).Finally, we can use this against the Team Of Two Tort Tossers with the key core group of apocalyptic fundamentalists. We won't even be casting the first stone. It will just be payback for the memory of the late Saint Ronald, whose Democratic opponent in his first campaign for Governor "reminded" voters that it was an actor who killed Lincoln. We'll just put out a letter to those church membership lists we are getting now quoting a classic of American literature, Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil And Daniel Webster":
He was a great lawyer, Dan'l Webster, but we know who's the King of Lawyers, as the Good Book tells us, and it seemed as if, for the first time, Dan'l Webster had met his match.
