Diamond in the rough

More Pure Pleasure from the Legion of Rock Stars. First we have "Cracklin' Rosie" featuring a mid-song coughing fit.

Store bought woman, indeed. Next we have the school bus version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

Public Service Message

She cracks me up again....

LOL

Come on

My friend, Blake, just sent me an email. Turns out he's looking for a job, and so he's emailing everyone in his address book. That normally wouldn't bother me, but I was busy buying some shrimp online when I got the email, and seeing his email looking for work made me totally forget how much shrimp I needed to buy. I mean, come on, man; you might be unemployed, but I'm not and I am trying to buy shrimp. And lobster.


Blake, please don't bother me again with your trivialities when I'm buying shrimp. Some things may seem important to you, but other things are simply more important.

No way! This one is even better!

Number 2 is my favorite. What's yours?

I'll bet PETA doesn't like #5 much. But me, I say go for it. It's only $71K, and you have to do something with all the stuff the gets nabbed in drug busts, why not have some fun?

Love Triangle

This is why I don't kiss people in public.

Thoughtful Piece on Libertarian Naiveté WRT Islamification

Joe Hargrave is fast becoming one of my favorite Catholic bloggers on political issues. He is libertarian by temperament and is a fan of Ron Paul, agreeing with him most of the time. But his opinion has diverged recently over Paul's comments on the Ground Zero Mosque. He first mentioned it here on TAC where he blogs, and he put up a longer post at his personal blog on Tuesday. Here's an excerpt:

Though I agree with Ron Paul and other prominent libertarians on a number of issues, and even take their side on issues over which they typically disagree with conservatives, such as the war on drugs or even the “war on terror” – if by that is meant the occupation of foreign countries by American troops and the formation of an domestic police state – when it comes to the challenges posed to the West by radical Islam, many of them are, to use the most accurate and charitable word possible, naive.

I have heard Ron Paul, for instance, actually argue once that if Islamic terrorists hated the West for its values, as opposed to US foreign policy, they would be attacking countries besides the United States – as if they hadn’t carried out bombings in Madrid, London, Bali, Jakarta, or other places. Paul and other libertarians routinely deny that Islamic radicals hate the West for any reason other than foreign policy, or at the very least, imply that all hatred of the West can be reduced to that factor.

While I don’t doubt at all that US foreign policy has inflamed jihadism around the world, this reduction simply cannot explain what has been taking place in Europe for the past decades. The radicalization of Europe’s Muslim immigrant populations, growing sections of which declare their open hatred on a regular basis for democracy, free speech, and other Western political ideas, agitate for Sharia law, use the courts to try and silence critics, and even declare fatwas on them, cannot be explained by this analysis.

I think naiveté is certainly an accurate term, but I would also like to point out that stubbornness and willful ignoring of facts can be detected in Paul's remarks. I myself believe that there are other underlying reasons for his remarks, viz., contrarianism and desire for camera time, but these are not obvious, and everyone here knows that I don't like Ron Paul very much, so I'll just point out that no prominent conservative has been been using legal arguments against building the mosque contrary to personal property rights.

Hargrave does an absolutely incredible job of showing how libertarians are only only offering "simplistic reductions of complex geopolitical problems" when they blame everything Jihadists do on US Foreign Policy. It reminds my of what Chesterton said in his book Orthodoxy about the madman being simplistic and lacking "healthy complexity", residing "in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point." (Source) A pure libertarian really does believe that freedom solves everything, and many conservatives lean libertarian because we do see a need in the modern climate to give back freedoms which the state has taken away, especially economic freedom. However we can't be tempted to reside in this "prison of one idea". Bill Bennett has a short sentence he uses to explain why he is a conservative rather than a libertarian: "Culture matters."

I'll close by excerpting another instructive passage from Hargrave's piece:

Finally, it demonstrates the contradiction at the heart of libertarianism; in order to preserve certain liberties, you must begin to take a hard line against those who would uproot and destroy them. Yet another Dutchman, Oscar van den Boogaard, a “Dutch gay humanist” is now famously quoted as having said, reflecting upon the Islamification of his society:

“I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

Fortuyn and van Gogh, like most Dutch libertines I imagine, would have rather enjoyed their liberties in peace instead of dying in their defense.

If you can stand listening to one of his speeches

Got this in my email a while back, have been meaning to share with all y'all.

"Here is something to help make Obama's speeches more interesting. Just print out this page, distribute it to your friends, and go listen...."


Here are the all-important Rules and Testimonials for BO BS Bingo.

Rules for Bullshit Bingo:

1. Before Barrack Obama's next televised speech, print your "Bullshit Bingo"

2. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.

3. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

Testimonials from past satisfied "Bullshit Bingo" players:

"I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won." - Jack W.,Boston

"My attention span during speeches has improved dramatically." - David D., Florida

"What a gas! Speeches will never be the same for me after my first win." - Bill R., New York City

The atmosphere was tense in the last speech as 14 of us waited for the fifth box." - Ben G., Denver

"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed "BULLSHIT!" for the third time in two hours." - Harry A, Chantilly