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

Sign the "Winning in November" Pledge

If you haven't already, think about going to the Winning in November website and signing the "pledge" form. Here's the meat:

Dear American Citizen,

Your elected representatives had a chance to vote on Big Government programs, Big Government bailouts, and Big Government health care. Now it's your turn to act. And your actions count. You have the power to choose the policies that will set this country on a pro-growth, pro-prosperity path. Pledging to win in November entitles members to receive candidate and policy updates.

Do your part. Sign the pledge now. Commit to Winning in November.

"The Pledge"

I pledge to demand that candidates seeking elected office support pro growth, pro free enterprise policies, and reject freedom-killing policies and legislation such as Cap and Trade, ObamaCare, Big Government Stimulus, and Big Corporate Bailouts.

Financing the Culture of Death

Anne Nicol Gaylor is an old lady who likes to buy abortion services for poor women. Is she a eugenicist who wants to "clean up the chaff of humanity"? Probably. Excerpt:

On Gaylor's 80th birthday she sponsored a fund-raising event to raise funds to kill more children in the womb. Those funds go mostly to poor women to assist them in taking the life of the children in their womb. There is no effort to offer counseling or any kind of abortion alternative. Erickson writes, "Gaylor used the occasion of her 80th birthday to hold a fund-raising party for the fund at the Madison home of Dr. Dennis Christensen, an abortion provider who has since retired. Gaylor sent invitations far afield, including one to a well-to-do woman in California she'd never met but who had donated to the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The woman sent her regrets and a $20,000 check."

She also helped start the Freedom from Religion Foundation; so there you go.

Very funny and creative flick from FlobbinHood0

If you have 10 minutes to spare and you like cartoons and/or Johnny English, it's worth checking out:

FlobbinHood0 is around 12 years old and the brother of another talented film-maker, jnddepew, whose videos I've posted here in the past. He demonstrates himself to be a master of the deus ex machina plot device, a staple of humorous cartoons.

Andrew Brown asks a good question

The question he asks is "Do we really need so many 'Eucharistic Ministers'?" Excerpt:

What’s the point of all these assistants? The Catholic Church does allow for what it calls an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, in cases when the priest is not available. But there is absolutely no need to have five extra ministers, giving Holy Communion under both kinds, as I saw this morning in an ordinary parish church, two thirds full, with a perfectly capable parish priest.

I can’t help thinking all these ministers are there just to give the more assertive parishioners something to do – so that they feel as though they’re joining in. I should think the priest is often bullied into allowing it, and daren’t refuse. As for ordinary Catholics, most of them probably find the extra helpers irritating, but are too polite to say.

All good points in his article. One priest I knew told me he runs into EMs who seem to feel they have some sort of "right" to distribute communion and they get hurt feelings when they aren't needed.

In my experience a lot of EMs seem distracted by ephemera. One time I was asked a question by a very young man distributing communion immediately after I had received communion. What was he thinking? I just shrugged.

I don't know if I'm "too polite to say" anything as Brown suggests. I just consider that there are too many moral crises in the church and the world to obsess about some of these matters. But liturgical abuses certainly don't help the situation.

Jonah Goldberg on the anti-Muslim myth

Jonah Goldberg discusses that oh-so-scary anti-Muslim backlash for which the media doth greatly jones, but which is as elusive as Sasquatch in an Albertan blizzard. Excerpt:

In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren't we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

Because there isn't one. And there isn't an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there's a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don't like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times - never mind left-wing blogs - you'll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party") than you will toward Muslims.

Italics mine. Does anyone not realize how much our society marginalizes people who really are racists or who are bigoted against people based on their religion? Well, yes, it does seem like you're allowed to be bigoted against conservative Catholics and Evangelicals as Jonah points out. But I'll axe you this question if you doubt my assertion about bigotry being frowned upon generally: do you know anyone who is anti-Semitic, racist against blacks and Hispanics or regularly uses words like "towel-head" or "rag-head"? Are they unemployed? If they are employed, how much money do they make? See.

The canard of gathering anti-Muslim mobs is the stuff of media fantasy.

Legion of Rock Stars deconstructs Madonna

This version of Material Girl is so much better than the original. It sounds like it is being performed by the puppets from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

I simply revel in the glorious cartoonishness of it all.

Art Paul Schlosser is eating some real good cheese

Duh, he's from Wisconsin.

Welcome to Newspeak

Start the day off with a smile and a LOL. This is a riot unless you take Vox Nova seriously.

Hat tip goes to The American Catholic.

"No greater cause"

From the Endangered Catholics website:

PLEASE JOIN US FOR A WEEKLY PRAYER SERVICE AT ST. CASIMIR'S CATHOLIC CHURCH, UNJUSTLY CLOSED BY BISHOP LENNON.

The “Prayer Service will take place EVERY SUNDAY in front of St. Casimir's Church at 11:30 am on E. 82nd Street between Sowinski and Pulaski Streets.

Come with your cars packed full of supporters for this most noble cause.

There is no greater cause than to save a church built by our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents!

Really? No greater cause?

Whenever Pro-lifers talk this way, viz, "There is no greater cause than to save the life of an unborn baby," we hear all kinds of people taking issue with the statement. Catholics on the left start bringing up feeding the poor, social injustices, victims of global capitalism, the seamless garment stuff, innocent people killed in a war somewhere, etc. So I wonder why someone thinks they can make a statement like this and suddenly have it be taken seriously.