"Adorable illusion"

This came out shortly after Star Wars, so I'm guessing that Debbie Harry borrowed Carrie Fisher's lip gloss for this video.

A. Weiner has public argument with his mouth full

Democrats are always so classy. They really care about, you know, the people and all that. That's why they love to get in public shouting matches. I guess once you've sent around pictures of your privates to everyone and dragged your wife through the dirt nothing will embarrass you.

Who is empowering the real wolves?

Once upon a time there was a boy who used to shout, "There's a wolf! Help! There's a wolf!" The good people of the town would run to help him, but when they found him there weren't any wolves, just the boy with a tin cup trying to bum money from the good people to buy booze. Some of the good people even gave him some money, but this happened so many times that pretty soon the good people stopped showing up.

The only people who kept showing up were politicians and some shady types who wanted to learn how to lie from a real master. Then it so happened that one day a real wolf decided to attack the boy since no one who really cared about the boy would defend him when he cried "Wolf!" anymore.

The politicians and ne'er-do-wells watched amid the boy's screams as the wolf devoured him alive. Then, while the good people of the town started digging a grave to bury the boy's remains, one of the politicians went to a microphone and began to condemn the good people for not coming when the boy cried "Wolf!" and saving the boy's life. Then when a number of the good people formed a hunting party to go kill the wolf, the politicians make a law against it, saying "The wolf shouldn't be punished for doing something which is in its nature to do."

The End

Inspired by this article. I agree with some of the ideas expressed in it and I disagree with others. So I decided to write this story instead of doing my usual commentary.

This should help save money

Ariel Castro found dead in cell.

I found this question interesting:

The overriding question is what about the medical and psychological tests that are done. Did those evaluations show any inclination that Castro would harm himself?

But I have a better question. Did anyone, like his brothers and acquaintances, have any inkling that Ariel Castro was raping three girls he kidnapped and held as sex slaves for years and years? Things that make you go "Hmmm." There will be no hand-wringing about medical examiners not catching suicidal tendencies at my address. Chances are these people never met such a monster, nor will they ever again.

The wheels are coming off the rickshaw

Keith emailed me this link last week, and although it's a month old, it's well worth reading. It appears that Ron Unz has decided to give Betsy Woodruff from National Review the scoop on how an editor of the magazine that he supposedly owns, The American Conservative, disregards the fact of his ownership.

A conflict at The American Conservative has led its publisher, Ron Unz, to claim he’s being “purged” from the magazine. And in an e-mail obtained by National Review Online, the magazine’s editor said he would resign if the board “would prefer that Ron Unz decide what we publish.”

It gets funnier from there. Editor Daniel McCarthy accuses Unz of not contributing very much to TAC; Unz claims he's the second biggest donor. McCarthy calls Unz's articles too long to publish, Unz claims they rock. I don't know why he doesn't just fire this McCarthy clown for insubordination, but publishing nonprofit online newsletters isn't my industry, thank God. My favorite part:

Unz says he also thinks the budget is being misspent.

“I checked with a few people I know who are bloggers for a few other websites,” he says, “and I found out that, based on traffic figures, TAC was basically paying a lot of its bloggers five to ten times the market rate.”

He also says that Rod Dreher generates close to half of the website’s traffic but is only paid “a very small fraction of TAC’s budget.”

No wonder the poor guy is tired. He's pulling the rickshaw with all these other fat, grumpy clowns on hanging off it. Of course he might just be better at hitting trends like Miley Cyrus, etc.

He also says the magazine is in danger of being seen as unserious.

“Some of the stuff TAC is publishing right now is so bad,” he says. “For three straight days their whole homepage was filled with articles about zombies and robots and cartoon characters and rock bands. Nobody will take you seriously if you publish that sort of stuff.”

“Maybe it’s the only stuff they can publish without paying people,” he added.

Wait — I thought they were paying people too much? I'm so confused. An ex-TAC writer summarizes the internal strife.

“The magazine largely was founded to discuss conservative perspectives that they didn’t think were well represented by the other conservative magazines,” he says. “So that, in and of itself, opens [the magazine] up to being affiliated with people who are kind of quirky thinkers; and people who are quirky thinkers tend to have temperaments where they’re going to have trouble getting along at times, and they’re going to have disagreements, and they’re going to think their disagreements are of this earth-shattering significance, when maybe they aren’t.”

Yeah, what the man said. Hilarious.

"Into things beyond your strength search not."

I thought the Sunday scripture reading from the Book of Sirach was wise advice for just about everyone. And I also dug the Yoda syntax in the third line.

My child, conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.
Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.
What is too sublime for you, seek not, into things beyond your strength search not.
The mind of a sage appreciates proverbs, and an attentive ear is the wise man's joy.
Water quenches a flaming fire, and alms atone for sins.