Hold the Mayo

My two takeaways from this piece on Ed FitzGerald's continued freefall. First, Nina Turner's absurd "bottum-up" remark:

"The best way to build a house is not from the top, but from the bottom," said the state senator from Cleveland. "When you go to the polls, vote from the bottom up."

Right, because voting is soooooo much like construction work. We're staffing the house, Nina, not building it. And no one wants a chamberlain chasing the chambermaids.

Secondly, I had to love this comment from The_Irish_Independent:

Both Ed Fitz (County Exec of Cuyahoga County) and Joanne Grehan (CEO Mayo County's Local Enterprise Office) have been DROPPED from the upcoming Cleveland Mayo Bash.

New AGENDA has been put up on line here -

http://www.clevelandmayosociety.org/Mayo%20agenda%20FINAL%209.23.14.pdf

That's sort of like the Vice President and Speaker of the House not being invited to the SotU speech.

Don't celebrate too early

This...



Reminds me of this.

Snowden

The excerpts below are from Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt email, which I highly recommend, BTW. He first links to John Yoo's piece on NRO's The Corner which begins "Edward Snowden should go to jail, as quickly and for as long as possible," a statement with which I agree. But I'm in more emphatic agreement with Geraghty's subject line: "Don't Come Crying to Us, NSA; You Guys Are the Ones Who Hired This Goofball."

Yoo also points out that Snowden's claim to noble motives is muddied quite a bit by his decision to run to Hong Kong. (By the way, the last guy to run to Hong Kong, certain that he was beyond the reach of American law enforcement and extradition treaties, was Mr. Lau, the money-keeper for the Gotham City mob. And we all remember how that turned out.) When Snowden declares, "Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech," we have to wonder if A) he's already working for the Chinese or B) he's an imbecile.

This may be a story with no heroes. A government system designed to protect the citizens starts collecting all kinds of information on people who have done nothing wrong; it gets exposed, in violation of oaths and laws, by a young man who doesn't recognize the full ramifications of his actions. The same government that will insist he's the villain will glide right past the question of how they came to trust a guy like him with our most sensitive secrets. Who within our national-security apparatus made the epic mistake of looking him over -- completing his background check and/or psychological evaluation -- and concluding, "Yup, looks like a nice kid?"

Watching the interview with Snowden, the first thing that is quite clear is that his mild-mannered demeanor inadequately masks a huge ego -- one of the big motivations of spies. (Counterintelligence instructors have long offered the mnemonic MICE, for money, ideology, compromise, ego; others throw in nationalism and sex)

My position on this is no doubt driven by my being a security hawk before I'm any type of civil libertarian. And what frustrates me most by this story is how it is taking time away from the IRS scandal.

I'm perplexed that Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have spoken favorably about this character. To me, he's a typical paranoid, head-in-the-sand Paulistinian who—like Geraghty points out—obviously has an enormous ego. What on God's green earth he was ever doing working in National Security is completely beyond me.

Well, it's not really beyond me. He is handsome, and there are a lot of middle-aged women working in human resources departments. That's how I'm guessing one otherwise unemployable friend of mine keeps getting good jobs. Now it is revealed that he is dating a pole-dancer. Say "bye-bye" to everything, Prince Charming; prison will not be fun.



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Keith Ellison to Hannity: I know you are, but what am I

I bet this wacko Congressman thinks he won this "argument". He seems to have taken the gig knowing that he was going to give this type of performance. It's sort of a throw everything at the enemy strategy and see if anything lands on him. The danger is that it makes you look stupid to anyone who has ever witnessed a real argument or debate.

By the way, our family sequestration party will be held on Friday, March 1. We will start serving bread and water at 11am. Remember to say the password to be allowed in, and bring a few spuds for the potato nudging contest.

"It felt good to be out of the rain"

Have you ever wondered about the whereabouts of the missing horseman of the apocalypse? Well wonder no longer....

There were plants and birds, and rocks and things, There was sand and hills and rings.

Sheesh, what a stupid song.

"That's him, right there!"

Please excuse the commercial.



Source. These are just excerpts from a 40-minute Obama speech from 2007.

"You can live some sort of life..."

Just found this quote from Richard Dawkins on this site about evolution:

Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study. — Richard Dawkins

I guess I am living "some sort of life" with a darkened intellect and a total lack of understanding of how I evolved from a Drosophilia. But I am laughing my ass off dancing on Lord Darwin's grave, and I'm ready for another beer.

"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.

MCJ on Liberal Theocracy

Mr. Johnson comments on this mess.

What’s wrong with this?

In God’s eyes, there is no documented or undocumented, there is no legal or illegal, there are only his children. For evidence, look to the Torah, which mentions the importance of welcoming the foreigner in our midst more than 15 times.

Our inability to welcome the foreigner is creating division among us as brothers and sisters – among God’s children. As a result, people are hopeless, and there is injustice in our land – injustice that in our fear and ignorance we allow to happen.

I believe that God calls us to love all in the face of the fear and the injustice. We are people of faith, and we are called to sing the Lord’s song, and it is a song of hope. I am mindful of this call as our government engages in the debate on the future of immigration reform, which will affect an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. Take out the references to illegal immigrants and rewrite this thing to condemn abortion or homosexual marriage and you will be accused of inserting the Christian religion where it has no business. Imposing your morality, establishing a religion, call it what you will. And Uncle Sam don’t roll like that.

We are told over and over that the United States is not a Christian nation and never was. Fine. That being the case, either keep your reading of Christian principles out of public policy debates or keep your mouth shut when other people cite their reading of Christian principles in support of initiatives you oppose.

And that's why we like Mr. Johnson over here at Est Quod Est.

Why is he still Episcopal? Not that he'd get away from that kind of goofy thinking on immigration policy if he became a Papist. But we are Pro-life at least.

Obama's Junker Story

Here's a press release I just got in my inbox.

February 26th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government Communications Director Carter Clews today asked President Barack Obama to explain a "rather unusual" story Obama told at Thursdays' health care summit about his dealings with a fictitious Acme Auto Insurance company.

During the White House meeting, Obama related a story from his post-college graduation days in which his "junker" was allegedly rear ended by another driver. According to Obama, when he called to get his car repaired, the "Acme" auto insurance company "laughed at" him.

In response to the Obama story, Clews sent the following email to the President through the White House web site:

"During your health care summit, you told a rather unusual story about being "laughed at" when you called your auto insurance company about your post-college "junker" being rear-ended. So, I have to ask you four questions: (1) Did you have collision insurance? (2) Did you know that liability insurance does not pay for your own car, (3) Didn't you know that when you are hit the other guy pays, and (4) Do you actually know as little about health insurance as you obviously do about auto insurance? I'll look forward to your response. And please make it short and to the point. Thanks."

Said Clews later, "Mr. Obama's story is more than a little disturbing – not to mention preposterous. There are really only four conclusions to draw from it. Either the youthful Obama had no insurance, he only had liability insurance, he didn't know that when you get hit the other guy pays – or, quite frankly, he told a totally manufactured tale to all of the assembled members of the Senate and House, not to mention millions of Americans watching on TV.

"If it was any one of the first three possibilities, it's no wonder the insurance company laughed at him. And if it was the latter, the man is delusional. Let's just hope he knows more about health insurance than he does auto insurance."

http://washingtonalert.org/?p=2356

I'm more interested in the make/model of the so-called "junker". Barack Obama went to prep school and the grandmother who raised him was a rich and successful banker. I know those facts were not broadcast during the campaign. I wonder why not?

Yeah, he made up the story. That's what "keepin' it real" requires in Obama's case.

I want the butterfly

HT Kathy Shaidle: Indonesia mulls tearing down Obama statue. This is the kind of stuff I live for.

"Barack Obama has yet to make a significant contribution to the Indonesian nation. We could say Obama only ate and shit in Menteng. He spent his subsequent days living as an American," the web page says.

"For the dignity of a sovereign nation, Barack Obama's monument in Menteng Park must be removed immediately."

As the kiddies would say, Obama is soooooo last year.

A breath of fresh air from Deutschland

Here's a beautiful blitzkrieg from Der Spiegel on Obama's West Point bellyflop. I heard about 10 minutes of the speech, and this Kraut, Steingart, nails it up by it's lederhosen. The piece is short, so read the whole thing. I'm not going to excerpt any of it because I'm lazy and kind of drunk, too. But the ending is sweet: "The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself." Maybe Obama should look in der mirror.

Rhymes with "I need a gun"

Saint Mother Teresa gets compared to a mass murderer. Great laugh line, too. I'll have to remember that.

Mao Tse Tung was a piece of shit who killed Americans along with 70 million Chinese people.

What should be done with this woman? Early retirement? Pull the ejection lever, Barack.

Kessler on Obama Nobel Prize

Ronald Kessler quotes liberal press outlets to demonstrate the ludicrous nature of the award being given to the President.

From the liberal Huffington Post and Daily Kos to the Washington Post and the Times of London, opinion makers have denounced the decision as a joke, spotlighting the fact that to date Obama has only hot air to show for his efforts at world peace.

"Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent,” the Times of London said. “It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush administration. The prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronizing in its intentions, and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun the period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.”

...

The Washington Post editorialized, “It’s an odd Nobel Peace Prize that almost makes you embarrassed for the honoree. In blessing President Obama, the Nobel Committee intended to boost what it called his ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.’ A more suitable time for the prize would have been after those efforts had borne some fruit.”

It's all interesting to me that liberals are miffed and embarrassed about this dubious choice for the peace prize. But most serious people have been laughing about the Nobel Prize since 1994 when it was awarded to Yasser Arafat. Of course, the Nobel Committee did make him share it with two Israelis which I'm sure he appreciated. I don't know if Arafat was the first homosexual to receive the peace prize or not.

Good definition of a "Truther"

I liked this definition from UD of 9/11 truther:

A crazy person who believes the US government committed 9/11. Truthers get their inspiration from a moronic documentary called "Loose Change" which provides no facts whatsoever and has been thoroughly debunked. People who disagree with the truthers are repeatedly called government shills since truthers have no logical argument to counter the evidence.

Truther: 9/11 was an inside job!
Sane person: Prove it.
Truther: There was no plane at the Pentagon, only a missile!
Sane person: There's dozens of witnesses and plane debris was found all over the place.
Truther: ...Well the WTC was a controlled demolition!
Sane person: Why did both buildings collapse from the point of impact then? Pretty crazy the explosives were in the exact spot the plane hit and didn't explode upon impact.
Truther: ...You're just a government shill! Enjoy your FEMA camp when the NWO rolls around!

It's by a dude styling himself troofers be nuts. And guess what? Troofers do be nuts. I know a guy who is a religious Catholic, very active, and was only a little bit looney before about 2 years ago. Then he "saw the light" and now he sends me 9/11 Truther stuff from Alex Jones et al at least twice a week. I'm on his list; he sends this stuff to everyone with a BCC, so at least it's semi-professionally done. As a bonus, I also get the standard fear mongering about H1N1... don't ask. The few times I've responded I get an all caps response back about how I should be asking the Lord to open my eyes to the truth and other meaningless platitudes worthy of question beggars.

To make his emails even easier for me to discount, he uses 20 point Calibri font on all his emails as a baseline. Recently he has obviously desired to urgently increase the urgency of his urgent message, so he has cranked it up to 24 point URGENT CALIBRI BOLD. I remember thinking "Hey, here's a new phenomenon: bitmap inflation." I felt like replying to tell him that using these large fonts is sort of like the Federal Reserve devaluing our currency by the endless printing of fiat greenbacks, but as usual I chickened out. I tell myself it's out of politeness and respect. But I really think he is full-blown bonkers to be broadcasting all these inanities.

One time he included an exclamatory AMEN! inflated to 100 points of inch-high black caps. Believing my light-fingered toddlers had attacked my precious notebook again, I instinctively checked my stash of Sharpies. But momentarily I realized the pious graffito was emanating from my liquid crystal matrix, so it was only the electronic equivalent of Black Crayola on Post-it―or possibly a mixed media collage using cardboard, Elmer's glue and headline typeface incised from the Akron Beacon Journal.

I'm probably overreacting to this poor old chap—he's getting up there in years—but it's on my mind because he just sent me more links to Infowars and Prison Planet and ended with a strained segue to The Chastisement™ and a call to conversion. All of this with zero percent insincerity, I'm fairly sure. I've learned that it's no use telegraphing that I'm not interested in this stuff because I know he feels called by God to blast his message to the ends of the earth via SMTP. How would he answer the Lord on Judgement Day if he took the name of a "lost sheep" off his email list? Still the conspiracy stuff just makes my head itch and I can't help reacting to some degree.

Of course he did

From Newsmax: "Activist Jesse Jackson Sr. criticized Congress’s yanking of ACORN funding during an interview with Newsmax.TV’s Kathleen Walter." Of course he criticized ACORN's defunding. He's the same ol' Jesse Jackson we know and love.

"No,” Jackson responded. “There should be an evaluation, and we should make a distinction between what’s gone wrong with what, in fact, has gone right. ACORN has helped a lot of poor people. If there are some people who have made errors, then eliminate them, as ACORN is trying to do. Look within the church. Sometimes, priests have gone astray. Don’t crush the church,” Jackson said.

Help me, I'm drawing a blank. Which churches receive federal funding? He goes on with a typically incoherent "defense" of Obamacare.

Because the private sector’s interests are conceivably narrow,” Jackson said. “Government has reforms for all of its people. The government all, for, and by the people must protect its people . . . Government is, in fact, a stabilizing force and a provider of last resort."

Yes, but Obama and other liberals want to make the federal government the provider of first resort for health care. Also I should point out that I like private institutions with narrow interests—they each focus on one thing and they do it well. But like a reverse Midas touch, the government turns everything with which it comes in contact into crap.

Obama compares Apples to Oranges

President Obama was on George Stephanopoulos's show last night talking about Obamacare. I heard the amazing sound clip where the President actually compares mandated car insurance to mandated health insurance. There are so many things wrong with this comparison.

First of all, some people will never file an auto insurance claim, whereas almost everything is filed as a health claim, even routine checkups. Can you imagine getting a tune-up and sending the bill to your auto insurance provider? Can you imagine laughter? Enough said.

Secondly, barring the "death panels" which we've been assured will never happen under Obama care, we don't declare human beings "totaled". (They do in the UK, but I don't think it would in the Obama Administration's best interest to put forward that comparison.) However if the damage in an auto accident is great enough, the owner will decide to ditch the vehicle rather than to repair it. So policy holders have a pretty finite limit with regard to what they will ever claim against their auto-insurance policies. Compare the cost of that to someone receiving experimental AIDS treatments over an extended period.

Thirdly, I don't know if the President realizes this, but garage mechanics make less than doctors. In fact, I've been known to throw a wrench around myself, replacing side-door windows, installing new head lamps, changing oil, etc. My father insisted on my doing some of these things when I lived at home and drove the family cars, however he never let me perform any of the dental surgeries my mother needed or treat my brother for the asthma he had when he was younger. I wonder why not? He could have saved thousands of dollars... right?

All of this goes to the reason why costs aren't spinning out of control for car maintenance and collision coverage. These bad analogies just grate on me somethin' fierce; that's why I never tire of quoting Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others."

Vox Nova: "...we are all racists"

Sam Rocha from Vox Nova seems to be attempting to confuse the current race card situation further. If so, he succeeds. I'll attempt to provide some corrections in my response below.

We all know the drill: X calls Y a ‘racist,’ then, Y calls X ‘racist’ for calling Y a ‘racist.’ Then, others enter the fray and repeat the accusations. And this is a major part of what passes as “politics” these days.

Uh, no. The Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Jimmy Carter (X) call those who oppose Obama's recent domestic proposals (Y) "racists", then camp Y accuses camp X of being a bunch of asinine political hacks, which is how those in camp Y perceive them. It's too bad this is what the Democrats seem to desire to have pass for politics, since they were the first to play the race card in this latest episode, and can hardly expect those whom they attacked not to defend themselves.

It seems too easy to forget that racism is not just a term, it is a real experience that happens to human persons.

This is possibly the stupidest line in the article. For normal people, especially those engaged in the argument, it is not "easy to forget" that any given word isn't "just a term", unless you are some sort of advertising copy writer, pop song writer or political sloganeer like Pelosi. It does seem easy for some to hurl the accusation out there, like tossing spaghetti against the wall, that some people in the Y group don't realize racism actually exists in the world.

Then Rocha goes on to posit a difference between a discriminatory racism which he claims everyone possesses and a capitalized Racism which includes supremacy in addition to discrimination.

In another sense, we all Racists but differ in relations and degrees of Racism and ought to try to eradicate the spirit of Racism from the human condition.

I like how he dropped into street slang there—"we all Racists"—to emphasize his point. It's cool; the bro is keepin' it real—don't fault my man fo' that, dog.

Attempting to sanely discern the difference between the two is what it would take to elevate political discourse on race from hand-wringing to an authentic consideration of what it means to be a racist in a folk sense of the term—a sensibility that doesn’t suffer from the need for these tortured categories.

I won't take further advantage of this embarrassment by quoting any more from it. My main point is that this is what passes for logic and thoughtfulness in the leftist mind. At least he admits that his categories are tortured; I question any need of them whatsoever. I've posted already on a few of the many successful attempts to provide sanity and discernment to correct the silly talk, and by them one can see that the political discourse has already been elevated on this issue by people like Toby Harnden, Michael Steele and Brit Hume. And since President Obama has spoken definitively on the issue stating that his opponents are not racist, the case would appear to be closed at this point. To behave as if no one has spoken with clarity, sensibility and persuasiveness in what Mr. Rocha calls the "Y group" on this matter is extremely misleading.

"Homeless Chic"

This article was mentioned on the Medved show the other day, and had me cracking up. Here's an excerpt, best read with a slightly effete yet deadly serious intonation—think NPR news announcer:

Some of us prefer to think of fashion as a charcoal filter that indiscriminately sucks up whatever’s swirling around, rather than a big ear that listens to what’s going on in the culture. Sometimes ideas become clarified in fashion, and sometimes they get stuck as gunk.

How else to account for a spate of references in fashion to homeless chic? A 28-page pictorial in the September issue of W magazine, shot by the British photographer Craig McDean, repurposes shopping bags from labels like Chanel and Dior as makeshift dresses, and shows them worn with furs and pearls and designer bags.

The Russian model Sasha Pivovarova, listless but still ineffably glamorous, is seen slumping on a park bench or a mattress or a bed of Prada bags. Along with the hair and makeup people involved in the story, the stylist Alex White is credited at the end of the spread for having made the (cleverly constructed, it must be said) paper-bag clothes.

I smell a reality show, pun intended. Oh... yeah, I forgot the best line:

It was just that the man’s jeans-shorts-over-sweat-pants look, his pale blue boots, with matching socks, gloves and glasses, suggested that he had not lost his need to “communicate and express himself through style.”

Wow, that is so deep. Give the guy some white make-up, big floppy shoes and a old bowler hat and he's a ready-made circus clown. I'm guessing he already has a red nose.

The Anarchist Pope

It's Friday; time for a nice little laugh o' the week. Over at Vox Nova, David Wheeler-Reed asks his readers to finish the sentence “If I were elected Pope the first thing I would do is...”. Then he asks us to keep our answers short. Michael Iafrate obliges David's first request, but not his second by posting a laundry list of, shall we say, rather progressive items:

1) Give Fathers Jon Sobrino and Roy Bourgeois a phone call.
2) Ordain some women.
3) Tell gay people that they are not “intrinsically disordered.”
4) Abolish every “military diocese.”
5) Issue an apostolic letter on collegiality/ecclesial subsidiarity.
6) Canonize Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day.
7) Appoint a lay theologian as head of the CDF.
8) Go “get in the way” of some wars with the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Their are some things wrong within this list which I have to point out. First of all, using a telephone would show an obscene disregard for indigenous peoples who don't possess a phone, especially by the first American pope who would then be seen as beholden to the evil telecom giants. Why not send smoke signals to them? Or have it delivered by vegetarian carrier pigeon?

Secondly, I hope that when he goes to ordain "some women" that he would have a woman choose which ones to ordain. Because as a male, he'd probably be tempted to just ordain the ones he considered to be hotties. We all know that's just how men are.

Finally, he left off number nine which should really be to pass the papacy on to someone else. He is, after all, an anarchist and as such should not even be participating in such a blatant celebration of patriarchal white male power in the first place. Of course if he can ordain women, I suppose he could just make a papal declaration that he himself is female and a person of color. That would solve the dilemma handily.