Swine Flu < Pig AIDS < Zombie Holocaust
From PBN, evidence they’re worried that Swine Flu/Pig AIDS is the precursor to the coming Zombie Holocaust.
Friday Morning Finger
Here’s your sample confession form. Check all that apply, submit so you can be re-educated.
I, [STATE YOUR NAME], denounce myself for being a thought criminal and surrender into the hands of progressive justice at flag@whitehouse.gov. My crimes include:
[ ] In a private conversation with my spousal unit I expressed doubts about the appropriateness of a one-party rule.
[ ] I was hesitant in repeating the party directive: American health care is worse than any other western democracy.
[ ] At the time of this year’s inauguration I hesitated to grovel at the feet of the Supreme Leader Obama.
[ ] I worried that Leader is trying to take too much power.
[ ] I once worried that “getting past bipartisanship” might mean more than just the expected re-education camps.
[ ] I worried that there might be more in the ObamaCare bill than I was told.
[ ] I had a moment’s doubt about whether it’s appropriate for the arts to become a tool of state propaganda.
I confess to my crimes and ask the mercy of the state and Leader.
Jesus Tap Dancing Christ — Seriously?
“I’d describe it as unfriendly,” said John Lamb, who lives across the street from the new $3.5 million home and its (8-foot) fence.
You know what’s even more unfriendly, John? Pissy little neighbors who won’t mind their own goddamn business. Hell, if I lived in Dallas my fence would be 12 feet high, topped with razor wire, and lined with Claymores.
“We feel it’s incompatible with the neighborhood,” said Lamb. “To have a fence like that forms a barrier.”
Who wouldn’t want a barrier from neighbors like that?
Mary Mapes of Dallas, Your Response?
At the risk of being labeled pro-Bush (I am not), Bernie Goldberg raises some interesting questions about the old 60 Minutes II hit piece on the former president in 2004 just before the election, and Mary Mapes’ complicity in the shoddy reporting. Read it here.
Portraits in Leadership: Carolyn Davis
I’m not sure exactly what to say. The Dallas council adopted a rule that members have to attend at least half a meeting to get paid for that meeting, and one member more than any other has a problem with that?
A frustrated Davis, who voted against the measure along with council members Vonciel Jones Hill, Steve Salzar and Ann Margolin, said there could be many reasons why she couldn’t attend a full meeting.
“I have to take my daughter to school,” she said.
What kind of job did Carolyn Davis have before where she expected to get paid for not showing up? Some sort of union job or community organizer gig? And look, I covered council for a year. Meetings typically run eight hours. Where does her daughter go to school, Shreveport?
For those not following at home, Davis is the member who expensed the city for her vacation to Belize (trade mission or some damn thing), uses campaign funds to pay for her car maintenance, and doesn’t even know what committees she sits on.
It all leads to the obvious question: How on earth could Dallas be facing financial difficulties with visionary leadership such as this?
Craig Newmark of Craigslist for President?
A friend and fellow traveler hillbilly points us to this interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, one who deserves the Capitalist Superhero tag.
Per that dirty-fingered nerf-herder’s post:
The latest issue of Wired has a great piece on the success of craigslist, and it’s supposed deficiencies, despite being the leading job search site, and the leading real estate site, among others. The author can’t seem to fathom such a free wheeling attitude, as Craig Newmark takes a largely hands off approach to regulating his invention. The belief that “people are generally good” seems to rub supposed enlightened souls the wrong way.
I can’t add much Vines&Cattle didn’t, but I love this part from Newmark. It’s something most control freaks and authoritarians of both stripes just can’t get their head around, but it’s the basis of why libertarianism isn’t some pipe dream, why free markets are self-organizing, and why centralization and regulation destroys innovation:
“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.
Get a Life, Jonah
I’m not a real big fan of Jonah Goldberg. Oh, he’s undeniably talented as a writer. So was Upton Sinclair, but that didn’t make Sinclair any less a know-nothing, overhyped prick.
My problem with Goldberg is that he’s like the writers and producers on Star Trek: The Next Generation, compared to the original, one and only Star Trek. The writers on the original Star Trek — they were war veterans, former cops, former business owners, pilots, and engineers. They’d lived life and their scripts had a depth to them.
Meanwhile, writers for the step-child of Trek with the bald guy as captain, those writers had spent their whole lives writing for television. Thus the show was flat, predictable, entirely conventional, and — more than anything — soulless.
Which brings me full circle to Goldberg. He’s a paper-hanger parroting the neo-conservative line to the point of parody. Something really rubs me wrong about guys who spend their 20s advocating for interventionist, non-defensive wars, but they can’t be bothered to enlist.
And today he suggests that torture isn’t immoral because the good guys do it in the movies.
Really? Yes, really.
Look, I’ll skip the “it’s just a movie/TV show” response because he is right — that’s not his point.
Now, I know I will get a lot of “it’s just a movie” or “TV shows aren’t real” email from people. At least I have every other time I’ve made this point. So let me concede a point I’ve never disputed while making one these folks don’t seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn’t beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford’s motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it’s just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans.
No, Jonah, the problem is in real life, the certainty that Jack Bauer, Jack Ryan and Jonas Blaine operate under almost never exists. The heroes can be sure they have the right guy and that he knows where the bomb is or will answer “WHO DO YOU WORK FOR??!!!” because their world is a pocket universe with a limited cast and omniscient writers.
I’m not saying that kind of certainty never exists in the real world. I’m saying it’s as rare as neo-con who is an actual military veteran.
We all know the hypothetical. If a nuc-u-lar bomb was about to go off in a day care, and Abdul knew where it was, would we support cutting off his fingers? Sure — almost all of us would grab the snippers and do it ourselves. If that didn’t work I can promise you there are even more interesting and grisly tricks we could play with his internal organs. And few of us would shy away from doing it.
IF. WE. COULD. BE. CERTAIN.
But would you do the wetwork on Abdul if you were told, “Well, we’re pretty sure he knows. We’re almost certain he’s involved. Of course, he could be just a guy off the street. Hell, we do work for the government, you know. Have you seen our previous work samples? The mortgage crisis, dollar collapse, the imprisonment of dozens of innocents for rape, and yeah — that whole tax code? That and the post office and those levees in New Orleans? Yeah, that’s us. Congress pays our salary. We’re running GM. Go on, now — start cutting on the guy.”
That’s the problem Jonah. Scenes where the good guys break the rules are cathartic because we know they have the right guy and the stakes are that high and yeah, Jack just kneecapped the dude but we saw the dude blow up a bus of nuns, so — okay. We want that in movies because reality isn’t so certain and it’s fun to watch bad guys blow up real good.
Look, even in real life I’m not against a little roughing up of the worst of the worst. Bread and water, limited sleep, a little slapping around, hot and cold running dysentery. And when we have a real asshole we know without a doubt is guilty, I’m not going to lose sleep if we go full Jack Bauer on him. But those cases are so rare that no, it doesn’t justify systematic, sanctioned torture.
(Side note: If they want to shake up Season 8 of 24, have Jack torture someone who is categorically innocent and have to deal with the consequences beyond a whispered, “Dammit.”)
See, I can enjoy the fantasy of fiction or even approve of the very rare use of extreme methods in the very rare instances of absolute certainty. But that doesn’t make it right. Hell, I watch Doctor Who despite its regular neo-Marxist and anti-gun message. I watch porn with a whole bunch of bells and whistles — and let’s be honest, humiliating stuff — and I don’t want any of that in my bedroom for real. (Mostly.)
So no, Jonah, there’s no connection. It is just entertainment.
Oh, and by the way, your own war porn fantasies didn’t get your flabby ass to the recruiting station, Jonah, so you’re the best counter to your own argument.
Whole Foods Boycott: EPIC FAIL
Rod Dreher talks the why.
The beautifully merciless stock market shows the what.
Trendy hipster boycott FAIL.
A Monkey with a Scalpel
Messing around with the dashboard update while on the phone, and now the last three posts are gone. Will see if I can recover them from the nethersphere.
“Dismissed With Prejudice”
I love clouds
So says the judge about the lawsuit brought against me and D Magazine for the story I wrote in 2007 outing some dirty cops who were betraying their oaths to protect and serve. (Thank you Haynes & Boone and especially Jason Bloom FTW.)
A less gracious gentleman might suggest the whole thing was a time-wasting scam put on by the plaintiff’s attorney — David Schiller of Plano. And someone without proper breeding might be tempted to point out that Mr. Schiller has some questionable history himself what with Schiller having been accused by a U.S. Bankruptcy judge of snookering some $600,000 from his own clients, none of which — only a cad would observe — ended up in the hands of any local health clubs, tailors, additional law training seminars, or weight loss centers.
And really, only an immature ass would remind Mr. Schiller that, when he was told by a certain bloggy journalist — and I paraphrase — monkeys would fly from my nethers before I gave up the name of a single source who was assured their identity would be protected, Mr. Schiller responded with a smarmy “We’ll see.”
I, of course, am just not the kind of low-class person to engage in such endzone showboating, much less say something really glib and gloating like — I don’t know, I’m just trying to give an example — but something like “Suck it, Schiller.” No, that would be disreputable. Uncivilized, even.
Mercy and grace are the mark of a great man, even when he had eight goddamn hours of his life stolen for a ham-fisted deposition in a frivolous lawsuit.
So I won’t do those things. Because Mr. Schiller and his clients are honorable men.
I shall simply say, “Hail, and fare thee well, sir.”