S P E C I A L - N O T I C E S . . .
MARIZELA PEREZ IS STILL MISSING: For the latest news on the search for this young lady, please visit the special website that has been set-up: FindMarizela.com.
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For The Latest News on the KIMBERLIN / RAUHAUSER SAGA: Follow John Hoge's blog HOGEWASH. He's doing one huckuva job covering the story.
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Bob Belvedere is now on Twitter! Can you dig it? @BobBelvedere
Amusing Bunni Needs Our Help
NOTE: This post will remain at the top of the this column until further notice.
Please see below for my latest posts.
I have been very fortunate since I got into this whole blogging thing to have made many Friends In The Ether, but I only have one Bunni Buddy — the Chicago gal who goes by the name Amusing Bunni.
Out of all of the great ladies I’ve encountered in The Ether, she’s the sweetest person and most gentle soul I’ve met.
When you need a smile, when things are getting you down, you can always head over to Bunni’s blog for some easing of your worried mind.
Now, it’s Bunni whose mind needs easing…
I’m not going to sugarcoat this: Bunni has inoperable, terminal liver cancer that has metastasized and has been given but a few more months to live.
As she put it in an e-mail to Zilla:
So, I’m terminal. There are so many tumors in my abdomen, and the liver is enlarged very much, they can’t operate, the tumors and blood vessels are too much and too close, they can’t do chemo, or NOTHING, so I just will be seeing palliative care Dr.’s for medicine adjustments to help with the pain, and then just get my affairs in order and wait to die.
Zilla, God Bless Her, has been speaking with Bunni and convinced her to go public about her situation.
You see, Bunni is not in the best financial condition, as Zilla explains:
Bunni is now (obviously) unable to work and she has mortgage and other bill payments still to worry about and she will need help covering medical and other expenses as well….
While Bunni will be applying for such things as Meals On Wheels and other helpful services, she has no job and will need end-of-life care.
If you could spare five bucks or ten or whatever you can afford, it would be big help in our effort to make our beloved friend’s last days as comfortable as possible and ones where she doesn’t have to worry about any financial worries.
Zilla again:
She needs other things as well, including our love, prayers, and support. Bunni is in the Chicago area so if there is a blogger reading this in or near that region, she would like to talk with you. She’s going to need help finding resources for assistance quickly, so if you are familiar with charitable organizations in her area, please let her know about them or let me know and I’ll pass the information along. Bunni lives with her adorable cat (the one in all those delightful videos) and we are going to need to help her make arrangements for Kittenkins’ care when that becomes necessary.
Please pray for Amusing Bunni and help her in any way that you can.
Zilla has more details here [and you can leave a message for Bunni there as well].
Please help my Bunni Buddy.
Here is her PayPal button:
HELP BUNNI!
NOTE: This post will remain at the top of the this column until further notice.
Please see below for my latest posts.
The Spot-On Quote Of The Day…
…is awarded to James Gannon for so eloquently expressing how many conservatives feel now:
…I feel abandoned by the establishment Republican Party of Washington, D.C. I feel depressed that I cannot see a single conservative leader in sight who could grab the Republican Party, slap it across the face, and tell it where it can go if it does not shape up. I feel angry that Republican “leaders” in Washington put a higher value on their own survival in office than the principles they claim to stand for. As I see it, the Republican Party is a rudderless ship that has lost its compass, dead in the water, with no captain and no destination. What this ship needs is a mutiny.
…
I now consider myself a citizen without a party. Everything that Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have done in the past month has reinforced my belief that only a grass-roots revolt — a true conservative mutiny — can save the Republican Party. The party is not worth saving unless it returns to conservative values — limited government, adherence to the Constitution, fiscal responsibility, and a dedication to individual liberty.
I have no hope that the leaders of the party in Washington have the vision or guts to adopt and adhere to such an agenda. They will pay it lip service, of course, but they will also go on making deals with the Democrats and President Obama to sell out those principles when it is expedient for their re-election hopes.
Only if millions of conservatives across the country withhold their money and their support for the collaborators in the capital, the nervous Neville Chamberlains of the Establishment, will there be any chance of real change in the GOP. So bring on the mutiny. There is something worse than being a person without a party. And that is being a member of a party without a soul.
Spot-on
As for me, I believe there is very little hope that such a mutiny can work, but I will do what I can to aid those who try one in the small hope that it shall succeed and save us much time and effort in building a new party organization.
Godspeed, rebels…I remain, Outlaw.
NOTE: It is fitting that the quote above is the first to be so honored with this award in 2013, for it looks to be a dismal year for those of us who love America and are fighting to preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution Of The United States.
So help us, God.
The Suicide Of The Best
Jeff Goldstein on those non-Leftists who refuse [despite the overwhelming evidence before us] to understand the actual intentions of the Left in America:
…the New Left “progressives” are doing what they want to do — create a dependency nation and a stronger, more powerful centralized government set to parlay every crisis it creates into an excuse to find a new governmental “solution” (a command and control economy is next, I bet; to take on the “profiteers” responsible for your smaller paycheck) — while the GOP is doing what it does best: throw up its hands, complain that it has no leverage to operate, and ultimately, after some theater…selling out its base while enjoying all the perks of being in a big powerful federal government.
Jeff was responding to an statement written by Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson, who wrote:
Unless the cost of doing business here can be reduced, through lower taxation, reining in new health care, labor, and environmental regulations, and sound money, a robust economic recovery will continue to allude policy makers.
You see this kind of willful blindness all over the Right. It is a self-imposed refusal to understand that the national government of The United States [and most of the state, county, and local governments] are in the hands of Committed Leftists — Revolutionaries who are determined to destroy the republican governments of America at all levels and see installed in their places Fascist-Socialist-Totalitarian ones.
These ‘Progressives’ are bent on eliminating all of the hard fought freedoms and liberties we Americans gained and have maintained since 1776. Hell, the Left wants to eliminate all the gains in freedom and liberty gained by Englishmen back to Magna Carta.
The Left is desperately seeking despotism.
That so many normally intelligent people on the Right are willingly blinding themselves to the intentions of the Left is an act of suicide and is another sign of The Present Crisis [and that they're Useful Idiots].
Collectivization Of The Churches
A guest post by The Reverend David R. Graham, A.M.D.G.
"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself."
—Abraham Lincoln
The Church and the churches are not the same. The churches more or less express the Church, which is the Spiritual Community, Bride of Christ, Pure and Elegant, but they are not the Church, as their more or less impurity demonstrates.
During the late 19th Century, the Germanic movement called Liberal Protestantism sought to remake Christianity as palatable to Erasmus’, Rousseau’s and Voltaire’s heirs in scientific humanism, aka, Marxism, which is historiography and planning on the horizontal (male) axis alone, ignoring or bending horizontal the vertical (female) axis.
To accomplish which, Liberal Protestants had to collectivize the thinking of theologians, clergy and laymen: turn Christianity into an expression of Marxism. Charging and converting scientists and humanists into Christians was not their goal. Liberal Protestants wanted to be wanted. Scientific humanism then was ascendant, where still it is, at least as a beneficiary of public and private finance and esteem.
Today no difference exists between thinking in the churches and thinking in, say, the university, media and government. All are collectivist, none is independent. All follow talking points handed down from a leftist political party, none swerves into private investigation of assertions. All believe what they see and hear in media, none suspects media as mouthpiece of university and government.
That is collectivization. Once it was called group think. Now it is called news you can use. Facts. Truth. Choices. For your benefit, no less. Fair and balanced.
There was a brief rebellion against Liberal Protestantism towards the middle of the 20th Century. It was called Neo-Orthodoxy. Barth, Brunner and lesser lights led it. They sought to restore the vertical (female) axis to usage and succeeded, partially and briefly.
When Neo-Orthodoxy reached America from its Germanic roots, it was taken up by Reinhold Niebuhr at The Union Theological Seminary in New York City, an affiliate of Columbia University. Niebuhr was a communist clergyman and labor union agitator with a huge, dominating personality and a wonderful, nimble gift of gab. Niebuhr turned the vertical (female) axis reintroduced by Barth and Brunner on its side so that it paralleled and then merged with the horizontal (male) axis.
(Remarkably, he criticized Liberal Protestants for doing exactly that. Niebuhr was not a self-critical or self-correcting man.)
Niebuhr considered this an accomplishment. His colleague at Union, Paul Tillich, did not. Tillich pointed out that Niebuhr never learned his theology and Niebuhr acknowledge that perhaps, indeed, he had not.
Barth’s and Brunner’s Neo-Orthodoxy was, in any case, top-heavy with Mohammedan-like, inscrutable and intractable “transcendent” dicta and diktats. And so, unsustainable.
With prominent politicians, including Hubert Humphrey, Niebuhr helped found Americans for Democratic Action. It was – still is – a vehicle for running the vertical axis of life as if it was horizontal and bringing American education, media and government into aggressive, messianic, collective conformity with scientific humanism, aka Marxism. Holding those three entities together was seen as the way to control the population and the course of events totally. Collectivism is the method of totalism (aka absolutism, totalitarianism).
Niebuhr anticipated in North America so-called “Liberation Theology” in South America. Both were collectivist, one from Liberal Protestantism (Niebuhr was German Reformed [Calvinist]) and one from Roman Catholicism. Both were generated in academe, which, post-Marx, is almost uniformly leftist.
Liberal Protestant collectivism (aka scientific humanism/Marxism) first made large-scale political force in the United States through Woodrow Wilson, a moral and intellectual superior, in his own mind, of the “common man” – and therefore the empowered director of affairs – if ever one breathed.
Marx was a theologian and a student of Hegel, as was Kierkegaard. The two successfully criticized Hegel’s totalistic system, despite its realistic elegance, but from different directions and with different results. Kierkegaard identified the vertical axis of the unexpected (paradox), which nullifies total systems. Marx identified the vertical axis of free (from historical determinism) intentional purpose (telos), which, also, nullifies total systems.
However, whereas Kierkegaard maintained paradox as an expression of the vertical (female) axis, Marx bent over telos to conform with the horizontal (male) axis. This made Marxism evil and predicts the genocide and misogyny of Marxists in education, media and government.
What Marx did earlier, Niebuhr did later. What Niebuhr did later, James Cone, at Union since 1969, continues through disciples such as Jeremiah Wright and “Barack Obama”: genocide and misogyny.
Collectivism is not a Christian idea or doing. It belongs to Marxism, not Christianity. Yet, the churches have been in its thrall since the middle years of the 20th Century. Since the later years of the 20th Century, the churches are indistinguishable from academe, media and government. The three sectors think alike, promoting government (collectivism/communism) as the universal answer to and refuge from VUCA.
The churches now are willing auxiliaries of government social engineering agencies, media/government propaganda technicians and academic troublemakers. They are secular organizations standing profanum, outside the door to the Sanctuary of the Holy.
No vertical axis. No femininity. No self-correction. No Church, only churches.
The parable of the good Samaritan is not a demand for forced charity. It does not promote collectivism by government edict, income redistribution at the muzzle of a gun. The nature of government is, essentially and rightly, penal. That is not the subject of the parable of the good Samaritan. Nor is its subject smug moralizing about charity.
The parable of the good Samaritan describes personal, voluntary and anonymous charity as desirable. Repeat: PERSONAL, VOLUNTARY, ANONYMOUS. The parable is descriptive, not prescriptive. Nor does it demand charity.
In fact, the parable of the good Samaritan is not about charity. The parable answers the question of who is the brother, that is, who is one’s equal in God’s eyes. It is not about charity. It is about living in gated “communities” and having armed personal security details. The parable condemns those activities. It’s about rich acting smug, superior to and separate from ordinaries.
The parable of the ten talents, on the other hand, does promote, directly and unequivocally, the Pauline, Christian principle, “No work, no eat.”
The voice of Hebrew and Christian Prophetism does not exist in the churches since at least the 1930s. It has been driven out by collectivists. Or, one may say, perhaps more accurately, it has seen historical developments transcend the churches in the direction of universal prayer and concrete Spirit. Religionless, omni-local, agile, unpredictable (as always), definite, practical and moral.
Two Avatars of the Lord have stridden the earth during the last two hundred years – one the x axis, one the x and y axes – and a third is coming – the y axis – I guess (!) in or before the next decade of the 21st Century:
Bear All And Do Nothing;
Hear All And Say Nothing;
Give All And Take Nothing;
Serve All And Be Nothing.
A.M.D.G.
This Is Your Captain Speaking: #FireBoehner
That is all.
Fiscal Cliff Notes… [Updated Below]
…or The Souse That Roared*.
-Really…did you actually expect a different outcome?
-Over at The American Spectator, Stacy McCain looks at the effectiveness of the Left’s Class Warfare message which helped them achieve their current victory and has set the stage for some more for them in the future. A highlight:
Americans have been repeatedly told in recent years that “the rich” (however that term is defined) are not paying “their fair share” of taxes, and that this greedy unfairness is the explanation of anything that needs explaining. Did the local factory lay off workers? The rich are not paying their fair share! Is your daughter struggling to repay her student loans? The rich are not paying their fair share!
Especially in the “swing states” during last year’s election campaign, voters heard this Democrat message so often, in so many iterations, that it must have seemed like the universal panacea, a sort of snake-oil miracle cure. Whatever your problem — obesity, dandruff, halitosis, chronic flatulence — the Democrats promised to cure it by finally forcing the rich to Pay Their Fair Share. This message proved to be amply satisfactory to people too stupid or too lazy to bother themselves with arithmetic. Perhaps it is not entirely a coincidence that comparatively few of those math-deficient voters are themselves rich.
-Over at his own joint, Stacy narrows his focus to Charlie ‘Charlie Shakedown’ Rangel, using this bloated corruption of human flesh to make some wise points about Envy.
-William Jacobson is in a witty mood:
What an embarrassment.
To say that Republicans in Congress folded like a cheap suit is an insult to cheap suits.
Indeed: my suit was angry all morning.
The good Professor, however, is not all blue:
The Republican leadership failed miserably.
Their lack of conviction is my liberation theology. Liberation from the Republican leadership. Liberation from the Republican Party as it currently exists. We need to have an “R” after our names only because in our two-party system, third parties fail and/or hand elections to Democrats. We need to change what “R” means. Think how bad the deal would have been if there were not a block of Tea Party congressmen with backbone.
The freest man in the world is the man who has nothing to lose, so take the final step Bill: Go Outlaw. Join us.
-Quoting a comment made by Oldsailors Poet over at Ace Of Spades, palaeomerus comes up with a damn fine suggestion:
“Jan -1 2013 You [Paul Ryan] just took 600 billion of our money and shoved it up a hogs ass while we were screaming no.”
I’m going to get a stamp made that says that and stamp all GOP fund raising letters I get with it and send them back with grocery store coupons for toilet paper.
In case you don’t know: if you send back a prepaid envelope, no matter if it contains anything or not, the receiver of it has to pay postage. I do this to the GOP all the time.
-From Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard, we learn:
John Boehner delivered a sharp response to Harry Reid, who last week accused the House speaker of running “dictatorship.” The top Republican reportedly told the top Senate Democrat, “Go f— yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” Reid replied, at the White House.
“Go f— yourself,” Boehner repeated.
What a complete and total dipsomaniacal fool.
UPDATE at 2011…
-Vodkapundit agreed with the strategy I advocated for two weeks ago:
The GOP had no good bargaining position, and it’s not like the Democrats were ever going to negotiate in good faith anyway — so the GOP shouldn’t have even tried. They had exactly one option open to them, which was to give the Democrats everything they wanted, vote “present” on the disgusting mess, then go home for the holidays.
Let the Democrats live with the results of their taxes and spending, without a single Republican fingerprint anywhere near it. It wasn’t a great play, but at least then they’d have stood for something. Yes, they’d have paid for it with lost seats in the midterms — but that’s going to happen anyway now, and probably even worse.
As he puts it another post:
Obama got exactly what he needed: GOP fingerprints on a deal that won’t lead to a recovery. Blaming Bush was getting stale, but now he has Boehner to blame.
Boehner and McConnell have assured that the blame for the inevitable economic failures that lie ahead can be blamed on the GOP, and, by extension, conservatives. Any sane person who has any understanding of how they operate knows that the Left will not cease to promote The Big Lie that the GOP = conservatives.
Ultimately, however, the GOP is not the focus of the Left’s attention here.
In fact, this is just another offensive in the Left’s long war to delegitimize conservative ideas [which is, really, American ideas]. The only way the Left can get their warped ideas to be taken seriously is to make normal ideas be perceived as abnormal.
As Jeff Goldstein writes:
To put it bluntly, the GOP has now assured that we have “Obama’s tax cuts for the middle class” — which are nothing more than the Bush rates now usurped by Obama as part of his aim to paint himself as the man of the working people. That is, they lost even their own tax relief plans for the middle class to Obama, who has assumed ownership of them. And yet some chin-scratchers continue to pretend that even questioning the obvious extended mishandling of the whole question, from the debt-ceiling compromise onward, is perplexing to them — the product of minds not so finely nuanced as theirs.
Whereas the real problem is, these people can’t seem to think outside of the political chess game — and even given that limited perspective, they continue to get their queens raped by some randy Leftist knight.
As I have written many, many times: this is not a game, but a struggle to preserve and restore our freedoms and liberties. No one who is serious about achieving these goals thinks that we have the luxury to enjoy playing political games. There are far too many people on the Right [as Jeff points out in his Fisking of NRO's Jim Geragthy and others here] who refuse to see that we are engaged in a life and death struggle with the Left. The goal of the Left is to destroy us, not to win a game.
-One starts to think that Jeff Goldstein is onto something when he writes:
Honestly, the fact that this game couldn’t have been played any more poorly had a script been written leads me to conclude — Occam’s Razor! — that a script’s been written. And in the denouement, we are the domesticated subjects who, if we just give Big Government a chance, will see just how wonderful collectivism can be, when divorced from the silly “natural laws” of Enlightenment philosophers too daft and idealistic to realize that there is nothing beyond men, the truths they construct, and their will to power as a method of enforcement.
-I don’t know about you, but the GOP is dead to me.
________________________
*Yeah, I mean you, Cryin’ John.
It All Started With Magna Carta…
…our present woeful cultural state, that is.
I have mentioned before that I am in full agreement with what Member Of Parliament Enoch Powell said in an interview a good number of years ago. During the course of it he explained that he could never join the Reform Club:
INTERVIEWER: Never join the Reform Club? But why ever not?
POWELL: All members of the Reform Club must assent to the Reform Act of 1867 [which extended the vote]. That I cannot do.
INTERVIEWER: (Astonished) Do you mean to say that you object to the Reform Act of 1867?
POWELL: That is precisely what I mean to say.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness, Mr. Powell, what is the most recent reform of which you do approve?
POWELL: (Long pause) With some reservations, Magna Carta.
Now you understand the kind of conservative I am and why this report upsets me…
From The London Daily Mail, Sara Malm reporting, we learn:
The proposed law changes to ensure that a daughter born to Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge can succeed to the throne, should apply to titles as well, daughters of the aristocracy have said.
The current tradition follows the previous royal succession law which sees a male heir inherit over a female.
Now daughters of the gentry are calling for a equal rights to inherit titles as the new law would leave the aristocracy ‘two steps behind’ the royal family.
The aristocracy’s current rules are even harsher than those of the crown, as a title will die out rather than be passed onto a female heir.
Lady Clare Kerr whose father is Tory politician Michael Ancram, is the 13th Marquess of Lothian, will miss out on inheriting her father’s title due to the aristocracy’s rules.
‘There is certainly a conversation to be had with regard to moving even one step forward to where the Royal Family were before this recent change,’ she told The Independent on Sunday.
‘In the absence of a son there should be no reason a daughter should not inherit – and once that has been established it is difficult to argue against girls inheriting if they are the firstborn.’
In Lady Clare’s case, her father’s title will eventually be passed on to her uncle.
…
Peter Yorke, author of the Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, said there is no reason why a title cannot be passed on to a daughter in modern society.
‘What mattered was that the estate goes to one person who will take care of it for the next generation,’ he told The Telegraph
‘But now the daughters often go off to Harvard and places like that – there is no reason why a daughter who has done three years of law and then maybe gone off to PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, should not be able to run a great estate.’
MPs will meet today to start rewriting 660-year-old laws to ensure that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s have a girl she will become Queen, even if she has a young brother.
Ministers are to prioritise the law change with the urgency usually reserved for anti-terror laws.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: ‘This Bill will bring to an end centuries of discrimination against women so that the first born is next in line to the throne, regardless of whether they’re a boy or a girl.’
The Liberal Democrat leader added: ‘I’m delighted that all of the Queen’s realms have agreed to this historic piece of legislation, that will enact in law what we agreed back in 2011 – that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have a baby girl, she can one day be our Queen even if she has younger brothers.
‘We’re pressing ahead with this as quickly as we can – it’s clearly something the entire country can get behind towards the close of this momentous Jubilee year.’
The four-page Bill states that in future ‘succession to the Crown not to depend on gender’ and rewrites the Treason Act 1351 to replace ‘first son and heir’ to mean ‘eldest child and heir’.
Other laws affected include the Bill of Rights, Act of Settlement and the Regency Act 1937.
Off with their heads, I say. And the Bolshevik Clegg should be the first to taste the axemen’s blade, followed by Lady Clare [who should be granted the mercy of a swordsman's blade upon her pretty, bejeweled neck].
God how I hate the 21st Century.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
That’s the way I feel every time someone mentions Lady ‘Evita’ Michbeth running for the Presidency in 2016.
Imagine my reaction when I read this by Sean O’Hare in The London Daily Mail [tip pf the fedora to Moonbattery]:
A striking transgender model made up to look like Michelle Obama being sworn into office has been put on the front cover of a U.S. magazine.
Luis Venegas, publisher of the first transsexual style magazine Candy, said he put model Connie Fleming on the front cover because he was inspired by the idea that a black, transsexual woman could one day be president of the Unites States.
The split front cover shows New York model Fleming being sworn into office and waving a U.S. flag accompanied by the headline ‘The Candydate’.
Fleming is dressed in typical First Lady fashion, down to the pearl necklace. Even the hair style is reminiscent of the President Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle.
Connie Fleming is described on website database of New York transsexuals as ‘a living doll, a multi-talented lady with a promising career as stylist and designer’s assistant.
Here’s the cover:
You know…give me the she-male over Lady Michbeth any day — at least it will have better fashion sense.
Good News In The War Against The Cancers
Some very interesting progress has been made in this long battle to defeat the forces of Cancer.
From the UC Berkley News Center, Sarah Yang reporting, we learn [tip of the fedora to Roxeanne de Luca]:
Researchers at the UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have put the squeeze — literally — on malignant mammary cells to guide them back into a normal growth pattern.
“We are showing that tissue organization is sensitive to mechanical inputs from the environment at the beginning stages of growth and development,” said principal investigator Daniel Fletcher, professor of bioengineering at Berkeley and faculty scientist at the Berkeley Lab. “An early signal, in the form of compression, appears to get these malignant cells back on the right track.”
…
The latest work from Fletcher’s lab, in collaboration with Bissell’s lab, takes a major step forward by introducing the concept of mechanical rather than chemical influences on cancer cell growth. Gautham Venugopalan, a member of Fletcher’s lab, conducted the new experiments as part of his recently completed Ph.D. dissertation at UC Berkeley.
“People have known for centuries that physical force can influence our bodies,” said Venugopalan. “When we lift weights, our muscles get bigger. The force of gravity is essential to keeping our bones strong. Here we show that physical force can play a role in the growth — and reversion — of cancer cells.”
…
It should be noted that the researchers are not proposing the development of compression bras as a treatment for breast cancer. “Compression, in and of itself, is not likely to be a therapy,” said Fletcher. “But this does give us new clues to track down the molecules and structures that could eventually be targeted for therapies.”
Let us hope that such research will not be halted once Obamacare has fully engulfed us and funding for such studies is stopped for monetary reasons.
Adventures! In! Spamland!
Not only do we read each and every comment you all leave here at TCOTS, but we enjoy reading the spam messages we get before I send them into the black hole of the Trash Bin [aka: Erika Niedowski's Who-Who]. Most are just the same old, same old. But, occasionally, one proves to be somewhat interesting and unintentionally humorous. Also, they can provide a situation well-disposed to our showcasing of our marvellous wits.
All of the gang here at the TCOTS Redoubt have taken on the duty of responding to the many interesting spam messages we receive.
1) From Selena:
You may risk accidentally pulling it out, which will cause it to bleed.
Hagbard Celine: I’m willing to take that chance, my dear…call me.
Bob: Sacrifices have to be made.
2) From Herpes:
Amazing post, definitely regret not going to the USO style dinner. Keep up the good work!…
This consistently amazes me how site owners for example yourself can find enough time plus the commitment to carry on creating fantastic posts. Your site is terrific and one of my need to read weblogs. I just had to thank you….
Bob: Well, if you spent less time infecting people, you’d find you have plenty of time to blog. [phone rings]…Hello…yes…hey, how are ya?…Oh!…I’ll tell him…[hangs up]…I just talked to the USO and they wanted to thank you for not attending that dinner.
Hagbard: You should stick to Democratic Party events, Herp.
3) From Ralph Respect:
Hey mods. Feel free to remove this comment but please research this yourself. What happened to all the deep blue skies with crisp fluffy clouds that looked like lumps of candy floss over a rich, deep blue sky…… now all we get are white hazy blankets that block out the sun.. sounds crazy I know but next time it’s a nice day, notice how there is no more deep blue skies…. more like a pale white now…. plenty of evidence and leaked govt documents can be found here
Bob: Plenty of evidence you were part of those LSD experiments conducted by the CIA.
4) From Marissa:
Your style is unique compared to other people I have read stuff from. Thank you for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I’ll just book mark this site.
Hagbard: How ’bout I just come over to your place and bookmark it for you — show you how it’s done, IYKWIMAITYD.
Bob: For you, my dear, I always have the opportunity.
5) From Stephen Wozniak:
Hey! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any problems with hackers? My last blog…was hacked and I ended up losing many months of hard work due to no backup. Do you have any methods to prevent hackers?
Bob: Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
6) From Team Awesome:
Excellent post. I used to be checking continuously this weblog and I’m inspired! Extremely helpful information particularly the closing section
I take care of such information a lot. I was looking for this certain info for a very lengthy time. Thank you and best of luck.
Bob: You are waaaaay too enthusiastic for me. You take care, now — meds are your friends.
Hagbard: Bloody Mormons.
7) From Sex Toys:
What others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms doesn’t bother me.. . The bible never mentions dildos.
Hagbard: Moses had a pretty big staff he carried around; Sephora always seemed happy.
8) From Gay Pi:
I do not even know the way I finished up here, but I thought this post was once good. I do not realize who you are but certainly you are going to be a famous blogger for those who aren’t already. Cheers!
Bob: That’s me: Blogger to The Unfamous.
Hagbard: Christ, they’ve even taken over Mathematics!
9) From Ashton:
no
Hagbard: Yes, dammit!
Bob: Why so glum, Mr. Kutcher? #Losing
10) From Johnie Cloutier:
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam responses? If so how do you reduce it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s driving me mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.
Bob: I usually find out where the spammers live and send Hagbard over to eliminate them with extreme prejudice.
Hagbard: Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Johnie…you live at 634 East Mango Road, apartment 394 in Cumquat, Iowa…am I correct?
11) From scarf elephant:
tory burch pumps brown
Bob: And what does the Senator from Massachusetts have to say about this???
12) From BeepBeepsNailMail:
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Bob: True.
13) From Gerry:
Dear Bobbelvedere,
Thanks for your thoughts, As you start exploring the market of strollers, you are sure to hear the name Bob Revolution Double Stroller. You may begin to wonder just who this BOB person is and why parents rave about his strollers. The key to this is to first figure out just who this BOB character is.
Cheerio
Bob: I wouldn’t dare venture a guess.
Hagbard: Hey, Clyde…there’s only one Bob and he just spoke to you. Am I right, TCOTS readers?!?
Merry Christmas From TCOTS
Mrs. B. and I did not send out our typical ‘cat card’ this year. What we mailed was a pic of me in front of a wagon load of Maker’s Mark barrels looking every inch the Southern distiller. So, we can’t show you that one.
Instead, here are a couple of our previous cards…
And it just wouldn’t be a TCOTS Christmas around here,
if we didn’t follow the tradition and post Miss Betty Grable…
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
FROM
THE BELVEDERES
Rule 5 Christmas Countdown: 24-Dec-12
The TCOTS Rule 5 Compliance Committee has voted unanimously to do another TCOTS Christmas Countdown. With so much funk enveloping us this year, The Committee feels a duty to provide a moment of relief, so from now until Christmas, the gals are on us…
@MarkSteynOnline [And Bob] On Christmas
The American Spectator has kindly reprinted Mark Steyn’s article It’s The Best Time Of The Year from their December 1995 issue.
I well remember reading it because it was one of my first exposures to his writings. It aided me in becoming a fan of his.
Please do take the time to click here and read the whole thing, but here are a few highlights:
In Vermont the first school board of the season has already declared that songs about Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty are offensive to those of other backgrounds. Really? The hallmark of democratic American culture used to be that it was simultaneously universal and specific. In denigrating the secular Christmas as it has evolved over 200 years, these groups are moving beyond the separation of church and state to the separation of American from American; they’re saying that the very notion of any common culture is suspect….
That, of course, is the Leftist Thinking behind most of it.
One more:
The soundtrack to the American Christmas dates from Coots’ 1934 seasonal staple to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” written by Johnny Marks 30 years later. Every Christmas standard you can name—“Frosty,” “Silver Bells,” “Sleigh Ride”—comes from that period, the apogee of mainstream American popular culture at its most confident and embracing.
It’s not surprising, then, that the last three decades have failed to produce a single Yuletide song of any lasting impact. Broadcasting has degenerated into narrowcasting, pop music has split into mutually antagonistic minority interests like grunge and gangsta rap, and, following the same pattern of fragmentation, Christmas has begun to subdivide too. If the American Christmas is a triumph of the American ideal—E Pluribus Unum—then the pseudo-African festival of Kwanzaa is surely the reverse. It exemplifies the trend of recent years, whereby large groups of Americans go to great lengths to make themselves more foreign than they really are. The language of Kwanzaa is Swahili, and the underlying philosophy of its seven “Principles” is the distinctively incompetent Afro-Marxism that bankrupted Africa’s richest countries. To placate disgruntled kids, Kwanzaa has since been obliged to introduce its own Santa figure—a wise man called Nia Umoja. But what was wrong with the old Santa figure? Will our society really benefit from Santa separatism?
…
In 1966, the same year Kwanzaa was invented, Jerry Herman, composer of Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles, wrote what looks like the last Christmas standard. “I snuck in just in time,” he told me. “We don’t really have Christmas songs anymore and we don’t really have songs that step out of shows and get taken up by jazz singers and country singers. But every year I get another half-dozen different recordings by different artists.” And, in his frail songwriter’s croak, he began to warble:
We need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
Candles in the hallway
Carols on the spinet…Well, maybe not the spinet. But we do need a little Christmas. Right this very minute.
Indeed, we do, especially in these dark times of the Leftist Era in America.
Hold your loved ones a little bit longer.
Pray a little bit harder.
Cherish those merry moments with friends and family a little bit more.
We know not what the future holds and we rightly fear that it will not be pleasant. But we must never forget the admonition of God to never despair for He is always there for us in the silent night.
We also must never forget that America is an idea that knows no physical limitations — as long as it remains alive in the soul of one Human Being, America will live on in the world.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Let Nothing You Dismay….
Rule 5 Christmas Countdown: 23-Dec-12
The TCOTS Rule 5 Compliance Committee has voted unanimously to do another TCOTS Christmas Countdown. With so much funk enveloping us this year, The Committee feels a duty to provide a moment of relief, so from now until Christmas, the gals are on us…
Blogger Christmas Traffic Blues
Well I woke up this mornin’
And all my hits were down
Oh, I woke up this mornin’
And all my hits were down
All my friends are missing
I’m the only one who’s posting now
Santy Claus, Santy Claus
What you bringin’ down
Santy Claus, Santy Claus
What you bringin’ down
I need some linky lovin’
Before I shut this old blog thang down
—Ramblin’ Bob Belvedere, Blogger Mood Disorder Blues
I got me some Blogger Christmas Traffic Blues and the only thing that will get me out of this funk — have mercy! — is some bona-fi-dee blues…
-Lightnin’ Hopkins…
-Mister BB King…
-I’m feelin’ better, so let’s up the mood with one of my favorites…
-Of course, no Christmas would be complete without Mister Chuck Berry…
-Now, link this post so I can really bet over by Blogger Christmas Traffic Blues.
Rule 5 Christmas Countdown: 22-Dec-12
The TCOTS Rule 5 Compliance Committee has voted unanimously to do another TCOTS Christmas Countdown. With so much funk enveloping us this year, The Committee feels a duty to provide a moment of relief, so from now until Christmas, the gals are on us…
