Other Unpleasantness

Charles Kesler:

Who knows what Bill would advise regarding our current contentions. He liked to surprise, whether by endorsing marijuana decriminalization or by opposing a blind man’s sailing expedition (“a profanation,” he insisted). Still, I’m pretty sure my old friend would say to depressed conservatives today something along the lines of what Barry Goldwater said to depressed right-wingers at the 1960 GOP Convention: Grow up, conservatives! Bill lived through and surmounted Goldwater’s 1964 debacle, the ensuing Great Society, Nixon’s presidency and resignation (at the time, hard to say which was more embarrassing), American retreat in the 1970s, the assassination attempt against Reagan, the various stains of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and other unpleasantness, not including, however, Barack’s Obama’s election in 2008. He was spared that indignity.

Hi racist! Let me remind you of the other unpleasantness:

The Prudes Speak!

David French:

Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto highlights a revealing and much-talked-about exchange between the Washington Post ombudsman, an anonymous reader, and an anonymous Post reporter exploring the Post’s bias against social conservatives. While the entire exchange (and Taranto’s analysis) are worth reading, I wanted to pull out two quotes of interest. First, the WaPo ombudsman:

Because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

Taranto’s response:

That “libertarian” is quite a dodge. Most journalists are anything but libertarian in areas where that would mean siding against the left, such as guns, education, taxes, nonsexual health care and nonmedia corporate free speech.

I agree with Taranto — “libertarian” is the wrong word. And this raises a pet peeve. It’s astounding how many times liberals say “libertarian” when they really mean “libertine.”

Stick to your guns, social conservatives! Make sure the Republican party never strays from its mission to scold.

Lazy Linkage Post

This is an interesting and pretty thing, but it runs the ChromeOS. For the money, it's useless: I can get any number of cheap laptops that do more.

Whether or not the Pixel can actually sell in any significant numbers is an, as yet, unanswered question. Pichai wouldn’t disclose specific sales numbers for any Chromebooks, but he said he believes that the appetite for a high-end Chromebook is there, noting that since Google and Samsung launched their $250 Chromebook 125 days ago, that specific computer has been the best selling laptop on Amazon every single day.

“This is targeted for a segment of users who have committed to the cloud,” he said of the $1,300 Pixel. “We believe we’ve built the best laptop from a hardware standpoint.”

Surprise! Canadians whining about Americans. Like about 95% of this blog's output.

"In [Argo], Canada and Ottawa didn't exist," [former Canadian ambassador to Iran] Taylor told the New York Times' Carpetbagger blog. "It's a great film, it's great. But at the same time, it was a Canadian story that's been, all of sudden, totally taken over by the Americans. Totally."

"I don't want to be hard on Tony Mendez," he added, referencing the CIA agent played by Affleck who led the covert op. "I want to give him all the credit I can. But at the same time, I'm a Canadian, and enough is enough."

Taylor also told the Associated Press today that it would be "a further reflection" on Affleck if Argo wins Best Picture and he fails to thank the Canadians who played such a huge role in the real-life version of events.

Genesis Death Sandwich discoverers steal your joke:

Researchers using text-analysis software say they've discovered a new literary device in the first book of the Bible: the "Genesis death sandwich."

The name refers to a familiar rhetorical structure -- sandwiching bad news in between the good. In the case of Genesis, the slices of white bread are themes of life, and the slimy cold cuts in between are mentions of death.

"The structuring of life and death in Genesis appears to be something that hasn't been noticed before," researcher Gordon Rugg, a senior lecturer in Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a Feb. 21 blog post. "We think it's a standard literary device being used on a larger scale than had been previously realized. No aliens, no secret codes, no conspiracies, but some striking images, and a great name for a band."

Nick Cave tweets!

The Q&A did not start well. His disdain for the process was quite clear as he said wearily on one six-second clip: “Whatever it is I’ve been roped into doing, I’m starting now.”

The first response, to whether he hated the event, also proved particularly apt: “I am hating this… beyond measure and I haven’t even started yet.” He later said the whole process was “bullshit”.

The Party of Death

There's an interesting slapfight going on at The Corner right now. This might be the fuel.

Since 1985, when Tanton, using his position at FAIR and U.S. Inc., created CIS, it has attempted to become the scholarly face of the immigration restrictionist establishment.162 CIS is supposed to “[b]uild the intellectual basis for immigration law reform”163 by supplying information to FAIR and other anti-immigration activists. The same environmentalist, abortion, and population-control ideology permeates CIS, its funders, and founders.

Mark Krikorian, the current executive director of CIS, used to work for FAIR. When asked about the ties among CIS, population-control groups, and John Tanton, he stated:

The center [CIS] has no views on population control, no views on China’s one child policy, or anything else. The guy you mentioned, John Tanton, he’s an eye doctor or retired doctor, he helped arrange our first grant, he’s a population guy, Malthusian in a lot of ways, has never been on our board, doesn’t know where our offices are, never told or had any hand in the opinions, development, or views of the research of the center in any way. I met him a couple times and he seems like an affable enough guy, but what do I know, and what do I care.164

Tanton’s own writings to donors and others contradict Krikorian’s statement. As noted earlier, Tanton told Cordelia Scaife in a letter that “For credibility this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we’re calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR.”165 CIS’s supposed independence from FAIR was a façade. Tanton was intimately involved with its founding and guided its positions from the start. As late as 1994, Tanton’s front group U.S. Inc continued to funnel money to CIS.166 Tanton arranged a lot more than a first grant for CIS—he created it, funded it, and provided its ideology.

Mark Krikorian says immigration-wets are Mexicans and Muslims, big whoop.

John O'Sullivan:

Nor need you hire a researcher to uncover what they think. Mark writes regularly for the Corner. When were you last horrified or outraged by him? My guess is never.

There was this...

Mario Lopez is returning fire.

In all of the discussion about my Human Life Review article, it seems telling that no one attempts to refute any of the facts laid out in it. Indeed, Mark Krikorian is proud of the “common cause” he has with some on the left — it’s worth exploring who some of these people are.

The evidence shows that John Tanton and some of his close allies in the radical environmental movement started the Center for Immigration Studies. Prior to getting CIS off the ground Tanton helped create NumbersUSA and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, and he was heavily involved in groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, Zero Population Growth, and the Michigan Council for the Study of Abortion.

More here and here and here and there must be more elsewhere.

What all of these people are dancing around is that immigration hawks don't have a problem if the immigrants are white.

They're Coming For You

Michelle! Someone has noticed you're a big fat liar! And they made it ILLEGAL!

Bouffant pointed at some nice clear rubberface video. There's more to be done with it once I get the facial recognition plans worked out.

International Relations

An American writes a polite letter:

PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tire company has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International's Maurice "Morry" Taylor, who goes by "The Grizz" for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France's left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant.

"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.

The lazy socialist Frenchman writes an unaccountably rude response:

As the leaked letter drew outrage in France, Montebourg penned a scathing response, spelling out the reasons why France routinely ranks as a leading destination for companies to invest, beating China and India in mid-2012.

"Can I remind you that Titan, the business you run, is 20 times smaller than Michelin, the French (tire) technology leader with international influence, and 35 times less profitable," Montebourg wrote, in a two-page letter in French.

"This just shows the extent to which Titan could have learned and gained, enormously, from a presence in France."

From the hazy mists of the past comes a memory confirming Taylor's nobility:

He built up Illinois-based Titan over 23 years into a global brand in tires for tractors and other off-road machinery and ran for the White House in the 1996 Republican primary, campaigning on a pro-business ticket.

At that time, he admitted to being "abrasive" in order to "get the job done": "The politicians, they all want you to like them," he told an interviewer. "I don't care if people like me."

To Montebourg, the author of "Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government" wrote: "You're a politician so you don't want to rock the boat ... France will lose its industrial business because its government is more government."

No cheese-eater should think he can impugn the character of a man who ran for president on the Republican ticket.

Goodbye Kevin Ayers

There is a nice tribute here:

The sublime singer/songwriter Kevin Ayers—an original member of psych-prog legends Soft Machine (and their predecessors, the Wilde Flowers)—passed away in his sleep Feb. 18 at age 68. The cause of death has not been reported.
Ayers played on Soft Machine’s classic self-titled debut album and then set off on a long and rewarding solo career, all the while occasionally collaborating with innovative musicians such as Brian Eno, Nico, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, and Mike Oldfield. Ayers wrote some of the most memorable and compelling compositions on The Soft Machine (aka Volume One), including the catchy as hell and exceptionally eccentric “We Did It Again,” “Lullabye Letter,” and “Joy of a Toy.”

Politics and Weaponry

Eliana Johnson gives up on her defence of Hitlerian sensibility to concentrate on Democratic equivalence with the festering evil of Republicans:

Colorado state representative Joe Salazar demonstrated yesterday that, as far as politics are concerned, making undiplomatic remarks about rape appears to be a bipartisan issue. The Democratic legislator cautioned yesterday that women, fearing they are going to be raped, may shoot and injure innocent victims.

Arguing a in favor of bill that would ban the individuals from carrying concealed weapons on college campuses, Salazar acknowledged, “There are some gender inequities on college campuses” that put women at risk. He explained, “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at.”

Salazar continued, “You don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop, pop a round at somebody.”

This is a stupid thing way to put it; most women are pretty aware of both the threat and when the threat is about to become more than that. So condemn condemn condemn, it's okay by me. I can imagine what his point might be, but why offer charity? Anyway:

Republican senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were defeated in November after making remarks about rape and reproduction that were widely criticized by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle.

Here's what Todd Akin had to say:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

And here's what Richard Mourdock said:

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said. “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

[...]

Democrats seized on the remarks following the debate. Perhaps anticipating the impact they might have, Mourdock tried to backpedal in the minutes following the debate.

“Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that anyone could suggest that. That’s a sick, twisted - no, that’s not even close to what I said,” he told reporters, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

But he reaffirmed his view that conception is determined by a higher power.

“It is a fundamental part of my faith that God gives us life. God determines when life begins,” Mourdock said. “I believe in an almighty God who makes those calls. ... There are some things in life that are above my pay grade.”

Is run-of-the-mill women-are-silly sexism the same kind of sexism as God's-plan-is-to-make-you-have-your-rape-baby-and-is-rape-legitimate-anyway sexism? If so, then yes, this Colorado state representative is just as brain-numbingly terrible as the two Republican Tea Party candidates for the US Senate.

Congratulations are due, I suppose, to Colorado Republicans for playing the sexism angle when they don't give a shit.

Now With Bonus Animated Gish

Morning!

Too Much Render Time Wasted...

So I had to post it. And a terribly low-res version at that.

Edwin Mellen Press Has a Dubious Future

Is Edwin Mellen Press a dubious publisher?

In September 2010, Dale Askey, now a librarian at McMaster University, in Ontario, published a blog post titled “The Curious Case of Edwin Mellen Press,” in which he called the Edwin Mellen Press “a dubious publisher.” For a few months afterward, several people chimed in in the blog’s comments section, some agreeing with Mr. Askey, some arguing in support of the American publisher.

In June 2012, Edwin Mellen Press’s founder, Herbert Richardson, issued a notice of action to Mr. Askey, suing him for more than $1-million. That same day, the press issued a similar notice of action to Mr. Askey and McMaster University, telling them that they were being sued for libel and seeking damages of $3-million.

Suing a blogger for a million dollars seems dubious. Suing a blogger and the university that later employed him for three million dollars is worse.

I suspect this action may cost them what they're asking for in damages.

Adam Carolla Is Not Funny

Here is Adam Carolla again. Adam Carolla is not funny:

“Alright, you’re not supposed to have two kids,” Carolla said. “Minimum-wage jobs are the ones you’re supposed to have in high school and you’re supposed to pass through them. The idea is — I worked at McDonald’s when I was 16. The whole idea isn’t let’s make Adam Carolla comfortable working at McDonald’s. I was like, ‘I’m getting $2.43 a hour. This place sucks ass. I want out of here as fast as I can possibly do it.’”

“I didn’t have anything — I just knew this job at McDonald’s sucked,” he continued. “If they paid me 10 bucks an hour, maybe I’d be managing the place today. So your jobs where you’re paid just a little bit are jobs you’re supposed to have in high school and you’re supposed to move through. And you certainly aren’t supposed to have two fucking kids when you’re making Minimum Wage. It’s not responsible; it’s not responsible to the kids you’re trying to raise; and it’s not responsible to the community they live in because you’re not — you’re not paying your fair share.”

Perhaps I should rephrase: Adam Carolla is not intentionally funny.

Carolla explained that he didn’t have opportunities simply handed to him in life, noting that his parents were divorced and his mom received welfare benefits.

Opportunity Knocked

Ishmael Reed writes an interesting column:

Republicans should also be more open to programs like that of the educator and poet Haki Madhubuti, a founder of the Betty Shabazz International Charter School in Chicago. He focuses on African-American literature — not just books about black dysfunction, readily available in the marketplace, but a variety of texts that give students alternative role models to those provided by the media, who are too often seen toting semiautomatic weapons.

And Republicans should oppose discrimination against blacks by banks and mortgage companies, which frequently deny blacks access to loans with which to begin businesses and purchase homes so that they can develop the equity toward a nest egg. And since the Republican ideal is a colorblind America, how about promoting a colorblind criminal justice system?

Rather than running on bizarre suggestions that Mr. Obama was influenced by his father’s anticolonialism, wouldn’t the billionaires in the Republican Party get more for their money by embracing proven solutions that address the real problems of black America?

After all, if the president and the Democrats won’t do it, someone has to.

Not gonna happen, as Republicans are too crazy and/or too unwilling to sacrifice their base for a smaller one (and Reed doesn't seem to notice that his ideas are Programs for Special Interest Groups). It'd be an interesting inroad for Green politicians to try though. If another party is ever gonna have a shot it has to have a local base, and a good and very visible base might be found in urban municipal politics. The Dems have left a gap that the Republicans won't fill...why not someone else?

In My Experience People Sometimes Go Right Back

Why We Fright

Neal Boortz:

You’re snug in your cabin in the mountains outside of Big Bear, California. Snug, but fearful. They’re searching for a killer near you. A terrifying, heavily armed former cop from Los Angeles who has gone on a killing rampage.

Suddenly you hear gunshots. You part the curtains to look outside ... and there’s the man whose picture you’ve seen countless times on TV over the past few days running toward your house as he returns fire to police officers in pursuit.

Just a few weeks ago you had been considering buying an AR-15 just in case it might be needed to defend your home from predators of the two and the four-legged variety. They don’t call the place Big Bear for nothing. You couldn’t buy one, though, because private ownership of these weapons had been outlawed. That didn’t stop the killer. He was carrying one ... that along with several pistols. The law didn’t seem to deter him at all. The murderer was still far enough away that you could stop him with one shot through your window, but that option had been taken away by anti-gun zealots.

Somehow you don’t feel comfortable with only your handgun and it’s seven-shot magazine to protect you from this approaching danger. You know the killer, who is rapidly nearing your door, is much more heavily armed than you. Things aren’t looking all that rosy for you and your family right now.

Why did this have to happen? Why were these liberals -- these Democrats -- so hell-bent on reducing your capacity to act in your own self-defense in a situation just such as this?

Interesting question, isn’t it?

YES.

Other places where I have once been snug and then cowered in fear as an insane cop stalked me while I only had seven bullets and my trusty handgun between me and certain death:

• My old Kentucky home
• My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii
• My bunker
• My duck-blind down by the lake
• My treehouse where the girls aren't allowed
• My orbital death platform
• My fort that I made out of the kitchen table and a bunch of chairs and a whole lot of sheets

Potential Animated GIFS

Also is Gram Parsons insanely overrated or what? Deleting song after song.

The Sin of Omission

Hugh Hewitt:

Because the Roman Catholic Church adamantly defends life in the womb, the oldest and most infirm and the institution of marriage, it has legions of foes spread throughout major media.

Ha ha, legions.

Anyway, CHILD RAPE.

As much as I like to imagine that the people who shape our culture are not really people at all, various humiliating sex-tapes prove to my satisfaction that most likely are. And this means that some of those people might be anti-Catholic, and some might be pro-Catholic. Nevertheless, whatever your bias is, it's pretty juicy news when the the guys representing righteousness keep getting caught raping kids.

Today's lead piece on the succession in the New York Times is a perfect example. Authored by Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo, and originating in Vatican City, it contains this whopper of a paragraph:

The resignation sets up a struggle between the staunchest conservatives, in Benedict’s mold, who advocate a smaller church of more fervent believers, and those who believe that the church can broaden its appeal in small but significant ways, like allowing divorced Catholics who remarry without an annulment to receive communion or loosening restrictions on condom use in an effort to prevent AIDS. There are no plausible candidates who would move on issues like ending celibacy for priests, or the ordination of women.

This is so silly a paragraph as to rank in some annual competition for naked bias somewhere.

Hmm, maybe a Hugh Hewitt award?

Note these two reporters do not cite a single name of one of those staunch conservatives

I cite Pope Benedict!

nor of a cardinal or even an advisor to a cardinal who wants to allow divorced Catholics who remarry without annulment to receive communion.

Here I would note that the struggle might be between a bunch of aging rape apologists and their laity, the latter group being oh-so-grateful for birth control and possibly unhappy about the potential of being kicked out of their community while waiting for their church to complete annulment paperwork.

Also they're generally against raping kids.

Liberty!

Via Boing Boing, Ron Paul does not believe in free speech:

Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul.

On May 1st, 2008 we launched a grassroots website at RonPaul.com that became one of the most popular resources dedicated exclusively to Ron Paul and his ideas. Like thousands of fellow Ron Paul supporters, we put our lives on hold and invested 5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012. Looking back, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve with unlimited enthusiasm and limited financial resources.

Last month, after Ron Paul expressed regret on the Alex Jones show over not owning RonPaul.com (in an interview titled “Ron Paul: The Internet Is Our Last Chance to Awaken America“), dozens of supporters urged us to contact Ron Paul to work out a deal.

[...]

Instead of responding to our offer, making a counter offer, or even accepting our FREE gift of RonPaul.org, Ron Paul went to the United Nations and is trying to use its legal process related to domain name disputes to actively deport us from our domain names without compensation.

Below is a copy of Ron Paul’s complaint and our original offer to Ron Paul. We have 20 days to prepare a response and we are tentatively looking for a lawyer to represent us in this case.

Hopefully it won’t have to come to that!

What in the world is going on?

The only response to this is

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

WORKS ONLY FOR SOME UPDATE:

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I Can't Go See This

So YOU DO IT.

The period from the 1890s through the 1930s was the Golden Age of American Illustration. The rapid rise of popular magazines created a new audience for art—the American public—and a new demand for illustrations. The nation's most talented artists responded by turning illustration into a sophisticated art form that gave visual life to our nation's dreams and ideals. Drawn from one of the country's premier collections of historic American illustration, this exhibition features original paintings by legendary artists such as Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker, and Norman Rockwell.