Mein BlogoVault

Best Phillies 2008 Postseason Highlight Video EVAR

2009-04-13T21:32:00.002-04:00

Thinking a lot about last year since Harry Kalas passed away this morning, and I stumbled upon this great highlight video - complete with AC/DC soundtrack - of the Phils rolling through the post-season. PWNED.

RIP, HK. That one was for you.

Venn Diagram of the Day

2009-02-26T07:42:00.006-05:00

The Shortest State of the Union Commentary You'll Ever See

Yeah. Pretty much.

ht: House of Eratosthenes

After Promising Not To, Obama Appoints Lobbyists to Key Administration Positions

2009-01-30T09:07:00.002-05:00

Hey, you stopped paying attention to the campaign once the vote was cast and Obama won, didn't you?

Well don't look now, but it looks like it took less than two weeks for business as usual to return to the White House and to DC. This is "change?"

President Obama promised during his campaign that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House."

So far, though, at least a dozen former lobbyists have found top jobs in his administration, according to an analysis done by Republican sources and corroborated by Politico.

Oops. Thought you voted for change, huh? The only thing that changed was the D's and R's. Washington, however, has not changed and will not change. Newsflash, I know.

Bet that just fills you up with a steaming cup of HOPE, doesn't it?

Recent Flyers Pwnage

2009-01-11T20:59:00.003-05:00

The NHL has gone ahead and uploaded a ton of NHL highlight footage to YouTube. In other words, this is a perfect excuse to post some great Flyers games I've caught this year (and a few great endings from last year's playoff run).

The best Flyers comeback I've seen perhaps ever, and certainly the best third period ever - came just a month ago on December 11, 2008. The Flyers were at home and behind the Hurricanes 5-1 going into the third. That was simply unacceptable.

This is a gem from last year's improbable playoff run against the Capitals. Game 7 in Washington. Regulation ends tied 2-2. Overtime. Winner moves on to the semi-finals. Lupul. Do the math. Saw this in a hotel in Atlanta and nearly jumped out a window.

And in the semis, here is the clinching game in Montreal, when the upstart Flyers stunned the top-seeded Habs on their raucous home ice, 6-4. And RJ Umberger, who has since moved onto the Columbus Blue Jackets, dished out a massive EPIC WIN playoff scoring performance that will go down in the annals of Flyers history as one of the most memorable post-season performances in recent memory. Sweet.

I was at this ~~brawl~~ game versus the hated Penguins on December 11, 2007. In fact, I made a whole post about it. Nothing like an 8-2 stomping of the Pens on home ice when you have free box seats.

Phillies Win World Series

2008-10-31T20:57:00.006-04:00

Best. October. EVAR.

VICTORY LAP:

Reflections: Seranading Kim Jong Il

2008-08-12T17:47:00.002-04:00

*** What follows is an draft/book review I never got around to finishing. Guess I'll update it someday.
- - -

Christopher Hitchens once joked that it seems as if somebody had given Kim Il-Sung a copy of 1984 and had asked him if they could actually succeed in bringing about the society envisioned in Orwell's masterpiece. Il-Sing would reply, "Well, I don't know, but we sure can give it the old college try, can't we?"

As a minor fanatic about all things North Korea, this little item I found at Powerline (now several days removed), concerning the North Korean internal response to the historic New York Philharmonic concert in North Korea piqued my interest.

According to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, North Korea has taken actions to try to blunt the diplomatic significance of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's recent visit to Pyongyang.

In an apparent attempt to avoid overemphasizing the significance of the event, DPRK media have afforded relatively modest treatment of the 26 February New York Philharmonic visit.

Per the reported original agreement, Pyongyang broadcast the concert live via television to a limited domestic audience. According to UN data, there are approximately 55 TV sets for every 1,000 North Koreans, totaling an estimated 1.3 million TV sets for the entire country. By comparison, South Koreans own 347 per 1,000, approximately seven times more (BBC, 10 October 2006).

The concert was not broadcast on radio, Pyongyang's most pervasive public communications vehicle. In fact, during the performance Pyongyang radio aired instead two anti-US programs -- an attributed talk entitled "Dangerous US War Strategy Against Korea" and a dialogue entitled "Who Is the Ringleader Intensifying Tension?"

The party daily all but sidelined the performance, relegating the report on the concert to the bottom of page four with a short accompanying article and photo (Rodong Sinmun, 27 February). Furthermore, the picture, although not necessarily small, appeared to be deliberately cropped to remove the United States and North Korean flags -- one on each side of the stage -- the inclusion of which would have been an easy opportunity to suggest the importance the regime places on improving US-DPRK relations.

As could be expected. The North Korean communist regime will not allow the unbroken stream of anti-American government propaganda to cease just because some group of musicians visited the country.

I'm torn on this issue. On the one hand, we want North Korea to come out of the Cold War/Korean War-era mentality it has locked itself into. We want its doors opened to scrutiny, democracy, abundance, scientific and commercial success, and many of the other things that we in the West and in free societies take for granted.

No doubt, fans of this cultural gesture would argue that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and they might indeed be correct on this point.

Then again, we're talking about North Korea here. I'm not sure such altruistic well-wishers who favor such reconciliatory gestures as the proverbial diplomatic carrot are aware of what exactly North Korea is. North Korea is a sworn enemy of the United States.

Their soldiers and much of the general population re perpetually training for all-out war. The only people in North Korea that appreciate or even have a kind word to say about the United States are no longer living in North Korea, for obvious reasons concerning their safety, or have been erased. Schoolchildren are raised to read write, and to worship at the alter of 'The Great Leader' and 'Eternal President' of the DPRK, Kim Il-Sung. There is no choice - either you live a life of servitude and adoration of the government, or you can subsist on rifle butts to the chin and several kernels of corn per day in the concentration camps.

The problem for the Party leadership highlighted by this press release, of course, is that the DPRK oligarchy and Kim Jong-Il know what any kind of genuine good will generated in the collective consciousness of the populace (to the extent that one can exist independently of the Party consciousness) by this trip would mean in the context of the steady diet of propaganda the North Koreans have been fed by the government for five decades.

Allowing such news to continue on a semi-regular basis, or even to reach and sink in with the general population at all not only would mean the end of the Korean Worker's Party, but the end of North Korean society as we've come to understand it. The entire political, economic and cultural framework of the DPRK is based on old-style Stalinist communism. Endless (and I do mean endless) streams of government propaganda coupled with comprehensively restricted and government-controlled media makes the assimilation of information from outside of their system virtually impossible.

The catastrophic collapse of such a meticulously constructed communist dictatorship by the simple introduction of something as simple as the freedom of the press could cause a humanitarian crisis not even rivaled by the wars in the Middle East. I've read several different pieces on the possible collapse of North Korea and it's potential impact on the religion and indeed the world. There would be millions of refugees flooding across the border of China. Heaven help them if they make a break for the de-militarized zone. This is all not even considering the significant loss of life and destruction that would no doubt erupt between the two sides if the system goes bust and the prevailing wound of the Korean War gets torn open again.

I've finished The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a horrifying testimonial from a former inmate at the Yodok prison camp named Kang Chol-Hwan. After moving to North Korea from Japan years after the Korean war (pushed to do so by their grandmother's militant communism and activism), the family spends a short time living a 'normal' life in Pyongyang. Without warning one day, the family is arrested by secret police and is sent off to Yodok for failing to be sufficiently subservient and adoring of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung. What follows is ten years of hard labor, squalid living conditions, starvation, disease, torture, brutality, indoctrination, public executions and merciless killing. Somehow, Kang survived and managed to escape the prison state of North Korea through China. He's currently living as a journalist in South Korea.

He was one of the lucky ones. North Korea doesn't take kindly to defectors. According to the AFP, they recently executed a group of people trying to escape to China.

It became apparent after watching videos like the ones linked in this post and piecing together bits of the limited information we can get out of the country that the vast majority of people living across North Korea are starving, dying of disease, politically enslaved and are otherwise suffering in some way. They have no idea they are being lied to, and if they do, they are powerless to do anything about it. They don't know that there is an outside world other than what the Party has been inculcating within the population from its collective birth.

Any attempt to insert 'counter-revolutionary' information into the North Korean system will be distorted, filtered, or more likely never shown at all. When the West (even their brothers across the 38th parallel) makes a reconciliatory gesture, the Korean Worker's Party swings into action and "corrects" the reality, so that the people (save high party officials controlling the information flow) will never know what is happening. It is almost a moot point anyhow - citizens in North Korean society would be unable to safely ask any questions of any government official or even their neighbors without being snitched on. A visit from the regime's secret police, even if they should choose to spare you from a trip to the concentration camps, seems to be enough to keep everything under control.

So what of it?

Do we continue to facilitate by North Korea's isolation, fearing perhaps an irrational and aggressive response from the nation? As evidenced by Kim Jong-Il's behavior in recent years, he remains an unpredictable and dishonest broker in diplomatic affairs, and is openly hostile to the United States. Who knows.

Do we continue to transmit the message that as long as they remain a repressive, Stalinist regime posing a threat to regional stability, they will no be rewarded in any way? They don't seem to be listening, and the international community, predictably, will take no action and will offer tacit support and de facto approval of the regime's activities.

Do we at least make a consistent effort to fight a quiet, subversive cultural war against the DPRK propaganda machine until we can get it to break apart from the inside? We sure as hell will try, but when one factors into account the archaic information and electrical infrastructure in North Korea, this seems less likely. The system hasn't been updated in decades, power outages are nightly, there is no Internet, an outdated phone system, no independent media, no commerce, etc. It is a society stuck in a different time, and has fought bitterly to preserve this antiquated system from another era.

Do we continue on the path we're currently on, which has more or less enabled the status quo to continue unabated? Neither option is particularly palatable. Looks like that's what we've been doing, save some quiet diplomacy. No wonder nothing ever changes.

For more information and some good documentaries about North Korea, check out these recent BlogoVault posts: Welcome to North Korea, and A Spectacle Like None Other.

Mooooving

2008-07-27T21:30:00.002-04:00

Moving to a new home in Pennsylvania.

Will resume blogging when settled. After marriage. After move-in. After honeymoon.

When settled.

This is The End, My Only Friend, The End

2008-05-12T00:45:00.001-04:00

At this point, it looks like better luck next year, boys. They'll be lucky to take one game the way they're playing (save Richards).

It's just the Pen's year.

Next year should be fun, though.

Olympic Park, Atlanta

2008-05-04T15:03:00.002-04:00

FLYERS RALLY TO STUN HABS, ADVANCE TO EASTERN FINALS

2008-05-04T14:09:00.004-04:00

I thought the previous headline couldn't be topped in terms of the sheer joy I gathered from typing it.

But last night's header is better still. And the game was one of the best I've seen from the Flyers in recent memory.

Now the Habs can go home, golf, and have nightmares about one man:

RJ Umberger. After having a low-key season with just 13 goals, Umberger roared out of nowhere in this series and scored 8 goals - tallying at least one goal in each game including two last night (on his 26th birthday) along with an assist, and the opening goals in most of the games for the Flyers. That's the stuff of legend.

We got a little Pennsylvania Polka with the Pens comin' up.

LET'S GO FLYERS

Post 1,500: FLYERS WIN GAME 7 IN OVERTIME IN WASHINGTON 3-2

2008-04-22T22:20:00.011-04:00

You didn't really have a doubt, did you?

LUPUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At this point, I consider the season a success. I don't expect them to beat Montreal, who is a much deeper and more capable team.

But who knows. Just last night, I thought the Flyers were done. Hell - in the third period of this game I thought they were done.

And they weren't.

UPDATE: Front page of ESPN.com!

Flashback to Junior High: Kitchenware and Candybars

2008-04-06T01:19:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite songs off one of my favorite albums by my favorite band of the era.

Flyers Clinch Playoff Spot

2008-04-04T22:38:00.006-04:00

My Philadelphia Flyers, against all conventional wisdom, completely PWN3D the NJ Devils 3-0 (a constant thorn in their side) and clinched a playoff spot tonight.

Considering where they were at this time last year - that is, dead last in the NHL - this is about as good as anyone hoped it would be.
LETS GO FLYERS

It was a wild sports night in Philly tonight - the Sixers also continued their remarkable turnaround by clinching theyselves a playoff berth, and Chase Utley went yard twice against Cincinnati in a solid Phillies win, 8-4.

WOOT!

Nice One Tonight, Four in A Row

2008-03-25T23:53:00.004-04:00

Thank God Briere is finally scoring - putting Prospal on the line with him has upped his game a lot. I'm literally in danger of dying of a heart attack with every Flyers game for the next week and a half.

The hated Rangers, up only one point after tonight's rally by the Flyers, get PWN3D in front of a near-sold out Madison Square Garden. Few things in life are better.

And what a great photo.

New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist (30), and teammates Sean Avery (16) and Marek Malik
react after Mike Richards scored in overtime on Tuesday night.
Flyers won 2-1. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Geno's - 1, People's Republik of Philadelphia - 0

2008-03-20T11:05:00.003-04:00

In a story that illustrates perfectly the left's inability to tolerate free speech and the rights of private business owners, a Kafkaeqsue "Human Relations panel" voted 2-1 that hanging a sign in your business's window that says to speak English when you order is not "discriminatory" or "intimidating."

PC police denied. Chalk one up for the First Amendment and individual rights.

In other news, the Human Rights panel will take up the issue of bumper stickers and their "intimidating messages" to drivers who might not like the messages on the stickers. Psych.

Anonymous v. Scientology II - The Ides of March

2008-03-17T17:39:00.003-04:00

** This is cross-posted at the Jawa Report and posted here for historical preservation purposes. **

The Jawa Report brought you limited coverage of the last installment of the war between Anonymous and Scientology. I tried to augment the coverage here at Mein BlogoVault. But now, it is time that you Jawaheads get the real scoop on this whole thing going on around you without your knowledge or concern. Rightly so.

The EPIC WIN of the last round of Scientology protests went off without a hitch, with lulz reaching levels over 9000 shared by all. Well, except the Church of Scientology, who proceeded to file failed lawsuits against various elements of Anonymous.

Today's round, held during the ominous Ides of March and dubbed "Operation Party Hard," was the next salvo from Anonymous in its ongoing battle with the ~~pyramid scheme / cult~~ Church of Scientology. The battle is part of an ongoing struggle known as Project Chanology.

Now, you may be saying to yourself- Hey, Good Lt, the numbers aren't that impressive. A few hundred here, a few hundred there, maybe a worldwide total in the tens of thousands. What's the big deal?

Well, SHUT THE HELL UP THAT'S THE BIG DEAL. (thanks, Ace.)

For those completely unaware of this story (as I expect all sane people with lives to be), a loose-knit coalition of people that frequent sites like the massive repository for all things hilarious, offensive, tasteless, vulgar hilarious, infuriating, tedious, and teh awesome known as Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED), that do...well...see for yourself. This is important to know the flavor of ED, because it allows you to sample the gestalt and flavor of Anonymous and the movement at hand. ED is sort of like if we here at the Jawa Report (and most likely everyone at AoSHQ and the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler), and a sh*tload of anarchists, nihilists, bored people and cynics, had our own Wikipedia in which we informed you about everything in the world and on the Internets.4chan, to make this worldwide event happen. They upload their videos, pictures and reports of the events either as they are happening or shortly after. They snip media coverage and upload that to a page designed to hold all of the videos from all over the world dedicated to this project. There's even an enclave in my hometown of Philadelphia, which was part of the Eastern USA chain of protests:

I will make every effort to keep you all posted as to the progress being made by either side on this clash of titanic forces on the fringes of mainstream culture.

And for those of you who don't care, I don't care.

Just Marking The Occasion...

2008-03-10T19:27:00.002-04:00

A Quick and Hearty Tribute to YouTube

2008-03-02T23:55:00.004-05:00

I just wanted to take some time out and give a tribute to YouTube.

Everybody knows that it is perhaps the coolest, most revolutionary technological development in recent memory, matched perhaps by the advent of the Internet itself.

Again, everyone who is familiar with what YouTube is knows this already. What sparked the sudden introspection was viewing my YouTube profile for the first time in a long while and realizing that I've watched 1,421 videos since I joined about one year ago. That's a lot of time mining the vast troves of YouTube video obscurity. I've come to the conclusion that I can find nearly anything that I might want, and even some things that I didn't.

A few examples.

Let's just say, I wanted a prime cut of Ron Hextall's first career goal. Famous in the hearts of Flyers fans, Philadelphia and perhaps in NHL circles and the sports world, but not to the world at large. YouTube's got it.

How about...some pirated video of North Korean work camp, which is leaked from a country that has no Internet, antique phone lines, few real connections with the outside world, a totalitarian communist dictatorship, and an oppressive atmosphere for a stray video camera. A place where information is not supposed to escape from. YouTube's got it, with a purported translation in the comments.

John McCain farting and laughing at an obviously confused Hillary Clinton? Heh.

How about something historical? Say, Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" stemwinder?

How about the wall itself coming down?

George Gershwin playing I Got Rhythm?

The laughtastic Futurama clip: Global Warming (or None Like It Hot!):

And...this guy:

You get the idea. I just wanted to accurately convey the notion that you can find almost anything if you dig enough. You used to be able to get even more before the crackdowns on pirated content began. The underbelly of YouTube is a terrifying and mysterious place where only the bravest and most bored souls travel.

But it's there if you seek it out. And I have. Oh, yes.

Nevertheless, YouTube has replace television or me in many ways. I watch what I want, when I want, at no cost. Any time, any where. It is truly the giant video Borg of our time.

But you already knew that.

So carry on, brave children.

Keep digging for those gems.

Random Dude Belts Out Rach 3 Cadenza

2008-03-01T12:52:00.006-05:00

It is an interesting thing to appreciate - the fact that some where, at some time, some random dude could possibly be playing this and pwning the world.

A Spectacle Like None Other

2008-02-18T00:28:00.005-05:00

I might as well post this while I’m on a spell of reluctant fascination with North Korea. These mass games things.

I will tell you true. Sure, it’s mindless worship of the personality cult of the idiotic “Dear Leader” and his cronies. Sure, the time they spend doing things like this could probably be spent doing other things that might help the population. Sure, North Korea is an ashtray of a tyrannical prison state that routinely engages in the most egregious violations of civil and human rights in the world by far.

Forget that these displays are nothing but reflections of the absolute conformity and rigidity imposed upon the helpless population at the hands of their disgusting communist dictatorship. Forget that these ‘games,’ which the children prepare for six hours per day, six days per week, for months on end, every year, all the time, are performed because the participants are forced to do so.

Forget all that, difficult as it may be, for just a moment. Take one step back, and just marvel at the sheer spectacle of this bizarre cultural tick. The aesthetic beauty of exacting execution and performance. Everything you see is people. Thousands and thousands of them, all performing in perfect synchronization and pulsating as one gigantic and colorful organism. It’s unbelievable.

And be advised that the video is dotted with periodic shots of the Kim Jong Il looking like an dumbass and his commie henchmen being all totalitarian-communisty.

And check out the kids. The kids...

It's so well done (be it a bit hokey) that it's a bit frightening and unnerving.

(shiver)

OK. Now that you’ve done all that, you can go back to being nauseated at what North Korea represents, the threat they pose to regional and world security, and everything else we’ve come to know and hate about the Hermit Kingdom.

Why do I get the feeling that this is what an Obama presidency would look like?

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Welcome to North Korea

2008-02-17T18:51:00.003-05:00

I watched this outstanding documentary last night. Extremely creepy, ominous and required viewing for all adherents of Marxist philosophy. In fact, later in the documentary, you can see a picture of Karl Marx hanging on a government building along with the "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung. Under their eternal gaze, the citizens go through their daily six-hour drills and rehearsals for their bizarre mass-worship/celebrations.

The second is a National Geographic documentary called "Undercover in North Korea." Equally as terrifying, it documents a team's visit to NorK with a doctor who's going there to help thousands of patients blind from cataracts. They also interview a prison cmp worker who defected to the south who lays out, in vivid and horrifying detail, some of the things he and his fellow thugs used to do to prisoners in the camps there.

Each is lengthy (about an hour), but both are totally worth your time.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Anonymous v. Scientology: The Epic Struggle Continues...

2008-02-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

You may or may not have noticed a seemingly innocuous new item that bubbled up through the Intrawebs over the past few weeks. I posted about it here previously.

Now, you may think that these are just a bunch of Internet nerds. You may think they're a bunch of emo or goth kids with no lives and too much time on their hands.

You may be right. But it is more likely that you're wrong, my friends. I think we may have finally found the antidote to the idiocy that is Scientology.

What started out as a half-joking idea on a few message boards has erupted into a worldwide battle between the forces of Anonymous and the Church of Scientology. The young struggle is characterized by swarms of lawyers, protests in cities all over the world, arrests, threats, private detectives, lulz, EPIC WINS, and an ongoing feud that promises to be one of the more interesting and frankly hilarious online-wars-gone-real-life in memory.

Legions of Anonymous foot soldiers on several continents have been taking to the streets with whatever garb they can muster. They carry fliers, bullhorns, gas masks, cameras, and the hopes and dreams of rational people everywhere. The Church of Scientology, thrown back on their heels by the worldwide nature of the Anonymous operation (codenamed 'Project Chanology'), has been desperately doing what they're used to doing when someone poses a serious "threat" to their ongoing-ponzy scheme- sicking the lawyers, sending the cease and desist letters, infiltrating the protests with undercover private investigators and cult members to get their personal information, dubbing Anonymous a terrorist organization, etc. The usual.

Not sure what to make of all of this? Wondering why the relative peace and calm of the world was rather abruptly upended? Just trying to make sense of it all? Not trying to make sense of any of it?

Make sure you visit the massive wiki pages at Encyclopedia Dramatica for the latest developments. They've even got a mammoth protest page set up as a hub for pics, videos, endzone dances, victory laps, photoshops, protest organization and other goodies for the curious passer by. Here's a ginormous collection of protest vids.

You may remember the Heaven Nose versus Trainwrecks saga, in which one blog succeeded in slaying (eliminating) another. The war of Anonymous v. Scientology is another thing altogether. And it's even funnier.

John Petrucci Will End Your Life, Noob

2008-02-09T00:16:00.000-05:00

EPIC LULZ in these videos.

You are not worthy:

And this one bears an uncanny resemblance to my dreams (and sometimes reality) as a teenage music nerd:

Biofuels Will Increase Global Warming?

2008-02-08T10:27:00.001-05:00

Assuming you buy into the religion of anthropogenic global warming, this hilariously ironic little tidbit is something you might want to take note of. According to a study, you environmentalist fundamentalists are the ones actually exacerbating the problem of "man-made" global warming by plowing up land to plant crops for inefficient, expensive, unreliable "biofuels."

Maybe we should throw these environmentally conscious do-gooders in jail, as one radical global warming disciple in Canada recently suggested.

Or maybe, before they do irreparable harm to our environment, the worshipers at the alter of Gaia could just take a step back, dry their powder and wait for the evidence proving man is actually causing historically cyclical climate change to come in.

And, of course, there's always global cooling to worry about.

Everything old is new again.

Jawa Report Radio

2008-02-06T00:04:00.000-05:00

I was co-host of Jawa Report Radio along with Vinnie, Rusty, Vicki, and Bluto tonight. If you want to visit our radio show homepage, it's here.

I've also embedded an audio player all the way at the bottom of the sidebar for your convenience. Just click the Play icon to get rolling with Jawa Radio's premier broadcast!

How do I...Where does it...uh...WTF

2008-02-05T00:13:00.001-05:00

On McCain Derangement Syndrome

2008-02-02T00:39:00.000-05:00

UPDATE (2-3-08): If you sort through the comments for this post, you'll see what I'm talking about when I say McCain Derangement Syndrome. I'm routinely called out for being "a McCain supporter," when I rather clearly stated several times in the comments and in the original post that I am a Romney supporter reluctantly acknowledging the political reality unfolding. Apparently, McCain Derangement Syndrome makes it hard for you to read English.

Deep breathes, guys. Count to ten and exhale. There you go.

<- - - - -Original Post below - - - - ->

The no doubt legions of folks bristling at the idea of a John McCain nomination, the thought often seems too much to bear. Proclamations of surrender, spite, paranoia and (as much as I hate to say it) borderline hate for the man are a routine occurrence on many large dextrosphere blogs.

McCain Derangement Syndrome is a good name for it. The rhetoric and invective needs to come down a notch. You can be angry without acting like some BDS-addled fringe moonbat. I'm not going to single out commentors or posters, because I'm not trying to get into a pointless pissing match with others on the evils of John McCain and the sudden awesomeness of Hillary Clinton.

Chill, my brothers and sisters.

I think many in the dextrosphere should take a few deep breaths and calm down. Calling McCain a traitor, a liar, a liberal, and any number of real or perceived epithets does nothing to change the record, or the fact that Clinton and Obama are simply not suitable for the White House in any way. McCain is light years better than either of them, and we all know it.

I'm taking the "best option" at this point. Hillary is simply not an acceptable option to me. Clinton, a member of the most corrupt and scandal-ridden administration in recent memory, is a lying, socialist criminal. Clinton's cronies are lying, socialist criminals and fools. Obama, while the most charming of the candidates, is way too liberal under all that hype and glitter. He was actually ranked the most liberal member of the Senate last year.

Neither are options.

So what is my option? Romney?

As much as I like the guy and think he's actually the most qualified and credentialed man left in the race, it just doesn't look like he's going to be able to pull it out. I want him to, but I'm being a realist.

As such, we're left with McCain. For the conservatives about to jump from window ledges, McCain has something like an 80% lifetime rating from the ACU. Rusty's done the heavy lifting on this point.

It's not even a choice. McCain is the only way complete and destructive socialism is going to be held somewhat at bay while the party regroups. Ann Coulter is wrong. I can understand the sentiments perfectly. I can not stomach throwing the country into the hands of a bunch of leftist wingut crackpots.

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said already. Count me in the hold your nose category.

One Minute Chess Match Sets New Standard for TEH AWESOME

2008-02-02T00:26:00.001-05:00

PWND!

BlogoVault Poetry Jam (with Updated Reprise!)

2008-02-02T00:10:00.000-05:00

***Exclusive Mein BlogVault content, culled from one of my music and literary notebooks from college. The name of the author shall remain anonymous, but he was an old fraternity brother of mine.

Yuban

Dear Yuban
It's 1:26 am and you're my sole caretaker.
Who art thou, Yuban? Why do you
stand by my side?
You are cheap, Yuban.
You are unwanted.
By your existence we suffer, Yuban.
You are schwag coffee.

-J.S., 2001

UPDATE: After conversing with the author by email, I was indulged with an impromptu reprise of the above poem. Thus, the chain of the saga of Yuban remains unbroken even seven years after its inception:

Yuban (a reprise)

To Yuban it may concern:

I have finally found another.

so we're through.

If you treat someone like dirt they'll stick to you like mud.

And I was stuck on you.

Stuck on you because I had to...I thought there was no one else.

In the darkness of the night,

you kept my soul awake

-- sole caretaker...soul caretaker --

But now that you have run from me

I'm finally free to say goodbye

Goodbye schwag coffee,

I have found another.

Another soul sucking cup of dirt,

though it taste more like volcanic ash

I always thought she was too superficial for me

But now that Starbux stock has dropped below $20/share

She's down to earth enough for me...for me to use

I'll use her and throw her away at $40/share

The way you used me Yuban

Paying it forward with bad karma

one bad taste in the mouth after another

because SBUX frees my soul and my bowel

a symbioses of convenience and temporary relief

forever freed from you, YUBAN, schwag coffee

- J.S. 2008

Today's Proverb

2008-02-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

Via LC DJ Allyn:

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things–your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favorite passions–things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else–the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. “Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers.”

Rusty Gets TEH PUBLICITY!

2008-01-30T22:07:00.000-05:00

Head jawa and co-blogger Rusty Shackleford gets a mention in this Australian article, played up as a 'cyber vigilante.'

One online counter-insurgent who has successfully tracked extremist sites for the past four years told NEWS.com.au like many Western forums the extremist discussions include sharing secrets on how to pirate anything from operating systems to mobile ring-tones.

But the vigilante – a US resident who wishes to be identified only as “Rusty” – said the most common software discussed were image, sound and video editing applications – the sort used to produce propaganda with high production values.

“The quality of the videos and the propaganda is just so much better than it was two years ago,” Rusty said. “They’re savvy - cyber-savvy.”

LOL!

Great Fark Photoshop Thread

2008-01-29T23:51:00.001-05:00

God, I love these things.

The original:

My favorite, among a lot of good candidates:

Unchained Hartnell

2008-01-29T23:19:00.000-05:00

Flyers take sole possession of first place in the Atlantic with a close match-up against the LA Kings.

Scotty "Best January Ever" Hartnell delivered a crushing, sliding goal with 28 seconds left in overtime to give the Flyers the 3-2 win (pic below).

(photo: Ron Cortes, Phila. Inq)

Outstanding. Give 'em their props, commentariat, and don't forget to tack tonight's overtime thriller on to the end of this:

A short word of praise for the Philadelphia Flyers as the NHL schedule resumes again tonight after the All-Star break. No single team did as much to turn around the fortunes of their franchise in the past 12 months as the Flyers did. A year ago, they’d managed just 27 points in 47 games up to this point in the season and were running away with last place in the overall NHL standings. A well-orchestrated trading deadline fire sale, a smart pre-emptive strike before the official free-agent signing period began and then one smart buy on the open market helped them turn it around so dramatically that they had accumulated 59 points in 48 games heading into tonight’s meeting with the Los Angeles Kings – or three more than they accumulated all of last season. The Flyers on an 11-2-1 run, look as if they’re going to make the playoffs; and when they get there, who knows what might happen? It didn’t hurt their cause that a few important pieces of the rebuilding puzzle (Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, R.J Umberger) were already in place before general manager Paul Holmgren began his work, but the Flyers provide a template for how quickly change can happen in the post-lockout, salary-capped NHL – just in case anybody else out there might be looking for a blueprint.

PWN3D!!lol!!1

Ghost Town Being Swallowed by Dunes

2008-01-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

Some travelers visited Kolmanskop, a ghost town in Nambia, that was once a hub for diamond fever in the first part of the twentieth century. As the diamond craze died following World War I, the population of the town slowly dwindled until it was abandoned in the 1950's.

Since then, Kolmanskop has wasted away, being ever so slowly swallowed up in the shifting sands of the desert dunes.

Eerie pictures and video.

Hilarious: Eric Lindros vs. Matt Barnaby

2008-01-27T01:57:00.000-05:00

Barnaby no doubt was asking for it. He's one of an elite group of NHL vets that has spent pretty much every second of his career begging to have his ass kicked.

It's also one of the few times I can remember that I wasn't disappointed in Eric Lindros.

Politics as Prog Rock

2008-01-26T20:17:00.000-05:00

Pretty funny.

Both are pompous self-referential masturbatory activities undertaken by mostly middle-class white boys, which are meaningless and irrelevant to most people.

Though its fans and practitioners believe what they're doing is important and look down upon those who fail to appreciate this, the truth is that anyone with genuine intellect or taste is wholly alienated from the process.

Leaders' speeches or policy initiatives are like 20-minute guitar solos. They are not intended to connect with the outside world, or with facts and ideas, but are merely ways to impress the cognoscenti for a short while.

Although I would surmise that prog is far less damaging to the people than politics are.

Flyers Soar Destroy Life Into First

2008-01-25T00:11:00.001-05:00

Sittin' on top of the Atlantic division going into the All-Star break.

Looking good, boys. Looking good.

Mike Knuble reacts to his third period goal, which turned out to be the difference in a 4-3 win. (Jack Cassidy)

I'm still not sure what we're going to do about the Devils this year, though.

The negative of the Flyers doing so well now is obvious - there is a long way to fall if the dreaded Philadelphia curse sets in on the latter part of their season.

Probably in the second round of the playoffs.

Anonymous vs. Scientology

2008-01-24T23:51:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Here's the video message to Scientology from Anonymous:

---> Original Post --->
There's going to be a lot of collateral damage in this war, but the levels of lulz are going to be well over 9,000.

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the cult of Scientology. If not, watch this South Park.

If you don't know what Anonymous is, all you need to know is that Scientology should be afraid. Very afraid.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Culture Alters Hard-Wiring of Brain?

2008-01-22T00:21:00.001-05:00

A fascinating article about a study which suggested that the structure of the brain is fundamentally affected by one's culture.

Small sample size, though. Grain of salt.

L. Ron Whackaloon

2008-01-22T00:03:00.000-05:00

A document from the Smoking Gun revealing some of the genuine super-creamy peanuttery of the demigod L. Ron Hubbard.

Page Fans Are People,Too!

2008-01-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

My man Page gets some love from ABC News in light of the release of his new album.

PLAY IT LLLLLLEEEEEEOOOOOO!!!

Caught Another Great One Tonight

2008-01-20T23:40:00.000-05:00

Flyers continue their brutally effective ascent up the Atlantic Division ladder with a solid pwning of the red-hot Senators, 6-1.

And I continue this season's unbroken string of attending kick-ass Flyers' victories at home. Here's the Inky's coverage.

I ate lots of peanuts in the upper decks. Good times.

We're Awesome

2008-01-20T14:06:00.000-05:00

Interesting post at Second Hand Conjecture.

If you take the top four biggest economies on Earth (excluding the US) and superimposed them on a map, they'd be roughly equivalent to the GDPs of four regions of the US.

Sweeeet.

One of Us is Over 40

2008-01-20T11:59:00.000-05:00

Always, always have loved Chick, and particularly his ongoing Elekctic Band project. The first album I ever heard or got by this groundbreaking piano genius was the fabulous "Inside Out," which is like a bop ensemble and prog band got into some sort of heavenly car accident.

Simply outstanding stuff. Complex, yet accessible. Tight as a drum. Chops that make you unworthy to touch your instrument.

Just try not to pay too much attention to the fact that the musically adroit band leader has the stage presence of a turnip, and also the fact that they're the worst dressed band in the history of the Earth, Middle Earth, the universe and time.

And for the Akoustic, stripped-down version of Elektric Band with just Chick, John Patitucci and Dave Weckl, dig this smoking reading of On Green Dolphin Street.

New Acquisition

2008-01-11T20:05:00.000-05:00

Barnes and Noble gift cards strike again!

Listening to it now, with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. This show was probably the high point of the "malaisse" period between 12-31-95 and the fall tour of 1997, with the exception of the Clifford Ball shows earlier that summer and the Remain in Light on Halloween.

Great stuff. Lots of Elvis impersonators. Sloppy, loose playing. Genuine rocking during Mike's->Simple->Harry Hood->Weekapaug.

Rock.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T01:32:00.000-05:00

Took a nice night out tonight and went to see The Disco Biscuits at the Tweeter Center in Camden (also known as "Circo Bisco"). Saw my brother there. Rocking show, off the hook energy, and I even saw one hippie get busted in the bathroom doing drugs when some event staff goon wearing a peace sign kicked open the stall door to reveal a dreadlocked mess of a human being doing drugs in the stall.

Good times. Happy 2008.

You know, 2007 was the last year that the United States of America did not have to cope with the possible impending raincloud known as a potential Hillary Clinton presidential run. 2008? No one is safe.

It was nice knowing you. Apologies for the extremely light blogging this year. Lots of changes occured -great new job that requires travel, engagement, plenty of Jawa Reporting, a new membership at the JREF forums that takes a lot of my time, etc.

I'll try to make 2008 a bit more interesting. And as long as we've got these people stealing everyone's oxygen...

...the more entertaining it is for everybody. Cheers!

Three in a Row

2007-12-31T02:06:00.000-05:00

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!11!one!!!
We'll see how long it lasts. They just came back from a six game skid. I've got tix to the 1/20 game against the #1 team in the NHL by far - the Ottawa Senators.

I have faith.

What's Spinning: A Journey Through New (Old) Music

2007-12-30T12:58:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Some of my brethren at Jawa Report are not too keen on the musical selections.

Original post- - - ->

In case nobody's noticed, I've been turning this blog away from the traditional all-politics-and-current-events-all-the-time and towards something more closely resembling my actual existence.

As such, I've picked up oodles of new music over the past few months. Here's a partial rundown of the acquisitions:

Michael Jackson- Thriller

I remember buying this on vinyl at a yard sale down the street one day in yesteryear for one dollar. Needless to say, it was probably the best dollar I ever spent. Used to listen to it nonstop, eventually picked up the audio cassette (remember those?) and wore it out in the walkman. Lost track of it and didn't hear the album for years until a few weeks ago, when I read something about Michael Jackson and thought, gee, I haven't heard Thriller in a long time.

Incidentally, some of musicians on this album also comprise Toto, which also made this list.

Favorite Tracks: Baby Be Mine, Human Nature

Michael Jackson - Off the Wall

More of the same, bought it off iTunes right after Thriller. It's got the tightness and brilliance of an Earth, Wind and Fire album, but with Michael Jackson at the helm. This isn't news to anyone alive during it's hey day, but it's an incomprehensibly well-written and well-executed album. Highly recommended.

Favorite Tracks: Girlfriend, Can't Help It, Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

Genesis - Three Sides Live

Always the sucker for a good live album, I picked this up already a die-hard Genesis fan. Great clean, energetic, precise readings of cuts from Abacab, Duke, And Then There Were Three, Wind and Wuthering, and more.

Favorite Tracks: In the Cage->Cinema Show-> Afterglow, Behind the Lines-> Duchess, One for the Vine

Steve Winwood - Arc of a Diver

While you see a chance take it. I love how he played all the instruments on this album - reminds me of my old music nerd days holed up in my bedroom and a former drummer's kitchen jamming, covering a myriad of contemporary and classic tunes, and spending days mixing epic masterpiece on a Tascam 414 Portastudio.

Favorite Tracks: While You See A Chance Take It, Second Hand Woman, Night Train

Steve Winwood - Back in the High Life

Not much more needs to be said about this excellent disc than "Higher Love," "Back in the High Life," and "The Finer Things." That, and "Freedom Overspill." Well played, Mr. Winwood. Well played indeed.

Toto - IV

I remember buying this album in high school strictly for the track "Africa." I also remember being thoroughly disappointed with the rest of the album, as it turned out to be (what I thought at the time) were cheesy, half-hearted power ballads containing no real cohesion from one track to the next. The years and thousands of hours of listening between now and then have revealed several things. The musicians in Toto, who have played on virtually every great piece of music and every great album that came out of LA in the 1970s and early 1980s, were sick. Jeff Porcaro (the drummer on MJ's Beat It and Heal the World, Steely Dan's Katy Lied album, and countless others), and David Paiche (also played on nearly everything including with MJ, EWF, and many others) were already heroes of mine in high school, and I didn't even know it. They were all, for lack of a better word, PWNAGE. So with hindsight included, the album sounds a lot better today than it did when I picked it up in high school.

Favorite Tracks: Africa, Rosanna, Lovers in the Night

Phish - 8-13-93, Murat Theater, Indianapolis, IN

As a permanent and fervent Phish head, I had to include at least one thing. This was always one of my favorite shows, and I suppose rightly so. It's a legend both in Phishlore and I'd dare say the jamband world in general. I had a fading copy on tape for years, and I finally broke down and bought it. Totally worth it.

Pristine quality and the first and arguably best uber-Bathtub Gin in Phishtory. The whole show is really marvelous - full of reckless musical abandon and forward momentum, it really must be heard end ti end (preferably with a glass or three of a fine merlot) to fully appreciate what is happening on the stage. It is well known among heads that the band had a particularly explosive improvisational year 1993. During the simmer, chaos and insanity reigned down from the Heavens on a nightly basis, and would put later post-hiatus shows to shame. TO SHAME. This show is the perfect representation of this seminal period in the band's storied live history.

Needless to say, I'd recommend this to anybody within any circle, because I think the world musical community has to be made aware of what Phish represented and also what they accomplished. OK. I'm done now.

Favorite Tracks: Bathtub Gin->Ya Mar, Fluffhead, David Bowie

Marillion - Family
Marillion - Friends

This is a double live album from the immortals in Marillion. Friends is a rarities/cover set with some great interpretations of a slew of alt and Brit rock standards. Check out their readings of Elvis Costello's beautiful She Goes On, REM's Everybody Hurts and Britteny Spears' Toxic. The other disc, Family, was designed to be an "ultimate" set of Marillion. It is not the "ultimate" set in my humble opinion, but it is never the less a great set with lots of gems not often played in the Hogarth era (a nice Hotel Hobbies->Warm Wet Circles->That Time of the Night trio makes me warm and fuzzy inside). These are great, high-energy versions of their excellent studio work, with a sprinkle of banter thrown in here and there to make it unique. All in all, a great package here. Can't wait for the new album.

Favorite Tracks: Between You and Me, Splintering Heart, The Great Escape, all

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
Muse - Absolution

Picked these up together in a Muse phase I was going through. I originally heard about this band during my first semester of graduate school when one of my more hip classmates offered a free burned copy of Origin of Symmetry to me. I like it, particularly because of the keyboards.

Absolution and BHaR are even better discs because they take the keyboard, synth and programming colors Matt Belamy hinted at on Origins and push them to their logical extremes. Crashing keys, piano interludes, fuzzy and warm lead parts, and an overall aesthetic of keyboard color and explosive energy surrounding the stripped down trio . The musical ideas bandied about on these two discs are for the most part excellent and fresh. Great band in an age of not-so-interesting pop music.

Favorite Tracks: (Absolution): Time is Running Out, Stockholm Syndrome, Hysteria, Butterflies and Hurricanes, (Black Holes...): Starlight, Map of the Problematique, Assassin, Exo-Politics

Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom

Another legacy of the high school band geek/guitar hero/Final Fantasy era. I just love EJ's attention to detail and sleek production. No nuance on any of his albums is every unintentional, and each album has a pristine, shiny sound to it. This album, as anybody familiar with the genre knows, is a classic and is just fabulous.

Favorite Tracks: Cliffs of Dover, Trademark, Steve's Boogie, Desert Rose

Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World for Tomorrow

I was waiting eagerly for this one to come out, and it did not disappoint. Science fiction plus guitars plus prog tendencies plus manic energy equals Coheed albums, and I really have to get to see 'em live. Like Rush on steroids and with a side of hair metal, this was probably the finest album I heard this year.

Favorite Tracks: all, Mother Superior, Feathers, Gravemakers and Gunslingers

The Church - Priest = Aura

I originally had two more recently released Church albums - Forget Yourself and Uninvited, Like the Clouds - so this one was seemed about right. All available literature about this band, whose prolific career actually stretches back into the early 80's, pointed to a watermark with Priest = Aura. It's got a nice, cavernous sounds. Clean guitars, interesting lyrical content, ethereal ambiance, and ennui, this album has a little bit of everything for the adventurous musical traveler.

Favorite Tracks: Priest, Feel, Ripple

Boyz II Men - II
The soundtrack to a million and a half slow dances in high school, the purchase of this album was the result of a few drinks of wine, reduced inhibition and nostalgia. But you know what? It's really good stuff. The fact that it came straight from Philly is bonus, but this is a really good album with talented musicians. THey don't make 'em like Boyz II Men anymore, and that's a damn shame.

Favorite Tracks: On Bended Knee, I'll Make Love To You, Water Runs Dry, Yesterday (Lennon and McCartney)

Sunny Day Real Estate - The Rising Tide

Rounding out this excursion down memory lane is one of my top 15 favorite albums of all time. This behemoth was given to me half seriously by one of my old fraternity brothers who said something along the lines of "hey - one of my friends gave this CD to me, and I listened to it, and it's like, really good for some reason."

And he was right. I used to have this in the walkman/CD walkman all summer during my first summer at school. I was working in a Center City law firm while blasting this into my cranium to and from work on the Broad Street subway.

Lots of deep textures, crystaline production, entoxicating arrangements, raw power and atmosphere.

Just like real life.

Favorite Tracks: One, Snibe, The Ocean, Television

Booyah!

2007-12-30T01:12:00.000-05:00

So I just picked up this tonight with one of my gift cards from Christmas.

BOOM!

The Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

Tremble before its glory.

This keyboard rules. Not only is it ultra-quiet and mucho comfortable, the keys are placed very naturally to enhance the ease of your new typing experience, but it also has hotkeys that open Internet browsers and whatever programs you sett them to open, buttons that shift back and forth between Internet pages, a slide that allows you to zoom in and out of pages, a button for activating your email mechanism, and has a nice leather strip running across the bottom of the device to rest your palms on. I can also bring up a calculator and control the volume of the computer...FROM THE KEYBOARD.

What now, huh? What you got?

Eric Johnson - S.R.V.

2007-12-20T00:22:00.000-05:00

When Venus Isle came out, I was totally immersed in an adolescent world of guitar heroes, Final Fantasy (II, III and VII) and musical mayhem. This song sends me back to the summer of 1996, when me and a buddy of mine used to go to Manahawkin for a week each summer to rock out at the Jersey shore.

Good times. Nice guitar tone, too.

Game Coverage: I Score Free Box Seats, Flyers PWN Penguins 8-2

2007-12-12T00:01:00.000-05:00

I attended the most smash-mouth, goal-tastic, penalty-laden, Penguin-bone-crushing-brawl of a victory at the Flyers tonight that I've ever witnessed.

And I got it all free - with box seats.

An old fraternity buddy of mine rang me up using our secret "batphone" procedure that serves exclusively as an avenue for him to tell me he's scored premium Flyer's tickets at no cost in the VIP...and I'm there.

8-2. This game had it all. The whole third period was a Penguin penalty (13, to be exact). Two Flyer hat tricks, complete with requisite piles of hats tossed into the rink. 5-minute majors and game misconducts raining down like blood. Goalies getting their legs upended over their helmets - constantly. 156 penalty minutes. Haymakers flying unceasingly through the crisp, Wachovia Center air. Snapping a hot team's winning streak by embarrassing them in an exquisite FAILgame on national television and increasing the Flyers' record against the Penguins at home this year to 3-0. Free box seats.

A magical, brutal, record-breaking night of ice hockey, free of charge. No doubt the wildest game of the year.

FLYER IT UP.

Flyers Warned By League For Being Too Violent

2007-12-03T23:41:00.000-05:00

Hate to 'addaboy unwarranted violence, but in love and the Flyers, the lines are at times blurred:

The National Hockey League said yesterday that it was prepared to discipline Philadelphia, possibly with a hefty fine, if another Flyer needed to be suspended for an illegal hit.

The league suspended forward Riley Cote for three games after he used his elbow to strike Dallas forward Mat Niskanen into the boards during the third period of the Stars’ 4-1 win Saturday.

The suspensions began when Steve Downie drew a 20-game penalty on Sept. 28 for a head shot to Ottawa's Dean McAmmond during the preseason.

That was followed by a 25-game suspension for Jesse Boulerice on Oct. 12 for crosschecking Vancouver's Ryan Kesler in the face. Randy Jones drew two games on Oct. 29 for a hit from behind to Boston's Patrice Bergeron. Scott Hartnell received a two-game ban for a hit on Boston's Andrew Alberts on Nov. 26

Emphasis mine.

A head shot for a 20 game suspension in the preseason?

¡Qué ridículo!

Marillion - The Great Escape

2007-11-15T23:11:00.000-05:00

Great performance of a great song.

Speaking of Rachmaninov...

2007-10-12T23:42:00.001-04:00

Now THIS is my kind of story. Old, but interesting.

A man named John Phillips started off his career as a playing musician, and then took a good paying sales job when he had kids. He also pursued and obtained a degree in philosophy. Fair enough.

One day, while driving down the road listening to Rachmaninov, he decided right then and there (curiously, while sober) to tackle what may the most difficult piece of piano music ever written - the dazzling, shimmering, thrilling and horrifyingly intricate Piano Concerto No. 3. Apparently, the 'Rach 3' (as it's nicknamed) has more notes per minute than any other piano piece in history.

In history. Behold it, if you dare. 136 pages of mind-melting Romantic-era genius.

And it's not just a flurry of runs up and down the ivory with a few schizophrenic passages thrown in for effect. Far from it. Rach 3 is a musical tour de force - an unforgettable aural journey to the farthest limits of the internal sound scape; a veritable post-doctorate examination of the full capacities of a piano; a lush, beautiful, dynamic, terrifying, soul-saving musical experience to behold. Only the most skilled pianists of the 20th century have been able to execute it properly. It separates the masters from the wanna-bes.

So anyway, Mr. Phillips, in an effort to take on this concerto to end all concertos and to establish a permanent life-affirming signpost, takes out a mortgage on his house and buys a Steinway grand (the piano of choice for Rachmaninov). Over the next 18 months, Phillips woke at 5 am each day to practice for two hours and squeezed every other available inkling of time in between job and family practicing and deciphering Rach 3. The culmination of this Herculean effort was a performance of the piece with the Trinity Orchestra.

And to be honest, I don't really know how it turned out. Judging from the continued appearances and concerts documented at his personal website, however, it appears that the Rach 3 adventure Phillips embarked on is paying some dividends.

Well played, sir.

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Mvt. II

2007-10-11T21:46:00.000-04:00

Philadelphia Orchestra
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Piano: Sergei Rachmaninov
Recorded for RCA in 1929

User Update and Random Thoughts on This Rainy Mid-October Night

2007-10-09T23:46:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the scant posting.

I've been a busy and bubbly little beaver over the past month or so. I've been working a lot, traveling, and posting primarily at the Jawa Report. In the course of a month, I was cited on Rush Limbaugh's show, got a hat tip on the Wall Street Journal's Health blog (I post there as "Observer" and was the reader Jacob referred to), railed mightily against the smear machine known as Media Matters, joined and initiated a number of ongoing conversations at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums (primarily concerning matters of anti-9-11-Trooferism, and generally have been having an all around great time. Up early, up late, and plowing ahead with all of the vim and vigor that one would expect from a rambunctious rabble rouser who, to the dismay of nearly everyone in his pathetic little life, never seems to know when to shut up.

And yet, like that little voice that tells you you really should be saving you money and not buying that hamburger, I always want to come back over here to where it all began. I think back to the days when BlogoVault was my primary outlet for political frustrations and ruminations, a repository of blabber about interesting topics, an outpost for fleeting laughs, and a platform for easy access to the most interesting and simultaneously uninteresting pics and vids I could dig out of the vast anarchy that are Man Bear Pig's Intertubes.

I also, with fluctuating amounts of glee and traditional disappointment, watched the Bronx Bombers and the Phillies respectively fail at life and baseball. I hold out hope for Brierre and the Flyers this year, but being that ever-cognizant Philly fan, I'm promising myself - promising myself - not to be too crushed when they cough it up at the end of the year as well. I think I'll try to get to at least one game - a game I'm sure they'll lose. In fact, I don't think the Flyers have ever won a game I attended. Sad, really.

And as I sit here and pound this drivel out on this cool and rainy October evening, I can't help but feel a certain amount of gratitude for every moment I'm alive and chugging along here on this Earth. There's so much left to see and do and to destroy and fatal.

I hope to get pictures of it all - particularly the destruction and fatalities I inflict merely by existing and going about my ways. But it isn't like you care anyway. And for that matter, neither do I.

See you soon.

On 9-11 Truthers

2007-09-04T23:21:00.000-04:00

***Bonus: A lesson in how to take down a 9-11 twoofer in the comments!

I posted most of these comments over at Screw Loose Change, but I wanted to expand them a bit in light of the upcoming anniversary of 9-11.

Conspiracists, particularly of the 9-11 Truther stripe, love to hide behind the flexibility of “just asking questions” and proposing “theories,” which are themselves are not proof of anything or arguments against something.

Interestingly, they fight facts and logic cited to them repeatedly, often with a ferocious tenacity, because when facts and simple logic disprove or blow holes in their carefully laid theories, they take it a personal insult. The theory that they so intelligently, so lovingly crafted in their fevered little brains, when presented with factual reality, is reduced to nothing more than the vapors of an overactive and quite frankly disturbed imagination. Therefore (in their minds), proving them irrevocably wrong is an intellectual embarrassment to a Truther - a crushing hammer blow to their personal self-esteem. After all, they’ve already positioned themselves as your intellectual superior by suggesting that YOU don’t know what you think you know about what happened on 9-11.

This inevitably leads to problems. 9-11 conspiracy theories have no internal consistency. We’ve all noticed time and time again the “leaders” of this conglomeration of fringe individuals have trouble agreeing with each other. The quarrel over details like whether or not there were planes. They disagree on which witnesses are to be trusted (even when the overwhelming majority of them vehemently disagree with any of their versions of events). They bicker over which “experts” are more credible than the others in their “movement.” They ostracize each other from their respective cliques when cognitive dissonance caused by competing theories becomes too great to bear. Egos are constantly at war. The 9-11 Truther cult is quite literally another reality in our midst.

The ongoing evolution of these “theories” is, in large part, logically what discredits them. Take, for example, the following mish-mosh of conspiracy nonsense that has evolved, devolved and otherwise slaughtered its own internal consistency as more facts are slowly (and I emphasize SLOWLY) incorporated into the theories to make them (in the minds of the Truthers) more palatable to the skeptical, rational minds of intelligent people:

There are no planes. There are planes, but they’re remote controlled from pods under their wings. Then they’re not remote controlled (although now you have the hangers-on in both camps), and they’re hijacked. There’s a possibility that space beams and lasers from underground bunkers were controlling them. There was a controlled demolition. It doesn’t matter that no explosives were seen, heard, found, or that they won’t ever be, but it LOOKED like a controlled demolition. But they weren’t hijacked by Islamists. OK- they were Islamists, but they were just the patsies. Well, maybe there were two planes who flew into WTC 1 and 2, but there was a Pentagon missile. We can prove that – ignore the hundreds of witnesses who saw a plane crash into the Pentagon, the giant whole and pieces of fuselage, and the families who heard their loved ones’ final terrified moments from the confines of phone calls – they’re just fakes. Well, maybe they’re real after hearing the NORAD tapes, but flight 93 wasn’t real. I haven’t seen the bodies, so they’re not real. Don’t listen to the coroner who examined the human remains – he’s a government worker. WTC7 was a controlled demolition – it just fell for no reason. OK – maybe fires were raging in it all day, and the debris from the Twin Towers falling on it weakened its unusual structure, but fire can’t melt steel. We know fire has never melted steel. OK – so nobody was actually claiming fire melted steel except for us, but it still isn’t possible that fire caused the for-some-reason-fireproofed steel to lose half of its strength…we have professors who disagree with the “government conspiracy” perpetrated on the sheeple, but we don’t actually agree or even know that the “official government story” is, but David Ray Griffin wrote a book that is as irrefutable as Newton’s law of gravity, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

It just goes on and on and on like that. The eternal game of Truther grab-ass. There is no end to it, because there is no end to the human imagination. The Truther imagination is even more fertile, because it is tinged with paranoia. No matter how many times they’re shown to be wrong and they realize it, no matter how many facts they’re shown and reluctantly (after fierce internal battles) realize that the facts trump their carefully constructed fantasies, no matter how many stupid theories they previously stood behind as if they were gospel, only to shift around later and pretend they never believed them, they will keep going.

All (certainly most) Truthers seem to agree on central, faith-based premises like “BOOSH is evil, the government lies, 9-11 was an inside job,” but they have no real coherent or consistent way to factually prove this (not to mention a limited and selective understanding of contemporary history). With no way to prove what they feel to be true, they resort to forming a belief system devoid of facts, with those empty round spaces ready to be filled with squares, stars and wavy lines feverishly distorted and hammered out of their original shapes in a desperate attempt to make them fill the holes. Quote mining, lying, selective and limited interpretations of information (eg., believing some witnesses while ignoring the majority of others), misleading statements, logical fallacies - they're all the glue holding the good ship Truther together (recently, the fissures and cracks are widening, as the heads of the cult vie for "top Truther"). It would be more amusing to watch than it already is if it wasn't so craven and disrespectful to the victims of 9-11.

And when they have to incorporate facts like (after years of denial) the hijackers were real and were Islamic terrorists, you can almost hear their hearts leap into their throats. That causes a large problem for about one half (or more) of the “movement,” in that 9-11 wasn’t just a figment of their overactive, under-informed imaginations after all.

That blob of 9-11 nutter woo woo I just threw together above is a partial approximation of an ongoing creation dating from the time the smoke was still clearing over Ground Zero until the present day. And while I single our George Bush as a popular object of derision among the Truthers, this nuttery often crosses party lines, or avoids them altogether.

Just remember this. When you see screaming, bull-horn wielding minions of black-shirted automatons on the news this September 11, that theirs is a failed, lying, dishonest, struggling group of intellectually immature individuals who can’t seem to reconcile their discomfort with contemporary world events, history or politics, and who exist in many cases strictly to be contrarian to one of the most heinous crimes in history. There’s a reason their movement is populated to the hilt with Holocaust deniers, moon landing deniers, JFK conspiracists, UFO enthusiasts, disenchanted teenagers and aging black-helicopter loonies.

They want your attention, and latching onto either the most tragic or the most whacked-out occurrences in contemporary culture is their way of getting it. Refute, ridicule and push these morons off of the graves of the 9-11 dead and back to the fringes of society where they belong.

/rant off

If you want to delve further into the facts, I heartily recommend reading through these sites:

James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) 9-11 conspiracy forum (a curse word among Truthers)
Screw Loose Change (great fun and lots of info)
Gravy's 9-11 Research links (the best place to start serious debunking, includes many video links)
Debunking 9-11 (great go-to site)
9-11 Myths (great go-to site)
Journal of Debunking 9-11 (papers by prominent debunkers)
Loose Change Internet Detectives (eviscerates Loose Change)

Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

2007-08-21T01:24:00.000-04:00

Wiccan Arrested for "Practicing Religion..."

2007-08-15T21:18:00.000-04:00

...well, actually, she was building a huge bonfire ten feet from her house while shouting incantations at the New Moon. When neighbors got a tad freaked out, they called the police.

Reality is stranger than fiction:

Neighbors called police shortly after midnight Tuesday and, after an officer arrived, he heard the woman yelling in the backyard and found her wearing headphones, a T-shirt and underwear, the captain said. [...]

He said Barney at one point poured lighter fluid on the fire, in which she was burning rubber car mats and a cooler. Barney refused to cooperate with police and was belligerent, and her breath smelled of alcohol, Babe added

But the kicker doesn't come until the last line of the dispatch:

Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

Respecting the Earth...by burning coolers and rubber floor mats in huge bonfires while screaming drunk inanities.

That sounds about my speed! Where can I sign up for this "religion?"

I leave you with this:

Wiccans, celebrating the Summer Solstice
Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Taliban Website PWN3D

2007-07-31T20:41:00.000-04:00

See those annoying Taliban graphics and pics below? No?

The site they're hosted on got shut down.

Badda-bing, Islamonazis. And there was much rejoicing.

Life Imitating South Park, Vol III.

2007-07-18T18:54:00.000-04:00

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

The left, at the rate of almost several times per month now, is intent on mimicking South Park's proverbial "theater of the absurd" in real life and real time. The episode? Season 5's "Proper Condom Use," in which the school board decides that condom use has to be taught to progressively younger grades to the point that the kindergarteners are learning about it.

The liberals are literally becoming cartoonish parodies of themselves.

Previous entries in the ongoing Life Imitating South Park series:

I. The "Tunnel of Oppression"
II. Ginger Kid Mania!

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

TIME: Democrats "Get Religion"

2007-07-13T00:49:00.000-04:00

More wishful thinking from TIME. Rosie O'Donnell won't be happy to know that her chosen political party has reverted into "radical Christians" that are more dangerous than Al-Qaeda. Amanda Marcotte will likely be flinging sh*t all over the walls at Pandagon on this horrible news, right? Didn't she work for Edwards at some point in the recent....ah, never mind.

Will this apparently "newfound faith" find its way into legislation under the DemCong? Is the Christian fascist state on the rise now? Will the secularists who usually reside at the faith community's throat be agitated to stop the march of religion in politics?

I question the timing (which makes me the ultimate patriot - thanks, Olbermann!). And the veracity of the reporting. And the whole notion that the Democrat Party is more "faith based" than the party which the DNC chairman regularly lambasts in tirades as being in control of what he sees as the nefarious and boorish "religious right."

Just the title of the article suggests that the Democrats have a problem with the religious vote. "Leveling the Praying Field" is intrinsically suggesting that the "praying field (sooo witty)" isn't level. Hence, a much needed biased fluff piece propping up lame Democrat candidates who really don't give a rat's butt about religion, insofar as they can fool you into thinking they do to get your vote.

They've discovered religion just in time for the opening of the 2008 election cycle! Do you believe in miracles, people?

PS - The Silky Pony's hair looks great in that stained glass, doesn't it?

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Are You A Dumb American?

2007-07-10T00:07:00.000-04:00

Take the quiz and find out! I have been determined by said quiz to be a smart American. DUH.

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed.
Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

Jawa Report vs. Taliban Websites

2007-07-09T22:52:00.001-04:00

I'm embedding the following code (pics) in the blog in an attempt to help sap the bandwidth for a Taliban website that Rusty found. As such, the Taliban site doesn't appear to have a lot of bandwidth to go around, and implanting the code on the page will automatically draw bandwidth from their site when you open this site or any other with the code in it. We hope that if several blogs can embed the code, that the lack of bandwidth will shut their site down.

Rusty has been at war with many jihadi websites for some time, and has been quite successful at shutting many of them down.

If you want to put it on your blog, check the page source.

Take this, you seventh-century barbarians!

Happy Birthday, America

2007-07-04T02:23:00.001-04:00

I will always love you.

If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.
- Lord Halifax

Remember and pray for our wonderful Troops.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Life Imitating South Park, Vol. II

2007-06-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

This time, it's the revenge of the ginger kids. Ginger-ninjas (or as Cartman termed them before joining them, "daywalkers"), are apparently a demographic whose existence is a response to abuse at the hands of non-gingers.

The e-mails from the choir built up to a great clamour in the days leading up to the Overture Weekend – the grand-scale reopening celebrations of the Royal Festival Hall earlier this month. “Have you heard . . ?” “Can you believe it?” “Talk about timing . . .” This was in response to the news about a family in Newcastle who had suffered three years of abuse – smashed windows, graffiti, physical attacks – forcing them to decamp from one council estate to another on two occasions, now pushing for a third move, and all on account of their red hair.

One of the more arresting details was that a council officer had apparently discussed the possibility that the family invest in a few bottles of hair-dye. As a ginger-ninja myself, I was appalled at the idea that the solution to being bullied was to change yourself rather than to correct the behaviour of your tormentors.

Score another prophecy for Matt and Trey. Their previously fulfilled prophecy chronicled here at Mein BlogoVault was the existence of the "Tunnel of Oppression."

We need South Park, now more than ever. View the full episode in question here.

Old School Phish Post

2007-06-28T02:25:00.000-04:00

10-31-94 Glenns Falls, NY
Divided Sky

11-16-95 West Palm Beach, FL
Funky Bitch

Bonus: 2-25-93 Miami Beach, FL
Suzy Greenberg

Battle Hymn of the Republic

2007-06-16T00:27:00.000-04:00

The Wilhousky Arrangement I sang in 1998 All State Chorus and again in the 2002 Temple University choir.

Rousing . Love your country. Your ancestors did.

A Hero's Tale: Lone Survivor

2007-06-13T00:52:00.000-04:00

This looks like a great read - the eyewitness, boots-on-the-ground account of a Navy SEAL who participated in Operation Redwing and was the sole survivor of SEAL Team 10's 2005 deployment to Afghanistan. The full first chapter excerpt is here. This particular passage was jumped out at me, written in August of 2003:

I guess by now the issue in the minds of the American public was, Did he have a nuclear weapon, an atom bomb? But, of course, that is not the most significant question. The one that counts is, Did he have a nuclear program?

Because that would mean he was trying to produce weapons-grade uranium-235. You get that from using a centrifuge to spin uranium-238, thus driving the heavy neutrons outward, like water off the lettuce in a salad spinner. It’s a hell of a process and takes up to seven years, at which time, if you’ve had a trouble-free run, you cut off the outside edges of the uranium and there you have a large hunk of heavy-molecule uranium-235. Cut that in half and then slam the two pieces together by high explosive in a confined steel space, like a rocket or a bomb, and right there it’s Hiroshima all over again.

And that’s the issue: Was Saddam spinning for uranium-235, and if so, where did he get the uranium in the first place? And where was he conducting his program? Remember, there is no other reason on this earth to want uranium-235 except to make an atom bomb.

We knew the American intelligence agencies believed he had such a program, that somewhere in this vast country — it’s bigger than Germany, nearly as big as Texas — there were centrifuges trying to manufacture the world’s most dangerous substance.

That was all the information we had. But we knew what to look for, and we would most certainly have recognized it if we had found it. Did Saddam actually own the completed article, a finely tuned atomic bomb or missile? Probably not. No one ever thought he did. But as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once remarked, “What do you want to do? Leave him there till he does?”

You may remember the CIA believed they had uncovered critical evidence from the satellite pictures of those enormous government trucks rolling along Iraq’s highways: four of them, usually in convoy, and all big enough to house two centrifuges. The accepted opinion was that Saddam had a mobile spinning program which could not easily be found, and in fact could be either lost and buried in the desert or alternatively driven across the border into Syria or even Jordan.

Well, we found those trucks, hidden in the desert, parked together. But the inside of each one had been roughly gutted. There was nothing left. We saw the trucks, and in my opinion someone had removed whatever they had contained, and in a very great hurry.

I also saw the al Qaeda training camp north of Baghdad. That had been abandoned, but it was stark evidence of the strong links between the Iraqi dictator and Osama bin Laden’s would-be warriors. Traces of the camp’s military purpose were all around. Some of the guys who had been in Afghanistan said it was just about a direct replica of the camp the United States destroyed after 9/11.

Maybe the libs should just try calling him a delusional chickenhawk warmonger who had no idea what he saw with his own two eyes. They know, after all. And listen to what Lutrell had to say about the CODE PINK-flavored antiwar liberals in this country, who he correctly serves a fine as*whooping:

Looking back, during our long journey in the C-130 to Afghanistan, I was more acutely aware of a growing problem which faces U.S. forces on active duty in theaters of war all over the world. For me, it began in Iraq, the first murmurings from the liberal part of the U.S.A. that we were somehow in the wrong, brutal killers, bullying other countries; that we who put our lives on the line for our nation at the behest of our government should somehow be charged with murder for shooting our enemy.

It’s been an insidious progression, the criticisms of the U.S. Armed Forces from politicians and from the liberal media, which knows nothing of combat, nothing of our training, and nothing of the mortal dangers we face out there on the front line. Each of the six of us in that aircraft en route to Afghanistan had constantly in the back of our minds the ever-intrusive rules of engagement.

These are drawn up for us to follow by some politician sitting in some distant committee room in Washington, D.C. And that’s a very long way from the battlefield, where a sniper’s bullet can blast your head, where the slightest mistake can cost your life, where you need to kill your enemy before he kills you.

And those ROE are very specific: we may not open fire until we are fired upon or have positively identified our enemy and have proof of his intentions. Now, that’s all very gallant. But how about a group of U.S. soldiers who have been on patrol for several days; have been fired upon; have dodged rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs; have sustained casualties; and who are very nearly exhausted and maybe slightly scared?

How about when a bunch of guys wearing colored towels around their heads and brandishing AK-47s come charging over the horizon straight toward you? Do you wait for them to start killing your team, or do you mow the bastards down before they get a chance to do so?

We patriotic men and women are sincerely sorry for the factions of truly braindead liberal morons, sir (too many of whom occupy positions of influence in entertainment, media and government). The sane libs may have honest disagreements, but they're drowned out by the caterwauling of the moonbat brigades. We can never repay you for dealing with what you had to deal with, both here at home and in the sandbox.

Look at what these guys endure just to get to the sandbox as a SEAL. For you and me. Click the link for BUD/S training videos.

Here's an interview with Marcus Luttrell - the Lone Survivor:

Where do we find such men?
Cross-posted at The Jawa Report.

Exclusive: Original Good Lt. Artwork

2007-06-12T01:55:00.000-04:00

Just though I'd share this with everyone and anyone again - I posted almost a year ago, but I thought the blog could use some more color.

Kerry Blogger Courting 9-11 Twooferism

2007-06-10T11:32:00.000-04:00

Another Nutroot tries to mainstream 9-11 conspiracy nonsense. This time, a blogger at The Democratic Daily, with their 'editor' approval, pushes the whackaloon documentary "9-11 Press for Truth," as well as links to a bunch of "sane" websites that have been flayed alive and debunked as the crackpot sites that they are. If you don't like being bukkaked with stoopid (to borrow a phrase from Maddox), don't click the links. If you love that sort of thing, be my guest!

Pat at Screw Loose Change has the lowdown here.

And if you're bored enough to actually try to sit through the nutbar movie, you can see the sourcing problems, factual inaccuracies and WTC7 lies/insanity exposed in all of their moonbatty glory.

The "editor" of this Democrat blog is Pamela Leavey, who describes herself thusly:

Pamela Leavey was a writer for the 2004 JohnKerry.com Campaign Blog from August ‘03 through the 2004 election cycle. She was one of the top three contributors to the Kerry campaign blog.

She also types this in her comment section:

This is one of those things that the average American doesn’t want to know about and the government like so many other things doesn’t want Americans to know about.

I didn’t know Brave New Theaters was promoting this. That means it’s getting a little more attention now. Good deal.

Indeed. Nibbling at the apple, as it were. "Just asking questions."

The flamewar that erupted in the comments between a particularly vile commenter and the regulars is amusing, too. The poster, who goes as "Bohemian Grover," keeps rambling about "the Frankiln case" in between threatening people's families, typing rape fantasies, and...well, just read it for yourself.

The sickness is spreading, and it is spreading among the Nutroot Democrats. Stay tuned.

And don't forget to check out Unfastened Coins, 2d. Ed. The Titanic "official story" didn't go down like you think it did.

UPDATE: The nutter in the SLC thread has been banned and his comments erased. You can still see some of what he wrote from others who copied and pasted his vile filth, though.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Twooferism: Last Refuge of Disaffected Democrats?

2007-06-04T02:26:00.000-04:00

A Nutroot blogger is seen here dipping her toes into the WTC7 waters - the gateway drug of choice for Twoofers. Its too good not to highlight:

We were the victims of a drive-by in-house shooting on 9/11/01 that was perpetrated, orchestrated, and allowed to happen by the very people who now say they’re the only ones to keep us safe. Are we going to take that or are we going to create our own “Reichstag” fire to get what WE WANT, meaning, hit the streets, encircle them where they are, and demand that they get the fuck out of our country and leave us alone!?!

Cindy Sheehan pointed out recently that it’s up to WE THE PEOPLE to take back our country and to demand that it be returned to us in the shape it was prior to the 2000 election. If we want it, we can have it back. Impeaching is what we want, but maybe it would be easier and more Patriotic to concentrate on getting our country back first? The Bushlevics will fight us when we do, but not for long if we overpower them.

Of course, she's never bothered to analyze anything not officially approved by the Twoofer nutbar outpatient ward. That would include scientific analysis, pictures, first-hand accounts of the FDNY, government and engineering reports, rigorous point-by-point debunkings and mainstream debunking publications, etc.

The Twoofer diet - nothing that contradicts this sh*thouse insanity with reasoning, facts and logic. Its not helpful for keeping that nasty cognitive dissonance out of the brain and even worse for preventing ego bruising.

I'll be sure to keep your Paduans informed of other major or minor Nutroot bloggers that appear to be inching closer to the frayed ends of sanity, with special emphasis on those taking the plunge.

ht: Screw Loose Change
Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

Life Imitating South Park (Again)

2007-06-01T23:15:00.000-04:00

Are Trey Parker and Matt Stone prophets?

Some liberal morons at UNLV set up an exhibit they called the "Tunnel of Oppression" to "educate" students with a "multimedia experience" on "their roles" in the oppression of people they've never met and whatever other leftwingnut moonbat macacca they believe.

The kicker? South Park, in a 2002 episode entitled "The Death Camp of Tolerance," parodied liberal hypertolerance (which South Park correctly portrays as intolerance) by making the boys attend a "Museum of Tolerance" after they expressed dismay at Mr. Garrison's increasingly perverted in-school homosexual behavior with Mr. Slave.

The boys were made by the museum guide to go through a "Tunnel of Prejudice," in which racial and ethnic slurs were screamed at the boys in the darkness to make them "feel what it is like to be discriminated against." You can watch the full episode here.

You can't make this stuff up this stuff (as they say), but Trey and Matt have not only found a way to write it, they've found a way to predict with virtual certainty that it will actually happen. Unless the moronic UNLV High Priests of 'Tolerance' were doing a direct take-off of the episode, I think this cements my longstanding belief that Trey and Matt are the two leading anti-PC prophets of pop culture.

Bravo, sirs. Bravo.

ht: Evan Coyne Maloney (support his new documentary, Indoctrinate U., by requesting a screening)

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

The Incompetence of the Bush Administration

2007-06-01T00:22:00.000-04:00

I like George Bush.

I'm not afraid to say it, and I'm not ashamed that I voted for him over the absolute fraud and loser that John Kerry and his minions of braindead 60's wannabe's and retreads in tow represented. The day after the 2004 election was a boisterous and celebratory day for myself and my fellow GOPers here in the Philadelphia area. Watching Kerry get his butt stomped at the polls while CNN tried oh-so-desperately to avoid reporting the Bush victory was truly a moment to savor in my young political life. But like nearly all good things, it doesn't last forever.

Those who know and love me (you proud few) will probably assert that I'm a partisan Bush booster. In some ways, this is true, but I'm not as much pro-Bush as I am anti-leftist. Leftism is alive and well within the Democrat party, and has its insidious tentacles in nearly every formative institution in the nation (TV, mainstream editorial pages and newspapers, movies, public schools, government bureaucracies, etc.) That makes me conservative, but not necessarily GOP (since conservatism, for the literate, is a philosophy and the GOP is a political party).

I like the man personally - his quirkiness, his family values, etc. I like his demeanor, which is usually a mixture of confusion, stoicism and gentle humor. I like how he is demonized in one minute as the stupidest piece of protoplasm that has ever festered upon the face of the planet, and in the next minute seeing the argument swing around to claim that he is a positively diabolical genius capable of executing the most heinous and ingenious crimes the world has ever known.

There are plenty of things that I really don't like. I have been writing at the Jawa Report for some time with mixed degrees of regret that I am on the outs with the GOP and have reverted to Independent status. The immigration debacle, as with many other GOPers, was the straw that broke the camel's back. I have never supported Bush's open borders policy and am well aware of the fact that one can not claim to be a proponent of strong national security while refusing to seal the southern border of the country I don't particularly like his inarticulateness (once amusing, now just frustrating), which has been a stumbling block that has magnified his Administration's problems more and more with the passage of time.

And though it all, there has emerged one word that has repeatedly come to characterize the Administration, however, that unfortunately is quite accurate. Not evil. Not fascist. Not Nazi.

Incompetence. Pure, unadulterated incompetence.

Here is a brief and far from incomplete synopsis of the downward spiral that is the second Bush term, as seen through the eyes of one of his supporters.

It began in earnest with Harriet Miers - an absolute disgrace that luckily he retracted after furious opposition from his own party. Trying to put his Texas buddies on the Supreme Court while thumbing his nose at the conservative voters who had renewed his tenure was quite simply the beginning of the end. Amnesty rumblings and flawed immigration policies followed, with a misguided attempt to subjugate financial management of certain US ports to businessmen in Dubai. Coupled with repeated attempts to block border security and INS reforms (again, in the face of the wishes of the majority of his constituents) kept the approval numbers tumbling.

The CIA leak case, as stupid and trivial as it was, cemented a perception in the American mind that more nefarious things were going on in the Administration than actually were (in Democrat land, perception is reality as opposed to reality itself.) Of course, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson are well-known Democrat operatives and Richard Armitage (a war opponent) leaked Valerie Plame's name, but Scooter Libby's scalp spoke louder than the facts or even the original charges (per usual).

Misjudgments and weak leadership in Iraq have been abound since the boots hit the ground in 2003. A repeated inability/unwillingness to talk to the public regarding the war has characterized the Presidency since day one. Those of use who don't need our hands held to figure out why we need to have a large military presence in the snakepit of the Middle East had no real support in articulating this to masses of people who have been yearning for guidance and explanations of the "it" that must be understood in order to support our military efforts in Iraq. Afghanistan is usually forgotten outright next to Iraq, partially because it isn't violent enough for the media to belittle, and is a smaller (some would argue more justified) operation. I am firmly supportive of the effort in Iraq, but I am less than convinced that Bush has the political will or power to continue fighting it with the ferocity and precision that we all know it requires to be effective. Although the casualty rates are on the historically low side of any major US conflict, the media is determined (intentionally or not) to repeat the chaos ad nauseum and to ignore the progress ad infinitum. That's just the reality on the ground. The Administration has been relentlessly clueless about this, and has been paying the political price on a daily basis as a result.

Bush should have been (and still should be) having a fireside chat with the nation every week, explaining the successes, setbacks and general goings-on in Iraq so that he can bypass the media reporting on the issue to speak directly to the population. We all know there is a large segment of the population that tuned him out starting in 2000, but I'm reasonably certain that the rest of the nation would appreciate some reassurance and perceived candidness about this fight. Bush has been a weak wartime leader. He hasn't retreated outright (to his credit) and has honestly tried (IMHO), although he seems to be looking for a way out in the near future. He succeeded in ousting Hussein and crushing the Ba'athists. He has failed to flood the zone with the full strength of the military and control the country (or to control the infiltration of Iran, which has been the catalyst for the ongoing violence for the duration of the war). I'm not saying that the country is blowing up, because a third grader can figure out that one car-bomb in a country the size of California doesn't mean that the entire country has been engulfed in flames. Just as murders in and around our major cities in the US on a daily basis does not indicate a massive slip into anarchy for the whole country, the same applies to the pockets of terrorist violence in Iraq. I can fully understand (through years of formal media education and from analyzing news coverage) why people feel this way, but cultivation theory suggests that this is an unfortunate by-product of today's news reporting. That's just a fact.

All this said, I have basically had my fill of defending George Bush. I had hoped that he would find a spine or a pair of brass ones in the past few years, but the immigration rhetoric and stupidity we are witnessing in Congress and from the White House has caused me to lose all faith that the man and his people are not completely and utterly tone-deaf as to the wishes of those who have been taking his arrows for all of these years.

I will not join the impeachment train. I will not take part in the high-school-crap-flinging that has become the hallmark of the Democrat Party voters. I will stand firmly with our military and their mission. But I have lost a lot of faith in the leader, who has even partially abdicated his Constitutional duties to a "war czar" (whatever the f*ck that is). It pains me to say it, but Bush and me are history. Maybe time will put him into perspective. Maybe a lunatic Democrat Congress/White House bitch combo-plate will shock the nation back into reality as to how badly it is being screwed. Maybe Bush will grow a spine and win back my blessing in the waning years of his tenure.

But I doubt it, given the totality of what I've seen.

So President Bush - I love you, man, but you've been barking up the wrong trees and backing the wrong horses for quite some time now; it is simply too pervasive not to notice anymore. Stay classy, support the Troops, and take a looong vacation in 2009. I'll be waiting to read your memoirs. You're a good man in a bad situation, and that's a sad thing to witness in real time.

Good night, good luck, and God bless you, W.

Blogger Being Sued For Reporting Public Information

2007-05-27T23:47:00.000-04:00

Here's some red meat for your Memorial Day.

A blogger is being ordered by a Cease and Desist notice to take down a posting on his website that an offended Muslim. Pam at Atlas Shrugs has the lowdown, including a reproduction of the post from the offending website. For the original post, scroll down here to the story entitled "Tampa Used Car Dealer Tied to Islamic Jihad / US Federal Court Order."

The story is this (as reported by the blogger, who is a private investigator named Bill Warner):

The owner of a Tampa car dealership, Mr. Abdul Dabus, has allegedly been laundering money through the international sale of automobiles from his dealership (shipped to and sold in the Middle East) to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Mr. Dabus was for years an instructor at the Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF), which was barred from receiving taxpayer funded vouchers in 2003 after being named in a 50-count indictment as an American base of support for terrorist activities in the Middle East (particularly by PIJ). According to a 2005 court document, Mr. Dabus (who has a strangely suspicious working knowledge of terrorist leadership in the Palestinian territories) was called to testify in a trial against convicted terror supporter and IAF leader Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian pled guilty in March 2006 to a count of supporting terrorism. He is currently serving a 57-month sentence and will be deported from the United States.

The Tampa Tribune published an article in October of 2005 with this interesting passage:

Dabus said he and Al-Arian had been friends for years but grew closer after he moved to Tampa in 1999 and took a job at a private school run by Al-Arian. He spoke succinctly and said he did not want to be in court. He said he was not a member of the Islamic Jihad but, as a Palestinian, supported those who fought Israeli occupation.

"This trial should be in Tel Aviv," he said, "not here."

Still, Dabus verified a number of code words prosecutors have said the defendants used in their conversations. Among them, "the guys" is a reference to Islamic Jihad members, "the interior" means the occupied territories and "Moussa's group" refers to rival terrorist group Hamas.

Get all that? The car dealer, who supports PIJ in deed and mission, who was teacher at a terrorist-supporting Islamic Academy in Florida, and who was a close friend and associate of a convicted terrorist currently in prison and awaiting deportation, is trying to sue a blogger for defamation for pointing all of this out.

In order for defamation to stick, the allegations must be untrue and must be intentionally published with knowledge of their falsity. Should the 'defamatory statement' (not specified by Mr. Dabus, presenting a weakness in his case) be false, he in his capacity as a private individual would only have to prove negligence of the blogger to collect compensatory damages (punitive damages don't apply here, being that the information is not malicious or recklessly published with knowledge of falsity). There are also many defenses against a charge of defamation: truth, fair comment, opinion, privilege, good faith statements (made with reasonable expectation of their truth by the defendant, etc.)

In America, the burden of proof generally lies with the plaintiff, since that pesky little thing called the First Amendment has to be protected and outweighs a alleged terror supporter's right not to be offended by citing public documents showing his support for Islamic terrorism.

While Pam is correct to point out that this is an important case to watch for anti-Jihad bloggers, I think that Dabus is fighting an uphill battle here. Not only is he trying to silence a blogger via legal intimidation (which more often than not goes spectacularly bad for the censor), but the facts and history that are readily available to those who are willing to look for it are simply not on his side. Fweh. We'll see.

Keep your ears and eyes open for more stories like this, as this is likely going to be another test case for legal jihad against critics of terrorism.

If we're really lucky, we'll get a Cease and Desist order at the Jawa Report. We're not usually that lucky, but you never know.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

I'm Back!

2007-05-27T23:10:00.000-04:00

Knocked down a peg in the TLBB system, but not beaten!

I have been extraordinarily busy over the past few months. Sparing you the boring details, I am ready to continue on my never-ending quest to sift through my own mind to see what nuggets I can pan out.

And for those who know my work, I have also been pretty busy writing at the Jawa Report during the past few months (over the past year, actually). I will continue to push back the frontiers of ignorance there as well, but seeing my precious personal blog go to waste after so much time and effort had been poured forth into it seemed like...well...a waste.

So tell you're friends! Mark your calenders! Throw the hot dogs on the grill!

Mein BlogoVault is back, babeee!

I'll give you a few minutes to catch your breath and calm your unbridled anticipation.

There you go, now. Isn't that better?

The Dude abides.

2007-04-17T04:25:00.001-04:00

Friends, Allies, Detractors, Readers, Well-wishers, One, All

2007-03-20T14:10:00.000-04:00

I have decided to take a hiatus here at Mein Blogovault.

Reasons?

1. School time.
2. 1,430 posts since December 20, 2004 is a pretty good start.
2. I want to revamp the site template when I get some spare time - perhaps a new platform/look is in order.
3. Jawa Report suits my rapid-fire, high-impact blogging needs (heh) quite well. Thanks, Rusty. Ya Bastard.
4. I want to clean up and polish my writing, expand the form a bit, and do the more measured "in-depth" thing.
5. I need to play more piano.
6. Impending busy times (school, work), a wedding, etc.
7. I like blogging, but I love life.
8. Feel free to plug in random words and phrases into the search field at the end of the sidebar if you're bored.
9. Leave all suicide notes and desperate pleas for reconsideration in the comments.
10. Visit the sidebar links to infotain yourself.
11. Glenn Greenwald is overrated.

Thanks for your readership. You can find me at the Jawa Report, if both of you awesome readers care. I've set the template to allow full view of the most recent 150 posts here. Have at it, chums.

Mein BlogoVault shall return.

Off Tempo, Vol. I

2007-03-13T13:03:00.001-04:00

~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~&#~

In Which I Pw3n an Environmental Activist

2007-02-28T03:32:00.000-05:00

Read it all here.

Thoughts: Drudge, Hypodermic Needle Theory & 'The Drip'

2007-02-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at The Jawa Report.

There's a case to be made the Drudge helped tank the markets today, particularly when thinking about information/news sensitive environments like the market floors.

Interesting if you're one of those types who believes the "hypodermic needle (strong effects)" theory of communications - namely, that the transmission of a message on a widely read and relied-upon source (usually a news source) will have a strong impact on the receivers of that message.

By the same token, the overall MSM coverage of the war in Iraq has had a negative net impact on the opinions and perceptions of many Americans regarding the daily events taking place there. Individual stories are not enough to do it alone. This is not to say that covering the markets is exactly like covering a war, but I would surmise that market reporters at least report positive developments in the markets from time to time without hesitation. So in terms of general news practice and protocol, there is an imbalance coming out of Iraq in the coverage.

The aggregation of the drip-drip-drip is what killed the public support of the war. The negative effect was not as instantaneously felt or as potent this time as it was when TV nightly news was in its "Uncle Walter" infancy (and before 24-7 ~~repetition of newspaper headlines~~ news networks) during Vietnam era. It is also inevitably true that bureaucratic and political mismanagement from all sides of the aisles has prevented the war from being executed in a more precise and efficient manner, but you go to war with the "slam dunk" Intel agencies, "Peace Dividend" military and Marx-lite Political Parties you have, not the ones you want.

A balanced drip, with positive (or even the seemingly mundane "everyday Iraqi/American troop interactions" angle reported with equal ferocity and breathlessness as the bad news), would perhaps have yielded a more moderate divergence on the collective public perceptions of the war. Fweh. Childish fantasy.

Instapunk had a great post on this sort of thing all the way back last May, dubbing it the "water torture" effect of negative media coverage. He also asserted that (for better or worse) the MSM were winning. In many ways, he was right. Here's the nut:

It doesn't have to be true, it doesn't have to be fair, it doesn't have to be consistent in its terms. All that matters is that it is repeated with uniform constancy: drip, drip, drip. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. Change the headlines, seem to change the subject. Abu Ghraib. European disdain. Tom Delay. Katrina. Deficits. Valerie Plame. Gas prices. Karl Rove. Death in Iraq. Angry mothers. NSA wiretaps. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, the lede is always the same. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. Forget the good news, bury the accomplishments or ignore them altogether. Drip, drip, George W. Bush is no good, George W. Bush is no good, George W. Bush is no good.

It took the MSM three years to bring George W. Bush's approval ratings down from their post 9/11 high to 52 percent on election day 2004. It's taken them just 18 months [corr. per Tim] to bring him down another 20 to 25 points. They never forgot their mission. While the princeling bloggers pissed and moaned about Harriet Miers, and immigration, and federal spending, the MSM kept on dripping out its one story, and now they are within reach of their goal -- Democrats restored to the majority in both houses of Congress and the stage set for the vengeful impeachment and dismissal from office of the most courageous president in modern times.

The hypodermic needle theory in effect requires a somewhat passive audience to be completely relevant, but it is just something interesting to think about. Instapunk made that call six months out from the elections. The only part of that dire scenario that has not yet materialized are the impeachment hearings (and the lack of total Democrat control of the Senate).

It is here, perhaps, that an "echo chamber" or an alternative "hypodermic needle" theory can be explored - the aggregate effects of negative media coverage on long-term and complex stories, can have strong effects on active audiences when given enough time and freedom to do so. It doesn't have to be intentional - it is simply a daily routine of one news organ (the NYT) leading another (WaPo), which in turn both lead the tone and content of other main players (CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX, etc.). By the time you see it on the news, it has already undergone revisions, filtering and editing by staffs of editors; pardon this media specialist if he asserts that pertinent information is often lost in the transfer between formats. Every day.

The dextrosphere can claim scalps of the more obviously biased and unprofessional here and there - even big fish like Dan Rather and Eason Jordan - but most Americans don't read blogs. Old media dies hard.

A finer man once said that "[a] lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants." Man, was he ahead of his time.

Two Fresh Democrat Failures

2007-02-27T09:52:00.000-05:00

Nanci Pelosi is failing to deliver on all of those lofty, nuanced campaign promises. Among them, a five day work week.

They also can't figure out what to do about Iraq - hence, they are just now realizing that they never had a plan. Even a flawed plan is still a plan. The Democrats ran on the exact opposite of "the plan," and now that they've been given a narrow majority, they don't want to actually do anything.

Apparently, platitudes and screaming in the streets with the pot-banging brigades wasn't a warplan. Gee. Whoda thunk?

If the war is lost at this point, it is owned solely by the Democrats in Congress.

One for the Vine

2007-02-27T02:46:00.000-05:00

Post-Gabriel, progressive pre-pop Genesis. The heady stuff.

What Happens When Bush is Gone?

2007-02-24T09:29:00.000-05:00

Its gonna be like a bunch of crack addicts without their daily fix, running around in an amusing yet debilitated state of confusion. I predict massive bouts of depression, widespread questioning of the validity of life, and drug relapses.

This Salon article (painfully revelatory and candid/casual) goes miles to validate and vindicate the criticisms of many critics.

Maybe we Bush-haters are extreme and obsessive. But Bush made us this way.(ed. - Blame shifting? Check.) We didn't want to hate (ed. Hate? Check.) the guy -- he left us no choice. And the respectable people calling for us to calm down and go to our rooms are the same good Germans who somehow didn't notice he was taking us down the garden path to hell.(ed. - Violation of Godwin's Law? Check.)

But after the high-fives, the partying, the Red Auerbach victory stogies and the cries of "Thank God almighty, we are free at last" have faded from the land, we'll be faced with a whole new landscape -- not just political but psychological. (ed. - realization that they may be totally insane and they don't care? Check.) And I suspect we're going to have a serious Bush hangover.

Gee. Ya think?

Who would've guess that living on years of visceral hate for a distant object of derision you've never even met might yield mild psychological damage? Surely not I, nor others.

Cross-posted at the Jawa Report.

WaPo Slams Murtha Again

2007-02-23T15:43:00.000-05:00

The centrist Democrats apparently aren't happy with Murtha's heavy-handed approach to slowly bleeding the troops in Iraq.

Gotta hand it to the Post - they have their agandas, but they're staying on this weasel.

WaPo Slams Murtha

2007-02-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

Even a liberally inclined Washington Post can see through Murtha's small brained, loud-mouthed BS:

Mr. Murtha has a different idea. He would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops. In an interview carried Thursday by the Web site MoveCongress.org, Mr. Murtha said he would attach language to a war funding bill that would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and prohibit units from shipping out if they do not train with all of their equipment. His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to "stop the surge." So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill -- an action Congress is clearly empowered to take -- rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. "What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with," he said.

Mr. Murtha's cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq "would be more stable with us out of there," in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce "massive civilian casualties." He says he wants to force the administration to "bulldoze" the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to "get our troops out of the Green Zone" because "they are living in Saddam Hussein's palace"; could he be unaware that the zone's primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?

It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership. Yet when asked about Mr. Murtha's remarks Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support. Does Ms. Pelosi really believe that the debate she orchestrated this week was not "the real vote"? If the answer is yes, she is maneuvering her party in a way that can only do it harm.

That's a warning shot across the Democrat bow from one of their own - it translates to "you'd better get these bloviating and ignorant anti-war nutjobs under control, or its gonna be a real short majority."

Graveyard Mountain Home - Chroma Key

2007-02-15T23:58:00.000-05:00

Here's a review of this album I wrote at Prog Archives. I've been letting it creep into my subconcious for a while now, and I reccomend this album for a somber and original listening adventure.

Fitznothing: The Strange Anti-Climax of the Libby Trial

2007-02-13T10:56:00.000-05:00

Howie Kurtz and a HuffPo lefty lament the passing of the Libby trial:

That pffft you hear is the sound of the air going out of the Scooter Libby trial, at least for Nora Ephron:

"The Libby case was the real deal. The Libby case had legs. The Libby case was about WMD. The Libby case was going to be the truth about this White House -- about its obsession with spin, its gift for pulling focus, its pathological use of lies as a means to war. What's more, if we could just find out who was responsible for the orchestration of the leak of Valerie Plame's name, it seemed clear that it might turn out to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of the Bush Presidency, a mystery that lingers even now: Who is President? Who is running this country? Truly we have no idea . . .

"In the months when the case became a prosecutorial fishing expedition, we all had some hope that in the end Karl Rove would end up on the hook. (This seemed especially important at the time, may I remind you, because we believed that if we didn't get rid of Karl Rove before November 2006, the Republicans would once again win a rigged election. Hmmmm.) For a minute there, we even dared to dream of bringing down the big Kahuna, Dick Cheney. But the smoking gun never really materialized, and the trail instead led to Dick Armitage. The wrong Dick.

"So now, almost two years later, we are stuck with a perjury case against Libby that never broke out of the Beltway; what's worse, it's ended up seeming to be mostly about journalism and journalists -- a subject that is more boring to the country than tertiary sewage treatment plants."

So much for the notion that Russert et al. are big stars.

Indeed. I told the MSM (quite expertly, if I do say so myself) this would happen here, here and here.

It was never about facts - its was always about "getting BushCo."

You can't play fast an loose with facts and truth in court, and the journalists in this were no doubt counting on the idea that their slanted coverage would force a wave resignations and investigations rather than become an all-out legal war against a White House staffer with journalists subpoenaed as central witnesses for the defense. I don't know what they honestly expected to happen. Told ya so.

Maybe they should stop trying to "get BushCo" and just stick to reporting the facts .

coughBERGERcough

Steely Dan

2007-02-12T14:15:00.000-05:00

Janie, Runaway -> Piano solo -> Josie. A note-perfect performance.

P&T: 9-11 Conspiracy Theories Are Bullsh*t

2007-02-11T11:42:00.000-05:00

Awsome.

'Postmodernism, Terry Eagleton Che Guevera T-Shirts'

2007-02-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

A great post by David Thompson. Some of it is grad-school-ish theory; its a good thing.

[...] postmodernism feels to many people like one of those loyalty-treachery markers, one of those with us or against us things. It feels like something 'we' are supposed to defend and 'they' are supposed to attack. That's bizarre, for a lot of reasons, one of which is that there really is nothing inherently 'left' about postmodernism, and it's a rather dangerous mistake to think it is, which is part of our point. Postmodernism serves a reactionary agenda at least as well as it serves a lefty one, as Meera Nanda, among other people, has pointed out. But such things are bizarre, and that's how it is: to many people pomo simply is that kind of shibboleth and therefore Why Truth Matters must be a neocon rant. The words 'critique of postmodernism' trigger in susceptible people a kind of bristly, wounded loyalty, and that's that.

To be a bit brutal for a moment, I have to say that people who think that really haven't been paying attention. The left is teeming with people who are fiercely opposed to epistemic relativism and fluffy 'all knowledges are equally valid'-ism - people who are well aware that that kind of thing is just as useful to religious bigots and warmongers as it is to leftists. It was a member of the Bush admin who referred pityingly to critics as the reality-based community, after all.

Derrida was such a little wanker.

Lessons: The Cooling Earth

2007-02-11T01:11:00.000-05:00

Newsweek, April 28, 1975. (pdf)

Learning is fun.

Marillion: Neverland

2007-02-09T09:15:00.000-05:00

One of the most amazing bands on this planet or any other. I'm totally stoked for the new album.

This is a powerful performance.

Instrumedley

2007-02-04T02:46:00.000-05:00

One of my absolute favorite bands of all time EVER. Watch them shred the old-school material - the stuff I was dorkily rocking out to in high school.

Start practicing. You aren't worthy.

Pennsylvania's Culture of Corruption

2007-02-04T00:38:00.000-05:00

A Democrat fixture in Philadelphia prepares to go down - hard. A "big fish," as it were.

PA State Senator (and "Democratic powerbroker") Vince Fumo will face the music this coming week for corruption:

Sources tell Action News the 6-term state senator will be charged with corruption relating to a charity called The Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.

FBI and IRS agents have been investigating how contributions to the charity were spent. They allege that Fumo used millions of dollars from the charity for his personal and political purposes.

The indictment, which is expected as early as Tuesday, caps a four-year federal investigation of the democratic senator, one of the most powerful politicians in Philadelphia.

The good thing about living in a heavy blue area is that when corruption and other charges fall, they almost always fall on Democrats. The morons around here keep voting for them anyway, but its fun to watch some of these preening, pompous Tamanny Hall-style Democrat assmonkey criminals bite the dust once in a while.

Keeps us all entertained while we're huddled inside waiting for the end of the sub-zero "global warming-induced" windchills.

Also posted at The Jawa Report.

The Untimely End of the Joe Biden 2008 Presidential Bid

2007-01-31T12:12:00.000-05:00

Presidential material.

Here's the quote:

'I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy'...

What about the rest of African Americans, Mr. Biden? How do you see them?

Is it the same as the way you see Indian Americans, Joe Biden?

In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

I think we're noticing a pattern here. Apart, of course, from Biden opening his fat mouth and dogcrap falling out onto the populace.

Hypocracy squared. Macacca!

The Antidote To the ACLU: Antonin Scalia

2007-01-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

Watch Antonin Scalia slap around an ACLU yenta. Its like watching "a big cat batting around a ball of yarn."

Part I:

Part II:

Great MST3K

2007-01-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

Space Mutiny.

Drudge Report Turns 9

2007-01-19T07:29:00.000-05:00

A tribute to Matt Drudge.

The dispatch that shook the world and doomed Clinton's presidency.

~ Taking a break. School. ~

2007-01-18T14:09:00.001-05:00

I leave you with the sounds of Vangelis. I liked this album.

That, and global warming from outside my pad today: