Rule#152 is my favorite

A message from the Nobel Prize Committee

Just for Our Man in Abiko


Disclose.tv Monty Python goes hard on Henry Kissinger Video

By the way, this post has the distinction of being post #1,500. Another milestone reached, hurrah!

A mysterious visitor from the east

He's wise, he's wonderful, he's that super sultan from the east and former travel agent from Washington D.C. - Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Karnac the magnificent!

I hold in my hand the question that has been placed in an envelope which a child of four could tell is hermetically sealed. It has been stored in a mayonaisse jar on Funk and Wagnalls porch since noon. What is the answer to this question, oh great seer from the east?

One is a pastime in which the participants take a standard vehicle, modify it until it is almost unrecognizable and then race around and around in a circle making a lot of noise and exciting the crowd of spectators, many of whom may not know much about the mechanics of the thing and are secretly hoping for a crash. The other is a big stock car race in Florida.

(Riiiiiip)

What is the difference between wingnut blogging and the Daytona 500?

Hiyoooooooo! Play us out, Doc Severinson....

And what did you do before breakfast today?

Because Barry Hussien MalcomXstalinhitlermugabemarxlenin Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Apparently he got for saying nice things about peace and international cooperation and basically repudiating American exceptionalism the last eight years.
Frankly, I think it is a bit premature to be handing out peace prizes before there is any actual peace happening, but if they can give it to Kissinger for extending ending the Vietnam War, I guess this is kosher.
This is the third Nobel Peace Prize handed out as a "fuck you" to the Bush Administration, after the awards to Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. I don't see that as a bad thing, but it does seem a bit excessive.


That sound you hear like popcorn popping is wingnut heads a'splodin' .

From the Dept. of Sober Second Thought

From my comments at Our Man in Abiko: my first reaction when I saw this on the wires at work was that we would see a retraction and correction in a matter of minutes. It was sort of a "they gave it to who? for what?

I get the whole "ending American exceptionalism" thing and the whole "let's ditch the nukes" thing, but I'll believe that when I see some missiles getting dismantled and the US insisting that Israel obey the UN. I'm not holding my breath. I could see it a couple of years from now if and when he's ended the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, but this seems to be jumping the gun a bit.

Still, if they must hand this out every year, I suppose there are worse choices. As far as I know, all you need to get nominated is a letter from a sitting member of a national legislature, so I think we can assume that George W.Bush, Dick Cheney and Vladimir Putin were among the more than 200 nominees.

The interesting part now will be seeing how he handles it. What charity will the money be given to? Will he attend the award ceremony and give a speech? Will Rush Limbaugh have a stroke on the air?

An armed society is a polite society?

Another couple of responsible gun owners killed.
I suppose we should be grateful it happened at home and not at one the kids soccer games to which Mom regularly brought a sidearm.
How long before the firearms fetishist choir declares "she'd still be alive if she'd spent more time on the range practicing her quick draw" or "if the kids had been packing too, they could have stopped Dad!"

Why cops don't belong in schools

My only question about this incident is why it took so long to happen.

Teens question authority. It is what they do, it is practically hardwired into the DNA. Putting an authority figure in their way for no good reason is just asking for trouble. If that authority figure is a coach or a teacher or a vice principal, even one with a chip on their shoulder, they are at least used to dealing with kids. A police officer may not be as experienced in dealing with kids. And one that decides to arrest a teenager for making "bacon" jokes or being a smart ass, is not someone who should be working in a school.

Who is the cop supposed to be protecting the students from? And who is protecting the students from the cops?

More cover-ups for the higher-ups

My guess would be that, as in most government scandals, the big problem here is not going to be the initial misconduct by some underling, but the subsequent bullshittery by the government in trying to hush the whole thing up.

Obviously, at some stage someone in the chain of command figured out a mistake had been made in handing over prisoners to the Afghans, and obviously they reported it to someone higher up who was eventually told it was not a problem, when it very much was a problem. The question is: Who was the amoral idiot who decided it wasn't a problem to hand prisoners over to be tortured, and how high up in the government ranks are they? Given the steps being taken to squelch this investigation, I think we can assume it was someone fairly senior, possibly Cabinet level.

The government is doing its best to delay things until they can appoint a new commissioner to the Military Police Complaints Tribunal when the current chairman, Peter Tinsley, reaches the end of his term in December. And they will probably manage to succeed and appoint some useful idiot to shut down the inquiry once and for all.

Which will probably lead the whistleblowers to take the case to the public in bigger and better ways. Eventually, even if it has to wait for a change of government, the truth will out, but it isn't going to set anybody free in this case, except in the sense that they will be free from being tied down to a government job anymore.

Our own little Nixon

Lots of fuss in the blogosphere about Steverino's big singing debut. Pale makes some nice points with a pop-up version of the video here.
Last year, big gala's were "elitist" and Steverino was hot and heavy to chop all the arts funding he could get away with. Now, he's appearing on stage with Yo Yo Ma at the National Arts Centre Gala? Well, his wife is the honorary chair of the event, so I suppose it makes some sense, but just to be clear about his feelings for the arts, Steve left the building before the event was over and went tieless to the blacktie event. When was the last time you saw him without a yoke of the corporate oppressor necktie?

Oh yeah, now I remember...



And how did that work out for ya Steverino?

This whole thing is just another sweater vest moment and it won’t work any better than it worked for Nixon. The people who like Harper are the same people who liked or would have liked Nixon and they like him for the same reasons – because he’s mediocre, just like them. They hate anyone smarter, better educated, better looking or more talented than they are and so they loved Nixon because, just like them, he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin and lacked any social graces at all. (See Rick Perlstein's Nixonland for myriad examples of Nixon being Nixon - Steverino is Nixon writ small)
They don’t like anyone different from themselves and they don’t like new ideas or change.
Read any posting on any Blogging Tories blog - its all about the resenting anyone different, anyone that they think is getting something that they aren't getting. And that, and fear of The Other, is what conservatives have been running on for the last 50 years.

That’s why they like guys like Steve. But you have to ask why they feel they need to sell this idea that he’s human. Why are they trying so hard to convince us that he’s a regular guy?
If he was a great piano player or singer, his advisers never would have let him do this--he'd look like an elitist, a star. Since he's merely adequate, he looks like a "regular guy" instead of the awkward, narcassistic, power-hungry, control freak that he is.


When I saw Harper at the piano keyboard, I immediately thought of Nixon, but Red Tory beat me to posting the video



Plus ca change, plus ca meme frickin' chose

Dept of "I'm not saying he is, I'm just saying" --Could it be that Harper is actually an android fuelled by the succulent flesh of tiny babies? Why doesn’t Stephen Harper, if that is his real name, level with Canadians and deny his baby-eating and the accusations that he’s really an android?