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Archive for the 'I Pity the Fool' Category

Tis Pity He’s a Bore

Posted by scott on August 1st, 2010

I’m sure you remember RenewAmerica’s A.J. DeCintio, the retired teacher who “first exercised his polemical skills arguing with friends on the street corners of the working class neighborhood where he grew up,” and who now makes a living as a model for Take a Lap!, the fashion catalog for men who want to look like a middle school P.E. coach.

Liberals discover the root of evil

Pity the perverse loves.

Um…okay.

Why?

Oh — it’s a question?  I thought “Pity the perverse loves” was either an aphorism your grandma stitched on a sampler; or maybe it was Rerun’s hilarious catchphrase from What’s Happening Now!!

Well, while most of us agree with our ancestors…

I don’t.  My ancestors were jerks.

…who, for millennia, recognized them as roots of iniquity, liberals and other Democratic leaders have given them the boot, claiming to have discovered “the” root of all evil (and it’s not money).

Why are definite articles all so “ironic” nowadays?  Anyway, as our ancestors always said, don’t boot “the” root.

Before I reveal this singular, frightening reality the nation’s self-anointed paragons of rationality profess to have uncovered, I’ll list some other things it is not.

And you’ll want to stick around until he reveals “this,” because as Coach DeCintio tells us in his bio, he “he now applies those [polemical] skills, somewhat honed and polished by experience, to social/political affairs.”  Let’s watch him polish.

It is not the world’s dictatorial, murderous Marxist heroes, madman Mao, for example, whom an Obama appointee praises as one of her favorite philosophers.

Turns out, it was Madman Muntz.  And while he’s not one of Anita Dunn’s favorite philosophers, he can get you a better deal on a 4-track car stereo.

But never mind that — there’s still more stuff it’s not!

It is not the immorality of the generational theft that has characterized the federal government’s budgets for 50 years.

Coach DeCintio has inspired me to come clean and admit something that has always shamed me.  When I was 11-years old, I was busted for shoplifting a generation from the A&P.  But since it was just that whiny Generation X, they let me off with a warning.

It is not the danger of change agent Obama’s program to double the national debt in the next eight years.

I hadn’t heard about that program; I guess Obama must be a secret change agent.

It is not the cowardice and duplicity exhibited by post-everything Obama as he refuses to say exactly what tax increases and entitlement decreases will be necessary to avoid the disastrous explosion just mentioned.

He’s post-everything?  Post-Apocalypse?  Post Emily?  Postum?

It is not the dangers to freedom and prosperity inherent in the liberal/Democratic love of centralized power.

It’s the humidity.

It is not the tyrannically insulting unfairness of the “Louisiana Purchase,” the “Cornhusker Kickback,” the “Union Payoff,” and the hundreds of other abominations

Look, I’m sure your wife appreciates the effort, but if it’s making you feel that inadequate, just stop reading the Redneck Kama Sutra and go back to the “Missionary Position.”

It is not the democracy and Constitution scorning notion advanced by Nancy Pelosi and her gang that a piece of legislation can be “deemed” passed

“Excuse me, Miss…Where are the scorning notions?”
“Third floor, next to the contumely and linens.”

It is not the ugly, human rights hating nature of the ethos promoted by Islamist psychopaths.

But it is ……………….. Fox News.

Would that be “the” Fox News?  And who knocked over my jar of ellipses?

They quote from former DNC chair Howard Dean, who declared that FNC’s coverage of the Sherrod firing “was absolutely racist” and then (in English perfectly worthy of a raving buffoon) went on to condemn the network for “pushing a theme of black racism with this phony [emphasis added] Black Panther crap and this business [sic] and this Sotomayor [sic] and all this other stuff.”

Of course, that response is deserving only of the bitter Swiftian sarcasm of, “And this they call the triumph of reason.”

That’s kind of a weak rejoinder for the author of A Modest Proposal.  Maybe the Coach is quoting Tom Swift from Tom Swift and His Sucky Sarcasm Machine.

This supreme irrationality is further highlighted by the fact that in smearing FNC, liberals behave as if a “right-wing” (to use Rich’s term) bias has permeated television news since the fifties.

However, the truth is this:

When fifties TV execs (who had honed their entertainment skills in vaudeville) created the character of Uncle News Anchor, they overwhelmingly chose left-wing actors to fill the roles, a reality that has persisted to this day.

It’s a funny coincidence that we were just talking about Walter Cronkite, because even today a lot of people don’t know that he was originally played by Blacklisted actor Zero Mostel, and later by Will Geer.

Moreover, those execs packaged Uncle so cleverly and the actors did their job so well that by the seventies, one Uncle was deemed by a majority of the public to be “the most trusted man in America.”

That man, of course, was Ilya Kuryakin, who wasn’t even an American.

Swift would appreciate the irony.

“The most trusted man in America” — Even though the viewers of Newton Minow’s “wasteland” had absolutely no idea about how Uncle chose what news to report, what news to ignore, what news to repeat, what news to let die, which “newsmakers” to put on film (never live), which to ignore, which film to use (often ad nauseam), and which to leave on the cutting room floor.

Well, actually UNCLE had a pretty simple rule.  If a story was called “The (Something) Affair,” it was pretty much guaranteed a spot on the Six O’ Clock News.

Not to mention that in those days, the public, still in awe of the technology that brought us the “boob-tube,”

I remember I was so floored by the mere existence of television in the 1970s that frequently, while gazing awestruck at The Hudson Brothers, or Match Game ’72, I would abruptly scream, “WE ARE LIVING IN THE FUTURE!”

…bought into television’s feigned verisimilitude and therefore failed to perceive how Uncle and his identical-twin minions influenced “the news” in more subtle ways, for instance by their choice and intonation of words as well as by smiling, scowling, or even slightly raising an eyebrow.

This propaganda technique, known as “the Big Smile,” was pioneered by Goebbels after Nazi scientists, working at a secret underground installation at Peenemünde, developed a fast acting tooth whitener.

The clones of Cronkite, of course, were created in the final days of the war by Josef Mengele, as recounted in the book, The Uncles from Brazil.

That supremely dangerous, parochial, pretentious, and, irony of ironies, illiberal vision of news was, however, perfectly fine with liberals and the Democratic leadership because, as Huck Finn might have observed, “It’s how they would have done it themselves.”

And if Huck had to choose a news purveyor today, he’d almost certainly select  Fox News, because at least they’re not afraid of the “N”-word.

Finally, for those who demand still more evidence in support of the notion that perversity underlies the liberal/Democratic demonization of FNC, I close with this:

Given the constancy of human nature, it is impossible that liberals have booted the perverse loves to the line of the unemployed.

Ah, see?  I knew it would all make sense in the end.

CSI: White House: Special Victim’s Unit

Posted by scott on May 3rd, 2010

Previously on World O’Crap: We were visiting RenewAmerica, where our server, polemic polisher A.J. DiCintio, was offering us a selection of light hors d’oeuvres off the poetasting menu. But the retired teacher and rhetoric honer only moonlights at RA, and I got to wondering about his main gig as “a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal,” a bedlam of impassioned right wing commentary brought to the online world courtesy of Managing Editor Frank Salvato. And who is that, you probably aren’t asking?

franksalvato.jpg

Why, here’s Frank now! Let’s give his bio a quick squint, shall we? “Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative.”

Well, that sure sounds impressive, in a “yes, I’m the Director of an internet-based national security policy think tank that developed after 9/11 when I began adding anti-Jihadi insights to my Geocities site, The #1 Dolly Parton Fan Page!!! And Virtual Wig Museum.”

A brief examination reveals that BasicsProject.org is a site dedicated to the study of “Constitutional Literacy,” “Islamic Terrorism,” and “The American Fifth Column,” and their “education initiative” seems to primarily involve pimping Frank’s wife’s book, and selling a bunch of ranting lectures on CDs (“The beginning of the end of Planet Earth occurred on September 27, 1991, when President George H.W. Bush announced that the United States would withdraw its nuclear weapons from NATO sites throughout the western world if the Soviet Union would follow suit.”) Moving on:

“Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain’s America Radio Show, nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting Network and on NetTalkWorld Global Talk Radio.” And the best part? “Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements.”

If he can actually borrow The Captain’s America costume (and can make balloon animals) I’m totally booking him for my next anti-terrorism symposium and birthday party.

Okay, enough with the bona fides! What febrile insight is burning a hole in your head today, Frank? I must know.

First, He Was a Community Organizer

When Barack Obama entered the 2008 Presidential Election scene, aside from recycling the Clinton mantra of “Hope and Change” (yes, Mr. Obama’s use of the campaign slogan was not original in nature), we were told that his most endearing credential was that he had navigated the “mean streets of Chicago” as a community organizer disseminating “hope”; that he had been successful in making the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Chicago a better place to live, a safer place to live. As of April 25, 2010, the residents of Chicago have stood witness to 113 homicides. I suppose, for President Obama, all that’s missing is a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

In addition to being President and Commander in Chief, Obama is also a rogue cop who doesn’t play by the rules (I don’t know how he does it. He must have a Day Planner.). I was hoping, when I voted for him, that he’d work to avert a total collapse of the economy, reform the dysfunctional health care system, and repair relations with our allies, but mostly I hoped he’d take down the Russian mob in a running gun battle that’d lead inevitably to a fight on top of the old Railway Exchange Building with the massive Ukrainian killer known only as “The Cossack.”

While the notion of sending in the Illinois National Guard sounds good on the surface, as John Howell of AM560 WIND in Chicago contends, the first time a National Guardsman has to shoot a civilian the real fireworks will start. I’ll take that a step further, the real fireworks will start when a Chicago gangbanger shoots and kills an Illinois National Guardsman. Illinois Governor Quinn has since rejected the idea so we shall never know how much blood would have been running in the streets had these two scenarios played out.

What a…shame?

So, the issue of street violence in Chicago remains with no immediate prospects for improvement.

You’ve crossed the line, Mr. President! I admit — you’re a damn good cop and a decent head of a co-equal branch of the Federal government — but I got the Commissioner breathin’ down my neck! Turn in your badge and gun!

In 1985, Mr. Obama was hired as a community organizer by the Developing Communities Project in Chicago and given the position of director. The Developing Communities Project was a church-based organization comprised of eight Catholic parishes on Chicago’s infamous far South Side.

Like most young Muslim men, he began his professional career working for the Vatican. It’s a rite of passage, like starting in the mail room at William Morris.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there were 666 instances of murder…in Chicago during 1985.

Satan was sending his only begotten son a message…in murder!

Mr. Obama worked at the Developing Communities Project from 1985 until mid-1988 during which time he increased the organization’s staff from one to thirteen and increased its operating budget from $70,000 to $400,000.

Again, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 744 instances of murder…in Chicago in 1986.

Clearly, instead of social workers, Obama should have spent his community development budget hiring wisecracking, suicidal cops with hair trigger tempers and deadly martial arts skills.

And during his just-short-of three years with the Developing Communities Project…he allegedly set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program and a tenants’ rights organization in Altgeld Gardens, a location that still exists in extreme poverty today.

So both Obama and Bush have lost major and protracted wars, the only difference being that Obama didn’t actually start the War on Poverty. (In the current President’s favor, while the Iraq War has produced no stirring songs like “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Over There,” or “Remember Pearl Harbor,” at least soldiers serving in the War on Poverty could march into combat singing Billy Preston’s “Nothing From Nothing.”)

Once again, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 687 instances of murder & non-negligent manslaughter and 34,172 instances of aggravated assault in 1987.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that the “Developing Communities Project” was just a front for a revived Murder, Inc., and that whenever Obama would suggest to an underling, “why don’t you register him to vote?” it was really a euphemism, like “why don’t you take him for a ride?” or “fit him for a pair of concrete galoshes.”

In mid 1988, community organizer Obama decided that he had done such a good job for the good people at the Developing Communities Project that he bid them “adieu” (mission accomplished) and set out to see the Continent of Europe for three weeks and then the ancestral African nation of Kenya for five weeks before starting his education in the law at Harvard University.

I too was in the habit of hanging enormous “Mission Accomplished” banners on my cubicle whenever I quit a job. It wasn’t until years later than I learned this was considered a faux pas in corporate culture, and that most professionals opted for a more bespoke and dignified departure — an awkward ice cream cake party in the conference room, a joint smoked in the stairwell, followed by the traditional stapling of multiple photocopies of your ass to the supervisor’s office door.

The most often accurate Wikipedia explains community organizing this way:

I’m torn; ordinarily I’m a sucker for an Appeal to Higher Authority, like Thomas Aquinas, James Madison, or Wikipedia, but I just looked up Frank Salvato, and according to the most often accurate source on the Internet, he doesn’t exist!

“Community organizing is a process through which people living in proximity to each other are brought together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest…community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless…”

It begs to be asked; wouldn’t the unbridled murdering of members of a community be in the utmost of “shared self-interests” of a community? Wouldn’t the senseless slaughter of the youth from poverty stricken Chicago communities rank right up there with, let’s say, teaching ACORN the Alinsky method of pressuring financial institutions into making bad home loans to people who could never pay their mortgages or registering fictional characters and dead people to vote?

Certainly, Obama would have had a far more positive and lasting effect on his community if he’d stopped with the airy fairy efforts to promote home ownership and voter registration in low income areas — since inner city poor people are either imaginary, deadbeats, or just dead — and spent his time and resources passing out guns. The truth is, he tried to join the Black Panthers, but he couldn’t pass the typing test and looked lousy in a beret.

For those who believe that the years of the Obama Community Organizing Experience saw an anomaly where serious crime is concerned:

1990: 850 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1991: 925 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1992: 939 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1993: 845 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1994: 928 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1995: 824 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1996: 789 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1997: 757 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1998: 703 murders/non-violent manslaughters
1999: 641 murders/non-violent manslaughters
2000: 631 murders/non-violent manslaughters

So, it would seem, one of the most important issues facing the communities serviced by Mr. Obama’s organizing – the unacceptable level of violence resulting in homicides – was either left unaddressed or, if it was addressed, was done so in such a poor fashion that the slaughter continued to increase in the years after his “organizing.”

Yes, it would indeed seem that the murder rate in Chicago rose during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, peaking four years after Obama stopped working for a local Catholic social welfare agency, and declined during the Clinton Administration (as all violent crime rates did throughout the country). If I may quote George Sanders: “You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.”

So, for all you Progressives and Obama-apologists, all you Alinskyites and all of you “hope and change” junkies

(The great thing about addressing your remarks exclusively to the demons in your head is you can use your inside voice, and your neighbor isn’t always threatening to “stuff that megaphone so far up your ass you’ll fart like a foghorn.”)

I ask, which is more important: to make sure those who can’t afford mortgages get them so the rest of the nation can bail them out down the road or securing the neighborhood streets from gang violence?

Instead of bundling risky sub-prime mortgages into exotic financial instruments, Bear Stearns should have formed an army of street wise vigilantes, and then sold them as derivatives.

Is it more important to make sure that you get people who have no fact-based understanding of the issues registered to vote or to make sure that when little Jimmy walks home from school he doesn’t end up kicked to the curb with a bullet in his head?

Well, people who bring the force of their numbers to bear on the ballet box (white people, older people, older white people) tend to get more in the way of government services, including better schools and an increased police presence. But I still think Obama should have skipped his time in the Illinois State Senate and gone on a vision question abroad, where he could have honed his body into the ultimate weapon, and returned to haunt the mean streets of Chicago as a nocturnal avenger.

Many among the electorate have come to understand that President Obama and his administration have their priorities mixed-up. I would point to the absolute failure of his “community organizing” – as it pertains to the most important job of a community organizer, keeping the members of the community alive – and say he had his priorities mixed-up long, long ago.

But, hey, if the number of registered voters trumps the body-count, then I guess he did one hell of a job.

I know we’re all the sum of our experiences, but I’m not sure just how much we can extrapolate from a President’s early job history. After all, Bush didn’t waste his young adulthood helping the poor. He coasted through school, went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard, failed a military drug test, subsequently got busted for cocaine and driving while under the influence, and ran a succession of business ventures into the ground, which might have led many observers to predict his presidency would be an historic flop, when in fact it was a world-historical disaster of unprecedented scope, from which we and and the rest of humanity are still suffering. So I think we should extend the same courtesy to Obama that we did to Bush, and give him a chance to reach his full potential.

A Good, Hard Philosophisting

Posted by scott on December 30th, 2009

RussAlan.jpgYou remember Russ J. Alan, RenewAmerica’s resident “adventurist” and “philosophist,” who we last saw here, fretting over the possibility that the Fort Hood shootings would fail to ignite an anti-Muslim pogrom (because what’s the point of being an adventurist if you don’t get to role-play the Charlton Heston part in Khartoum, except — instead of getting a spear between the ribs — this time you roll a natural 20, so it’s that Mahdi guy who gets kebobbed?) Anyway, this week he’s read the tea bags and is feeling much more optimistic about the chances for widespread mob violence in 2010:

I say the biggest mistake we conservatives can make in 2010 is to continue worrying about how we appear to the left, John McCain style, as we have been doing for so many years past. We must to stop appeasing the leftists, we must stop caring what they think, we must have the courage of our convictions and the pride to voice it without shame. No more bipartisanship. We need partisanship and plenty of it.

Note: This column is set in that “Mirror, Mirror” universe from Star Trek where Spock has Jonah Goldberg’s goatee.

Yes, 2000–2009, or the “aughts”…had some bad times, but they weren’t all bad. They started with the last two years of the administrations of President Clinton who sewed the seeds of the “housing bubble” but didn’t weed out the Muslim problem nor take out Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance, and that was bad.

Clinton left office on January 20, 2001, so I’m not sure where Russ is getting “the last two years of the administrations of President Clinton” from. But then, he’s a philosophist, not a mathematician, and likes to fudge Presidential terms a bit. For instance, his bio claims that he “served in the Department of Defense in Europe during the Cold War under President Reagan (1980-82),” which, as commenter Woodrowfan noted, probably means “he was a private in the Army for his minimum 2 years,” while Round Guy points out that “Reagan wasn’t even sworn in until January of ‘81 so he…either peeled potatoes under the dreaded Jimmy Carter or stretched the dates.”

As for Clinton “sew[ing]” seeds — it’s nice he had a crafty little hobby to relax over, but I hope at some point he traded up to a Bedazzler.

The Republicans elected President George W. Bush and we didn’t have a democrat president in the White House when we were attacked by Muslim extremists in 2001…

Cause? Meet Effect.

…and that was good. We lost many soldiers in Iraq which was bad, but we took out the murderous, weapon of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein

Saddam was like Mel Gibson’s character Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon films, in that he, himself, was a weapon. But unlike Riggs, he didn’t use bullets and karate, because those don’t create mass destruction, so I guess Saddam would — I don’t know — fart mustard gas?

and we killed lots and lots of Muslim extremists, and that was a really good thing.

On a similar note, Russ is a lot like Martha Stewart, if her magazine Living was called Dying, and mostly contained articles about remodeling your charnel house, and recipes for whipping up a batch of homebrew Zyklon-B out of those leftover holiday snack ingredients.

In 2006, Conservatives lost the majority position in congress, and Mike Huckabee, instead of dropping out of the Republican primary and endorsing Mitt Romney, gave us John McCain who became the Republican nominee (bad), who stabbed his running mate, Sarah Palin, in the back and gave up the presidency to Barack Obama, and that was really bad.

I think Russ is confusing the McCain-Palin campaign with Episode 8 of I, Claudius (“Reign of Terror”), but I admit it would have made the Presidential race a lot more fun.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t need to be organized, we are already organized. We are an “organism” like a colony of ants or even better, like the “Borg” on “Star Trek: the Next Generation.” We communicate with each other and act as one, toward a common goal, and just like the Borg, “Resistance is futile — you will be assimilated.”

Well…it’s good to have role models.

We don’t care that it raises the blood pressure of the leftists to hear the term “Tea Parties,” we don’t care that it “fills them with disgust.” Conservatives get disgusted when we hear “Al Gore,” “global warming,” “cap and trade,” “health care reform”… do the LEFTISTS care what WE think? Why should I care what THEY think? I want them to get their blood pressure up. The higher the better (actually, the lower the better — I would prefer the leftists have zero blood pressure).

Just in case you thought Russ wants to kill all Muslims, he wants you dead, too. So it’s not like he’s a racist

Another “worst thing” conservatives could do is vote strictly “Republican” in the November 2010 elections, especially if many of the so-called “blue-dog” democrats follow in the footsteps of Senator Parker Griffith of Alabama, switch to the Republican party to prevent losing their seats in Congress.

I knew you could switch parties, but I had no idea you could switch from the House of Representatives to the Senate at will. That’s pretty cool, although I don’t know why Griffith didn’t aim just a smidge higher and switch to the presidency.

The Republican party would just be adding more weak, timid, moderate, appeasing, “bipartisan,” woosies, otherwise known as RINOS (Republicans in name only).

I know what RINOs are, but woosies are new to me. Are they a candy or gum? But it’s not merely weak-kneed politicians who are kicking the grass roots in the teabags. Fellow RenewAmerica scribe Warner Todd Huston believes the 24 Hour Tea Party People lack the requisite cult of personality to become a truly effective tool of freedom, but Russ is not having it.

Mr. Huston believes that the Tea Party movement was destined to fail from its inception, and continues to say that the main reason is lack of a leader. If he doesn’t believe we lead ourselves or that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Mark Levin (the latter three are also an “organism”)

Well, wait a second, I don’t think that’s quite fair. Most of his detractors will agree that Glenn Beck is an organism, and some will even concede that he’s multicellular.

…then I guess he is saying he doesn’t want to lead it either. OK, if that’s the case, I nominate myself — I will lead it. As the leader of the Tea Party, I propose that we rename it the Constitution party or the Conservative party, and effective immediately, we don’t care what the leftists think.

So nyah. However, Russ might want to check and see what officials of the Conservative Party and the Constitution Party think, since both are, so to speak, pre-existing conditions.

Obama Uses School Kids As Batteries To Power The Matrix!

Posted by scott on October 7th, 2009

I learn so much from World Net Daily.  For instance, did you know that in addition to being a usurper, a fascist dictator, a crypto-communist, and a crack-smoking closet homosexual, President Obama is also a public utility?  And that every time you turn on a light, or make a waffle, you buy our foreign-born fuhrer another czar?  Check it out:

PresidentConEd.jpg

Part of me feels sorry for the WND readers who buy the homemade generator diagram, and the secret martial arts brochure, and the “breakthrough of the century” — discovered by “Navy sailors” — for avoiding “heart and brain disasters.”  But another part of me kind of enjoys the thought of them going off the grid with a jaunty, “so long, suckers!” only to find themselves shouting at Grandma to “pedal faster” so they can crank up enough juice to get on Mapquest and download directions to the next Tea Party.

The Science Is Settled: Humans Are Making The Earth Stupider

Posted by scott on July 22nd, 2009

After declaring Dr. Regina Benjamin, the nominee for Surgeon General too fat to survive a confirmation hearing, the Astute Bloggers have turned their attention to  debunking Anthropogenic Global Warming:

BRRRRRR!: SEVERE COLD GRIPS ARGENTINA!

They quote a story noting that a cold snap has hit Buenos Aires, then declare:

MAN-MADE CO2 AND MAN-MADE “GREENHOUSE” GASES GO UP ALL THE TIME, BUT GLOBAL TEMPS DO NOT; THEREFORE, AGW = BS.

Two or three things we should probably mention.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

Global surface temperatures have increased about 0.74°C (plus or minus 0.18°C) since the late-19th century, and the linear trend for the past 50 years of 0.13°C (plus or minus 0.03°C) per decade is nearly twice that for the past 100 years. The warming has not been globally uniform. Some areas (including parts of the southeastern U.S. and parts of the North Atlantic) have, in fact, cooled slightly over the last century. The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia between 40 and 70°N. Lastly, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995.

“Climate” is not the same as “weather.”

It’s currently winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Didn’t Chuck Connors Play Him In “Branded?”

Posted by scott on June 21st, 2009

We received an email this evening (as did a number of our distinguished commenters) from Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, and at first I was quite excited.  But it turns out he’s not the guy who played “Linc” in The Mod Squad; instead, he’s the cashiered, ex-Navy Lt. Commander who is — even as we speak — bringing down President Obama with a charge of TREASON!  For the sake of posterity, I’m going to post the body of the letter, including all four Hungadungas.

Subject:  BATTLE OF COWPENS ALL OVER AGAIN!

Today’s attack-rant writing brought to us by a gent named Scott Clevenger (historically the reincarnation of British commanders at Cowpens).

I hate to interrupt Walter when he’s on a roll, but I should point out that while I am in fact historically considered the reincarnation of British commanders at Cowpens, I am hardly a “gent.”

(links, oddly emphatic bolding, and idiosyncratic color scheme all in the original…)

Scott and fellow travelers (see the comments) “Doghouse” Riley, “Slywy,” DSIDHE, and Rugosa, are on the record with Patrick McKinnion (who updated his writing yesterday).

Presumably a career-ending letter of reprimand will be placed in our jackets and blot our escutcheons.

McKinnion writes: “In the interest of being fair, I welcome any further information from Mr. Fitzpatrick as to his behavior and his side of the story…”

Isn’t it a shame Mr. McKinnion didn’t check with me first. Or with Ed Offley, author of the work McKinnion relied upon, or with Christine Clarridge who writes for the Seattle Times (Mr. McKinnion’s current home town). Or with so many other independent journalists who’ve seen and vetted the extant document record.

Just a rotten shame!

As troubling is Mr. McKinnion’s exposure in his self-admission that maybe…just maybe…he didn’t know a wit of what he was so libelous in writing.

Tee-ball anyone?

As someone with a smart mouth and a long history of being told to put up or shut up, I just have to say — that’s the weirdest threat I’ve ever received.

It will be interesting to watch McKinnion’s filth travel.

Fellow travelers, as you know, travel by filth.  Making us, I suppose, filth columnists.

And I wonder who’s gonna break the news to Norm Dicks, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and the criminal thug Obama things aren’t workin’ out so well?

I think we should send a Strip-O-Gram.  It’ll cushion the blow.

Regards,
/s/
Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III
United States Navy Retired
United States Naval Academy Class of 1975

And yet, despite all that, he still doesn’t have the Kung-Fu Grip™.

Over at the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan drew a parallel between voter suppression tactics pushed by Karl Rove, and the apparent electoral fraud perpetrated by the Ahmadinejad administration.

Ahmadinejad’s bag of tricks is eerily like that of Karl Rove – the constant use of fear, the exploitation of religion, the demonization of liberals, the deployment of Potemkin symbolism like Sarah Palin

Meanwhile, Confederate apologist Robert Stacy McCain has gotten his antebellum bloomers in a twist over this affont to the honor of Mrs. Todd Palin by a notorious sodomite:

I went outside, smoked a cigarette, then took a shower and ate a pizza and now, an hour later, I’m still agog at the wretchedness of Sully’s phrase, “Potemkin symbolism like Sarah Palin.” Sully attributes this to Rove — as if the governor of Alaska were self-evidently a signature “Rovian” tactic — and then says it is part of a “bag of tricks is eerily like that” of Ahmadinejad. Or vice-versa, actually, but the idea of moral equivalence is there.

How? Why? I’m scratching my head. Given that hyperbolic extremity of ad hominem is sort of a speciality of mine, and that I am a three-time nominee for Sully’s “Malkin Award,” you might think I’d have the kind of insight necessary to reverse-engineer a thing like this.

I’ve been irked by things I’ve read on the internet, sure, but I’ve never had to frantically pace the breezeway, sucking on a Salem, then scrub myself pink with a loofah and wolf down a Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine Three Meat Pizza before I could compose myself and sit back down at the computer.

WTF? I look at phrase, and try to figure out exactly what Sully means by it. “Potemkin villages” were the cruel propaganda hoax by which the Soviets sought to convince naive foreign visitors that everything was hunky-dory in the worker’s socialist paradise.

Zing!  Ouch!  Damn, McCain, your superior grasp of history has totally nailed Sully…give or take a century.  The “Potemkin village” was a (probably apocryphal) ruse attributed to Grigory Potemkin, who allegedly tried to deceive his girlfriend, Catherine the Great, about the value of her conquered real estate in the Crimea during the campaign of 1787.  Inconveniently, Potemkin died in 1791, about 130 years before the Soviet Union was created, but I’m sure the Prince was a total Commie.

Teacher’s Putz

Posted by scott on June 3rd, 2009

Hey guys, better hustle on over to the registrar.  Over at RenewAmerica, Mr. DiCintio is teaching an A.P. class in sarcasm.  (Who’s Mr. DiCintio?  Well, let’s let him tell it…)

dicintio.jpg A.J. DiCintio is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. He first exercised his polemical skills arguing with friends on the street corners of the working class neighborhood where he grew up. Retired from teaching, he now applies those skills, somewhat honed and polished by experience, to social/political affairs.

Well, students of Working Class, U.S.A., your loss is our gain.  Today, Mr. DiCintio has brought along a very entertaining film strip explaining how one can disarm a rhetorical opponent by feigning elaborate surprising over statements you pretend he’s making.  Let’s watch…

Whether the object of their dictatorial pedantry is based upon what “empathic” judges, politicians, and social activists weave according to rules laid down by a penumbra, fashion from the love of power, or create from leftist ideology, liberals have something new and ridiculous to teach us every day.

You know, before we go past the first paragraph — not that it isn’t great, mind you — maybe we should check out this “New Media Journal.”  I’m curious about any publication which could, in these parlous times, induce a man to abandon tenure and a good health plan:

The New Media Journal is division of BasicsProject.org, a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) research and educational initiative whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant socio-political issues important to our country, specifically, but not limited to, the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth Column.

Well, that sure sounds non-partisan!

The organization works to educate the American people using primary source materials and culling qualified opinions from governmental agencies, congressional testimonies, internationally recognized experts, credible think tanks and editorial boards.

…and former gym teachers who took early retirement under mysterious circumstances.

However, on a number of days since the election of the most leftist president and Congress in the nation’s history, we have been sent reeling by so many madly perverse liberal lessons that, frustrated beyond patience, we have no other option but to avail ourselves of the cathartic effects of an especially sarcastic, “I never knew that!”

Because John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby threatened to sue if he pursued his original plan of periodically ejaculating, “That’s Incredible!”

By the way, the third person pronouns used above refer to a line of common sense folks so long it extends all the way to China, where a billion souls were surely driven to expressions of the sardonic exclamation when they heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promise that only good things will happen to China if it buys up every last penny of Obama’s ten trillion dollar debt offering.

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The Peoples’ Liberation Army Sarcasm Corps Greets Secretary Clinton with a 21-Girl Eye Roll

Although it would be both interesting and instructive to sojourn in the land of justified Sino-sarcasm a while longer, it is time to get back home, where Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has caused us to be bombarded with so much liberal bunk that we are afforded not a moment’s respite from issuing one mordant “I never knew that!” after another.

I’m having a hard time placing Mr. particular DiCintio’s discipline, but judging by the clear Jeff Goldsteinian influence, I’m guessing he taught semiotics and Drivers Ed.

Anyway, as long as we’re imbibing the wisdom of high-minded academics, let’s check in with Professor Mary Grabar, who appears to have lost her berth at Clayton State University, since her last review at RateMyProfessors.com was in 2008 (“Truly one of the stupidest profs I’ve ever had.”), but has happily landed on her feet at Georgia Perimeter College (“This is the worst professor ever”).

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I was a bit surprised to hear former Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge echo President Obama’s criticism of Rush Limbaugh by calling him “shrill” and “divisive” recently. Then Senator John Cronyn joined in the Rush-bashing over Limbaugh’s use of the word “racist” for self-described “wise Latina woman” judge Sonia Sotomayor. I do not recall ever being enlightened or inspired by these politicians.

On the other hand, as I’ve driven to teach afternoon classes I’ve enjoyed the insights and wit from Limbaugh. I am always impressed by his ability to apply historical figures, ideas, events, and Constitutional principles.

Then chop them up with a razor blade and snort them.

This is what I miss about my profession as a college instructor. Rarely am I able to discuss ideas with my colleagues; indeed, I dare not speak my opinion nor say anything positive about any figures on the Left’s “hit list.”

Oh, before we get too deep into Professor Grabar’s analysis of Professor’s Limbaugh’s theories, I should probably take a moment to plug her latest academic project:  The Other White People (theotherwhitepeople.com)

This is a blogsite run by Mary Grabar, who does not apologize for being white, who believes that “hope” and “change” come not from some academic, politician, or celebrity, but from within with the help of God, and that Western civilization is the best civilization.

White People:  The Pork of humanity.

I’ve listened to other colleagues on WGKA, like classics professor Victor Davis Hanson interviewed by host and law professor Hugh Hewitt, and host and professor of Russian and Jewish history, Dennis Prager.

Prager is a professor of Russian and Jewish history?

In 1970-72, Prager attended the Russian (now the Harriman Institute) and Middle East Institutes at the Columbia University School of International Affairs. He studied under Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later served in the Carter administration as the head of the National Security Council.

Huh.  Well, what do you know?  I guess he is…

Prager did not complete his master’s degree, dropping out instead in 1973

Ah.  Well, I guess it’s sort of like the way Harold Hill was a “Professor” in The Music Man.

On radio host Glenn Beck’s Fox television program, I learned about Florida State University history professor Robert Gellately’s currently apropos and lively study, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Rush Limbaugh provided historical explanation for the public’s adoration of Obama: the same kind of emotional investment that caused gulag prisoners to cry at Stalin’s death.

And yet Obama did it without exiling prisoners to Siberia, or dying, so he totally kicks Stalin’s ass!

Many mistake the shows of sophistication—modulated voices and stylish sentences–for intellectual depth. But the educated can spot what is left out of the NPR or “New York Times” report. Usually it is a serious consideration from the other side.

As represented by David Brooks, William Kristol, and Ross Douthat.

A good professor does not speak in the monotone of a policy meeting or business negotiations. He moves around the room, gesticulates, asks provocative questions, and even, as I heard two lawyers discuss a favorite professor they had at the University of Georgia, throw chairs out the window.

And if that doesn’t work, start throwin’ out dead bodies every ten minutes until they bring that fucking helicopter!

What the talk show hosts do is present foundational ideas to concerned and intellectually curious citizens. Their wild success exposes a hunger for ideas rarely met in other forums—like our schools. That is why they want to shut down talk radio as it is today.

Clearly, the answer is to shut down our schools, and require children to listen to AM talk radio six hours a day.

So I suggest that the government functionaries and politicians take a moment out of their wonkish study of policy and listen in to talk radio. I suggest they go pick up Tocqueville. If they want to be voted into office they need to understand what he says about a free democracy

But…if they’re government functionaries, aren’t they already in office?

Tocqueville is talking about the middle class that keeps this country going. And today they are millions of voters and they’re educating themselves by listening to talk radio and buying books.

And that’s why, sadly, nobody signed up for Professor Grabar’s Introduction to White English class at DeVry.  They were all over at Palm Beach U (total party school!) auditing Professor Limbaugh.

The Best And The Blightest

Posted by scott on May 5th, 2009

Most people are cowed by the subjects of race and gender, and even people who are ordinarily rewarded for the pungency of their opinions have learned to issue odorless, colorless platitudes when the subject turns to identity politics.  But not NRO’s Andy McCarthy.  Like Lenny Bruce, he throws out the polite euphemisms, and dares to call a spade a spade, exposing this crazy vogue for diversity with the kind of cutting edge humor not seen since 1983, when Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt humorously reduced a coal-leasing review commission to its component elements: “a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”

Will a Lesbian Do, or Does It Have to Be a Trans-gendered Muslim Lesbian of Color?   []

We’ve gotten by fine with just the two flavors: White and Male.  What’s with the sudden yen for Tutti-Frutti?

At Contentions, Jen Rubin notes Politico‘s report, “Lesbian Lawyers Eyed for Supreme Court” (the headline has since been changed to the tamer though less alliterative, “Groups push for first gay justice”).

Less alliterative and, I guess for Andy, more difficult to wank to.  Anyway, the Politico piece describes a gay rights group recommending an out lesbian for Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court, just as Hispanic rights groups have lobbied the president to appoint the first Hispanic justice, and feminist groups have urged him to redress the Court’s continuing and shameful imbalance between the sexes.  And while the thought of throwing any one of these alien spices into the bowl of lukewarm Cream of Wheat that is the current Supreme Court is laughable, nothing, apparently, would tickle Andy more than a twofer.

I was on the Lars Larson show last week right after the Souter announcement, so naturally the question of what we should expect in an Obama nomination arose. I answered, “I’m thinking a left-handed lesbian paraplegic.” I thought I was joking.

Sort of like when a man trips over a patio chair and falls off his hotel balcony, plummets eight stories, bellyflops into the pool, and — when fished out by the hotel staff and revived via CPR — remarks, “I thought I was diving.”

Speaking of deep thinkers, Joe the Plumbler has delivered his Sermon on the Septic Tank to Christianity Today, and one or two ex cathedra statements stood out:

People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer.

Merriam has gay-married Webster!

Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for.

Well, what women are for, anyway (hint: the nasty)

Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.

I sympathize, Joe, because I wouldn’t trust you to don a clip-on tie without lynching yourself.

We’ve lost our American history. Every state has “In God we trust” or “With God’s help” in their constitution. God is recognized as, if you will, America’s religion.

America:  Worshipping the God of Tautology Since 1789.

Who do you see as the emerging Christian leaders?

James Dobson. I love Dobson.

Yeah, you mark my words, that Dobson kid is goin’ places.  ‘fore you know it, every man in this country is gonna be punchin’ out dachshunds and takin’ his kids into the shower and waggin’ his papa-pipe at ‘em.

I heard some stories about George Bush, and how he wrote an original letter to each and every soldier that died. And his prayer life was listed to be pretty intense.

Of course, all those letters were returned, marked DECEASED, but you don’t get your prayer life on the A-List by doin’ things the easy way.

That kind of thing, it’s awesome. I would love it to be true. I would love to hear our leaders actually check with God before he does stuff.

“Are you there, God?  It’s me, George.  Listen, should I put a stop to this needless war of choice, and all the wanton slaughter I’ve caused, or should I just write thank you notes to the corpses?  Column A?  Column B?  B?  Awesome.  Good talkin’ with ya, Stretch.”

We All Have Our Burning Cross To Bear

Posted by scott on January 24th, 2009

JammieWearingFool has his Dr. Dentons in a twist again.  This time he’s offended that Michelle Obama seems displeased by the transformation of her prepubescent daughters into collectible effigies.

Oh, the indignity of it all, After a year of allowing the kids on Access Hollywood, magazine photo shoots, parading her girls front and center wherever she goes, now Michelle Obama is upset with a doll manufacturer for cashing in on the kids…You can bet she wouldn’t be whining if she was getting a cut of the action.

Yes, some naive devotees of “hope” and “change” may believe the First Lady is sincerely upset by this exploitation of her preteen children, but it’s clear to Mr. Fool that her outrage is entirely manufactured, just part of an elaborate shakedown scheme designed to extort money from John Travolta.  And he’s not alone in thinking the little golddigger had it coming.  But while Jammie sees Mrs. Obama’s disapproval as prima facie evidence of a criminal enterprise, Paleo Pat of Political Byline sees it as an opportunity to tell a black woman to shut up.

First Lady Michelle Obama, “Don’t be using my kids as a marketing tool!”

(Just a tiny caveat:  That may not be an exact quote.)

But yet the first bitch will put her daughters on Access Hollywood, magazine photo shoots, and parade her girls front and center wherever she goes. But she bitches about this?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Mr. Pat is not troubled by a surfeit of feminine companionship.  But let’s check his bio just to be sure…
paleo.jpg

Sigh.  Why are all the good men married, gay, or compulsive masturbators?  Better luck next time, ladies!  On the bright side, I feared that his post title was a trifle racist, but I see from his “is got a mental disorder” construction that he was simply writing in the charming patois typical of his native region of the basement.

As they say in the ghetto here in Detroit….. NIGGA PLEASE!

upyours.jpg

“Up yours, wigger!”

If the first harpy does not want her “Babies” out in the public, keep them out the public eye. Otherwise, shut the hell up, and be glad your stupid idiot husband got elected, despite that 45 percent; or more if the truth me known, considering the election was rigged as hell, and he basically bought the damned election from all those off-shore donations from terrorists.

….and for it’s worth, Bambi is NOT my President. He’s just stupid uppity idiot that won, because he was black; and that’s ALL that Magic Negro will be to me!

I don’t claim to know exactly what Barack Obama’s inauguration as President means to the United States; but I do know this:  somewhere in suburban Detroit, there’s a fuzzy-faced misogynist who spent January 20th shrieking with rage and repeatedly punching the logo on a box of Uncle Ben’s Rice.  Nevertheless, Mr. Pat’s political convictions are surprisingly nuanced, for unlike some conservatives he lays the blame for our current economic difficulties squarely at the feet of George W. Bush:

Seriously, I have not had a “day job” since 2005. I last worked as a merchandiser vendor for a major home improvement chain. I handled Lighting, I had to quit. The job was making me physically sick. Due to the medication that I take. (Prolonged Exposed to bright Lights and Sunlight makes me want to HURL!)  The company shortly after that went out of business. So, I don’t think I made out that badly. I have not had a good paying steady job since 2000. Yes folks, I haven’t worked steady since Bush took office, 8 years ago. Lovely eh?  You see now, why I am not fond of him?

Admittedly, this brief excerpt doesn’t do justice to the sophistication of Mr. Pat’s views, since it fails to include his many animated emoticons.  Later in the interview, he asks himself if he’s crazy.

No, I am in full use of my mental faculties.

Is only we could all say the same.