It’s Saturday, and time for another attempt at a Q&A with our readers who arrive here via Google.  What’s the Internet a’buzz about this week?  Well, according to our search engine logs, it’s junk, junk, Christmas songs with impaired liver function, and more junk.  Class is now in session.  Please try to keep your mind off the babes…

1.  9 foot blue rusty gun: According to the bonus materials on the Avatar Blu-ray, this is a common euphemism for erectile dysfunction on Pandora.

2.  Which president said I cannot tell a lie in regards to cutting downa cherry tree: Apparently we’re hosting a field trip for students from Beck University today.  Where’s my spanking paddle and tricorner hat…?

3.  300 “porn version”: (WHISPERING)  The Password is… “redundant.”

4.  Robinhood is a douche: This is an updated 15th Century ballad which is frequently and lustily sung at Tea Party rallies.

5.  do men’s scrotum sag: If depends if it’s just received a telegram with bad news.

6.  on the christmas shoes heart with hepatitis b: I just don’t understand Country music.

7.  Man with a bag sagged scrotum: The last, cryptic words, etched in blood by Dr. Seuss.

8.  can a histrionic mother make her son impotent?: Apparently Governor Palin has been getting some bitter emails from Track.

9.  lady pee on the highest roller coaster in the world: While I can’t prove it, I suspect this is the same lady from the October 24, 2009 edition of the Top Ten, (nude lady sitting on elephant tAKING A CRAP), who has since “upped the stakes,” as they say in the screenwriting game, because kicks just keep getting harder to find.

10. i caught my son masterbating in my wetsuit: I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but it warms my heart to know that James Dobson still feels like he can come to us with his problems.

Open Source Snark Section.  You know what to do:

11.  are hermaphrodite allowed to have anal sex in islam?

12.  greta van susteren bikini

13.  square pegs dubbed khmer

14.  death by hip waders

15.  candiru porn (I blame this one on D.Sidhe.)

For No Good Reason | 19 Comments »

Like Dennis Prager, the avowedly cerebral Selwyn Duke is dismayed by the coarsening of our culture.  Unlike Dennis, he does not appear overly concerned that black people are using the F- through N-words inclusive, because that sort of thing just doesn’t go on in the tennis clubs and manicured fairways where he germinates his Deep Thoughts. However, he is worried that one of you ladies might confuse his genitals with non-biodegradable packing peanuts or the oily, moldering black petals of a discarded banana skin.

YOU CAN TOUCH MY JUNK, BUT NOTHING ELSE

Now that “Don’t touch my junk!” has become a rallying cry, I must ask a question: What’s with this youth-culture tendency to refer to male genitalia as “junk”?

And what’s with this tendency of Jazz musicians to address each other as “cat,” when clearly neither party to the conversation is a domesticated fur-bearing quadruped?

Since I keep my nose to the ground, I noticed this slang innovation long before John Tyner drew his line in the sand; it seems to be a phenomenon of the last five years or so.

Selwyn experiences language through the olfactory sense, which explains why his metaphors stink.  But he’s pioneered a powerful new technique for social order, and instead of invasive pat-downs, the TSA should take a leaf from his book and station slang-sniffing dogs in airports to detect kooky teen lingo.

And it’s one I’d like to put on the junk heap.

Here’s another neologism that might interest you, Selwyn.  Curdmudgeon — noun.  A callow pundit who aims to be a more butch version of H.L. Mencken, but whose work is like Velveeta cured in a semen-stiffened sweat sock.

I really don’t want to sound like the über-sensitive professional complainers who say that the term “black hole” (density-approaching-infinity-so-not-even-light-can-escape-it hole is a little clumsy, dontcha think?) is insensitive to blacks or, God forbid, like the harridan feminists who would have us supplant “snowman” with “snowperson” (Frosty the snowperson was a San Francisco soul….).

Those are some pretty lame hallucinations, Sel.  Have you considered zombies?

But something needs to be said about this, and if I don’t say it, perhaps no one will.

I don’t want to add to your burden, but it’s also possible that no one is going to run into the Lateran Palace, tear off his clothes and scream, “I’ve got a hanker for a chancre!”

Would you mind?

Does it strike anyone else as strange that we’re now referring to male genitalia with a word that means “garbage”?

Dude, have you seen a scrotum?

Oh, I know dictionaries indicate that this usage of “junk” can refer to female genitalia as well, but in the real world it seems to be used almost exclusively for the male variety.

Then what’s all this stuff in the trunk I keep hearing about?

Given the above, is it mere coincidence that this anti-male age sees a phenomenon whereby that which symbolizes manhood, at least physically, has come to be called “junk”?

Why can’t we go back to the days when polite society used that word only to describe Chinese sailing vessels, spit balls, and the previous sentence?

And what might we conclude about this anti-male environment’s psychological effect on recent generations of boys and young men when they will readily refer to that symbol of their manhood (in fact, a fellow’s privates are sometimes called “his manhood”) with a demeaning term?

Not sure.  What do you suppose is the result of these same young fellows referring to the female equivalent as a “gash”?  Whatever.  For the sake of our young men’s psychological health, we must urge them to address their organs of generation by the names their fathers and grandfathers used, such as “beaver cleaver,” “assmaster,” and “Ding Dong.”

My self-image has never been so bad that I wanted to characterize part of my body as garbage.

Nor should you, Sel.  That’s women’s work.

Moreover, given that feminist women don’t even like being called “girls” — when that’s just the equivalent of “guys” —

Exactly.  When I was young I joined the Guy Scouts, and never felt offended.  And when I was a little guy, I loved to read Batman comics and pretend I was Robin the Guy Wonder.

I can just imagine how the “womyn” at NOW would react

…if they met a lunkheaded failed tennis pro with his forefinger Crazy Glued to his chin who thinks it’s the 1970s.

…if the word “junk” was widely used to describe a female body part.

I’m sure they’d faint.  You know the ladies.

Oh, not that I blame this on them, or on normal women.

Don’t be condescending to the freaks, Selwyn.  Remember what NOW did to Olga Baclanova.

I also don’t expect men to do much about it. You could say that my sex rolls with the punches,

The donkey punches.

…that we really will take these things “like a man.”

Say no more, Selwyn.  I won’t ask, you don’t tell.

Respect Your Betters | 41 Comments »

Before we descend into Dennis Prager’s Id and begin digging around for his usual nuggets of wisdom and veins of poetry (part of our new government-sponsored program, Clunkers for Spelunkers), I’d like to welcome former law clerk, former part-time community college instructor, and ham radio talk show host Ellis Washington, who dropped by this post yesterday to wish us happy holidays:

I’m elated that my article, “Art, music and the Wagnerian dilemma,” provoked such passionate discussion. During this Holiday Season I wish you all …

Peace

Passionate we certainly are, although as Mary remarked, Mr. Washington may have “confused discussion with derision.”  But hey, if it leads to … Peace, then I’m all for it.  Plus, Ex-Clerk Ellis has a blog now, Ellis Washington Report, and while so far it only features links to, and brief excerpts from, his World Net Daily columns, this is still a very exciting development, because unlike WND, Mr. Washington’s blog invites you to “leave a comment.”  Naturally I wanted to reciprocate his holiday sentiment, but clicking on “leave a comment” takes you to World Net Daily where you can’t … leave a comment.

It just goes to show that liberal’s well-known love of the “intentional fallacy” leads to chaos and Caravaggio, while Veritas leads to a clean and well-lighted causality loop.

So anyway.  Dennis Prager is about to school us squares on popular music.  And a one, and a two…

‘F— You’ – from the music industry

The nominees to receive the most prestigious awards in the music industry, the Grammy Awards, were just announced. Among the five nominees for Song of the Year is a song titled “F— You,” with the F-word, of course, spelled out and pronounced.

Here are the song’s opening lyrics:

I see you driving ’round town
With the girl I love and I’m like,
F— you!
Oo, oo, ooo

I guess the change in my pocket
Wasn’t enough, I’m like,
F–- you!
And f— her, too!

The next lyrics add the S-word:

Which, if you say it real fast, sounds like “sword.”  That’s why I like to mumble when I curse, because people don’t know if I’m saying “S-word,” or threatening to grab a basket-hilted claymore and run them through.  Either way, it will usually inspire the elderly woman ahead of me in line at the grocery store to fill out her check with a bit more alacrity.

And shortly thereafter, the N-word:

Eventually this song is going to exhaust the English alphabet, and we’re going to have to start importing fricatives from the !Kung Bushmen.

It is also worth noting that the video of this song includes children who appear to be under 12 years of age and all the performers are black – a point I will address later.

Well, I took that for granted, since Dennis usually gets around to pointing out how black people are spoiling everything, from pride to snack chip commercials.  Not to mention all the “name rape.”

I have long believed that MTV has done more damage to America’s young people than any other single institution. I am referring to the music videos, in which most images or scenes are shown for less than two seconds and thereby numb kids’ minds, and to the sexual imagery and sex talk that permeate the music videos and much of the rest of MTV programming.

There are music videos on MTV?  I’d better touch up my spiral perm.

How does a song replete with expletives, whose very title is “F— You,” get nominated for a Grammy Award as Song of the Year?

I blame industry pressure from Big Dash.

The answer is that the music industry, from producers to artists, is largely populated by people who regard social and cultural norms as stifling. Their professional lives are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, destroying that which uplifts and to profaning that which is held sacred.

Tell me about it!  What’s next in their unending quest for sensationalism and exploitation?  Caribou snuff films?

There is no better explanation for “F— You” being nominated as Song of the Year. It has little, if any, redeeming moral, social or artistic (to the extent that this word retains its original meaning) value. The lyrics are as vapid as they are obscene; the video further degrades that part of black life that is already too lacking in elevation; and there is the participation of children in a profanity-filled video.

Dear Black People:  Mr. Prager would appreciate it if you would stop living at sea level.  Thanks.

For most of American history, a child who used such words was punished by his parents, and society instinctively knew how important it was not to expose children to obscenities. Today, adults in the music industry reward children for participating in videos laced with obscenities.

When in fact they should have been dealt with in the same time-honored fashion Dennis would have dished out to the kid in that corn chip ad which delivered such a fatal blow to Western Civilization during the Super Bowl:  ”If a child did that to me, I would grab his offending arm and apply enough force to make it clear that he will never do that again…The Doritos kid deserved a physical response from this man — as in pressure on the offending arm.”

The third nominee is an ode to New York City, “Empire State of Mind,” performed by black rapper Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, and which also contains the N-word. It is worth recalling that when white radio-show host Laura Schlessinger used this word solely to condemn its use in inner-city black life

Black people really needed to hear it from an unbiased source.

…society’s elite poured such wrath on her that it forced many of her sponsors to abandon her, and she decided to leave radio.

…and move to satellite radio, where apparently you can say any crazy s-word that comes into your head.

Things That Go Grump in the Night | 26 Comments »

I received an email from Tucker (“Watch me pull a Babbitt out of my pants!”) Carlson’s Daily Caller this morning, touting what I can only assume is one of those $19.95 per month reality porn sites:

*World O’ Crap is not an affiliate, nor does it endorse, Sarah Palin’s Ruminant Snuff Reels!; we’re just passing it along in case you’re getting bored with your Hentai collection.

MORE good news! | 16 Comments »

Gather round, friends, because radio gabber and adopted son of Ronald Reagan whose unused portion was returned for a full refund Michael Reagan is giving a seminar on dealing with all enemies, foreign and domestic.  In short: point a gun at them (but just to avoid trouble with the authorities, make it an unloaded gun, and be careful to look silly while you’re doing it).

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an empty .22, the least powerful handgun in the world, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Oh.  You do?  Well…You should probably go buy some Lotto scratchers then.

WikiLeaks’ Assange and Pvt. Manning Should be Tried for Treason

If we had a president in the White House who understood that we are at war with a crazed faction of Islam, and was willing to act on that belief, there would be no question about how we should deal with people who give aid and comfort to the enemy — they’d be tried for treason and when found guilty stood up before a firing squad.

A president like Michael’s dad.  A man who, if he did not necessarily know we were at war with a crazed faction of Islam, almost certainly began to suspect it after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, when someone in the White House pointed out that he had managed to lose more U.S. Marines in a single day than any president since World War II.  And unlike the current Administration, Reagan had a plan for dealing with the traitors who give aid and comfort to the enemy: sell weapons to the same crazed faction that attacked us, thereby making the traitors look like small potatoes (because aid and comfort is nice, but TOW anti-tank missiles are nicer; not to mention the lovely key-shaped baked goods that came with them as lagniappe), and ensuring that whoever was getting killed — us, them, whoever — we’d make a profit on it.  Because the man was first, last, and always a Fiscal Conservative.

Julian Assange and his fellow conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning allegedly betrayed the United States, gave aid and comfort to the terrorists who seek to destroy the United States, and if found guilty they deserve nothing less than death sentences for their unspeakable crimes.

I’m not sure that Assange, an Australian who doesn’t live in the United States, can legally “betray” it, but still, one can’t ignore the precedent set by the execution of Daniel Ellsberg.

Their pitifully lame excuse that they were merely trying to provide information to the American people that was being improperly withheld from them by the government is on a par with Benedict Arnold’s claim that he was merely trying to inform the British on information the American people believed they deserved to have.

Often when I read a conservative  columnist and encounter what context indicates is a joke, I think, “well, that’s kind of stupid.”  But then I remember that everything liberals observe in wingnuts (sociopathy, hypocrisy, racism, etc.) is really just a projection of our own mental illnesses, so in reality the conservative columnist is actually so smart that his writing probably works on multiple levels at once, which means that at this very moment, there is some place, in a quantum branch of infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, where that joke is funny.

Anyway, the super-intelligent pan-dimensional mice seem to like a good Benedict Arnold gag.

On the contrary, the public does not have the right to know everything — some information needs to be kept secret if the public’s safety is to be assured. Consumers do not need to know the gory details of how sausage is made

Rather than establishing the business-strangling USDA, the government should have just hanged Upton Sinclair.

…nor do the people need to be made aware of all of the details of what is being done to protect them.

For instance, Erin Brockovich spilled the beans about how Pacific Gas & Electric contaminated the residents of a small California town with hexavalent chromium.  What Hollywood didn’t tell you — and what you didn’t need to know — is that PG&E was working under contract from the U.S. government to make Californians unappealing to the aliens who wrote that To Serve Man cookbook.  NASA figured out that if you fill humans with enough hexavalent chromium, they become the equivalent of the Japanese fugu fish — very tricky to prepare without poisoning the diner — and the aliens would go find some other planet with a dominant species they could just microwave.

Nobody ever demanded that those scientists engaged in building the atomic bomb that ended the war with Japan should do their work openly and share their secrets with the public, and nobody has the right to decide which secrets the public has a need to know.

Nobody has a right to decide what should be secret?  So who or what handles security classification for the federal government?  That NotMe guy from Family Circus?  A platoon of Shmoo?

I’d stamp this one “Warning Notice – Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved (WNINTEL),” but I don’t have any arms.

Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier who is alleged to have illegally obtained the documents, is already behind bars where, if justice is to be served, he will remain for the rest of his life. Assange’s punishment is yet to be determined, but it should be equally as harsh, if indeed he escapes the hangman’s noose, although he should not.

Oh, Michael, that’s your answer for everything.  Seriously.  In 2008 he called for an anti-war activist to be shot for transmitting information — not to our enemies in this case, but to our troops, in the form of DVDs containing some nutty 9/11 Truther documentary:

“Excuse me folks, I’m going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.” Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”

Meanwhile, back in the present…

According to news reports, the Feds are attempting to learn whether Assange violated any criminal laws

But that doesn’t mean we should wait to execute him for treason.  Or at least transport him to a penal colony on the other side of the world.  I bet he’d hate that.

but there is no question of the serious nature of the crimes committed by Assange and Manning — by their despicable actions they have plunged a dagger into the hearts of the American people

They have stabbed the American people in the head with the Sausage of Knowledge!

It should be kept in mind that Assange and Manning are not the only entities who have put the American people at risk. Those in the media who couldn’t wait to publish the information given them by the pair are equally guilty of endangering the American people.

Exactly — we’re Americans!  You’re better off putting a bullet in our brains than a fact.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 26 Comments »

For many people, holidays mean spending time with family members. Usually this is time spent playing games, making cookies, caroling, decorating, airing long-simmering grievances, engaging in drunken brawls, and possibly covering up homicides.

But Human Events Online has a series designed to help you use your holiday family time more productively: to prepare for the apocalypse. We join the program already in progress.

Preparing for the End of the World: Making Your Family Tough
by Skip Coryell

In the opening article of this series I painted the following picture:

Close your eyes and imagine a world without electricity: no Fox News,

Okay, so it’s got its good points.

no facebook, no email, no Blackberry, no cold drinks, no heat in the winter, no automobiles, no food and no way to cook it even if you had it.

Yes, without electricity, combustion engines don’t work, seeds refuse to grow and fire declines to work. So, take a minute to thank Reddi Kilowatt for all he does for you!

It’s the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) and you and your family are going to die.

 
But on the plus side, you can skip the usual Christmas shopping this year, and you don’t have to worry about how Wikileaks has doomed America by revealing that our diplomats talk about other countries behind their backs.

Through all my research on preparing for societal collapse, I found a dearth of information on preparing the family’s mind and relationship for hard times. So that’s what I want to focus on today, because if your family doesn’t have the will to live, it won’t matter how much “stuff” you have stored in your basement. You’re going to die.

Let me be blunt: without the will to live, you and your family will be killed for the stuff in your basement by people who just want it more. You know, people like Skip.

Think of it in terms of self defense. You can be carrying the largest handgun in the world, but if you don’t have the balls to use it, then you’re going to die.

Yes, if you are starving to death because the lack of electricity has ended photosynthesis, if you don’t have the balls to shoot your neighbor with your large handgun so you can eat him, you’re going to die. It’s that simple.

In the Marine Corps I learned about teamwork, loyalty, and honor. I learned that if one team member is weak, the whole team suffers. Now, as a husband and father, I’ve learned that my family is a team; it has weak links, and it’s only as strong as its weakest team member. Those of you with family know this to be true.

This holiday season, determine who that weakest team member may be. It could be Grandma, since her reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and so she will be of little use as a sniper when it’s time to pick off Chinese invaders. Or it might be your spouse, whose ogling of that comely neighbor demonstrates that he or she posseses a frightening lack of family loyalty. But it’s probably your teenage son or daughter, since teens are notoriously annoying.

Surviving a societal collapse as a lone wolf will be nearly impossible. You’ll need people around you who are trustworthy and loyal and prepared. That’s where the family comes in. Think of yourselves as a military unit. Depending on your size, you could be a fire team or an entire squad. If you live near extended family, you could be talking about an entire platoon!

Start planning a secret second family or marry a few sister wives, and you might be in charge of an entire regiment!
 

The family, even in the best of times, can be an asset or a liability. I have two teenagers at home, and, as much as I love them, they can be a real pain in the butt!

I told you that Greg and Marsha were probably the weak links in your family!

I try to prepare them for hard times, but sometimes I just don’t know if they’re getting it. At times they seem spoiled, lacking in perspective and common sense. As a matter of routine, I give them an hour of chores per day. They complain, whine and moan as if they’re being marched off to the gallows.

So, I marched them off to the gallows. It was for the good of the platoon.

In today’s world, their undisciplined, disrespectful behavior is a nuisance that causes me stress. After societal collapse, their immaturity could well mean the death of a loved one. No, I’m not being overly dramatic. Today I ask them to wash the dishes, but after society collapses, I’ll hand them a gun and send them up on the roof as a sentry from midnight to 2AM. If they shirk their duty, the whole family could be slaughtered in its sleep.

Just something to think about when Wally does a crappy job doing the dishes.
 

Why am saying this? Because there are things you can be doing right now to prepare the minds of your spouse and kids.

The Chinese, evil though they may be, have excellent brain washing technology. While expensive, think of it as an investment in your future.

Anyway, Skip has a lot more to say on the subject, but let me leave you with one last tip:

In many cases, just getting on the same page in regards to preparing for societal collapse can improve your relationship. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to make all the preparations necessary, but, after a while, you might even start having fun. Case in point, my wife and I once went on a date to a militia meeting. We had a good time and met a lot of nice people.

That’s right, fellows: a militia meeting makes a swell date! Any wife, sweetheart, or cute girl whom you want to impress will be thrilled to that you cared enough to take her to an Aryan Brotherhood meeting rather than the same old dinner and a movie. And it will help you to survive the end of the world, so it’s probably tax-deductible.

Well, that’s all the time we have for today, but keep preparing for the apocalypse, and be sure to wish everyone a Merry End of the World.

Uncategorized | 44 Comments »

This just in: Robin of Berkeley has trolls! And not your ordinary trolls; no, she has progressive trolls, the worst kind!

When I started my little blog, it didn’t occur to me that trolls would come out in droves. Why would leftists expend their energies on me?

Aw, you’re just being modest, Robin. After all, you’re a reformed liberal and a licensed psychotherapist!

And why would they subject themselves to scrutiny by a licensed psychotherapist?

Yes, you’d think that knowing that a licensed psychotherapist was scrutinizing their anonymous, hasty, remarks would keep them cowering in shame. But yet they still dare post their unflattering comments. What is this world coming to?

But apparently, numerous trolls have been drawn to me, like venomous bees to honey.

Robin, you routinely diagnose mental illness in the Left while being a nut yourself. You’re a humorless, tone-deaf scold. And you tell the most far-fetched, improbable, entertaining stories about the trials and tribulations of being you. Of COURSE the trolls are going to be drawn to you. You’re their queen!

As a psychotherapist, I can see right through them to who they are and how they operate.

And as a layperson, I can recognize projection (I learned about it from Tucker Carlson).

I wonder to myself: Where do these trolls come from? Where do they live and breed?

Do they write in dank basement rooms while their bedraggled girlfriends (or moms) pick up their dirty shorts? Do they intermix trolling with downloading internet porn? (I’m not being snarky here; I’d bet good money that violent smut gives them endless inspiration.)

Sadly, no. Seriously, I think she’s talking about Sadly, No! readers. (Hey, just joshing with you, Tintin and crew.)

Anyway, as usual, Robin takes a horrific incident from her everyday life (in this, case, somebody disagreeing with her in the comments of her blog), and extrapolates it into an indictment of that part of the country that didn’t vote for Bristol Palin, and ends up in a froth of righteous indignation that this country allows people who think differently from her to even live.

The most hardcore of the leftists seem almost feral, wild, and undomesticated. Many lack even the most rudimentary of social skills; some people may very well be diagnosable on the autism spectrum.

Many militants are devoid of an essential ingredient of being human: empathy.

I’d say something about pots and kettles, but doubt that Robin would realize what I’m talking about, what with her total lack of self-awareness. But really, Robin of all people should refrain from accusing people of a lack of empathy – especially because what she is really saying is, “Somebody posted a comment I don’t like; they must be a feral, evil Socialist/progressive/liberal sociopath to do such a thing, because words can hurt and they don’t even care!”

In conclusion, if you have ever had the impudence to criticize Robin of Berkeley, consider yourself put in your place, you troll, you. She knows where you live!

UPDATE:

I just googled Robin of Berkeley to see if I could anything more about her professional background. I didn’t, but I did find an interesting thread about Robin from a couple of weeks ago in the comments section at the American Spectator.

Here are some excerpts:

D — I used to try and post comments on American Thinker, but my comments were either continuously edited (to their liking) or not printed at all.

G — I was actually asked to be a moderator on that site [...]

It’s funny how I got started.

I wrote a scathing comment about something Robin of Berkeley had written; I believed Robin was a phony, since she had been a die-hard liberal for, like, 40 years – and then suddenly embraced every single conservative principle so thoroughly and articulately that it just smelled wrong. [...] I smelled a rat.

Well, my comment disappeared after about 10 minutes, and I wrote to [American Thinker Publisher and Editor] Lifson to complain. [...]

He actually wrote back to me assuring me that Robin of Berkeley does exist, that she’s a friend of his and he’s physically been in her company several times. [...] A day or so later, I got an email from the chief moderator, who told me she shared my suspicions about Robin and she asked me if I was interested in being a contributor to the moderating team.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/11/18/pat-me-pat-me

Anyway, G. took the position [insert joke here], but very quickly became disillusioned because of what the job entailed (mainly, deleting or editing all posts critical of the AT columnists, especially Robin), and because of all the behind the scenes power plays and nonsense (“I felt like I had fallen in with a Nazi cult). He added that he suspected that the chief moderator, who had a LOT of vitriol to vent about Robin, was jealous of Robin’s friendship with Lifson.

Make of all that whatever you think appropriate.

Get the Butterfly Net! | 42 Comments »

Author’s note: this post is dedicated to D Sidhe, in the hopes that she will draw Stossel as the appropriate parasite.

This week John Stossel shows us how the private sector is Making Parks Decent Again (for decent people only).

Yes, Stossel says that the way to fix “badly maintained” public parks is simple: give them, as tax-free gifts, to “entrepreneurs” who will run them as for-profit enterprises. That way, the public doesn’t have to fund them anymore, they are available for use by concession sellers, special event planners, local businesses, and real estate owners who want to sell park-front property to rich people. And, best of all, only the homeless people who play by the rules get in.

Here’s Stossel!

America is filled with parks that are filthy, dangerous and badly maintained. The governments in charge plead: We can’t help it. Our budgets have been slashed. We don’t have enough money!

Bryant Park, in midtown Manhattan, was once such an unsavory place. But now it’s nice. What changed? Dan Biederman essentially privatized the park.

With permission from frustrated officials who’d watch government repeatedly fail to clean up the park, Biederman raised private funds from “businesses around the park, real estate owners, concessions and events sponsorships. … (S)ince 1996, we have not asked the city government for a single dollar.”

Sounds good to me.

Of course it does. Stossel would think it sounded good to give the state of West Virginia to Donald Trump to use as a game preserve for rich guys who want to hunt the most dangerous game. (After all, many West Virginians are poor, and would probably welcome the chance to be hunted for money, if they had no better prospects. And anyway, the government hasn’t made a financial windfall off of the state, so it should be turned over to somebody who could make it a paying proposition.

But Shirley Kressel, a Boston journalist, doesn’t agree with the idea of giving Boston Common to Dan, the guy who now basically owns Bryant Park.

“(W)e don’t need … to teach our next generation of children that the only way they can get a public realm is as the charity ward of rich people and corporations,” she said. “We can afford our public realm. We’re entitled to it. We pay taxes, and that’s the government’s job.”

Silly journalist, haven’t you been paying attention to Stossel: NOTHING is the government’s job! Except to contract out for-profit wars and the American justice system! And anyway, you pay your taxes in order to allow corporations to make the world a better place for corporations, not to provide any personal benefit to you.

And when she objected that privatized parks won’t allow the homeless to use them, Dan said that this just isn’t so.

“The homeless people are welcomed into Bryant Park if they follow the rules. And those same 13 people are there almost every day. We know their names.”

And doesn’t sound that great! A park where 13 select homeless are allowed to visit, and everyone knows their names! And the rules are followed! And if they aren’t, well, Dan knows their names . . .

But let’s let Stossel give us the lesson to be learned from the shining example of Bryant Park:

Once again, the creative minds of the private sector invent solutions that never occur to government bureaucrats. If government would just get out of the way, entrepreneurship and innovation, stimulated by the profit motive, will make our lives better.

Yes, greedy bastards, stimulated by the profit motive, will make our lives better, if only we will welcome this brave new corporate world.

The Rich Are Different From You | 17 Comments »