The Owners Manual

Celtic Thunder

2009-12-17T17:56:00.001-05:00

Uh, okay.

2009-07-03T11:13:00.001-04:00

"Over the past six months we have filtered out those businesses that want to be good neighbors and those that did not wish to operate legitimate businesses," Fenty said in a statement. "We will continue to monitor our neighborhoods and economic corridors to ensure these illegal businesses open shop in the District again."

D.C.'s used car lot crackdown picks up

Ixnay on that Star Spangled Banner

2009-06-25T13:06:00.002-04:00

It seems that academia thinks love of one's country over someone else's is a bad thing. How else to interpret this?

They wanted to see if the songs created a pro-social or an anti-social response. He said the preliminary findings showed that the patriotic songs had a negative effect on the participants, as shown through their responses to the survey's questions about other cultures and diversity. The patriotic songs made the participants close-minded and prejudiced. "Once they were in a patriotic point of view, they were less empathetic," Alvarado said. "They didn't put themselves in other people's perspective." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090625115237.htm

How is empathizing with North Korea and Iran working so far?

Love for sale

2009-05-13T19:05:00.002-04:00

Postal service: Worker stole $20,000 in stamps for mortgage

"Pssst. Hey, you...come over here."
"What? What do you want? Are you selling something?"
"Yeah. Hey, listen, I got half-priced love."
"Half-price? How much you got?"
"A hunnert dollars worth for fifty bucks."
"What kind of love?"
"Well, it's like you won't have to lick 'em."
"I really hadn't planned on licking them..."
"All you have to do is peel 'em and stick 'em."
"Oooo! I like that. Where are they?"
"I got 'em right here."
"That's just a roll of stamps."
"Yeah, but hey, they're LOVE stamps."
"Say, aren't you my mailman?"
"It's the haircut. Everybody thinks I'm their mailman. Well, I'm outta here."
"Bye now. Dang...that's some haircut..."

Blah blah, blah-blah [John Derbyshire]

2009-05-11T14:19:00.001-04:00

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWU5MzlkZjUzMGMxMzczYjBjMzJlYmIwOTY5YjczNTk=
Monday, May 11, 2009
Blah blah, blah-blah [John Derbyshire]

Blah blah-ah blah blah, blah - blah blah. Blah, blah-blah-blah, blah! Blah.

Blah-blah, blah/blah, blah blah-blah blah blah.

The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, and social. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the esteem of our peers. For most people, wanting to know the truth about the world is way, way down the list.

Blah-blah blah blah (blah) blah, blah. Blah blah; blah.

[Occasionally, the internet inadvertently leaks out something profound.]

Buck Up

2009-05-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

Buck Up

Pirates, hackers and suicide bombers,
you're not even safe at home.
They'll come down the intertubes --
snatch all your data, or blow up
your tour group in Rome.

What good is having a Defense Department
with wide open borders and sky?
If the suitcase nukes or swine flu don't getcha,
they'll serve up a new way to die.

So rattle your cage bars, trade 'safety' for freedom,
keep terror from clouding your day.
'Cause just like the cops, fedguv will tell you,
"When it comes down to seconds, we're only minutes away!"

Hillary Reminisces

2009-05-06T16:11:00.000-04:00

Bill or Vince?

"Bring me fraud's head on a platter!"

2009-05-05T13:33:00.005-04:00

Writing on physicist fraud:

"Science was corrected in the Schön case, but not by itself – only because individual scientists made corrections. From would-be replicators in dozens of labs to many sceptics, only a couple of researchers were transformed into whistle-blowers by the unlikely pattern of [duplicated] evidence."

Reich continues, "Fraud was able to stifle questions about Schön's lab technique that would otherwise have been asked, and to turn review processes at journals into opportunities for additional fabrication. Other scientists' support of the fraud was unwitting, but the decision to place so much trust in a colleague was a conscious rationalisation that continues to be defended in science to this day."

Who is this fraud, and why is he stifling me? Even Reich, it seems, must lapse into passive aggression. How could so many be fooled for so long? As Family Circus would say, "Beats me. Not me. I dunno."

It isn't the first time gobbledy-gook cooked books have been taken for gospel. Won't be the last. Still, it self-corrects sooner or later. There's that.

Things you might see at Felony Frank's

2009-05-04T23:26:00.004-04:00

"Felony Franks is Jim Andrews' new hot dog stand, currently under construction on a busy West Side corner, decorated with freshly painted wieners donning prison garb and a ball and chain, proclaiming "food so good it's criminal."

"Our cooks went to Screw U."
"Do you want to fry with that?"
Try our Diet Dog. It's lite without possibility of a roll.
Your hotdog is free if the cashier doesn't shank you.
Please count your change carefully. We need time to molest your woman.
Employees must wipe their shivs before returning to the service line.
Don't like mustard? No problem.
Don't like relish? No problem.
Don't like serial rapists? We got a problem.
Do not accept hot dogs from server's lap.

Resumé or rap sheet?

2009-05-02T13:23:00.003-04:00

The NYT has this to say of Jennifer M. Granholm as a prospect to replace Souter on the USSC:

Jennifer M. Granholm is governor of Michigan and has served as a federal prosecutor and the state's attorney general.

She stood in for Sarah Palin to help Joseph R. BIden Jr. prepare for the vice-presidential debate last fall. Which qualifies her as what, exactly?

She has practical experience as a hands-on politician... And we want that in a judge?

...in dealing with the ailing auto industry, the state's budget woes and the troubled city of Detroit. Three dismal failures.

Would you hire this applicant?

H/T Neptunus Lex

I can't even afford to dress poor

2009-05-02T12:58:00.002-04:00

Is this Poverty Chic? I see it as paying a substantial premium for clothing that looks like it came from the local Scratch 'N' Sniff factory-seconds store.

This dressed-up dressing down is only successful, though, when everyone knows you're doing it. The point is to show solidarity with people who can't eat and buy $500 canvas spads while refusing to live like one .

Absent the press pointing out your faux thriftiness, as opposed to castigating the governor of Alaska for doing the real thing, and without the same press being a weather vane of Obama vanity, the mini-theater to be had of it all would devolve into wondering how a society in the throes of economic alarmism nonetheless finds time and money for such conceit.

New York, New York

2009-05-01T12:18:00.002-04:00

New York City police have begun handing out small cards telling people why they were stopped and searched on city streets.

"Why did you stop me, officer?"
"It's part of our positive reinforcement program."
"What do you mean?"
"I found you doing something good. You stopped when the 'don't walk' signal came on."
"So, what was frisking me all about, then?"
"Checking you for lumps. Cancer, you know."
"And these handcuffs?"
"It's just a precaution."
"So what's the positive reinforcement?"
"I'm positive I"ll have some reinforcement in a minute. Then we're going to kick your ass. This is New York, you know."
"It's a hell of a town."
"It sure is. Now get up against the car."

And he deserves to get it, good and hard.

2009-04-25T14:55:00.003-04:00

"When you jam something down somebody's throat, it's not sustainable," [Democratic Senator Max] Baucus told reporters. "And I want something that will last."

Paging Barney Frank...

Hillary Sets Iraq Aright

2009-04-25T12:00:00.002-04:00

"I think that these suicide bombings … are unfortunately, in a tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction," Clinton told reporters aboard her plane.

"So, madam Secretary, you're saying the killing of over 150 people is a good sign?"
"Good in a tragic way, yes."
"And the nature of your committment is to pull out?"
"Yes. We are committed to being gone."
"And if the number of combat troops turns out to be inversely proportional to the suicide attacks in the country, resulting in all-out civil war as the last American soldier leaves, this is the ultimate symbol that Iraq is moving in the right direction?"
"Well, I... yes, I guess that follows."
"So, good means tragic, committed means to leave, and war is the right direction?"
"Yes. I know this is difficult to grasp, but it's a major principle of diplomacy. It's called Catch-22."
"That's quite a catch, madam Secretary."
"It's the best there is."

Sanctuary Mulch

2009-04-24T12:58:00.001-04:00

*Sanctuary Mulch*

Across the street at a house for sale,
they're putting down new sodded turf.
I wish my last layer of life could be scraped
and topped with such custom made stuff.

Here on my own lot I have to be careful
at Chemlawn's herbicide call,
'cause if it wasn't for evergreen weeds,
I'd have little front lawn at all.

No soap, radio. No sale, either.

2009-04-19T12:51:00.001-04:00

.
Progressives lack a Limbaugh-like voice

Those poor progressive babies. They have TV and the print media entanked for their vacuous, stammering "communicator" while taking money from the rest of us to fund NPR and CPB, virtual vassals of liberalism. Seemingly unable to flip from AM to FM radio, or even change the station to nontalk radio, they subsume their San Francisky selves to a quasi-North Korean state of forced listening, ears no doubt propped open in a Clockwork Orange fashion where listening becomes unavoidable, to mind-altering "words."

Now, I don't envy their having to listen to Michael Savage, who has for years been about two quarts low, but I don't see where it's had much effect on the voting habits of Pelosi's Pals of the Saddle. And Rush Limbaugh failed to keep two branches of federal govt from falling into the hands of the Kommie-krazies.

All this is normal. It is how words work. And the right-wing message machine has found a way to take advantage of it - activating, as it were, a conservative system of thought.

Note well the choice of "activating" instead of "creating." You activate something that is already in place, that has already been created. Even the cognitive professor from Berkley is forced to admit, and this man makes a living from "words," that many people are innately conservative without understanding the underpinnings of it. They don't naturally believe that someone else owns them or is entitled to fruits of their labor. It is only through the droning adulation of liberal media that the grossly underqualified child of the Chicago machine came to rest on the laurels of this unfortunate nation.

When the French, for god's sake, can see the emperor is buck naked, and to see that without the benefit of talk radio, even the Birkenstocked bimbos of Berkeley must eventually succumb to what their own ears tell them. Blaming it on AM radio is looking like a cry for help.

Wisdom for poetry month

2009-04-10T13:51:00.000-04:00

A shining lamp, you pierce the fog who
sees yourself as others blog you.

Obama meets the Queen

2009-04-01T16:15:00.001-04:00

Obama -- "Here's a picture of you, for you."
Queen -- "And here's another picture of me, for you."
Obama -- "I'm thrilled."
Queen -- "We're amused."

Grapes of Wrath Reloaded

2009-03-25T20:41:00.002-04:00

"I'm goin' to California, Ma."
"But who'll take care o' you, boy?"
"The governator, Ma. He's goin' to put us up at the State Fair."
"Well, I swan. Whatcha gonna do there, boy?"
"I hear there's mountains o' dope that need smokin', Ma."
"Well, I swan."

Oddly, doing more of what fails, still fails

2009-03-24T14:14:00.001-04:00

The latest group to call for the prospect of legalizing narcotics is El Paso's City Council.

Out in the west Texas town of El Paso,
they wrote a request to legalize drugs.
"Hell, no!" the Mayor said, "Not in this lifetime.
"Dudes getting high? I'll take Mexican thugs."

Meanwhile, the prisons are swelling with stoners,
while usage continues untrammeled somehow.
Odd how it took a full blown Amendment
to bring Prohibition, but not so much now.

So at last, here I am in El Paso,
watching the border through hotel window.
Drugs and illegals pour through it unhindered,
cash heading back to poor doomed Mexico.

Not so far from Teapot Dome

2009-03-24T12:29:00.004-04:00

In the Teapot Dome matter of the 1920s, Senator Albert Fall was convicted of receiving a bribe of $100,000 that multimillionaire oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny were cleared of giving.

In our more enlightened age ---

From Wiki:

Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223 (1993), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the exchange a gun for drugs constituted "use" of the firearm for purposes of a federal statute imposing penalties for "use" of a firearm "during and in relation to" a drug trafficking crime.

In Watson v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 697 (2007) the court later decided that a transaction in the opposite direction does not violate the same statute (i.e., Smith holds that one "uses" a gun by giving it in exchange for drugs, but Watson holds that one does not "use" a gun by receiving it in exchange for drugs).

Hollywood slips one over on Obama

2009-03-22T12:29:00.003-04:00

Richard Gere Starring in
An officer and a Lentilman

Obama, lost for words

2009-03-18T12:43:00.001-04:00

If Obama gets a double case of the pink eye and can't read for a while,
does Joe Biden automatically take over?

Does inability to speak extemporaneously qualify for parking in handicap spaces?

Mel Tillis was unable to speak without stuttering unless he sang.
If a teleprompter dies during the next SOTU address,
will Obama turn the speech into musical comedy?

Will Obama's next press give & take be limited to twittering?

When Obama answers the phone, how far past "Hello" can he get?

Gridiron singed by Obama no-show

2009-03-16T13:54:00.001-04:00

“I don’t think [Obama] understands the implications of not coming to the [press] club in the first year. It’s not your ordinary state dinner. I think [the Gridiron dinner] would be helpful for him and his relations with the Washington establishment to come to the club.” Politico

So then, there are degrees of adoration?
I'm so sorry to be hearing that.
If adoration isn't quanticized,
a modern Moses taxed with getting media
back to the frontage road of objectivity
has a long, long journey ahead of him,
with no epiphanies, just the steady
grind of backfilling, denial, and amnesia.

No Soup for You

2009-03-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

"I can hock a loogie into the soup before you can stop me."
"Hock a loogie? Right here? In my dumpling chicken broth?"
"Yeah. Actually, I already did."
"Get outta here!"
"Yep. That's not a dumpling."
"How would you like a job at the White House?"
"Sorry, I got tax problems."
"Shoot."