We lost the Silver, we lost the Gold

Time to Think Again: Stanley Fish writes that the humanities and arts "“restore the wonder which those who have glimpsed the human condition have always felt, and which our scientific civilization, with its gadgets and discoveries, obscures.”"...

"...Kronman is not so much mounting a defense of the humanities as he is mounting an attack on everything else. Other spokespersons for the humanities argue for their utility by connecting them (in largely unconvincing ways) to the goals of science, technology and the building of careers. Kronman, however, identifies science, technology and careerism as impediments to living a life with meaning. The real enemies, he declares, are “the careerism that distracts from life as a whole” and “the blind acceptance of science and technology that disguise and deny our human condition.” These false idols, he says, block the way to understanding. We must turn to the humanities if we are to “meet the need for meaning in an age of vast but pointless powers,” for only the humanities can help us recover the urgency of “the question of what living is for.”

The late Pope John knew full well that reverence for - and the pursuit of, the arts and the humanities is part of our holy life. I loved that he knew that.

Jacking-off In A Rush

Limbaugh Wants To Find 2 Guys That Masturbate: "We're going to find out... !!":
"We're going to find out where your kids go to school. We're going to find out who you knocked up in high school. We're going to find out what drugs you used. We're going to find out where you go to drink and do -- we're gonna find out how you paid for your house. We're going to do -- and we're going to do exact -- and we're going to say that, you know what? You are no different than Al Goldstein. You both masturbate."

There are very few things more instructive than watching a Faberge Balloon insult a dime-store hatpin.

What's interesting is not the ridiculousness of the confrontation. It's realizing yet one more time that not enough of us use the power we have to bring down a tyrant.

Ron Paul / Google / Yuk

Ron Paul is Anethema - Don't Sleep Until He's Off The Stage: "The New Hampshire Attorney General has determined that anti-Mormon push polls employed earlier this fall were organized by the polling firm Moore-Information, Inc.

Moore Information has not yet confirmed the sponsor of the poll, but the firm lists presidential candidate Ron Paul as one of its clients. Paul is the only presidential client listed on Moore's website."

Google this creep and learn of the kind of thinking he employs. Read the Ron Paul newsletters. Read the bills he sponsored in Congress. Stay away from this man.

Let's Take The Fork In The Road

Arianna thinks Bill took Hillary down: "Bill Clinton has privately told friends that if Hillary didn't win, it would be because of the two weeks that followed her shaky performance in the Philadelphia debate..."

"...But it wasn't those two weeks. Indeed, if we were to pinpoint one decisive moment, it would be Bill Clinton on Charlie Rose, arrogant and entitled, dismissive and fear-mongering."

Maybe, but for me it was definitely those 2 weeks. They were a kiss of death. I was completely amazed at how she did almost nothing to counter the negative aftermath of the Philadelphia debate. It was an absolute disaster for her to appear so defeated and unable to react - and it stayed like that for an incredibly long time, as if she were paralyzed.

Peggy Gets With Obama

Peggy Noonan: "He did it with a classy campaign, an unruffled manner, and an appeal on the stump that said every day, through the lines: Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together."

Stunning, and nearly transcendently beautiful. It is hard to resist the longing she so clearly evokes.

But with Hillary, the view is more prosaic: "There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.

She started out way ahead, met everyone, and lost."

"My Heart Is With the Big Cats"

An Emotional Quagmire - Zoo opens to tourists and curious onlookers: "'I came to mourn the death of Tatiana,' said Susan Pettitt, a Santa Clara resident who has visited the zoo each week for the past three years. She brought a card, a stuffed tiger and three photos she had taken of Tatiana, and placed them in front of the statue.

'She was a fun-loving tiger who would greet you when you came,' Pettitt said. 'It's going to be weird that she's not here. I know today I won't see them, but my heart is with the big cats.'"

Booze, Cigarettes and Tons of Grass

Why booze and cigarettes are essential for good journalism - Slate Magazine: "please do not bring any alcoholic beverages into the newsroom."

I'm from the rock world of years ago and I have never had to take a drug test. I'd like to think I would pee on their shoes instead, but I've never had to face the choices - job or grass, because, well, I was raised right. Back in '69 we smoked dope at the job; all day. We turned out some of the best recordings ever made by humans, and we loved life a lot.

Over the years the idiots took over the country and the Security-Guard mentality seeped into family life and into the souls of otherwise great individuals.

Of course, I can't stand to talk to any of them because they're lying to themselves likkity-split, their kids are nervous wrecks, and all I see is that nothing good can ever come of resisting the breadth of life.

Go for the higher law and do what you know you must do, because if we don't live our life, nobody will.

Upload Outrage - Vista rats you out

Download Uproar: RIAA goes after personal use: "The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from a legally bought CD are 'unauthorized copies' of copyrighted recordings."

According to the ruling in the recent "Jammie Thomas" internet-downloading case, copies of copyrighted music on a hard drive and in a folder that is shared with people other than the "copy owner", is a violation of the law - even if no copying from the folder has occurred.

I think that it is a defensible ruling if the intent of the "copy owner" is to make the material available for downloading or copying by other people, or it is reasonable to assume that the person would be aware that this would occur. But it is less defensible where the "copy owner" reasonably did not expect that others would download or copy the copyrighted material from the shared folder.


But it's so much bigger than this...


The entire world has made up its mind - people want their music on a portable MP3 player.

If it is illegal to copy a CD to an iPod or Zune, then who needs to buy a CD? It is cheaper to buy music directly from the internet.

There goes your CD business you massively stupid RIAA old-time fucks.


And it's bigger and worse even than that...


We like to think our PC tries to protect us and our stuff. Uh uh, think again. That's the old days.

Somebody's figured out that the public is a pain in the ass and won't pay much for security - but business will pay serious money to be protected from the public. So screw the public.

It's so much more lucrative to create Windows Vista, an operating system with a "New Electronic Deal", where your computer finks on you - literally rats you out, whenever you do something that causes some business to lose a buck - or miss the opportunity to get more of your bucks. And that list of "crimes" gets bigger by the minute.

But we all continue to click "I agree with these terms" all the time - like it doesn't affect us; like we really plan to pull out at the last minute. Yeah right.

A Breathtaking Dereliction

"Hey! Let's measure it!!": "'There have been a lot of different measurements regarding the moat,' zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo said Thursday. 'Today we went out and measured the moat ourselves.'"

"Measured the moat ourselves"???? Who in hell has been measuring it up to now? Is this guy for real?

And the online comments about this story boggle the mind. The tirade of visciousness directed at the 3 young male victims - absent any clear indication of their complicity or involvement, is unacceptable. One online commenter chimed in with "According to unnamed sources, when the "Tiger Whisperer" came in to find out what happened, the Tiger said "Who says you can't get good Mexican Food in San Francisco!"

For me, the 2 clear facts are that a beautiful Siberian tiger is a treasure, and that the most valuable animal at the zoo is always the visitor.

Heterosexual Domestic Partners and Gay Domestic Partners To Lose Rights

Woops! Republicans Target Me ??? Bad Plan: "The Florida proposal, according to its opponents, will affect not only gay couples but also heterosexual domestic partners, legally recognized in some areas of the state, and will mean insurance programs, hospital visitations and death benefits, and other citizens' rights would be terminated."

Anita and Matthew Stavor, a pesty couple of rightie mouth-breathers, want a surge of anti-gay anger to fill the poll booths. But threatening all old folks in Florida - whose retirement options can include choosing a Domestic Partner arrangement - stinks on ice.

I'm straight, getting older and planning retirement, and if I was in Florida, and the Liberty Council started to fuck with my rights, I'd go ballistic - and they'd know about it!

Romney Flops - Flips Out

Romney Says He Was With Alice When She Was 10 Feet Tall, So He Didn't Notice That Martin Luther King Was Not Beneath Him: "'My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit.'"

"Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged that was not true. "Mitt Romney did not march with Martin Luther King."

Did I hear Mitt say, "Did march, didn't march, doesn't mean squat. Martin Luther King should have lightened up. Like Clarence Thomas said about being a Supreme Court Justice, 'There’s no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me.' "

Apple Sets Price of Integrity

Corporate Dons Toasting the Cheap Rates: "“It’s great for the individual critic to be paid to be quiet, but the public is worse off if we lose the ability to get more information in the marketplace of ideas..."

"...Nicholas M. Ciarelli, who operated a Web site for Apple rumors called Think Secret, was sued by Apple for publishing trade secrets in January 2005. In a brief statement Thursday on his site, Mr. Ciarelli said that he had reached a settlement with Apple and that he would stop publishing Think Secret."

Integrity HALF-OFF - Today Only !!!

If you drag a million bucks through my trailer court I don't know for certain if I can vouch for the integrity of my response either.

Clarence Won't Get His Wings After All

Republican Quality On Parade For All To See: Clarence Thomas hates his job.: " 'There’s not much that entices about the job,' Thomas said, answering questions from the public that provided a rare glimpse of the man behind the office. 'There’s no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me.' "

A Republican Giant of defining proportions that the world will surely note and long remember.

" 'Thomas, 59, said the position is satisfying because he feels he’s serving the public, and he’s honored by it, 'but I wouldn’t say I like it.'

'I like sports,' Thomas said. 'I like to drive a motor home.' "

Do you know anyone who would want their child to emulate this schlubb?

"He Thinks I'm Dim"

Peggy Noonan on Huckabee: "His rise is not a cause of collapse but an expression of it":
"That guy is using the cross so I'll like him. That doesn't tell me what he thinks of Jesus, but it does tell me what he thinks of me. He thinks I'm dim. He thinks I will associate my savior with his candidacy. Bleh."...

When Huckabee said that the cross in the background was just a shelf, he spoke as a calculating liar.

..."Ken Mehlman, the former Republican chairman, once bragged in my presence that in every ad he did he put in something wrong--something that went too far, something debatable. TV producers, ever hungry for new controversy, would play the commercial over and over as pundits on the panel deliberated over its meaning. This got the commercial played free all over the news.

The cross is the reason you saw the commercial. The cross made it break through."...

..."Like Mr. Bush, his approach to politics seems, at bottom, highly emotional, marked by great spurts of feeling and mighty declarations as to what the Lord wants. The problem with this, and with Bushian compassionate conservatism, which seems to have an echo in Mr. Huckabee's Christianism, is that to the extent it is a philosophy, it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to "This is what God wants." This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it."

Clinton-Hatred Bags Another Sucker

Huckabee Tries to Shoot the Messenger: "'Dear Wayne,' Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond, after having read the victims' letters. 'My desire is that you be released from prison.' And no amount of spinning can change that, or the conclusion that Huckabee allowed his judgment to be swayed by the bleating of a collection of right-wing zealots who put their hatred of Bill Clinton over the well being of the public (Dumond's victim was a distant relative of Clinton, and the daughter of a major Clinton donor). "

From the Cold, Dead Hands of Children

Guns for Tots - The NRA Children:

I think we owe thanks to the NRA and all the conservatives for getting guns into the hands of as many young people as possible.

And I'd like to see a special high-five to all the American citizens that vote for the politicians who make this all possible.

And a real special shout-out to all the cops around the country that use tasers because they know - as we should but don't, that if everybody has guns, cops have to shoot you or tase you - there is no longer a third choice on the American streets.

But the Big Award goes to me, and to you, for letting America slip beneath the waves.

On The Back Of A Turtle

Huckabee Aims To Cram Creationism Down Your Child's Throat: "Huckabee, at a dinner in Des Moines, told reporters that the theory of intelligent design, whose proponents believe an intelligent cause is the best way to explain some complex and orderly features of the universe, should be taught in schools as one of many viewpoints. "

This is the main reason I could never support Huckabee. He should be challenged at every opportunity on this point.

Huckabee "bristled Tuesday when asked if creationism should be taught in public schools."...

..."That's an irrelevant question to ask me—I'm happy to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what's going to be taught in 50 different states," Huckabee said. "Education is a state function. The more state it is, and the less federal it is, the better off we are."

I'm Imus. No, I'm Imus, No, I'm Imus, No, I'm...

An Everyman Hero:

From Mediabistro: "6:00 A.M.: Charles McCord opens the program. "The Imus in the Morning program has returned to the air following a hiatus of nearly 8 months." Wild applause from the live audience assembled in Times Square's Town Hall.
6:06 A.M.: Imus debuts to the sound of "Sirius" by the Alan Parsons Project (famous for also being the Chicago Bulls theme song).
6:07 A.M.: Imus announces today's guests: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Sen. John McCain, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Sen. Chris Dodd, James Carville, Mary Matalin.
6:09 A.M.: Levon Helm performs.
6:14 A.M.: New "Imus in the Morning" jingle.
6:10 A.M.: "I want to take a second to introduce this new incarnation of 'Imus in the Morning' and the cast." They are: Bernard McGuirk, Rob Bartlett, Tony Powell, Cara Foster, Larry Kinney, Lou Ruffino.
6:20 A.M.: "I want to take a second to talk about what happened back on April 12th. ... what it means ... what it means for this program and what it means for the young women out of Rutgers.
"In thinking about what happened... I didn't see appoint in going on some Larry King tour to offer a bunch of lame excuses for making a reprehensible remark about innocent people who did not deserve to be made fun of.
"I think what happened is about what should have happened. I think one has to realize ...that you don't get to decide nor should you how the news media is going to treat you a remark you make. ..."Every time that I got pissed off about that I reminded myself that if I hadn't said what I said then I wouldn't be having this discussion. ...
Les Moonves could not have been more honorable and decent and honest in dealing with me. ...6:23 A.M.: "Whether you're a good person or not is completely unrelated and it doesn't give you any license to make any kind of remark you feel like making, and doesn't minimize the impact it has on who you make it about. ..."6:25 A.M.: Describes meeting with Rutgers basketball team as close to a life-changing experience.
6:28 A.M.: "As I was talking to these young women, I realized that, other than placing in context for them who I was and that I wasn't some vicious racist and this is what we did for a living -- make fun of people -- that was so irrelevant to how they felt. ... It sounded to me as I listened to myself talk and as I looked at them, it just sounded like one lame excuse after another. ...
"They didn't think I was calling them prostitutes, but they didn't think it was funny either.
"One woman was this close to my face, just screaming. You could feel her heart break. And I realized how fortunate it was that I was fired. If I had been there apologizing and offering these excuses and still had my job, they would have thought that I was there to save my job and that may have been true. But I was there to save my life. I had already lost my job ... They forgave me, they accepted my apology and they said that they would never forget. And I said that I would never forget."
6:32 A.M.: "I analogized it to being an alcoholic and a drug addict, which I also am. If you get into recovery, which I am, for 20 some years now, you have an opportunity to be a better person and to have a better life than you ordinarily would have. And that's true in this situation because it was demonstrated to these young women that there are consequences for things you say. Would I rather have not gone through it? ... Absolutely."
6:33 A.M.: "We now have the opportunity to have a better program, to obviously diversity the cast -- I mean that just makes sense. But the program is not going to change. ... It is a great radio program. It's on a better radio station. ... I will never say anything in my lifetime that will make any of these young women at Rutgers regret or feel foolish that they accepted my apology and forgave me. And no one else will say anything on my program that will make anyone else think that I didn't deserve a second chance."
6:34 A.M.: Imus takes national media to task. "They said we were going to have an ongoing discussion about race relations in this country as soon as I left the room. ... I must have missed that."6:35 A.M.: "Not much has changed. Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is still Satan and I'm back on the radio!"
6:38 A.M.: At the end of Imus' speech, he plays Montgomery Gentry's "Some People Change":
Here's to the strong; thanks to the brave.Don't give up hope: some people change.Against all odds, against the grain,Love finds a way: some people change.Some people change.
6:45 A.M.: Goodwin: "I'm so excited you're back." Imus tells her at 6:55 that she's "a great friend."
6:47 A.M.: Salutes Sean Hannity and Opie & Anthony for their support during Imus' tough time.6:48 A.M.: "We signed for five years because that's how long it's going to take to get even with everybody."
6:49 A.M.: Someone wrote Imus a letter and said, "Since the Rutgers team forgave you, can't you forgive" those whom Imus feels betrayed him. Imus: "I probably can." But: "I didn't think that these various folks who I was making famous and rich had a lot of courage. I don't know what you think about Al Sharpton, but if I'm going to pick somebody to be in a foxhole with, I pick him before I pick a lot of them people."
7:01 A.M.: Any reason MSNBC still has its Imus page up?
7:36 A.M.: Sen. John McCain tells Imus, "Glad to have you back."

"I Want To 'Hang the Ten' In Malibu"

Ashcroft Suffering From "Premature Explanation" - Meant "Surfboarding", Not Waterboarding: "It’s not something I can make a decision on,” said Ashcroft.

..."After the debate, McCain reminded people that Japanese soldiers were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding."

Confused, Ashcroft vows to "take some curls" and "hang ten more" at Trancas after church.

Scumbag Utah Trooper acted reasonably, say Head Scumbags

Fascist Murderer Cops On Duty In Utah: In addition to the criminal cop who double-tased the motorist, here's another real scumbag: Lance Davenport of the Utah Highway Patrol, who has no problem defending the tasering of a man who refused to sign a ticket - as I have refused to do at least once in Marin County, California.

"A Utah trooper who used a Taser to subdue a stubborn motorist who was walking away from him during a traffic stop felt threatened and acted reasonably, state officials said Friday."

Time after time, tasers are torture devices when used by most police officers. If they pulled this on me or someone in my family, I would go after that person without hesitation and with no limitation and I wouldn't stop until I was satisfied.