March 24, 2005
Books and blogfesters
This one is for my bride, She Who Must be Obeyed, with her six linear feet of paperback romance books stacked six rows deep and waiting to be read.
My thanks to Delftsman (who got it from Lucianne) for this link.
And speaking of Delftsman, husband of the unstoppable Mommamontezz, he's got a photo of the illustrious, nay, infamous Darth Misha I, Lord Spatula, Denita Twodragons, and a whole bunch of others who attended Texas Blogfest 2005. Go here for the post and photo.
And Lila? Your new hairstyle is great. Consider a new photo for your blog!
Posted by Weaselteeth at 01:12 AM | Comments (1)
February 21, 2005
It's a blogger thang
Anyone who's been reading this thing I'm doing here already knows how I admire the writing of La Shawn Barber and Michelle Malkin. They are among the best of the very best of the blogging world. And here they are together.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 01:05 AM
January 22, 2005
Depression, our comrades in Washington, French surrender, and snow
The one thing that the "blue states" have in common is the high number of mental health professionals. (We always knew they needed help, yes?)
The February 2005 edition of Chicago Magazine (not yet online at www. chicagomagazine.com) offers a new insight.The ten states (including the District of Columbia ) with the highest ratio of psychologists per 100,000 residents, were, with the exception of Colorado, all blue states which supported John Kerry (D.C, Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, in rank order from one to ten). The ten states with the lowest ratio of psychologists per 100,000 residents, all were red states supporting Bush (Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana). Louisiana with the lowest ratio is listed first.
(Hat tip to AlphaPatriot—and somebody put on the Patsy Cline.)
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Over at Conservative Insurgent, Jack takes a hard look at the new comrade in charge of Washington State, and has some eerie similarities between Christine Gregoire and the unlamented Josef Stalin.
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The French have surrendered again, E-nough reports....
IT IS official: the French are a nation of depressed pessimists, wracked with self-doubt and unable to see a positive future.This gloomy portrait of the current state of Gallic morale - or rather the lack of it - was made public yesterday in a damning report by France’s prefects, the country’s top administrators.
"The French no longer believe in anything," the report said. "That is the reason that the situation is relatively calm, for they believe that it is not even worthwhile expressing their opinions or trying to be heard any more."
The country’s 100 prefects went on to use the words "lifelessness", "resignation", "anxiety" and "pessimism" to describe the attitudes they believe prevail in France today...
[A]nalysts point to the fact that disillusionment and apathy are so great that not even France’s formerly powerful unions were able to predict the turnout for the strike. Opinion polls show that 65 per cent of the French support the strikers, leading observers to say that the country is showing its discontent by proxy via the strikers. . .
Pierre Taribo, writing in L’Est Républicain . . . wrote: "One is forced to say that the French no longer believe in very much. Confronted with the reality of an open economy, clearly showing less and less appetite for politics, they are disillusioned and doubt everything from Chirac to the government and the Right, which is accused of every ill, to the Left, which has no projects, and the unions, whose activism no longer inspires a reflex of blind adhesion."
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And finally, here's one of the really great reasons why Michiganders like myself say a foot of snow is a really good start.
Hubs and Spokes has the photo. And the cute kid.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 09:58 PM
January 20, 2005
Inauguration, jobs for Hollyweird, and Dan Rather
Today, adult leadership in America was reaffirmed by the second inauguration of George W. Bush. You'll notice in this hilarious photo who is standing where, and who is forlornly looking on.
But we're not going to see any improvement in one area. Hanoi John Kerry got his ass kicked at the polls, but the Hollyweird crowd aren't going to do the decent thing and leave America, now that he lost. They promised they would, back in 2000, but actors are all paid liars and that one they told for free.
There are even jobs waiting for them, says Canadian blogger Kevin Steel:
Harrison Ford, a former carpenter, could get work as an instructor in his old trade for Corrections Canada if he moved to Laval. According to the bio on his official site, Alec Baldwin "is a vigorous supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)." Well, here's a job for an Animal Health Technician in Winnipeg. Any number of megastars--Sue Sarandon or her husband Tim Robbins--could grab a job as a Passport Examiner in St. John's, Newfoundland. I mean, how hard can that be? You open a passport, examine it, and say "Thank you. NEXT!" $39,840--$43,132 per annum (pro-rated-- under revision). Sweet.
(Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.)
Well, what brought that on? This update on the Fox News site, talking about the surge in page hits at the Canadian immigration site, the day after the election.
Well, not every liberal left the country, though quite a few reportedly sat out the inaguration itself. Fox News says Terry McAuliffe decided to stay home and watch a movie based on the 2004 Kerry campaign. Titanic.
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Speaking of sunk ships, here's a snip from Pat Buchanan, asking a very telling question about Dan Rather:
Where is the outrage of Rather, whose reputation has been ruined and career destroyed by the criminals who cooked up the fakes? Last September, Rather said that if the memos turned out to be fake, he would love to break that story. Why hasn’t he? Why hasn’t CBS turned the dogs loose on those who did this to it?
Posted by Weaselteeth at 11:12 PM | Comments (1)
January 15, 2005
Space blobs and Demo-losers
NASA has photos and a story on three galaxies which are merging together. It's all part of the astronomy world trying to make sense of what are now called "space blobs." (Hat tip: What Kind of Sick Weirdo)
The Borowitz Report has this take on the next generation of Democratic Party losers....
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean today announced his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, proclaiming, “It is time for the Democrats to pass the torch to a new generation of losers.”Mr. Dean made his announcement in Burlington, Vermont to a crowd of supporters and well-wishers, many of whom were instrumental in helping him lose in 2004.
“As Democrats, we cannot afford to continue with our old ways of losing,” he said. “We must find new ways of losing.”
Promising “a fresh approach to defeat,” Mr. Dean told his audience, “In the past, we have lost by being boring and uncharismatic, but I believe we must lose by being crazy and wild-eyed.”
But just hours after his speech, Mr. Dean received a sharp rebuke from two of the Democratic Party establishment’s most prominent losers, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and former Vice President Walter Mondale.
“So, Howard says he has all kinds of new-fangled ways to lose,” said a skeptical Mr. Mondale. “What I’d like to know is, ‘where’s the beef’?”
“Say what you will about being boring and uncharismatic, but it certainly helped me lose in 1988,” Mr. Dukakis added.
Political science professor Jude Krenzel of the University of Minnesota says he is not surprised that the race for DNC chair has grown so heated: “It’s pretty much the only office that a Democrat has a shot at winning.”
(Hat tip: What Attitude Problem)
Posted by Weaselteeth at 01:21 AM
January 08, 2005
Canadian Content
Leaping madly through the linkosphere brought me recently to a very interesting compendium of conservative Canadian blogs which I've chosen to add to my links list. That's Blogging Tories, and here are admittedly just a few surface skimmings from the member sites they link to....
MODERN LIBERALISMThe modern Liberal view:
"Children should have a right to be permitted to decide their own future if they are competent." "Decisions about motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of venereal disease, or employment, and others where the decision or lack of one will significantly affect the child's future should not be made unilaterally by parents." - Hillary ClintonThe modern Liberal problem:
IPS police and Marion County child protection workers are investigating an incident involving two first-graders who officials said were caught trying to have sex Wednesday at an Eastside school. SourceModern Liberalism 101 - The modern liberal devotion to sex education is an ideological commitment rather than a policy of prudence.
Mike Brock On the Attack has been nominated as the Best Conservative Blog in the 2004 Canadian Blog Awards, and here is a factoid I never would have thought possible back in the Cold War era.... To get their emergency team to the disaster scene following the tsunami, Canada had to rely on the Russians for transport. The Canadian military wasn’t up for the task.
Nothing against Mr. Brock here, but Babbling Brooks which links to here has also been nominated. Damian Brooks believes "most problems can be solved with weaponry of a high enough calibre." Damian in turn points with glee to his early recognition of Jerry Aldini being run by Matt Fenwick, who says:
Sounds like bloggers, eh?Found via Instapundit before Christmas, an interesting Scientific American article entitled "Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth". After reading it, I'd say the Professor seized on one of the less compelling aspects (or rather, subcomponents) of the article - understandable given his wife's field. The piece does not dismiss out-of-hand the value of self-esteem, but it obliterates the notion that positive self-esteem is the root of all that is good.
I'm linking to it because it has the absolute greatest concluding sentence in the history of research pieces. It makes the point they want to make, and it summarizes the article to perfection:
And we have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today's children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.And Paul Jané at All Agitprop, All the Time should have known what he was starting when he posted this one about a Bulgarian drunk who blew a 0.914 on a breathalyzer test — on his third try. Even up north, they still see the opening for a Teddy Kennedy joke....
Posted by Weaselteeth at 12:14 AM | Comments (4)
January 07, 2005
LiveJournal acquired by Six Apart?
Here is a breaking story of interest to every LiveJournal user. Om Malik on Broadband reports:
EXCLUSIVE: Folks have been predicting a big year for mergers and acquisitions in 2005, and we are starting the year with a bang. I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash, and could be announced sometime later this month, according to those close to the two companies. If the deal goes through, then Six Apart will become one of the largest weblog companies in the world, with nearly 6.5 million users. It also gives the company a very fighting chance against Google’s Blogger and Microsoft’s MSN Spaces.Weblogs have become quite popular in last 12 months. A recent report by the Pew Internet, nearly 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. About 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers. Bacon’s Information, a media industry research group has recently started tracking blogs as a news source. Ben and Mena Trott of Six Apart, and Peter Rojas of Engadget were recently featured on the cover of Fortune magazine.
Live Journal was started by Brad Fitzpatrick back in 1999, long before Six Apart existed and blogging was all the rage. Live Journal, which is based in Portland, Oregon has 5.5 million users, though only a miniscule number are paying customers. Live Journal is very popular with teenagers and is built on an open source platform, and arguably is one of the largest open source projects on the web. Live Journal has been in talks with several other possible acquirers, though Six Apart is more of a natural fit. My sources tell me that all Live Journal employees are going to be retained.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 11:10 PM
January 05, 2005
Turkeygate, John Conyers style
Any time you mix a longtime Michigan Demo-swindler with a nice juicy scandal, and the word “turkey” is more than just figurative, it is (as the glitterati say) to die for.
Seems that Rep. John Conyers’ Detroit office was given 60 actual turkeys, two days before Thanksgiving, to give to needy people. Now the Gleaners Community Food Bank says they haven’t gotten any paperwork back, saying where the turkeys actually went to — and a federal court worker says he was offered free turkeys from a member of Conyers’ staff.
I was actually a bit surprised that the Dems’ official house organ, the Detroit Free Press, even bothered to report this story, until I read further down where it mentions one of the two people who actually picked up those turkeys from the Gleaners.
A Conyers staff member who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal told the Free Press that Grubbs and her cousin, Conyers’ Detroit deputy chief of staff Marion Brown, along with a former Conyers aide, DeWayne Boyd, picked up the turkeys and later gave contradictory accounts of what happened to the birds.The unnamed staff member raised concerns in a memo sent to both the FBI and House ethics committee. Conyers was the target of an informal ethics committee inquiry last year following a Free Press investigation about use of staff members during work hours for political campaigns.
Boyd, who was fired from Conyers' Detroit office in 2002, was convicted on seven counts of fraud last month in U.S. District Court in connection with a scam he ran from Conyers' office in 1999. (Emphasis added.)
Okay, so why is Conyers’ deputy chief of staff running around with convicted felon Boyd? One would think that once-burned is twice-shy, yes? How little the outside world understands the utterly corrupt nature of Michigan Democratic Party politics.
So leave it to the blog world to gobble this story right up and let it take wing even better than Arthur Carlson's Thanksgiving gift on WKRP in Cincinnati. Now there’s a blog called Turkeygate, and they've pecked around for other blogs which have swooped in on this tale, including Instapundit, Bill Quick over at The Daily Pundit, and the intrepid Hubs and Spokes, which says, “This story may turn out to be the gift that keeps on giving...”
Over at The Captain’s Quarters, this was said:
Conyers has long held himself out as a hero of the downtrodden. Now it looks like the hero has a staff of knaves. They claim to have received a list of the needy from Michigan’s Family Independence Agency, but the FIA not only never heard of the Conyers giveaway, they almost never release names to anyone.Gleaners CFB has asked multiple times for an accounting, as has the Detroit Free Press. None has been forthcoming from John Conyers or his staff. The DFP reports that an unnamed source says the fate of the turkeys is murky even in the office and that no one really knows what happened to the food for the hungry. It appears that Conyers’ staff took the holiday meals for the most vulnerable in Detroit and used them to spread a little influence among the more powerful. It’s detestable, and if Conyers can't provide an accounting for the food -- for which his staff never reimbursed Gleaners -- the House Ethics Committee should look into it, as well as the Detroit PD.
But the best line I've seen thus far was by Daily Pundit commentor "Jake," who says:
The crazy part of this story is that Conyer's campaign chest is so massive that he will never, ever spend all of that money.Why couldn’t he use that money to pay off his political cronies? No, he has took take food out of the mouths of the poor.
Not only did Conyer's policies create the poor — he has to give the poor the finger every Thanksgiving.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 09:05 PM
January 02, 2005
'Democratic Party: Racist Baby-killers'
Over at The Black Republican, there’s a look at the totally unsurprising racism in the Democratic Party by James Taranto, who goes after Demo-gogue Minority Leader Harry Reid for his attack on the intellect of Justice Clarence Thomas.
Taranto first hinted at, then flatly called the Senator racist, along with other segments of the Democratic establishment.
Taranto continues to promote our case on the matter, and continues to say it in ever bolder terms. After quoting Democratic operative Donna Brazile on abortion when she said, “Even I have trouble explaining to my family that we are not about killing babies,” Taranto goes on to explain how the Democrats may decide not to fight a battle to replace one anti-Roe justice with another. He ends with this:
Since it looks as though President Bush is going to get a free pass on his first Supreme Court pick, how can he make the most of the political opportunity? First, by elevating Clarence Thomas to chief justice. Thomas vexes many Democrats because they are racially prejudiced, and it’s quite possible they would not be able to resist the urge to mount a (futile) campaign against him. Then Donna Brazile can explain to her family that Democrats are about keeping black people down as well as killing babies. (my emphasis)
Of course, the fact of the matter is the abortion scourge itself has been doing both things at once all along, as we noted last year (third item).
UPDATE: I should have noted something else. Any math whiz can tell you what 90% of 13 million is. The Roe Effect is apparent no where more blatantly than within the black community. If just a fraction of the millions of black children aborted since the early 1970's had been able to vote in the 2000 or 2004 presidential races, the grotesque margins voting for Democrats surely would have tipped the balance over any (supposedly) aborted Republican votes.
One of the links above goes to the LEARN site at BlackGenocide.org, which offers this front-page comment entitled, "SAY WHAT?"
Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion.
1,452 African-American children are killed each day by the heinous act of abortion.
3 out of 5 pregnant African-American women will abort their child.
Since 1973 there has been over 13 million Black children killed and their precious mothers victimized by the U.S. abortion industry.
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King said, “The early church brought an end to such things as INFANTICIDE.” What would Martin Luther King say to the church today?
The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said:
“That is why the Constitution called us three-fifths human and then whites further dehumanized us by calling us ‘niggers’. It was part of the dehumanizing process. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do and not even feel like they had done anything wrong. Those advocates of taking life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. They further never talk about aborting a baby because that would imply something human. Rather they talk about aborting the fetus. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore abortion can be justified”.
Jackson's massive flip-flop on the abortion issue is further proof that his political future is far more important to him than are his principals.
With 1/3 of all abortions performed on Black women, the abortion industry has received over 4,000,000,000 (yes, billion) dollars from the Black community.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 07:34 PM
Happy holidays, oui?
Yeah, I know. I got way behind in reading a few of the blogosphere's better offerings. Over at Hubs and Spokes, for example, there's a quote from Jonah Goldberg worth noting....
Ah, Christmastime. Joy to the world. God bless us, everyone. Through the rapturous din of carols and chimes, a stray condemnatory note can be heard, chastising the yuletide revelers for being too materialistic, too concerned with gifts that come wrapped in pretty paper and shiny bows. Who can help but sympathize with such concerns as the groaning hoards of shoppers appear like Huns outside the doors of Wal-Mart? That is why I am so grateful for a special Christmas present — holiday present if you must — for the whole world. No mere thing or shiny bauble, this present is an idea, glowing with an ecumenicism that fires the mind and illuminates the heart, uniting nearly all mankind in fellowship. What idea is that? Why, the total destruction of France, of course.Can we find any better reason to decant a split of our favorite Michigan or California bubbly, for this wondrous, festive occasion?
Posted by Weaselteeth at 06:16 PM | Comments (2)
January 01, 2005
Loitering with intent to blog
Okay, Day 1, new year, different host, and no archives from my last site (yet) to show I didn’t just walk in and set up from nothing. Ten days shy of my tenth month doing this thing, and I suppose like most bloggers I should be putting up the big act about how I really don’t have to do this, I just fell into it.
And bloggers know that’s a damn lie. It's closer to Molière's observation about prostitution: "First you do it for the love of it. Then you do it for a few friends. Finally you do it for the money."
Closer to it, but that third part needs a little work. Let’s come real closer and try, do it for any money. I suspect maybe 90% of all bloggers are very lucky to attract any advertisers, their first few months. And if you ask them, are you making enough to cover bandwidth costs, things start sounding like Friday Night Date stories in the boys’ locker room. Sex may get you read, sure, but the ad-hits pay for your hosting.
Which leads me to a story from my Arkansas friend, who assures me you will not be reading this from any public computer in the Hot Springs County Library. According to their filtration system, this is both a “hate site” and also has “adult content.” Must have been the time I had a headline which read "Kitty Porn," referring to a photographic site about cats. The hate-site thing is the one that’s got me wondering. Do they take conservatives that seriously, down in places so godawful they thought Bubba Dropdrawers was gubernatorial material? I mean, when does Jim Guy Tucker look any worse than Monica’s supper date with the bad aim? And just because I mentioned Mary Matalin ought to marry within her species, that doesn’t mean much, does it, unless you’re an inbred drooler from Ark-armpit. Hey, be proud you’re so organized that the same place you can find a date will also innoculate for heartworm.
There’s another way to look at library filtration systems, and that is they’re saving the little punks a withering smack-down for even bothering the grown-ups by wandering in, to begin with. I had a few of these dumbasses at my last hideout, and they were just too appallingly ignorant to even have real sport with. It simply wasn’t worth the effort, rewriting their posts and questioning their future departure from puberty. I’m much too adult for that. But anyway, Hot Springs, I think you’re an adult-content hate-site too, so nyaaaah. Or maybe I mistake you for that other festering swamp, where Marc Rich’s bribes money helped build Bubba’s Massage Parlor and Sex Toys Palace, infesting that whole riverbank. Better county libraries, I have no doubt: four Marvel Comics.
Back to blog-envy.
Of course there are a few bloggers making decent money from this gig. A few are highly respected, serious writers whose stuff is greatly admired and widely linked-to. And dang, if you look hard enough among that crew, you may even find a few who can actually write, not just plagiarize with panache.
22. The great thing about blogging is plagiarising is encouraged. That's why so many academics blog. The only trick is plagiarising needs to be accompanied by links back to the original...because links are the lifeblood of a blogger. So go ahead and steal.The trouble with that one is, I was never that big on “scholarship,” where creative intellectual theft earns people doctorates or other stuff they can’t use at McDonald’s. I crawled out of the bogs of journalism, where attribution lays off the blame, diffuses the acrimony, and even shows how hard you dug for what little you actually say. This was all before the internet, and I contend that if Sherlock Holmes would’ve had a Pentium 4 and a cable hook-up, he’d rule the entire planet.
14. There are some good ways to attract attention to yourself and your blog. These can be broken down into the following: a) talk about your sexual experiences a lot. This works far better for women than men. b) have something interesting and new to say. This works far better for those that understand the basics of English grammar. c) quirky slice-of-life types who are actually quirky. This works far better for those that are interesting people in real life. d) humour sites. This works far better for those that are funny. e) niche sites. There may well be a strong readership for those interested in mountain goats. It helps if you talk about stuff you know about. f) be an iconoclast. If you are controversial you are likely to generate debate and people will come back for another look. The important thing is to be coherent and have a rational body of thought rather than a series of random pronouncements.Wow, how true, especially #14(a). I’ve heard the same story so many times that you’d almost think she wasn’t talking about me. But being from Michigan means I’m supposed to have stories about sex in cars, or sex involving deer-hunting, sex in ice-fishing shanties, more sex in cars, and more sex involving ice-fishing (or traffic barrels). This is Michigan, not Plato's Retreat. Here we could talk about the No-Tell Motel, where anything you pick up off the sheet is gratis, just don’t forget to get yourself steam-cleaned if you want to go home to your main squeeze. (Steam-cleaning is underrated for apportionment of true pain. Massive doses of antibiotics can’t even get close.)
Controversial? Sure. I can do that. Trouble is, there are bloggers out there who do have audiences, and it ain't no fun at alllllllll dealing with the kind of trolls those sites can generate, given half a bash to send them my way. I mean, who even has met Glenn Reynolds, much less knows for a fact he blends puppies or murders hobos? And in these enlightened days, who are we to be so judgmental to even care?
For God's sake, if you're going to be envious of someone, that’s one thing. Drool and slobber and wish you had his daily number of visitors (and revenue from the advertisers). But don’t just go and hate him for being so popular. I mean, work up to it. Try a little snort or a toke before you get to the skin-popping or even the mainlining, okay? Hate him for being a lawyer. That’s something he can understand. It's like Anna Nicole Smith faking a honeymoon orgasm. It’s expected.
But I will never write about mountain goats. I’d sooner blog about other disgusting things, like liberals and other societal cancers. I’ll write about music, too. Jazz and New Age and some vintage rock, easy on the bubble-gum. But goats — no. Some of my best dates would think I was writing about them. Or Molly Ivins.
4. Prepare for the reality that the rest of the world may not share your high opinion of yourself and your site.
No problem. I had that down pat long before I ever heard of blogs. Like this one, from whence came these quotes.
Research, to be sure.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 03:38 AM | Comments (2)
December 30, 2004
Clueless, departing
Several months ago at my now-defunct (but similarly-named) first blog, it became my pleasure and my intimidation to read the superb work of Steven Den Beste at U.S.S. Clueless.
This remarkably fine writer covered a galaxy of subjects, then suddenly stopped cold. At first I thought it was just post-election burn-out. It was not.
Now comes the news that it's for real, Den Beste has in fact walked away from one of the most remarkable ongoing series of essays I've ever read. Rishon Rishon has more of the background, including den Beste's closing thoughts on a verbal voyage to the stars.
Bosun, render the salute. Pipe the Captain ashore.
Posted by Weaselteeth at 02:42 AM