3719 Some are more equal than others, or something....

Thursday, April 18, 2013

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us,

but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

-- Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), rhetorician (c. 35-100) --

---------------------------------------------------------------

There was a huge explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant last night, at about 8 pm.  Authorities predict between five and fifteen dead and more than 160 injured, but they're still pulling people out of wreckage, so those numbers could go much higher.  The ones they are sure died are firefighters and a police officer.  It's a small town, and a large part of the town was flattened by the blast, including a nursing home.  So far, it is believed to be a chemical accident.

I shall wait to see if there is a big national fund set up for the injured and families of the dead, the people who lost their homes and possessions.  I shall watch for biographies of victims.  I shall wait for the politicians and their speeches.  Will there be people praying all over the nation?

I shall wait for someone to explain how a hurricane or a bomb attack is more terrible than an accident.  It isn't to the people involved.

Story at http://entertainment.verizon.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA5NSA5G0%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=931&page=1.  (And what a slap that Verizon put this under "entertainment".)

------

Later:  I turned on the TV at noon to see if they had better info, and found the entire newscast was about a memorial service for Boston.  If I lived in that little Texas town, I'd feel very ... snubbed.

------------------------------

On Holy Thursday, before Easter, the Pope went to a youth detention center and washed the feet of young prisoners, both male and female.  The washing of feet by the pope, usually those of other priests, is a Holy Thursday tradition.  The washing of female feet most certainly is not, and many church traditionalists were horrified and angered.  Like spitting-mad.

Ok, ladies.  How does that make you feel?

------------------------------

I spent some time one late evening wandering around "Dumb Political Quotes"-type sites, and I discovered something odd.  Members of one party seem very prone to really ridiculous statements, while members of the other party sometimes says things that that pretty stupid.  The difference is that the first party is prone to declarations demonstrating a complete lack of knowledge and logic, while the other party just gets names wrong, or uses the wrong word or terms offensive to the audience.

 For example, we have these from Dan Quayle:

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

Not a simple slip of the lip. The first one is stunning, literally.

I could fill this page with Bush-isms of the same amazing quality. Palin, anyone?

When you look at stupid quotes from the other party, there's very little to be found, and those that exist are just things like calling a female reporter "Sweetie", or getting a town or person's name or a country's language wrong. Or trying out a German phrase and calling yourself a sweet roll.  Obama's worst stupid statement seems to be referring to the 58 states. That's not so hard to understand. His mind runs ahead of his mouth. He was probably thinking of the 48 contiguous states, so it came out 58 (actually, "57 and one more to go"). Big deal. A far cry from a Mars atmosphere, or the impossibility of pregnancy from rape.

Am I biased?  Well, I know I'm biased, but I mean is my bias coloring what I observed?  Or DOES one party tend to promote their most stupid people?

-----------------------------

I have discovered Susie Sampson and her Tea Party Report videos.  They're funny.  Susie, in the guise of a conservative reporter, comes off with some real zingers.  Try this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjshdQc5cjg&list=UU1J66cMCW46dOueINxNbFtw, or this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aRDaSPuGKE&list=UU1J66cMCW46dOueINxNbFtw.

.

3624 True speaking

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

It's always been and will always be the same in the world:

the horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Note - I find the music overlay in this clip enormously annoying.)

Ya gotta admit, the man can speak to the people:

[http://youtu.be/xiLun9GcL0M]

But what's more important is that you KNOW, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, that unlike a lot of politicians he completely believes in everything he says.  Nothing is just "political expediency".  

Now, whether you agree with his beliefs and goals is something else.  But you've got to grant him honesty and integrity.
.

3252 Sexy thoughts

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

If you’re standing with one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pissing on today.
-- Old Italian saying --

-----------------------------------------------------

Raising the debt ceiling thing. Look it up. If it's not raised, the US will default on obligations for the first time in history. A doomsday scenario.

There may be valid reasons for not raising it, but what pisses me off is that the Obama-haters are gleefully mentally masturbating to the thought of the consequences - completely forgetting who and what got us to this point. The more stupid of them would ensure it happens for that reason alone.
.

3237 Revenge may not be so sweet

Tuesday, April 3, 2011

I read the papers to find out who I am, so I can be it.
-- Steve Wozniak, Newsweek 2/19/96 --

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, so lots of people are celebrating because ObL is dead. Ok. Revenge. (Not very attractive, people. I think the Bible says something about that?) And the US gets to beat its chest and roar that you may hide, but we will find you. And the CIA can take satisfaction that their black torture sites are effective. And Obama gets a boost with people stupid enough to be impressed by symbols.

But - ObL wasn't running Al Q anymore. Most cells are now autonomous. ObL had a particular beef with the US over our support of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, and that was pretty much it. The current autonomous cells have their own agendas. Nowadays, ObL was mostly a figurehead, spokesman, and recruiting tool, and was revered as the founding father of a movement.

His death leaves a vacuum, which some middle-aged fool who thinks he's been ignored too long is going to want to step into. Or several fools who want to compete for the honor.

In order to acquire the acclaim, they'll need to pull off something big. Yeah, pissed off groups can do something like a dirty bomb in L.A., or put nasty germs or poison in the ventilation system of Grand Central station, or in the water supply of a major city (like the Ashokan reservoir - in the woods, in the remote mountains, with miles of unsecured shoreline, where fishermen are not carrying ID, and OMG! I may have just figured out why The Man never drinks water!). Any of those would be big, impressive, take out a lot of Americans --- but they wouldn't be photogenic!

If you want to get the admiration of all the other cells, you've got to do something that makes good TV. Something that will be played over and over. Like 9/11.

It will be big. It might take a year to decide what to do, to plan it, to pull it off. But most of all it will involve a big bang and lots of cameras. And this one will be a surprise to the US government. Suddenly the Mayan calendar worries me.

Al Q. was close to becoming irrelevant, you know? We just breathed new life into it.

Enjoy your revenge, folks. I hope it's worth what it's gonna cost.

--------------------------------

The wingnuts are, of course, screaming foul that they weren't allowed to taste the body. Last week they lost the birth certificate chewbone, so it's especially hard to take. They're not smart enough I guess to figure out why the immediate disposal of the body was necessary. We've royally pissed off the bad Muslims. It's kind of important right now not to piss off the good Muslims, too. We need them.
.

3253 A political observation

Sunday, February 6, 2011

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
-- Albert Camus --

-----------------------------------------------------------

From Asecular.com, on March 22, 2010. I find it interestingly prophetic.

Another striking thing about this Obamacare story is what it says about the difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to the wielding of power. This is an oversimplification I know, but the basic difference is that Democrats believe in the value of government and campaign so that they can win elections and then do things to improve government and run it competently. Republicans, on the other hand, don't believe government has any value and so campaign so that they can win elections so they can do the things necessary to win more elections and consolidate their power. This was summed up nicely in Gingerich's remarks about health care just before it passed in the House, "[If Democrats pass health reform,] they will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years [by pushing civil rights legislation]." Not only was he saying that Democrats had just done a foolish thing by passing a bill that hadn't been polling well, but he was also implying that their passing the Civil Rights Act had been foolish because it hadn't been in the service of holding onto power. These guys are all completely Machiavellian, and it's great that we have days such as today when their masks are ripped off and we are shown, to be frank, how evil they are.

This was brought to mind yesterday by all the Regan-worship going on now. His record has been whitewashed. I was there. I remember. And Field remembers, too. Read http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2011/02/glossing-over-history-for-gipper.html

-------------------------------------

Some things kinda neat, but not covered in the news reports from Egypt:

You know how praying Muslims form lines and blocks? We see them praying in the square in Cairo in news reports and photos. What we haven't seen is that during prayer times, Christians, non-Muslims, and others have been forming shoulder to shoulder protective rings facing outward around the ones praying.

Also, shoulder to shoulder protective lines are circling the museums.

--------------------------------------

When I saw "The King's Speech", it didn't occur to me then, but later I realized, "Hey, the wife was the Queen Mother! Wow!" I was once about five feet from her. The real Queen Mother, I mean. Not the actress.
.

2038 The Conspiracy!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

I'm not going to footnote (i.e. link) anything because you can find anything you like on the internet, so have at it.

Ok. Here's what I've heard and/or read lately, no assurances that any of it is true, but when do you ever get assurances with conspiracy theories?

My Very Own Conspiracy Theory:

Point 1: The US economy is a mess. The debt is enormous. Tax relief, let alone anything like health care assistance will be impossible. Foreign affairs are a mess. The world hates us. We're in one war we can't win and another we don't dare lose, and we can no longer afford either.

Point 2: I hear that Sarah Palin's handlers are having fits. They've had some practice debates, and some mock news conferences, and they've been total disasters. They'd like to cancel the upcoming Palin/Biden debate, or postpone, but that doesn't seem possible. People are freaking. There are those in the GOP rarified levels that would like her to voluntarily withdraw (but I'll bet she keeps insisting she's ready), but it probably wouldn't help anyway (that "experience and judgment" thing McCain thinks he has going for him would be shot full of holes).

Point 3: I hear that Palin was recommended to John McCain by none other than Henry Kissinger.

Point 4: Of all the people in the world who suffers least from cognitive dissonance, I'd put Kissinger pretty far up there. I see him as coldly logical.

Point 5: I think Kissinger knew exactly what he was doing, and I think others were involved.

Conclusion: The GOP wants to lose this election. They will be happy to hand the whole mess over to the Democrats, who will be forced to do some unpleasant and very unpopular things to clean it up. The American public has a very short memory. In a few years, they'll forget who created the mess, and all the anger and frustration of the cleanup will be dumped on the Democrats (who not incidentally don't know how to use the media to the same effect as the right), and in 2012, the Republicans will be able to waltz right in, and look like saviors. And in running McCain and Palin, well, it's not like they sacrificed any of their valuable players.

How's that for a conspiracy theory?

(Oh, and don't forget what the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus and some interpretations of the Bible have to say about 2012.)
.