Apr 30, 2014
Hole in the firewall
A spammer has bored through the Blogger filter. I don't want to moderate or apply the fuzzy word game. For the time being I'll just trash them as they appear, accounting for the deletions you may see.
Apr 29, 2014
Fashion, Sports, and the Bug-Eyed Luddite
No matter how fast I run, I can't even catch the first slight rise in the cultural curve.
For instance, watching the Drake Relays, I wonder when girl pole vaulters started buying their leaping suits from Victoria's Secret.
(I can not find it in myself to condemn this instance of gratuitous modernism.)
For instance, watching the Drake Relays, I wonder when girl pole vaulters started buying their leaping suits from Victoria's Secret.
(I can not find it in myself to condemn this instance of gratuitous modernism.)
Apr 28, 2014
April comes like an idiot, babbling ...
It has been a tough month on the racial front. Bundy allows as how Jews are this and that. The inarticulate old guy who owns a basketball team announces blacks are that and this. Television goes bananas, and "social media" wets down its share of the spectrum.
It seems to me we're about halfway to symmetry on the bigotry front so far in this episode. If someone would hunt up a network news crew and hurl a few ignorant slurs at Hispanics and another sling some generalized abuse at us white guys, I would be content. It would be just another saga of racially fused and made-for-teevee outrage, but at least even-handed in real time and therefore -- somehow -- less objectionable. If he had known how to write Karl Popper might have expressed it as, "When everyone is is a lunatic, then no one is."
Mark Twain: "Man is a sorry piece of work."
---
One ray of hope occurred in the silly mess of April. Government was again reminded that a number of Americans get irritated when it deploys platoons of slightly upgraded mall ninjas, equipped like Seal Team Six, in case it decides to shoot down an American citizen and his family over an alleged civil infraction.
There was a little pleasure there, too, when the button-down BLM administrators noticed that some of the citizens, not necessarily limited to the certifiables among them, were in a mood to react in kind to a federal "shoot" order. It was literary pleasure. I don't think I've ever witnessed government's professional "communicators" whip up the standard "only to preserve public safety" news releases so quickly. You admire professionalism under pressure no matter what the source.
It up to us to gently remind our brothers and sisters that a deeper motivation was to head off rude historical allusions to Ruby Ridge and the dead mother there, Waco and the dead kids there.
----
H/T to Edna St.Vincent Millay for the subject line
It seems to me we're about halfway to symmetry on the bigotry front so far in this episode. If someone would hunt up a network news crew and hurl a few ignorant slurs at Hispanics and another sling some generalized abuse at us white guys, I would be content. It would be just another saga of racially fused and made-for-teevee outrage, but at least even-handed in real time and therefore -- somehow -- less objectionable. If he had known how to write Karl Popper might have expressed it as, "When everyone is is a lunatic, then no one is."
Mark Twain: "Man is a sorry piece of work."
---
One ray of hope occurred in the silly mess of April. Government was again reminded that a number of Americans get irritated when it deploys platoons of slightly upgraded mall ninjas, equipped like Seal Team Six, in case it decides to shoot down an American citizen and his family over an alleged civil infraction.
There was a little pleasure there, too, when the button-down BLM administrators noticed that some of the citizens, not necessarily limited to the certifiables among them, were in a mood to react in kind to a federal "shoot" order. It was literary pleasure. I don't think I've ever witnessed government's professional "communicators" whip up the standard "only to preserve public safety" news releases so quickly. You admire professionalism under pressure no matter what the source.
It up to us to gently remind our brothers and sisters that a deeper motivation was to head off rude historical allusions to Ruby Ridge and the dead mother there, Waco and the dead kids there.
----
H/T to Edna St.Vincent Millay for the subject line
Apr 24, 2014
The Hog Ball Lady
Joni Ernst is drawing more attention lately, but I'm told her rallies are a little funny-looking. All the guys sit with their legs crossed.
"I'm Joni Ernst and I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm," she reported in the now-viral teevee spot. The conclusion is left to the viewer : Ergo Joni really needs to be a United States senator, so let's all send her some money."
---
It's part of the 2014 through 2016 Iowa political circus. The ultimate purpose is to decide which president-thing-hopefuls you will be allowed to vote for if perchance the nation survives the remaining 32 Obamanation months.
It's a dreary show, a reprise of the banal. but this time without the interest of a Ron Paul semi-libertarian presence. Joni's cutting remark may be the only noteworthy snark of the revue, and she must concede some credit to congresscritter Bruce Braley. (Joni is in a GOP primary fight; Bruce has been slated by the White House Office of Iowa Affairs and will be the statist nominee.)
They both want to replace Tom Harkin who is retiring to his Bahamas home after 30 years of pretending to represent Iowa as water carrier for the Ted Kennedy senate tribe. (As a frame of reference, he was elected to the senate when Pete Rose was still hitting homers for Cincinnati instead of dodging process servers; the same year Madonna was still singing on American Band Stand. And, get this, he is still Iowa's junior senator.)
Braley's handlers made the fatal mistake of letting him speak without a teleprompter, and he decided to bitch slap our senior senator, Chuck Grassley, as an "Iowa farmer who doesn't even have a law degree."
Joni's surgical line is a direct result of Bruce's ad lib, and Braley operatives spent the next three nights foetally under their blankies, sucking thumbs and wondering if things were as bad in the private-sector job market as they were hearing.
---
And there it stands as a soft April rain nurtures the fresh grass seed on the Camp Jiggleview grounds; as theTrail (phhbbbtt) Trial Lawyers Association rallies with massive Citizen's United cash to redeem their artless colleague; as the evil Koch Brothers lurk behind the barn, trying to decide which of the primary Republicans would be their best senatorial buy.
---
All of this overlays something I need to get to before long. Libertarian forces are in disarray around here this season. They had a decent presence on the state GOP Central Committee, but it has just been recaptured by the church-basement faction.
Danny Caroll is the name you want to Google. I know him only second-hand, but I hear he's a very nice guy if you can get him to quit quoting Genesis 1:1 in response to any question, from farm bills to Russian expansionism to making Janet Yellan slow down the goddam printing presses.
"I'm Joni Ernst and I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm," she reported in the now-viral teevee spot. The conclusion is left to the viewer : Ergo Joni really needs to be a United States senator, so let's all send her some money."
---
It's part of the 2014 through 2016 Iowa political circus. The ultimate purpose is to decide which president-thing-hopefuls you will be allowed to vote for if perchance the nation survives the remaining 32 Obamanation months.
It's a dreary show, a reprise of the banal. but this time without the interest of a Ron Paul semi-libertarian presence. Joni's cutting remark may be the only noteworthy snark of the revue, and she must concede some credit to congresscritter Bruce Braley. (Joni is in a GOP primary fight; Bruce has been slated by the White House Office of Iowa Affairs and will be the statist nominee.)
They both want to replace Tom Harkin who is retiring to his Bahamas home after 30 years of pretending to represent Iowa as water carrier for the Ted Kennedy senate tribe. (As a frame of reference, he was elected to the senate when Pete Rose was still hitting homers for Cincinnati instead of dodging process servers; the same year Madonna was still singing on American Band Stand. And, get this, he is still Iowa's junior senator.)
Braley's handlers made the fatal mistake of letting him speak without a teleprompter, and he decided to bitch slap our senior senator, Chuck Grassley, as an "Iowa farmer who doesn't even have a law degree."
Joni's surgical line is a direct result of Bruce's ad lib, and Braley operatives spent the next three nights foetally under their blankies, sucking thumbs and wondering if things were as bad in the private-sector job market as they were hearing.
---
And there it stands as a soft April rain nurtures the fresh grass seed on the Camp Jiggleview grounds; as the
---
All of this overlays something I need to get to before long. Libertarian forces are in disarray around here this season. They had a decent presence on the state GOP Central Committee, but it has just been recaptured by the church-basement faction.
Danny Caroll is the name you want to Google. I know him only second-hand, but I hear he's a very nice guy if you can get him to quit quoting Genesis 1:1 in response to any question, from farm bills to Russian expansionism to making Janet Yellan slow down the goddam printing presses.
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