by Smitty
The truth is so powerful, and perhaps NSFW, that you’ll have to go to Effingconservatives for the priapismic truth: Missing Missile Missive.
Month: November 2010
Bleg: Shakespeare On Kindle
by Smitty
Since the election is over, and the toothpaste is out of the frying pan and into the metaphorical blender concerning my non-approach to vacationing, I need some help.
I’ve purchased a Kindle 3G to support the deployment to A-stan, and I want to load it to the gills with Good Stuff.
In particular, I’d like to know if there is a preferred Shakespeare collection with all the Bard’s works AND really good dictionary/annotation support.
Looking through the bazillions of Shakespeare entries at the Kindle store, it was unclear what was worth purchasing. Hence the bleg.
Any other “don’t leave home without it” recommendations graciously accepted.
Shocking: Gangs of Minnesota Lutherans Charged in Child Sex-Trafficking Ring
Because you know how those Minnesota Lutherans are:
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Twenty-nine people have been indicted in a sex trafficking ring in which Somali Lutheran gangs in Minneapolis and St. Paul allegedly forced girls under age 14 into prostitution in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. . . .
The indictment details several instances in which young Somali or African American Lutheran girls were taken from place to place and forced to engage in sex acts with multiple people. One girl was under 13 when she was first prostituted. Another girl was 18 when she was raped by multiple men in a hotel room, the indictment said. . . .
The indictment claims the ring involved three Minneapolis-based gangs — the Somali Lutheran Outlaws, the Somali Lutheran Mafia and the Lady Outlaws Lutherans — and that all three gangs are connected. The men and women charged were either gang members or associates of the gangs, the indictment said. They range in age from 19 to 38. . . .
Damned Lutherans! Meanwhile, in Virginia, they’re getting ready for trials of Lutheran pirates.
What the Left Thinks of You
Verum Serum gives some tasty excerpts of these deep thoughts from a leading “progressive” thinker:
Christian fundamentalists, the millennial end-of-theworlders obsessed with the Left Behind series about the End Times, neo-Nazi racists, rural black-helicopter Michigan Militia types cut from the same inbred cloth as Timothy McVeigh, allied with “mainstream” gun nuts and right-wing Republicans, have been planning, preparing, and praying for the destruction of the “Godless,” “secular” United States for decades. In the past, they formed groups like the John Birch Society and the Aryan Nations. Now the hard Right has a postmodern, decentralized non-organization organization called the Tea Party. . . .
The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. . . .
The millions of partisans who follow Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and right-wing televangelists . . . will act to stop teenage sluts from getting abortions, teach n—–s a lesson, and slaughter those spics, dots, and everyone else who doesn’t fit into their vision of what and who is right.
You — the millions of people who listen to Limbaugh and vote Republican — are bloodthirsty totalitarians who endorse the genocidal “slaughter” of everyone who disagrees with you. So says Ted Rall, providing a handy guide to how he sees the two sides in the political Armageddon that looms:
Us: Hard-working, underpaid, put upon, thoughtful, freedom-loving, disenfranchised, ordinary people.
Them: Reactionary, stupid, overpaid, greedy, shortsighted, exploitative, power-mad, abusive politicians and corporate executives
See? That’s who the Left thinks you are, and how they think of their “thoughtful” selves. Only they are “hard-working.” Only they are “underpaid.” You? You’re stupid, overpaid and greedy. (Elsewhere, he calls you “parasites, vampires, hideous monsters.”) And who is promoting Ted Rall’s insightful analysis? Who else, but MSNBC?
MSNBC — where Keith Olbermann is paid $7 million a year.
MSNBC — part of the NBC/Universal division of gigantic global conglomerate General Electric, which is trying to sell it to another behemoth corporation, Comcast, for $30 billion.
Yes, MSNBC — the network that gives voice to the “thoughtful, freedom-loving, disenfranchised, ordinary people” like Ivy League-educated Ted Rall, who matriculated at Columbia University, alma mater of the President of the United States and other members of the downtrodden toiling masses.
Ted Rall: He’s being kept down by The Man.
UPDATE: Watching that video of Ted Rall being interviewed by Dylan Ratigan, I’m wondering why Columbia University (where the tuition is $40,000 a year) can’t teach basic economics. Rall speaks of “1% of the country owning 24% of the income” and “people getting thrown out of their homes, over 10 million of them.”
Ted, they’re not getting thrown out of their homes. They’re getting thrown out of the mortgage company’s homes. It’s not your home until you pay for it. If you’re living in a $300,000 house and you don’t make the payments, that $300,000 house isn’t yours anymore. And it never really was.
Ted Rall and Barack Obama: Columbia University graduates who can’t grasp basic concepts like property ownership.
UPDATE II: “MSNBC totally owes Keith Olbermann an apology.”
5,000,000 Hits!
About 9 a.m. today, we passed the 5-million mark, riding the wave of last night’s Instalanche.
Our joy at this achievement is tempered by the knowledge that loyal sidekick Smitty will soon be deployed to an Undisclosed Location, where Uncle Sam has decided that his astonishing powers of IT geekery are required to intimidate the Taliban into surrender.
When I expressed concerns for Smitty’s safety in the Undisclosed Location — some place on the other side of the world, in a country ending with “-stan” — he told me not to worry and used one of those super-secret military acronyms to explain.
It seems that Smitty will be deployed as a “REMF.”
While the duties of a REMF are highly classified — I get the idea they’re kind of a combination of Green Berets and ninjas — Smitty assured me that being a REMF is actually quite safe.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “If they ever get to me, the situation has gone so completely sideways, we’re all screwed anyway.”
This was strangely reassuring, as we’ve come to rely heavily on Smitty’s abilities. This blog went full-time in March 2008 and notched its first million hits in February 2009. Smitty joined up shortly thereafter, assuming responsibility for compiling FMJRA Saturday and Rule 5 Sunday. We crossed the 2-million mark in July 2009, reached 3 million in November 2009, and recorded the 4 millionth visit in June this year.
The weirdest thing about this astonishing success — the triumph of our Underpants Gnome Business Plan — is not merely that we have never been asked to explain it at any gathering of conservative New Media activists. For a long time, I blamed AFP’s Erik Telford for us being blackballed this way, but when Tabitha Hale left us off the agenda for BlogCon, I finally realized we are far more universally loathed than I had hitherto suspected.
OK, that’s weird — why does Tabitha Hale hate me? — but it’s not the weirdest part of our wild ride to 5 megahits.
No, the truly weird thing is that we haven’t had a single offer to sell out.
Despite our well-nigh notorious status as greedy capitalist bloggers, and despite creditable rumors that Our Plutocratic Republican Overlords are sitting atop a king’s ransom of ill-gotten billions, no emissary of the GOP Establishment has yet come forward to offer us the relatively modest sum it would take to persuade us to knock it off.
And the price isn’t going to decrease. I figure we’d start negotiations at a rate of $1 per hit to date. You see that, a mere 18 months ago, I could have been bribed to cease-and-desist for a piddling million bucks and our asking price was still under $2 million in May 2009. Our Plutocratic Republican Overlords took no notice, however, and instead wasted more than $10 million on the doomed Charlie Crist campaign.
Yeah, sorry that didn’t work out for you, Mr. Cornyn.
Principles? Yeah, we’ve got principles, but we are not unreasonable men, and we’re still willing to entertain offers.
Instead, these idiots keep trying to get the blogosphere on their side by handing out fat consulting contracts to their buddies who send us press releases telling us what a wonderful job they’re doing there at GOP HQ. Yeah, and paying useless dingbats like Mike Murphy $90,000 a month to run campaigns — how’s that working out for you, guys?
Anyway, we’re still here, with help from our tip-jar hitters, busting the Establishment’s balls every day. Whenever I mention that we haven’t yet achieved worldwide accolades and untold wealth in the process, someone will inevitably accuse me of “whining.” What I’m actually trying to emulate, however, is the description of the ancient Athenians, provided by the Corinthians in a speech recorded in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War:
“And what they have planned but not carried out, they think that in this they lose something already their own; what they have attempted and gained, that in this they have achieved but little in comparison with what they mean to do.”
No partial success can satisfy our fierce determination to achieve Maximum Blogospheric Hegmony. Let us quote one eminent authority on effective New Media strategies:
Indeed. Not “a great writer” like Kinsey Schofield perhaps, but most certainly tenacious.
UPDATE: Chris Wysocki hasn’t yet been Tweeted by Alyssa Milano, yet seems to have lots of Rule 5 action, while Troglopundit’s primitive paleolithic blog also extends congratulations.
Gonzo, Vindicated
Maetenloch at AOSHQ linked this list of the Best Magazine Articles Ever, and I noticed that Hunter S. Thompson was named twice in the top 10, for “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (where Thompson first displayed his famous “Gonzo” style) and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (originally syndicated in Rolling Stone).
Actually, we ought to demand a recount because (a) they omitted Thompson’s article “The Motorcycle Gangs” in The Nation, which formed the basis for Hell’s Angels, and (b) no Tom Wolfe? “Radical Chic” (New York, 1970) certainly deserves inclusion on any such list, as does “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson” (Esquire, 1965).
For good measure, I’d nominate Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s “Dan Quayle Was Right” (Atlantic, 1993), and Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships & Double Standards” (Commentary, 1979). These were certainly consquential articles, as “Dan Quayle Was Right” was crucial in building support for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, and Kirkpatrick’s article provided a key element of the intellectual framework for Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy that won the Cold War.
LIVE AT FIVE – 11.09.10
TOP NEWS
Obama Agrees – India Belongs On UNSC
Wins applause, skepticism from Indians
Netanyahu: Nuclear Iran Greatest Threat To World
Calls for military action; Clinton, Gates disagree
Peruvian Court Paroles Lori Berenson For Second Time
Served 15 years of 20-year sentence for aiding terrorists; most Peruvians unhappy with parole decision
POLITICS
Palin Criticizes Fed Purchase of Treasuries As Inflationary
Joins Chinese, Germans in condemning “quantitative easing”, calls on Bernanke to “cease and desist”.
Dems To Vote White Hoyer Or Black Clyburn Off Leadership Island?
Joe Miller Cautiously Optimistic About Absentee Ballots, Write-Ins
Another Reason That Moron Spencer Bachus Needs To Be Kicked To The Curb
Altschuler & Buerkle Races Still Too Close To Call IN NY-1, NY-25
Seven Other House Races Still In Doubt
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Gold Drops From High As Dollar Strengthens
Blue Chips Drop On Euro Sovereign Debt Concerns
Crude Oil Stockpiles Increase, Prices Continue To Rise On Dollar Drop
Google Gives Free Aerial Wifi For Holidays
NTIA Reports “Digital Divide” Still Exists
SPORTS
Jon Miller, Joe Morgan Done At ESPN
Work begins immediately on ridding baseball of Tim McCarver, Jack Buck
Jason Garrett Replaces Wade Phillips As Hapless Cowboys’ Head Coach
#4 Pitt Opens Hoops Season, Beats Rhode Island 83-75
Packers Get Full Week Off After Drubbing Cowboys
Ilitch Getting Close To Pistons Purchase
FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan Reunites With Father
First time in seven months
Jake Gyllenhaal: It’s Too Soon For Taylor To See Me Naked
Kanye West Surprises Delta Passengers With In-Flight Concert (Video)
Miley Cyrus Would Trade Success To Quash Parents’ Divorce
Charlie Sheen: Can’t A Guy Have One Bad Night?
O_o
FOREIGNERS
Flooding Raises New Cholera Fears In Haiti
Karens Flee Myanmar As Fighting Erupts Following Sham Elections
Seoul Signals Openness To Free Trade Deal
Moroccan Troops Break Up Western Sahara Protest Camp
BLOGS & STUFF
Yid With Lid: Defeated Dems Implore Pelosi To Step Aside
Contentions: Dems Wake Up To What A Lousy Politician Obama Is
Don Surber: Manchin Being Courted By GOP To Flip?
Dennis The Peasant: So Long To Ambinder, I Won’t Miss Him
POWIP: Electile Dysfunction Strikes Dems Of All Ages
NRO: Is Rand Paul Already Selling Out?
Hit & Run: Lone Star State To Become No Medicare State?
WSJ: California, The Lindsay Lohan Of States
— compiled by Wombat-socho
Whitetail Jihad Bags BAMBI Killer
by Smitty (h/t Theo)
The Brotherhood of Alaskan Mujahedeen Bark Ingesters (BAMBI) report a glorious victory in the endless struggle against the Killer Invasive Americans (KIA), as they term the two-legged, four wheeled invaders decimating their ranks.
This particular specimen of vehicular evil has been vanquished, but not before he led BAMBI on a merry chase. Claiming to be involved in some KIA pursuit called ‘journalism’, this miscreant has traipsed all over New England, Alaska, the Southwest, and the South in his vain attempt to escape justice.
Let this be a lesson to all of you KIA infidels! Wapiti Rackbar!