"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
What a jacked-up pile of crazy talk this is:
I mean, really: parents having any say about schools? How regressive a notion is that? To top it off, if you read Luther Olsen’s bio page, he has six kids. Clearly a conservative Gaia-hater, committed to ensuring his progeny upset the Progressive fair-adise that has been so long in the making.
(via Orit Sklar on Twitter)
— compiled by Wombat-socho
Welcome to Bring The Heat, Bring The Stupid, who makes his Rule 5 debut here with some nice pix of Connie Britton! Also, Hookers and Booze, who didn’t include a link to a specific post, so I just went over and snarfed one. Next week you gotta bring your own, though!
Meanwhile, from our regulars…Fishersville Mike brings us heat relief, The Rio Norte Line finds Rule 5 in Orbit along with a new reason to demand the Fox Business Channel, and the Eye of Polyphemus shows us the best thing about The Smurfs, while Reaganite Republican is getting jealous of the Russians. Randy’s Roundtable offers a triple feature this week: Kristen Cavallari, Genevieve Morton, and Carla Ossa; A View From The Beach looks at Scarlett Johansson in the wake of her decision not to attend the Marine Ball, as well as other redheads.
Proof Positive is also doing things by threes, with Emily Scott, vintage babe Betty Brosmer and Smurfette feeling blue. Three Beers Later brings us a Jay Scott Pike pinup and Jane Russell. Maggie’s Notebook spotlights Annie Ilonzeh, soon to be co-starring in the Charlie’s Angels remake. At Dustbury, it’s Iekeliene Strange and Kate Beckinsale. This week, Jake Finnegan’s Burkalesque Babe is Brooklyn Decker, and the POH Diaries this week goes with Pamela Geller.
This week, El Opinador Compulsivo is EN FUEGO! Starting with an introduction to the how-to site Eye Handy, congratulations to Soylent Green on reaching his first million hits, Larissa Riqelme (even though Paraguay lost), Penny Argentinita, Iga Wyrwal, Motorhead’s “Whorehouse Blues”, a pretty Commie, an illustration of two types of discipline (one with King Crimson, one without) and finally a fast Quebecois chick if there ever was one.
Soylent Green’s Monday Motivationer is a twofer this week, followed by Dalene Kurtis, Joanna Krupa, a young lady getting locked down, Corset Friday, and a celebration of his million hit milestone. Glad we could help!
The Camp of the Saints, beset by real life as bloggers sometimes are, nontheless managed to get three Rule 5 posts in last week: Luisa Ranieri, It’s All About The V, and the weekly Rule 5 News.
The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week include Naomi Campbell, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Asian Babe Friday, Hilary Fisher, Crista Nicole, Melanie Iglesias and Rhona Mitra.
Thanks to everyone for their links! To be included in next week’s Rule 5 Monday (which will appear on its proper day of Sunday next week), send your links to me at Rule 5 Wombat no later than midnight August 6.
by Smitty
Insty links NBC Washington:
Cocaine use in the District was also high. The survey says that while D.C. residents age 17 and under reported some of the lowest cocaine use in the country, District adults were among the top coke users in the United States, with 3.78 percent of residents saying they had used over a one year period.
I’m not trying to imply any correlation between the amount of blow in play and the non-approach to integrity, economics, leadership, sense, planning, decency, &c evidenced by our Ruling Class Overlords.
Not me.
But Nancy, if they had a conscience, they wouldn’t be Democrats!
OK, beyond the cheap snark, here’s a EuroNews video report, which you may enjoy merely for the narrator’s accent:
Notice that even this lady with the weird foreign accent blames it all on “Republican right-wing Tea Party supporters.” And via Memeorandum and Breitbart, here’s Norah O’Donnell bitching and moaning:
Permit me to suggest that anything that makes Norah whine like a baby is, at some level, a victory. Tina Korbe has a pretty good roundup of the latest at Hot Air.
“You can blame the whole mess on cynical Democrats like Harry Reid, who could have raised the debt ceiling while in control of Congress last year. But they simply didn’t want to, preferring to play politics with the nation’s finances instead.”
— The Rhetorican, “A debt deal has been reached”
For those who are not yet fluent in Obama-ese:
Russ Emerson’s Obama vocabulary list also helps you understand many otherwise confusing idioms:
Thus, “let me be clear“ means “watch me be equivocal.”
by Smitty
Sitting There Feeling Useless sits Paul Krugman, unable to grasp that the American people aren’t buying his swill.
The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further.
Can you not grasp reality, man? Government Spending Triggers Fiscal Undertows.
Only somebody with the mentality of an insect would lack the wisdom to see that, beyond a certain early point (long ago passed in our case) the governmental cast on the economic limb with the fracture* causes atrophy of the market muscles. Human beings that do not confuse themselves with Socialist ants can grasp that an exoskeleton on the limb implies increasing weakness over time, not recovery. Load-shed the government spending, the over-regulation, the suffocating growth of bureaucracy, and go for some good, old-fashioned physical therapy.
Sincerely, Thanks For Understanding.
–Smitty
*Caused by a load of regulation that landed upon it.
Update: Surberlanche!
Update II: Linked at WyBlog, too. Thanks!
Update III: Left Handed Nib and That Mr. G Guy pick it up.
Update IV: Tagged by marfdrat.
Spin filters into the news at CNN:
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are expected to vote Monday on a deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut the deficit, a compromise that President Barack Obama and leaders in Congress reached on Sunday night.
The votes come one day before the United States faced the prospect of an unprecedented default on the nation’s debt. . . .
The Senate plans a first vote on the deal on Monday afternoon, a Senate Democratic leadership aide told CNN. If the measure passes an expected Republican filibuster attempt, the House could vote on it Monday night, the aide said.
The idea of Aug. 2 as the drop-dead default date? Spin. Tim Geithner estimated the Aug. 2 date months ago but — even if you trust Geithner, which I don’t — it wasn’t like we were automatically going bankrupt Tuesday. Also, now that Mitch McConnell has approved a deal, this “expected Republican filibuster attempt” exists only in the minds of the kind of deluded young leftists who work as Senate Democratic leadership aides or CNN reporters.
You want neutral objective facts? Try the blogs:
The debt-limit deal relies on gimmicks . . . the credit rating is still at risk, and our massive federal debt will continue to grow like a malignant tumor.
That’s Right Klik, pushing back against a lot of spin — from Chris Cillizza of the WaPo, among others — claiming that this deal is a Gigantic Right-Wing Triumph, “Return of the King” for the Tea Party Hobbits, which it obviously ain’t.
Yet if the debt-deal isn’t a Tea Party triumph, it does involve a couple of key defeats for Democrats, as Tim Carney says:
Abandoned in the debt deal are the liberal ideal of “shared sacrifice” (i.e., tax increases) and the Keynesian tenet of government spending surges during recessions. Preserved is the political framing that helps the Democrats in the 2012 election: no more embarrassing debt-limit votes before the election, no prominent debate on a balanced budget amendment, and a stage set for some good old corporate-jets-vs.-Medicare demagoguery.
White House economic adviser Gene Sperling was all over the morning TV news shows today replaying his “shared sacrifice” broken record, while Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin mourned the death of Keynesianism:
The Republicans are killing Keynesian economics with their attempt to cut spending as the economy rebounds from a recession, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a floor speech on Sunday.”I would say … that symbolically, that agreement is moving us to the point where we are having the final interment of John Maynard Keynes,” he said, referring to the British economist. “He normally died in 1946 but it appears we are going to put him to his final rest with this agreement.” . . .
Oh, if only it were so! Most sane people had thought Keynesianism died in the “stagflation” debacle of the 1970s, and yet for the past three years the ghost of Lord Keynes has haunted us again. Despite the discrediting of Keynes’s theories, liberals still believe in him and so, any time liberals wield decisive influence, we can expect to see the same disastrous deficit-spending policies pursued.
That is a neutral objective fact!
UPDATE: Legal Insurrection has posted the entire bill and — mirabile dictu! — Da Tech Guy actually read through it.
UPDATE II: Linked by Cranky Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!
This might be a good occasion to remind you that I’m rattling the tip jar to pay my way for a 10-day shoe-leather trip to Iowa.