October 31, 2008
Going John Galt
That Anonymous story about tipping the homeless instead of your waiter is making the rounds; the Instawife reposts a version of it left in her comments section. Dr. Helen improves on the meme with the following and I think if we had deployed this strategy six months ago the election would not even be close.
HOPE AND CHANGE FOR AMERICA: Spreading the Wealth Around.
In lieu of a tip, $_____ has been donated to the Re-Elect Obama for President Campaign. Thank you for supporting the man and the movement that are bringing America together!
If enough people leave notes like this, I'm sure it will galvanize waitpeople everywhere in support of The One!
Add cab drivers to the list.
As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII explains his support for Barack Obama (via lgf). The argument is primarily class driven Paline Derangement Syndrome. A better excuse than any his jumped up, pissant Canadian wannabe equivalents can muster. And unlike Van Voorhees, Canadian onservatives are all too real.
It's an inescapable conclusion that this woman has, in 6 short weeks, single-handedly destroyed the Republican party. Certainly George Bush may share some of the blame; but we conservatives must remember how our hopes were buoyed by his impressive bloodlines and Yale degree before we realized his excursion to Texas had caused him to "go native." But la Palin offers true conservatives no such extenuating graces. I mean, my God, this woman is simply awful; the elided vowels, the beauty pageantry, the guns, the crude non-Episcopal protestantism, the embarrassing porchload of children with horrifying hillbilly names, the white after Labor Day. As fellow conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan quipped to me the other day outside a Martha's Vineyard antique shop, it's gratifying to know the Gipper isn't alive to see what has become of his party.
No joke. This is what the left has become in its hatred of the working class. It used to be Republicans were beset with Birchers, anti-semites and the like. Well, today these people are still with us. But today these people vote Democrat. And so do their grasping, snivelling onservative friends.
Hollywood Director Attack Ads
John McCain turns to famous Hollywood directors for help with his attack ads (Part I, Part II). This via Hot Air, correct to point out Part II is a great improvement over Part I. David Lynch has sealed the deal for me: Vote McCain!
A barack in disguise
One thing for which I thank the junior Senator from Illinois: Many supposed conservatives have shown their true colours as this man has slouched toward the White House. These are people I would have trusted if, say, we were faced with World War Z. Now I know better. No matter the outcome of next week's poll, and no matter what these charlatans will have to say for themselves should John McCain become President, I will not forget. With their every word I will hear the voice of Grima Wormtongue. They have chosen their master. Let them learn the species of generosity for which his camp followers are famous.
In this sense, Barack is indeed a blessing. I would call it a small blessing for a blighted world. But if things get ugly it may be the greatest favour he could have possibly done civilization. It is said the forces of darkness are often their own undoing. Now we know who to turn away at the gate; who to leave to the zombies.
Exeunt Saxonum
With the retreat of Empire, the Romano-British decided to import Germans to do their work for them. These barbarous newcomers, energetic and fecund in comparison with an enervated host population of sophisticates, started as a trickle and became a flood. It has been fifteen hundred years since this generational conquest of Britain, so long that the English themselves have forgotten how they took title to the land; their only memory that of a British war leader now wrongly celebrated as an English folk hero.
Give it a hundred years and Arthur will be remembered as a Muslim, celebrated for his expression of Islamic chivalry.
With luck and a fair wind next week the free world may once again find the man it needs to stand up in the hour he is needed. Or it may be the will to decline will take office and right thinking people will discover the police and the judiciary perverted into acting against them.* The latter outcome makes the task ahead of us all the harder in the short term. But even a victory for a latter day paladin - the real deal, a stand up bona fide hero - risks lulling us into a sense the confrontation is a matter of winning a few pitched battles, only of winning a couple wars. This would be a mistake. No matter the outcome of next week's presidential election, I have been told over and over again England is already lost. We cannot win the war this way, my friends. We have to start thinking unconventionally. It is that or the Saxon keeps coming no matter the glory of Badon Hill.
* Do not mistake this for hyperbole. In Canada, saying the wrong thing even in jest can drag you through Star Chamber tribunals and commissions without the benefit of due process, can bankrupt you, destroy your career and your family, result in lifetime bans on free speech and expression (of the Gospel, no less) and ultimately even lead to imprisonment. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom to practice religion as we choose, are guaranteed by our constitution. For all the good it does us. And for all the good it will do you once Obama has appointed three Supreme Court Justices.
Tim Curry: Anything can happen on Hallowe'en
This is goth Christmas, btw. Now is the time at the Flea when we dance (via Coilhouse).
Goth make-up tutorial No. 1
Adora BatBrat demonstrates (silly, nsfw lyrics in accompanying music).
Best. Vampire. Evar.
Which vampire kills the competition?
(via Agent Bedhead)
October 30, 2008
Dark times demand dark music
Attentive Flea-readers will have noticed The Summer Glau Chronicles was nowhere to be found this week. Not to worry, it returns November 3. What even the most attentive Flea-readers may not have noticed are the discreet star tattoos Lena Headey - Sarah Connor of the show's lay title - sports on each forearm. They are quite fetching.
Pic related. Is Lena Headey.
Now that I have your attention: I am playing a darkwave/industrial set at Savage Garden as part of tonight's Devil's Night festivities. M00nBass, DIFF_CULT and Witchmaker make up the rest of tonight's line up; I will be on at 10 (allowing my suburban friends to get home before the TTC turns into a pumpkin).
New Order: Touched By The Hand Of God
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Television under the swastika
The Daily Mail reports Hitler's plan for Big Brother style television broadcast and surveillance; worth the read for the comments alone. Almost everyone agrees the BBC has seen Hitler's vision through (via Agent Bedhead).
All very interesting. But Michael Kloft’s documentary on the history of Nazi television, Television Under The Swastika suggests plans were much further along that this Daily Mail piece might suggest, Nazi television was broadcasting well before the War.
The cowgirl bathing suit lasso routine kitsch is fun, of course, and instructional in a bread and circuses way. But my favourite footage shows the Führer adopting his usual commanding position in his staff car and a brief look of consternation as it sets off in reverse. In the days of live television broadcast, Hitler's message was bound to suffer the occasional set-back of this kind. Today's left-stream media would have found a way to carry his water for him.
Everyone would have laughed
Most notorious for the torture and murder of Jean Moulin and for ordering the deportation of 44 Jewish orphans to their deaths, SS-Hauptsturmführer, soldier and Gestapo member, Klaus Barbie personally raped, tortured and murdered in pursuit of his duties as Nazi proconsul of Lyons. Decades later, after leading a full life in South America, Barbie was belatedly brought to trial in France. What should have been an open and shut case was instead taken as an opportunity by the far left and the far right to come together and put France herself on trial.
This should all sound distressingly familiar.
On the day before the verdict of Barbie's trial, Alain Finkielkraut, one of France's foremost moderate thinkers and the son of survivors of Auschwitz could be found outside the Palais de Justice and he was visibly upset by what he saw. "Imagine," he said with more than a hint of bitter irony in his voice, "that we're in 1945, at the end of the war, and someone says, 'you'll see, in twenty or thirty years when they accuse and condemn a Nazi torturer, it'll be the 'subhumans' who will defend him.' Everyone would have laughed."
Not any more. Not when the show trials start in Congress next year. Not when that same Congress enacts Canadian-style "human rights" star chambers. Not when Chicago education professors are called upon to draft the laws establishing them. Not when three new Supreme Court Justices ratify their validity in the face of the Constitution.
Substitute 9/11 for Holocaust and you find an agenda shared by the radical left and the radical right in raping the memory of the dead in service of destroying the United States and replacing democracy with a global apartheid (though that arm-band is now called "multiculturalism"). The difference between the two ends of the political spectrum is more than an aesthetic preference for this or that historic fascism. It is that the radical right is confined to a handful of basements and internet chat rooms. The radical left, by contrast, has taken control of the media, the university system, the entertainment industry, much of the judicial system and is now attempting to steal the presidency.
Arm yourselves while you still can.
October 29, 2008
The Speech
Kathy Shaidle links a video of The Speech, Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater, October 27, 1964 (full text at the Reagan Library).
If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance.
It gets better. You owe it to yourself to make time for this. The rest of us will do what we can but we need you to be strong now. Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America! Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight! Nothing is inevitable here. You are Americans. You never hide from history. You make history. (I get choked up every time I think of those words. My God. How is this even a contest?)
North and south of the border, we have to retake the education system. We have to be ruthless about de-funding the bureaucracy before it is used to silence or imprison us all. We have to stop being intimidated when moral ingrates call us bad names. We can. We must.
Related: Republicans... do you know where your voting location is?
Also related: Sarah Palin rocking out to Redneck Woman.
We don't dial 911 Update: Black belt patriot, Chuck Norris offers a non-partisan message for the American electorate.
Ezra Levant needs your help
So does freedom of speech and expression. Americans, if things go badly on November 4th you are looking at your future when you look north of the border. Help Ezra stand up for all of us.
Nick Drake: Riverman
Wish I made this. Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Legend of the Seeker
Sam Raimi and Rob Tappert have a new television series based on The Sword of Truth novels by Terry Goodkind.
One can only assume Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi have cameos. Some aspects of the world must still exhibit perfect symmetry.
October 28, 2008
Not anti-Christ, just on the other side
Amir Taheri asks if the Twelvers, and by extension the government of Iran, believe Barack Obama is the "promised warrior" here to help the Hidden Imam conquer the world. Read the whole thing but do so at Free Dominion, Forbes sent the article down the memory hole.
According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet's cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the Mahdi, the Ultimate Saviour, a "tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West." Commanding "the strongest army on earth," the new ruler in the West will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, whose name was Hussein Ibn Ali.
The tradition concludes: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us."
In a curious coincidence Obama's first and second names--Barack Hussein--mean "the blessing of Hussein" in Arabic and Persian.
His family name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads O Ba Ma, which means "he is with us," the magic formula in Majlisi's tradition.
Creepy. Though it is bad enough Joe Biden has been in the mullahs pocket for decades. Two traitors on the Democrat ticket spells disaster; your prophetic outcomes may vary. With apologies for my tag line, I recognize it does not quite make sense.
Turn that frown upside down Update: No seriously keep frowning. It is just that Spengler appears to be even more of a downer than I am. I find this thought strangely comforting.
A throw away observation suggests it is a "wave of self pity" threatening to carry Obama into the White House. This is the best explanation I have heard for this inexplicable prospect. Unless, of course, it is the Devil making them do it.
Wear plenty of sunscreen
Fallout 3 launches today. To those of us without the right cultural capital, this Fallout Retrospective is an invaluable introduction to the before of the game. A five part gameplay demo introduces the new arrival.
Related: Killer ants. Also, girls, guns and garden gnomes.
Odds and ends
A number of Flea readers kindly keep me up to date with steampunk products on the internet; much appreciated though not always linked. One advantage of the (admittedly limited) popularity of the style is the increasing cottage industry of kit bashers large and small making their wares available for purchase. Take this Nerf rocket blaster modded as a cosplay steampunk ray gun. Sweeter yet, this Nerf Maverick steampunk mod. These auctions will soon be done but future retro-future eBay Victoriana may be found at Steampunk Attire, a specialized link filter dedicated to the subject.
Closer to the cyber end of the spectrum of post-industrial fashion is my new favourite design house, Alexander Hi Tek, a kind of style successor to Storm London. Sunglasses and watches are central to the current line but I am particularly impressed by this mask and - for the ladies - this extraordinary hat.
Flea Towers is undergoing redecoration and, were I to prioritize knick-knacks over ceiling fans, this Hunley Civil War submarine replica would be close to the top of the list. Given a larger budget, I would spring for this light up special edition Tokyo Disneyland opening 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine Nautilus. With yet more mad money, Flea readers can say damn the torpedoes and mod their own Nautilus minisub and working Nemo suit.
Finally, my hat collection. Now wondering what a French military police M1912 goes for when such a beast is made available at auction. This is perhaps the ultimate in martial industrial stagewear.
Uniting Nations: Ai No Corrida (as interpreted by the Tokyo Dance Trooper)
Don't give up! Stand your ground! Fight! Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Bonus and extra: Tokyo Rock Trooper.
To clarify a point of definition
Barack Obama is not a socialist. Hillary Clinton is a socialist. Tony Blair is a (sort of) socialist. And, if we are honest, George W. Bush is actually a socialist. As, I would argue, is the case for the political establishment of the entire Western world since the 1930s. Marx's prognostications about the dialectic were more or less right on schedule, it is just that most Marxists (having not read Marx) have failed to notice.* For those of us who like the idea of 1870s Deadwood or Heinlein's Freetraders in principle but who also like working traffic lights and a municipal police force in practice, socialism writ small is not such a bad idea.
Barack Obama is not a socialist. Barack Obama and his co-conspirators are revolutionary communists.
In so far as socialism is involved it is because Obama enjoys the naive support of academics, well-meaning wealthy people who have never had to work, social gospel Christians and the left of the Democratic party who have yet to figure out George Bush is not the enemy.** Obama also happens to enjoy the support of black national socialists and Arab national socialists (many of whom are pretending to be Muslims). Non-socialist but non-trivial - particularly given a "global test" - is Obama's support among Muslims who for some obscure reason assume Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim and therefore by definition not a socialist. They would be best advised to remember taqqiya works both ways.
Given an Obama presidency (by no means a given), mainstream Democrats and their moonbat would be advocates at Daily KOS et al are going to enjoy the show trials for precisely as long as it takes Obama's crew to turn on their own revolutionaries. Writing from north of the border, I plan to stock up on popcorn for the Night of the Long Knives if for nothing else. But I weep for the Republic should this evil man and his evil friends hijack the Presidency and turn the American government into a flying suicide bomb aimed at square at the heart of the American people and all they hold dear.
* I am prepared to defend this assertion in detail. Though I should really do so at book length.
** That goes double for Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens, Sarah Palin is not your enemy.
Update: Dust My Broom... He is coming for you next.
Those in the lower classes standing steadfastly behind the campaign haven't figured out that this 'modern communist revolutionary' is in fact coming for them next.
Messy war
As experience in Afghanistan and Iraq turns from theory to practice, opposition grows toward Future Combat Systems and the Revolution in Military Affairs.
In a new paper, Army Col. H.R. McMaster, definitely a member of the messy war group, calls for abandoning so-called transformation, which is intellectually rooted in the idea of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). McMaster, of 73 Easting and Tal Afar fame, is a highly influential soldier-scholar who is currently putting together a brain trust for Gen. David Petraeus to review U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.
McCain asks if we know the real Obama
But do we know the real John McCain?
October 27, 2008
Dean Barnett, rest in peace
I am very sorry to pass on the news Dean Barnett has died, aged 41. I would like to offer my prayers to his family and friends. He will be sorely missed by those of us who were just his fans.
His appearances as guest host on the Hugh Hewitt Show were always welcome. He was gracious with people from across the political spectrum, had an engaging temperament and subtle wit that will not be replaced; in short, the model of a gentleman in an ungentlemanly age.
Hugh Hewitt remembers.
Had he had more time, he would have been one of the great influences on the GOP for as long as he lived, probably because he valued and used every minute he had.
Chowda. Rest in peace.
Update: Kathy Shaidle is linking remembrances and updates.
Generally speaking, people don't listen until it is too late
Your result for How Long Would you Survive in a Horror Film?...
The Horror Aficionado
Take How Long Would you Survive in a Horror Film?
Related: The Creeping Terror. Also, Sigourney Weaver almost gets naked at the end of Alien but then Ripley was not a virgin.
Peter Fox: Alles Neu
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Where will China get the weapons and ammunition to wage a war of liberation?
Someone should tell the Onservatives about that last one.
More Robert Taber inspired thinking to follow, especially if things go badly on the 4th. I guarantee you the PUMAs are already thinking along these lines; you cannot steal an election in the United States - really steal, not selected/elected "steal" - without a revolutionary impulse rising in the hearts of patriots.
Important note: I am interested in means rather than ends with these links. I am four-square in favour of nuclear power and suspect I would disagree most policy issues with the author of these letters. Even so, he has interesting things to day about taking on tyrannical elites. There is the faith of our fathers. Then there is the practice of our fathers. Time to review the Federalist Papers too...
FYI: The tag line and question are quotes from Chairman Mao, a man who knew a thing or two about fighting and winning when out gunned. Again, ends vs means.
Related: The nuclear plant is everywhere!
A parable of hope and change
Lifted from an Anonymous.
Once in the Doe's my waiter had on an "Obama 08" tee shirt.
When the bill came, I decided not to tip the waiter and explained to him while he had given me exceptional service, that his tee shirt made me feel he obviously believes in Senator Obama's plan to redistribute the wealth. I told him I was going to redistribute his tip to someone that I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. He stood there in disbelief and angrily stormed away.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy $3 and told him to thank the waiter inside, as I had decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy looked at me in disbelief but seemed grateful.
As I got in my truck, I realized this rather unscientific redistribution experiment had left the homeless guy quite happy for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn.
Well, I guess this redistribution of wealth is going to take a while to catch on, with those doing the work.
October 26, 2008
Black Thong Stretching Trio
Knew I forgot something today. Basically I spend most of my time lately in a blood red rage. Fortunately, I have the internet. Now is the time at the Flea when we dance (nsfw but I take it you don't work on Sunday).
Update: Belatedly decided I should expand on the blood red rage issue having avoided it due to blood pressure issues. This business with the cigarette almost sent me off the deep end.
Selection bias
American Thinker suggests there are signs pointing to a McCain victory. His arguments are sound - and I particularly enjoy anecdotal law sign/bumper sticker evidence - but I am posting a link due to this gem from the comments. God bless Vid III.
Also, Shtuey.
I've been listening to a lot of conservative talk radio over the past month and a half. I'm amazed at the number of people who find themselves falling victim to the same methods of voter suppression through polling and media drumming that we experienced in the primaries. On the last day of the Democrat Party primaries AP released a false story that Clinton was conceding; BEFORE THE POLLS CLOSED. There has most likely not been a point where Obama has polled ahead of McCain out of the margin of error. Republicans need to know there are millions of us out there that are going to vote against Obama because of his politics, and his hand in the destruction of democratic process. We could care less about the color of his skin. It's the content of his character we have a problem with. I have never voted Republican before. Country before party.
DO NOT STAY HOME!
The banality of onservatism
Yet another thing I used to wonder at in my 9/10 life was how German conservatives could ever have accommodated themselves to Hitler and the Nazi party. Now I know. They were not conservatives. They did not care about democracy or individual liberty or the free market or authentic German traditions. They saw a strong man on a horse and - being weak - they followed him. They were the Weimar equivalent of today's cowardly, careerist urban latte beta male lawyer class (see link above) and they could not care less who ran Germany so long as they were still invited to the right parties.
The radical left, the radical right and al Qaeda share several things in common: As people, they are wrong about human nature, wrong about the nature of the world, are clinically insane and are true believers in the creeds they preach. This last trait is not admirable in itself. But these true believers often lead lives of self-sacrifice and devotion to higher ideals - albeit evil ideals - which one might imagine could have made for valuable lives if only directed toward different ends.
I cannot say the same for the little traitors, the objective nihilists, who pretend to think some attenuated strain of Nazism, Communism or Islam - or as seems likely a hybrid of all three - is acceptable in the White House.
Update: It occurs to me the title to this post might be a bit Canadian dextrosphere inside baseball. So, for the benefit of my American cousins, the definition of onservative.
October 25, 2008
Confronting prejudice...
... one street gang at a time. Ace points to Clint Eastwood's latest inspirational effort as a community activist.*
Which appears to rock freaking hardcore.
And in the other corner: The Philadelphia Club of the Young Communist League offers "Will of the People", revolutionary rap for Obama. Funny how every fascist lunatic on the planet supports the Democrat this time round. There could not be a better testament to the work President Bush has done on behalf of a strong America these last eight years than his condemnation by a global motley of evil half-wits. History, assuming it is written at all, will recognize what he has accomplished.
* My community: Angry white men.
Poignant Update: First off, this is Shatner and therefore awesome (by which I mean "awe inspiring"). Second, no, this is not the Sulu marriage invitation thing; you can Google that. Third, this was forwarded to me by a cute Vietnamese woman with the words "sooo funny!!! he's my hero" (I quote): Shatner considers the message we need to be sending as the United States is trying to elect an African-American president. And a further thought on gun control.
Rachel Stevens: Knock On Wood
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
The silenced majority
Zombietime considers the Democrats' meta-campaign and argues they have adopted the worst possible strategy; bluffing when they are going to have to show their hand on November 4. This is an in interesting read, perhaps the most interesting piece on strategy I have read this year.
Best of all, it points to Richard Nixon's answer to the problem of dealing with media bias.
In 2008 there is no silent majority: there is the silenced majority. The unpolled majority. The media is so pro-Obama that the views and the concerns of McCain supporters are for the most part ignored or, at best, mocked. The goal is to foster disillusionment among them, a sense of isolation. To trick the Republicans into all staying home on election day because "there's no hope of winning." Maybe the Democrats can't avoid a showdown on November 4, but if they can convince enough McCain supporters to individually "fold" and not vote at all, then Obama can carry the day.
Update: The Jawas.
Despite a FULL-COURT PRESS by the mainstream media, Ohio and Florida are now moving into the McCain column. Pennsylvania is trending to McCain, also.
DO NOT believe the hype, folks.
Get to your ass the polls. Get your family to the polls. Get your friends to the polls.
MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
HOLD THE LINE.
This is just as true for Republicans/PUMAs/Independents/conservative Democrats/the sane living in blue states. Every down ticket vote counts for or against a moonbat controlled Congress and a McCain presidency will go easier with a clear victory in the popular vote.
October 24, 2008
Here are some pictures of Eva Green
I am having an honesty in materials moment. The article is interesting too, actually (via Agent Bedhead)
Related: Eva Green for Dior Midnight Poison, Breil and Heineken. She has a lovely laugh in that last one, all the more so for being unexpected.
In case I forgot to mention it earlier: Tom Ford is the new tailor to James Bond.
Gary Numan: Me I Disconnect From You
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.*
* Yes, it's a Scientology reference. Numan had been reading William Burroughs who, in turn, had a fling with Scientology in the late '60s before getting turned off.
Guilty as sin, free as a bird
Megyn Kelly kicks ass and takes names. Bill Ayers was and remains a traitor. He and his associates represent a clear and present danger to the Republic. Once again, I blame otherwise sane conservatives for continuing to give a pass to men who should have been tried, found guilty and hanged decades ago. If democracy falls it will be our fault for rewarding its enemies.
Existentially related: The Weather Underground planned to exterminate 25 million of their political opponents in death camps to be established once their revolution was complete. To Obama, this is a babysitter resume material. Still think I am joking about him being the Antichrist? Already his party is engaged in systematic fraud, its allies using every trick to distort the election and the man is cheered on by his friends and relatives in the Umma as his supporters engage in lawfare and domestic terror against his political opponents both within the Democratic party and against a nation of sleeping Republicans.
Arm yourselves.
Study guide: No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat
Despite recent unpleasantness in Georgia, and a dimwitted refusal to appropriately discern its friends from its enemies, a strong Russia is not only in the short term interest of the free world, it is in the long term interest of democracy. It is difficult to be too hard on Russia's corrupt leadership, blinkered as it is by anti-Americanism; these are features of every European government saved by the United States in World War II.
50 billion dollars in Russian military spending in 2009 may sound alarming but I find the prospect they may not be able to pay for it far more alarming. A Russian military "running on fumes" is inherently more destabilizing than even the most belligerent Russian policy in the near abroad.
Related to my point: India is building airfields along the border with China.
More than meets the eye: A previously classified Northrop Grumman video of the X-35 prototype for the short take-off/vertical landing variant of the F-35 joint strike fighter.
October 23, 2008
Damn you, Alexis Denisof
10/11: A day that lives in infamy (this disaster via Agent Bedhead, who is famous, btw). Console yourself with images from before the naqba.
Real Life: Send Me An Angel
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
The better Bond
Daniel Craig offers an extremely gracious answer to a somewhat delicate question. His answer is, of course, entirely wrong headed. Of the two presidential candidates, who would make the better Bond?
Craig doesn’t hesitate. “Obama would be the better Bond because—if he’s true to his word—he’d be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them. McCain, because of his long service and experience, would probably be a better M,” he adds, mentioning Bond’s boss, played by Dame Judi Dench.
Sure, excepting the part about how James Bond kills men like Bill Ayers. Bernardine Dohrn would initially survive due to being a woman but due to leftist hubris her pitchfork Nazi salute would come out and Bond, to great audience applause, would kill her as an aside on the way out the door. Other than that and the fact McCain is the real deal, sure, I can see Obama as James Bond.
Or possibly Felix Leiter.
If Felix Leiter was a Marxist CIA agent.
But I repeat myself.
Ok, I think I can stop beating this horse now. Looks good and dead to me.
In all the empty places where you must walk
The Indian navy sallies out against jihadi pirates based in east Africa. About time, observes an Indian public wondering what the point is of supporting a large navy if the Indian government is "too weak" to use it.
The Indian Navy currently has 156 ships and 35 under construction, ranking it in the top 5 in the world in total numbers. In terms of numbers of modern ships, the Indian Navy will soon have more aircraft carriers, more amphibious ships, more major surface combatants, more submarines, more ships in the flotilla, and a larger auxiliary than any Navy in Europe, including Britain, Russia, and France. True they will not be as advanced in terms of technology, but a decade of buying American could change that in a hurry for India.
The numbers are impressive and - with the will - could be the shield of the civilized world in the coming darkness.
Related and awesome: The Indian Navy saree uniform.
Also related: Sovereign and mobile territory. GlobalSecurity offers a nifty graphic representation of aircraft carrier size comparisons.
America has twice as many aircraft carriers as the rest of humanity combined, and America's aircraft carriers are substantially larger than almost all the other's aircraft carriers. The Navy likes to call the big Nimitz class carriers "4.5 acres of sovereign and mobile American territory" -- all two dozen American carriers of all classes add up to about 75 acres of deck space. Deckspace is probably a good measure of combat power. The rest of the world's carriers have about 15 acres of deck space, one fifth that of America's.
Also awesome: An animated naval gun turret, based on a British 15 inch gun turret Mark 1.
October 22, 2008
The Green Fairy
Perhaps the ultimate gothic tipple, Pernod Absinthe returns after a 93 year absence.
I am also on the market for a Danger Bomb Clock. I think these are a very good idea.
Unrelated: Some people liked my "big butts" post the other day but this is the best blog post headline of the year.
Adamski feat. Nina Hagen: Get Your Body
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Related: Time for me to learn German.
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work
If my financial situation was slightly better organized - and I had less work to do in the next few days - I would make my way to Chicago's Packer Schopf Gallery this weekend to take in Clive Barker's concept paintings for Midnight Meat Train.
Related: The trailer.
How to end the war (one thing only)
Socialists do not create wealth for themselves; they parasitize the wealth of others, primarily through confiscatory state bureaucracies. Therefore, to destroy the left, the next real conservative government has to do one thing (and one thing only): Stop paying the left to destroy civilization. Shut down the CBC's national television news, shut down funding to arts and social science departments at all publicly funded universities, shut down all fine arts funding, shut down all tax incentives to write or produce leftist propaganda in whatever medium and let all of the above fend for themselves in the marketplace.
Problem solved.
We can no more win this war so long as we continue to fund the other side through our taxes than we can expect to defeat the Islamic forever war against us even as we fund the jihadis every time we buy gasoline.
Note: By applying this simple philosophy of only paying for our own side we reveal the asymmetric nature of both conflicts. Neither the left nor the jihad has a parallel weapon with which to retaliate. I could live the rest of my life without any good or service provided by the genius of Islamic art or science without noticing the difference (with the possible exception of Iran's pistachios) and live the rest of my life without a single (tax payer financed) arts grant funnelled through a leftist university or leftist arts council to scholars or artists who publicly express conservative opinions (because such funding already equals zero for anyone straying from the left's agenda).
Related note to Stephen Harper: Those arts grants cuts did not cost you any votes; at least not until you restored them in a bid to placate Quebec. Quebec was not - and cannot be - placated and you must know there is not a single publicly funded artist or arts functionary in the country who would vote "Conservative" under any circumstances. But you can alienate your base by kissing Quebec's ass and you can alienate your base by tacking so far to the centre we might as well vote Liberal Classic instead of your New Coke version of the same agenda. Do the right thing now, please.
Exit observations: Give it about six months and we could be back to the best things about the 1950s. Yes, there will be a small core of artists and activists to be found in whatever today's real estate equivalent of Greenwich Village might be. But this not incidentally means something profoundly positive for the arts. Give me one William Burroughs and one Jack Kerouac and one Allen Ginsberg (though I could do without Ginsberg, frankly) and with fewer men than it takes to count with the fingers of one hand I will have found more inspiration - more grit - than in the entire output of the Canada Council for the last thirty years or for the next hundred (assuming their output is not primarily written in Arabic in fifty years' time).
Did Leonard Cohen require a panel of bureaucrats to give him permission to be a genius? He did not. Cutting public funding to the arts is not only good for civilization, it is good for the arts.
Someone like Gwendolyn MacEwan, to my mind Canada's greatest poet, gave more to this country in her brief life than countless nameless parasites rewarded before her because they had the right things to say to arts council grant reviewers. In that strictly limited medium, the funding application, they were better storytellers and fabulists but they have left nothing to their country save their bad example. MacEwan, by contrast, is immortal.
I have achieved nothing comparable to her work but I write and publish (obviously) and I make music, the latter effort perhaps more important to me than the former. I do not receive a dime in public funding and yet I struggle on. To my mind, what I produce is more interesting - and demonstrably has a larger public - than 100% of the work produced by artists supported by the Canada Council this year. It is easy math, I have never heard of any of them, most probably never will and doubt anyone reading this blog (who is not personally employed by Canada's arts bureaucracy) has either. Queue the outrage from leftists forced to consider the grim possibility of having to interest an audience in their work or, failing that, having to work for a living like the rest of us. But remember in all that canned outrage not a single voice in the arts bureaucracy suggesting my writing or my music deserves some tiny portion of the largesse they award to themselves, not least because it is my taxes paying for it.
October 21, 2008
An unbroken line
Dan Gardner argues for a view of Canadian history that is not constricted to our current geography but part of a "grand, complex, interwoven saga spanning much of the globe". I could not agree more. While I am appalled to discover a new generation of undergraduates with no exposure to Animal Farm or 1984*, I cannot say Canadian history was taught well when I was teenager. Wet blanket, decontextualized nationalism was the order of the day and I expect this has not changed. The first formal exposure I had to Canadian history was through Manifest Destiny, a text on American history that shed some glimmer of light on events north of the border as part of a bigger picture.
Gardner goes on to critique Paul Gross latest acting/directorial effort about Canadian involvement in the War to End All Wars, Passchendaele.
The hero, a Canadian soldier played by Gross, is everything the Brit is not. Honest. Plain-talkin'. Brave in battle. He has no use for politics, doesn't care how the war started, and is loyal only to his comrades in the trenches.
The sharp division Gross draws between Canadian and Brit -- with the British Empire shoved over to their side of the line, thank you very much -- is also thoroughly modern. Canadians today see this country as a sovereign nation with no special link to Britain. The British Empire is, at most, an embarrassing reminder of the time when we were colonial subordinates; for many, it is a costume drama set in India.
Writing for The Torch, Mark C. points to a difficulty with this thinking - beyond its simple minded anti-Brisih cultural cringe; the bulk of Canadian volunteers were recent British immigrants. It is not clear to me if Gross' film draws the sharp line between British and Canadian an anachronistic nationalism would draw, I have yet to see the piece. If it does, this is as much a symptom of (English) Canada's failure to teach its own history as it is a repetition of it. It is also not clear to me the film will take a pacifist position or whether it will restate the opinion of every elderly relative I spoke with who lived through the thing, viz the Great War was a pointless, tragic waste. If so, this is at least a defensible point of view and one not to be confused with Hollywood's evil vogue for substituting a government conspiracy for every real world instance of jihadi activity.
I am prepared to give Paul Gross the benefit of the doubt. The Passchendaele trailer suggests to me a love story set in a time of great challenge and upheaval and, quite possibly, a story about what it is to be Canadian that includes bravery, sacrifice and feats of arms. I will put up with some (entirely justifiable) condemnation of Britain's decisions in the field for a Canada that includes an heroic army. It is nothing but the truth and it is a story we need now.
Paul Gross appears to believe the same. His words:
The Dominion Institute is on board with what appears to be a reasonable education guide and a film-related contest for young people. It is a start.
* It is not an accident these have disappeared down the memory hole. The Establishment has decided it is more important for you to feel empowered than for you to be empowered.
Mario Basanov & Vidis feat. Jazzu: I'll Be Gone
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Float like a butterly, sting like a Flea
I AM THE GREATEST!
Your result for The Personality Defect Test... Braggart
To put it less negatively:
1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.
Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Bitch-Slap.
Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Haughty Intellectual, and the Capitalist Pig.
Take The Personality Defect Test at HelloQuizzy
October 20, 2008
But that is another story
The Summer Glau Chronicles is now confirmed for the remainder of its second season including not only the two new episode orders but the full back nine. Which for some reason sounds like a double entendre in this context now I come to think of it (hat tip to Agent Bedhead).
Related: Girls with guns.
Also related: Cat that looks like Summer Glau (according to Kathy).
Totally unrelated expect for the River/Riverbank pun that is not coming to me and, let's face it, would have been a stretch anyway: Tales of the Riverbank - The Riverbank Clock.
Reason nobody is watching television: Girls burping, dancing and smoking cloves on YouTube is miles better. This last one makes me yearn for the days when eating a piece of cake could take an afternoon. Young people have a lot more time to waste. This blog keeps me too busy in the pixel mines for that sort of frivolity.
Martha And The Muffins: Echo Beach
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
< girlfriend =
> awesome!
Now all he needs is beer and pizza and life is complete.
Iraq and Afghanistan
A difference is a difference that makes a difference.
Update: A ray of the blindingly obvious shines through the clouds of today's received wisdom (pdf report available through a link at the link).
"We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict," said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.
The report, "Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words," was written by unnamed civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. It is thought to be the first official document to challenge those in the government who seek to downplay the role of Islam in inspiring some terrorist violence.
October 19, 2008
Yahoo! "Antichrist"
Also try: * barack obama antichrist prophecy.
October 18, 2008
I do indeed like big butts; I refuse to pretend otherwise
io9 tracks down Frank Frazetta's Battlestar Galactica on-line masterpieces (my headline stolen from an io9 commenter).
Worth every penny. And yet another reason George Lucas is doing it wrong.
That said, I got round to watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and I have to say I am with Butters, I thought it was pretty good.
Tangentially related: Stills from the forthcoming Star Trek reboot. I am sceptical about the entire project but Sylar is rocking the Spock ears.
MGMT: Kids
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance (hat tip to SondraK).
Vet the media
An excellent idea.
After all, far more turns on the questions they ask and... refuse to ask, more importantly.
We are at war with a rape cult
The collective brain trust that make up the British security services has noticed a link between child pornography and Muslim terrorists. You all know where I am going with this.
British security sources confirmed that such a link had been discovered in several cases. They noted the contradiction between people supposedly devoted to theocracy and Islamic fundamentalism and their use of child pornography. “It shows that these people are very confused,” a source said. “Here they are hating Western decadence but actually making use of it and finding that they enjoy this stuff.”
Note to the police forces of the UK: Western decadence makes the production and possession of child pornography illegal and our prison system - albeit informally - renders the harshest punishment to child sex offenders. "These people" are not confused, they are practising their religion. Here are some facts for confused officers charged with defending us from "these people".
Religious fundamentalists believe in different things depending on their religion. Devout Christians are opposed to child pornography. So too are devout Jews. Or devout Norse Odinists. Devout Muslims, by contrast, believe their prophet - the "perfect man" - married a six year old and started raping her/she started fulfilling her marital obligations when she was nine. There is no necessary contradiction between child pornography and the latter worldview provided the images are of non-Muslim children as such children are potential slaves. In so far as there is a potential religious conflict in this case, it concerns the representation of children for sexual gratification not the use of children for sexual gratification. We can point to child raping Christian cults, of course, but none of them command state power, none of them are successfully making war on civilization and none of them is protected from the full force of the law by a leftist suicide ideology that calls facts racist.
Any Muslim who finds this post offensive will receive a personal apology from me the moment he publishes a statement to the effect that Mohammed did not marry a six year, did not take her to his bed when she was nine and that any Muslim who claims otherwise - or who endorses marriage under some civilized age of consent (let's say 16 or 18) - is an apostate and encouraging paedophilia.
Notice how the British frame the issue, contrasting "Western decadence" with Muslim religious values and casting the "terrorists" - in fact, jihadis - as hypocrites. Not only does this repeat the usual lies about the belief system of the enemy, it explicitly condemns the West as decadent by contrast with authentic Islam. These are the publicly stated views of the police and security services.
Exit question: How long before Europe's ersatz feminists decide men having sex with nine year olds is true freedom for women? How long before Canadian and American feminists follow suit? Academic feminists claim only Muslim women are allowed to pass judgement on such practices; perhaps they hope to pass over mass rape in silence while Republican men fight and die to save their daughters from the same fate, condemning them all the while for doing so.
Directly related reminder: The war is not an engineering problem. It is a matter of whether we believe our rights, our liberties and our civilization are worth defending. Mark Steyn: “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.”
Update: Kathy Shaidle considers the charge of hypocrisy.
But since, in their worldview, condemning anything is, well, condemned, they condemn the offshoot -- hypocrisy -- rather than the other fellow's actual sin, because "sin" doesn't exist in their worldview either.
Condemning someone as a "hypocrite" -- and nothing more -- is like arresting the ventriloquist's dummy for the ventriloquist's crime.
October 17, 2008
Note to John McCain
Directly related, a note to the German commander: Nuts.
The point is the media is lying to you, their polls are rigged, many people say they will vote for Barry Hussein but won't and half his base -- students and multi-generational welfare recipients for pity's sake -- never bother to vote anyway.
Stand your ground. Don't back down. This is not over yet.
* In case anyone does not know the story of General Anthony McAuliffe.
Update: David Janes writes to suggest Batman is more of a Chaotic Good type... quite possibly. Also, with the following supporting documentation.
Tangerine Dream: Deadly Silver Crosses
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Life of Barian
The paper cups are important but don't forget the sandal and the gourd.
“I’ll do whatever he says to do,” actress Halle Berry said to the Philadelphia Daily News. “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”
Welcome to the cult of Barack Obama.
According to Omen III: The Final Conflict, The Antichrist comes from Chicago. Just saying. Anyone got a line on the Seven Sacred Daggers of Megiddo? Heed the warning: Attractive, brilliant, charismatic. He is one step away from the most important position on Earth.
October 16, 2008
No, Mr. Bond. I want you to get by on a UK civil servant's salary.
Yes, I would like to travel more and - given I have a week off for the first time in two years coming up in a few days - a little more time to pursue my various hobbies. As a general rule, however, I do not have ambitions to fantastic, unearned wealth and a life of sybaritic ease.
Which is just as well because if I did aspire to such a thing I would want to do it properly; no half measures. Mega-yachts are for the weak: I will have a giga-yacht.
You could hear the sound of penises shrinking from as far away as San Remo when “A” dropped anchor in the bay of Cannes recently. You could hear the sound of Billionaire’s accountants calculating the cost of building a more spectacular boat about thirty seconds later.
I will have an Aston Martin One-77 too, thank you very much.
Update: YouTube video of Blohm + Voss' monster creation.
Robyn: Cobrastyle
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
We are losing the war
Flea-readers may already be aware a V reboot is in the works. You may not have heard about some intended plot changes.
With the new "V" will come a lot of changes, including the removal of the Holocaust and Nazi allegories from the original. The current project will focus on Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent who has her life turned upside down when the aliens arrive, according to SciFi Wire.
The original V was a bit crap, obviously. But it was made at a time when V not only stood for the Visitors but also unambiguously stood for Victory. The Holocaust references - with scientists taking the place of the Nazi's preferred victims - and smooth talking, two faced (ahem) space fascists served as a salient warning for young sciffy fans.
Today, not so much. Having decided Zionism is the same as Nazism, today's Hollywood "progressives" are most likely after something a bit more nuanced. And by nuanced I mean the United States government, the American people (red staters) and Western civilization are to blame for everything. If we are going to win this thing, we have to start by taking back the culture.
October 15, 2008
Please put me back in the water
All Canadians stop whatever it is you are doing.
Here at last: Paddle To the Sea.
The 1966 film version seen here was eventually nominated for an Academy Award two years later in 1968, for Best Short Film, because it was so beautifully done by the director - Canadian naturalist, master canoeist, artist and filmmaker Bill Mason.
Bill personally hand-carved from wood, in meticulous detail very faithful to the book illustrations, the beautiful wooden "Paddle" models seen in the film.
This story (both book and film version) has been loved by generations of school children for decades as they learn about the history of the Great Lakes region of North America while they follow the exciting adventures of a brave toy Wooden Indian in his tiny but sturdy Canoe (hand carved by a Native Canadian boy from Nipigon Country).
Relate: Wayne Omaha explain the emotional resonance of the film. Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
This is your future
My American cousins, protect your republic from cultists. Watch this Los Angeles City Council public hearing on September 17, 2008 regarding L Ron Hubbard Way street closures and do something about it. This just leaves my blood boiling. Watch it and imagine a town, a state or the country were it to fall into the hands of Scientology.
Residents of L Ron Hubbard Way: This sounds like a class action suit. Do not bother suing Scientology, sue the City of Los Angeles. Embarrass them. Make it their problem.
October 14, 2008
God help us
CBC Radio is now projecting a Conservative minority government. Hooray! Money well spent, I say. Congratulations everyone for wasting our time yet again and especially to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Her Majesty's time waster in chief. One bit of good news: Having refused to hand the Conservatives a majority, we can look forward to another two or three years of federal government not entirely beholden to the province of Quebec.
A special shout out to Michael Ignatieff, tonight the happiest man in Canada.
Update: Another thought... no Greens elected. Evidently it will take more than two generations of lies about "the environment" to convince Canadians to entrust the Green party with a seat. Good. After this election, I consider them to be Canada's postmodern equivalent of the Nazi party; riddled with Truthers, defeatists, anti-Semites, Luddites, fantasists, health nuts, economic illiterates and people who are somehow proud to value the landscape over human life. When cornered, the party would disavow Truther or anti-Semite candidates yet somehow these people felt at home in the party in the first place. Barring the due diligence of the blogosphere -- and hard evidence -- the party would not have ferreted out their Truther and anti-Semite views as a matter of course; I believe those views would have stuck out to me in a casual conversation.
Free to oppose what I believe wrong
Today we have the opportunity to exercise our franchise, should we choose to do so. On this and every other day we have the right to speak our minds. Or rather, we used to. No matter who is elected to represent you or who our representatives choose to support for our next government, every member of Parliament might usefully be reminded of the words of John Diefenbaker.
He never added the caveat, "so long as nobody might be offended".
"I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship God in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
free to choose those who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold
for myself and for all mankind."
- John Diefenbaker
House of Common Debates, July 1, 1960*
Related: For context, and our American cousins, John F. Kennedy in Ottawa, May 18, 1961.
"We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection instead of trust and respect."
His words might also usefully be remembered on a day of fixed smiles.
* With thanks to Covenant Zone for the correct quotation and who has posted more Canadian quotes on the subject of freedom.
Update: Kathy Shaidle.
Can you imagine a Canada in which school kids recited this each day like the Pledge? Naw, me neither. But it's fun to think about.
Update: Blazing Cat Fur lists everyone who participated in today's blogburst. God bless Canada.
Still... it's a start.
Shania Twain: That don't impress me much
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Edible Ballot Society
I had been planning to make a trip to my local polling station today to carry out one of my favourite hypothetical rituals, refusing a ballot. Having voted for Elvis some time ago, I decided it was time to move beyond producing spoiled ballots and to effectively vote none of the above. Thanks to David Warren, I now understand this is not an option. At least I am not alone in having confused Ontario provincial election law with the Canadian federal equivalent; most polling officials would not have a clue the practice exists anywhere (hat tip to the Parental Units of the Flea and to Five Feet of Fury).
The idea of an aroused citizenry, forcing one byelection after another, in riding after riding, until the parties agree to run some plausible candidates, deeply appeals to me. Better yet, I should like to see a Parliament emerge with, say, five Conservatives, three Liberals, two New Democrats, and 298 independents.
God, yes. Let us change the law at once. I expect Stephen Harper will get to it as soon as we have a Triple E Senate and the GST is repealed. Once we may legally refuse ballots, I have a further request aspiration demand, viz the right to eat my ballot (admit it: you want to as well).
Failing that, Elections Canada might have the courtesy to include a note on their website to the effect Canadians do not have the right to formally refuse their vote. Don't count on it happening any sooner than conservative reforms from our ersatz Conservative party; too many bums are keeping their seats warms in federal offices to encourage the electorate to get off theirs and do something about it.
If you want my cynicism you will have to take it from my cold dead hands
A minor observation concerning my feelings on the subject but I thought it was a reasonably clever way to end a post. I am delighted to learn Mark Steyn also says if the Obama's want his cynicism they will have to take it from his cold dead cynical fingers. Great minds, etc. (toward the end of the interview, courtesy of Free Canuckistan!).
October 13, 2008
Christopher Hitchens endorses Barack Obama for President
The only operative part of that sentence is the phrase "used to".
* Via Will. And another tip of the hat to Ace for his skull. I should probably get my own animated siren going on. The idea is to attract attention.
How about this?
Update: It is not as if the Hitch is never wrong. He is wrong about Israel, wrong about the Elgin Marbles and has a bee in his bonnet (to which I am often sympathetic) when it comes to religious crazies (a category into which I understand I might arguably fall). I assume it is this last which has him concerned about Sarah Palin.
I further assume he has decided Obama is lying in his repeated claims to be Christian; on this last point we agree. But -- and this is the but to end all buts -- neither McCain nor Palin have assumed a quasi-Messianic mantle to make their case for the offices to which they aspire. And they neither have belonged to a racial separatist "church". So, while I share Hitchens' concern in principle I think he is dead wrong in practice. This is the wrong call.
Stop Harper!
Fenris Badwulf reports on a meeting of extreme far-right Christian extremist right-wing, right-wing bloggers said to have taken place somewhere in downtown Toronto over the weekend.*
Fenris might be joking about the mass arrest lists. I am convinced we could do with a good mass arrest or two if I'm honest; I update my lists regularly. Yet another thing I have in common with Pierre Trudeau.
As to the groupies, the insolence! My very presence is a cold breeze. RTWT.
* Whence the graphic, courtesy of Five Feet of Fury (and the Communists, obviously).
Yoav: Club Thing
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
The Odinga Identity
Raila Odinga is just another corrupt machine politician dhimmi murdering swine stupid name guy in Barak Obama's neighbourhood. Or rather, tribe. Unlike Obama's spotty church attendance, debatable choice of babysitters or somewhat recent ex-girlfriends, Odinga may prove more difficult to throw under the bus. For one thing, Odinga's friends are jihadis and his supporters lock women and children in churches, set fire to them and machete anyone attempting to flee.
In other words, men who play actual hard ball rather than the McCain variety. It is not that I think Obama lacks spine, I credit him with more than 99 out of 100 of his supporters. But I think the man has yet to learn there are situations you cannot talk your way out of.
On a related note: I am beginning to like the sound of President Biden. Assuming the networks and voter registration fraud give Obama his margin, I suspect the DNC will feel much the same as soon as the first indictments come down in the spring. These will be for real crimes in a time of war; not Clintonian venality. Failing the justice system, Obama is still going to figure out he is not in Chicago anymore and -- despite his friends in Hollywood, the universities and the "mainstream" media -- there are lines he cannot cross. Frankly, he has already sailed right over a number of them. At some point, the people are going to notice.
Old Patriot comments at Rantburg:
Provided they can take a pause in their crying-jag-as-life-strategy long enough to get the message, this is something the left might usefully remember the next time they accuse the right of plotting violence. It is not a subject we joke about (ok, so we do: see two posts above; my hyperbole gland is trying to compensate for an excess in my bile duct today). There is an expression progressives may have heard but most likely never understood, certainly not on the visceral level of any conservative worthy of the name:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
I am referring to Mad King George and his Hessian mercenaries, you understand. Obama's friends in the Umma take a different long historical view. They have high expectations of an Obama presidency; he will find it all too easy to disappoint them.
October 12, 2008
Helter Skelter
Nation of Islam Führer, Louis Farrakhan endorses Barack Hussein Obama as the Messiah. I expect the MSM will report this as soon as they finish investigating the Grand Wizard's endorsement of McCain as the KKK Messiah.*
Remember: If you call him a Muslim, you are racist.
* Assuming there are any KKK members not currently serving as Democratic members of Congress.
Update: The Jawas offer a handy creative visualization exercise.
Gregorian Mode: Blasphemous Rumours
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
The war on blitzkrieg
John P. Avlon asks how the next leader of the free world is going to solve a problem he can't even name?
Seven years after 9/11, we still seem to be debating whether it's polite to name our enemy directly. Worse, the emerging consensus seems to be "no."
Sadly, even John P. Avlon is apparently unable to name our enemy directly. He thinks we are fighting blitzkrieg.
October 11, 2008
Talks to free Ukrainian arms ship collapse: pirate spokesman
So reads the headline of an AFP article. Flea-readers will be as shocked as I am too see their insensitivity repeated in the lede.
I see, so pirates have "spokesmen" now do they?
Note to AFP: This is 2008. Your pirate "spokesman" is more properly referred to as a "spokesperson" or simply "spoke"; an editorial change is in order. Your adoption of gender neutral/gender fair language could avoid perpetuating stereotypes of pirates as men engaged in hijacking, kidnapping, murder and rapine. A gender neutral diction would more properly reflect the possibility of female pirates engaged in hijacking, kidnapping, murder or rapine or, indeed, transgendered pirates. This discursive shift would open doors/portholes/hatchways for young people of any gender or of indefinite gender orientation previously discouraged from a career in pirate representation by the patriarchal language of domination sadly characteristic of French press reportage.
Shame on you, AFP.
Related: The IMB live piracy map for 2008. If only we could use this map to infer a shared culture or worldview serving to justify acts of piracy to the men who engage in them; some motivating ideology which leads the pirates to believe their victims are less than human and deserving of their fate. Oh well, some things will probably always be a mystery.
In Canada, free speech does not exist in any meaningful way
Mark Steyn offers further thoughts on his acquittal by the BC Human Rights Commission and sympathy for the Canadian Islamic Congress.
I sympathize with the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose mouthpiece feels that, if the British Columbia pseudo-judges had applied the logic of previous decisions, we'd have been found guilty. He's right: Under the ludicrous British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, we are guilty. Which is why the Canadian Islamic Congress should appeal, and why I offered on the radio an hour ago to chip in a thousand bucks towards their costs.
October 10, 2008
Thank God almighty
Congratulations to Mark Steyn, to Maclean's magazine, to the Canadian dextrosphere and to an authentic human right... freedom of conscience and expression.
(With apologies to Ace for borrowing his skull again.)
Update: Five Feet of Fury has a round up of reactions from the blogosphere and includes a press release from the publishers of Tyranny of Nice.
Related: Kari Simpson is to file a human rights complaint against the BC Human Rights Commission. One way or another, the complaint will be passed on to the British Columbia Supreme Court -- a real court -- for judicial review.
Update: Andrew Coyne:
Update: Five Feet of Fury hands off the round up to Blazing Cat Fur. Sometimes the dextrosphere feels like a barn raising... :-)
If you win, you're still a rat
I love Toronto's Chinatown on Spadina for the groceries and for the restaurants and for the shopping. What I do not love are the squalid piles of garbage, the inconsiderate and dangerous driving or the system of apartheid city governance which creates both problems by enforcing the law for some but not for others. Take, for example, yet another instance of rats frolicking in a restaurant window. Much as progressives do not believe Muslim women deserve the same protection of the law as white middle class academic feminists, progressives do not believe Chinese home or business owners deserve protection from cholera outbreaks or the plague.
The left's verminous reaction to the incident is exemplified by doit2julia, commenting at the Toronto Star.*
Posted by doit2julia at 2:30 PM Thursday, October 09 2008
Ignore the obvious public health issue in favour of ideological finger pointing. Check.
Infantile sarcasm (as opposed to by smart sarcasm). Check.
Berate a publication for words it did not publish. Check.
Class war. Check.
Invoke the apartheid holy grail of multiculturalism. Check.
"Racist!" Check.
My American cousins, you are looking at Obama's America in miniature.
* Kudos to the Toronto Star for acknowledging a blog broke the story. Unkudos for linking CityNews but not blogTO (both are linked above).
The Birthday Massacre: Remember Me (City of the Dead Mix)
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Stephen Hawking: We must learn to live in space or we will not survive
"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next 100 years, let alone next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."
I want humanity to survive and, with it, a flotilla of arks carrying Earth's miracle some distance out of harm's way. If that means a future history written in Russian or Mandarin, so be it.
Directly related: The Starlost is available on dvd (hat tip to Mike Campbell).
Manatee squash
The internet is the best. Evidence.
Also: Panda babies!
October 09, 2008
Pennies a day
The Parliamentary Budget Office has produced figures estimating the cost of Canada's Afghan mission; expect Canada's "progressive" media to let you know every Canadian household will have been billed the equivalent of $1500 by 2011. I also expect I am going to be hearing this number over and over again from every compassionate, anti-war person I know whose compassion strangely fails to extend to the women and children of Afghanistan or, indeed, any Muslim woman or child who might appreciate some small portion of our liberty.
The Torch helpfully breaks down that $1500 further; it works out to 13.7¢ per Canadian per day. That, my friends, is the best money I will have spent today on anything. Follow the link for the full (illustrated) analysis and a list of just some of the things our money is buying, not least of which is our freedom.
* humanitarian food assistance to more than half a million Afghans in 2007 alone
* more than 530 Community Development Councils elected in 9 districts, which facilitated more than 700 community projects completed, including improvements to transportation, water supply and sanitation, irrigation, power supply, education, health, and agriculture
* maternal health care professionals being trained in emergency obstetric care and monitoring
* approximately 350,000 children being vaccinated against polio
* measles and tetanus vaccination program reached more than 76,000 children and 63,000 women
* non-food kits (teapots, soap, gas stoves, towels, buckets, kitchen sets, blankets, floor mats, sweaters and health kits) supplied to 1,500 families
* more than 30,000 Afghans received functional literacy training and more than 4,000 received vocational training throughthe World Food Programme in 2007 alone
* More than 5,000 people (the majority of them women) have received literacy training through UNICEF
As Damian points out, those figures are just for Kandahar.
The moral courage not to apologize
Theodore Dalrymple considers False Apology Syndrome (hat tip to Agent Bedhead). My favourite example of this kind of exhibitionism is John Paul II's apology for the Crusades. Dalrymple awesome power: Activate!
They were, however, rather a long time ago. The Crusades were an attempt to recover for Christendom what had been lost by force, with all the accompanying massacre, pillage, and oppression that the use of force in those days implied. No one, I think, expects an apology from present-day Arabs for the imperialism of their ancestors, either as a matter of moral duty or political likelihood. We are all born into the world as we find it, after all; we are not responsible for what went before us.
That said, I would be quite happy for various Islamic parties to apologize for their contemporary imperialism. By contrast, the West needs "the moral insight and courage" not to apologize for things we have not done, for the successes we have achieved or for the manifest moral superiority of our way of life. Manage this simple duty to ourselves -- and to the hundreds of millions of people currently enslaved by a high-tech, Dark Ages bondage -- and all else will follow.
Schiller: Sehnsucht
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves
The Jawas point a derisory finger at yet another Canadian embarrassment, the latest target of Canada's puritans-without-God, disposable coffee cups. Remember: This is what the left cares about; to them, 9/11 is dismissed as the politics of fear.
Intestinal cramping over a non-problem. Check. Professional income as a consultant for an imaginary profession. Check. Bullying and threats directed at people who work for a living if she does not get her way. Check. But there is a silver lining in that garbage disposal unit... even the reliably liberal Toronto Star gives Tim Horton's the last word. Socialists and social engineers need to step lightly if they plan to demonize our double-doubles.
Javor said Toronto should figure out a way to compost its coffee cups, the way that Hamilton does. He called concerns about plastic lids a "red herring," saying the city should simply ask residents to remove the lids, which are recycled at a plant in Mississauga.
"I really think that we are looking at an element that is trying to make this into an environmental catastrophe. Well, it is not," Javor said.
Better to convince self-satisfied progressives of the Annex it is common courtesy to find a garbage can for their empty coffee cups rather than treat any flat surface as an alternative. I am certain local book store staff have better things to do than pick up after grown up babies with BMWs.
Related: A handy top ten most depressing quotes from George Orwell's 1984 (the last one is a spoiler but if you have yet to read 1984 you deserve what you get). And a doubleplusgood array of book covers.
And that, my friends, is why Barack Obama will attempt to censor the blogosphere and tell us it is for our own good.
October 08, 2008
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
I have learned something new both fannish and art historical thanks to the etherwebs: E.M. Lissitzky's Soviet propaganda poster may look eerily familiar to Flea-readers still missing the Uncharted Territories.
On a related note, I am planning to go out as a Peacekeeper Commando this Hallowe'en. Whether my outfit is going to be as elaborate as a hardcore Farscape fan's is down to scheduling...
Dobenbeck Feat. Joanna: Please Don't Go
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
A vote for Labour is a vote for Islam
The latest from Pat Condell. Stop sharia law in Britain: If you are a British citizen or a resident please sign this petition against sharia law being imposed on Britain, and particularly and most immediately on the women of Britain.
Despite the fact Islam is an ideology -- not a race -- some will say this is "racist". I say those people hate women, hate gay men, hate Jews, hate Christians, hate freedom of speech and expression, hate freedom of religion, hate sex, hate having fun, hate the idea of other people having fun and most of all hate themselves.
Yet these same people -- these stupids -- demand the pirates at Gauntanamo should have recourse to the same law they would have us hold in contempt. But of course it does not end there. Next comes the demand the pirates only be held accountable to their own pirate law, the same law that demands of them an eternal war against us. I demand equality before the law, not the apartheid law dreamed of by the left.
You might as well call me racist for opposing Scientology courts in Britain.
Update: Writing for the National Post, Barbara Kay introduces the Third Jihad, and the tactic of soft jihad, to Canadians: We cannot disarm Islamists if their presence is not acknowledged.
We're presently experiencing the terror-focused third great jihad, which seeks to recreate the triumphalist dynamics of Islam's muscular 7th-century ascendancy. How or when this great jihad will end we cannot say, only that realism insists it will not be soon and that the mission to replace secular democracy with Islam proceeds apace inside our borders as well as abroad.
Fair enough so far as it goes. But Kay's insistence there is a difference between the private faith of Islam and the imperialist ideology of Islamism serves only to recapitulate the leftist fantasy her argument means to oppose. Ask a jihadi if he is an Islamist and he will tell you he is a Muslim.
Also missing is a tip of the hat to The Third Jihad, from whence Kay presumably borrows the term and her argument. It is not only ungracious to avoid giving credit where credit is due, in the long run it makes you look like a thief. Print readers may not know better but in time they will learn to master the complexities of an internet search engine and the MSM will have to step up their game or go under.
Rewarding greed and stupidity
John Bird and John Fortune explain how markets really work (via Ace). Canadian Flea-readers should be advised several groups might risk being brought into hatred and contempt in the course of their analysis.
On an equally serious, if less satirical, note; some questions and answers on the Canadian economy. David Akin assures us Canadian banks were either too small to have participated in the sub-prime farce or were prevented from doing so by regulation. Consequently, Canada's direct exposure to the mess is not what it is for our cousins south of the border. In the medium term, our resource and manufacturing sectors may suffer but in the short term events may work out well for the aforementioned Canadian banks; the US Federal Reserve may be enlisting them as investors.
October 07, 2008
Oil solution
On August 4, 2008, Anne Korin, Co-Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) stated the blindingly obvious. Being blindingly obvious, her statements are yet to be repeated by any politician in the civilized world (expecting possibly Tom Tancredo, bless): You cannot win a war as long as you are paying for the other side.
Not only that. The problem will be precisely the same even should we decide to drill, drill, drill. If you believe we are at war, this talk is mandatory viewing; please forward the link to everybody.* Korin suggests the problem we face is the strategic value of oil particularly with regard to the transportation sector. Her solution -- quite sensibly -- is to use today's technologies to increase choice and competition in said transportation sector. Flex-fuel vehicles should indeed be mandatory; the logic leads to 500 miles per gallon (of gasoline), stripping oil of its strategic value and crippling the five or six middle east bastions of evil of their entirely unearned leverage over Western sovereignty.
A brief editorial aside...
Or we could use existing, proven military technologies -- and the handy martial incompetence of our adversary whenever it comes to a stand up fight -- to take the oil by force, keep it for ourselves and our friends and return the occupants of every Xanadu on the Gulf to their former pastoral subsistence strategy. Heaven knows their worldview never made the leap to modernity; they would hardly notice the difference. Civilization, by contrast, would be saved.
Just a thought. Call me old fashioned.
Link via The Third Jihad with a hat tip to Blazing Cat Fur.
Related: The history of salt as a strategic commodity. Next up: Breaking the spice monopoly.
* My favourite moment is in the question and answer in pt 5.
Ahem. Happy Tuesday morning, Mr. Harper.
Death Cab for Cutie: Soul Meets Body
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Obviously
Your result for The Your Type of Girl Test... The Goth Girl
43% Sexy-Cute, 21% Dark-Light, 16% Artsy-Stylish
Sexy, Dark and Artsy, the Goth Girl definitely catches your eye. And who can blame you, with her black eyeshadow, black clothes, and black expression? The Goth Girl tempts with the promise of sinful satisfaction.
Take The Your Type of Girl Test at HelloQuizzy
Fascinating
Your result for The Beautiful Faces Test... Mischa Barton
75% Eyes, 52% Nose, 61% Mouth, 65% SexyCute
You seem to like prominence in all of the features, and a cute demeanor. Mischa Barton has come to prominence on the hit show (and spiritual successor to 90210), 'The OC'. She's definitely full-featured, and more cute than sexy. She's also in no way the 18-year-old she plays on the show, but that's okay. We love her anyway.
Similar: Alyssa Milano (sexier), Hillary Duff (smaller lips)
If you liked my test, please remember to give it a decent score, and of course I'm always happy to hear feedback. Thanks!
Also, you could check out my Your Type of Girl Test.
Take The Beautiful Faces Test at HelloQuizzy
More like it
...I scored 13 on Hatred, higher than 90% of my peers, apparently. Also, 9 on Insanity, higher than 84% of my peers!
Your result for The Supervillain Archetype Test... The Megalomaniac
The Megalomaniac is the most prestigious of super-villain classes. If anyone is ever going to rule the world, it will probably be you.
Your main goal in life is power and domination, you have the tools to do it, and you know it. Megalomaniacs are intelligent and forceful, and they tend not to let their emotions cloud their judgment. Most of the time. They are usually found, or not found, working at the top of a huge structured organization, though many prefer to work by themselves.
The Megalomaniac has but one flaw, but its an invariably fatal one; arrogance. He knows that he can take over the world, and he isn't afraid to let you know, often elaborately and in great detail. They often do not foresee the fly in their ointment, because they do not want to admit that such a fly could exist.
Sample Megalomaniacs: Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, Ras al'Ghul, Kang the Conqueror, Emperor Palpatine, Brain
Take The Supervillain Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy
October 06, 2008
Somebody Else's Problem
The United States Embassy to the United Kingdom is to move from Grosvenor Square, a site it has occupied in one form or another since John Adams was appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James more than two hundred years ago. Given the weapons access enjoyed by latter day Barbary pirates, and the spinelessness of today's British government, the embassy is to be moved to a more secure location in Wandsworth south of the river.
And not just the spinelessness of the British government, but a spineless British upper class. Take W1 locals as a case in point.
Yes, and the lot of your clients would have been high-handed, self-satisfied, anti-American, anti-Semitic fascist sympathizing cowards in the 1930s as well. Congratulations on your real estate success; may you choke on it.
Snow Patrol: Run
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
White man's burden, redux
Michael Knox Beran describes charismatic figures as men who are not only attractive but regarded as healers of wounds and alleviators of pain by their followers. Barack Obama, shaman, affects just such a pose by virtue of a post-masculine charisma.
Both revolting and accurate.
If I understand correctly, progressives believe certain folks attack the United States (and the British and the Jews) because the United States is not well liked. Ergo, the fix is not to bomb things into smithereens or, worse yet, make unkind observations about anyone's behaviour -- this only compounds the problem -- but to make everyone sympathize with the United States again. You know, like the French did immediately after 9/11. "Carpet bombing", invading and occupying other countries is, from this point of view, the reason for international disdain and by extension the reason America deserves to be attacked. I have said it before and will most likely do so again: The left believes the invasion of Iraq caused 9/11.
Strangely, the left never offers the same advice to the Arabs, the Persians, the Chinese, the aforementioned French or indeed to any Muslims regardless of their specific culture, nationality or ethnicity. These are communities who can do just as they please free from the obligation of being well liked. Such is the racism of low expectations. The courtesy is not extended to the wrong social groups in the West. To the left, the wogs start at Watford Junction or your local equivalent; wherever the metropolis ends and the provinces -- or flyover country -- begins.
If you read this blog chances are you can see the problem with this sort of thinking. All that international sympathy as the incinerated and their paper work settled in the cold waters of the Atlantic off Long Island was insufficient to dissuading the attack in the first place. And all that contempt for the working class of the West (and the South and anyone who enjoys NASCAR and anyone who volunteered for military service, etc. etc.). sits uneasily with the left's claim to represent working people and their interests. The pretzel logic of "false consciousness" somehow never applies to their own deeply-held, unquestioned and ostensibly unquestionable assumptions. Of course, it wouldn't.
For all I am not an American citizen (yet), I have a message for Barack Obama and any charismatic healer to follow him. We are not perfect and in this imperfect world we are not perfectible. If you want my cynicism you will have to take it from my cold dead hands.
October 05, 2008
Let us go forward together
It may seem strange to think of May 1940 as a better time but I believe something like that sentiment explains the enduring popularity of Foyle's War. The writing, the acting and the production were superb, the latter taking extraordinary care with period detail. But beyond that was an evocation of the spirit of the time, a sense of how Britain pulled together in the face of adversity and a representation of decent people upholding the law in the face of cynicism, opportunism and despair.
If only this were the spirit of our age.
It was was great disappointment I learned the show was to be cancelled and to find Season 6 skipping lightly through two years of the struggle to make it to VE Day for the finale. But there has been a greater disappointment still. I think I can speak for almost every man who watched Foyle's War in saying I am a little in love with Samantha Stewart. Sadly, Honeysuckle Weeks is not quite the woman she played on tv.
Flea-readers are advised to consider carefully before following that last link; the image is indelible. Safer by far to click the following for a post-Foyle Honeysuckle interview. And some good news: ITV may revive Foyle's War.
Related: It is almost impossible to credit, but the BBC used to represent British interests. Take this response to Adolph Hitler's "Last Appeal to Reason", for example.
I believe the British people still believe much the same in our current circumstances. They have almost no voice in their Parliament and none at all in their press. God bless the memory of Sefton Delmer and God bless the internet.
"For your first lesson we will take:
"Die Kanalüberfahrt… the Channel crossing, the Chan-nel cros-sing."
"Now just repeat after me:
"Das Boot sinkt... the boat is sinking, the boat is sin-king;
"Das Wasser ist kalt… the water is cold. Sehr kalt… very cold."
"Now, I will give you a verb that should come in useful. Again please repeat after me:
"Ich brenne… I burn;
"Du brennst… you burn;
"Er brennt… he burns;
"Wir brennen… we burn;
"Ihr brennt… you are burning."
"Yes, meine Herren, in English, a rather practical language, we use the same word ‘you' for both the singular and the plural:
"Ihr brennt... you are burning;
"Sie brennen… they burn."
"And if I may be allowed to suggest a phrase:
Der SS-Sturmführer brennt auch ganz schön… The SS Captain is also burning quite nicely, the SS Captain is al-so bur-ning quite nice-ly!"
Spike Jones & His City Slickers: Der Führer's Face
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Canadian Flea-readers are advised caution: An HRC complaint might claim this sort of humour risks bringing one of several master races into hatred and contempt. If you think I am joking, I have a couple decades of cultural studies papers and Disney's take on a mincing Nazi stormtrooper, an exaggerated Italian accent and a cartoon General Tojo to back me up. In today's Canada, being the enemy makes you a protected minority. Or a former CBC executive. But I repeat myself.
Related: The Donald Duck rendition.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
There was a time not so long ago when Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith would have been hanged or, worse yet, shunned by society. Now I do not imagine he will be so much as cashiered for his defeatism. Far from it, I expect he can look forward to a warm welcome in SW1, some appearances as a military expert for the BBC and perhaps a sinecure as spokesperson for the winnable War On Second-Hand Smoking.
October 03, 2008
Oh look, it's Natalie Dormer again
Why We Fight Week @ The Flea... Episode V: The Ranking:
Some may say officer's totty is a cynical theme for a week, suggesting an unreconstructed view of the fairer sex and a one track mentality on the part of the Flea's male readership. All I can say in response is... thanks!
PR6! Woo! Woo!
On a serious note: Paris Hilton.
Related: "I'm voting Democrat." Also, Hollywood has transcended self-parody. I do not think the Greeks had a technical term to encompass this degree of farce.
I missed last night's Veep debate -- I gather there was something on about Canada's election as well -- but Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn thought it went well for Sarah Palin. This despite a moderator who stands to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Obama victory.
The bun stays.
Update: With apologies for the delay, a direct link to Robert Jago's Top 25 Canadian political blogs. I assume the Flea's Olympian performance is going to be relatively short term. Ezra and Mark will be blogging again soon...
HPLHS: If I Were A Deep One
A warning to the professionally aggrieved: The following contains the expression "Mad Arab". Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
A rare treasure: An essay by H.P. Lovecraft I have not read. Now I fear to turn the page -- or click the link -- lest I behold cyclopean vistas too terrible to contemplate. Or parse.
Now that is an opening sentence; the rest I shall pass over in silence.
Speaking of cyclopean: I must somehow restrain myself from buying the following... while I am sore tempted by A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft, I have quite enough monstrous tomes to contend with as it is.
Arm yourself because no one else here will save you
From a last redoubt of the culture that still remembers what Britain means... James Bond news. The Quantum of Solace theme is the bomb; tuck a little parallel compression under Alicia Keys' vocals and we are good to go. But seriously, who mixed this? The linked commentary is catty but it is not wrong.
Jack White's favourite Bond music is the title to OHMSS, btw. Good choice. John Barry is God.
Related: A compilation of James Bond title themes.
And for anyone who missed the Quantum of Solace teaser trailers.
October 02, 2008
I blame society
Why We Fight Week @ The Flea Chronicles... Episode IV:
Every time I run a picture of Summer Glau I get a traffic spike. Somehow the process does not seem to be working the same way for Fox and The Summer Glau Chronicles.
Burial: Distant Lights
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
One of each
Billy Connelly on religion; specifically, suicide bombers and other quaint Mohammedan customs. Would we had more examples to the contrary and a greater commitment to the rights of women everywhere, regardless of what the local priesthood believe to be a woman's lot in life. Warning: NSFW language and more than enough of the truth to get you charged with thought crimes were you to repeat the bit in Canada.
Also from the comments at Jihadwatch -- with a hat tip to Meleager99 for the link -- some thoughts on Dubai. I have said much the same thing myself but not in such useful detail.
Dubai may be an offense to Muslim sensibilities, but for other reasons, it is an offense to good taste and a sense not only of aesthetic, but moral proportion. The whole project of modern, empty Dubai, hollow Dubai, nothing Dubai, where each building represents an attempt to outdo another with gimmicks (this building turns with the sun, and that one can stand on stilts, and this one prostrates itself five times a day) and the most grotesque and unappealing luxury (Warren Buffett won't be impressed), merely put on display all the comic bad taste of the Arabs and Iranians much of Dubai real estate is owned by Iranian) who, with the money they do not spend on mosques and madrasas around the world, on weapons purchaes and weapons projects, and on buying armies of Western hirelings, use to build the kind of thing, more or less, on display in the picture above.
In the rich Muslim states, the best of the West --which has nothing to do with money, but with intellect and the imagination -- is not being emulated. Instead, much as they denounce that West, it is the worst of that West that in the rich Arab and Muslim states is being sedulously aped.
The luxury of Dubai is nauseating to contemplate. There is nothing there but that. No art, no science, no thought. Luxury, money, gold in the souks. Perhaps the locals will rent some paintings for display from the Louvre, rent a succursale or two of Western universities looking for loot, in order to pretend there are minds to be cultivated and something like civilization to be found in Dubai. But it's not to be found. All of Dubai is not worth a single star in your personal Michelin. Dubai is merely a cheesy holiday resort with elephantiasis, the result of the hundreds of billions that are so freely spent because they have been not earned, but merely accidentally acquired.
The photograph above tells you all you need to know, not only about Dubai, but all the other pleasure-towns that the Arabs have built up with the oil money lavished upon them.
Civilizationally, they remind me of the story -- a true story, told to be by a former member of the staff-- about the famous London bookseller Hatchard's. One day a rich Arab entered the store. It seems he had bought a country estate, with a large library, and he asked that that library now be filled -- he motioned around the vast bookstore --with "one of each."
Remember: Mock Donald Trump for this sort of excess and you are considered sane. Mock the rulers of Dubai for the same excess -- on steroids -- and you are considered racist.
October 01, 2008
It is only a passing thing, this shadow
Why We Fight Week @ The Flea... Episode III: The Return of the Flea:
Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. It's Kylie: The Musical. A bit obvious conceptually once the idea is pointed out (hat tip to the Sister of the Flea).
An even better idea: Kylie bedding. Dream the impossible dream.
Armin van Buuren & DJ Shah feat. Chris Jones: Going Wrong
Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.
Breaking glass
Melanie Phillips hears a distant sound as neo-Nazi parties gain ground in Austria. Local variations on the same "ultra-right" theme -- actually socialism with a race fetish -- are making advances across Europe.
This presents a nightmarish prospect in which, if the democratic parties of Europe continue to demonise legitimate aspirations to maintain national cultures against undemocratic and anti-democratic forces, more and more people will be drawn to these parties – see the sophisticated pitch by and increasing support for the BNP in Britain, and social disorder will rise. The rise of these noxious groups is entirely due to the abandonment by social democratic parties of the defence of the nation and the right of individual peoples to their own cultures and self-government. The continuing rise of the BNP in Britain is overwhelmingly the outcome both of the fanatical Europhilia which masquerades as the centre ground while engaged on its project to destroy Britain as an independent nation, and the systematic destruction of British national identity and the demonisation of those Britons who object by the dominant left-wing elites.
And once again these elites will blame the Jews. Israel, arm yourself. I am sorry but it seems my people have short memories, have learned nothing and are not to be trusted. Across the Western world, self-serving "anti-racists" persecute Jewish writers and publishers -- or writers with "Jewish sounding" last names -- even as they set out the welcome mat for the same Dark Ages fascists Franco used to rape Spain. Welcome to 1929.
Then as now there are men actively working toward disaster in the hope they can seize control and make an utopia of the wreckage. I look around me and all I see is Weimar decadence and denial. I am all in favour of decadence on an aesthetic level, obviously. What I pray for is decadence with teeth.
Directly related: On this side of the Atlantic the West sleeps more deeply.
Thinking along the same lines: Christopher Hitchens in a candid moment (via Will).
Better have one yourself, Rush Molloy; the nice men with the beards will put a stop to that sort of thing once the dust settles. And Google Cassandra while you are at it.
Update: You know who also cared about the environment? The Nazis (hat tip to Free Dominion).
I’ve come into possession of an interesting document. It is a leaked email between Rosemary Frei, Green Party candidate in York Centre, and Daryl Vernon, a Green Party paid lackey and blogger on their official site. Before last weeks debate hosted by B’nai Brith at the Beth Emeth synagogue, Frei ran into some confusion with regards to some of her Green Party talking points.
RTWT and the update.
One quote by Ghanem I came across: People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful.
Such is the left.
