Marginalizing stupid

John Cole observes moonbats on the Huffy-puffy blog: And there you have the far left in a nutshell: smug, condescending, deceitful, paranoid, self-congratulating, in denial and divorced from reality, and wholly uncredible. Some choice the American system has- John Conyers or Pat Robertson. Isn’t there any way to marginalize stupid? Listening to Al Franken broadcasting … Continue reading “Marginalizing stupid”

John Cole observes moonbats on the Huffy-puffy blog:

And there you have the far left in a nutshell: smug, condescending, deceitful, paranoid, self-congratulating, in denial and divorced from reality, and wholly uncredible. Some choice the American system has- John Conyers or Pat Robertson. Isn’t there any way to marginalize stupid?

Listening to Al Franken broadcasting from Portland this morning I observed the same thing. He told lie after lie to a screaming, cheering, applauding audience as willing to be deceived as the Scientology membership or the voters in Nazi Germany.

Did you know that Franken invented left-wing radio? That’s what he claimed, despite the fact that Pacifica, NPR, and stations like KGO were with us long before Air America got Clear Channel into that game. He must have invented the Internet too. And did you know that there’s no legitimate constitutional question about the Social Security Act, which was only approved by the Supreme Court by a 5-4 margin after court-packing? That’s what he said. Or that we wouldn’t have minimum wage laws without it? Even in a state with its own minimum wage set higher than the federal standard the audience ate this up.

The political dialog that matters in this country – the one that engages the largest number of voters – is almost wholly divorced from the facts. That’s a problem.

Incidentally, somebody could do a whole blog just covering the lies Al Franken, the failed comedian, tells every morning to his retarded audience but I don’t get paid enough to do it myself. Maybe a tag-team approach would work.

Sticking it to the wood

Formaldehyde really sucks. It’s carcinogenic, and breathing it causes headaches and runny mucous right away. But it’s an essential part of the glues that make plywood, particle board, and fiberboard possible, without which we wouldn’t have much in the way of homes and furniture. But all that’s about to change thanks to he lowly mussel, … Continue reading “Sticking it to the wood”

Formaldehyde really sucks. It’s carcinogenic, and breathing it causes headaches and runny mucous right away. But it’s an essential part of the glues that make plywood, particle board, and fiberboard possible, without which we wouldn’t have much in the way of homes and furniture. But all that’s about to change thanks to he lowly mussel, the groovy little mollusc that attaches itself to rocks with a sticky foot.

CORVALLIS — A weekend trip to the Oregon coast gave Kaichang Li an idea that is revolutionizing the wood manufacturing industry and will mean cleaner air indoors and out.

It’s a new adhesive that’s a safe replacement for chemical glues in plywood, particleboard and other manufactured wood that leak noxious formaldehyde fumes into homes. It’s so simple and inexpensive that Li, an assistant professor at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, can whip it up from soy flour in a kitchen mixer on his laboratory counter.

The tenacious foothold of mussels in the ocean surf inspired the new glue, and its commercial potential could extend to almost every new home and building. OSU patented the adhesive in the United States and other countries, and is licensing it to companies.

The OSU professor figured out how to make a soy-based glue with essential amino acids from the mussel and outperforms formaldehyde and doesn’t make you sick. Hungry maybe, but that’s about it.

This kinda stuff is cool, but it makes me wonder why my smaller Giant Clam won’t stick herself to a rock like she’s supposed to.

Arianna’s Blog Blows

This review by Nikki Finke tells you all you need to know about Arianna’s idiotic blog: it blows. Judging from today’s horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too far. She has now made an online ass of herself. What her … Continue reading “Arianna’s Blog Blows”

This review by Nikki Finke tells you all you need to know about Arianna’s idiotic blog: it blows.

Judging from today’s horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too far. She has now made an online ass of herself. What her bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree conservative-to-liberal conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn’t accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This Web-site venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable, because of all the advance publicity touting its success as inevitable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the box-office equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it’s the disastrous clone of Tina Brown’s Talk, JFK Jr.’s George or Maer Roshan’s Radar. No matter what happens to Huffington, it’s clear Hollywood will suffer the consequences.

It almost seems like some sick hoax. Perhaps Huffington is no longer a card-carrying progressive but now a conservative mole. Because she served up liberal celebs like red meat on a silver platter for the salivating and Hollywood-hating right wing to chew up and spit out.

Chased out of England for plagiarizing two books, she came to the US, joined a cult and married a rich gay guy. They went to Washington to depose Sally Quinn as the town’s leading Greek, failed, and then returned to California to challenge Susan Estrich as LA’s biggest liberal, failing again. Failing to secure any votes in her run for Governor, she turns to blogging to have the last nail hammered into her coffin. What a waste of carbohydrates.

UPDATE: Two good parodies, each better than the original. The Guardian’s pre-launch version, and the more urbane Huff and Blow.

Poor Arianna gets no respect.

Civility

A blogging conference in Nashville featured Dave Winer hosting a session on civility. This is not an April Fool. See Instapundit.com for details. Best quote was from Megan McArdle: “like Jimmy Swaggart preaching monogamy.” Winer’s the third blogger, and a brilliant guy and all, but still, this had to be somebody’s idea of a joke.

A blogging conference in Nashville featured Dave Winer hosting a session on civility. This is not an April Fool. See Instapundit.com for details.

Best quote was from Megan McArdle: “like Jimmy Swaggart preaching monogamy.”

Winer’s the third blogger, and a brilliant guy and all, but still, this had to be somebody’s idea of a joke.

Bait and Switch

There’s a nice, pithy critique of Intelligent Desgn at the Ayn Rand Institute web site: Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, “intelligent design” is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one “candidate for the role of designer” need apply. Dembski himself–even while trying to deny this implication–concedes that “if there is design in biology … Continue reading “Bait and Switch”

There’s a nice, pithy critique of Intelligent Desgn at the Ayn Rand Institute web site:

Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, “intelligent design” is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one “candidate for the role of designer” need apply. Dembski himself–even while trying to deny this implication–concedes that “if there is design in biology and cosmology, then that design could not be the work of an evolved intelligence.” It must, he admits, be that of a “transcendent intelligence” to whom he euphemistically refers as “the big G.”

The supposedly nonreligious theory of “intelligent design” is nothing more than a crusade to peddle religion by giving it the veneer of science–to pretend, as one commentator put it, that “faith in God is something that holds up under the microscope.”

The insistence of “intelligent design” advocates that they are “agnostic regarding the source of design” is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a “designer” who is susceptible of scientific study–in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Their scientifically accessible “designer” is nothing more than a gateway god–metaphysical marijuana intended to draw students away from natural, scientific explanations and get them hooked on the supernatural.

Right to the point.

The Englishman

From The New Criterion’s Weblog we find an odd quote from Santayana: What governs the Englishman is his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. Instinctively the Englishman is no missionary, no conqueror. He prefers the country to the town, and home to foreign parts. He is rather glad and relieved if only natives will … Continue reading “The Englishman”

From The New Criterion’s Weblog we find an odd quote from Santayana:

What governs the Englishman is his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. Instinctively the Englishman is no missionary, no conqueror. He prefers the country to the town, and home to foreign parts. He is rather glad and relieved if only natives will remain natives and strangers strangers, and at a comfortable distance from himself. Yet outwardly he is most hospitable and accepts almost anybody for the time being; he travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him.

Scientific blackguards? I had no idea the Englishman was anti-science. Now we know who settled Kansas, the place where science is on trial.

Party

Portland’s Liberal Hawks are going to convene for a little drinking Monday evening at a local watering hole. Contact me if you’d like to come. Guest of honor is just back from Lebanon, and he’s alleged to be armed with stories about the Cedar Revolution. Which reminds me of something pertinent to Iraq. Remember how … Continue reading “Party”

Portland’s Liberal Hawks are going to convene for a little drinking Monday evening at a local watering hole. Contact me if you’d like to come. Guest of honor is just back from Lebanon, and he’s alleged to be armed with stories about the Cedar Revolution.

Which reminds me of something pertinent to Iraq. Remember how the peaceniks used to say “yeah, that Saddam is a Bad Guy, but there’s lots of Bad Guys and we can’t invade ALL their countries, can we?”

It turns out the answer to that question has become apparent from recent happenings in Lebanon as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya: we don’t have to invade ALL their countries, just enough so that they get the message. But thanks for asking.

Cut down to size

The (hippie) Guardian’s summary of the British election: Labour should be very humble and grateful that so many voters have been prepared to stick with them to the extent that they have. But the electorate has changed the momentum of British politics overnight. This has been a powerful blow to a political movement which until … Continue reading “Cut down to size”

The (hippie) Guardian’s summary of the British election:

Labour should be very humble and grateful that so many voters have been prepared to stick with them to the extent that they have. But the electorate has changed the momentum of British politics overnight. This has been a powerful blow to a political movement which until now has had no real experience of defeat to be treated in this way, losing seats to Tories, Liberal Democrats and, as a remarkable result in Blaenau Gwent showed, to independents. The politics of the ensuing days and weeks will focus on the future of Mr Blair after his superhuman majorities have now been cut down to something more like politics as normal. Yet the prime minister’s future is not, in the end, likely to be as contentious or crucial a question as whether Labour itself can regroup and recreate itself in time for the next general election.

HT Norm Geras.

This is the end for Tory leader Michael Howard.

Paxman waxes Galloway

Jeremy Paxman’s election-night interview of George Galloway is hilarious: JP: We’re joined now from his count in Bethnal Green and Bow by George Galloway. Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament? GG: What a preposterous question. I know it’s very late in the … Continue reading “Paxman waxes Galloway”

Jeremy Paxman’s election-night interview of George Galloway is hilarious:

JP: We’re joined now from his count in Bethnal Green and Bow by George Galloway. Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: What a preposterous question. I know it’s very late in the night, but wouldn’t you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational election results in modern history?
JP: Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: I’m not – Jeremy – move on to your next question.
JP: You’re not answering that one?
GG: No because I don’t believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and because of their policies. So move on to your next question.
JP: Are you proud –
GG: Because I’ve got a lot of people who want to speak to me.
JP: – You –
GG: If you ask that question again, I’m going, I warn you now.
JP: Don’t try and threaten me Mr Galloway, please.

Vintage Paxman. He once asked a question 17 times to a politician who tried to dodge it the way Saddam’s former employee Galloway did this one. He makes Tim Russert look like Larry King.

HT Iain Murray.

The magician who fell to earth

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, puts the British election in context: Lost among the long faces of Labour was this fact: a party which had never won two full terms in government yesterday won a third. That is not to be dismissed. There was a time, back in the 1980s, when such a feat … Continue reading “The magician who fell to earth”

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, puts the British election in context:

Lost among the long faces of Labour was this fact: a party which had never won two full terms in government yesterday won a third. That is not to be dismissed. There was a time, back in the 1980s, when such a feat seemed to be the remotest fantasy.

Even the midnight rumours of a Labour majority of 50, later revised, would once have thrilled, rather than crushed, the party’s supporters. In 1974, for example, that kind of margin would have felt like a landslide. And, lest we forget, Margaret Thatcher started a revolution in 1979 with a majority of just 44.

A sober view would say yesterday was no disaster, merely a sign that, as David Blunkett declared, “normal politics has returned” – that the rhythms of the 1960s and 1970s have been restored.

Nonetheless, many of your Labourites do have long faces today, and the usual pack of Communists want Tony Blair’s head. This seems a strange reaction to winning a third consecutive election for the first time in your party’s history.