Wherein we read your mind.

Cat Storage

The Religion of Permanent Offense

Pat Condell is a British comedian and political commentator.

This will never work

Who would buy a book from some stranger on the Internet? What, you're going to type your credit card number into a computer, and send it who knows where? And then wait for the Post Office to get around to delivering the thing?  I give this thing six months, tops.  August 16, 1995:

Via KOKOGIAK.

It's a Quiz!

For today, oh my brothers and sisters, we provide a quiz. Which candidate for President of the United States said: "If you don’t have work, you’d go to an employment office, not an unemployment office, and you’d get a job, not sit home, depressed, with a check."

Has to be Mitt Romney, right?  Obviously not Mr. Obama.  Maybe the candidate of some tiny Conservative Party.

Not so.  That would be Dr. Jill Stein, nominee of the lefty Green Party.

As Professor Reynolds observes, "It’s a hell of a thing when the nominee of the far-left Green Party espouses a stronger work ethic than the President of the United States. But that’s what we’ve come to."

"They gave Erica a 200-square-foot room where she was forced to serve as a residential adviser to sexually rampant alcoholics."

The Grad School Scam. Don't fall for it.

The Undecided Voter

Reprehensible Provocation

Mother of Dragons

At the Emmy Awards

NOT at the Emmy Awards

September 24, 1862: The Writ of Habeas Corpus is Suspended

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A PROCLAMATION

Whereas, it has become necessary to call into service not only volunteers but also portions of the militia of the States by draft in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection;

Now, therefore, be it ordered, first, that during the existing insurrection and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of United States, shall be subject to martial law and liable to trial and punishment by Courts Martial or Military Commission:

Second. That the Writ of Habeas Corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement by any military authority of by the sentence of any Court Martial or Military Commission.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this twenty fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the 87th.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Child-rearing advice from the President

Dispatches from the rabbit hole

What the White House said, via Press Secretary Jay Carney: "We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the prophet Muhammad, and obviously we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this. We know these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential be be inflammatory."

What the White House should have said: "In the first place, I have no idea why we're talking about this nonsense. In the second place, anyone who would get their panties in a bunch over something like this is diagnosably insane."

Let Teddy Win!

E:60 "TEDDY ROOSEVELT'S ROUGH RIDE" from Bluefoot Entertainment on Vimeo.

Because even the demons use the Internet . . . .

"Gargoyle with laptop computer," only $24.99 at Amazon.

. . . because their lips are moving.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

The headline at Mother Jones screams: "SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters."

This apparently clandestinely-recorded video shocks and appalls in certain quarters. From where we sit, it's a pretty accurate summary of the upcoming presidential election.

Librarians; Tattoos

More HERE.

"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -- David Hume

If this had been a scene from a movie, we'd sigh at the cheap manipulation of trite terror: brownshirts; the midnight knock on the door; no arrest, merely "taken in for questioning." That's not a terrorist, that's a guy who "the authorities" think had something to do with making a really bad movie. More HERE.

Everyone who's worked for any large organization knows that when your boss decides he doesn't like you, you're toast. You're not going to be fired for incompetence, or for super-gluing the coffeepot in the break room. Instead, your boss will haul out the Big Book of Personnel Regulations, have his secretary clock what time you arrive in the morning, and write you up for tardiness.

We live in an age of environmental regulations, zoning regulations, income taxes, sales taxes, ad valorem taxes, licenses, and permits.

When The Man knocks on your door at midnight, he won't be there to arrest you for murder or blasphemy. He'd just like to ask you a few questions down at headquarters. He will call you "sir."

"When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction."

What does "smart diplomacy" look like?

Via The Atlantic.

Analogy

When someone makes a silly film that causes Muslims to riot, burn and murder, the film is officially decried as "reprehensible."

So what do we call it when the Los Angeles Times publishes specific information -- including photographs -- about the identity and home of the maker of the silly film?

Our money is on a consensus that the former is an abuse of Freedom of Speech, while the latter is journalism, a time-honored expression of Freedom of the Press.

While American embassies burn . . .

. . . the President of the United States tweets: "Beyoncé and Jay-Z are hosting the President in New York—your chance for two spots on the guest list ends at midnight."

Point Missed

There has been much just criticism of Secretary Clinton's "nuanced" statement on the recent events in Egypt and Libya.  She said:

The U.S. government has absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and messages. But there is no justification — none at all — for responding to this video with violence.

[snip]

Now I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day. Even if it were possible, our country does have a long tradition of free expression, which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law. And we do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views, no matter how distasteful they may be.

It is, of course, absurd to dignify murder by street thugs as if it were a matter of cultural misunderstanding. But more fundamentally, when did it become the business of the Government of the United States to characterize this or that Constitutionally protected speech as being "reprehensible," or to "absolutely reject" the "content and messages" of that speech?

We have to wonder if Secretary Clinton absolutely rejects the content and messages of Monty Python's Life of Brian, and finds it reprehensible?

Fed Announces New Round of Quantitative Easing

"I am the very model of an amateur grammarian"

From The Stroppy Editor:

(With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)

I am the very model of an amateur grammarian
I have a little knowledge and I am authoritarian
But I make no apology for being doctrinarian
We must not plummet to the verbal depths of the barbarian

I’d sooner break my heart in two than sunder an infinitive
And I’d disown my closest family within a minute if
They dared to place a preposition at a sentence terminus
Or sully the Queen’s English with neologisms verminous

I know that ‘soon’ and not ‘right now’ is the true sense of ‘presently’
I’m happy to correct you and I do it oh so pleasantly
I’m not a grammar Nazi; I’m just a linguistic Aryan
I am the very model of an amateur grammarian

I’m sure people appreciate my pointing out their grammar gaffes
And sorting out their sentences and crossing out their paragraphs
When you crusade for good English, it’s not all doom and gloom you sow
The secret of success is: it’s not who you know; it’s whom you know

The standards of our language are declining almost every day
Down from a peak in 18– or 19– I think – well, anyway
Pop music, TV, blogs and texting are inflicting ravages
Upon English and unchecked, this will turn us into savages

I fear that sloppy language is a sign of immorality
For breaking rules of grammar is akin to criminality
So curse those trendy linguists, lexicographers and anyone
Who shuns the model English of the amateur grammarian

Conjunctions at the openings of sentences are sickening
I wish that the decline of the subjunctive were not quickening
And that more people knew the proper meaning of ‘anticipate’
Of ‘fulsome’ and ‘enormity’, ‘fortuitous’ and ‘decimate’

I learned these rules at school and of correctness they’re my surety
I cling to them for safety despite having reached maturity
Some say that language changes, but good English is immutable
And so much common usage now is deeply disreputable

My pedantry’s demanding but I try not to feel bitter at
The fact that everyone I meet is borderline illiterate
When all around are wrong then I am proud to be contrarian
I am the very model of an amateur grammarian

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Like Cutting Your Toenails

There are a variety of things each of us does that are best done in private. No, no, no -- not THOSE things (but those things, too). Trimming nose hairs; cutting your nails; almost anything at all having to do with your nose. All of these things are at least moderately disgusting, at least from the point of view of third parties.  I know you do them, but I don't need to see you doing them.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

James Eadie QC, acting for the government, told the European court that the refusal to allow an NHS nurse and a British Airways worker to visibly wear a crucifix at work “did not prevent either of them practicing religion in private”, which would be protected by human rights law.

He argued that a Christian facing problems at work with religious expression needed to consider their position and that they were not discriminated against if they still have the choice of leaving their job and finding new employment.

National Empty Chair Day

More at #EmptyChairDay.

The Gospel According to Barack

In 2004, while running for the United States Senate, candidate Barack Obama gave an interview with Cathleen Falsani, then a religion reporter for the Chicago Sun Times. The full transcript of that interview is now available HERE. If you are eligible to vote in the November election, and you fail to read the entire transcript, then you are a very great fool.

Each of us is burdened with our own perspective, and so what another finds most interesting or illuminating may differ from those parts that seemed to me important. I offer two.

FALSANI: Who’s Jesus to you? (He laughs nervously)

OBAMA: Right. Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

Just so.  Later, we have this:

FALSANI: Do you believe in sin?

OBAMA: Yes.

FALSANI: What is sin?

OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.

If ever I've seen a concise and straightforward statement of the guiding principle of modern secularism, that's it right there.  Note that in this moral system, either I also sin when I am "out of alignment" with the believer's values, or else those values are without any basis whatever to claim any authority over me, since I'm equally free to imagine my own "values," being "out of alignment" with which is the only sin.  In either case, we are each of us left without hope and, incidentally, at the mercy of whomever has the most guns.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Everything is Fake Now:

The Solomon Asch study showed that people will change their correct answers to conform with the wrong answers that are being given by others. The false consensus has operated on that same paradigm, convincing people of two lies. The first lie is that the wrong answer is the right answer. And the second lie that everyone else has already agreed that the wrong answer is correct.

Sunday, September 2, 1945