Aunt Genie's Fun Festival

My sister Genie, who is wonderful and an amazing aunt (just like the rest of my sisters, all six of whom Sabrina adores), took Sabrina to dinner and afterward to this fun place that Sabrina still hasn't gotten over. It's along the hike and bike trail that runs around the downtown section of Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake), atop a small hill on the South side of the lake (which is really the Colorado River with dams on either end). There's a disco dance floor there and Sabrina just went nuts.

She sang and danced for a very long time and wore herself out to much that Mommy had to carry her back to the car the whole way. Sabrina even cried when another family tried to take pictures on the lights. How dare they.

Pretty Passenger

Sabrina's not old enough to ride in the front seat yet, but she loves her new big-girl booster seat and won't ride in anything else. We like it too because it's got good head support wings on either side and when she falls asleep back there they hold her head very nicely.

I love her little fleece coat in this picture. It's not quite cold enough here to wear it, but we let our little angel set the dress code for herself, which explains all the princess wear.

Visiting Angel

Sabrina entertains Aunt Naomi by dancing on her furniture. Naomi has invited us to her home the last two Thanksgivings and Sabrina has absolutely loved the experience both times, as have we. Naomi is a delightful host and a lovely person all around, as is her man Adam.

Unf*ckingbelievable

Just beyond belief that this isn't enough to get him thrown in jail, much less disqualified from running for President, much less not even goddamn ASKED about it by the disgustingly biased mainstream media:

Mr. Good Will - who lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You" - has contributed 1,000 times to the Barack Obama campaign. All the contributions have been in amounts of $25 or less. But they add up to $17,375 - far more than the legal limit of $4,600. That's $2,300 each for the primary and general election campaigns.

Wait. There's more:

Mr. Doodad Pro made 786 contributions for a total of $19,500. Like Mr. Good Will, Mr. Pro lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You." Mr. Pro said he is from Nunda, N.Y. Directory assistance found no listing for him either. Mr. Obama has raised a whopping $223 million in contributions of less than $200. Candidates are not required to disclose the names of those who contribute less than $200, and Mr. Obama has not. John McCain has made his complete donor database available online.

Don't stop there, you'll miss the best part:

If there are more suspicious donors to the Obama campaign, we won't know until long after the election as long as their aggregate contributions are below the legal limit. Mr. Timmerman was particularly curious about 11,500 contributions from overseas totalling $33.8 million.

Emphasis mine. Just enough already. I'm tired of one side being held to a standard beyond reasonable and the other ignored, no matter what type of shady crap they do. I'd like to punch 90% of the journalists in this country in the face. I know it would take a long time and a lot of work, but I'm a giver. Link from Instapundit.

Sadly, No

Thomas Sowell's new column is titled "Do Facts Matter?" I wish they did, but they sure don't seem to:

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

Apparently not.

More Democratic Party Shenanigans

Barney Frank's partner is a Fannie Mae executive.

Wow. Or as Ace says, "Why is it I f*cking know the exact time Sarah Palin had amniotic fluid leakage and I'm just finding this out now?"

%&$# You, You Disgusting Reptilian Whore

The balls on this bitch. How dare she try to pin this Democratic party disaster that is the mortgage crisis on the Republicans who repeatedly tried to stop it. "How did it sneak up on us so silently"? You idiotic skank, you were told repeatedly it was coming. So was your entire turdpile of a party. And you kept right on anyway. Go straight to hell, harpy.

Unbelievable

Watch this immediately. Maybe the best explanation of how the Democratic party screwed the country over with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac available.

Sweet

I was looking up "metal pez dispenser" after reading this (again from Thighmaster) and found this. Sweet.

Now That's More Like It

This is what the internet is for. Thanks, Thighmaster, for one of the most consistently weird sites around for like years now.

Well, It's a Start

I just hope it's not too late to get some of this stuff out. There's much more and better to be told about the Obamessiah, but we'll never see it in the mainstream media. Never.

Do the Right Thing

And read this explanation of the current situation and the proposed bailout. Really good stuff and you need to know it. From Ace.

Frolic

Sweet Sabrina in the wildflowers, May 2008. What a little angel. We were walking Fred a couple of days ago and she asked me to tell her a story. She gave a lot of instructions about who was to be in the story (Sully and Mike from Monsters, Inc., Nemo, Marlin, Dory and some other Finding Nemo characters, and Monster Bear from the Little Bear chronicles) and what the setting was to be (the beach), and after a few minutes of story she exasperatedly told me that SHE would be telling the story from now on, thank you very much. And she did. And it was fantastic.

That's never happened before and I like it. Her imagination is so active, we have to be careful about discussing injuries and illness because she'll tell us she has a broken arm or a cold if she's heard about one or the other that day. I'm worried we'll miss a real problem because we read a story about that problem just before it actually happened. Silly . . .

Wheee

Yummy. I miss being young and stupid. It was so much fun.

Best Thing Ever

I don't care if I've said other things were the best thing ever. Compared to this, they suck. I can't stop watching it.

I Can't Argue with This

He is. He really is. Watch the whole video and you'll believe as I do.

Barack Obama, Idiot and Lying Sack of Sh*t

I have had it with Obama's pathetic attempts to lie about recent history in hopes of getting elected to a position he has zero ability to deal with. Here's his most recent nonsense on parade, in which he tries to pin the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Republicans:

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional democrats and the Clinton white house, designed to make mortgages available to more people, and as it turned out, some people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s white house budget director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected 50 million dollars. Jamie Gurilli, Clinton Justice Apartment Official, worked for Fannie and took home 26 million dollars. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae C.E.O. job.

Now remember, Obama’s ads and stump speeches attack McCain and republican policies for the current financial turmoil. It is demonstrably not Republican policy and worse, it appears the man attacking McCain, Senator Obama, was at the head of the line when the piggy’s lined up at the Fannie and Freddie trough for campaign bucks.

Emphasis mine. This is par for the course for Obama, who wouldn't have anything to say during campaign stops if he didn't lie his ass off. The press won't challenge him on it, so most people will never know. That sucks. Furthermore, if he's going to lie, he could at least learn the names of things:

“The fact that we have reached a point where the Federal Reserve felt it had to take this unprecedented step with the American Insurance Group is the final verdict on the failed economic philosophy of the last eight years . . ."

American International Group, you moron.

Update: More of the same. Why isn't any of this being reported in the mainstream media? It's the biggest story of the year, if you ask me, that the very financial disasters that are throwing the country, really the world, into a tailspin, are directly linked to the sleazy and dishonest behavior of the Democratic presidential nominee. Disgusting.

Update 2: Now he's lying about inventing the economic stimulus package. The balls on this guy.

See How That Works?

I used to wonder how the world operated. Then I watched this video:



Mr. Show was the best sketch comedy show that ever was, and they're decent enough not to take their videos down from Youtube ever five seconds, which makes them even better.

That Just About Covers It

Found this at One Cosmos, which is always a blast when you're feeling extra smart and thoughtful. The column in question is a beauty:

The Left always counts its presidential chickens before they're hatched. They did it with Algore, they did it with Kerry. They think they have victory in their grasp, and when reality says otherwise they feel robbed and betrayed. They have to find dark plots and conspiracies to explain the impossible; the Supreme Court was corrupt in stopping the Al Gore assault on the election rules in Florida. Ohio's voting machines were hacked to give George W. Bush his win there. Today, Algore is still bulking up with rage, eight years after Florida. Kerry still thinks he was "swiftboated" -- when his Swiftboat chain of command finally got its chance to tell the truth. Rapper P. Diddy was on YouTube yesterday going "Alaska? Alaska?" and "McCain, you're getting the *** out of town."

It's the gangster theory of electoral democracy. They're all counting on victory. It's theirs already. Like the Obama campaign keeps telling us, the election is just a formality. We have a new president, and his name starts with an O.

The Left is entitled to power, because in their own eyes they have Truth and Morality on their side. They are Mahatma Gandhi, they are Dr. King, they are the vanguard of the marching proletariat. It's not just Big O who has the incomprehensible egomania. His inner circle and vast numbers of his supporters do, too. Entitlement, grandiosity, narcissism: In psychiatric thinking they all suffer from secret feelings of inferiority, narcissistic wounds to their self-esteem. Every time they lose, those nagging feelings come up again. So they are always overcompensating, trying to bully reality into the shape they need.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Check out Bob's piece on this piece for more red meat.

Had to Happen Eventually

And now it has. Good Lord. I'd ask if these people had any decency, but as they themselves are telling us, the answer is no.

Obamania

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The First of Many

Joe Biden is a real turd of a VP candidate, and I couldn't be more happy about it. All the video of Obama and him ripping each other over the Democratic nomination will be great fun, but this, and all of the other fun stuff we'll be seeing soon about him, is even better.

Somebody Pissed off God, Apparently

Why else would she get struck by lightning as she filmed a storm? Link from Pajiba.

What. The. Hell.

I don't even know how to describe this. Some links on the page are not work safe, probably, but the page itself is inoffensive. The video is extremely weird but interesting.

It Doesn't Get Much Sadder

I consider Theodore Dalrymple one of the best writers and thinkers in the world today, and this column of his is shocking, chilling, and dead right in a number of ways. As in most of his work, he manages to opine on moral decay in a non-preachy, even non-judgmental way. Read it and weep, it's nasty medicine but damn good for you.

Link from Instapundit.

I Think I'm in Love

Wow are these just beyond sexy. Especially number 5, I'd get medieval on that bizzlebazzle. Totally work safe.

Sweet Zoo Train Girl

I try not to call Sabrina a baby any more, because she's not. Anyone who can use the adult-sized lavatory by herself is a young lady. If in the future this is an embarrassing revelation that mortifies my sweet, wonderful daughter, sorry about that. And there's a lot more where that came from.

Intense Girl

Sabrina has many faces. This one wants ice cream.

Cool

Really.

Bathing Beauty

Darling Sabrina loves the pool at our new place. I haven't lived in an apartment for almost a decade, and I wasn't sure how it would be with a small child, but the place we ended up really works very nicely for us. No shady/loud/weird people around us, a great pool for Sabrina (and Deirdre and me, we swim every day and are really enjoying it, and the two hot tubs should come in handy as soon as it's not too hot to use them), and we don't have to maintain the yard in near-drought conditions, which is a relief.

Even Fred seems to like it better than the last place, although he had a large fenced yard there. That probably has something to do with the fact that we actually take him for walks here instead of just putting him out back in the yard like we used to, not to mention the presence of rabbits, deer and God knows what else around the grounds. We came across an enormous buck last night right before bedtime, and Fred took off after it as I got ready to run the other way. That thing was huge and it made a scary noise right before I saw it, and I've been reading a horror book called Terror about a giant demonic Polar bear that eats a bunch of Antarctic explorers in the 1800s. I was ready to sprint up the stairs and leave Fred to be eaten if need be. Sorry, Fred.

Well I Never

Jon Voight: anti-Obama column writer. Man, I never in a million years expected to read something like this from him:

Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.

The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.

I agree, I just never thought I'd hear it from this guy. Go figure. Link from Ace.

The Horror

If you've eaten recently, you may not want to expose your central nervous system to this, or this. I tried to warn you.

Delightfully Violent

Cool video below:



From here, which I found because I was looking for Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Snad's album, featured in this video:

Spaceships, Toddlers, Model T. Cars & Jars of Beer

While You Enjoy Your Air Conditioned Home

I hadn't heard much about the big fight in Afghanistan that killed nine US Airborne warriors, but here's the Stars and Stripes story about it. Amazing story:

When the attack began, Stafford grabbed his M-240 machine gun off a north-facing sandbag wall and moved it to an east-facing sandbag wall. Moments later, RPGs struck the north-facing wall, knocking Stafford out of the fighting position and wounding another soldier.

Stafford thought he was on fire so he rolled around, regaining his senses. Nearby, Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling, who later died in the fight, had a stunned look on his face.

Immediately, a grenade exploded by Stafford, blowing him down to a lower terrace at the observation post and knocking his helmet off. Stafford put his helmet back on and noticed how badly he was bleeding.

Cpl. Matthew Phillips was close by, so Stafford called to him for help. Phillips was preparing to throw a grenade and shot a look at Stafford that said, "Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first."

Why do I have to go all the way to Stars and Stripes to get this stuff? The only thing I had heard before this was the US body count, and how it meant we were losing the war again. This next part will be laughed about by the participant one day:

The insurgents then started chucking rocks at Gobble and Stafford’s fighting position, hoping that the soldiers might think the rocks were grenades, causing them to jump from the safety of their fighting hole. One rock hit a tree behind Stafford and landed directly between his legs. He braced himself for an explosion. He then realized it was a rock.

I would feel no shame in peeing my pants during that experience. Must be invigorating to not be blown to smithereens when you fully expect to do so.

Link from Ace.

Sweet Thing

Sabrina walks up to me while I'm laying on the couch after dinner, slaps my belly and says "You're fat, Daddy. Daddy, you're fat. You're fat, Dad." And so on. I know it will only encourage her to insult strangers, but that cracks me up like a Dennis Miller special on HBO. I can listen to it all day long. I'd like to apologize in advance to the next portly person we come across at the park or the pool.

You Decide

What's wackier: this story, or this video:



Came across the latter when I decided to see what would constitute one of the "gayest videos ever" on the Logo Channel. They weren't kidding. Frankly, I find it refreshing to hear the word "faggoty" in a song without it being a hateful rap reference. Not that I've actually heard it in that context, but I would have bet a considerable amount of money that it would sooner have come up there than here, where it's not just unashamed but exuberant. You go, um, girl.

Sure, it's almost superhumanly gay, but watch the whole thing. It's pretty catchy and inordinately hilarious.

More Ammunition

Another body blow to the anthropogenic global warming crowd over at Ace's. When you take your feelings out of the equation, the alarmist arguments don't hold up worth a damn.

First Lady of Angrytown

I don't know much about Barack Obama, and less about his wife. But this pretty well condenses what I have heard:

Consider the case of Michelle Obama. She was raised in a two-parent, middle-class family. She applied to one of America's top universities, Princeton, and was admitted. Of this experience, Michelle says on the stump, "All my life I have confronted people who had a certain expectation of me. Every step of the way, there has been people telling me what I couldn't do. When I applied to Princeton, they said: you can't go there, your test scores aren't high enough."

Which is all very moving, except that her test scores weren't high enough. Michelle Obama is part of the affirmative action generation of above-average but far-from-stellar performers who were granted preferential admission to America's most elite institutions.

Michelle notes that she graduated with honors in her major. Again, the problem is that her undergraduate thesis is on the web. You might expect that she wrote about Shakespeare's sonnets or the political evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois. Well, no. Essentially Michelle Obama wrote about the problems of being a black woman at an Ivy League university.

Here is a typical passage: "By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight."

Alas, the grammar is all wrong here. More than once, the tenses are garbled. People are ignorant "of" the plight of the lower class, not ignorant "to" their plight. And"desparation" should be spelled "desperation." To wreak so much havoc on the English language in one sentence, without conveying anything of substance, is perhaps deserving of a prize. Is this what her professors were thinking when they granted her honors?

I think Laura Bush may well be right when she defends Mrs. Obama's statement that she's only recently proud of her country (Mrs. Bush says she misspoke, and meant "more proud"), but the tone of her speeches is a bitter one. I don't understand that, considering her own fairly privileged life. D'Souza's best paragraph is this one:

One might expect that the reaction of someone who gets so many privileges to be grateful to a society that makes them possible. But no. Michelle Obama thinks that her very success is an example of white oppression. By a bizarre twist of logic, she converts "you're not good enough, but we'll take you anyway" into a message of "they said I wasn't good enough, but I proved them wrong."

Maybe it's a case of identifying with her husband's base, I don't know. I just know it comes across pretty nasty and ungrateful considering how well she's made out.

Sweet Little Monkey

My wonderful sister Genie took this one, seems likely to be at a park somewhere but I don't know which one. What a darling she is for taking it and emailing it over. Sabrina is just too photogenic for words, and I worship her.

Sweet Child O' Mine

I've been pretty mangled lately, my neck's been in a state of unpleasantness that is extraordinary even for me (I'm pretty used to being screwed up spinally and enduring it without much complaint, but this last month has been extra nasty), and my daughter has been very sweet about it. Today I was holding her hands as she bounced on an exercise ball, not supporting her weight but steadying her so she wouldn't fall, and she suddenly dropped to bounce on her bottom. I wasn't expecting it, and the sudden drop just killed my neck, upper back and head with a lightning bolt of death. I squealed "OW OW Ow ow ow ow ow" and dropped her as soon as she could safely land on her feet, and then I kind of went fetal and moaned for a while.

Sabrina immediately started patting my neck and upper back gently, and said "It's OK, Daddy, you're OK," very softly over and over again. She stayed with me for a long time, leaving for a minute to tell Mommy about Daddy's booboo, and then she came back to take care of me some more. I don't think I've ever been comforted by a child before, and certainly not my own child, so through the miserable pain I could only think of how proud I was of her, and how grateful I was to have her there. I don't know where she learned that, but I'm again struck by what an amazing little girl she's turning out to be.

Work It, Girl. And Boy, for That Matter

If I had been smarter, I would have found a way to be an EU Parliamentarian instead of working for a living. They really know how to get paid for doing nothing at all. Meanwhile, I'm in the office sweating from showing property outside in late June in Austin, with stabbing pain in my neck, upper back and face that won't go away no matter what I do. Silly me . . .

Wow

Amazing. Dirty naughty objectionable site, but an amazing play in a minor league baseball game. By the ball girl. Seriously, check it out.

Not that It Will Make a Difference

In the way people perceive Bush, that is. You can debunk the fantasy that the administration lied about Iraq to lead us to war all you want (I've been doing so since before the war started), but people will still believe what they want to believe.

Why Am I Not Surprised

What? Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are drooling over the late (and great, if you ask me) Tim Russert's Meet the Press gig? I'm shocked.

Happy Fun Movie

Boner alert indeed. I watched Ong Bak and loved it, love Tony Jaa's fighting style and while I couldn't tell you a thing about the plot or even if there was any dialogue at all, it was an amazing film if only for this scene. Now that's what I call a long tracking shot - seven minutes of solid bad guy beatings.

Good Stuff

This is inordinately dirty/profane/gross/icky and otherwise objectionable. I absolutely love it.



I tried to warn you, and you still looked. Don't blame me for your prurient interest. But wasn't it fantastic?

Oh for Christ's Sake

Can we believe in any sport any more? Steroids/HGH/whatever in everything, boxing's been a fixed, faked pile of BS for more than a decade, the Olympics are a bad and boring joke, horse racing is just creepy (the damn horses' legs aren't even fully formed until they're 4 years old, which is the moral equivalent of infants having head-butting contests), the Patriots cheated their way to a number of Super Bowls, and now this?

NBA basketball has bored me since the 1990s, and even then Jordan got away with all kinds of illegal crap and never got called on it. But refs deciding games is beyond the pale. The only thing I buy any more is MMA/UFC fighting. The bouts are rarely decided by the judges, and I've yet to see a sketchy decision. Maybe that's why gladiators were so popular in Rome: it's hard to throw a fight when it means you die.

Mahmoud, You Sexy Bitch

I actually like this song, not to mention finding it funny. Thank God for Samberg and his friends, they're often the only funny thing about SNL these days. Sorry about the ad at the beginning, it's short but I can't find another source for it but the NBC site.



In case this doesn't work, hit this link.

Deeply Unsurprising

Of course war coverage is down 92% since the surge started working. They're using the economy to whack Bush with now, and Scott McLellan.

Memorial Day Madness

What fun we had, and what a little angel the sometimes aggressive Will (or is it Bill nowadays?) was almost the whole time. I hope they can be friends, these two cousins, and when they're left alone they almost always get along. Then the parents show up and they fight. Why is that?

This Will Never Happen

Al Gore will never debate anyone about global warming, much less the president of Czechoslovakia. And that's a real shame.

Link from Skinny Bean aka Timmler.

Yuck

I can't remember when I've been so repelled by a human being:

On Sept. 11, Wurtzel, who usually gets up at the crack of noon, was asleep when her mother called to say a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. “My main thought was: What a pain in the ass.”

Her apartment was at ground zero, on Greenwich Street, south of Chambers. She could see the twin towers from her window. Or she could have, if she had bothered to get out of bed.

Then the second plane hit, and more people called. Wurtzel finally hauled herself up in time to watch one tower collapse. “I had not the slightest emotional reaction,” she recalls. “I thought: ‘This is a really strange art project.’ ”

Wurtzel takes a tiny bite of monkfish and ponders the worst terrorist attack in New York’s history. “It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone’s head.”

She takes another bite of monkfish. “It was just beautiful. You can’t tell people this. I’m talking to you because you’re Canadian.”

Then her windows blew in. Airplane chunks landed on her roof. Wurtzel crawled into the basement and was later removed from the building. To this day, she can’t understand why everyone else was so upset. “I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me.”

Wurtzel became hysterical only when she realized she wouldn’t be allowed back to fetch her cat.

Disgusting. I apparently missed this when it happened, she's noteworthy today for her lame and lamebrained attempt to defend Obama's friendship with Weather Underground dickwads Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Die in a fire, lady.

I Should Be Ashamed of Myself

But I'm not.

Breathtaking

I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. Picture by one of the other Mommies in Sabrina's Mommy's Day Out group.

I Want One

Geekologie posted this Youtube video today, and I'm stealing it from them:



I'd pay $30 for that.

Well Said

I don't understand the universal pessimism I get from young people these days, and I talk to a lot of them, being a UT campus-area realtor. It is an election year, and since Iraq's going well enough to not bash constantly, the economy's going to be the main bad news vehicle for journalists and other Democrats, but it's gotten a little ridiculous. This WSJ column says it better than I can:

So why the long faces? Sen. Obama reminds them every day of how dreary things are. Here's what Mr. "Audacity of Hope" told workers in Ohio last week: "Everywhere I go . . . you see people who have worked in a plant for 20 years, put their heart and soul into building profits for shareholders. Suddenly, the rug's pulled out from under them; the job's shipped overseas." Not only that, he explains: "They don't have health care. They don't have a pension. They're trying to compete with their teenage kids for a job paying $7 an hour at the local fast food joint."

Times are tough in many old industrial areas of the country. And middle-class anxiety about the costs of health care and higher education is real. But new data from the Census Bureau reveal that Americans of all income groups have made enormous gains in their standard of living in recent decades. As late as 1970, air conditioning, color TVs, washing machines, dryers and microwaves were considered luxuries. Today the vast majority of even poor families have these things in their homes. Almost one in three "poor" families has not one but at least two cars.

Consumption in real per-capita terms has nearly doubled since 1970. The single largest increase in expenditures for low-income households over the past 20 years was for audio and visual entertainment systems -- up 119%. In 2007 Americans spent an estimated $1 billion to change the tune of the ringer on their cellphones. Eating in restaurants used to be something the rich did regularly and the middle class did on special occasions. The average family now spends $2,700 a year dining out.

Mr. "Audacity of Hope" indeed. Hey, what else can he do? He's never done anything, run anything, or made right anything that was wrong. He has to piss all over the economy to distinguish himself and make the Republicans seem incompetent by comparison. But I'll guarantee one thing: no matter who wins in November, the economy will miraculously recover, or at least we'll stop hearing doom and gloom stories all the time. Journalists will find something else to mope about, and we can all get on with our lives.

Thomas Sowell said it best: very few people understand economics, and none of them work in the news industry. You used to have to be an expert in a certain field before they'd let you write about it, but now you have to be an expert in news writing before they'll give you a chance to learn about the field you're supposed to report on. That's all kinds of backward and stupid. Don't believe the hype about anything, and especially not the US economy.

Link from Paul Katcher.

Hell to the No

What the hell is this crime against humanity? DO NOT WANT

Oh, Bawma

I didn't have a crush on Obama before, and I certainly don't now. He seems like a decent fellow, but shares the same ugly quality that so many people (I was going to say liberals, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair) do: a basic distaste for the average American, and maybe even for the average person. It's alarmingly fashionable to say "I hate people" while smiling or laughing, and actually mean it. It's a mark of cleverness, of sophistication. As someone once said, there are far too many good reasons to hate individuals to find reasons to lump them together in your disgust.

The Departed

We lost Oliver a couple of days ago. He was born with an undersized liver and it probably never really worked right, which caused a number of other problems, most notably bladder stones and later neurological problems. Seizures, toward the end. We feel as miserable as you might imagine for not adding up the clues, and there were many in the last few months, but even worse, there were more subtle ones for years.

I can't tell you how painful it is to realize that he suffered because of our affection for him. A small and malfunctioning liver doesn't process protein very well, and we stuffed the poor little fellow with doggie chicken jerky, meat from the dinner table, and even his fancy veterinary-quality food was probably poisoning him slowly. But we just didn't understand the signs, and neither did our veterinarian.

Even worse is the fact that toward the end he wasn't able to go the whole night without relieving himself once or twice, and in our most recent home we don't have a doggie door. Usually I'd get up a couple of times, a sort of mental alarm clock, and take him out, but when I didn't I'd patrol the kitchen first thing and usually find a couple of messes. He had the good nature to do it on the tile, but I have to confess to punishing him more than once, figuring it had to be malicious. Mind you, he'd leave similar gifts on the floor even if we just left him and Fred in the house for a half hour no matter how many times we let him out before, so it's not like he didn't have some doggie vengeance in his soul (the first time we moved after getting him, we left the dogs alone in the house for two hours and he took a dump on my pillow), but I'll never forgive myself for yelling at him, making him smell it and spanking him one morning recently when I'd had it with cleaning up the floor several days in a row. I feel like a monster. He couldn't help himself and probably felt like crap for months, maybe years, and instead of trying to understand why I just lost it and took it out on a sick dog who couldn't help himself.

Oliver was a sweet, exuberant little puffball of love, a one of a kind dog who I'll remember forever, just like I'll always remember Patton, the orange tabby who's grooming him in the picture above. Pattycake disappeared one day outside our condo in Travis Heights, and we don't know if he was bitten by a rattler, hit by a car, eaten by the grey foxes that lived in the empty lot next door, or kidnapped by the neighbors who moved away the day he disappeared. But losing both of these wonderful animals taught me one simple thing: when your sister the veterinarian gives you advice, take it. My sister Nancy told me a thousand times not to give my dogs human food or too many treats, and she told me just as many times not to let my cat outside the house. She was right on both counts, and I was a fool to think I knew better, that I was being kind to them by giving them what I thought they wanted, what I thought I'd want in their places. I just sped them on their way. I hope they can forgive me.

I'll miss you, Ollie Bear. See you on the other side.

UPDATE: See Deirdre's touching tribute here.

So a Guy Walks into an Agent's Office

I'm a sucker for magic, and particularly card tricks. I don't even want to know how they're done, because it would ruin them for me. I've got a friend who can't enjoy movies because he's always imagining the cameras, crew and set during every scene. That must suck, and I want no part of it.

I also enjoy profanity and lewdness. This video is from a documentary called The Aristocrats, which if you haven't seen you should, as long as you don't mind unbelievably foul language and imagery. You've been warned, so don't watch this part of it if you're liable to object to naughtiness:



You've got to see Bob Saget's version of the joke, not to mention Jason Alexander's, which features butterflied testicles. You heard me.

Sassy Fun Baby

Sabrina is the most delightful, giggly little girl, and I know that because when you tickle her, she bursts into the most amazing laugh, and when you stop she says "More." And then you blow a raspberry on her tummy and she laughs even longer and louder than before. Then you pick her up and hug her with a big grin on your face and the one of the warmest, happiest feelings you've ever known in your heart.

She won't put up with that for long, because that's not the game she's there to play. But she tolerates it for a while because she knows you can't help yourself, and after a few seconds it's back to work. You wipe the moisture from the corners of your eyes and get back on the job, and it starts all over again, and again, until you're exhausted and Mommy takes over for a while. It's hard to let go, but it all begins and ends with Mommy, and if you had to hand her over to anyone, it would be her. You're just grateful to be a part of it all.

Sabrina's Art, part 2

Sabrina chose the last one as her favorite of the five I had pictures of (my absolute favorites are some of her first paintings ever, and they're at the office just above where my laptop goes - I'll definitely take pics of those soon and post them), but I like this one a lot. She's so sure of what she wants to do, and she doesn't hesitate or think about it, it just comes out of her onto the paper. One day I hope to be as much of an artist as she already is.

Sabrina's Art

Take that, Monet! More to come . . .

Sabrina's Bed

This is the top bunk in Sabrina's new bed (thanks Grandmama AKA my mother!), which she climbs up and down with confidence. We've put pillows around the likely tumble-down areas, but no flying leaps yet, thank God. Below is the sleeping area, up top is for play and stuffed animal storage.

She loves to show off her bed to visitors, and they're all required to climb the ladder and get up under the canopy, which is covered with stars. It's very strong, but I'm usually worried about getting up there as it creaks a little.

We haven't yet succeeded in getting her to spend the night here on her own, and considering the degree to which she flails around in our bed, I'm a little worried she'll knock herself cold on one of the uprights, but we all have to learn such things the hard way. Mommy's quite good at bubble-wrapping sharp corners in a stylish and effective way, so I look forward to sleeping on a portion of our bed that's wider than 18 inches someday soon. Yay me! Considering I used to sleep from corner to corner of my king-sized bed and never touched the side for five years, that will be just unbelievably fantastic. The dogs are probably hoping to get back up there too, but no dice, piggies. You're still banished to your luxurious piles of pillows.

Worth Watching

Fitna, the film about Islam by Geert Wilders. Interesting but seriously graphic and difficult to watch at times. But probably good for you, so do it anyway. Link hijacked from Ace of Spades.

Nice Skirt, Mike

Hey, who knows when I'll be wearing a kilt again? I don't know if you can tell, but the tie kind of matches. Boo-ya, suckas.

Man That's Good Stuff

I'm a fan of David Mamet, who wrote the play that was made into one of my favorite movies, Glengarry Glen Ross. He may well have written the screenplay, but I'm too lazy to look that up. Mamet has apparently long been, in his words, a "brain-deal liberal," which considering his writing is bit of a surprise. He always seemed to have a conservative worldview, as liberals often do when you get down to it.

Anywho, he's written an interesting column for the Village Voice:

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me.

It's a long column, but well worth the time. Mamet, a New Yorker (I think) in the entertainment industry, will catch a rash of sh*t for writing this, as the comments will reveal if you care to read them. He's probably not going to suffer financially, being one of the rich white males liberals love to hate already, but I foresee a lot of awkward encounters at award ceremonies, movie premieres, etc. He gets a little closer to the point here:

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

My major problem with liberalism is the idea that perfection is attainable, but that evil conservatives are keeping it from us. I'm oversimplifying, but conservatism seems to me to take human nature into account more fully than liberalism. I found this section particularly interesting:

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

I've excerpted more than is probably helpful, or even legal for all I know, but it's all well worth reading. Check it out.

One Sensible Voice in a Hurricane of Nonsense

Tim Blair, ever the Global Warming skeptic (good for him - we all should be, considering what people like Al Gore stand to gain from widespread acceptance of his nonsense), has found a story that, along with others and a common-sense view of the current state of climate science, helps non-brainwashed people make sense of the issue:

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists.

Best American Idol-Related Thing Ever

I don't know how people find the time to do something like this, but thank God for them and their wide-open schedules.

My Favorite Things

I've often mentioned how magical Achewood is here on this tired old dog of a blog, because it just is. But sometimes it's so perfect that all I can do is tell you to go forth and check it out.

Thoughtful Baby

Beautiful Sabrina is just too precious here, isn't she?

Bath Baby

This one's from December of 2007, featuring the lovely Sabrina and many of her bath letters as clothing. Sort of a Goldie Hawn Laugh-In thing, I suppose. But more adorable and sweet.

Swing Baby

Man I'm terrible at updating this blog lately. Between being horribly ill with the flu and losing 20 pounds during it, and taking another 10 days to not feel like fried death, and working furiously, I just haven't had a chance.

But when your daughter is this amazingly beautiful and sweet, it's a crime not to share that with the world. World, I apologize. Won't happen again.

Pudding Face

Yum.

This Time Last Year

Sabrina was modeling her fancy cold-weather hat and playing in the "cave" (the bush out front that hid the cable junction box) and we were celebrating a year of baby existence. What a little darling.

The Awesome Never Stops

So many uses for bacon, AKA God's gift to humanity. This one I won't try, but it sounds lovely.

An Enormous Amount of Fun

GodDAMN.

Site is objectionable for any number of reasons, but this video is amazing. Watch.

Easily the Deepest Sh*t Ever

Words cannot express my feelings after watching this:



You can thank Skinny Bean in Denver for that.

Bad News

What a bummer. George MacDonald Fraser was one of my favorite authors, I absolutely love his Flashman series and his accounts, fictionalized and otherwise, of military service in the Highland Light Infantry during and after WWII are absolutely amazing. The Flashman books are especially enjoyable; they chronicle the adventures of a (fictional) prominent Victorian soldier whose horniness and cowardice are only surpassed by his luck, leading him through amazing adventures that take him all over the world, where he meets every interesting character of the times, blunders into every interesting event of the times, and beds most of the interesting women of the times. They're extremely well written and, other than the presence of the main character, historically accurate, especially as concerns the language and local customs of the era. He also wrote the screenplay for the only Three Musketeers movie I've ever enjoyed, the 1973 version with Oliver Reed, Michael York, Faye Dunaway, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch and Richard Chamberlain.

Just as enjoyable are his MacAuslan books, fictional retellings of his military service that are variously hilarious, poignant, heartwarming and fulfilling. I really loved Quartered Safe Out Here, his factual account of WWII service in Burma, but for some reason I keep rereading the fictional stuff and I like it more and more each time. I've reread a lot of his stuff, especially the Flashman books, but I'll probably reread the MacAuslan and Flashman stories for the rest of my life. They're just that good.

Godspeed, good sir. You'll be missed.

UPDATE: cool article by Christopher Hitchens here.