Sunday, December 25, 2005
O.C. & STIGGS
Tod Carroll and Ted Mann’s Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O. C. and Stiggs was published by National Lampoon in 1982. It’s a nihilist-comic riot I first read at 17; recommended to anyone suffering post-Christmas family trauma. Sample quote: “Most people in nice neighborhoods don’t expect their pool cabanas to be in danger from helicopter gunships, which was why Sponson’s tactic of using it was so great.”
BUON FIGLIO
A charming Christmas tale—involving Liliana Cavani, Nazis, a Naples brothel, Alexandra King, Marcello Mastroianni, Burt Lancaster, the Internet, two languages, three currencies, and a son’s devoted mission—from Malcolm Farr.
CLEAR NEED IDENTIFIED
“It is clear,” writes Molly Ivins, “ we will need to practice hard on our credulity in the future.” Good advice, especially to everybody who believed Ivins’ previous piece in which she repeated the Little Red Book lie. Hey, Molly; is it lying or not telling the truth?
(Ivins, of course, has something of an unfortunate record over the years. Practice that credulity!)
A GOOD YEAR FOR FREEDOM
Merry Christmas to ... the world:
This week, Freedom House released its survey for 2005. The survey grades each country (from a best of 1 to a worst of 7) and then simplifies these scores into a broader categorization of “free,” “partly free” or “not free.” (For example, the U.S. and Australia are “free”; Burma and Cuba are “not free”; Turkey and Nigeria are “partly free.”) Because countries usually evolve gradually, not many of the numeric scores change in any one year, and even a rise or fall in a country’s score is usually insufficient to move it from one of the three broad categories to another.
This year, however, more countries than usual changed category. Eight countries plus the Palestinian Authority, not yet officially a country, moved up — either from “not free” to “partly free” or from “partly free” to “free.” Four countries moved down. In all, this made it a good year for freedom.
The piece offers some credit for this to George W. Bush’s “strategy of promoting freedom and democracy, including by means of war in Iraq”:
Saad Edin Ibrahim, the dean of Egyptian dissidents and an opponent of the war in Iraq, said recently that it had “unfrozen the Middle East just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did.”
Merry Christmas to ... US forces:
Rumsfeld helped serve the soldiers a dinner of rib-eye steak, lobster, crab legs, Cornish game hens and all the seasonal fixings. Grinning widely and wearing a white cooks hat, he worked his tongs as many of the soldiers snapped pictures of him and politely asked for their helpings.
“Steak’s the big seller tonight,” he declared after the first several dozen soldiers had gone through the line.
And Merry Christmas to ... Jim Lowney! But saaaaad Christmas to ... British Liberal Democrats:
According to Lib Dem calculations, a team of nine reindeer would emit methane with a global-warming impact equivalent to 40,667 tonnes of carbon dioxide as they covered the 122 million miles needed for Santa to deliver presents to every house in the world.
This makes his sleigh ride almost as environmentally unfriendly as an aircraft, which would produce 41,480 tonnes of CO2 on the Christmas Eve trip.
And saaaaad Christmas to ... The Independent’s Martin Hickman:
Gifts are made at factories that use lots of energy and contribute to global warming. Finite and diminishing natural resources such as metals go into them. In particular, plastics use a high amount of oil, yet these goods are often poor quality and disposable, something especially so for toys at Christmas.
Transporting these products to the shops results in more energy use and pollution.
Intensive food production to sate our festive appetite discourages wildlife and allows pesticides to leach into streams and rivers ...
The only bright spot environmentally is that while we are stuffing our mouths with food or ripping open our presents (wrapped with disposable paper), we are not jumping into our cars and spewing pollution from the exhaust pipes. Or working in factories to supply goods for the next Christmas.
Actually, reducing pollution is bad for the environment. Martin hasn’t been keeping up with the very latest scientific discoveries.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
O BONZA TREE
We don’t celebrate Kwanzaa in Australia. Instead, we revel in Bonza, a day of traditional Australian cultural pursuits: songs, film, poetry, filling in applications for arts grants, and so on. Imre Salusinszky began this year’s Bonza a week early:
When I was a lass in Sassafrass,
There was nuthin’ we couldn’t handle,
With Uncle Fred’s shovel, or Uncle Bill’s pick,
Or Aunt Ethel’s “special” candle.
Fred’s shovel dug our mighty well,
Bill’s pick, it broke the stones some,
And as for Ethel’s candle, well,
In ‘Frass it could get lonesome ...
Merry Bonza, everybody! And, for anybody not beholden to Australian traditions, please enjoy that Christmas thing that happens in some countries.
(Okay, Bonza aside, very best Christmas wishes to all readers, commenters, linkers, fellow bloggers, supporters, opponents, trolls, oafs, and infants, and all of your families. Have a great day—Tim)
LITTLE REDS BOOKED
Molly Ivins and James Carville lied to the American people! Well, not really, but they did repeat information that was later shown to be false—which is the same thing, if you’re one of them Bush-hatin’ folks, yessir (must ... stop ... channelling ... Ivins).
The claim: that a Dartmouth student was questioned by Homeland Security agents after making a library request for Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. Who fell for it, besides Carville and Ivins? A surprising number of gullibloggers and fellow members of the Frightened-American community.
Some doubted the story from the outset. For others, news that the story was wrong merely caused them to mutate it into further fake-but-true evidence of Smirkler the Hurricane Monkey’s wicked plans to imprison everybody in Intelligent Design re-education camps:
The report of the FBI harassing students over Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book is apparently a hoax, but that it was so plausible says volumes of how we view our government.
Yes. Yes, it does.
UPDATE. Instapundit, who was on to this early, has more.
UPDATE II. Bunch of other links—the Huffertonians were also stooged by this—at Conservator.
UPDATE III. Nice post from Gryphen.
UPDATE IV. Second thoughts at Daily Kos.
UPDATE V. Ted Kennedy, who cited the bogus report in a newspaper piece, uses the fake-but-true defence:
Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited ‘‘public reports” in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy’s broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance.
UPDATE VI. Islamic site Khilafah.com is still reporting the story as fact.
UPDATE VII. Rep. Jay Inslee: “The kid checked out Mao Tse-Tung’s Little Red Book for research and ended up with two FBI agents on his doorstep. That’s unnecessary and causes more fear and concern than security. I’ve seen that over and over again.” Sure you have.
UPDATE VIII. Gary McGath reports that “a variant of the story has popped up, with the locale changed to California.”
GOVERNMENT DOES GOOD
When Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer discovered that $18,000 of taxpayers’ money was about to be wasted showing several films—including The President Versus David Hicks, which already cost us $433,000—at an Indonesian movie festival, he apparently intervened. Result: funding withdrawn. This is a brilliant outcome, although David Marr seems unimpressed for some reason.
UPDATE. In other local film/television news, Harry Hutton is negotiating with the ABC over a beach riot blockbuster!
RESIDENTS “LOST”
Blue staters are mysteriously vanishing:
Massachusetts [blue] lost residents for the second year in a row, new federal Census estimates show, underscoring an accelerating population shift from the Northeast to the South and West that threatens to erode the state’s political and economic clout ...
Nationally, according to the census estimate, Nevada [red] edged out Arizona [red] to once again win the honors of being the fastest-growing state; its population is up 3.5 percent from last year. Eight of the 10 most rapidly growing states are in the South or West. Rhode Island [blue] and New York [blue] also lost residents this year.
We need a Lancet report on this. Where is Bush hiding the bodies? Are they in the stolen lake?
UPDATE. More bad news for blue people:
California is in danger of large-scale flooding, according to speakers – including former Vice President Al Gore – at a global warming presentation on Dec. 6 given at Stanford University.
Speakers at “The Heat is On” presented the crowd, which included a handful of Paly students, with data and predictions for the future. For instance, scientists expect a rise in sea level of 20 feet which will leave hundreds of millions of people homeless across the world.
Homeless? They’ll be lucky to escape the incremental water level increase (if any) with their lives, as Dave S. explains: “Presumably the poor people will drown in their living rooms and huts after years of sloshing through ever-rising water to get to them, rather than, say, move a couple miles inland where the new coast is. Because if there’s one thing humans can’t do, it’s adapt.” Gore’s fans—Google that phrase and you’ll get 35 matches, by the way—turned out in powerful numbers for his Stanford speech, although some still haven’t gotten his environmental message:
Kimberly Heiman, a Ph.D. candidate in Marine Biology, drove with 10 classmates from the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterrey just to see Gore’s speech.
Ten people won’t fit in a Prius. It’d be interesting to see if the weather in Palo Alto was colder than average on the 6th, thus following the inverse law of global warm-mongering ...
UPDATE II. To futher encourage running away, six blue states—New York , Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont—have signed on to some sort of mini-Kyoto:
Under the agreement, each state will set a cap for its carbon-dioxide emissions and power plants will face emissions limits. Plants that don’t meet their targets will be required to purchase unused emissions allowances from other plants that pollute less. Market forces are expected to encourage plants to install more pollution controls.
Which lucky states get to be New Zealand?
NEWS BRIEFLETS
* Congratulations to Donnah on two years of pure cracker goodness. This is still one of the funniest posts you’ll ever read; and, if you missed them the first time, please scroll through Donnah’s hilariously deadpan comments here.
* MoDo, why you no speak to your old friends? Why, MoDo?
* Good news for Iraq.
* The phrase of the day: “I had my gun coming out the door after him and he’s right here at this point. That’s when I was fixing to lay it down.”
DAILY LOSS
Love this line from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of popular US satire site Daily Kos:
“They want to make me into the latest Jesse Jackson, but I’m not ideological at all,” Moulitsas told me, “I’m just all about winning.”
Oh, no he isn’t! Go visit Mark Coffey for much more on this happy-go-lucky online oddball.
CAN’T BLAME HIM
Sadness in Seattle:
Counselors have been made available to Seattle Center employees who may have witnessed the most recent suicide, which occurred Friday when an 84-year-old homeless man shot himself ...
... at the end of an evening jazz performance.
He’s gone to a better (and possibly less arrhythmic) place. Other nations are taking preventative measures against this sort of thing:
The music of Eric Clapton was banned in Iran this week.
(Via LGF)
CHRISTMAS MIRACLES
Andrew West reveals his inner conservative. Or maybe it’s his outer conservative, considering the subject matter. And Anonymous Lefty continues his slow drift to the right:
Another person there was boasting about her apparently extremely generously funded fine arts PhD. She wasn’t boasting about how brilliant her PhD was: she was boasting about how little she had to do and how well she was remunerated by a grant for doing it.
Now, I’m all for the funding of the yarts as much as anyone, but if you’re being generously supported at the public teat for work that is extremely esoteric in nature and which you apparently only have to do a very little of whilst sunning yourself on the veranda - perhaps boasting about how much you’re screwing the system to everyone you meet might not be the best idea.
Lefty’s transformation is running ahead of schedule!
Friday, December 23, 2005
STATE OF PLAY
George W. Bush: up. New York Times: down.
UPDATE. Other trends are also encouraging:
The Liberals and Nationals have moved within striking distance of breaking Labor’s stranglehold on state power, with Labor losing its lead in NSW and struggling in Queensland.
However:
Academic and leading election analyst Malcolm Mackerras said the defeat of Labor in NSW could hurt the Howard Government, boosting Kim Beazley’s chances against the federal Coalition in late 2007.
“I think it would be good for federal Labor if Labor in NSW was defeated,” he said. “It is a fact that Howard benefits from all the states being Labor.”
There might be something to that, although Mackerras is primarily known as a reverse indicator.
TOO MUCH LIKE THE US, NOT ENOUGH LIKE CANADA
“Let’s admit it,” writes Greg Barns. “Australia has become a pigsty.” Mr. Barns—click here and here for a little background—wishes us to be “more like Canada, a nation that embraces civil rights and tolerance, with political leaders who stand up to racism and nastiness; a nation that sees its role in the world as an independent nation and which is not frightened to stand up and be counted in the global fight for a fairer world.”
Tell Ted Nolan about it, Greg. In NYC, Margaret Kimberley is also furious about Australian racism:
A rumor that Arabs had punched a white lifeguard in the nose sent the laid back white Aussies into a frenzy.
Some rumor. Margaret concludes:
Australia may be far away physically, but it seems to have too much in common with the United States. Both countries affirm that their forebears had a right to kill and destroy. Both countries have political leaders who accentuate the worst aspect of their nations’ histories. The people produced by those histories are never as good as they claim to be.
Whatever that’s supposed to mean. By contrast, here’s some interesting comment from someone who was actually at the riot and doesn’t seem to be stupid.
MUGABE PIERCED
Not sure how believable is this Zimdaily report, but there’s no harm in hoping:
A billy goat did some rough, instant justice to the President when his motorcade stopped to refuel en-route to the eastern resorts of Nyanga. The president, popularly known as Bob got out to stretch his legs, and speak to a couple locals. He was holding a bottle of water, when a Billy goat developed a profound interest and chose to pursue it. Whilst Bob swung the bottle at the goat, it quickly and sharply pierced Bob’s scrotum, and large bowel. Mugabe’s notorious bodyguards seemed unable to prevent the attack as the goat lunged towards the president, perhaps the goat should be handling his security in future. By the time they reached Christmas pass outside mutare, the President was in horrible pain and had to be rushed to a secret location in Mutare for medical treatment.
(Via Deo)