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Monday, October 31, 2011

 
A Rerun Of The Fourth Annual Blogger Costume Party

It's been a busy year for me. Haven't had the time to whip out the Paint Shop Pro.

--

This year's theme: X-Men.

As Professor Charles Xavier (Roger L. Simon) tours the X-mansion...



...Magneto (Andrew Sullivan) hatches his latest plans for mutant domination.



Beast (Hugh Hewitt) enjoys a good read.



Wolverine (Dean Esmay) senses trouble.



Never start a flame war with Pyro (Markos Moulitsas Zúniga).



Storm (Michelle Malkin) goes into action.



Courtesy of Chris Muir, the stars of Day By Day show up to the party: Sam as Dr. Jean Grey, Zed as Cyclops, Damon as Iceman (keeping the bottle of champagne chilled), and Jan as Rogue.



Designer notes: Heh, looks like Kos is the only one not wearing hat or helmet who keeps his original hair. His is my first Paint Shop Pro creation to make use of the directional illumination effect.

I created the Hewitt image and an earlier version of the Sully image prior to October 25; that interview had nothing to do with their inclusion in the costume party.

The first Sullivan image used a closeup of Magneto, but it required blowing up his face so that it came out real blurry. I got Sully's image by screen-capturing a YouTube video of one of his appearances on The Colbert Report - you can see a purple glow above his right eye from the Colbert set lighting.

As challenging as getting Wolverine's hairline to look reasonably natural on Dean, the most time-consuming task was getting Hugh Hewitt's face the right shade of blue.

Many thanks to Chris Muir for his contribution.

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Saturday, October 29, 2011

 
He's Making A List, Checking It Twice

Andrew Breitbart is tallying up OWS lawbreaking.

Powerline's John Hinderaker is right - Occupy Wall Street is a crime wave.

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HEARTBREAK

The Texas Rangers utterly collapsed from the second inning onward. Just sad.

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Friday, October 28, 2011

 
False Alarm

Chelsea Clinton will not be running for Congress.

She seems a bit young for the gig at 31, only because of the size of our problems. Not that age has been an asset for sorts like Barney Frank or Maxine Waters.

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

 
I Wish This Were A Parody

Chelsea Clinton might run for Congress.

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I Sure Hope This Is A Parody

Ken Jennings is the 99 percent.

(Click image to embiggen photo.)

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Not A Parody

Volokh Conspiracy headline: PETA Tries to Use the Thirteenth Amendment to Free Whales from Sea World.

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Monday, October 24, 2011

 
Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Hearts Of Men?

Pope Benedict does, but only up to a point:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

Memo to the Vatican: central planners are just as immoral as and far more economically destructive than the private sector. The public sector is responsible for the Great Recession. In this country, the Fed lowered interest rates abnormally, and the United States Congress pressured lenders to overextend credit. This combination masqueraded high-risk mortgages as low-risk, and a lot of folks took the bait.

The sovereign debt problem falls on the lap of the sort of people the Vatican wishes to empower. The Western powers simply cannot afford the level of welfare statism and economic intervention that they crave.

Free markets are a moral necessity because they minimize theft. Thieves operate in all economic systems, but their power waxes as economic freedom wanes.

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Friday, October 21, 2011

 
The Most Important Thing To Keep In Mind About Qadaffi

Just because an evil dictator has been killed doesn't mean Libya becomes a better place. We don't know how peaceful - or how violent - the contest for power will be. We don't know who will fill the power vacuum. We don't know if the new boss will be someone the West can establish amenable relations with.

Don't break out the champagne glasses until we see how this thing turns out.

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NRO On Qadaffi

Ion Mihai Pacepa - who once had a price on his head, placed by Qadaffi - applies a bit of Cold War thinking to the Arab world.

KLo interviews expert on Islamic supremacism Barry Rubin.

Katrina Trinko reports Perry and Romney's reactions.

Jack David issues words of caution.

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

 
"Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair!"

Muhammar Qadaffi has reportedly gone the way of Ozymandias. US State Department cannot confirm just yet.

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Lost In Translation

Oops.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

 
The Fleabaggers Were For Wealth Redistribution...

...before they were against it.

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Pop Quiz

New York magazine tests Zuccotti Park OWS protesters on their knowledge of certain issues. A majority got the inflation/deflation question right. Only 38% of the respondents were able to name the Federal Reserve chairman, but all the answers but "don't know" deserve partial credit.

I wonder how many fleabaggers know the significance of the term helicopter drop.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

 
MLK Statue Fail

I don't mind if a statue of an American civil rights leader is outsourced to an overseas firm. But if the designer is the same guy who designed Mao statues for Communist China, well that's just cruel.

And there's the unanswered question of whether slave labor might have been employed in the statue's creation.

Even Maya Angelou finds fault with the memorial:
On Feb. 4, 1968, two months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a haunting sermon at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church about a eulogy that might be given in the event of his death.

“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,” King told the congregation. “Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

...

Carved on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue, the inscription reads: I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.

“The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,” Angelou, 83, said Tuesday. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply.

“He had no arrogance at all,” she said. “He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.”

The crossed arms strike me as more appropriate for Bull Connor than Martin Luther King, Jr. It's a "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" sort of posture. I think this pose woudl have been more appropriate. (Yes, that's from the "I Have A Dream" speech.")

Recycle the Chicom marble and start all over. Maybe someone could buy up some of that marble to make a Tiananmen Square monument - in Taipei.

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Monday, October 17, 2011

 
Reenactment Of Battle Of San Jacinto

Photos here.

Tell me the guy in the sixth photo isn't Ben Linus from Lost.

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Sunday, October 16, 2011

 
Texas Rangers Win Second Pennant

With an amazing 15-5 blowout against Detroit.

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Friday, October 14, 2011

 
This Ain't No Disco

California legislator goes after raves, due to the prevalence of drugs (mainly Ecstasy) at these events.

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Snooki's Revenge

Tanning tax fizzles.

For those who missed the Jersey Shore star's riff on the tax...

Hey, any chance of getting her to make a Tea Party appearance?

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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

 
OWS And Anti-Semitism

One of the driving forces behind the Occupy Wall Street protests is Adbusters, an environmentalist and anti-consumerist organization based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

"Anti-consumerism" is a movement that claims that the Western world buys too many luxury consumer goods. Think of Adbusters as Greenpeace meets Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Florentine Dominican friar who had instigated the most famous of the historic Bonfires of the Vanities.

Aside from OWS, Adbusters launched the anti-consumerist Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week campaigns.

It also has a nasty anti-Semitic Street, as Rush Limbaugh describes:

You know, Adbusters is also very much involved in the Occupy Wall Street Now movement. And David Brooks, you know, a clock is right twice a day. David Brooks has a column in the New York Times today with an interesting implication. He writes that the impetus for Occupy Wall Street was sparked by Adbusters magazine.

Now, Adbusters magazine, you may not have heard of them, but within certain circles Adbusters magazine is known for quite a lot and one of the things that they did that stands out was an essay in 2004 entitled "Why Won't They Say They Are Jewish?" David Brooks says that that 2004 essay in Adbusters outed influential Jews as a tiny elite with a nefarious grip on America. The old Jewish power brokers, the movies, the bankers, that stereotype, that conspiracy theory.

Commentary writer Abe Greenwald sees lots of anti-Semitism among the OWS protests (hat tip to Rand Simberg):

The Jew-hatred among protesters and sympathizers is diverse and unapologetic. It is, in fact, atmospheric. Tune in randomly to live television coverage of the spectacle and you’ll see—as I did—placards scapegoating Israel, Zionism, or “Hitler’s bankers.” Check out the continuous flurry of protest-supporting tweets and blog posts, and you’ll get more of the same.

Glenn Beck caught one anti-Semitic rant. Note that nearby OWS protesters do nothing to diss the ranter.

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I See A Pattern

First it's Charlie Sheen costumes, next it's marijuana-shaped candy.

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Monday, October 10, 2011

 
Just In Time For Halloween

Charlie Sheen costumes.

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If The Shoe Fits

A little while ago on the Rush Limbaugh Show (guest-hosted by Mark Davis today), a caller offered his take on the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Their one consistent message is "Give us free stuff," so they're just a bunch of parasites. He says we should call them the Flea Party, or "Fleabaggers."

Heh.

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Rod Serling, Call Your Office

The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran backs the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Iranian protesters were unavailable for comment.

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Saturday, October 08, 2011

 
A Woman After My Heart

First image in this slideshow.

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Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

All you folks involved or sympathetic with the Occupy Wall Street movement, front and center! Y'all think Wall Street is a hive of scum and villainy? So act like it.

What do people do when they identify a commercial enterprise they find morally reprehensible? They refrain from trading with that company. All you Wall Street bashers should show some moral consistency and refuse to buy any products or services sold by any company publicly traded on the NYSE, American Stock Exchange, or NASDAQ. Buy from foreign corporations not listed on those exchanges (like Nestle), or from private firms. Starve the Wall Street beast!

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Thursday, October 06, 2011

 
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Pejman Yousefzadeh has some thoughtful words.

Kevin Williamson notes a characteristic of Apple Computers that the government does not enjoy: economies of scale. "Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy. Not all of them, but a great many."

I don't own a single Apple product. No iPhone (or any other cell phone), no iPod, no iPad. But I have enjoyed one of Steve Jobs' other legacies: Pixar. While Disney feature films in latter years produced more mediocrity than quality, in its short time Pixar created some of the best animated feature films of all time: Toy Story and its two worthy sequels, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and a personal favorite, Ratatouille. Few live-action films have a scene as moving as this:



Like the restaurant in the film, the microcomputer revolution owes much of its talent to humble origins. Apple was started by two college dropouts in Steve Jobs' bedroom. It now ranks 35th in the Fortune 500. Steve Jobs and his pals have made the world a better place.

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Wednesday, October 05, 2011

 
Yawn

CBS headline: Russia, China veto UN sanctions on Syria.

So what? It's not like sanctions accomplish anything. Especially UN sanctions.

Nothing short of military action will curtail Syria. Anything else is make-work.

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The Show-Me State Shows Protest To Obama

Party on!

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Tuesday, October 04, 2011

 
Did God So Love The Worlds?

Philosophical question of the day: Did Jesus die for Klingons too? Best comment, from sharrukin:

You know I am not a Christian but it would be priceless if aliens showed up and started talking about saving our souls for Jesus just to see the look on Dawkin’s face.

I always thought that "Romulan Catholic Church" had a nice ring to it.

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Monday, October 03, 2011

 
Is Chris Christie Too Fat To Get Elected President?

If food fascists ever become an election issue, I'd say his girth is a plus.

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